There is an Avis dealership in town who has about 40 Landcruisers. The UN and NGO’s sell Landcruisers here when they replace them with new ones, and this guy stocked up on them for 15,000 each. Around town you see hundreds of them. UN convoys are one of the few things that makes all cars instantly clear the streets and pull over. The rumour is that if you dont pull over, it will end badly and quickly, and no one wants to find out. There are UNMIL bases everywhere. For some reason Indiam women miltary have a strong presence around the presidential house. They wear a blue and black camouflage? which would be handy if you wanted to blend into a coral reef. Everyone has an AK47.
I hired a Landcruiser for 3 days. Day 1 was to go to Robertsport to see Cori Stern’s Strongheart House. She asked me to check on it while I was in Liberia and take some pictures. We had a great driver: Morris. Over the entire 3 days, he was careful, risk averse and smooth. And the car was perfect for our trips. Landcruisers are really cool vehicles for long trips on uneven roads.
Now everyone in Liberia underestimates times and distances. General consensus is that Robertsport is 1 and a half hours drive. It took nearly 3. I pointed this out and people said, oh that was because of the traffic so it took longer. But you guys told me the traffic was always like that? Ralph you are right. Sigh.
The first 100km or so was fine, a smooth, good sealed road. When we turned leftfor the last 46km to Robertsport, the road was heavily furrowed the entire way, with no let up, and also huge potholes. It was a compressed dirt road. You know when you get ripples across the entire road length, that are only centimetres apart, and the faster you drive the more things vibrate? 46km was like that.
When we got there, we had no idea where the house was. So I had the idea of going to the very top of the hill, looking around, and asking the first people we saw. I thought if we said Cori Stern or Strongheart we might get a blank look. So we pulled up to a nice looking home with a woman in traditional African dress and headdress. She said, Can I help you? Yes, we are looking for the big house that the american woman painted. That sounded clear and unambiguous. She replied, Who me? I repeated and she looked confused.
Agnes WAS american and had just renovated and painted this house. She was brought up in the US but her mother had lived here. Agnes decided to sell up in the States and move here. She had only been here a month. There were 2 american women who had painted houses.
She invited us all in for lunch (me, Karrus, Johnny, Snyder from Niapele, and our driver.) We had a great lunch of rice, bean salad, and potato geens with fish. Agnes’ house was beautiful. She had just extended and renovated it, with a western eye. She was just off the sand, up a hill. It was a beautiful surf beach with huge wide sands. We stayed for some time and chatted. Coincidentally, she had another western visitor. Luca was Italian, but was born in Robertsport to doctor parents and went to the local school. Before the war started he went to live in Italy. He looked very Italian, my age, wild hair, extravagant hand gestures.
Liberian english is very hard to follow at first. They are as hard to follow here as the jive turkeys on flying high. I need to concentrate and tune in. If I’m just sitting back in the car and the guys are talking and laughing, I cant follow a word. But if I concentrate and tune in I pick up about 70%. Luca is fluent, and a really nice guy. He didnt have a plan - just left Italy and came here to look around. He was staying that night in a Red Cross guest house.
Agnes asked me how long I was in Liberia for. I said thats a good question. I planned to stay for 2 weeks, but this place is killing me. Hotels are 150, vehicles 150/day plus fuel, I may need to ship out earlier. Agnes then told me she had an apartment in Mamba Point, and I was welcome to stay there. Was I interested? Oh yeah. That was a very generous offer. She told me where it was and where to pick up the key. Its about 200m from the Mamba Point Hotel. Agnes was a very wonderful and generous hostess. The apartment will save me at least 150 per day. And it all started asking for directions from the only other american woman in Robertsport who had recently painted a house.
Time to go, and I really enjoyed the company of Agnes and Luca. BTW some south african guys have set up a nice ‘tent hotel’ right on the beach and are attracting surfers. The tents are on wooden raised platforms and look very comfortable, like those outback tent hotels at home in Port Douglas or Uluru. There is a good restaurant. They are Agnes’ neighbours. Apparently Robertsport is one of the world’s great surf beaches. Try a google of Robertsport + surf, and Robertsport + accomodation + tent. The surf certainly looked huge, there was a peninsula and a cove thing happening.
We checked out Cori’s place, which Luca had seen. It looked like it needed a lot of work but had a lot of potential. It was uninhabited but right on the sand, and enormous. I think it needs a rock wall as the high tide was only about 30m from the building. I’ll ship Cori a report and some photos when I get back to Ghana; pictures wont upload from here with this bandwidth.
Surprisingly the trip back took as long as the trip up. Something to do with using the same roads, and having the same traffic problems in Monrovia. Everyone but me was surprised that it took longer than an hour and a half.
I moved across the Royal Hotel in Sinkor, same rate but I wanted to have a couple of places in my mind for the next trip. It was near Karrus, and also near a huge UNMIL base,with mainly UN and NGO clientelle. It turned out to be nice, with a huge restaurant at the back that was lively with westerners. I find i need some ex-pat ambience every now and then.
There was just one surprise at checkin: the 100% deposit. I suggested this was more of a payment in advance than a deposit? The partial payment being the whole point of a deposit. No sir, thats just a deposit. O..kay. I was glad I was staying just the one night. Tomorrow would be a 2 day trip to Bong County to see the school, and an overnight stay there. On my return I would be staying at Agnes’ apartment. So i handed over USD 150, which I am getting really good at now. And in one of those frequent incongruous scenes that is a daily African experience, I watched 4 Japanese sushi chefs prepare my Udon noodles, Miso soup and Sashimi platter.