Coming back to Monrovia after a 3 year gap has been deflating and discouraging. It's been a crash landing and, the plane has still not come to a complete full stop.
The almost-2-hour ride from RIA to central Monrovia is enveloped in complete darkness at night. Crashing into another vehicle with broken headlights at night on the RIA Highway is a recurring what-if nightmare and, to experience this road after an exhausting series of flights from abroad is a terrible way to come back.
They are widening the Highway which is good, but meanwhile, you have to come through this depressing darkness , riding for hours, hoping not to have an accident, if you flew in at night.
When you finally make it to the edges of Monrovia, you will see an insane an amount of traffic on the same small road, chaos, some lights, garbage, even fully visible at night. From the edge of Congo Town all the way to central Monrovia, everything was dark, hardly a few street lights here or there.
If you aren't a saving-the-world international development worker, living a humble life in a fully serviced compound, you will arrive in a house or apartment building which is yet again dark. If you are lucky enough to have a back up generator, you can have that turned on and, then sit and weep , wondering what you are doing in a country which doesn't have electricity.
Not having stable electricity has been the bane of my existence here. I'm getting close to my mid-40s so I'm really not a fan of living like this.
But, we have to pretend like everything is good. So good that 200 years of Liberia's history was being marketed and celebrated in a grand style. There are - or rather, still are, and will be there, rusted, for next 10 years - hoardings everything talking about this grand event. I believe some of these hoardings mention a Monrovia that is green and clean.
Speaking of cleanliness, Monrovia is filthy. It is exponentially more filthy than before I left. There are mountains of garbage on Centre Street. I literally exclaimed in horror when we passed by it.
The controversial 'Monrovia is the dirtiest capital' comments by the EU Ambassador which I'd seen on my Facebook feed started to make sense.
The state celebrated 200 years of existence by a very grand event at the SKD Stadium, attended by dignitaries from neighbouring states and the United States of course. In fact, the celebrations were launched end of last year, marketing the Bi-Centennial celebrations as Year of Return, copying what Ghana has more successfully done, attracting African Americans 'back home.' Ghana though is far more advanced as an economy and has thriving sectors and markets compared to Liberia.
Liberia has already implemented the 'returnee' policy in its earliest post war era under Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. Many appointments in administration were made to Liberian diaspora but how many of these professionals actually returned? Everyone talked about how the merely channeled their salaries back to the US where they still had rents and school fees to pay.
From what I understand with Ghana is that the Diaspora is welcomed back to live and work. I am not sure how many appointments are being made in its state infrastructure, at least not critical ones. Ghana is a much more thriving and stable economy but I can't imagine who wants to come back to Liberia given that literally nothing works.
And more, importantly, these Bi-Centennial celebrations are hollow if they don't engage with Liberia's problematic past and, the contradictions of the 2003-present post-war era. And, they haven't. It seems it's all been pomp and glory. That this particular populist, anti-establishment , anti-elitist government has promoted such a narrative points to the supremacy of power and that of the state. It is vital to keep promoting a grand narrative of Liberia as a free and unique state for black people and, the symbolisms of the first independent republic, despite its horrific history as a settler colony, have to be perpetuated at all cost. Not even a from-the-slum-footballer-turned-President is going to tinker with this image. So, we keep playing this tune and even amplify the notion of freedom so much so that we continue to be a beacon for return to the continent.
See this piece: CONFRONTING DUPLICITY Liberia bi-centennial celebration: why it needs to reconcile history and identity.
In the midst of this grand farce, the price of produce knocked me out. I couldn't believe that a rather small pineapple costs 700 LD! 4 mangoes which literally fell off a tree cost 200 LD. 4 bananas cost 100 LD. Shitty, over ripe bananas. There is no cultivated fruit in Liberia. They all fell off a tree. I'm livid.
Everything is so damn expensive and nothing works.
But somehow we have to participate in the falsehoods of narratives, the lying propaganda that state machineries and hegemony operate with. How many lies are too many?
