Monrovia Pool Party ‘06
The Washington Post’s Johannesburg correspondent, Craig Timberg, has been filing some really great stories out of Africa lately. His latest is from Liberia, the once war-torn West African coke hub that is actually showing some slow signs of progress. Imagine that, a flicker of hope in an African news dispatch.
Monrovia, Liberia’s wild and crime-ridden capital is coming back to life. A semi-steady flow of electricity is coming to areas of the city, lighting up the streets and driving the number of robberies down.
So brazen were the robbers in parts of Monrovia’s Paynesville district that they often sang a terrifying serenade, “I Hear My Blessing Coming,” in the moments before they lifted their victims into the air, rifled through their pockets and ran off into the night.
Then in September — more than four years after warlord Charles Taylor stepped down as president, ending the country’s disastrous civil war — a pair of diesel generators no larger than tool sheds rumbled to life in one of Paynesville’s most lawless neighborhoods. Operated by the national power company, they produced just enough electricity to operate streetlights. The robbers retreated. The singing stopped.
The newish president, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf came to power promising changes; no small task in Liberia.
Johnson Sirleaf has repeatedly urged patience from Liberians as she attempts to cultivate a culture in which the government is seen as something more than just a source of jobs and largess. She trimmed the civil service by thousands of jobs and has made a priority of tax collection, often a neglected art in countries such as Liberia where much of the national budget is paid by international donors.
Billboards across Monrovia feature an illustration of streetlights shining on a road at night. To the side, in a separate image, a girl is pictured drinking water from a communal tap, another slow-moving success story as some neighborhoods get what Liberians call “Ellen water” in affectionate homage to their president.
Though still far from prospering, it looks like the country might stand a chance at pulling itself back up.
Now Liberians worry about the routine frustrations of citizens of poor but peaceful nations anywhere. The price of rice has spiked. Jobs are far too few. Taxes are high. Road construction has caused traffic jams and kicked up a mess of dust that irritates eyes and chokes throats.
But there also is something to celebrate.
“Light has something to do with life,” said Sarah Barpolu, 42, a mother of seven who sells ice and water by the soft radiance of the streetlights. “If there wasn’t light, we couldn’t be sitting here. Everybody would be afraid.”
In early February, Timberg write a great piece on Zimbabwe about a man forced to walk 9 miles each way to work because roundtrip bus fare costs a week’s salary.
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