I'm in Sanniquellie, Liberia. For those that may not know, Sanniquellie is in north-east Liberia, close to the border between Cote D'Ivoire and Guinea. It's a town of approximately 10,000 people (of course, by western standards, you wouldn't think that many people live here) in Nimba county.
Sanniquellieis at about 1000 meters...giving it a bit of elevation. This helps, actually, although I've yet to see it, I've heard that the heat isn't so bad up here and that Sanniquellie can get tropical 'breezes'which help to mitigate the extreme temperature.
Certainly, the temperature has been hot. I don't think it's been under 30C since I've arrived. What I can say for sure is: it's bloody hot!
I've got heaps of stuff I want to share, but I find only a limited time to do so. I thought I'd make my first real post about the project here more of an overview of what I've observed in the last week.
Liberia is a ruin. 15 plus years of civil and uncivil wars have left the country in a state that's unimaginable. The native Liberians actually refer to three different phases of the war - different struggles for different power groups happened at different times - they refer to the phases as World War I, WWII, and WWIII. They use this information to help you know what happened when. For example, when I asked one of the drivers when it was he started living in Sanniquellie town, he said that he moved here between WWII and WWIII. This, for him, perfectly encapsulated the information - sometime between the conflict between LURD & the government and the conflict between MODEL and the government, he and his family were forced to leave the coast and headed for the Guinean border.
I should preface the rest of my story with the knowledge that I've never been to the developing world to speak of. All of my impressions I think should be taken with a grain of salt. However, at the same time I have already discussed much of this with the team here in Sanniquellei (SA) and I feel like I have some authority to say what I'm about to say.
Liberia is exceptional among developing countries (shares with only a few right now) in that quite literally the last two decades have been spent destroying everything that was in place. Before the war, by African standards, the country was quite rich. It has a remarkable amount of natural resources at its disposal in the form of rubber trees, iron ore, diamonds, bannanas, etc. and as a result (before the war) had quite an infrastructure built all around the country. The bombed out remnants of this infrastructure is frequently still visible.
Monrovia looks like...well...a bomb went off in it. Everywhere you go, you cannot help but notice the fact that the walls are full of bullet holes and burned out shells of buildings stand filled, frequently, with squatters who have no place to live. Like many developing cities, in every available space people who are trying to eke out their lives have put together whatever they can to provide themselves with some sort of shelter or housing. They've piled into partially destroyed apartment complexes with half of the building lying in rubble around it, simply because at least it provides cover from the rain.
I can go more into that in the future. I have not yet been here long enough that I have a good feel for the place. The one thing that I can say for sure is just what the title of this post refers to: it is a country of optimism.
Everywhere you go, you see evidence of people thinking that now things are different. The new president, with the backing of much of the western world, is beginning to rebuild the once influencial nation many of the residents were raised in. Everyone has tremendously high hopes for what this governement will accomplish; indeed, some of them even recognize that it's possible she won't do everything herself but will lay important groundwork for years to come.
But the optimism is quite spectacular. Especially in the face of the destruction they face every day and the remarkably extreme poverty they endure, the optimism frequently shows on their faces. Talking with anyone you meet - anyone at all - reveals their confidence that: now things are going to change. Now things are going to get better. Now the electricity will start to run. Now the water will work again, the sewage system will be restored, people will have jobs, industry and investment will return. In short, these people who have suffered through so much war and death, ensconsing an entire generation of the country, have something to look forward to.
So, I suppose, here I sit in Sanniquellie, hoping to be part of what they expect to see happen.
For now, anyway, I have a tremendous load of responsibilities to cope with. First and foremost, I am being called to dinner.
I'll try to write again soon.
ciao-
taj
No comments:
Post a Comment