It might be interesting for you to see it after the most recent wars. From the video Monrovia looks like a disaster zone. Some of the statistics he gives are mind numbing if true.
I’m not telling you to watch it, but I’d be curious to see how different it is now from back in the '80s.
As a whitey could you walk into the streets, or were you mostly restricted to compound style locations (your embassy, but also some local “exclusive” clubs for the expats or rich Liberians, and places like that. I think you know what I mean)?
What advice do you have for someone who will probably end up raising children overseas?
I could go anywhere. There were no racial tensions there. When Americans were targeted, it was because they had money, not because of their color. Black Americans got hustled too. It was interesting being a racial minority, but anti-white racism - racism in general - didn’t exist there. It was a non-issue.
Seriously, this documentary depicts Monrovia as a hellish cesspool of cannibalism, heroin and prostitution. If it’s even in the ballpark, it’s still gotta be the worst place on earth. Is it in the ballpark?
That depends an awful lot on where you’re raising them, but the best general advice would be to make sure you have access to good health care, a good education system and a way out of the country if you need it. I had diplomatic immunity as an Embassy brat, which was very helpful whenever I got arrested, but if you don’t have that, you’re more vulnerable. If you don’t have that, make sure you don’t live any place where you aren’t willing to follow local laws, or where you don’t trust local law enforcement.
I wasnt necessarily thinking of racial tensions. More a white man=surely rich mindset (and true to the facts actually), so let’s mug him. I told you before I lived in Nigeria in my teen years, and only once did I see a white man in the street (and not at the marketplace or near his car). The guy was jogging. It was completely crazy for any white in Nigeria to even think of doing something similar.
In my mind that has stuck as a major point in assessing third world countries. Hence my question.
Not when I was there, but I left before the war. When I was there, “Vice” consisted pretty much of weed and hookers. I never saw heroin. Sure as hell never saw cannibalism. I saw real life starving children (which is not the same as seeing them on TV), I saw a dead baby floating in a swamp, I saw bad third world conditions, but nothing close to what happened during and after the war.
It wasn’t like that in Liberia. I walked all over the city with very little hassle. For the most part, being white just meant you would get panhandled, but the odds of violence I think were less than walking around some US cities.
Of course, things have changed there now.
What was the city like? You mentioned people living in shacks, were businesses in proper buildings?
Other than purchasing really cheap pot, what did you do in the city?
What were you arrested for?
There were regular, brick and board businesses in the city. It had something like a downtown area with various shops, restaurants, bookstores, etc. Oddly, they were mostly owned (at that time anyway) by Lebanese immigrants. There were a lot of Lebanese there for some reason, and they owned a lot of the businesses. No idea why.
There was also a big, open air market downtown (called “watertown”), which looked like the cliche of an African open air market, vendors and booths selling fruit, meat, fish, clothes and other things.
When I went downtown, I was often going to bookstores or to bars (no drinking age). Sometimes my friends and I just wandered down there from the Embassy out of boredom. You could also go to drugstores and buy pretty much anything you wanted without a prescription, so…
Drugs. I was arrested twice, once for pot, once for pot and pills (valium). The thing about getting arrested for pot there (if you were American) was that the cops were really just looking for a bribe. The standard price was five bucks (which was a lot there). If you didn’t have the five bucks, they brought you to the Embassy (by law, that’s all they could do to you if you had dip immunity). A few times I had the five bucks. A couple of times I didn’t.
Did you get to see much beyond Monrovia?
Why are (or were) so many ships registered in Liberia?
I’ve never bothered to warch it, but everyone who’ve had tovisit/work in Liberia has flamed itas sensationalist garbage. Here’s a quote from a blogger that I regularly read (Chris Blattman) who regularly works/travels to Liberia [
](Buffoonian filmmakers and HuffPo deviously manipulate me into a blog post - Chris Blattman) I’d put these people’s opinion ahead of VICE anyday.
Sure. I went upcountry a few times, into the bush. Really cool sights. Real Africa. No lions, but there were wild elephants, monkeys, hippos, crocodiles and lots of big-ass snakes (cobras, constrictors, mambas). I saw a toucan once, which was really surreal. There were some really nice, peaceful little villages upcountry that were really fun to stay for a night or two. I stayed at a hotel with some friends once, and ordering food at was one of the coolest restaurant experiences I ever had. They had an outdoor dining room overlooking a beach. A waiter came and told us he was going to serve us some fresh seafood (no menus), so we said ok. Then he signaled to another guy down on the beach, who got into a boat, rowed out into the water and caught some lobsters, crabs red snappers and a barracuda. He brought it back to the kitchen and they cooked it up and brought it out to us. Delicious. It doesn’t get any fresher than that. It took a while, but they kept us lubed up with beer, and it was worth the wait. That’s actually one of my best memories of my youth, staying in that little hotel in the middle of absolute nowhere, being treated like royalty. Sadly, it’s probably gone now.
It sure as hell doesn’t represent anything close to my own experience, even though I was there before the war. I suspect it’s highly exaggerated and cherry-picked for the worst things they could find. The Liberians I knew were not violent savages, though.
I don’t know he details, but it has something to do with their low fees and standards for registering with their Merchant Marine. I guess it’s cheaper to sail with a Liberian flag than just about any other, and they’ll register anybody.
Was the West Point slum around then and if so, have you ever been there?
Never heard of it. It may not have been called that at the time. There were plenty of slums. I saw my share. I never heard of any of them having names, though.
This sounds absolutely divine.