Driving thru Liberia

We drove 7 hours from Ganta to Monrovia on a decent enough road for Liberia. We went past thick jungle, old rubber plantations, bush that had been cut for timber or farming. We went through small villages, market towns, rice paddies, small holdings planted with rubber or banana. Life is happening on the roadside, young boysand girls bathe, older boys fish, even older boys drive motorcycle taxis.Girls are selling and shopping, running businesses with their mothers The young are walking to school, the older are walking to shop or sell or maybe get to a doctor or a banker. People pop out of the bush all along the highway. We made our way into the teeming capital, the streets clogged with UN jeeps, government convoys, motorcycles, taxis and people, always people, selling, shopping, rolling wheelbarrows full of toothbrushes or flip flops. People moving through a city of crumbling huts, of the hulks of bombed out government buildings and stores, the wars lingering wounds. And there are signs of rebirth, new grocery stores and banks. The city smells of smoke and exhaust and a thousand other human scents. And always there are little kids waving and older boys and girls looking hard, until you smile and they smile and everyone waves.

Category:

Travel & Events

Tags:

• Liberiareporting