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The Purple Culture Guide to Liberia
What visitors actually need to know before they step off the plane in Monrovia, and what life in Liberia is really like once you're there.
by Alumigogo Books
Chapter 1: First Impressions
If you step off the plane at Roberts International Airport expecting a place that is still recovering from a horrifying civil war, you will be thrown. And if you step off expecting a tropical African country with palm trees and easy smiles, you will also be thrown. Liberia is both of those things, and neither of them at the same time. The first thing that hits you is how green it is. Not softly green, not pretty-postcard green, but aggressively green. The bush grows over everything that is not actively being lived in. Fences, abandoned buildings, road shoulders, and old cars disappear into greenery that looks like it has been waiting for you to stop looking. It is a country that is lush and a little wild, even in the middle of the capital.
Monrovia, the capital, is most people's introduction. And Monrovia does not behave the way a capital city should. There is no downtown grid, no corporate towers, no central square for gawking. The city is a tangle of narrow roads, low concrete buildings with rusted tin roofs, and dirt streets that turn into red mud rivers after a hard rain. Traffic is where the population reveals itself. Motorbikes carrying two or three people weave between battered taxis with doors held shut by rope, while women in bright dresses walk along the roadside with buckets of bread or pineapples balanced on their heads. The market streets are a chorus of horns, shouts, music, and