Joni's Journals

Chapter V

Hi,

I forgot to tell you that we got caught in a lock down at the American Embassy. John and I had gone there to register our presence and we were not permitted to leave for at least an hour.

Marchers from an outlying county marched to the Embassy but I could never figure out why. Well, those Marines sprang into action. They donned their riot gear and were ready for anything. Bullets, bullets everywhere. Two and three sashes over their shoulders and coiled around their arms like bracelets. We could tell they were nervous but excited. Music was playing from an unknown source and they were taking pictures of each other, as they got dressed. The soldiers looked vulnerable.

From the outside looking in, I'm sure they were intimidating but from the inside looking out, it was a different story. Their staging area was the waiting room, where folks go to apply for visas. And not just for that one exercise. Smoke grenades sat on the windowsills and gear spilled from various cases. It was obvious there was no other storage area. In any case, I assumed they would need to have stuff ready at a moments notice. Because the waiting room had a wall of glass overlooking a courtyard, it was rather disconcerting, sitting there looking at the backs of heavily armed solders and not knowing what was going on.

Videos were neatly lined up. For the record, the Marines favored action films such as Above the Law, Platoon, and Sum of Fears. To be fair, they also had copies of Chicago and Analyze That. You kind of had to be there to get the full picture. :)

I need to make a correction on the counties I mentioned yesterday. Virginia is not a county but rather a settlement. Maryland and Mississippi are two of the original three counties. The third one is Artington. It should have been Arlington but the person writing it down could not understand the pronunciation of the person speaking so it was written as Artington.

John is always looking for stories, thus he is always striking up conversations with strangers. He was in the bank preparing for his trip, (he went to Russia before heading to Liberia) and noticed the teller had an accent. Upon further questioning, he discovered she was from Liberia. When John told her we were going, she got very excited and asked if we could carry back a letter to her brother. John said sure, but since he was leaving I would be in touch.

The day before I left I stopped by the bank to pick up a letter for her two brothers, Samuel and Gilbert Cole. In addition to the letter, Judith gave me what I thought she said was $2500 cash to give to them. I'm like, hmmm ok, what's the address. She said, "We used to live on Perry Street, near the Executive Mansion. That house burned down, so they may be in Sinkor, on Dupor Road. My grandmother had a farm there. Ask around for the Cole family. People will know."

In Liberia, we mentioned to our hosts that we have to find these brothers. Are we lucky or what? Our fixer, Frances, lived in Sinkor on Dupor Road! What are the chances of that? So anyway, we were all excited, thinking this is going to be a piece of cake. We picked up Frances and a little neighbor girl who knows just about everyone on Dupor Road and set out to the Cole family house. It was not the right family. We were really disappointed but kept trying. We asked several other people but no one knew them. We did receive several suggestions of where to look for them, which included checking with a woman named Patrice, who supposedly knew everyone in the area. Well, guess what? She knew Sam Cole! We hurried to find the house she described. It's not the right Sam Cole. So we had to try again the next day.

The only real connection to the outside world here is the radio. The television stations stopped broadcasting years ago and the newspapers stopped publishing as well. Of course, the American Embassy had a satellite dish and so do a couple of other folks in town. There were a few Internet cafes but most of the time, the servers were down. Cell phones are big since there are no more landlines. Gas runs about $3.00 down from its wartime high of $30.00 per gallon. Fifty-six Liberian dollars are equal to one US dollar.

Entertainment is limited to clubs...video clubs, sports clubs, etc. Those are open-air buildings where folks gather to talk. If you want to talk sports you go to a sports club. If you want to watch a movie, you head to a video club.

Because of the civil war and the marginalization of the indigenous people, the illiteracy rate has plunged to about 9o percent. The good thing is that the intellectuals have not yet left the country so there is lots of hope for rebuilding infrastructure, physically and mentally. Rebuilding physically will be the easy part.

Once people knew we were American, we started getting letters to carry back to the States since there is no mail service to speak of. We came back with at least three dozen letters we agreed to mail to families and friends across the US.

We didn't experience the begging factor, which was quite surprising given the conditions. There are business centers all over the place, even street corners where the going rate is $25.00 per page. Correspondence is composed by hand or on manual typewriters.

The civil war intensified over the summer. So much so that the summer is divided into World Wars 1, 2, and 3. So when people describe their situations, they refer to WW1, 2, or 3 as the defining period of time. Most of the looting took place during this time. People lost furniture, clothing, everything. The commonly lamented losses were the mattresses and clothing.

Lots and lots of street vendors, some set up on the curbs and sidewalks with nothing more than a card table or in some cases a cardboard box. There were mobile shops where the wares were plied from wheelbarrows. I saw lots of used clothes being sold so I wondered if they were the looted items. No one knows for sure as the used clothes vendors buy their goods wholesale from used clothes dealers. Where they get their clothes nobody knows.

We did hear of several incidents where people caught others wearing their clothing. They demanded the return and in most cases it was. I was told that in one instance where the dress wasn't immediately returned, others in the neighborhood gathered round to convince the wearer that returning the dress was the right thing to do and in her best interest…There is also a store called Buy Back Your Own Things. That's the place where you buy mattresses…