A new hotel room is never the best place to sleep soundly.
We arrived in Monrovia Roberts International Airport - a corridor with lots of slow security checks but no chair or waiting lounge - in the middle of the night, via a Royal Air Maroc flight transiting in Casablanca.
The heat and the humidity are often the welcoming signs of tropical cities down the water; Monrovia is no exception, even at 4 am. But we were lucky enough to be properly welcomed in person by the TV direction of LBS, Liberia Broadcast Service, a charming and knowledgeable journalist of 29 years of experience who lived in exil in the USA during the Liberian War.
There are no street lights outide Monrovia's city centre, so no night picture this time...
We are taken along the dark main road from the airport to the Golden Gate Hotel, who partly holds the right name for it is definitely gated... A heavy military-like gate and trucks and security agents guard the entrance.
As usual, while travelling, while arriving in a new place, I cannot sleep well, though I know we have a busy six-day-work-week ahead of us. Too much to anticipate, to much to compare from the read and listened to knowledge of Liberia I have had for years and what began tonight to be a reality I am experiencing of this very special country.
Liberia, the word carries this strange mix of Liberty and USA, like the country's flag displays stripes and a star... And yet what most people know of Liberia is the monstrous civil war than turned the nation into bloodsheds of nightmare. The country is Africa's oldest republic, founded by former American black slaves and local indigenous populations in order to built a new kind of nation. And yet again, as other striking exemples of hope around the world, it had to go through a dark and wounded path. I cannot say I am not thinking of other countries I know toO well...
Nevertheless, when arriving in Monrovia what dominates the senses is the striking sunlight and the humid warmth, aren't those a source of life and joy?
Later today we are to meet our fellow journalist again and to talk about visiting the national radio newsroom and meeting the future TV staff team. I hope we will also so have time to have a glance on Monrovia's streets, the one I dreamt about all of last year, in Nairobi, while daily passing by on Monrovia Street, the heart of the Kenyan capital's city centre...
We arrived in Monrovia Roberts International Airport - a corridor with lots of slow security checks but no chair or waiting lounge - in the middle of the night, via a Royal Air Maroc flight transiting in Casablanca.
The heat and the humidity are often the welcoming signs of tropical cities down the water; Monrovia is no exception, even at 4 am. But we were lucky enough to be properly welcomed in person by the TV direction of LBS, Liberia Broadcast Service, a charming and knowledgeable journalist of 29 years of experience who lived in exil in the USA during the Liberian War.
There are no street lights outide Monrovia's city centre, so no night picture this time...
We are taken along the dark main road from the airport to the Golden Gate Hotel, who partly holds the right name for it is definitely gated... A heavy military-like gate and trucks and security agents guard the entrance.
As usual, while travelling, while arriving in a new place, I cannot sleep well, though I know we have a busy six-day-work-week ahead of us. Too much to anticipate, to much to compare from the read and listened to knowledge of Liberia I have had for years and what began tonight to be a reality I am experiencing of this very special country.
Liberia, the word carries this strange mix of Liberty and USA, like the country's flag displays stripes and a star... And yet what most people know of Liberia is the monstrous civil war than turned the nation into bloodsheds of nightmare. The country is Africa's oldest republic, founded by former American black slaves and local indigenous populations in order to built a new kind of nation. And yet again, as other striking exemples of hope around the world, it had to go through a dark and wounded path. I cannot say I am not thinking of other countries I know toO well...
You are never more alive than after death and a rebirth...
--Nevertheless, when arriving in Monrovia what dominates the senses is the striking sunlight and the humid warmth, aren't those a source of life and joy?
Later today we are to meet our fellow journalist again and to talk about visiting the national radio newsroom and meeting the future TV staff team. I hope we will also so have time to have a glance on Monrovia's streets, the one I dreamt about all of last year, in Nairobi, while daily passing by on Monrovia Street, the heart of the Kenyan capital's city centre...
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