Bats

Gabriele Asare, posted on YouTube

Like many other West African cities, Monrovia is beset with large colonies of bats, when not hanging over the city from the ruins of stately Cotton trees, they swarm the skies like a plague of locusts. There are about five or so such trees in central Monrovia, broad and ancient, that rise above the rooflines of the oldest parts of town.

Denuded and presumably dead, they are enlivened by the diabolical presence of hundreds and thousands of flying mammals. Once, while driving up Snapper Hill to the Ducor Hotel, I passed one of these great dead oaks, its countless inhabitants clinging under each huge limb like dried fruit, while a few diurnal specimens flittered about. A single bat, ready for a nap, landed upside-down on a branch. It was the straw that broke the camel's back in real life: the weight of that one small flying-mouse was too much; the great old bough came crashing down as if struck by lightning: thunder clap and all. Dazed creatures, panicked by the pruning and blinded by the afternoon sun, flew chaotically in all directions: some directly into the ground, some into a chain-link fence where they became entangled. Within moments, a price had been put on a bar, and I am told by a friend who lived nearby that bat soup was the weekly special.

Even absent such a spectacular event, these tree-colonies are remarkable scenes though they are in many ways unsettling. The nearest image to the hive of half-frenetic, half-febrile activity would be vultures on a carcass, yet a carcass would never have so many ravenous attackers. When frenzy hits these nocturnal clans, the sky darkens a shade, the already-brief evening hour hastily blotted out with each small pair of slightly-translucent stretched-skin wings. The Wingéd Monkeys, lifting off to the shrill commands of the Wicked Witch of the West, come to mind.

This threatening aspect has grown with the swelling of the Ebola panic which has swept into town and onto the headlines of the newspapers. A popular fact shared among acquaintances is that fruit bats are the carriers of the virus, and Guinea has gone so far as to ban the eating of bats. So it is not too far from the mind to think of the immune risk when the sky darkens with the flittering, furry beasts, carrying death from afar. A report from Abidjan, from earlier in the month, chronicled just this wariness, of wrath of sky-borne couriers of the fever. Even before all the attention given to their presence due to the virus, they were seen as pests to eradicated. Both the U.S. Embassy and at times the local government have chopped down trees hosting bats.

Laurent Guilard posted in the Daily Motion

Despite lending themselves so excellently to be wicked omens of doom, the chattering communities of bats are an amazing site in the middle of the the concrete jungles of urban West Africa. I hope they remain overhead.

Literary Break: Guinea Highlands

The sudden three-week full-stop of posting has been mainly due to some exciting, life-changing preparations and the travel and distractions that go with them; the time since the last week of March has flashed by. Secondarily, the social and journalistic atmosphere of this stretch of West Africa has been dominated by the near-panic of the Ebola outbreak which started in innermost Guinea, in the mountainous frontier near Sierra Leone and Liberia, to which the virus has spread via the well-plied trade routes down to Monrovia.

Amidst the paranoia and panic, and my own preoccupations, I thought it'd be timely to post the below book excerpt, which has been sitting in the Drafts folder of this blog for literally years. It's beautiful, evocative description is the best anecdote to the hysteria around the place of origin of the Ebola virus. I hope you'll enjoy, and in the meantime I am getting myself situated and I'll be back to more regularly postings shortly.

©Google Earth.

High up in the wooded flank of the Guinea Highlands, a land of icy streams and alpine pastures, rises the stripling Niger, and its affluents, the Dion, the Sankarani and the Milo. Southward, beyond the rocky watershed, the mountain streams have bored their way down the cliffs and are lost in the vast stifling rainforest that blocks off the Highlands from the Gulf of Guinea. But on this northern flank, each river has carved out a delightful valley of its own, and the most delightful of all is the Milo Valley, an African garden of Eden.

It was here, in the district of Konya, that the kola trade had flourished since the Middle Ages, providing its own bonanza. The kola nut was grown in the clearings of the forest, marketed in the valley and then carried laboriously across the wilderness for hundreds of miles to the mud villages and mud cities of the Sudan and beyond. The nut, one of the few stimulants allowed by Islam, was served as a luxury throughout Islamic Africa, and the Middle East. To organize this demanding trade came the Dyula, Muslim immigrants from the coast. The Dyula metropolis was Kankan, a teeming village of mud huts on the banks of the river Milo.

The lines of trade pushed out and became more sophisticated. The arterial trade routes designed for the delicate and perishable kola nut-- fair markets, dry storehouses, trustworthy guards, able porters -- could also supply delicate girl slaves from the forests. In return back came ingots of salt from the Sahara and the luxuries of North Africa that the caravans had brought from still further away: fine cloth from Morocco, pottery from Tunis, horses from Arabia.

Sometimes, a passage in a book can, in a few sentences, transmit the essence of an entire world. Thomas Pakenham's ‘vast, scholarly and delightful’* 1991 epic, The Scramble for Africa details many of the European campaigns, and the figures who led them, into the interior of the continent for the sake of crown and glory. The above passage, conjuring a tropical Switzerland is itself so intriguing and magical, and in Pakenham's history, sets the scene for the French campaigns from both the coast and the desert to source the Niger River. The book as a whole is a vast, essential chronicle how the global slave trade, stretching its wicked tentacles deep into the the remotest redoubts of the region—increasing their vulnerability just as the European armies penetrated further into indigenous domains.

Today, the heart of the Guinea Highlands is nominally protected by a National Park designation: The deep verdancy at the center of the above in the Google Earth image is the Parc National Haut-Niger. Three symmetrical clouds float over its center. At right, a slightly larger bit of cloud hovers just to the west of a white-grey mass that is the city of Kankan. The Niger, quickly widening as it enters southwesternmost Mali, can be seen at upper right. West African Manatees have been scientifically verified as far upriver as this border region; the Parc's population, thought to be several thousand, have reported dugong sightings deep in the park's interior, thousands of miles from the delta, and the Gulf of Guinea. 

Can One Be in Conakry?

Not that anyone would advise flying to Guinea this week, but that had been in my plans just a few days ago. That necessitated the 21st century ex-pat-in-Africa ritual of researching how to fly from one country to its next door neighbor. Although having long since obtained my PhD in this subject, I am struck by the double shock of (1) how difficult this logistical information-gathering still is; (2) how infrequent, indirect and expensive the flights are. West Africa in particular, a checkerboard of francophone and anglophone countries, remains astoundingly difficult to move around in, even just crossing a single border.

Case in point, to fly to one Mano River Union capital (boasting two airports nonetheless), to the capital city of its larger neighbor: Monrovia to Conakry. There are no direct flights, at all. There are not really any connecting flights, either, in the more conventional sense of, getting halfway there and having to stop and switch planes.

There is only very, very, indirect. Like, Casablanca indirect. Or, slightly better, Dakar indirect. No wait, that involves flying in the opposite direction, to switch in Accra first. Same with the third Mano River capital, Freetown, which is directly in between the other two: that itinerary goes on to switch in Banjul before heading back down to Conakry. Twenty-six hour journey, that one: more than ten hours longer than driving.

That is the shortest flight route out of Robertsfield. It also costs $1,975. United States Dollars.

How about from convenient little Spriggs-Payne, which, from the middle of last year, has once again been host to the puddle-jumper network of ASKY Airlines?

Oh, much better: $620, a third of the price (for a one-way ticket). But this is still a three-stop journey, in the wrong direction two out of the three times: Monrovia-Accra-Lomé-Abidjan-Conakry. Eight-hours, forty minutes. Only one seat left at this price!!! I guess I am lucky I won't have to fly to Brussels first.

Guess there's more than one reason not to go to Conakry this week.

Air Mano River Union?

A bit of a strange, and typically vague press report came out of the recent meeting between the Transport Ministers of the Mano River Union (Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Cote D'Ivoire) that stated, in part:

The Ministers of Transport of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea have resolved to establish a common airlines to connect the three countries and ease the difficulty being experienced by inhabitants of the sub-region  because of the absence of connecting flights.    

It should be noted that presently none of these three countries has any domestic airline, unlike Ivory Coast, with its recently re-launched state carrier, Air Cote D'Ivoire. Perhaps that's why the MRU's newest and largest member state (which also does not straddle the Mano River) is not listed among the countries seeking to 'establish a common airline.'

The impracticalities of this scheme are evident: aviation anywhere is a costly endeavor; even in low-competition  Africa, continental giant Kenya Airways struggles to yield a profit. In the region, privately-backed, would-be Sierra Leonean state carrier Fly 6ix went bust with little fanfare, while news of an Arik-backed or government-back successor have gone silent.

The region remains a tiny market for commercial flights, with fewer seats departing Liberia in a week than are filled at most major airports in a quarter of a single hour. Furthermore, there is still very little need to connect the Mano River Union capitals with one another, much less for domestic flights. Since Brussels Airlines changed its schedule earlier in 2013, there has been no scheduled service between Abidjan, an urban center of 5 million, and Monrovia, just 2 hours away (Brussels airlines stops in Freetown as of last month). Likewise, Conakry and Monrovia were initially linked by Air France's service which it began in 2011, but that has now switched to a stop in Freetown. British Airways also flies to Freetown, although it doesn't have rights to drop passengers from Liberia in Sierra Leone. Despite all these widebody fights, there are still more frequencies to further-away Accra than next door Freetown.

ASKY Airlines, launched in 2009 by Ethiopian Airlines, and based out of Lomé, dominates scheduled flights across West Africa, albeit with tiny turboprops making a handful of flights a week, few of which hopscotch the Anglophone/Francophone checkerboard of West African countries. In April, a flight from Monrovia to Abidjan took 6 hours, as the only routing was on ASKY from Monrovia to Accra to Lomé, to a change of planes to reverse directions to Abidjan. This is the result of the current state of both the economics and regulations of the region, and ASKY has been successful in part because it boasts no particular national affiliation. Although national flag carriers will always be a point of pride for governments, they are expensive and impractical, especially for under-budgeted, underdeveloped countries.

Francafrique on Al Jazeera

Following on the last post about the corruption scandal in Guinea, a recently-broadcast 3-part Al Jazeera documentary is especially well-timed (now that Al Jazeera America has launched and subsequently Al Jazeera's website has been blocked in the US, I may be just teasing Moved 2 Monrovia's American readers). This excellent three-part exposé, The France-Africa Connection, can be accessed online in three 45-minute episodes on the Al Jazeera website.

While reading up the topic will give interested viewers more depth into the long, sordid, shocking relationship between France and its colonies, documentary programming like this are electrifying for their vintage footage, however fleeting. Anyone interested in African history can only dream of having hours to look through all these archive news reels. 

In this respect, Episode Two is especially riveting, concentrating on the shocking "Elf Affair," which revealed how metropolitan French politics were infused with dirty money from oil exploitation from Francophone Africa, especially Gabon. Included here are brief glimpses of rare footage of Brazzaville, pockmarked by gunfire in the wake of the Nguesso-Lissouba conflict. 

Legendary prosecutor Eva Jolly also makes an appearance at the end, calmly recounting her life-risking exposure of the Elf scandal. 

All three episodes reference astonishing chapters in this complex, often ugly history, such as the mention in Episode 1 of the now openly-admitted poisoning of Cameroonian opposition candidate Félix Roland Moumié, and the counterfitting of the Guinean currency to destablise the regime of its democratically elected leader, as well as some disturbing retelling of the Biafran crisis, where France tried to undermine British power in the Gulf of Guinea.  

Across the entire broadcast, the grey-haired, liver-spocked old men, sitting in their gilded salons in Paris, could not be more frank in admitting to and confirming the malfeasance and shenangians that went on for decades in French West and Equatorial Africa, from Conakry to the Congo. 

One of the more compelling interviews is Jean Pierre Cot, who, as a young public servant was named Minister of Cooperation in the early days of the Mitterand cabinet. Having never been to Africa, much less positioned within the corruption networks, Cot's year in office was a rare, brief moment of reform, retold in his own words from 30-year old footage as a baby-faced Cot steps off an Air Afrique jet to visit a village, and speaks of a new era of fairness and partnership that never came.

The third episode is especially fascinating. In post-cold war era, as realpolitik pros age and die and new powers, especially China, arrive on the continent, and the traditions of feality to Paris slacken. The bonds with metropolitan France aren't exactly broken, but in some cases are reversed. 

Gabonese President Ali Bongo's endless suitcases of cash, stashed in corners of Crillion Hotel suites, not so much lubricated French party politics, but became one of the post important power nodes in the entire country, hand selecting freshman ministers across the political spectrum. Rather than simply being an industrial-commodity exploitation, now cash was the main extraction flowing out of Africa with the Presidents-for-life playing their former colonial masters.

Just as this bizarre arrangement reached its sprawling, viscous apex, its main underwriters, the founding father of Cote D'Ivoire and Françafrique itself, Hophouët-Biogny, passed away. The other pillar of Françafrique, Ali Bongo, died in 2009, succeeded by his son. 

This last episode includes several pristine panoramas of the Basilica in Yamoussoukro... 

...but more memorably features some shocking footage of the night-time bombing of Gbagbo loyalists on bridges Abidjan, and hundreds scattering and falling as French forces fire on protesters outside the Hotel Ivoire. 

Rather than being the final unravelling of Françafrique, the arrangement seems to live on in a post-classic form, as French intervened in the Gbagbgo-era Ivorian crisis, and its commercial tentacles still firmly grip the economic levers of West and Central Africa in the Sarkozy era, when ministers who spoke ill of Françafrique found themselves suddenly without portfolio.  While Hollande has declared a new era, French companies still operate ports and mines from Cote D'Ivoire to Congo. 

Simandou Scandal

It's not often that West Africa features in America's leading periodicals, but the surprise at glimpse words like Conakry and concession jumping off glossy pages only partially accounts for why Patrick Radden Keefe's article on Guinea, appearing in the July 8th edition of the New Yorker was so compelling.

Guinea is one of the poorest countries on the planet. There is little industry and scarce electricity, and there are few navigable roads. Public institutions hardly function. More than half the population can’t read. “The level of development is equivalent to Liberia or Sierra Leone,” a government adviser in Conakry, Guinea’s ramshackle seaside capital, told me recently. “But in Guinea we haven’t had a civil war.” This dire state of affairs was not inevitable, for the country has a bounty of natural resources. In addition to the iron ore in the Simandou range, Guinea has one of the world’s largest reserves of bauxite—the ore that, twice refined, makes aluminum—and significant quantities of diamonds, gold, uranium, and, off the coast, oil.

Keefe's report details the saga of Guinea's massive Simandou iron ore mine, in the interior highlands of east of the crescent-shaped country, north of Liberia. In particular, Keefe records the account of Israeli billionaire Benny Steinmetz's success in gaining control of the Simandou rights, in which the original concession was stripped multinational giant Rio Tinto, only to be handed over to one Steinmetz's companies, who then resold its interest in the potential mine to Brazilian behemoth Value, for billions of dollars in profit, as Guinea lurched from the death of its President-for-Life Lasana Conté, through chaotic military junta, to nascent democracy under General Alpha Condé.

Instead, B.S.G.R. could pursue a cheaper option: exporting the ore through Liberia, which already had the necessary infrastructure. For years, the government of Guinea had resisted such a scenario when Rio Tinto had proposed it. As a concession, B.S.G.R. agreed to spend a billion dollars developing a passenger railway for Guinea.

It's definitely worth reading in full (as well as the Photo Booth feature that accompanied the article), not only because it carefully explains a very complex situation and is otherwise thoughtfully written, but because of its dramatic unfolding, including President's wife's collusion with an aging Steinmetz proxy, which may have resulted in the purchase of a McMansion in Jacksonville, Florida; only the most memorable detail of what is a sprawling opera of kleptocratic corruption.

Cilins hired Touré’s brother to help promote the company’s interests in Guinea, then secured an introduction to her. Not long afterward, Cilins and several associates from the company obtained an audience with the President. 

While the story is compelling in that documentary evidence seems to exist that would prove the guilt of a billionaire taking advantage of one of the world's poorest countries. But the best passages of the Keefe's stellar 13-page story are those that zoom outward for a panoramic view of 21st-century robbery of African nations. The Simandou saga is allegorical of the kleptocratic corruption in many corners of Africa:

But how do you prove corruption? By its nature, corruption is covert; payoffs are designed to be difficult to detect. The international financial system has evolved to accommodate a wide array of illicit activities, and shell companies and banking havens make it easy to camouflage transfers, payment orders, and copies of checks. Paul Collier argues that there are often three parties to a corrupt deal: the briber, the bribed, and the lawyers and financial facilitators who enable the secret transaction. The result, he says, is “a web of corporate opacity” that is spun largely by wealthy professionals in financial capitals like London and New York. A recent study found that the easiest country in which to establish an untraceable shell company is not a tropical banking haven but the United States.

The story has developed since July, as this Guardian report from earlier this month details how Britain's Serious Fraud Office (love that name) has taken up the investigation into Beny Steinmetz's holdings in the UK and Guernsey. 

Paula Scher's Map of Africa

At the other end of cartographic history from the previous post's artifact sits this contemporary specimen from world-famous graphic designer Paula Scher of the Pentagram Group. In its own way nearly as abstract as the chart from 1570, with fanciful interpretations of the shapes of many of the countries, especially Cameroon, Benin, Mozambique and several others. 

The map's defining feature is overwhelming bustle of twisting place names that fan out across the entire canvas. Country names and capital cities are most prominent, but each space on land and ocean is filled with the chalky block type of cities and other features near to their true location. 

"Liberia" is in white and upside-down from the reader as the Guinea Coast turns northwesterly. "Monrovia" is nearly more prominent in black, delimited in a white box. Between the two sits the large, bending "Grain Coast" crammed in with a dozen other town names: Harbel, Mount Barclay, Buchanan, Edina, Hartford, Greenville, Marshall, Brewerville, Tubmanburg, Robertsport. Settler communities, all. Back on the land, names of a few county towns can barely be deciphered in tiny, thin letters-- only Zwedru is large enough to read from afar. 

Pan Am's West Africa Routes, c.1962

Before both Blogger and the Omega Tower came crashing down, I think I was blathering on about arcane details of Liberia's aviation. So let me continue with this: a detail of a golden-hued, wall-covering route map of Pan Am's global operations. Printed around 1962, it originally adorned the backwall of a check-in counter or ticket office at one of the airline's global offices. In the early sixties, Liberia was entering its Golden Age of the post-war Open Door era, and in concert with this prosperity and Cold War cooperation, Pan American's base at Robertsfield was growing to prominence.

The map shows the route from New York Idlewild to Roberts International via Dakar, which continued on to Accra, Lagos, and Nairobi (and perhaps Entebbe and Dar Es Salaam); a second trans-Saharan route from Europe via Rabat, Morocco reached the Guinea coast at Conakry, connecting at RIA, and then continuing on to Abidjan, Cotonou and Douala. A third leg from Lagos stretched down to Leopoldville, terminating at Johannesburg.

From the 1960s to the 1980s, the majority of Pan American passengers to Africa passed through Robertsfield, which Pan Am managed under contract from the Ministry of Transport. Even to this day, the RIA logo mark is a modified Pan Am globe emblem (below).

In the early 1980s, Pan Am had a weekly nonstop from JFK to RIA, but in the following years pulled down its African network, ending its service to Liberia in 1986, and ceasing operations in 1991. I've got half a dozen of these old Pan Am maps as well as other ephemera of RIA history in the M2M collection, so I'll keep posting these periodically.

More African & Liberian Art on Auction

More African and Liberian Art is up for sale during the Spring Auction season in New York this month. On May 12th, the Bonham house will hold an auction of Fine African, Oceanic, and Pre-Columbian Art.

The African collection is wide-ranging with a large stock of wooden masks and figures from Mali (including excellent Bamana and Dogon items) and Burkina Faso (Mossi, Lobi, Bobo, Mumuye, Igbo, Yoruba and others from Nigeria, Ghana (Ashanti and Akan) and DR Congo. From Cote D'Ivoire, Baule and Senufo are included with Dan and Gola pieces from the Liberian frontier area, in addition to a few choice Dan and Grebo works from Liberia itself, such as the Dan animal figure, at top. A few other highlights, with links to the catalog:

#2085 Gola Helmet Mask

#2088 Mau Mask, Cote D'Ivoire, Guinea

#2104 Mumuye Standing Figure, Nigeria

#2110 Igbo Mask, Nigeria

#2132 Pende Mask, DR Congo

#2137 Salampasu Woven Mask, DR Congo

Flying to Liberia: Its Getting Easier. Part 4: Air France to Monrovia

After yesterday's post about the new services from Spriggs-Payne, its well past time to note the arrival of a new major airline to Robertsfield last month. After a small delay of its inauguration, Air France has launched a twice-weekly extension of its Paris-Charles de Gaulle to Conakry flights to both Freetown, Sierra Leone and Monrovia.

This gives the first European airline to return to RIA since Ellen's election, and offers a bit of competition to Brussels Airlines' dominance of the market. It also offers travelers easier connections from the United States. I know many people who prefer to connect from New York, Washington, Boston, and Philadelphia in Europe rather than routing through Atlanta or even the 10-hour non-stops from JFK on Delta.

By the way, for those who are just looking to shuttle up to Conakry on a Tuesday and back down to Monrovia, this is technically possible. I was quoted a roundtrip airfare, all taxes and fees, of $3,333.30. I'd love to know how that figure was arrived at. It'd be funny if it wasn't so outrageous.

Flying to Liberia: Its Getting Easier. Part 3: Spring 2011 updates from Spriggs-Payne

Last fall, I gave a run-down over the few posts about the commercial air services into and out of Monrovia. It can be a bit tricky, because African airlines tend to come and go, and connecting within Africa, between countries or domestically, can involve differential calculus (not to mention a higher fare than from the United States to Europe, in many cases).

I was even tripped up last fall, as Elysian Airlines, the Cameroonian carrier that had set up a pretty solid operation at Monrovia's secondary airport, Spriggs-Payne Airfield in Sinkor, had suddenly ceased flying at some point in the middle of last year, without any formal announcement. This happens relatively often in Africa. Slok Air, a Gambian carrier, has still never admitted that it is finished, even though it has not flown since mid-2008.

The collapse of Elysian's operations left Spriggs-Payne without any scheduled commercial service. Given that Elysian's Friday service down to Harper, which normally returned on Sunday or Monday, the closure of the station also left Liberia without any scheduled domestic airline flights. Given that it can take days to traverse Liberia's roads to the distant counties such as Maryland, this was a serious setback to the country's transport infrastructure.

Although there are no reports out that any airline has relaunched service to Harper, I am happy to report that the void left by Elysian has been filled by not one but two airlines.

Note: this route map does not reflect the current ASKY flights out of Monrovia.

The first is Lomé, Togo-based ASKY Airlines, a young regional carrier that is partly backed by Ethiopian Airlines. Ethiopian itself began flying to Robertsfield from Addis Ababa via Accra in late 2009 to great fanfare, but then withdrew that service, disappointingly. Instead, smaller, newer ASKY came into Spriggs-Payne late last year. ASKY started with non-stop service to Abidjan, Accra and Banjul (last year's route map above). The service to Abidjan was helpful in particular, as Brussels Airlines had switched its pit-stop from Europe from Abidjan to Accra in mid-2010. Banjul was later dropped, and at the beginning of this year, Abidjan appears to have been substituted with Bamako, Mali--an interesting choice. Service is with small prop aircraft--current schedule is below.

Secondly, Manu River neighbor Sierra Leone got its own airline at the beginning of this year. Fly 6ix has already been designated that national carrier by President Koroma, just in time for that country's 50th years of independence, its Golden Jubilee. With a single Embraer regional jet, the young carrier operates three-times a week service from Freetown, connecting to Banjul, Conakry and Monrovia. As can be seen in the schedule below, the airline flies non-stop from Spriggs-Payne (MLW) to both Freetown (FNA) and Conakry (CKY).

A recent airfare search on the airline's website showed a roundtrip fare from Monrovia to Conakry of $672. Pretty typical. Additionally, these intrepid little carriers, although using modern aircraft, can be subject to huge delays if a maintenance issue grounds an aircraft. Fly 6ix appears to have only one plane. Passengers could be stuck for days if something doesn't go according to plan. Still, these small steps forward are definitely progress. A key to making African economies grow faster is to integrate them, and the region can definitely use better infrastructure--for all modes of transport.

More African Art up for Auction at Sotheby's

Following the morning session, selling off the fantastic Robert Rubin Collection, Sotheby's will be holding an afternoon auction of "Primitive art." While this categorical term is apparently still alive and well in the art world, encompassing the craft traditions of Africa, Oceania and the Pre-Columbian cultures of the Americas, there is nothing crude or simplistic in this collection for sale, as can be seen in the sampling below.

Following arts from South America and the Pacific, the African group is extensive, and focuses on West African cultures. Items include gold combs from Ghana and wood-carvings from Guinea and Mali. Among the highlights here are two uniquely-angular Chi Wara (such as Lot #204), followed closely by a gorgeous Dogon cross-figure crowned mask, and a haunting, hollow-socketed ebony Bamana hyena mask. Another Dogon gem is #222, an amazing, intricate crocodile mask, followed by an incredibly beautiful, classic Mende helmut mask.

There are a number of items from Liberia, especially the Dan ethnic group, including several brass objects, such as Lot #215, an amazing brass crocodile. Lot #217 is a beautifully-carved Dan game board, collected in eastern Liberia in the mid-20th century. Click through each below to see more information and provenance.

Lot #204: Bamana Chi Wara, Mali.

Lot #207: Dogon Mask, Mali.

Lot #209: Bamana Hyena Mask, Mali.

Lot #217: Dan Gameboard, Liberia.

Lot #221: Senufo Monkey Helmet Mask, Ivory Coast.

Lot #222: Dogon Crocodile Mask, Mali.

Lot #226: Mende Helmet Mask, Sierra Leone.

Lot #230: Baga Shrine Bird, Guinea.

Lot #232: Lobi Ivory Pendant, Burkina Faso.