Feasibility Study and Master Plan for Robertsfield, 1965

The recent posts have reminded me of something I found in the basement of the Library of Congress several years ago, and never got around to posting here before, but now seems relevant: A 1965 Feasibility Study for Robertsfield, commissioned by USAID and prepared by a Los Angeles firm of engineers and architects.

Frankly, in many parts it is so dry and technical as to be unreadable, but I was in love from the cover, with its Microgramma typeface looking like a prop from 2001: A Space Odyssey, complete with a gorgeous, dashing R.F.I.A. logo (famously derived from Pan Am's globe emblem, as the US carrier had the contract to manage the airport apparently from its earliest days as a commercial facility).

The best parts are really all the graphics. There are a decent historic photo of the yet-to-be finished KLM Terminal (today the VIP Terminal but still sporting the sky-blue roof trim of KLM). Unfortunately, no good shots of the main Pan Am terminal, which I've only ever seen in photos and in person as a multi-storied hollow concrete shell. I am not even sure what the "interim terminal building" was, as it looks to be a finely-crafted steel-spanned, winged-roof structure. No such shed exists today, but maybe Pan Am hadn't even built the bigger building yet, and that was what the "interim" was anticipating.

Another good illustration, and what reminded me that I should post the document, is a map which catalogued intercontinental flights to, from and within Africa. The monochrome map is too low-tech for 21st century eyes; its too easy for the lines to cross over and get lost, but its fun to look at, it shows SAS's flight to Rio de Janeiro as well as KLM and Sabena's flights.

But the best part of the document has got to be the watercolor-washed perspective drawing of a future RIA as proposed by the engineers and architects. Too cartoonish to be technical, the poster board acts as an emotional hook to invest in a new airport for Liberia. The scene is recognizable, most notably by the meandering Farmington river narrowing away to the horizon, and the general arrangement and direction of the runway, landslide structures, airside facilities, and waterway are all the same.

But in place of the familiar array of small, bland terminals of today, here RIA looks if not like a miniature Laguardia than at least bigger than what might suit the needs of Madison, Wisconsin or Montgomery, Alabama. Clearly shown is a multistory, multi gate main terminal with early-iteration passenger bridges to the airliners, which here seem to consist solely of a prototype profile of the yet-to-exist B747-100. It is too-wide wings and the too-bulbous visage of these fanciful jumbo jets that most gives the painting its Warner Brothers-backdrop quality.

That this impressive volume has been gathering dust in the sub-sub of the LOC for decades was a treat to discover; what's more curious is how it was always seemingly dead on arrival. At the time of its production, the study rightly anticipated a Liberia that was soaring upwards, at least a decade and a half from its economic peak.

More relevantly, Pan American Airways, which again was not only the primary commercial user of RIA but also the manager of the airport on behalf of the government, would continue adding capacity at Robertsfield and across Africa throughout the 1960s and well into the 1970s, up until the oil crisis and related pan-African stagnation first curtailed the viability of jets from New York to Cotonou, Douala or Kinshasa. Yet tiny Monrovia would remain among Pan Am's African destinations to the very end, including many years in which real B747s would in fact land at the airport multiple times per week. It is therefore not immediately apparent why, at the crest of global optimism in 1965, the grander visions of this proposal were never implemented.

Air Service to Liberia, forty years ago

A smartphone photo from an African year book from about 1973, which I discovered when suddenly finding myself in the Library of the Nigerian Embassy earlier this year (which maybe could make the subject of a separate post). Monrovia was served by six African airlines, six European airlines (SAS from Scandinavia, and flew from Zürich to Monrovia on the way to Brazil. UTA is French), MEA (Middle East Airlines) from Lebanon, as well as its own domestic airline, and of course Pan American. Today it is served by nine, one of which, Delta, is leaving.

A better comparison than number of carriers would be to tally the number of weekly seats on planes departing the country; many of these 1970s flights were not on jets, and even the single isle DC-8s and B707s from New York and Europe are comparable in size to the 150-seat B737s that Kenya uses to Accra today, rather than the two-aisle wide body A330s and B767s that British Airways, Delta, Air France and Brussels use on their routes to RIA, which typically have capacity of up over 250 passengers. So the total passengers numbers may have grown, even if the number of airlines and destinations is smaller (and continues to shrink).

Note in the short section under tourism the paltry number of tourists in previous years: only 250 in 1971, rising four-fold the next year, although the fact that the address is provided as “Government Wharf, Freetown” means they mixed up this entry with Sierra Leone, so who knows.

Lastly, I didn’t know Hughes Air West was involved in Air Liberia. At times it really seems as though all of corporate America was lending a hand to Liberia in those days. I'd love to dig into the Hughes company archives and see how that partnership transpired.

Ten Years since A Continent for the Taking

Lacking refugee camps or any other appropriate shelter, Monrovia's huge internally displaced population took up residence in the gutted and bombed-out shells of what had been a once-proud city's most prestigious addresses. Somehow, the entire fron façade of the massive, boxy structure of the Libyan-built Foreign Ministry, for example, had been neatly sheared off in the artillery duels between the Nigerians and Taylor's fighters during one of the rebel leader's attempts to capture Monrovia. And squatters now used the ministry's offices as overcrowded apartments, seeming to pay no mind to the fact that their whole lives were on display to the passersby on one of Monrovia's busiest avenues.  

 

This same gritty resourcefulness was at work at the Intercontinental Hotel, once a majestic skyscraper that stood on the city's highest ground like an exclamation point, announcing the cosmopolitan pretensions of the old Americo-Liberian elite... Like nearly every other monument to the Americo-Liberians, the Intercontinental Hotel had been shattered and left to rot in the moldy damp of Liberia's persistent tropical rains.

Howard French's description of mid-1990s Monrovia, from his landmark chronicle of his journalistic journeys across Africa: A Continent for the Taking was published ten years ago this spring. The book contained several photographs of Monrovia from that time, including the rare shot of the Foreign Ministry, a skeletal shell on a treeless forecourt, astonishingly contrasting with the building of today. Although the historical events accounted in the book are now fading further into the past, the book is still highly recommended reading for that very same reason.

Not only does this past June mark ten years since this release of the book, but French, who since his years as an African correspondent has now spent much of his time in, and become equally expert on, China, has a new work out about Africa, China's Second Continent, which was reviewed favorably by no less of an authority than Stephen Ellis. On the summer reading list.

Brussels Airlines gives bad directions

Not sure is writing for Brussels Airlines b.spirit! in-flight magazine these days, at least in terms of their guides to their African destinations, which have long been featured in the back section of the monthly magazine. At one time, it was Monrovia resident ex-pat Kate Thomas, who not only actually lived in Liberia (and for whom I will be forever grateful for putting the Architectural Tour into the magazine for the first time—the Tour's first major exposure) but also was and is a professional journalist. 

The above paragraph is nice enough, encouraging visitors to leave the central city and check out the lovely Quelu and Wulki Farms, as well as the mention of architecture (although simply describing the architecture as "American" is particularly helpful). 

For one thing, Careysburg is not “a half hour's drive west of the capital's Chocolate City suburb” —firstly, Careysburg is at least a half-hour northeast of Chocolate City, not west, and Chocolate City would be more accurately described as an impoverished slum, even if it does functionally act as a suburb of the city. 

There is certainly something appealing about the romantic Chocolate City name, as in American popular culture it has certain cult connotations, which interestingly parallel Liberian social identity. But this is the second time I have seen it confusingly and unnecessarily invoked: Daniel Howden, who is a solid journalist with a slight tendancy for the melodramatic, name-checked Chocolate City is his slightly-overwrought debut at Roads and Kingdoms two years ago. 

In reality, Chocolate City can hardly be defined several miles distant from central Monrovia, even high atop the Ducor Hotel. The sprawl of Monrovia's upper fringe, which has seeped further into the swampy flats north of Somalia Drive for over a decade, and Chocolate City is just one section of this 20-mile long stretch of tiny-roofed communities, many with equally-enigmatic names like Chicken Soup Factory, JJY, Day Break Mouth Open, and a dozen other neighborhoods, many of which recall the nascent industrial zone that Somalia Drive was developing on the cusp of the country's downfall. 

Chocolate City is just one section of the larger Gardnersville township, and as such hardly a reference point for directions across the metro area. I know I am knit-picking and this post is several paragraphs too long now, but in order to encourage foreign visitors to actually take the advice in these brief travel tips, it would at least be helpful if their basic orientation was correct. I wonder if anyone, in any of the three languages provided here, will try to find their way to Careysburg and get lost on the way to Chocolate City. 

The Original Two Monrovias

Kru Town, 1932 by Paul Julien. As posted on the Liberian Observer. 

This upcoming exhibit has been written about elsewhere, most notably at Liberia Past and Present, where Fred adds some interesting context to the unique and itinerant Dutch Liberiophile Paul Julien, who seemed to be a particularly curious and observant fellow, just the sort of witness to the footnotes of history that could be hoped for, such as this under-documented era of Liberia's history.

I was particularly intrigued by his remarks about the contrast the indigenous settlements so close to Monrovia with the mannered and increasingly prosperous hilltop capital. From his comments on the juxtaposition of Krutown, which was situated approximately where the Freeport is today, and the central city:

Paul Julien visits Krutown and describes it as being in a "sharp contrast to Monrovia, of which it is not even two minutes walking distance away. [It] consists completely of square huts with grass thatched roofs. It is obviously situated on the shore, with a wide sandy beach separating it from the surf." 

When comparing the two he makes sure the Belgian audience will understand what he means, by relating to what they should know. "Up, in Monrovia, the city still reminds one of a capital city, with streets and buildings that, even though only from afar, remind one somewhat of Europe." While in Krutown, "The narrow muddy alleys that wind in a marvelous disorder through the village are the set for the life of the coastal residents. Small naked youngsters run around in the sand.

It seems even in the pre-war era, the phenomenon of the Two Monrovias existed.  Julien's photographs and a film will be on display at the National Museum in July and August.

A Detailed Description of Liberia's Executive Mansion

The Executive Mansion was constructed over a three - year period, from 1960 to 1963. The entire project was designed and supervised by Stanley Engineering Company of Africa; and the Construction Contractor was Liberian Construction Corporation (LCC). The project was officially dedicated on January 3, 1964, the seat of the Executive branch of the Government of the Republic of Liberia. 

The building is an eight-storey horizontal arch-like (semicircular) structure, constructed primarily of reinforced concrete post and lintel system, covering a total area of approximately 26,500 sq. ft. Vertical circulation throughout the building is by means of four major staircases and six elevators. One of the elevators is solely used by the president and visiting dignitaries, another one is used for freight and the rest of the other four elevators are used by the public. 

The Executive Mansion was designed and is being used for four basic functions; the official residence of the President of Liberia, Offices of the President and Staff of the Ministry of State, reception and living accommodations for guest/dignitaries and maintenance/technical sections. The focal point of the building is an elaborate northern and centralized entrance/reception hall of the second floor, which connects the executive parlor, located in the eastern section of the building along with relevant supporting facilities; and to that of other administrative offices, located in the western section.  

The entrance is approached by a bridge-like driveway (semi-circular), which overlooks and engulfs a parade ground in the north and under which lies a reflected pool. A reinforced concrete canopy covers this entrance and bears the seal of the republic of Liberia centralized on its reinforced concrete V-shaped fascia.  Access to the beautifully landscaped, ocean view garden, yard, which is located at the southern side of the building, is also obtained from the above - mentioned hall. 

Very prominent on the exterior walls of the building, running across the northern and southern surfaces is gold colored composite rectangular shaped solar screen, which runs from the second to the seventh floor. These aluminum metal solar screens are divided into several sections by vertical fins from first through eighth floors of the building and are concealed behind the indicated solar screens and fins. The building’s western and eastern exterior end- walls, which also bear concave forms are finished with mosaic tiles. 

Since the completion of construction works on the Executive Mansion in 1963, there had been two major rehabilitation works executed on the composite building elements/systems. Additionally, it is worth noting that the first renovation/rehabilitation of works was executed during the 1988 /89 under the reign of the late President Samuel K. Doe.  The second renovation work was executed during the tenure of former President Charles G. Taylor in the year 1997-1998. Since the indicated period, there has been no other renovation & rehabilitation of the building element system. 

The Executive Mansion was gutted by fire during Liberia's 159th Independence Anniversary celebration on July 26, 2006. Following the outbreak, the government of Liberia announced its closure pending renovation work. President Sirleaf relocated to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where she has been performing official State functions. The eight-storey building was constructed in 1964 during the tenure of Liberia's 18th President, William V. S. Tubman, Sr.

This wonderful, detailed description of the Executive Mansion is from this less-than-uplifting article regarding the current state of affairs of the official residence of the President of Liberia (What's even less encouraging are the excoriating comments underneath the article on FrontPageAfrica.com).

It will sound terribly unfair to the journalist, but I am almost tempted to conclude that the above-description was lifted from another text, so different and lucidly accomplished it is from the rest of the article, and how abruptly the article transitions from a rough and excitable j'accuse to a technically proficient architectural description. I have never encountered such a detailed accounting of the building's history, and there are a dozen details and facts here that I didn't know before. Of course, being off-limits to the public, I've never toured the building. But a simple internet word search does not come up with a duplicate of this passage, so perhaps it is original to the FPA journalist.

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. 

Modern Railways, May 1965: New for Nigeria

I've kind of moved on from the posts earlier this week about Nigeria's railways, but here's something I found in the tubes of the internets back in August, the cover of Modern Railways from May 1965:

“New for Nigeria: As part of their expansion program me, the Nigerian Railways, have recently ordered twenty-nine locomotives equipped with Sulzer 6LDA28-C six-cylinder pressure charged diesel engines of 1400 h.p.  The new locomotives will be used for mixed duties on the route from Lagos to Kano in the northern district of the Federation. The main contractors are A.E.I. and the locomotive builders are Metropolitan-Cammeli.”

Yak Hunting in Liberia

 All Photos in this post are the property of Patrick Smith.

“Yak Hunting in Liberia” is the brilliant title of a post by Patrick Smith on the blog Ask The Pilot. Although Paul’s not referring to Tibetan pack animals in the title, he is talking about something nearly as exotic: a vintage Russian-made jet, a Yakolev Yak-40, which was used for short, regional flights across the Soviet Union and elsewhere in the world. Almost a 1,000 of the 30-seaters were manufactured in the late 1960s and 1970s.

Read his post for more details and photos, but I am reposting here as I have long seen this disused, slowly decaying aircraft, lying forlornly in the overgrowth at the edge of RIA's runway. I've never approached the aircraft, the way Paul did, but I could read the faded “Weasua Air Transport” markings along the fuselage, and knew this to be an erstwhile air operation in Liberia which only lasted until about 2006, but remains the current local service agent for Kenya Airways, KLM, and Air France. The plane clearly will never fly again, but it’s unclear what will become of its remains, or whether Weasua will revive as an airline—as Liberia currently doesn't have a national carrier.

For more about Patrick, see his Flickr page.

Building of the Month: The Ruin at Clay Street & Camp Johnson Road

One of post-conflict Monrovia’s primary architectural characteristics, featured through the M2M Architectural Tour, has been its ruins. The city is bookended by abandoned monuments, or rather monuments to abandonment—the never-was Ministry of Defense in Congo Town as you enter the capital, and the Ducor Hotel, situated both at Monrovia's highest point and atop the termination of the long Mesurado peninsula (with the oceanside Hotel Africa complex in Virginia as an eastward outlier). Megastructures of the country's former affluence and importance dot the cityscape: the Pompeii of Post-Conflict.

Aside from these larger commercial complexes, there have always been lots of smaller-scale ruins across the city, from shells of sprawling split-level '70s ranches the fin-de-belle-époque to skeletons of historic mansions in town. If the hulks of five-star hotels and the unfinished frames of intimidating ministries are mausoleums of Monrovia's Cold War relevance, these domestic dilapidations mark the graves of personal tragedies: families and businesses fallen. 

Carey Street, 2008 & 2009.

In Central Monrovia, there have been half a dozen such ruins featured in the Architectural Tour over the last five years: a few compelling examples where an intact, multistory stone or concrete shell stood vacant amid the crowded, chaotic bustle of the town. a Victorian-style façade, still grayish-white with old paint and once-resplendent with double-height front porch, now rooflessly houses a carpenter's yard on Carey Street. About a block away, a grandiose triple-decker whose front entry had been built out into a video club and garment shop, the front parlor home to a wide, green plum tree that reaches up to the crumbling eves, a second vines over the back of the house.

Carey Street 2009.

The most magnificent of all, unquestionably, was the Ruin on Camp Johnson Road at the corner of Carey Street. Like so many of Monrovia's old buildings, its original purpose was difficult to ascertain, although by its size and location is was almost certainly an anchor of what was once Monrovia's fifth avenue shopping street. Taking up an entire lot, the four-story high structure had five wide windows all around, and some sort of interior circulation shaft, perhaps a central stairwell, or almost as if a larger building had been built up around the outside of a smaller inner building. Whatever the relationship between the two elements, they unmistakably recall an outer peristyle and inner cella of a Greek temple.

Camp Johnson Road, 2013.

The scene is made rather less like the Acropolis in Athens and rather more like Angkor Wat by the last and third element: a massive, vining tree, sprouting knottily out the inner sanctum and over the top of the concrete structures like a dome. At its ankles, like many other of Monrovia's ruins, was an arcade of small shops, a bustle of hustle: a baby-care store, a bar and restaurant with an enclosed sitting area, painted in bright lime green. If Monrovia is post-colonialism's Rome, than here is a scene of Canaletto, or at least of Hubert Robert, as the ordinary citizens reoccupy the old edifices, not to keep their livestock, but sell plastic toys and warm Club Beer.

Hubert Robert, French. Roman Ruins, c.1760.

This arrangement was an arresting site. First, like all of Monrovia's other war wreckage, it is ruin porn, less ironic than the Ducor and less hilariously menacing than the Ministry of Defense, as the previous life of the building is not evident. It is striking both for the visual orchestration, and that such a feral germination had proceeded with only disregard and accommodation, without intervention or mitigation—without anyone on the busy street around it taking any action to stop it.

But it has stopped. As of earlier this week, the concrete-block walls have been knocked down. A pile of rubble covers the twisted roots of the thick-trunked tree, which will undoubtedly meet the blades of chainsaw in the coming weeks.

Photo ©Glenna Gordon February 2014. 

What will come in its place here is not known: another cement shop front, with heavy iron doors, selling used mattresses or auto parts. Perhaps the second floor will be apartments. A diesel generator will run outback. One more store for Camp Johnson Road. Jobs will be created, commerce will commence: it will be another step in the march of progress and recovery, and Monrovia will become more like every other West African capital, with one less of its unusual sights.

Special thanks to Glenna Gordon for use of her Instagram photo. All other photos ©Matthew M. Jones.

A Far West, A Mushroom City

I think I bought these flashcards on eBay a couple years ago. Printed in Italy in 1978-79, they must be part of a larger set of fast-fact cards on places around the world. They would suggest something educational, although in reading the short summary on the back suggests that either these were for an adult audience in the pre-digital age or that pupils from thirty years ago were under a much higher expectation for reading comprehension than would be the case today—with terminology like “autochthonous peoples” and “insalubrious districts” casually included the explanatory text. 

The card presents a dynamically industrializing state, with the orderly and ultramodern Freeport on the front, and much of the back discussing trade and economics. The tabulation of figures is also remarkable: Liberia exported 250 million dollars worth of goods in that year, 90% of which was iron and rubber, or around 800 million dollars in 2013 inflation adjustment. 

As mentioned in a post from a few months back, 2010's figure was 823 million dollars, although a third of this was the offshore ship registry. The whole country had only 1.2 million people; Monrovia only 180,000. There are probably more than 1.2 million people in greater Monrovia today. My favorite sentence, unquestionably, is “…Monrovia, which until then had looked like a Western film city with twisted wooden posts, developed and acquired one of the finest ports of West Africa, which became a free port.” Great sentence, although I cannot imagine that the unfamiliar reader would be able to understand the connection between a wild west film set and pre-modern Monrovia. Although this was enough for the front of the card to declare Liberia “An African ‘Far West.’”

The card for Abidjan is perhaps even more fascinating. First, the image itself is so banal as to be mesmerizing; it seems to be calling attention to how remarkable such an ordinary scene of an office building parking lot was in sub-Saharan Africa before 1980. The back caption states that the block is “the Ivory Coast data-processing centre at Abidjan.”

The remainder of the back text is mostly devoted to an unusual description of Abidjan's socio-economic  “hierarchy” —the Europeans concentrated in the more attractive districts of Plateau, Cocody and Marcory, the industrial zone in Petit-Bassam. Then there are the majority-African districts: Adhamé, Koumassi— “high-rise towers of rented flats,” an intriguing image; and then “the ‘areas of spontaneous settlement,’ or shanty-towns.” 

Then: “as fast as these insalubrious districts are renovated to clear them of the slums, new ones spring up alongside to house the influx of immigrants from Upper Volta, Mali, Nigeria, etc.” The echo of an earlier, imperially-sactioned racism informs a modern sociological assessment. The final two paragraphs summarize the economic sectors in almanac form. “Abidjan really is a mushroom city,” it declares. 

These cards not only recall the pre-decline era of post-independence, when Africa hummed with progress and industrialization; for me they also remind me of early childhood memories, flipping open the family Atlas or taking down a volume from the Encyclopedia set, to look up a distant, exotic city or country, described in a handful of paragraphs. The brief, essential words conjured the cityscapes in my mind: “a tourist complex on the lagoon,” —what would a ten year old American kid see? Rare was the encyclopedia image of an African city in those days, and even if the entry had an illustration, it was but one small photograph in the decades before Google image search. It was left to interpretation, and the imagination.

All the other ways to write Liberian

The post from earlier this week featuring the Loma Language (also known as the Lorma or Buzzi) reminded me about Liberia's many alphabets, or more technically, its half-dozen scripts and syllabaries.

Liberia is unique among countries of the world, much less African states, for being home to six separate writing systems for the transcription of local languages. Bassa, Vai, Mende, Loma, and Kpelle have all been codified into their own writing systems since at least the mid-19th century, on a continent that has only a handful of other instances where languages adopted writing systems.

This is a big topic for a blog post, as whole books have been written on Liberia's writing systems and the corner of the internet devoted to linguistic anthropology and language history is a dense one. This page from the Christian Education Foundation of Liberia is an excellent summary of the invention of each of these writing systems, many of which can be specifically dated to a particular individual, a historic figure, most of whom report quite similar inspiration from God, usually in a dream.

In the case of Loma, Kpelle, and Mende (which is primarily a language of Sierra Leone), the invention of new syllabaries coincided with European mission efforts to instruct in Latin Scripts of English. These singular efforts by visionary inventors were undoubtedly inspired by one another if not the spread of English writing around them. Unfortunately, none of these fanciful efforts never seemed to get off the ground, as evidenced by Tuesday's post, a newspaper from the 1960s which transcribers Loma in the international phonetic alphabet, rather than its native-born script.

A Bassa Keyboard. Seriously.

In the case of Bassa and Vai, however, there seems to have been more success. Somewhat hilariously, the Bassa script is unhelpfully called Vah, which means, To Throw A Sign, which is such a wonderful way to describe a writing system, if unbelievably coincidental in its easily-confused similarity with its neighboring language.  There are other possible connections to the enigmatic Cherokee script, and the Vai in particular seem to have borrowed some symbols from Ghana's Adrinka Symbols. In later decades, Academics both in Liberia and in the higher educational diaspora took up the perpetuation of these scripts and their academic study.

A Table of Vai Syllable Symbols. 

But in my personal experience, I have to seriously sound a note of caution about these incredible alphabets: I have only once seen an indigenous script in use in Liberia: in a Bible of undated vintage, sitting under a dusty display case in the National Museum in Monrovia as an object of curiosity, not reference.

I have seen no signs, billboards, advertisements, newspapers, or handwriting in a native writing system in any corner of the country, although these have been reported at least as recently as the 1980s—missionaries from the Doe era report Vai and Bassa people using the scripts for communication. In present day Liberia, I really think the main concerns is learning professional English and writing skills to get a job. These scripts are beautiful, but sadly have faded from whatever erstwhile employ they regularly enjoyed. Today, the Bassa language is generally transcribed in the phonetic alphabet also.

mɛ̃ɛsɔ̃ɔ niinɛi

Here's a gem that emerged recently emerged from the Liberian Observer last week: a reprint of the Loma Weekly, a missionary-run newspaper from Lofa County, published in the Loma (Lorma) language by Lutheran missionaries to encourage literacy. Seemingly type-set with a specialty phonetic typewriter tape, and featuring a wonderful illustration, this particular cover story explains the newly-completed Executive Mansion, which surely bewildered non-urban Liberians even more than it astonished more cosmopolitan audiences. The description is also delightful:

Below is the translation: 

The New Mansion 

The new Executive Mansion, dedicated on Jan. 3, is truly a splendid building, unsurpassed in its kind in Africa. It has eight floors and 310 rooms. It has a few stairways, but nine  elevators.They say there is meaning to the plan of the mansion. The curve of the building suggests the embrace of welcome extended to all who seek help from the Chief Executive. The building has its back to the ocean, suggesting the strength of the decisions that are made in the executive branch.There is a pool of water all around the building. The building contains 55 offices, a laundry, a clinic, a library, a theater, a dance room, a church, several kitchens, and a sewing room. The building is air-conditioned.President Tubman says the building should be as a proverb for the citizens of the country. As it is a splendid work, so we should strive for excellence; as it is a bold and giant venture so we should attempt great things; as it represents hard work and sacrifice, so we should not fear suffering in the performing of our noble tasks.

That fantastic description, and apparent quote from President Tubman, might make its way into the Architectural Tour. It's also interesting that “mɛ̃ɛsɔ̃ɔ  niinɛi” clearly sounds like Mansion—New, suggesting that both words were borrowed from English. Not surprising the Loma had no word for “Mansion” previously.

Further details from the Observer article, including a sad detail which I've emphasized in bold:

...the Lorma Weekly was published in Wozi, Zorzor District, Lofa County on January 24, 1964 by the literacy program of the Lutheran Church in Liberia (LCL). The literacy program in Liberia was formally started in 1948 by the government of Liberia,   in collaboration with the Lutheran, Methodist and Episcopal Churches. 

A renowned international literacy  expert named Frank Laubach was sent out to spearhead the program. He trained many Liberians in adult literacy through the churches.  Among those who did the program under him were Reverend Byron Traub and his wife Margaret, both of whom were part of the nationwide Lutheran school system.  They taught at Lutheran schools in the Meuhlenberg Mission near Millsburg and Harrisburg on the St. Paul River, at Totota and in Sanoyea, where one of their daughters,  Mae Gene Traub Best,  was born. 

The literacy program spread to Yandequelleh, near Totota and was later established in Totota Town, where the Lutheran Mission, elementary school and church were built. In Totota, the teachers worked in the Kpelle  language, and in Wozi,  they worked in the Lorma language. 

The Lorma Weekly was published in Wozi. The Wozi program was started by three Lutheran missionaries, Paul Slafford, Gerry (Gerald) Currrens and   Margaret Jim Miller, daughter of the lengendary American Lutheran missionary in Liberia, Ma Miriam Miller, mother of Margaret.  Margaret managed  with the program until  the late 1980s when she returned to the USA.

Mr. Yella Quaqua was the last supervisor in charge of the Wozi  program when, during  the Liberian civil war, the United the Liberation Movement for Democracy (ULIMO), under the command of warlord Alhaji Kromah,   attacked and burned down the Wozi Literacy Center, including the church.  Yella Quaqua was  killed during that  attack.  The Wozi  Literacy Station still lies in ruins.  The new Lutheran Bishop, Rt. Rev. Dr. Daniel Jensen Seyenkulo, said the church does plan to rebuild Wozi, but it will have to be a long-range, five to 10-year plan.

Building of the Month: Renovated Labor Ministry

 I've spent some time in my photo archives, looking to see if I happened to have taken a photo of this building before, but it doesn't seem that I had. Surprising, given its prominent location at the city-side foot of Capitol Hill, at the terminus of a high-traffic intersection where U.N. Drive intersects with the “Bassa Community Short-Cut” –a steep, busy hill that connects to Jallah Town Road, which means it’s nearly impossible not to pass this building heading into central Monrovia. Secondly, it is relatively prominent in its former role as the Ministry of Labor. Yet the building is so indistinct that I never lifted my lens to capture it in five years of taking pictures of the city. It was just another peeling, chipping, multistory rectangle of hulking concrete without present purpose.

And yet suddenly, the building's notability is not only its location but its envelope. Like an increasing number of buildings in central Monrovia, the erstwhile Labor Ministry has emerged from its cracked concrete cocoon to reveal the iridescent scales of a beetle-green glass façade. The effect is dramatic.

This rehab is the latest work of the CNQC Qingjian International, which is one of the massive Chinese infrastructure companies which has had a major presence in Liberia in the reconstruction period, as it has in dozens of African countries from Mali to Lesotho.

I don't have more information on the building's future use for now–for all I know at present, the Labor Ministry could be moving back there–but the choice of materials is striking both visually and in terms of what this new stylistic paradigm continues to say about Liberia.

On the one hand, the proliferation of shiny glass sheeting down the fronts of the city's buildings, a startling phenomenon that began about five years ago and had been noted on M2M before, speak to investors' confidence in the economy and security situation at street-crossings that ten years ago were war zones, with nothing but shattered windows. Secondly, however, this paradigm of throwing up expensive, flashy envelopes to cover over cheaply-constructed concrete shells to make glasshouse bubbles of class-A office space, sucking up air conditioning from diesel generators, is not exactly a contribution to a long-term future. Not that buildings are built differently elsewhere.

In the here and now, these Dubai-style glass boxes stand in stark contrast the the other 99% of the building stock. While I haven't had time to find out more about the plans for the building, I was able to shoot the picture below from Redemption Road, looking at the backside of the new block. It is a somewhat astonishing juxtaposition of the new building and its neighborhood, Buzzy Quarters–the traditionally-Lorma-dominated enclave of informal housing, wedged along a swampy creek between the mighty edifices of Capitol Hill and the vast fortification of the Barclay Training Center, which is home to the Ministry of Defense (many early soldiers were Lorma, hence the development of the community decades ago). The old Labor Ministry's new skin shimmers like a pair of polarized Oakleys, one of several new buildings rising over the cityscape, which still consists of rusty corrugated zinc roofs, just as it has for decades.

JFK Hospital is named for John F. Kennedy

In the hubbub surrounding the 50th Anniversary of the JFK Assassination, Liberia got a minor shout-out on Slate of all places, which had a little exercise of recording more than 400 places named after JFK. Monrovia's John F. Kennedy Memorial Medical Center made the map: 

Renewed Government Effort to Wrest Control of EJ Roye

There's a fresh round of noise in Monrovia in the past week as the government (so often referred to as, "The Unity Party led government of President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf" in the press) tries to again gain control of the Edwin J. Roye Building on Ashmun Street. Famously built in 1962 with what was rumored to be government funds for the then-predominant political party, the True Whig Party. There's a lot of grand-standing from the individuals quoted here, but also some references to interesting points in the building's history, such as a PRC-era decree seizing the building. Here's a reprint of two press reports from this week, one from the Informer, the other from The Inquirer:  

The Unity Party led government of President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf stands accused of having employed force and intimidation in the recent seizure of the grand True Whig Party (TWP) Headquarters situated on Ashmun Street in Monrovia. 

In a press statement issued in Monrovia on Wednesday, November 20, 2013 by a stalwart of the TWP, Mr. Reginald B. Goodridge, Sr., said Government's seizure of the party headquarters recognized by the National Elections Commission (NEC) was not only illogical, but an affront to Liberia's emerging democracy. 

Mr. Goodridge who was in a rather despondent mood while addressing the Liberian press, lashed at the UP-led administration for using the defunct People's Redemption Council (PRC) 33- year-old military Decree No. 11 in confiscating the E.J. Roye Building now reportedly leased out to an unknown business tycoon for at least US$130,000. 

Terming the PRC Decree 11 as draconian, and a military instrument, Goodridge took up time to refute GOL's claims that leaders of the TWP used tax payers money to erect the EJ Roye Building. 

"I want to categorically debunk such claim by the Johnson Sirleaf UP Government," Goodridge remarked, and disclosed that the EJ Roye Building, meaning TWP Headquarters, was constructed in 1965 from dues paid by partisans, prominent stalwarts, friends and sympathizers. 

He said the Liberian Government has made several attempts to forcefully confiscate the building; firstly, through eminent domain to no avail and that it was on November 11, 2013 when the Justice Ministry Deputy Minister for Economic Affairs, Cllr. Benedict Sannoh, applied the PRC military Decree 11 in seizing the EJ Roye Building backed by LNP officers and GSA Director Mary T. Broh. 

Goodridge explained that GOL has exhibited a blatant disregard for the due process and property rights toward its forceful seizure of the Building just as it did in the case of the National Culture Center, Kendeja, established by TWP Government, to a millionaire friend of President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. 

He said the EJ Roye Building is the legitimate property of TWP and urged government to overturn its decision and give back the Building to the party. 

Accordingly, the TWP has written communications to the Embassies of the United States of America, United Kingdom, ECOWAS region, amongst others, informing them that the UP government's action constitutes a potential conflict returning to the country. 

Meanwhile, the TWP in its press statement issued, called on pioneers of progressive forces in the vanguard for the promotion of multi party democracy for decades, Peace Ambassador George Weah, Cllr. Varney Sherman, political parties, LCC, Interfaith Mediation among others to speak up against "this evil that is threatening to reverse their successes."

The second report, in which the TWP leadership puts the burden on the government to prove that the taxpayer paid for the EJ Roye's construction. I've highlighted the more electric bits: 

Some aggrieved partisans of the True Whig Party (TWP) have called on the Government of Liberia (GOL) to stay away from the E J. Roye Building which they say government is applying force and intimidation to seize the National Headquarters of their TWP. Speaking with journalist at the King's Building on Buchanan Street in Monrovia, Mr. Reginald B. Goodridge said such illegal act on the part of government was done without due process by personnel of the General Services Agency (GSA), backed up by a large squad of officers of the Liberia National Police (LNP) and the Executive Protective Service (EPS) on November 11, 2013. 

Mr. Goodridge pointed out that GOL has not issued any official public statement on its actions, but the Deputy Minister for Economic Affairs at the Ministry of Justice, Benedict Sannoh, and the GSA Director, Mary Broh, have both stated off record that the GOL is using Degree '33' which was instituted by the Peoples Redemption Council (PRC) following the 1980 Military Coup d'Etat, which overthrew the TWP Government. 

He added that there are several contradictions in the Government's actions, saying that the Government claims that it is confiscating the building as its property rights relying on PRC Decree No. 11. 

At the same time, the Government has admitted that it made a deal with some individuals of the True Whig Party worth several hundred thousand United States Dollars for the privilege of confiscating the building and these same individuals recently published in a local newspaper that they had leased the building for US$130,000.00 (presumably to the Liberian Government). 

This disclosure has infuriated the Ministry of Justice which had preferred that its deal with these individuals remained a secret. "I believe whenever government uses force against peaceful citizens without due process, it is a sign of weakness," Goodridge said. He added that in the wake of this illegal act, a delegation of the True Whig Party sought clarifications from Madam Mary Broh, the GSA Director General in a conference and over the telephone as to her motive, but and in her typical style, she resorted to abusive invectives, and that Madam Broh threatened that if anyone approached her on the issue of the E J. Roye Building, she was prepared to use her gun to shoot them down. 

He told Broh that partisans of the TWP are no longer afraid of bullets or government's bullets, adding, "Thirty-three years ago, on that black day of April 23, 1980, when 13 of our stalwart partisans were lined up on South Beach and shot in cold blood, they were not afraid of your bullets, so we are not afraid of your bullets now; in your conscience, you know that what you are doing is wrong and illegal and your threats are simply an expression of your fear of uncertainty," the TWP stalwart averred. 

Mr. Goodridge stated further that the TWP pities this government or any government that takes pleasure in using its weakness to put up a barrier around an opposition political party's institution, adding, "Know this, Madam President; instead of erecting barriers to multi-party democracy, you must break down the barriers of poverty, hunger, ignorance and disease among our youths and the Liberian people. Our people are suffering; Instead of putting food on their table and money in their pockets, you are busy taking a political party's property by force and you must break down the barriers of ethnic tensions and moral degradations in our society," TWP said. 

The party furthered, "You must break down the barriers that prevent our children from going to school, the barriers that have turned our children into street peddlers and drug addicts." 

Mr. Goodridge also said that President Roye was deposed and eventually killed on the very spot where the E.J. Roye Building now stands. "His body was dragged down to Slipway and dumped in the river. Propaganda was spread that he was drowned while trying to escape, but the truth is, the deposing of President E.J. Roye was Liberia's first coup d'etat, this is why the E.J. Roye Building to us is more than just a political party headquarters; it is more than just a building and it is a spiritual shrine symbolizing the fervency of our belief in justice and equality for all regardless of social, tribal or religious background." 

Mr. Goodridge added that the reason that the TWP has lasted all these years is because it was built as an institution based on its Unification and Integration policies which envisaged the cohesion of every individual citizen as equal partners in the party and it did not depend on the pocket of any single individual and TWP was organized as a corporate entity that made investments and bought shares in viable corporations in order to sustain itself financially for future generations. 

He added that the first attempt was made through the process of Eminent Domain, which did not succeed, then the Government informed the party lawyers that it had documentation to the effect that the National Social Security and Welfare Corporation (NASSCORP) owns the building. 

He also said that it turned out that certain individuals some years ago received cash from NASSCORP in an illegal deal to sell the building, but NASSCORP could not produce any documentation to authenticate its ownership. 

Mr. Goodridge concluded that the Liberian Government then claimed that the E.J. Roye Building was built with tax payers' money adding, "This has not been proven; they have challenged Madam Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, a former True Whig Partisan, who served as Deputy Minister and Minister of Finance under the late President William R. Tolbert's government to produce any documentation such as budgetary allotment or payment voucher to show that the E.J. Roye Building was built with government's money."