Pan Am's Flying Clippers to Liberia, c.1939

Two artifacts from the early days of Pan American Airways' arrival in West Africa. Its interesting that Monrovia was such a key link even in these first years, linking North America via the Azores, Europe via Lisbon and Dakar, South America via Brazil, and onward across Africa to Leopolidville, Belgian Congo and Johannesburg. There is also a line running across to what looks like Lagos.

Most fascinating is that the Monrovia facility was a seaplane base referred to in the schedule as "Fisherman Lake" ---its important to remember that the original Clipper Ships of Pan Am were flying boats, so even if Robertsfield was under construction, these aircraft landed on the water. I have no idea where Fisherman Lake is now-- a colloquial and bland term, almost sounding like a contemporary American suburb (how fitting for Liberia), which is now likely called something else, unless I've missed the existence of Fisherman Lake in metro Monrovia all these years.

A Tourist's Guide to the Belgian Congo, c.1960

Continuing on with some emphemera of Pan American's erstwhile African operations, this 5-page tourists' guide to the Belgian Congo was published by Pan Am in 1960 as part of their annual New Horizon's World Guide publication, which was something of the Lonely Planet aof the dawn of the jet era. The entry indexes vital visitor information for the colony, reached by Jet Clipper from Idlewild via Dakar, Monrovia, and Accra, and afterwards to Johannesburg, in journey listed at 27 hours duration. Published just months before its independence, the guide describes a city and country on the verge of what I have read described as a brief, jubilant era of post-indendence promise, years before the world knew of Mobutu or the Mai-Mai.

It was, in so many aspects, a simpler time. Section headings such as Cigarettes and Tobacco and Motion Pictures are certainly quaint, but more interestingly there is virtually no talk of either tropical disease prophylactics or personal security or safety. There is also absolutely no discussion of politics. Its almost unimaginable to assemble a short dossier on an African country for a foreign audience and not have these subjects be the primary themes.

What is unquestionably the most alarming passage is the quoted population figures on the first page, which provide statistics distinguished by race: a hundred thousand "Europeans" and a round figure of 13 million "Negroes." Leopoldville is described as having firstly 20,000 white and additionally 400,000 native inhabitants. Not that you don't hear reckonings of "ex-pats" or "non-Africans" or for that matter "Lebanese" in many sub-Saharan cities nowadays, but the contemporary hint at a Jim Crow worldview is a bit discomforting. Its also a remarkable figure of "Europeans" --I had previously read that lots of Belgians lived throughout the Congo and remained there after independence, but its interesting that only one in five was thought to live in the capital. I wonder if there are 100,000 Europeans in the DR Congo today (maybe there are).

What is nearly as startling is to realize that this number of people listed is the estimated population of just the city of Kinshasa alone nowadays, with DR Congo guessed to have as many people as Germany, possibly more. Its my experience that a good rule of thumb is that the population of an entire African country at independence is now the estimated population of its capital or major city. [Let's call it Jones's Law].

The last page suggests an ambulation around the orderly little capital city on the banks of the wide river, with the "native market a 'must' for color photographers...A tour of the European Quarter should include the Museum of Native Life, St. Anne's Cathedral, King Albert Monument, Pioneers Monument, and Stanley Monument."

The final paragraph urges Jet Clipper passengers to consider a sightseeing tour up the Congo by rail or train, and compels readers to visit the cannot-miss Kivu region, with Lake Kivu renown as the "Jewel of Africa." From there, travelers are urged to see the "7-foot tall Watussi natives," and not far away is the other extreme: the "jungle home of the Pygmies." Unquestionably, an unforgettable corner of the globe.

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.