Dragon Embarrasses Sinkor

Another recent gem from that monumental institution of journalism that is the New Republic Liberia, is this report from last week of a Dragon, which sounds a lot like a wooden figurine, discovered to be cursing a house in the 12th street community, Sinkor. The story doesn't exactly go anywhere from there, but that's sort of the point—that the below could be the subject of a group of people's panicked investigations, resulting in a published newspaper report. Again, I quote in full, emphasis mine:

Witches and wizards are humans and their missions are devilishly diverse, so to speak. They are jugglers who maneuver in all forms, be it at night or day, to pursue destructive courses. Some develop images used to carry on cherished depravities against others. Juju, dragon, voodoo are symbols of evil crafted by man to get at their targets. As they do, others are standing up to them, challenging their powers and exposing them in broad daylight. 

Residents of 12th Street in Sinkor last week witnessed one of the frightening happenings when a "man of God" dug out what is said to be a juju planted by another resident. Reporter Bedeskoe M.N. Tumbay, reports A well-crafted man-like wooden image apparently developed by "wicked ones" to torment their targets, was brought to light last week in the 12th Street Community of Sinkor, sending shocking waves of apprehension down the spines of residents. 

Residents awoke to a very disquieting and scandalous noise concerning the discovery of the incredibly fearful wooden image tied with black thread and cowry shells, soaked in concoction and planted in the soil, at the window of the home of the one of the community residents. 

It was an occurrence akin to an outbreak of instability as some residents whisked to the scene, and others, especially residents closed to where it was dug, took to their heels.The carefully crafted wooden image was said to be uncovered by one Pastor James Baryogar of the Holy Church of Christ in the Jobah Community following a tipoff by one of his members. 

The "man of God" told this paper hours after the discovery of what the residents referred to as "dragon or traditional medicine," that he had been invited by one Elizabeth Bedell, a member of his congregation a day before the Thursday he showed up. 

Upon his arrival, he said, he discovered that something had been planted at the back of his congregant's house. He did not say whether the woman who invited him was aware of the presence of such there, but noted he was called by her after she has seen his performance in one of the many communities he has been working for years. 

"The image resembling a carved wood with four cowry shells neatly designed and striped around the body with a humanlike-face was tied in a black cloth with strains of black thread that looked incredibly fearful," he said. 

"I have been doing this since 2006 when I opened my church and can move from place to place discovering medicine and dragons in every part of Liberia; so this is just one of the many things I have discovered and presently I am on my way to another area for the same job." 

He said the woman had complained that she has been sleepless nights, with nightmares, snakes and other evil spirits tormenting her in the day and at night. 

"When I told Madam Bedell that there was something planted by her window, she and the occupants in the house did not believe it, but after we started digging, I realized that the medicine left the ground and entered the ceiling," the pastor said. "I further told them that I was going after it and at that moment, it left the ceiling and came back to its normal position where it was planted." Asked as to how he got it, he said "I poured holy oil and water on the spot and it got weak and I later pulled it out to the amazement of everyone." 

The Pastor Baryogar further said the "dragon" has been embarrassing residents of the community for a long period of time and has even led to the death of a child from the same house. 

"It has been in the yard for a long period. Last year, it even killed the grand daughter of the owner of the house; it can to take on many forms, sometimes it changed to a lizard, snake and even crab, it also changed to a naked nightmare taking the form of an old man having sex with her in dream," he said. 

According to the Pastor the alleged dragon has also been living on blood of the people in the house and other community dwellers, stressing it always disturbed occupants of the house and the community at night. 

At the same time, Pastor Baryogar who burnt the "dragon" minutes later, has accused one Kollie, the owner of the house of being the mastermind of the dragon. "The old man who owns the house is aware of it because he is the owner who hosts such tenant and two of them were in the deal, and if it was not by the grace of God, by now all those in the house would have been dead," he noted. 

Ironically, Madam Bedell who invited the "man of God" to the house happens to be wife of the owner of the house, that is accused Kollie. Explaining her ordeal, she said she experienced strange sounds at night which prevented them from sleeping for a protracted period of time. Like Madam Bedell, several residents of the community complained of enduring sleepless nights for months and that they heard sounds of moving animal and other creature in the community.

British Embassy Reopens

The United Kingdom has re-opened its Embassy in Monrovia this week, after it was evacuated and closed in 1990 at the early stages of the Liberian Civil War. From The New Dawn: 

"I also just want to reiterate the importance that the United Kingdom attaches to the relationship with Liberia", the British Minister stated during the ceremony held at the new British Embassy in Sinkor.A Foreign Ministry release says Mr. Simmonds disclosed that there are only a few numbers of embassies the UK Government is opening across the world, and that his Government wanted to make sure that Liberia was one of those:"So, this is a significant step for the United Kingdom. I'm delighted to be here, I'm delighted to dedicate this new British Embassy".He added that his government will be encouraging more UK businesses to invest in Liberia which would contribute to the economic development and growth that is taking place in Liberia.In response, Foreign Minister Ngafuan hailed Britain's contributions to the bilateral ties between Liberia and Great Britain as he recalled Britain's historic recognition of Liberia's independence as the first country to do so.The Liberian Foreign Minister remains certain that with the reopening of the British Embassy in Liberia the British government will now put on its front-burner the issuance of British visas here, something the British Minister himself acknowledged in his speech delivered Monday night at the Royal Grand Hotel in Sinkor.Counting other efforts by the British government that have helped to enhance Liberia-British relations, Minister Ngafuan continued: "This year, we have been honored by two significant visits: one, by your Prime Minister, the Honorable Dave Cameron who came in February as a Co-chair of the UN High Level Panel of Experts to craft the Post-2015 development agenda and today, another high level visit from you.""The fact that you didn't have an embassy here; we felt that we needed to bridge that gap. And now we are very happy that you've responded and we have a physical presence of Great Britain in Liberia", Minister Ngafuan stated.He named the resumption of flights by British Airways to Monrovia, the operations of British businesses in Liberia and last year's Liberia-UK Business Forum that was held in London, the UK as some of the testimonies of the cordial relationship between both countries."

The new Embassy is not in the same location as the old one: As the article notes, Her Majesty's government now operates a mission in Sinkor, specifically the LCL Compound, a sparkling complex of three high-rise apartment towers on the beach between 12th and 13th streets, which is also home to the new Swedish Embassy, which moved in from a Johannsen location when the LCL Compound opened in 2012. The Knight of the Order of Malta's legation moved from another compound in Sinkor, and the three golden blocks house some of the most expensive apartments for lease in the entire city. So the new British Embassy is hardly a dedicated, purpose-built mission. 

The Former British Embassy on Mamba Point, the white building at the center against the concrete wall and curve of UN Drive, was later made the Ambassador's residence of the US Embassy.

Previously, the British Embassy had been part of Mamba Point's classic Embassy Row, situated on a beautiful, dramatic clifftop house just below the US Embassy, facing the ocean. The Dutch embassy was just down the street and the French Embassy was further up the hill at Benson Street.

1990-2000 era maps showing old UK Embassy location.

At some point after it was vacated by the British, HM Embassy became the Ambassador's residence in an expanded US Embassy compound. Today, the French and British embassies are located in the oceanside avenues of Sinkor, the US have moved across the street to the old Greystone compound, and the Dutch have yet to return, although the area still is home to most UN Agencies, the European Union, and the Vatican Embassy. 

Monrovia now hosts more than twenty embassies, consulates, and honorary consuls, although many Ambassadors accredited to Monrovia are resident in Abidjan, Accra, or even Abuja. 

Building of the Month: Pink Apartment Block

 ©2012 Matthew Jones.

I set these two photos aside from yesterday's post because I think they're actually two nice pictures, if I do say so myself, and of the many long-procrastinated ideas for this blog, I thought a 'Building of the Month' feature would be kind of fun. So here it is.

Obviously a pink building is strange anywhere, its implications of a certain juvenile femininity, perhaps, or even a twee tropical style. Whatever exuberance may have been intended or is possible to interpret is muted by the dark skies, pot-holed dirt boulevard and over-pruned tree. I see the resulting image as forlorn, in an unintentional way that compounds its melancholy. Some of Glenna Gordon's photos hold this aspect, such as this one, among others.

Tiling of buildings as a finish is common in Monrovia, as in other parts of tropical Africa, and the range of tiles that gets imported to Liberia (as with many categories of imported goods to West Africa) tends to be low-quality stuff from Dubai and China. In this example, I imagine these may have been more intended for bathroom interiors than multi-story façades. The builders obviously continued the theme with the paint job on the exterior wall ("fence") and elevated generator house. Note lastly the tinted glass windows, shaded much like the rain-heavy clouds, and balcony rails.

This building around Warren Avenue and 18th Street in Sinkor, went up through 2011-12 and is an example of the rapid in-fill on non-prime sites, away from the major streets and beaches, that have now experienced dense, high-end construction. This block  is now occupied, although I've never been inside and I think that ex-patriates from Asia, who may or may not be the building's owners, live there.

That Sinkor Feeling: The Two Monrovias

In babbling on about Monrovia's divergent real estate markets and how it is similar to, and different from, the phenomena in other African cities, it occurred to me that some visuals would help illustrate the on-going building boom in the city, which has been seemingly increasing in the last half-decade. I've previously run similar photoposts here (All Photos ©Matthew Jones). 

One of the taller towers going up, an 8-story tower on 8th Street and Gardiner Avenues, part of a larger, 4-building development going up in phases across the street, facing the beach. I think it's nearly complete now but it took about an extra year to get it finish. Whether by lack of capital or other construction constraints, delays like this are pretty common here and elsewhere in African real estate development.

The architectural plan of the same tower, showing the 2-apartments-per-floor layout. 

 

One of the more noticeable examples of the densification of Sinkor is on Payne Avenue at 19th Street near the side entrance to JFK, where two recently-constructed towers, mainly apartments but also the local of the iLab tech NGO, were joined this past dry season by a third building, bulging up in between the earlier two. 

While Mamba Point and the city center have fewer available lots, this tall building at the top of Sekou Toure Avenue, seen at the center. Sekou Toure, home of many of the UN Agency offices, is something of the Turtle Bay of Monrovia. And while most diplomatic missions have decamped from Mamba Pint to Sinkor, the US Embassy and EU Delegation compounds are still nearby, in addition to the perennial hotel, restaurant, and nightlife options of Mamba Point.

 

The Naresh Brothers Building, completed in early 2012, is right at the center of Sinkor, 15th Street and Tubman Boulevard. While the building doesn't have a pool, its balconies have great views across the city, and its across the street from the Royal Hotel as well as other restaurants and supermarkets.

Similarly hidden on a side-street of Sinkor, this building went up on 11th street near the beach in just a few months in late 2012. The area is still characterized by informal structures, vacant lots with old cars, and abandoned buildings housing squatters, including the former Ghanaian embassy building. Increasingly in the last few years, however, these corners of Sinkor have been transformed into walled compounds with multistory apartment blocks like this.

 The grandaddy of them all has to be the 3-tower beachfront complex between 13th and 14th streets. Now home to the Swedish and Knights of Malta diplomatic missions, reportedly the British mission is set to move here any day now when it is formally upgraded to a full Embassy. There's a massive pool and other typical amenities, although, like many compounds, there isn't much space for parking. I took this in 2012 when they were still going up, but the buildings have been complete for about 10 months now.

A New Building for an Old Purpose

One detail of the election coverage which I didn't remember to write about last fall was from a BBC article from October 10, by Jonathan Paye-Layleh: Can Liberia's leading lady fight off election challenge? The article included this poorly-cropped picture of a building under construction at the time, near 5th Street and Tubman Boulevard in Sinkor:

Caption: "Central Monrovia has been transformed since the end of the war"

I thought the text and photo a bit curious, especially as they didn't do much better at accurately reporting on the nuance and detail of Monrovia's cosmetic and atmospheric changes during the recent boom, despite Mr. Paye-Layleh being a Liberian based in Monrovia:

Mrs Sirleaf's campaign team cites Monrovia's development as a symbol of her achievements.

'More than 75% successful'Most of Tubman Boulevard, the city's main road, once bore the scars of conflict, with buildings dilapidated and riddled with bullets.

But today Tubman Boulevard - named after Liberia's longest-serving President William Tubman, an uncle of Winston Tubman - is tarred and shiny new buildings are springing up - including residential flats, banks, the offices of airline companies and six of Monrovia's leading supermarkets - four of which are newly established.

Most of Tubman Boulevard, the city's main road, once bore the scars of conflict, with buildings dilapidated and riddled with bullets.

I forgot about the article, but remained curious about the building, as it is one of the larger non-residential multistory buildings going up in the city. Presumably another air-conditioned office building, like so many that are transforming the cityscape. Perhaps one of the new foreign concessionaires, or even a domestic conglomerate, was constructing new office space?

After the all-too-familiar aluminum-paneling-and-tinted-glass finish, which seems to be the final skin of nearly every new building in Monrovia, the block was crowned off with a diagonal corner cap. Its brow sports a neon title of the major tenant, common enough around the world, but it reveals the building as the new office tower for LISCR, the Liberia International Ship and Corporate Registry-- the unusual, U.S.-owned and operated company which administers the registration of ocean-going vessels on behalf of the Liberian Government. Liberia's "flag of convenience" has the second largest fleet of vessels in the world-- 11% of the craft plying the planet's oceans. This has been for decades one of the government's primary sources of revenue, although too often shrouded in secrecy and lacking proper transparency.

So rather than a symbol of foreign investment, the block is another swanky office block for government business, and therefore, not a good example of any sort of "transformation" of the city, other than the slick cosmetic makeover, which is often only skin-deep.

Continue reading the main story

That Sinkor Feeling

The beach at 15th Street, Sinkor.

There aren't a great many cities in the world where you can look down the street and see waves crashing on beach, or the sky meeting the water on the horizon. Chicago, Rio de Janeiro, Nice, Miami... Monrovia. Surrounded by water on several sides, Monrovia is in a naturally beautiful setting, with the waves of the Atlantic crashing on orange beaches only a short distance away from anyplace in the city.

This is especially true of Sinkor, the mid-section of the city that has been my home for most of the last four years. Mostly laid out in a grid pattern with numbered cross-streets, Sinkor straddles the narrow center of the peninsula, with a "swamp side" to the north of Tubman Boulevard, toward the marshy meander of the Mesurado river, and the "beach side" to the south, facing the ocean.

16th Street, Sinkor.

While both are quiet and upscale residential neighborhoods, home to many of the city's embassies, it is the oceanside section which has been Monrovia's leafiest and most affluent area for decades. Originally elite families built stately mansions here on the square city lots, just blocks from the beach. Several of these are some of the last buildings in the city still inhabited by squatters and un-rehabilitated. A greater number of these are now high-walled NGO headquarters, and an increasing number have been given over to the Ellen-era building boom: there are now a half-dozen recently-completed multistory apartment tower complexes in the area, with another four or five under construction, as developers rush to finish out apartments that rent out for Manhattan-rate prices.

12th Street, Sinkor.

In the past few months, it is not just the walls of these concrete constructions that have been bricked up: the quiet, sandy ends of several of Sinkor's little streets, some of which are still pot-holed (or even never paved in the first place) have been closed off with cinderblock.

9th Street, Sinkor.

This is apparently the solution decided upon to impede access to the beach by people who mine beach sand for construction, although this continues to go on unabated just in other sections of the city, and I've also been informed that this is to restrict those who would use it as either a toilet, or rubbish bin, or both. Never mind that the much less-affluent majority of the city's residents resort to using the beach as a bathroom out of desperate necessity, and that maybe the beach could be better tended if people were employed to take care of it, rather than have some governmental authority restrict public access to a common amenity.

A sign at 18th Street proclaims "Sinkor Beach Patrol"

but gives no indication that this an actual, acting body,

merely imploring the public to keep the beach clean for children.

There is also the question of safety, as wanderers can also find themselves locked on the beach, which doesn't sound helpful if you encounter someone unfriendly. It has also had the predictable effect that the metal doors in these walls are now guarded by young men who attempt to charge others for access, which may or may not have been anticipated when this project was thought up.

I imagine it also occurred to no one that one of this often very harsh and ugly city's few moments of serenity and beauty, the vistas down its streets to the ocean, was being lost, and replaced by yet more hideous concrete block.