This is What Bureaucracy Looks Like

A traffic accident reconstructed on a chalkboard. A diagram of traditional dress pasted askew to the concrete wall. Broken furniture, still arranged to invite a visitor to sit. 

These memory-jarring details, somehow both banal and exotic, are immediately recognizable as quintessential to Liberian official offices. Sandwiched between shots of young French paper pushers and a Siberian secretary sporting a perm are ten alluring portraits from Liberia, part of an extraordinary series of photographs, titled simply Bureaucracy, by photographer Jan Banning. The other countries in the series are Bolivia, China, India, the United States, and Yemen. Banning spent years spanning to globe, photographing hundreds of government officials, and her work was organized into a traveling exhibition and was published as a book in 2008.

The visits were unannounced, [we] kept the employees from tidying up or clearing the office. That way, the photos show what a local citizen would be confronted with when entering.

These head-on shots of Liberian civil servants, from the center of Monrovia to remote districts in River Gee County are familiar in ways heartwarming and hilarious, or even headache-inducing, to outright horrifying. Anyone who has spent any time in Liberia has been in rooms like this, sat in small, hand-made wicker seats, under a roof of rusting zinc or woven mat, painted cement floors or worse, covered in rolls of plastic floor matting. Banning and her partner's interview also recorded the official salaries of each, perhaps the most jarring detail of all. 

Banning's descriptions and photos are reposted below. Everything ©Jan Banning.

 Warford Weadatu Sr. (b. 1963), a former farmer and mail carrier, now is county commissioner (administrator) for Nyenawliken district, River Gee County. He has no budget and is not expecting any money soon from the poverty-stricken authorities in Monrovia. Monthly salary: 1,110 Liberian dollars (US$ 20, euro 19), but he hadn't received any salary for the previous year.
 

Major Adolph Dalaney (b. 1940) works in the Reconstruction Room of the Traffic Police at the Liberia National Police Headquarters in the capital Monrovia. Monthly salary: barely 1,000 Liberian dollars (US$ 18, euro 17). Traffic accident victims at times are willing to pay a little extra if Dalaney"s department quickly draws up a favorable report to present to a judge.


Alfred D. Tartea (b. 1946) is administrative assistant and acting superintendent (highest civil servant) of Careysburg district, Montserrado County. Monthly salary: 750 Liberian dollars (US $ 13, euro 12.50).


Alfred C. Garley (b. 1950), stationed in Zwedru, is deputy revenue agent for Grand Gedeh County. During the Liberian civil war, the tax office was robbed and destroyed. Monthly salary: approximately 1,000 Liberian dollars (US$ 18, euro 17).


Henry D. Snorton (1957) is senior tax collector in Kakata district (22000 people), Margibi County. He is co-ordinator of the district"s 12 tax collectors. They take in real estate tax and tax on trade profits, mostly in cash. "We have absolutely nothing: no decent office furniture, no telephones, no typewriters, not even a motorbike to collect tax in remote areas. Our collectors sometimes walk for a whole day to visit one taxable." Monthly salary: 925 Liberian dollars (US$ 16, euro 15).


J. Modesco Siaker (1959), township commissioner in Crozierville, Careysburg district, Montserrado County. Crozierville had 10,000 people before the war; now 4,000. In 1990, Taylor's rebels entered the village: "I was a clerk then, and they threatened to execute me and some others. They let me go, but killed 2 others." They ransacked houses and public buildings. In 1991, INPLF rebels (Prince Johnson c.s.) and Ecomog peacekeepers stole what was left. Since 1997, Siaker is back in his village. His office and home are in a derilict villa: the town hall was raised to the ground.Siaker cannot do much for his people. He earns 750 Lib. dollar (US$ 13, euro 12.50) a month.


Henry Gray (1940), acting commissioner for Gbaepo district, Kanweaken, River Gee County. During the Civil War, the office was completely looted and destroyed: only one wall remained. Gray has 11 personnel, of whom only 4 are paid. The rest are volunteers. He has no budget and over two years salary owing. Yesterday, he went to the capital Fishtown to collect last two months salary, two times 975 Liberian dollars (2x US$ 17, 2x euro 16). All he got was 600 dollars (US$ 11, euro 10). Gray is father to 34 children (sic), 13 of them depending, and has 18 grandchildren.


Lieutenant Samuel P.S. Kollie (b. 1955) is chief of the Traffic Station of the Liberia National Police in Kakata, Margibi County. He has no police car and no means of communication. When an accident is reported, Kollie at times takes a cab at the expense of the person reporting the accident. Monthly salary: 900 Liberian dollars (US$ 16, euro 15).


Louise N. Smith (b. 1964) keeps files at the Department of Statistics of the Bureau for Immigration and Naturalization (BIN) in Monrovia. Monthly salary: 1,000 Liberian dollars (US$ 18, 17 euro), almost all of which is spent on transportation to and from work. Sometimes she receives nothing for three months, except for support from family in the United States.


Brama F. Nyé (b. 1962) is head of the Revenue Office in Smell-no-Taste, Margibi County. Once a month, he drives in a rented or borrowed car to Monrovia to deliver hundreds of thousands of Liberian and American dollars to the Central Bank of Liberia. Monthly salary: 1,080 Liberian dollars (US$ 19, euro 18).


"Ducor Hotel's Misfortune Resonates"

Going from the present state of the art of Liberia's hospitality scene to the glories of the past, is this fantastically written article published in the New Republic newspaper in May of this year. It's a tremendous town cry on the sad state of the Ducor Hotel, which is in an even more perilous position than it was previously, due to the demise of its recent benefactor, Muammar Qaddafi, whose government investment unit had taken up plans to redevelop the hotel (covered in earlier years on this blog here). 

This grandiose work of journalism is unmissable in full, for the reporter's singular reporting style alone, but also because the article references this very blog, albeit a bit confusingly (emphasis added below). Also, the lamentable language of the journalist suggests that the Ducor is in its present, ruinous condition as much because of Qaddafi's recent death, rather than all the other causes of the property's destruction and decay.

I've excerpted most of it below, but again, click the link and don't miss even one of the rambling, laconic sentences. Aside from this journalism, there is no update on commencing construction to refurbish what was once West Africa's finest accommodations. 

Lastly, oh the irony of the present that this web advertisement for present-day Intercontinental Hotels popped up at the bottom of the article: 

...From North Africa, East Africa, Central Africa and West Africa, the symbol of his might protruded, and he proportionately responded with frolicsome display of generosity, undertaking projects in dimensional quality. Liberia had its share in Kaddafi's cascading generosity. Since his demise in 2012, most of the projects including the rehabilitation of the Ducor Palace Hotel are a standstill, an indication that they have also demised with him.The New Republic was at the site of the once hilltop, five-star hotel to ascertain what is now considered its misfortunes. Ducor Palace Hotel should have been fully salvaged, well and kicking as it was in pre-war Liberia had Libya, whose former leader was instrumental in extending helping hands to needy African countries, not endured a costly political upheaval. He felt victim to the Arab political tsunami (Arab Spring as it is termed today) that began in Tunisia.From the look of things, it is guessable that the Hotel has died with the former Libyan strongman who did not survive a nationally-ignited but internationally-backed insurrection.The government of Muammar Kaddafi, then considered a friend to Liberia, had agreed to renovate the building after years of neglect, but that openhandedness was asphyxiated when his government was dethroned, thus turning the Hotel's fortunes into unbearable misfortunes. 

Present State of the HotelIt is now lying abandoned. Approaching the wide courtyard of the once blossoming and captivating hotel - an unassailable national shrine -and noticing the depth of damage evoked ominous feelings.Besides the general state of devastation in which it is, its once appealing surroundings, parking lots have become garages, playing fields for children, most of them students, while the two main streets leading to the main building have been turned into latrine sites. The amazing swimming pool which captivated tourists from far and near is a pond of tadpoles.During a visit there to ascertain its present state, our reporter said he noticed overgrowing trees overwhelming the entire scenery of the surroundings, making distance viewing completely tetchy.The more the devastation to the building is likely to become, the more the resources needed to revamp it surge if it is not attended to now, this paper was informed when it toured the facilities recently.During the tour, our reporter said he saw the street leading to the right wing of the building awash of human feces, while the main security check point is now being turned into business booth by residents of the Snapper Hill community.Residents there did not feel comfortable speaking to our reporter who endeavored to inquire from them why they were using the security check point for business purposes and who authorized them to do so.Our reporter said, however, he noticed few security officers - three gentlemen -from a private security officers sitting on the ground floor of the building, close to the main entrance."Hello, I am from The New Republic Newspaper. My mission is to capture the present landscape of the building, get some photos and talk to some people here," our reporter divulged his mission.Apparently overwhelmed by awe, one of the officers took in deep brief before responding. "You are welcome. We are here on behalf of a private company. The government turned over the building to a company," he said without calling his name."For me, I don't like to speak to press people; I am afraid of them because sometimes when you say something to them, they paraphrase it."After the fleeting interaction between the two, the officer granted our reporter permission to take some photos, but refused to grant him interview.Amidst the negative aspect of the dilapidation and the incorrect and unkempt use of the premises of the hotel by "elements of griminess", others are getting very good glances of some of the beautifully still-in-tight symbols such as the J.J Roberts monument.People from all walks of life, especially students, trooped there everyday for several reasons: for photographing, for relaxation, for recreation amongst others. These events point to the rather ever-living significance of the Hotel to the national emblem.A case in point is that several school-going children were seen playing soccer on the grou8nds of the hotel complex. 

War era usefulnessBesides its antebellum elegance that attracted thousands to it, Ducor Palace Hotel headquartered the Amos Sawyer-led Interim Government of National Unity (IGNU) from 1990-94.Most of Sawyer's officials resided there and even ran the various offices from there because most government ministries were either looted not secure to be occupied...Dozens of Liberians occupied the building the demise of the interim government...It was during this period that it suffered the worst of devastation occasioned by another period of massive looting of its assets. 

Historical backgroundResearch records show that the design of the "to the Moved 2 Monrovia postcard collection sent in 1964. It depicted the hotel when it was nearly brand new, and shows how denuded the hill was when the hotel finished.Neil Prince is credited with designing the Ducor in 1962 as part of his worldwide portfolio of properties for Intercontinental Hotels, which was at the time the hospitality arm of Pan American Airways, which was obviously very focused on Monrovia.A Pan Am's 1963 World Guide, seemed to have recommended the "brand new Ducor Hotel" so it seems the property was originally called the Ducor Palace, then called the Intercontinental, then back to the Ducor Palace.In 2008, under this present administration, Ducor Hotel gutted fire, thus exacerbating its conditionsEarlier in 2007, the Liberian Ministry of Justice began to evict the Ducor Hotel's residents, and in 2008, the Government of Liberia signed a lease agreement with the Government of Libya, who began clearing the property of debris in 2010 in preparation for a bidding process to be completed by June 2010.However, the project was delayed several times before finally being abandoned upon Liberia's severing of diplomatic relations with the Gaddafi government following the outbreak of the 2011 Libyan civil war.Following the restoration of diplomatic relations with Mohammed Kaddafi's Libya, the Liberian Government sought its intervention to resuscitate the building to its pre-war status.After months of negotiations, a formal agreement was signed and the building was accordingly turned over to the Libyans to rehabilitate and run it for a period of time.Immediate work did not start on the building due to strong opposition from residents who lived in the proximity of the building who the government had earlier asked to vacate the premises to allow the reconstruction work on the building.'Again, after months of hauling and pulling, the government managed to calm the situation, paid some of the residents to relocate and even bulldozed buildings whose owners did not comply with the arrangement.Official reconstruction work began on the complex in 2010 but short-lived due to the uprising against the Kaddafi regime in 2011.The Liberian government, perhaps bowing to the whims and caprices of the US government and other western nations, severed diplomatic ties with Libya, thus bringing an end to efforts toward reconstructing the building.Now that the government last year restored ties with Libya in 2012, the state of the building remains the same.Ducor Palace Hotel, then Liberia's hilltop five-star hotel, would have been an oasis of comfort, realization and a hub of adventurism had it not been destroyed.It is gathered that its antebellum comfort, elegance, luxury, status and protruding first-class quality drew many to Liberia. The scenery was also added value. All of this is historyOperated by the Intercontinental Hotels chain, the Ducor Hotel was the first hotel constructed in Liberia, and one of the few five-star hotels in all of Africa.Its various amenities, including its three hundred rooms, pool, tennis courts, and a French restaurant, made it popular with tourists from the Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana, as well as visiting professionals from the US, Europe, and Asia.This paper also gathered that the building was closed in 1989, just before the coup led by Charles Taylor which ousted President Samuel Doe and marked the beginning of the First Liberian Civil War.At present, according to information available to this paper, the building is being turned over to a private company, but could not establish which company is it and how the process was conducted.Most Liberians who are concerned about the state of the hotel are beginning to interject that it is another "white elephant' of Liberia.Several historic complexes remained unattended to, either due to the lack of interest on the part of the government or lack of resources.Hotel Africa, another five-star hotel built in 1979 during the administration of President William R. Tolbert is completely ruined and the government is yet to see reasons to rescue it despite several calls from Liberians.The Unity Conference Center, another landmark nation shrine, is gradually getting into a state of oblivion. The building is partially destroyed and there are that reports conditions could get worst if nothing is done about it.Of course, Ducor Palace Hotel is one of Liberia's proudest landmark complexes that represented its image across the globe. As it is, millions of dollars are needed to get the building back to its prewar status, and this is task so huge for the government to handle.Until then, Ducor is history and it could remain as such during the lifespan of this government which is already struggling with its own budget, analysts have hinted.

Kendeja Hotel on CNN

Another segment from CNN's recent Inside Africa report from Liberia, interviewing the new-ish GM of the RLJ Kendeja Resort & Villas, located beachside in Paynesville on the RIA Highway. The property looked good despite the cloudy weather, with the interview taking place by the pool under one of the nice thatched huts which is one of the best places in the city to eat a burger on a weekend afternoon.

While having been on the job for, as he reports, only 9 months, the GM doesn't seem like the best to have a perspective on how Liberia is changing, as he reports a shift since being on the ground in the type of visitor, from NGOs and faith-based travelers to investors and miners, in truth both groups make up the vast majority of the Kendeja's non-local clientele and have been since the resort opened in 2009.

The part where they show the on-site electricity and water treatment is also interesting.

Remembering

Although not aligning with the July and August events which marked the 10-year anniversary of the conclusion of Liberia's civil war, the Los Angeles Times remembered the events on its Framework photography blog featuring a series of 18 images from the 2003-2005 period, some taken by Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros. Several feature recognizable spots in Central Monrovia, notably the Masonic Temple and the National Housing Bank tower, as seen above. The posting does coincide with an exhibit, Remembering Liberia, put on by the Chris Hondros Fund at Photoville in New York for the past few weeks.

The Future of the EJ Roye

©2012 Matthew M. Jones

Following on the mention of the EJ Roye Building in the previous post, as the old dame was featured on CNN, here's a 14-month-old mention in the local rag The New Dawn about what is one of the largest abandoned buildings remaining in central Monrovia:

"Public Works Minister Samuel Kofi Woods says Government has earmarked US$400,000 to conduct a feasibility study on the E.J. Roye building which ownership is still left to legal interpretation."

As has been previously mentioned on CNN, as well as previously on this blog as well as on the Architectural Tour, the EJ Roye was built, probably with government funds, as a headquarters of the country's True Whig Party. The government has since demanded ownership of the building, since it was, it seems, taxpayers' funds which financed the tower's construction.

Meanwhile, the building was heavily damaged during the war, especially the final siege of Monrovia in 2003, when government snipers positioned at the skyscraper's top fought off rebels trying to cross the old bridge. The building suffered several rocket hits, and its not clear whether it is structurally sound enough for it to continue standing, or how much it will cost to refurbish it.

There's been no recent reports about the commencement of the study or its results.

A Pehn-Pehn Ride Around Monrovia

Back in September, CNN's weekly Inside Africa program put together a show from Monrovia. While the journalism tends to be as unimpressive as the rest of CNN International's line-up, this segment where the show's host takes a ride around Monrovia on the back of a motorbike is nice, particularly because it shows some nice shots of the streets of Monrovia, and especially because the pehn-pehn driver, who is called "Harris Cully" by the CNN team but who I would assume has the last name "Kollie" is a typically polite and agreeable Liberian guy. 

Between Harris's delightful, animated narration and trying to figure out which streets the dynamic footage was shot on, it's enough to make a viewer homesick for Liberia, or at least proud to see the city looking so respectable. 

Emphasis on the downside is mixed with the positive, though. The EJ Roye Building makes a momentary cameo, in a mention that doesn't really go anywhere, and I wasn't sure what the host meant when he asserted that many businesses that had left Liberia during the war have yet to return, especially when there is unprecedented concession activity from one end of the country to the other in a bonanza of investment unlike Liberia has ever seen.

Vaguely, the segment tries to emphasize how many pehn-pehn drivers are ex-combatants and how Liberia is suffering from the lingering impacts of the civil conflict; the host begins the show by saying that, "to truly understand this country, you have to look at everything through the context of its brutal civil war," which is of course true, but also perennially unfortunate that everything is always cast in the shadows of the conflict, even when trying to be a bit positive, which on balance is this case with this segment. 

What does Liberia Export?

In 2010, the value of Liberia's rubber harvest was nearly equal to the value of its cruise ships.

That's one potential headline that could be derived from playing around with The Observatory of Economic Complexity, a web-based visualization app that is co-hosted and developed by Harvard and MIT, holding trade data for most countries. Liberia, along with most of the world's countries, has data on imports and exports available for years 1995-2010. It's fun to play around with and it's macro-economically enlightening.

Rubber should be unsurprising, and although Liberia has no shipbuilding industry above Fanti fishing boats, it does continue to offer one of the world's favored flags of convenience with the Liberia Ship Registry, which I've mentioned before.

Just based on legibility of text size as an indication of significant exports, its curious and fascinating that  Liberia's exports were by and large just three classifications: Cruise Ships (31%) Rubber 30%, Petroleum (26%). As Liberia is and has always been an importer of fuel, the third category is a bit strange.

Diamonds, Cocoa Beans and Scrap Iron are the only other categories that can even be seen without zooming in, the latter not exactly being a growth industry. Raw iron ore should have significantly displaced these other categories the next year with ArcelorMittal's resumption of ore exports.

Arik Air's Guide to Nigeria's Cities

In the wake of Air Nigeria's ignominious demise, Arik Air has taken up the mantle of flag carrier for Nigeria, and taken on West Africa's key Lagos-Accra-Monrovia route, which I flew a few months back.

Arik Air's in-flight magazine, Wings, has the usual economy class journalism, but I was delighted by the airline's back section feature, WingTips, which are visitor guides to cities it serves. These include not only the larger global destinations like Johannesburg, but also most of its domestic network, including Akure, Asaba, Gombe, Ilorin, Jos, Kaduna, Katsina, Owerri, Port Harcourt, Sokoto, Uye, Warri, Yola. Each profile has a section, Behold, which celebrates the city itself, followed by paragraphs on what to buy or what local markets the city has, and what or where to eat, and where to stay.

Brussels Airlines and Kenya Airways produce similar content for their in-flight glossies for spots as exotic as Lomé and Conakry, and of course Lonely Planet and other adventure guides have provided information on off-the-beaten-path African cities for decades. So perhaps I am looking at this from the perspective of a patronizing foreigner, but this glossy promotional series was pleasantly unexpected. I find it so warming and optimistic to find these tourist guides to these places, so little known and little visited by foreigners, and broadly speaking so infrequently appreciated or celebrated by just about everyone.

The only time any of these places make it into the international press is likely when there are fear-mongering stories about Nigeria's insecurity or imminent break-up. Rather than danger warnings, its nice to read celebratory recommendations suggesting travelers explore the country.

Newly-discovered blog: Naijanomics

Following from yesterday's post on the new Chatham House report on Nigeria's institutionalized oil theft, I just happened to discover, via Twitter, this excellent new blog on Nigerian economics, called Naijanomics, written by Chuba Ezekwesili. I've added it the blog roll (on the right-hand side of the page) and recommend checking it out. The post from today, on 'African Time' analyzed through game theory is pretty clever.

Nigeria's Stolen Oil

Sticking with Nigeria for another day, here's a few startling (or not so surprising) paragraphs:

Nigerian crude oil is being stolen on an industrial scale. Some of what is stolen is exported. Proceeds are laundered through world financial centres and used to buy assets in and outside Nigeria. In Nigeria, politicians, military officers, militants, oil industry personnel, oil traders and communities profit, as do organized criminal groups. The trade also supports other transnational organized crime in the Gulf of Guinea... 

Nigeria offers a strong enabling environment for the large-scale theft of crude oil. Corruption and fraud are rampant in the country’s oil sector. A dynamic, overcrowded political economy drives competition for looted resources. Poor governance has encouraged violent opportunism around oil and opened doors for organized crime. Because Nigeria is the world’s 13th largest oil producer – exports often topped two million barrels per day in 2012 – high rents are up for grabs. 

Those are from the opening passages of the Executive Summary of "Nigeria's Criminal Crude: International Option to Combat the Export of Stolen Oil" authored by Christina Katsouris and Aaron Sayne, and released this week by Chatham House. Free to download here. Eye-opening reading.

Planet Money Podcast on Nigeria's GDP

Speaking of Podcasts, which I am a bit addicted to, in addition to the Africa Today Podcast from the BBC, which comes out 5 days a week, I also subscribe to NPR's Planet Money podcast, which features short, digestive summaries of complex economic stories in the news.

Earlier this year, Planet Money has two episodes about Nigeria and Ghana's GDP calculations. One called, When a Poor Country Gets a Whole Lot Richer, which described the re-adjustment of Nigeria's GDP calculations, moving the baseline year up and accounting for whole sectors such as mobile telephony, resulting in a radically larger GDP figure. Earlier in the year, an episode covered both Ghana's 2010 GDP readjustment as well as emerging tech sectors contributing to Nigeria's GDP reckoning.

I definitely recommend listening to the whole episode via the link above, which is quite illustrative on how GDPs are calculated and informative generally on Nigeria's economic growth, but I also was amazed to hear the episode because I had written an email to Planet Money and recommended this topic for a show. Unfortunately, no love for me in the credits, but still.

Grand Bassam: Ready for Tourists?

While preparing the posts about Françafrique earlier this month, it seemed serendipitous to hear my good friend and excellent journalist Tamasin Ford, the BBC West Africa correspondent based in Abidjan, on the BBC Africa Today podcast, filing a report about Grand Bassam, Cote D'Ivoire's original capital city.

Situated on the Atlantic Ocean, tiny Grand Bassam is about an hour southeast of Abidjan, and was the first capital of the French colony has been more recently something of the Newport, Rhode Island of Ivory Coast. As Tamasin reports, it has received UNESCO World Heritage status, but hasn't yet seen an influx of tourists. Listen to Tamasin's report on her Soundcloud page.

I happened to visit Grand Bassam in April this year, while visiting Tamasin and her boyfriend in Abidjan. Upon arriving from the city, we first went to a decent beachfront hotel for lunch. The beach was busy and the hotel was lively, although I didn't see that many foreigners; the majority of people seemed to be West African.

The three of us strolled to find the Vieux Carré after lunch. It was a bit hard to find, as there were no street signs or maps, and few wayfinding aides for the interested visitor. We experienced one of those strange sensations when visiting a foreign city, that particular disorientation when you have no idea if you've found the center of town or if you're on the outskirts, looking for something else.

Like several other colonial historic districts that I've visited in West Africa, Grand Bassam in its current, dilapidated condition, offers the visitors a rare chance to get up close to the architecture in its on-reconstructed state. Its amazing to be able to walk in these old buildings without restriction, such as the old railway station, below:

However, the bigger aspect is also the more negative: I was disappointed not so much at the sorry condition of the historic buildings, but it was obvious that several had already disappeared, and even the better examples that still stood, there was no way of learning more about them, such as the case with the magnificent example at the top of this post. The old center was interrupted by new construction, as would be expected in an inhabited district; some was more "contextual than others." In the bones of some of the older structures, the possibility for a refurbished, tourist-oriented destination seemed possible: fixing up a few for restaurants, cafés and small guest houses. Certainly sufficient crowds were coming to the area, as the beaches just ten minutes away were full of weekenders.

I am not familiar with what expertise or assistance UNESCO provides its designates, or whether a master plan or other aide is coming Grand Bassam's way. But there is a lot of work to be done to capture the potential of this historic city as a place for visitors, and much like the historic architecture of Liberia, as time passes, less and less of the older buildings are left standing.

All photos ©2013 Mathew M. Jones

When Swissair flew to Monrovia

The prominence of Swissair in the opening scenes of the remarkable Wealth of Liberia, which I posted about last, reminded me that some photos of Swissair and its ticket office have been posted to the Liberia 77 website.

As seen in the film, the Swissair ticket office was located in the heart of the city, at the corner of Broad and Randall Streets, in what then, remarkably as now, was called the Palm Hotel. These two photos are dated by the anonymous uploader as 1983 and 1984, which show the later Swissair paint job and a strikingly modern, glazed-wall storefront:

An interesting aside is a black and white press photo, posted earlier on Liberia 77, showing the large-pane glazing of the ticket office smashed during the April 1979 rice riots, below.

As the later color photos show, despite the vandalism Swissair stuck with Liberia, fixing their glass windows, and landing at RIA several times a week. Swissair flew a Zürich-Geneva-Monrovia weekly from April 4th 1965 to 1986, occasionally linking Abidjan or Dakar as well (see first day covers below). Swissair started with DC-8 jets, as the film shows, then employed DC-10 trijets beginning in 1977, until during the last years it used a widebody A310, as seen in this historic first-day service envelopes:

The year 1986 is the same fateful date during which Pan Am finally pulled out of Monrovia and ended its management of Robertsfield. Swissair itself met its demise suddenly in 2001, when its assets were seized by creditors. An interesting detail of this bankruptcy was that Swissair had taken over the Belgian carrier Sabena, which had never stopped flying to Liberia, and was quickly transformed into SN Brussels Airlines, now just Brussels Airlines, which still has more intercontinental seats out of RIA than any other single carrier, with 4 flights per week, and maintaining a large ticket office in the former Chase Manhattan Plaza, now formally known as the Episcopal Church Plaza at Randall and Ashmun, just a two-minute walk from the old Swissair office.

Although under administration, Swissair was similarly resurrected as Swiss International Air Lines, that new carrier does not serve West Africa at all.

The Wealth of Liberia

To-day, businessmen and investors from all parts of the world have discovered the commercial and industrial potential that is the Wealth of Liberia"

Big thanks to Twitter bud Chris Carnel for immediately alerting me to this YouTube posting from Pepperbird Studios: a restoration of a c.1974 newsreel on Liberia, released to Yor-El Francis of Pepperbird from the Tolbert family's private collection. 

Every once in a while a vintage film or photo surfaces which embodies this blog better than a thousand word post. This grainy, colorful, 22-minute archival gem seems tailor-made for this blog, starting off with a Swissair DC-8 landing at Robertsfield, and from there launching right into a sightseeing tour of the landmark buildings of central Monrovia, most of them barely 10 years old at the time. It almost recalls this blog's Architectural Tour of third of a century later. 

Monrovia reflected in a graceful cultural heritage, but a city, as modern as To-day... Buildings steeped in the traditions of Liberia's rich history...Building reflecting the country's promise of a rich future. As with the imposing Executive Mansion, home of the country's president, William R. Tolbert...Buildings that reflect the civic dignity of the city, its commerce and industry... For the well-being of its people, the JF Kennedy Memorial Hospital..The renown Ducor Intercontinental Hotel also looks out to one of the islands first sighted by those early settlers, 150 years ago.

Its a glowing overview of the Camelot that was Late Classic Liberia wonder-story, the High-Tolbertian boom of Rally Time, raw commodity exporting, rapid industrialization, all narrated in an infallibly clipped mid-Atlantic accent, blaring trumpets heralding the excitement of an economy on the move in between the frenetic reporting. Act One is made up of several minutes of luscious street scenes of bustling mid-1970s Monrovia, looking spotless and state-of-the-art: leafy Broad Street lined with fine-looking buildings, all recognizable today.

There's current no information about who the customers for the film-making were, but presumably this was a governmental commission, although the Tolbert family's now-somewhat infamous Mesurado Group of Companies features more than prominently throughout the feature, almost to the point where the film becomes indistinguishable as a promotion of the conglomerate or of the country itself. In those days, as in other times, investing in the Liberian economy meant investing in, or at least closely alongside, prominent and elite families. 

That contentious issue aside, the film spends a good deal of time noting many of the government programs aimed at assisting the general population, in skills training, employment and the advancement of agriculture through higher education twinned with research and development. Tobacco, processed crepe and latex rubber, cocoa, coffee and timber seem to pour out of the Liberian hinterlands and through the humming, orderly ports of Buchanan, Greenville, Harper, and of course the Freeport. It's undeniably impressive. 

There are also some delightful scenes of Swissair's glass-fronted ticket office in the Palm Hotel, at the corner of Broad and Randall Streets, as well as the busy Air Liberia office, whose location was presumably on Broad Street as well, but this is a new one for me. Later in the film, the Wings of the Pepperbird are shown linking the bustling port of Buchanan and to the industrial hive of Mount Nimba to Spriggs Payne.

The entire film is quite astonishing. In its economic overview, a sequence of scenes breeze through factories and finishing lines for cigarettes and soap, paint and packaged seafood, window frames and wood products, none of which exist 39 year later. Only Cemenco is recognizeable, although the legacy of Parker Paint and others live on in place names. Likewise lost to war and history are the refining capacity of the Liberia Petroleum Refining Company. 

 Outside of the industrial zones, the Agricultural educational farms decentralized in Virginia, Lofa, and Grand Bassa, as well as the Liberia Feed Mill Company, provide a quasi-statal architecture of agricultural advancement, with a goal of not only building export volumes, but becoming self-sufficient in rice production. The Liberia Produce Marketing Corporation, like so many of these ventures, has since ceased to exist. Even these structures and facilities have disappeared. 

In contrast, the gleaming towers of commerce, culture and industry are all recognizable, standing today either as shabby shadows of their former selves, albeit serving the exact same purpose as they did originally (the Masonic Temple, Chase Manhattan Plaza, Centennial Pavilion, the Executive Pavilion, the Executive Mansion, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Finance, Monrovia City Hall, JFK Hospital) or standing as shameful shells of once-boastful monuments, like the E.J. Roye Building and the Ducor Hotel. 

Indeed, the early shot of businessmen arriving at Robertsfield almost exactly matches the picture on RIA's Wikipedia page: the airport's facility is the same building today as it was in those days. 

The entire feature is an amazing gem for Liberiophiles and history buffs. It's entirely preciously-rare footage of Liberia's golden era, from the sunny scenes of the new Gardnersville and Amical Cabral housing estate to the incredible breadth of Liberia's industrial facilities. Of course, the film is painfully bittersweet, as it speaks of the Wealth of the Future and Progress, barely five years before President Tolbert was assassinated in the Executive Mansion, the opening violence in a horror which erased every inch of Liberia's progress, much of which, astoundingly, has yet to return.