Election season in Liberia

Liberians elect a President every six years.  On Oct 11, they will have only their second Presidential election since their two civil wars that killed hundreds of thousands of people in this country.  Elections are always a nervous time in West Africa.  Cote d'Ivoire just came out of a civil war this year over election results from last year.  Warlords and "generals" from the Liberian Civil Wars are now Senators and Congressmen in the government.  Our drivers know who they are and will point them out around town saying "That man in the Mercedes killed thousands of people"  So everyone is nervous that tensions, although muted for six years, are still just below the surface.

The second civil war ended in 2003, with the landing of US Marines and Nigerian troops.  The President at the time, the warlord Charles Taylor, eventually was exiled to Nigeria before being turned over to the UN.  He currently faces charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and is in custody in The Hague.  See the movie "Blood Diamond". 

That was the last President.  The current President was elected in 2005 in the first election after the second Civil War.  She is Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf (EJS), with degrees from the Univ. of Colorado, Univ of Wisconsin, and Harvard.  She has worked at the World Bank and Citibank, and placed a distant second in the Presidential race to Charles Taylor when he was elected in 1997.  She opposed the government and escaped Liberia during the civil wars. In 2005, her biggest challenger was George Weah, the most famous soccer player in the history of Liberia.  In fact, in the first round of voting, the uneducated Weah got the most votes, and EJS came in second.  However, in the run-off, she won the most votes and became President.  She is one of the few women leading a country in the world, and the first one in Africa. She is an international celebrity but there are questions in Liberia whether she can win re-election.

Liberia has a long way to go to recover from the two civil wars.  EJS has done a lot to bring the international community in to Liberia and begin investing again.  I am here for the oil exploration licenses that were granted soon after the end of the war, for example.  For the everyday Liberian, though, the trickle-down is slow.  This new round of elections have 27 people vying for President.  One of EJSs top challengers is Winston Tubman.  He, too, is Western educated at Cambridge and Harvard, but his biggest asset is his Vice-Presidential nominee: George Weah the soccer player.  Weah has distinguished himself as a humanitarian in the last six years, and also now has a degree from DeVry University, as seen on TV.

This isn't just a history lesson.  It is rare to be in any country during elections, and this one is certainly unique.  EJS and her party have posters, banners and billboards plastered EVERYWHERE.  They obviously have the most money.  Their slogan is "Da Their Area", a phrase lifted from a popular Liberian song that shouts out locations with the response "Da Ma Area".  For their posters, they will name areas of improvement and claim "Da Their Area".  They also have signs around saying "Monkey be Working, Let Baboon Wait Small".  This is an allusion to a Liberian phrase "Monkey Working, Baboon Draw" that refers to the poor working hard for peanuts while the rich enjoy themselves.  Political rallies are going on around the country.  A small one for one of the lesser candidates passed by me yesterday on the street.  It was an excuse for a parade, with drums and chanting and dancing and waving.  They waved at my camera, glad for the attention,  and I waved back.  However, violence does break out if a rally from one party passes the headquarters of another party.  I didn't stick around long.  Here's a couple of photos of the banners for Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf.

Cape Hotel, Monrovia

I have stayed at the Cape Hotel in downtown Monrovia many times on my visits to Liberia. It is one of the nicest place to stay in Liberia. Think Motel 6 with lots of tile floors. It is clean, with pool and restaurant, and satellite TV. There are 24 channels and 8 are National Geographic Abu Dhabi in Arabic. Seriously. Of all the channels, four are in English: BBC, CNN, FX (!) and the "All CSI, All The Time" channel.

The hotel sits next to the US Embassy just above the beach. I have never been to the beach from the hotel, though. The locals call it Poo-Poo Beach, and I am sure they don't call it that for nothing. Speaking of poo-poo, flushing toilets in West Africa are the exception. That means working in a hotel provides a luxury to which many Liberians do not have access. The last time I checked in at this hotel, I got my room key at the desk, walked to my room, unlocked the door, and startled a (male) housekeeper doing his daily duty on the toilet in my bathroom. He leaned forward and swiped the door closed while I put my luggage on the bed. When he finished, he went to the hallway and came back with air freshener. I tipped him for the air freshener.

No such encounters tonight.

The time I carried counterfeit dollars back to the US

You are all familiar with the changes in US Currency in the past ten years or so.  US paper money now has a new look to deter counterfeiting, and the most obvious change is the size of the picture of the Presidents on the front of the bills.  In Africa, this is called Big Head Money.  They will not accept Little Head Money in Africa - the bills printed more than 10 years ago - so you better make sure you have Big Head Money with you before you go.  At the end of one of our trips in Sierra Leone, I found myself with a lot of extra local currency.  I was with a local friend who has a friend who changes money.  There are no exchange booths at the Sierra Leone airport, and no bank will accept Sierra Leone money back in the US, so all money has to be exchanged in country.  And it is usually with a dude that has a lot of cash on him.  Anyway, my friend called his friend and in a few minutes the money changer arrived.  We negotiated a rate and he started giving me Big Head twenties.  I noticed he also was carrying several Little Head twenties.  I asked him why and he said it was currency that was stuck in the country.  No one would accept it.  The only way it could be of value to him would be to exchange it to an American.  In the US, he correctly said, all money is the same - Big Head or Little Head. Now me being the nice guy, I told him I would take a couple of Little Head twenties to get them off his hands.

Fast forward a week.  I'm home in Houston and filling up my car with gas.  I give the attendant a couple of Big Head twenties and one of the Little Head twenties.  He studies my money for a while and hands the Little Head twenty back.  He won't take it!  "Wait a minute", I said.  "This is America.  They both spend the same here."  He asked me to give it back and he rubbed a pen across it.  It made a dark purple mark on the bill.  He took a Big Head twenty, rubbed the same pen on it, and no mark showed up on the paper.  He shrugged.  I realized I had been passed counterfeit money.

I found out later that not all clerks are as diligent as this gas station attendant, especially when there is a long line at the drive thru and you have put in a long, complicated order......

My triumphant entry into Conakry

The first time I entered Conakry, the capital of Guinea, I was greeted by a military marching band and women in native dress.  It all started with a flight from Monrovia, Liberia to Freetown, Sierra Leone.  There are not any good, reliable commercial flights between the cities that we trust, so the five business companions and I chartered a plane to take us.  We boarded the comfortable 12-seat plane and handed the pilot $8000 in $100 bills.  They only take cash if you don't have an established bank account in the country, and since we had been carrying that much money on our person since we arrived in Africa, we were ready to get rid of it.  The pilots then took off heading for Freetown for the 90 minute flight.  As we approached Freetown, the pilots - who are not separated by a wall or door from us - became agitated on the radio with the ground.  They finally informed us that it was a national holiday in Sierra Leone and the airports were closed.  Of course they didn't find this out BEFORE we handed them the money, but that's another story.  We had to land somewhere, and the nearest airport that was not celebrating a national holiday was Conakry, about 45 minutes away.

We landed in Conakry with no problems, and were the only plane on the taxiway.  We pulled up within walking distance to the main terminal and noticed a large contingency of people and trucks parked in the shade of the building.  After the engines shut down, the door was lowered onto the tarmac and we began to walk down the stairs.  Instantly, we heard a marching band start to play and saw several trucks with people standing in the open flat-beds begin to approach the plane.  The trucks were carrying many women waving and clapping in beautiful, colorful native dress.  The band, in dark green uniforms, was marching toward us right behind them.  It was only a few moments later when the faces of the people stopped smiling, the arms stopped waving and the band sounded like someone had let the air out of them.  We stood there just as confused as they were as we watched the trucks make a u-turn and the band, after some shouting and arm-waving, turned around to head back to the shade.

We were then told to hurry and exit the tarmac.  Another plane was right behind us and about to land.  That was when we found out that the President of Ghana was flying in for an official visit to Guinea.  The crowd of well-wishers and the band was there to greet his arrival.  No wonder they all looked surprised and confused to see six fat white guys come down the stairs of the plane.