A visit to Liberia by Anthony Daniels
Anthony Daniels may be better known by his pseudonym Theodore Dalyrymple. He is a doctor and psychiatrist and a fine writer.
This book dates from 1992 and describes his observations from what must have been a couple of weeks visit to Monrovia during a time when the Interim Government of National Unity ran Monrovia (with the help of Ecomog aka Every Car Or Moveable Object Gone) and negotiations were in progress. Doe’s men still held the Executive Mansion and the military camp.
On the morning of my arrival in the Ivory Coast I learned that the Steel Trader was due to sail from Abidjan for Monrovia and I went straight down to the ‘Port Autonome.’ A man in khaki uniform, reclining on a bench like Madame Recamier, barred my way. I was not allowed to enter the port.
’Where are you going?’ he asked.
’The Steel Trader,’ I replied.
’Why?’
’I am a doctor,’ I said, leaving open the possibility that a terrible epidemic had broken out on board.
’Do you have medicine with you?’ asked the official.
’Of course,’ I said.
’I am always tired, doctor,’ said the guardian of port security.
’Why?’ I asked.
Laboriously, he levered himself up on to his elbow.
’Too much work,’ he said.
I searched in my box of time-expired medicaments for something suitable, and alighted on erythromycin, vivid pink antibiotic pills that looked as though they would glow in the dark.
’These,’ I said, ‘are very good for tiredness.’
’How many do I take?’ he asked.
’One a day, until you are no longer tired.’
’Merci. Bon voyage, docteur,’ said the official, collapsing back on to his bench.
That was the end of immigration and customs formalities in Abidjan.
The above is the first page of the book, and gives you a flavor of both the man and what he finds. (I’m violently allergic to erythromycin myself, and find his choice of medicines startling.) He toured the Masonic building, the University, the Maternity Hospital, and tried to invoke a feeling for the often banal existence before the violence, and from there arrive at an understanding of the destructiveness of that violence. For example, the Maternity Hospital was thoroughly looted and wrecked; the papers from it used apparently as toilet paper. Apparently only the medical records were so used, and not the more mundane correspondence, and from this he mused about the way the white man’s medicine must have evoked resentment from those whose world-view it was overthrowing. Maybe it did cause resentment, but he forgot that the looters were mostly illiterate; and a more mundane explanation might be that the medical records, on sturdier stock than typing paper, were a more useful substitute for the traditional toilet of large leaves.
He attended the All-Liberia Conference, discovering later that “the middle of the day was a good time to travel if you wanted to avoid road-blocks, because it was then too hot for security, and the soldiers would languidly wave you through from under the shade of a tree.” Of course the “history-making” conference made no history or breakthroughs. “The delegates sat around the tables, deep in political discussion. Lunch was delayed by an hour and a half. When finally the food arrived, there was a scramble for it as desperate as the scramble in which I had participated at Lagos airport one the boarding of the aircraft was announced (The Togolese market women had brushed me contemptuously aside with their baskets, seemingly laden with lead ingots). The leaders of the nation were terrified that there would not be enough lunch for them.” There he also met Tipetoh (leader of MOJA; Movement for Justice in Africa), whom he shreds (“He kindly gave me the Preface, a single sheet of paper, and also a large photograph of himself: in my experience, the few people who genuinely believe in the equality of man do not carry photographs of themselves in their attaché cases for distribution to as many people as possible”)
He later arranged to meet Prince Johnson, and was even more horrified by his vice-Marshall Varney than he is by Johnson. Still later he arranged to see the infamous movie of Doe’s murder by Johnson, and was startled at the glee his hosts display re-watching it.
Along the way he met and was suitably perturbed by various people with ill-concealed pasts—people who had active roles in the massacres on one side or another.
Memory can be a fuzzy thing sometimes, and many of the places he described are either places I didn’t visit more than once, or were built after my time. Providence Baptist Church—he slipped out of the service at the new building, which was still under construction when I left. Some of the ruins are of places not yet built 30 years ago, which makes his references hard to follow.
He toured JFK hospital, and the massacre site of St. Peters, and found some of Doe’s family still living in Doe’s house. He even got permission to tour the Barclay Training Center where Doe’s army remnant still camped, and eventually even the Executive Mansion. Along the way he met still more villains, but I have the feeling that a lot of his reaction was read into the men from what he knew of them; a reaction to his knowledge rather than to them personally. But he is honest with himself here. He attended an interview of General Brown by a Swedish TV team (and FWIW he found them an exception to the usual Swedes in Africa whom he describes, “I feared the compassion of the Scandinavians as I feared the cruelty of other peoples, for their compassion was simultaneously neurotic and abstract, sentimental and ruthless.” Yes, he justifies this with examples.). This Swedish team is interested in digging out stories, and grills the General, who says at the end of the interview “’You have asked a lot of questions,’ he said. ‘Now it is only fair that you should answer ours.’”
There were several questions I could think of which might have caused us some embarrassment: had we come to Liberia to further our own careers, did the destruction we found there confirm us in our feelings of cultural superiority, were we enjoying ourselves amidst the ruins, did the level of suffering in Monrovia match up to what we had expected and hoped for, or were we disappointed in it?
Dr Daniels doesn’t say as much outright, but the answers would probably have been “Yes,” or something closely kin to it. He is very sensitive to matters of architecture and culture, and sees meaning in things (such as the carefully sawn-off legs of the only Steinway piano in Liberia) that don’t always resonate with other people. His insights misfire sometimes, but he hits the nail on the head at others. The fall of every sparrow is attributed to some CIA conspiracy, because people want meaning in their lives and the notion that America just doesn’t care about Liberia is intolerable to them.
The situation in Liberia is now very different, of course. The corruption is still there, but for now there’s no war or threat of war. This dates the book slightly. Someone who had spent years there would no doubt have written a more accurate book. But the glimpses of what life is like with decommissioned murderers in the neighborhood are still useful. This book is good despite its flaws, and I recommend it.
