My plane from Casablanca arrived in Monrovia at five in the morning, just before the sun. I was picked up at the airport by mom and an embassy driver, the dawn slowly creeping up on us while we drove into the city.
The view from mom’s third floor apartment: Dawn over Sinkor
I barely had time to repack my bag. The original plan was that I would have one night in Monrovia before we went anywhere, to get the transit exhaustion out of my system – but then three young men rolled two home-made bombs on luggage carts into the arrival hall at Brussels airport. So, now, one hour after arriving at mom’s nice, clean and cool apartment, we left again, met up with some acquaintances of mom’s in a second jeep (traveling in Liberia should always be done in twos, for safety). We headed east on the still hot and dry, but bumpy dirt road toward Sapo National Park.
I drifted in and out of sleep, while mom drove and our guide Jimmy and mom’s friend (and environmental science student) Prince discussed politics.
The trees became higher and higher, forest patches denser and denser, and by five, dark, ominous clouds suddenly appeared out of nowhere and large, heavy raindrops started falling. We had arrived in the tropical rainforest zone, where the sheer density of transpiring organisms drives its own, local climate system. Short showers of rain arrive in the late afternoon, every day, like clockwork.
Later than expected (as always when dealing with Liberian roads) we arrived in the Sapo village, on the edge of the national park. We set up our tents by the cars in the dark, and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep, awaiting our first rainforest dawn.
Katja Malmborg 