Like most cities in Africa, Monrovia is a place of enormous contrasts. The extravagance of its upper class isn’t as evident in the architecture as in many other places, but it is hidden right under the surface of the densely city.
After our days in the rain forest and in small fishing villages, mom wanted to treat me to some luxury, so we went to get our nails done. Already that was something completely new and slightly awkward for me – manicures belong to a category of womanly activities that feels completely foreign to me. And while we were sitting there, mom started telling stories to the other ladies in the salon about our rain forest adventures: the humidity, trees, magic.
And the woman sitting next to me said: “That sounds nice. I had no idea Liberia had anything like that. Maybe I should go there? I have lived in Monrovia for ten years, and I have only ever been to Robertsport* once.” [* A town with a beautiful beach approximately two hours from Monrovia.]
And it’s so typical. The rich, business-owning class in Liberia are mostly expats, who live in Monrovia and move in the tight expat bubble of restaurants and beauty salons and resorts by the beach, and then they go to spend their holidays with family in Lebanon or Europe or the US. They don’t know the country that they’re living in. The money that they make in Liberia might not even be spent there, because they send for most of their consumer products from elsewhere. Economists sing the praise of the open market, but how is the market of Liberia ever to develop and grow when the money of the rich isn’t trickling down to the general population at all, but to businesses in far-away places where the economy is already a well-oiled machine?
Of course, I’m aware that the way my mom, as a diplomat/development worker, is living isn’t completely exempt from this problem. She lives a comfortable life in an apartment and can afford to eat at the expat restaurants a couple of times a week, go to the beach. Treat her daughter to a manicure in a salon run by an Italian in a Lebanese luxury hotel. I know we’re part of the problem. It’s a disease in the system, and I don’t know where and by whom a change should be started.
Big, complicated things aside. The luxury expat life of Monrovia does not attract me at all. What I enjoyed most was the fruit. The simple, and definitely Liberian things. Mangoes, papayas, pineapples. I ate until my gums were bleeding, and then just a little bit more.
Katja Malmborg 