Armed Force’s Day in Liberia

As I mentioned yesterday, our plan today was to go to the American Embassy in Monrovia and investigate how we can improve Wintee’s chances of visiting the US. We headed out late morning after a light breakfast of oatmeal and fried plantains with a cup of coffee. All of us headed out, Emmanuel & Wintee and me & Jenny. We had an interesting ride as we drove along. We noticed a police presence and we were wondering if some of the gas lines were getting unruly. A short time later we were waved over to the side of the road with all the other traffic on the road. We then saw a police motorcycle leading the way with lights flashing followed by multiple cars with lights and some SUV’s, presumably carrying the Liberian President, George Whea. We assumed there was some celebration he attended for Armed Force’s Day and he was headed back home. I was going to take a picture of the motorcade, but Emmanuel felt it was better to not draw attention from anyone so I didn’t take any pictures. It was rather interesting though.

We continued on our way, fascinated at the gas lines at every gas station that still has gas available. People are lined up more than 1/4 mile with cars, motorcycles or standing in line with as little as gallon size jugs. Later in the day as we stopped for diesel, one of the gas stations was out of gas and diesel, but the next station had diesel and no gasoline. We are not sure what will happen, but it is affecting all the people of Liberia. We were told that a government official was at the gas station telling them that their next gas shipment would be at the end of the month. I’m not sure how news like that will go over. Perhaps they’ll find a way to improve their delivery schedule.

When we got to the American Embassy we did find that they were closed in observance of the Liberian holiday. We thought that might be, but we went to check anyway. As we left the Embassy Emmanuel thought it would be good to take a tour of Monrovia, something I hadn’t done before. We passed a building that their Declaration of Independence was signed. It reminded Jenny and I of our trip to Philadelphia. A couple places were closed, but this one building was opened I guess to the public as there were some students taking a tour. Emmanuel went out to see if it was open to the public and of course Emmanuel knew the person giving the tour. They let us in and we were able to tour almost alone. The building is their inauguration hall where the President is normally inaugurated. The current president was inaugurated at the soccer stadium as he was a popular professional football (soccer) player. They have pictures of all the past presidents and their years of service. We saw the chairs where the President and First Lady sit during the inauguration. You can’t just walk by when you have chairs there to sit in.

We even got to stand on stage.

I thoroughly enjoyed this stop.

We continued with a tour, first looking at the past presidential cars up on blocks. We were informed that we couldn’t take pictures of the 3 cars that were on display. We aren’t sure why. You can see the cars in the background of this statue that still has bullet holes in it from the civil war.

Admit it, you zoomed in on the cars. They are all Mercedes Benz. The one you can’t see as it is in the middle, is an SUV type Mercedes Benz that we were allowed to open up and look around. There is a single seat in the back almost like a throne. It was pretty impressive in a couple ways. One, the fact that the Liberian President, Charles Taylor, who is in prison in the UK for war crimes actually rode around in it and two, they are leaving it outside to rust and ‘spoil’ as the curator type person stated.

After looking through the cars we headed into a museum which only cost $5 per person. That wasn’t too bad. I love to learn history of Liberia and there are so many things to look at from past to present. I really enjoyed learning more about the country of Liberia.

We finished at the museum and headed back towards home. Emmanuel decided to treat Jenny and me to lunch at a very nice restaurant located in a hotel. We had a great time visiting and laughing at many things. We feel so at home with them that it’s just like they are part of the family and we’re part of theirs.

After lunch we headed home with a short stop to visit Wintee’s sister, Anti. We only stopped for a few minutes, but Wintee told us that she had to live there for the first month after she had her broken leg because it was closer to the hospital for checkups and the roads were so bad in the rainy season that she couldn’t be bounced around that much. As we were leaving, Emmanuel driving and me in front on the passenger side with Jenny already sitting in the back and Wintee was working at getting into the car as it is difficult with one crutch and her leg that doesn’t work real well yet. Well, as she is starting to get in, Emmanuel decided it’s time to back up. He puts the car in gear and of course there were 3 people informing him to wait as he realized Wintee wasn’t in yet. He apologized to Wintee as I teased him. A short while later Wintee starts laughing in the backseat as she remembers another time of Emmanuel’s forgetfulness. She told us that one time she was going to get in the car and was going to ride in the backseat, but the car took off without her. What made it funny was that Emmanuel didn’t know that Wintee wasn’t in the car. He swears he heard the back door close so he drove away. He realized it after driving a ways and he turned his head to find nobody in the car with him. We all laughed at that memory.

We came home afterwards with plans to head back to the Embassy for 8:30 as the guard suggested coming at that time tomorrow. We’ll see how that goes.

Here’s one more picture of our time at the museum.