On the road to Monrovia, the sun beating down and evaporating the moisture from the forest floor. Trekking here is difficult and enchanting all at once. The canopy shields us from the deadly sun, but it also hides untold dangers; snakes, like the King Cobra or the tree-dwelling Green Mamba could sink its teeth in and that would be the end, for there is no medical center for miles, and your best hope would be native herbs and cures, or perhaps a healing spell.
This dense jungle has cultivated so many native traditions and customs as tribes once hid from the invading colonialists to the west along the coast. Its deadliness and unpredictability kept enemies at bay and confined them to the ports and settlements around Monrovia. After the invading Europeans came the liberated slaves from the American South, free men from plantations where they were once slaves. In dramatic irony they returned slavery to these shores, becoming masters and enslaving native tribesmen for their own plantations in the fertile lands to the west. Even the houses they built resembled the white plantation mansions in Georgia or Jackson, Mississippi, and board by board civilized Liberia became a second-rate Dixieland, its remnants visible even today, although officially slavery was outlawed in the 1920s.
It is a great study in human nature, that slaves and the children of slaves could not imagine a country of free men, to each his own. They could only see that they stood on the beneficial end of the slavery system once they have returned to the continent of their ancestors, different from the fellow tribesmen they once called brothers.
As night fell, we kept walking in the pitch dark. You cannot light a fire for fear of animals, and my guide Abdollah drinks from a goat skin's pouch. He is tired and complaining bitterly, of how traversing the desert in search of water while he was still up north is easier than the unbearable humidity of the rainforest. The dark is only short-lived in the summer months, and as the light filtered through the trees once more, I was aware of the rhythmic routine of this continent, where the most important quality to possess was patience, and a close second, self-preoccupation. We reached the end of the dense vegetation, and already children are running from their play to offer us transport to Monrovia. There is a truck, they say, but when I asked what time it would come, they only shrugged and pointed me to a spot of sand. And that is the nonchalance with which everything was done. Things will come when they come.
