Chapter 1: North America, Europe, Africa

Off to Liberia

A day of travel!

It started on Sunday at gate A6, at Tampa International with boarding starting at 1:35pm.

The itinerary: Tampa to DC to Brussels to Freetown, Sierra Leone to Monrovia, Liberia. Phew!

As I type this, it is 9:56 pm Liberia time, 5:56 pm Florida time.

It's been a long day! I am sitting at a small writing desk in a room at the RLJ Kendeja Resort and Villa. Turns out, my good friend and Liberian host, Jay, has a house full of guests and won't be able to house me until they leave. More on Jay later. More on my day of travel now.

Photos from the last 30 hours of travel...

These first three are pretty mundane, domestic: advert on tram, flight info board at Tampa International, somewhere over America between Tampa and DC — probably closer to DC.

This would be the domestic part of the day.

Boring Yawnville, I know!

It got more interesting and novel for the European part of the day.

According to my phone, I spent about half of my day in a place called Steenokkerzeel, and a cool 65-degree day. Guess that is where the Brussels International Airport is located.

I spent four hours inside the Brussels airport in an exhausted daze.

Found a little juicery called Guapa. Here I had a "Morning Energizer" (apple, carrot, lemon, ginger, beet). The rising sun outside said it was morning but my watch said it was 1:57 am Florida time. This was my (very, very early) breakfast.

Flew over the Sahara.

Finally, after over 24 hours of planes and airports, a full day of recycled air and air-conditioning, I stepped off Brussels Air flight SN 245 a few minutes before 7:00 p.m., walked down the covered stairway, and onto the runway of Roberts International Airport — ours was the only plane at the airport — and breathed deeply the warm West African air. All of us passengers were quickly directed to a bus which promptly transported us a couple hundred feet to the airport terminal. And thus the crowded jostling began. The terminal at Roberts International is unlike any airport you’ve ever experienced. It’s a tiny mustard yellow building, old, worn, a single story. Once inside you realize there are no soaring ceilings, no floor to ceiling windows looking out over the runway or into the lush landscape. All the newly arrived passengers pack themselves into the first room of the building where we are separated into two lines, one for residents (right) and one for visitors (left). This was customs. It is here, in these quickly assembled lines, that you realize that yelling and jostling and pushing your way forward into the person in front or you and to both sides of you is not rude, but expected. No one seems to mind…

(By the way, as I am typing this on my laptop, I can feel it vibrate ever so gently. It’s almost as if a tiny current is brushing against the skin of my palms as I type. Then I remembered about 20 minutes ago — just as a storm was starting — the power went out ever so briefly. My guess is the power I’m running on now is from a generator somewhere outside. I recall from previous visits that my laptop would get this buzzy feel whenever it was being powered by generator-created electricity. Needless to say, I unplugged my computer’s charging cord to let it run on it battery.)

Back to the scene at the airport terminal. To reset the scene, the room in which the passengers are lining up is quite small and packed with people, us and the dozens of uniformed officials standing everywhere, pointing, yelling, directing. The room’s low ceilings and lack of windows add to the claustrophobic feel. I made my way into the visitors’ line and was handed a pink piece of paper by a gentleman who looked official enough, he was wearing a vest, he gave no explanation. He was giving the papers to everyone in the line so clearly it was something we needed to fill out. It was “official”. I did my duty: name, date, reason for visiting Liberia, passport number, etc.

It is important to note that this is my third trip to Liberia. I was here in 2016 and 2018. But this is the first time I’ve traveled into Liberia alone, without my confident and seasoned traveler friend Tim. Up until this point of my day of travel it’s been pretty ordinary: one more airplane, one more airport — they’re all pretty much the same. Typical air travel. But the Roberts International airport experience is very much not typical. All of this is to say, where most of my day has been fairly stress-free, once I was handed the pink paper by the unhelpful, vest-wearing official, I stood there alone and uncertain in a line of scrambling, squeezing people. It was here I wondered where and how my friend Jay was going to find me. Likely he was outside the terminal, waiting in his truck. I pressed on, going with the flow, literally, marched forward in a line of packed people clamoring to get to the female official behind the glass in the booth in front of us. Everyone in the room had no problem pushing against each other, whatever it took to get one step closer to the lady in the booth.

A small Asian man in the other line saw a tiny opening between me and a much larger African lady in front of me and wedged his way in between us. Clearly my prim sense of how to properly stand in a line, with plenty of space between each person, was not a winning formula for success in this situation. So I pushed my way forward as close as could to him. I was about a head taller than him. He would’ve been fine but he made the mistake of shoving his pink paper around the lady in front of us in an attempt to catch the eye of the official behind the glass. My fellow traveler and lady in line was not going to have this. She had a least 100 pounds on this guy. More importantly she was very unhappy at his impudence. She turned and blasted him in her fierce dialectic English. He had no idea of the words she said but her intent and tone were unmistakable. This bit of commotion caught the attention of more officials in vests. A couple of them made their way over to us, yelled, pointed, and put the man back in his line. Justice was served. I was now next in line.

The lady behind the glass checked my passport, asked me a few questions, and allowed me to pass. The scene that lay before me next was the even less organized and much more chaotic baggage claim. Oh boy! Again, it is important to the reader to realize when I say airport baggage claim you probably think of a spacious area with tall ceilings and bright windows where hundreds can comfortably mill around a number of different conveyor belts and wait for their bags while quietly chatting to one another. Nope. One small and rattly L-shaped conveyor belt wound its way through the middle of the small, low-ceilinged room. It was surrounded by a murmuring mass of people all intent on getting their bags and getting out of there. When we were in line for customs a few minutes earlier there was some sense of organization for we were all had to get through the same customs agents. Now in the baggage claim area it was everyone for themselves. If you saw your bag coming down the belt shoving your way into the shoulders and sides of those who stood in your way seemed to be expected.

In addition to all the passengers in the baggage claim area there seemed to be dozens of onlookers, some were officials in vests but many more were of uncertain purpose. Here again I realized I had no idea where Jay was. Was he waiting outside? Would he be helping me get my bags through security? What if I got through security, then what? As I waited for my bags, I finally connected with Jay via WhatsApp. He was outside waiting for me and I was to find a gentleman by the name of Leo who would help me. But first I needed my two bags. Like everyone else, I stood there elbow to elbow, pushing and swaying, watching for my bags to arrive. They arrived. I pushed my way to them and pulled them to my side. I got my baggage claim tickets ready and stepped to the lady at the security checkpoint. I asked her about Leo. She looked this way and that into the noisy crowd, yelled a few times and there appeared my man Leo. Great. After we ran my bags through a machine we were ready to step outside. This is where Leo was most valuable.

We stepped outside and I was very surprised by two things. One, it was now dark. The sun was gone, the moon was out. Evidently, the sun sets very fast here. (Liberia is only 6° north of the equator.) It was only 7:30 p.m. Wild. Liberia at night is very dark. There are no streetlights, no lights on building exteriors. When you leave a building at night the abrupt transition from illuminated interior to pitch black darkness takes getting used to. The other surprise was the mass of people that surrounded the airport building exit. Hundreds of people ringed the airport exit, all of them facing the exit, all of them watching everyone who stepped outside. All of the onlookers, of course, are dark-skinned and blend into the night. Many are there to meet friends and loved ones. But many more are there to offer rides and help with your bags and who knows what else. Lucky for me I had my man Leo who knew where to go and walked with authority. He lead me through the clamoring, throngs of people into the parking lot and straight to the friendly handshake and hug of my good friend Jay. We loaded my bags into his truck and headed into town.