back in London

I'm back! After 24 hours of travel, I made it back to Balham. First there was the flight from Monrovia to Freetown in the Elysian prop jet. Which was held together by duct tape. Not joking. I wanted to take a picture, but I thought they wouldn't let me on the plane. Halfway through the flight there was this sound like when you're riding your bike and a plastic bag gets caught in your wheels...for 15 minutes. Good times! Then there was 11 hours in the airport. I got three different marriage proposals there and the passport security guy "Wasn't going to let me leave Sierra Leone" until I gave him my number. Sigh. Then there was a flight to Malaga, refueling, and then the flight to London. BMI really stepped it up - it was a great flight and I somehow actually managed to sleep! As soon as we stepped off the plane in London, the Brits got all excited (and I did a little too) because it was cold, windy, and drizzling. Haha, weird what you appreciate after being away.

Anyway, excellent trip. There was a lot I left out of the blog, so if you want to hear more, I have lots of stories! Thanks for reading along!

finishing up

Total whirlwind last week in Monrovia. First I got documents (yay!). Although it was totally last minute, this turned out to be a real success. The majority of what they have here is deeds and wills because of land rights disputes, but I’m sure that will be useful somehow. I apparently looked at the only documents they have from my time period – the rest were destroyed in the war or exist in the US. Looks like I’ll be spending lots of time in Indiana, Massachusetts, Chicago, and DC in the spring.

Then yesterday I went to confirm my flights and found out they were rescheduled to Monday so I’m not spending next week in Sierra Leone, but back in England. And since I’m leaving sooner than expected, I’m having my leaving party tonight at the Living Room – Monrovia’s best sushi restaurant/lounge. I can’t believe how long I’ve been away. Freetown seems like ages ago; the conference at Hull was only 2 months ago!

Anyway, since I’ll obviously be missing warm weather, the sun, beaches, good music, and cheap beer, I thought I’d list some things I am looking forward to about being back in the UK and US:

Jeans
Refrigerator
Cooking/baking
Fast internet connection
Running
Real coffee and Milk (not powdered creamer)
Thanksgiving
Christmas music
Sweaters
Family and Friends!!

Archives!

I got documents! From my time period! I'm so glad this trip wasn't a waste. Going through my photos from these archives is going to be...time consuming, to say the least. They seemed to be from several different books of deeds, indentures, letters, and other miscellaneous pages. Figuring out what's what is going to be a major ordeal. As is figuring out how to cite them when I don't know what they are....Oh well - a problem for another day. For now, I'm just excited!

analogies

And I still haven't seen any archives. They're getting closer though - yesterday they had some 1870s stuff for me....So, since I have all this free time not researching, here are some thoughts on Sierra Leone and Liberia. Those of you who know me know that I'm a huge fan of analogies, particularly historical analogies. For example, I say things like "Worcestor Mass. reminds me of the 1950s" or "the British Empire is to the Greek Empire as the French Empire is to the Roman Empire" or "George W. Bush is to James Buchanan as Barack Obama is to Abraham Lincoln." Yeah, I'm a dork. While the following analogies may appear controversial because of the problems of imperialism/decolonisation/postcolonial theory, please don't read too much into it. I'm just throwing an idea out there to help people visualize these places (yeah, I know, travel literature blah blah imperialism blah blah Foucault); I know it’s unpopular (and rightly so) to compare modern developing countries to past states of Western society because it implies some kind of linear, progressive development which places the developing country at a lower point. However, I think it's just as important to remember that "developed" and "developing" countries are not some permanent state of higher and lower order: the places we think of as the most developed now went through many of the same things seen here (sometimes very recently) and many of the assumed bastions of Western Civilization were no more "developed" than places we consider developing today. [If the Egyptians could build the pyramids without telephones, why can't we assume great things from countries without landlines? If Shakespeare could write sonnets in a London sinking into the mud during a plague that we can cure now, does that make him backwards?] Similarly, some countries that have boasted the most advanced world civilizations in their time are now classed as "developing." The point being, these analogies are for fun because I'm bored and have no archives, but lumping countries into two categories (whether they're "developing/developed" or "third world/first world") may have the effect of making impressions of the world generic and not specific to the atmosphere, the people, the history, and the current state of a particular country. These analogies are just based on my impressions of the atmosphere of these places and my fondness for historical analogy.

I have to say that from what I’ve read – both historically and fictionally – Freetown is most aptly described in historical analogy to ancient Rome in the years of the Republic. That is, hilly, winding streets, multi-storey wooden tenement houses, street vendors selling fast food, candle-lit pathways, thriving entrepreneurial culture, popular engagement in politics, intrigue amongst government and businessmen, a recent civil war, huge mansions for the political elite up on the hills... If you can picture that then you can probably picture Freetown by adding a whole lot of cars and okado (motorbike taxis), cell phones, and telephone/power cables.

Then I came to Monrovia and all I can think of is the Old West. For example, Randall Street is this wide, straight, potholed road, with built up sidewalks just like in old west towns, and these storefronts that are like glassfronted warehouses selling furniture and building supplies and groceries along long counters. Monrovians live in these homestead-type situations where they cluster houses together, sometimes with one on the main road, but mostly in what looks to us like the middle of the block, with laundry strung out between the buildings. In Sinkor (where I'm staying) a few of the fire ravaged buildings from the war are now home to impromptu carpentry workshops. But right next to them there will be a really new fancy building constructed to house, for example, the Great Wall Chinese Restaurant. Maybe it's the post-civil war feeling here too that makes me think of the post-civil war atmosphere in the US. Maybe it's the Chinese road building contracts (Union-Pacific Railroad?) or maybe it just still has that leftover American frontier feeling.

Sorry if this post offends anyone.

archive trouble

Oh boy. On Friday I went to the archives, as planned. Unfortunately, when I got there, they had nothing for me. They showed me some documents from the 1940s and 1950s. They complained that they needed money to do the search. I told them that I didn't want to give them any unless I knew that this stuff actually existed in the country. After some negotiating, we came to a compromise: I would pay them the fee to search for 4 documents and I would come back on Monday afternoon to see those 4 documents. If they existed I'd pay the rest of the fee, and if they didn't, then....well....not really sure. Here's the thing though: they were looking at typed looseleaf documents, at which point I realized that they don't even know what they're looking for. Of course it's taking them awhile: the typewriter wasn't even invented during the 1820s-1840s! So I had to tell them I only wanted handwritten documents, usually found in bound volumes. Fingers crossed that tomorrow is more successful.....

Thanksgiving

Happy Liberian Thanksgiving!!!

The Kenyans designated today a national holiday to celebrate Obama's victory; the Liberians already had one! I'm using the day to catch up on old episodes of The West Wing (remembering what a liberal president is like) and going to the beach. Tomorrow I'm finally allowed in the archives, so I'm enjoying the last day of this unexpected vacation before I get back to photographing thousands of 19th century documents.

Oh, and I learned how to make pasta in a kettle, so no Cup O Soup Thanksgiving dinner for me!

the election

I spend a good 3 hours a day with CNN on, either in the breakfast room at the hotel or in my room when I'm working there. It's so funny, because in Freetown I had essentially no news on the election (except snipets when BBC World Service felt like teasing me) and now I'm totally inundated with it. And, while I was still following it to some extent there, I wasn't up on the hourly changes. It's totally addictive once you have 24-hour news, though. Which is silly, because things do not change that fast! So I end up watching the same stories, same clips, over and over again. (Now I really understand the Daily Show). The problem with this is that I feel really powerless! I wish I was out there campaigning, I wish I could vote in person, I wish I could make a difference in these crucial last days to help Obama win.

But then I see people on TV shivering in the cold and rain in voting lines or campaign rallies and I go to the beach and feel a little better....there are some positives to absentee balloting!