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.