Has anyone here ever been to Monrovia, Liberia before?

[Taverner]

Liberia itself has always fascinated me...

What's it like there?

[bicentennial_baby]

1. I used to have a Liberian friend...

According to him, dangerous. But then again, he also kept an assault rifle in his trunk.

This was in High School! :crazy:

[Taverner]

2. Fucking A

That is bad...

Cambodia was like that when I was there

[Parche]

3. Monvrovia

The only Country in the World named after a US President....Hint,(It wasnt GW Bush)

[rug]

4. President Liberia?

You must mean the capital.

[Parche]

5. yes

Yes that is what I meant...........:bounce: :hi:

[GoddessOfGuinness]

6. No, but I've been to Marilyn Monrovia

I mean Monrovia, Maryland... :evilgrin:

[two gun sid]

7. Yes, but it was in 1984...

I was there training with the Liberian military.

[pitohui]

8. sid this is a story that MUST be told

so TELL!

[Taverner]

9. Yes, please tell....

That would be under Doe, no?

[two gun sid]

11. What I remember of it is not much of a story...

I spent a couple of months in fall/winter of 1984 in west Africa (The Gambia, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Benin, etc.) training with the host countries military. Benin was still a communist country at the time I remember that. The USSR embassy was huge and it had the biggest fucking flag flying over it I've ever seen.

Anyways, Monrovia was a very tense city. We could not leave the capital and visit the countryside. There had been some kind of civil disturbance prior to us arriving. Doe's military had shot some students? I don't remember, something like that.

The people were nice to us in Monrovia. Their military seemed pretty fucked up. More like a gang than a military.

I got sick on warm Guinness and puked my guts out. And people kept asking us if we knew their cousins in Chicago, LA, New York etc. Wanted to give us their phone numbers so we could call them when we got back to the states. Damn, that's pretty damn tragic now that I think about what happened later in Liberia.

And that's my whole story. Just another enlisted puke that didn't know the big picture and just wanted to go home alive. Thanks for listening.

[pitohui]

12. dude that's better than the angola stories i heard

the best one being -- "yeah, well, somehow i got herpes on my hand"

that's it, that's the story

sometimes you get the impression that everyone on assignment in africa in the early 80s was in a constant state of being wasted...wait a minute... let's try that again, probably everybody assigned to planet earth in the 80s was in a constant state of being wasted

:-)

[two gun sid]

13. Well, I sent a local to buy $100 worth of pot in Banjul....

and he came back with a garbage bag full of good African ganja. Oh, and I got ringworm on my leg.

I've got a box of pictures from Africa, Central & South America and the Middle East I put away 20 years ago. Someday I ought to go see if I can find them. I wish I had saved some of that good smoke.

To the OP: Liberia was beautiful and so is the rest of West Africa. The people are very nice but very poor. Don't buy any of the handmade African shirts, they come apart when you wash them but, the wood carvings are awesome. I bought some wooden masks and some carvings of water bucks. If you ever get a chance to go to Africa, go. You will not be disappointed.

[pitohui]

15. heh we knew we'd pry a story out of you if we kept at it

:-)

[Zywiec]

10. Nope, just Monrovia, Maryland. n/t

[driver8]

14. Nope...I've been to Monrovia CA quite a few times, though! n/t

[Throd]

16. They have a good Pick-A-Part there

Not as good as Wilmington or Santa Fe Springs, but better than Anaheim.