Liberia: A shell of a country

Yesterday we made our way upcountry to Bong Mines, a journey we were not able to make during 2005 due to the instability of the country. We travelled via train, well, landrover on top of train, in the pouring rain, making the journey an experience in itself. I think Monrovia has the ability to lull you into a false sense of security; an unrealistic view of what so much of this country is really like. And it's really beautiful...stunningly so. And yet everywhere you go you are struck by the sense that the people have so little. I know this is true of the city, but there is an "elite" class that live here, but I suppose even that is relative to our "wealth." It's not far out of Monrovia though that dwellings move from breeze blocks with tin roofs to mud huts with palm leaf roofs. The sight of so many buildings which were burnt out and derilict becomes somewhat disheartening after a while, and the whole region of the Bong Mines bears testament to this. Vast mining facilities and plants are now simply ugly looking structures of twisted, rusting steel...a shall of what it once was. The landscape is littered with such structures, and with the rusting remains of endless bits of heavy plant machinery. And bullets. This country continues to enthrall me and break my heart all at the same time. It is so beautiful and yet so broken. Stunning scenery and the ruins of what once was are irrevocably enmeshed. The natural beauty, however, is slowly invading the ruins. Beautiful flowers bloom amidst piles of corroding industrial wreckage. Maybe this is a symbol of things to come; of God's hope continuing to spread and grow. So much of Liberia has been reduced to burnt out abandonment. It stands as a shell of the country it once was. War has such a horrible way of taking everything and leaving next to nothing.