Last week, short on cash and going more than a little mad, I allowed myself to be roped into event coordination for the UN's Post-2015 High Level Panel Development Agenda Monrovia meetings.
A mouthful, right?
All you need to know is that England, Liberia, and Indonesia decided to lead big talks on how to make the poor less poor. Each co-chair hosts an international conference in his or her respective country. Last week was Liberia's moment in the sun.
And oh the frenzy, my people.
Roadblocks. Gaping holes in roads and sidewalks magically patched up. This thing going up almost overnight. Communities of zinc-roofed shacks bulldozed on the boulevard. Thriving street markets shoved into corners. Road lanes suddenly lined with cat's eyes. Placards (still drying) crowding intersections. Soldiers, guns, journalists.
And a dozen solar traffic lights.
WHY. There is now traffic where there never was.
I will refrain from describing the indoor chaos of the conference itself. Suffice it to say that the next time the "Special Assistant" to a dignitary or his wife barks at me because she wants fifty color copies of a twenty-page document in five minutes (in Liberia), I will cut her.
The whole production got me thinking, though. Why wait until the foreigners flood the city to make the town shine? And why tuck away all the things that make post-conflict Monrovia what it is? The city seems to say, "Dear world, thanks for all of that free money. Just look at how much we've done with it. But...umm...please don't cut us off -- the rest of the country is totally falling apart."
A certain delegation did not get the memo that things in Monrovia are really looking up: they brought their own mattresses to lay on top of the mattresses in the hundreds-of-dollars-a-night hotel.
A mouthful, right?
All you need to know is that England, Liberia, and Indonesia decided to lead big talks on how to make the poor less poor. Each co-chair hosts an international conference in his or her respective country. Last week was Liberia's moment in the sun.
And oh the frenzy, my people.
Roadblocks. Gaping holes in roads and sidewalks magically patched up. This thing going up almost overnight. Communities of zinc-roofed shacks bulldozed on the boulevard. Thriving street markets shoved into corners. Road lanes suddenly lined with cat's eyes. Placards (still drying) crowding intersections. Soldiers, guns, journalists.
And a dozen solar traffic lights.
WHY. There is now traffic where there never was.
I will refrain from describing the indoor chaos of the conference itself. Suffice it to say that the next time the "Special Assistant" to a dignitary or his wife barks at me because she wants fifty color copies of a twenty-page document in five minutes (in Liberia), I will cut her.
The whole production got me thinking, though. Why wait until the foreigners flood the city to make the town shine? And why tuck away all the things that make post-conflict Monrovia what it is? The city seems to say, "Dear world, thanks for all of that free money. Just look at how much we've done with it. But...umm...please don't cut us off -- the rest of the country is totally falling apart."
A certain delegation did not get the memo that things in Monrovia are really looking up: they brought their own mattresses to lay on top of the mattresses in the hundreds-of-dollars-a-night hotel.
1 comment:
Thanks so much, Paolo!
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