Saturday 11th November Part 2

We visited the Liberian School for the Blind on our way to the hotel. This was a deeply depressing place – the buildings were fairly new, but there was absolutely nothing inside them as far as I could see. The children sat on benches around the walls and all looked depressed and hopeless. We donated four Braillers and two globes – the school only had one brailler and this was only used by the teachers. None of the children had been screened to check whether they just had refractive error – it was agreed that Verda would arrange for this to be done as soon as possible.

We then drove on to Monrovia, and I had my first sight of how badly Liberia has been damaged by the 14 years of war. The only way I can describe it is to say that everything is broken, and all the buildings are burnt. There is rubble and rubbish everywhere, and every few miles there is a UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) checkpoint. Many buildings are empty and occupied by squatters. The atmosphere on the streets is a mixture of despair and menace – very different from Sierra Leone which has a feeling of recovery. We stayed at the Mamba Point hotel, where the local US Marines were having a birthday party that night. It seemed utterly incongruous to see all these people in dress uniforms and gaudy frocks with a huge cake.