The Capital... Monrovia

It sometime gets a little lonely here at the guest house with just 3 residents, however we have had visitors come along in the past month or so. We’ve had external auditors from Ghana, Lawyers from the US, the head of security from Nashville, IT folks from Indianapolis and finally internal auditors from Nashville. Between them all I have kept myself entertained.

While the internal auditors were here we took a trip to Monrovia so I made sure to pack my camera so I could write a little about the city. Before I share some of the pictures, I will give a little background of the city.

It’s the capital city of Liberia and is less than 50 miles from Harbel which is a small town where I am based. It takes about an hour to get to Monrovia from Harbel and is located on the Atlantic Coast as you can see in the map. Somehow it seems as though the city has turned its back on the ocean front not realizing its true potential. The population is a little over a million, but one drive through the traffic and you’ll be convinced that it’s much more than that. One of the reasons for that could be that a large concentration of the country’s population (29%) resides in the capital. Needless to say it’s the cultural, political and financial hub for the entire country.

Founded in 1822, Monrovia is named in honor of U.S. President James Monroe who was a prominent supporter of the colonization of Liberia by emancipated former slaves from colonial era America.Left is a picture of the city from the 1800’s that I picked up from Wikipedia. For a lot of folks from Nashville or the southern region of US, this might look quite familiar and with reason; the city was based on southern architecture from America when it was founded.


Below is a picture of the main road connecting Harbel to Monrovia and it’s actually a pretty nice road. Instead of the road serving as an efficient mode of transportation, seems as though the road has become prime property for local economy. There are all kinds of open air markets, and other businesses setting up shop around the road. I get a feeling that in a few years the travel time to Monrovia will double due to the growing congestion.