Liberia is a country in quite a lot of trouble thanks to 14 years of brutal civil war. According to the government’s poverty reduction strategy more than half of Liberian children are out of school, there are only 51 Liberian doctors – that’s one for every 70,000 people and 64 percent of the population live below the poverty line.

We visited a slum West Point, in the capital Monrovia, where 62,000 people live on a sand bar without running water. We were kindly shown around by the members of the West Point Health and Sanitation Organisation, desperately trying to raise money for an ambulance so people will no longer have to go to hospital by wheelbarrow. We went to a training institute where young people whose schooling was disrupted by war are working hard to learn a trade, with no guarantee of employment on graduation. We fell in the potholes in the streets, even the main ones and we found it impossible to find an ATM that would give us any money.

But there is a surprising other side to the country, enjoyed by UN soldiers, Lebanese business people and embassy staff. One weekend the boys followed the head of the UN mission in Liberia around Firestone Rubber Plantation golf course and we had a fantastic time waterskiing, fishing and sailing with some friends at their out of town holiday house on the edge of a river. We were kindly invited to the US embassy for a barbeque, a game of tennis and a swim. It felt like a holiday resort behind a wall with guards. It is odd to pet the ambassador’s dog and enjoy barbequed shrimps and imported beer while the rest of the country is struggling to find a meal that day.

Every country has rich people and poor people but in Liberia the gulf seems immense and impassable. For a peaceful future more of the population must begin to benefit from growth otherwise the economic marginalisation of the majority could cause a return to the bad old days. 

To see photos of Liberia click here.