Going downtown

I asked Bill, one of the trusted taxi drivers, to take me around the city for an hour or two, to orient myself. Monrovia is a long settlement, increasingly straggly, built around the mouths of a couple of rivers and a network of mangroves. These are sadly less extensive than they once would have been.

The city has a Caribbean feel, not just in the accent and use of Creole, legacies of the founding of Liberia by both American and Caribbean freed slaves. The colours and heat, with the slightly less frenetic pace than in other parts of the continent, in my mind's eye transport me to the Dominican Republic or Kingston, Jamaica.

Locations have names like Mamba Point and Chocolate City. Bill zipped me around in his yellow taxi, pointing out City Hall, the downtown street markets, various ministries, UN apparatus, the University of Liberia, lots of supermarkets and a striking building called the Temple of Justice. This houses the Supreme Court and was constructed in the 1960s, with a result that is markedly more appealing than much 60s architecture in the UK.

In the evening I asked my new pal Bill to drop me at the only restaurant I remembered from my previous visit. A tasty Lebanese where a Westlife soundtrack was blaring out.