I bet you probably never learned about Liberia in your US History class.
At least I don’t remember anyone ever telling me about the country where Americans took over other people’s land in order to give it to freed slaves and free African-Americans who then enslaved the indigenous peoples of the land they’d took… do you?
Liberia’s government is modeled after the US; the people speak English, use Liberian and US dollars interchangeably, and know American R&B music better than I do. My sister said that it’s how one would imagine the US if it were in Africa… and was being rebuilt after a very long civil war. Liberia views itself as America’s baby, but if that’s true it’s a child we are mostly ignorant of and/or have seriously neglected.
To learn more about the country that I just visited, read this brief article: http://africanhistory.about.com/od/liberia/p/LiberiaHist1.htm
In case you’re wondering… Liberia looks like this (a shoe)
And my trip went like this (village, Ouaga, Accra, flight to Monrovia... and back)
