Liberia leader faces tough challenges

By Mark Doyle
BBC News, Liberia

The woman who looks set to be the next president of Liberia, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, says accusations of vote-rigging from her opponent, the former footballer George Weah, are absurd. Mark Doyle, who's been reporting on Liberian affairs since the country's civil war in the 1990s, is back there watching the democratic process unfold.

We were on a mission with the United Nations peacekeeping force to collect ballot boxes from a remote region of Liberia, and there was the usual fascinating UN mix of nationalities on board.

Liberia's election results have yet to be confirmed

The helicopter was crewed by smart young Ukrainians, happy to recount stories about the Orange Revolution. Security was provided by a huge Irish army sergeant called Seamus and two of his young privates.

The UN civilian staff included a jovial, efficient Gambian in charge of collecting the ballots, and a quiet man from Rwanda who had a big bag of cash for paying the Liberian election officials their $5 a day.

The mission was to collect the boxes, check the tallies and return the collated figures to a regional counting centre on the coast.

But as soon as our helicopter started descending into a clearing in the jungle, I became transfixed by something else.

Isolated village

We were landing next to a mountain that appeared to have green agricultural terraces cut into its side. But that seemed strange. In this fertile country, farming takes place in the valleys, and I had seen a big river nearby.

On the ground, I met a Liberian policeman called Dickson. He explained that the apparently terraced mountain was an old iron-ore excavation which, before the war, had generated the income to build the village.

The apparent green agricultural terraces, he said, were just layers of moss growing over old excavations cut by giant bulldozers.

Now, all the mine managers had left because of the fighting, and the few dilapidated buildings Dickson showed me were mere hulks.

Our visit to the iron-ore mountain with the UN peacekeepers was a symbol of the difference they have made in Liberia.

The village in the dense forest was called Kongo Old Town, and the UN chopper was its tenuous link to the outside world.

Ruined infrastructure

As we walked around, Dickson told me that the abandoned concrete buildings, slowly being consumed by the jungle, were once the offices of diamond and gold merchants.

"We recently got a visit from a South African company and we were hoping they would re-establish here," he said. "But we just don't know what has happened to that plan."

Mrs Johnson-Sirleaf could be Africa's first elected woman president

Kongo Old Town is indeed a symbol of Liberia - rich in resources, blessed with good land and plentiful water, but poor, ruined by war, and remote.

When, as seems almost certain now, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf is declared the next President of Liberia, the challenges she faces are huge.

Everything has to be rebuilt. Even in the capital Monrovia, there is no piped water, no electrical grid, and every road you drive on has potholes.

In the provinces, the potholes are the size of swimming pools and in the rainy season, if you do not have a sturdy four-wheel drive car, you will surely get stuck in the mud.

Simple aspirations

Back in Kongo Old Town, I wanted to visit the river. I do not know why - I had seen it from the air many times and just wanted to.

Dickson set off to guide me at a cracking pace, almost running down jungle tracks. It was hot and humid and I struggled to keep up.

Thousands of UN peacekeepers are deployed throughout Liberia

But I did not regret it when I reached the riverbank. It was beautiful. Silent, apart from the lapping of the water and the sound of birds and crickets. Tall virgin forest on both sides.

But beautiful isolation for me, on a short visit and with a quick escape route in my chopper, is hell to the local people.

They want a road. They want a school. They want to sell their vegetables at a market where they can get a decent price.

They want, in short, to join the modern world.

This election was about more than ballot boxes. It was about electing a decent, transparent government which might - just might - make a difference to the people of a remote place in the jungle of Liberia called Kongo Old Town.

From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on Saturday, 12 November, 2005 at 1130 GMT on BBC Radio 4. Please check the programme schedules for World Service transmission times.