A few weeks ago in the middle of the night we were visited by armed robbers. Or ‘Rogues’ as the Liberian guards called them, which makes them sound vaguely loveable, which they certainly were not, armed with machetes and guns. They tried to break into one of the buildings to one side of Tearfund’s Monrovia compound which houses our finance manager, but despite hacking the window surround away, couldn’t get through the steel bars on the windows. One of our guards then did a sterling job to convince them that the team house was in fact full of big burly Liberian guys, no expats, and was guarded by a lot of scary guards. The ‘rogues’ then went to try other organisations’ compounds on the larger ELWA compound where Tearfund is based, and succeeded in stealing valuables and wounding a female expatriate from another organisation who was trying to hold the door shut from the inside whilst they hacked at it with cutlasses. Whilst escaping from yet another organisation’s compound in the same robbery spree, they fired at another expatriate running out of his house, luckily missing him in the dark.
There has been an increase in violent armed robbery in Monrovia, beyond the usual rainy season rise. After the war, Liberia was disarmed: however, an emergency response unit of the police force have recently been re-armed, and it seems to be these same guns which are finding their way into general circulation. The bullet fired in the attack on the ELWA compound was apparently from one of these guns.
Attractive steel doors are in the process of being fitted to all external doors in the main Tearfund staff house, and the guards now have torches, which is…reassuring…!
