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Opinion
Fromblood
diamonds
Staging a marathon in Liberia is something
that Peter Harrington was told would never
work. He tells us what happened next…
“It’s too disorganised here” said my fiend. “How
can you have a marathon when there aren’t even
any traffic lights?” Others had equally rational
views about why it was a bad idea: ‘Liberia is too
chaotic for the level of
organisation needed’; ‘West Africa
only produces sprinters’; ‘Liberians
hate running and love football’; ‘It
is too rainy, too humid’; ‘There are
not enough sponsors, too many
cars’, and so on. There was only
one problem with these
arguments; they were all wrong.
If people have heard of Liberia,
most likely it’s for the child
soldiers, conflict diamonds and
one of Africa’s most shocking and
brutal civil wars. For much of that
war, this small, tropical nation
draped along Africa’s western
corner was ruled by the
continent’s most notorious warlord
president, Charles Taylor -
currently on trial at The Hague for
war crimes committed in neighbouring Sierra
Leone.
When the war ended in 2003 almost all physical
and human infrastructure was in ruin. There were
traffic lights once, but they had all been broken,
shot, blown up or looted. All the country’s
institutions – including the sporting ones – were
destroyed and hundreds of thousands had fled the
country along with most of Liberia’s talent. On top
of that, Monrovia is Africa’s wettest capital.
Not promising for a marathon, but in spite of the
devastation wrought by 14 years of war a different
story has been developing in Liberia. In eight years
of peace Liberia has elected Africa’s first female
head of state (President Ellen
Johnson Sirleaf, of whom more
later); rid itself of national debt;
risen off the bottom of the poverty
and human development
rankings; and grown steadily every
year. This is a country now on the
move.
I had been in Liberia – working for
a charity called the Africa
Governance Initiative – for only a
month before the idea for a
marathon took hold of me. It
came from a sense of what it
could do for Liberia, and because
Liberia is ready for it. The public
benefits that a marathon
generates anywhere stood to
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Distance Running | 2011 Edition 4 27