Business-Savvy That Borders Suicidal

For references to Liberia, you can watch “Lord of War” and “Blood Diamond” again :)

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There is a Chinese restaurant in Monrovia, Liberia, that is way overpriced but wildly popular, not least because there is little competition. The UN Peacekeeping Force was a regular guest, and Hu Jin Tao dined there during his state visit. The owner of this restaurant is very kind and most helpful to all his compatriots who come to Monrovia, but he is also as lebensmüde as he is business-savvy. His is the incredible story of a Chinese man who made his home in Liberia, a country so conflict-ridden that Cameroon, relatively speaking, is more like a Canada; only in Canada's case, it is the Francophones who dream of independence from the Anglophones.

As a foreigner, running your restaurant where a UN Peacekeeping Force is stationed probably means you should have evacuated long before they even decided to come. But some people don't mind danger. Liberia isn't the safest place today; however, violence there was especially bloody and psycho until the last civil war ended in 2003. Soldiers had worn Mickey Mouse masks playing 'guess the sex' of unborn babies before cutting their mothers open to see, and road blocks came with stretched human intestines to indicate that robbing would take place and that it was advisable to put up no resistance.

Yet even under such horrifying circumstances was the restaurant's owner able to set up shop. In fact, his entrepreneurial skills extend beyond the restaurant business. Originally, he came to Liberia as a medical aid worker on a mission that was part of a government program. When the situation got out of hand and rebels closed in on Monrovia, the capital city, even the embassies evacuated. But he decided to stay. From that point onward, he as a businessman would rely on his sneakiness and luck to survive.

He managed to hide and stay away from the constant fighting. And to avoid being robbed, he claimed to be guarding embassy property on behalf of the Chinese government. As luck would have it, heavily armed rebels understood the political implications, and chose to move on. Construction machinery left behind by the embassy no longer had a rightful owner and were now his. These he cleverly hid in a barn in the countryside, only to make full use of them when fighting stopped and peacekeeping troops provided a minimum level of security and stability again.

Civil war resulted in the destruction or disappearance of virtually everything that was valuable. By this time, much of the country needed to be rebuilt and the Chinese Man was 'the guy' with the equipment required for big construction jobs. On one occasion, a ship had sunk just off the coast, and only with his rentable crane and some improvising were people able to retrieve the ship.

So he prospered and began selling rice and other commodities, as well, to Liberians and foreign peacekeeping troops alike, making fortunes in a country where for decades, the people lived a nightmare and did little but fight or fear for their lives. TIA!
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• Some details excerpted from Robert Guest's "The Shackled Continent", a provocative and disturbingly wonderful book on Africa.
• Charles Taylor, the ruthless warlord who last controlled and raped Liberia, is now on trial in the Hague.
• AC Milan footballing legend George Weah lost the 2005 general election to a Harvard-graduated former Citibank and World Bank economist who has since governed the country with more dignity.

Liberia is one of only two countries that began as a colony with the sole purpose of accommodating (unwelcome) former slaves. They would rule over the 95% majority of local inhabitants after Liberia was abandoned and quickly declared independent when it became a financial burden to the U.S. The only other such country is neighboring Sierra Leone, formerly Freetown, a British Crown Colony.