From Liberia to Argentina, a reflection on money, memory, and the illusions we trust.

Monrovia, Liberia.

Robertsfield Airport, Liberia, October 1985.

The oppressive heat and the smell of the earth knocked me back from the moment the doors to the plane swung open. I’d been told to expect that, and the ensuing hostility at immigration and customs.

Outside into a world of darkness and children asking for money; but unfortunately, not into the arms of the people who were meant to meet me. I was way out of my depth, and they were out in the dark somewhere with a puncture.

Welcome to Liberia, my baptism of fire in Africa. To be fair, along with Lagos and Kinshasa, it was probably the worst place to make a debut.

Founded in the early nineteenth century by freed American slaves under the auspices of the American Colonization Society, it carried the outward form of a republic from the start: constitution, flag, presidency.

On April 12, 1980, a group of non-commissioned soldiers led by Master Sergeant Samuel Doe, of indigenous Krahn ethnicity, entered the Executive Mansion in Monrovia and killed President William R. Tolbert Jr. The coup was a brutal correction of history.

The following day made clear what kind of correction this would be. Thirteen senior officials of the old regime were taken to the beach beside the Barclay Training Center and executed publicly, without trial, on state television.

By the time I arrived in 1985, the place was starting its descent into a world of brutal violence. Economically, the country was collapsing, and this set the stage for my second experience with stained paper and molten metal.

One of the links to the old country was a monetary link to the US dollar, which was legal currency since the country’s foundation. Using another country’s currency as your own places exacting constraints, limiting you from both pursuing your own policies, and having room for manoeuvre in more spurious activities.

So, the Liberian Government decided to establish its own dollar, which had a nominal value of one US dollar, and was freely interchangeable – until it was not.

The company I worked for had invested in the Liberian National Lotto, managed, as was much of West African trade in those years, by a Lebanese group. In return for our investment, we set up the instant lottery, which was not doing much at all, so to show willing, Kevin Anderson and I were sent to Monrovia to revitalize the operation, and more importantly, to get our hands on as many US dollar bills as we could.

Our week under the brooding Monrovian clouds was spent exchanging as many clunky Liberian dollars, similar to the original fifty pence piece in the UK, into US dollars to get them out of the country before it finally collapsed. Little did I realise it then, but I was being given the best lesson I could have wanted for my future life in Argentina.

When artificially constructed economies fail, it leads to destruction of wealth, living standards, and sometimes uncontrollable violence. In the case of Liberia, into this environment stepped Charles Taylor, launching an insurgency in 1989 that would unravel what remained of the state.

Violence became not just instrumental, but expressive—public, symbolic, and at times grotesquely inventive. The logic of the state gave way to the logic of the warlord.

In 1990, Doe himself was captured by forces loyal to Prince Johnson, a rival warlord to Taylor. Doe’s torture and execution were filmed, a grim echo of the beachside killings a decade earlier. His ten-year cycle ended with his dismembered and rearranged body being pushed around Monrovia in a wheelbarrow.

Kevin and I returned home with fifteen thousand dollars in his briefcase, and whilst I would return to Monrovia a couple of times, those visits were purely because the air tickets for my 10 country African tours were sourced there, because, yes, it was a way of spending worthless Liberian dollars as if they were actually US dollars. In real terms, my four-thousand-dollar air tickets cost the company nothing. The wonders of financial systems.

In June 1990, I made my last business trip to Africa, and in August I began my totally unforeseen Argentine adventure. In the year 2000/2001, I had my third experience with collapsing currencies.

When I arrived in Buenos Aires, Argentina had the four-year-old Austral as its currency. Launched to reset the economy in 1986, it had devalued from one to one with the US dollar to six thousand to one. By March 1991, it hit ten thousand to one, and the new Economy Minister, Domingo Cavallo, introduced his Convertibility Plan and another new currency, which would, in his own words, bring stability for the next sixty years. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

The plan depended on a currency peg of one Argentine peso to one US dollar. This would require fiscal restrictions which Argentina would never respect over time. Five absolute boom years ensued, and subsequently five years of decline set in until the system exploded.

People’s US dollar bank deposits were frozen, and forcibly converted into pesos, which were immediately devalued. Technicalities are not important here; the destruction of people’s lives is. Businesses and property prices imploded, and the country dissolved into hysteria. The Government ran through Presidents on an almost daily basis.

Personally, I lost a fortune. Other people lost their lives. Argentina did not descend into total violence only because Argentina does not do that – the Argentinians have a remarkable resilience to adversity. Underneath the evident Latin emotion is an almost Saxon stoicism.

In my car the other day I found a coffee-stained blue one hundred peso note. Worth one hundred US dollars in the year 2000, it is now worth seven cents of a dollar. Coins have disappeared from circulation – the melted-down base metal is worth more than their nominal value.

My first experience with stained paper was far more benign. In the late 1970s I would faithfully walk to Filbert Street every second Saturday to watch Leicester City, my youngest brother Jonathan in tow. As part of the ritual, when we arrived at the ground I would buy him the match programme.

At one game, he opened his programme and was upset because one of the pages had a large black stain on it. I had a look, agreed, and, being the brother I am, I immediately bought him a new pristine version. All smiles again.

So was I. The big stain was a brewery promotion telling me the programme holder had won twenty-four cans of beer, to be picked up at the club shop at the end of the game. This was the wonderful seventies, no concerns about proof of age. I was popular with my friends that night.

In the end, all economic structures and brewery promotions are inventions of people, with their inevitable contradictions. The crisp paper in your pocket will wear down and burn. The reassuring weight of metal will tarnish and melt. Enjoy them while you can, do not lament them too much when they fade away.