I had just turned a corner several storeys up and nearly walked straight into an empty elevator shaft plunging back down to earth. No bungy today. Instead, we stepped aside and round to a set of stairs that weaved equally precariously. It was dark in that stairwell. With each step the stairs themselves became increasingly variable - different heights, different widths, as though the architects instructions had been - “best guess”.

I approached the square of light that was our way out onto the roof. It was a smaller passage through than I first thought, I crouched down, half squat, one leg through, head down, lunge. The heat struck me again as I moved out onto the roof. I was already clammy from all the stairs but as soon as we were out of the shade my body gave another water and salt offering to the Liberian October sun.

I looked down eight storeys to my right. Some eighty feet plus ten more from the snapped diving board to the empty pool. Still wearing his weapon, Idi Amin had once reportedly swam in that pool, maybe jumped off that very diving board. The guide told us the likes of Queen Elizabeth and Michael Jackson had also visited the hotel in its hayday. Though neither their attendance nor their swimming practice can be verified.

It is beautiful from that roof. A once-in-a-lifetime collection of views. It certainly isn’t safe. There are no guardrails, nothing to stop you dropping down an elevator shaft or misstepping as you move through to a new section of the building, nor is there anything to stop you gouging your hand on the handle of a rusty ladder.

If you Google ‘The Last Guest Monrovia’, the first hit you’ll get is a great little piece from 2012 describing the place, much better than I can. It is the ‘Ducor Hotel’ in Monrovia, Liberia. I shall sum up the description of the building from the rooftop view.

Looking eastward takes you out over the infamous pool, and over Mamba Point - out to the Atlantic Ocean. I lived in Jeffreys Bay for three years, one of the surf capitals of the world. As I looked down Mamba Point that day I saw line after line of clean waves running left down the point towards the Northward view.

As you look North and East you see urban sprawl, some areas that look secure, others that appear built on swamp, marsh, mangroves, these are the ‘West Point’ beach slums. Ready to be picked up and moved on out into the Atlantic, homes and lives on the edge. Even from so high up and a mile away you can still sense the busy, frantic energy that you experience so acutely when you are bouncing along through those communities in a keke.

As you look further West and down towards the South you see more of Monrovia and right out further into Liberia, some portions more orderly, the familiar North American grid system of roads illustrating an order that is so often experientially absent. To the South you see the enormous compound of the US Embassy. At this point someone in your group will chime in to inform you that that view of the Embassy is what has hindered any attempts to renovate and rebuild the hotel. They wouldn’t want anyone able to peer in - that’s the general consensus. Especially not when the last attempted purchaser and developer was the Libyan government under Muammar Gadaffi.

Back in 2012, Daniel Howden wrote the piece on ‘The Last Guest’. This guest was a squatter named Frank. Howden tells the story of the hotel. He tells of how the gentle-natured yet disturbed Frank’s lodging there was not top of the list of national concerns for a nation that had experienced two brutal, horrifying civil wars and just had the former President, Charles Taylor, convicted of a litany of war crimes, for which he is still held in prison in the UK. They did clear out all squatters a long time ago, with no steps taken to preparing the space for any future guests.

Howden describes the same thing I saw, another eleven years after his writing, a hotel in ruin. A hotel that was one of the first 5-star hotels in Africa that sits as a remnant, an artifact of the lasting damage and devastation of civil war, the crippling nature of which transpires into this sense of hopelessness at the difficulty of rebuilding. He concludes his note saying: “it may yet make a comeback, but for now, in a town full of ghosts, the Ducor Palace is still the most haunting.” 132 months on, the comeback was still waiting.

“Who owns it now?”
“This was one of the first 5-star hotels in Africa.”
“Yes, but who owns it now?”
“It hosted the Queen of England!”
“But what’s the plan with it?”
“Michael Jackson stayed here.”
“But what is stopping a redevelopment here?”
“Come look at these photos from the 1960s!”

This was the conversation going on on that roof between the man showing us around and my friend Wilfred. Wilfred is a Sierra Leonean. By nature he is a pioneer, a true leader. Wilfred will charge through a wall, climb a mountain, run faster and harder than anyone else to drive something worthwhile and meaningful to completion. You can follow a man like Wilfred. He imbues you with a sense that while what you are trying to do is incredibly difficult, if you can just also see how worthwhile it is and the impact it will have, together you can see it come to fruition. He also makes it clear at every turn that building something that truly transformational in many of the communities we work in in Sierra Leone and Liberia require you to give your absolute all. I’m in.

When I arrived at Ducor I had a programmed response. There was a way to act, a way to think. It’s a way of thinking that sees highest value in reverence and grief over what was lost. There is certainly time for this, but that way of thinking is an easy way to score points for your empathy and compassion. What is harder and better is the Wilfred way. I am in an organisation now where I am surrounded by people who take the Wilfred way. The way that asks why something can’t change and who, having identified blocks, set their face like flint and, having outlined a vision, engage and galvanise a group of people and unstoppably strive onwards. It’s not just Wilfred, its in the DNA of our team. Leadership is ones ever-lengthening shadow and we in our work are so fortunate to be able to think like this because it is modelled to us and we are trained in it. This is the way to think about Ducor, not what was, but what can be.

The Wilfred way helps me realise that while there is an empathy in seeing a town full of ghosts, there is a greater necessity to see a city full of life. The company I work for are not in African hotel developments, but we are tackling major problems, following visionary leaders who have found ways to overcome seemingly insurmountable odds and impossibilities for years.

I hope one day I can sit on that roof and have a meal, having been a witness to the Ducor comeback and the revitalisation and transformation of a city like Monrovia. The leaders I’m following and friends I’m working with continually help me see a path through to that future. More life, more meaning. In it for the comeback.