A Liberian's bittersweet journey back home

As the Boeing 737 christened "Fortitude" lifts off the runway, bound for Liberia, many of the passengers giggle nervously, like children getting on an amusement-park ride.

Joe Geetoe, like most of those on board, has never flown before. "I've never had the opportunity," he says, as the sandy coastline of Ghana disappears below.

Opportunities have been scarce in Geetoe's life. He was born in Liberia, a country that has known little but war and poverty since 1989, when rebel leader Charles Taylor led an uprising that eventually toppled the government.

Last year, all eyes were on this small West African nation. The international community, including the US, dispatched troops to intervene between President Taylor's forces and rebel fighters, and by August a peace deal was struck.

Earlier this month Geetoe was one of 97 people on the first official repatriation flight for Liberian refugees since the war ended. The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, predicts that 100,000 of the estimated 340,000 Liberians in West Africa will return home by year's end. But as Geetoe soon learns, trading the relative security of a refugee's life for a new start is fraught with risks in a country as ravaged as Liberia.

His teenage years in the capital, Monrovia, were spent trying to dodge the undisciplined and unaccountable fighters who harassed, beat up, or forcibly recruited boys like him. Then on April 6, 1996, while on a trip to the market, a battle cut off his route home. He took refuge in the port for three days until a ship took him and some 300 other passengers to the coast of Ghana.

The plane banks right, heading west along the Ghanaian coast. Geetoe spends most of the next two hours staring out, trying to get his first glimpse of Liberia in eight years, but the view is often obscured by clouds.

He doesn't know where his parents are, or even if they're still alive. He doesn't know if he can get a job, despite the laminated computer-training certificates he carries with him. He isn't even sure where he'll sleep tonight.

When the weather clears, he sees a swath of green, the forests that were once battlegrounds. Liberia's war was a criminal conflict: factional leaders fought for power solely to enrich themselves, encouraged their soldiers to loot instead of paying them salaries, and cared nothing for the civilians whose lives they destroyed along the way. Still, for Geetoe it's home.

"We're now commencing our final descent to Roberts International Airport, Monrovia," announces the pilot, and a cheer goes up. Geetoe pulls on his earlobes, agitated by the pressure change. As the plane lands and taxis, people at the back start a rousing hymn. "Thank you my Lord," it goes. In the front of theplane, passengers start singing the Liberian national anthem.

The white helicopters of the 14,000-strong peacekeeping mission - the largest UN force in the world - are lined up on the tarmac. For some, it's a reassuring sight. For others, it's a pointed reminder that the peace is tenuous. The plane stops, the door opens, and the orderly fashion with which the refugees boarded breaks down in their enthusiasm to step on Liberian soil.

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