Caterpillar plague
New 6:15AM Tuesday Jan 27, 2009
Authorities in Liberia have set up a command post and called on international experts to help fight an invasion by millions of crop-devouring caterpillars that are eating their way across the country with dire economic consequences. The 2-3cm caterpillars are clogging wells and waterways with excrement and devouring banana, coffee and cocoa crops. They swarmed around a clinic in one town, preventing people from accessing it. The plague has now affected 65 towns.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10553647&ref=rss
Founded as a colony in 1822 by freed slaves from the United States, the area was already inhabited by various indigenous ethnic groups who had occupied the region for centuries. The freed slaves were so thankful to American president, James Monroe, they named their capital city, Monrovia. In 1847, the colony of freed slaves declared independence and founded the Republic of Liberia. In 1980, the government was overturned in a military coup, and from 1989 to 2005 Liberia was in a state of flux, witnessing two civil wars, the First Liberian Civil War (1989–1996) and the Second Liberian Civil War (1999–2003) that displaced hundreds of thousands of people and devastated the country's economy.