In lieu of an expensive out of country vacation for the holidays myself, Mathew Cramer, Debbie Dezutter, Elena Pellizzaris, Brenda Pigeon, Will Traynor, and Andrew Tyler drove down to Harper, Liberia. Harper is the capital city of Maryland County. It’s on the South Eastern most tip of Liberia. It’s the furthest city you can drive to in Liberia from Monrovia. GPS and Google Map files.

Harper was one of the original cities founded by freed American slaves and has a lot of lovely southern United States influenced architecture. That along with some lovely beaches, and a point or two makes Harper a wonderful destination for a few in-country tourists. We were hoping to just relax in the city, and hopefully discover some new surf spots.

The road to Harper is notorious for being a huge muddy mess. It often becomes completely impassible in the rainy season. But we thought we’d come in the middle of dry season and miss all of that. Boy we’re we wrong.

The problem is a lack of drainage. A puddle of mud forms on the road and then a big 20 ton transport truck drives over it and pushes it down. This makes a little rut. Then another and another. Then after a while the little mud spot is now 6 feet deep “rutt” and even more water and mud have collected in the bottom of it. Then it gets so bad that someone cuts a bypass around that, but then the same thing happens, and the bypass turns into mud and water. As you can see from the picture on the right. These ruts got pretty deep. Here we’re digging out my 4Runner, code named Midnight. The tire ruts were so deep that my suspension was scraping the middle of the “road” and with the low traction I wasn’t able to move forward.

Things started off pretty easy. At first we just encountered low spots in the road with lots of water. Hear on the right you can see Andrew navigating his Xterra, code named Lorma Girl, through a small puddle. However things quickly escalated to 100 yard long ruts full of mud the consistency of oatmeal. On the left is Lorma Girl stuck in a massive rut. On this rut, I had opted to take the incredibly steep bypass to get around it. I’m still kicking myself for not taking a picture of my car scrambling up a 60 degree incline. Andrew opted for the slightly more traditional route and we eventually pushed and pulled him out.

All was well for us until we got about 40 miles south of Kanweaken That’s when we encountered this transport truck stuck in the mud. The truck had been stuck there for over 2 days. What’s more mind numbing is that this vehicle had succeeded in blocking all other traffic on the road. As we pulled up 3 transport trucks and a pick-up were waiting to continue south, and another pick-up was waiting to head north. As we walked up the drivers and passengers in the other vehicles told us to “get out your mats” and take a nap, because it would be a while. The pick-up truck heading north, had been stuck behind the transport truck for a day and a half. A day and a half! Thankfully we were North Americans (Andrew and Elena are Canadian) with a “if it’s not the way you want it, change it” attitude. So we changed it.

We surveyed the situation, decided that the West side of the road was best for a bypass and set to work filling in the mud with dirt, rocks, and bamboo we had cut down. This inspired the captain of the north bound pick-up, who sent his men over to help us dig. Then this inspired the other crews to start building their own road on the other side. After and hour or so of digging and chopping, armed only with two shovels, 3 machetes, and a pick axe, we were across. That was it, that’s all it took, unbelievable. These people had just been sitting there for a day and half. We worked for an hour.

At the risk of being ever so slightly politically incorrect, I’d like to say that this little incident perfectly illustrates what’s wrong with Africa. A problem arises and everyone stops, pulls out their mats and takes a nap. Then some white people show up. These good intentioned, underfunded folks fix the problem just enough to last for them to use it twice, and then leave. Meanwhile, an equally underfunded and unsustainable effort is underway, completely duplicating the other project. I’m not saying why it is this way, or how it got to be such a problem, I’m just saying, that’s the problem. I suppose for this to be a completely accurate analogy I’d have to work in a corruption angle. Anyway…

After that things only got worse and worse. We went through several unbelievably long and muddy ruts. You can see from this picture at the left how deep some of them were. This picture was taken as I stood on the side of the road.  I could literally just walk straight across the top of the car to the other side.

For me the worst part came when after 6 hours of plowing through mud we came to a spot we would later dub “The Triple Header” since it was three amazingly muddy sections all in a row. On the 2nd section Matt Cramer, who scouted out the sections and then relayed his findings back to the drivers via walkie talkies, informed me that I needed to back-up and shoot for the middle entrance to the section. It was pitch black, my windows and mirrors were all covered in mud. I knew Andrew was behind me so I backed up keeping an eye on him over my right shoulder, then BAM. I didn’t even know what I had hit. It was dark and I thought there was just road behind me. Turns out it was a abandoned transport truck. Thankfully, I did no damage to it at all. Sadly, I did total deform the rear drivers side of Midnight, and I busted out two of her windows. It did put a damper on things after that.

Minus smashing up my car, the driving was a lot of fun. The progression went from, “Awesome, some mud.” To, “seriously, the road is still getting worse.” And finally, “Bring it on!” By the end of it I had my technique down. 4 low, cause there’s no point in given it less than all you’ve got and getting stuck in 4 high. Gently, yet quickly, depress the gas peddle till the engine soars to 4000RPMs, then your off. Pretty much keep the wheels pointed in the direction of the rut, when you start to slide steer in the direction of the slide, but then back off when you start to straighten out. When you have to jump from one rut to another over steer into it and then quickly correct. Perhaps one of the best compliments I received on the trip was from an elderly Liberian gentlemen we had picked up outside of Fishtown. After I took the high revving, mud slinging, car bouncing, inaugural drive through our newly constructed road he came up to me with a huge smile on his face and said, “Ahh, you good driver.”

We arrived in Harper, 12 hours after departing, tired, very dirty, but safe, and happy. The good people at the Carter Center were kind enough to let us stay at their incredibly accommodating compound in Harper. I hope Laurie, their Harper office manager, is enjoying the bottle of Champagne we left for her in the fridge. We spent a lot of time, sleeping, reading, and relaxing in hammocks on the back porch. It was a great place to just hang out and enjoy having nothing to do.

Like I said we, or at least Matt and I, were hoping to find some new waves to surf. Unfortunately, the waves just weren’t there. We found some wonderful looking spots, but the swell just wasn’t happening. However, we did find some unbelievably lovely beaches. Like Fish Town beach, shown on the left. This is the first beach I’ve been to in Liberia where the water was calm and shallow 100′ out. Usually in Liberia you take 3 steps in and the water is up to your neck. The beaches are normally very steep, but this was anything but. It was also very pristine, as far as you could see there were no buildings, villages, clearings, anything, just water, sand, and palm trees.

Also at Fish Town was Skeleton Island. A few hundred feet from the beach is a small little island, maybe an acre or so big, where they put their dead. But they just leave the coffins above ground on the island. This makes for some rather macabre sites when you arrive on shore. Someone told me that they used to put the bodies there during the war, but I’m not sure why they still do it, and what really started it.

We also took advantage of being so close to Cote D’ Ivoire and popped over on market day. We didn’t have visas but decided to give it a try. The Liberian immigration officer was very nice to us. He asked us what we wanted to do, looked us over, and told us, “sure, just leave the cars.” He even let us park the cars close to his office so they’d be safe. Which was good since I was missing a couple of windows. So we hired a canoe and paddled across the river. Then the Ivorian immigration guys cared even less. He seemed totally uninterested in us white people. Which is strange, usually boarder crossings are a pain, and we didn’t even have the right papers. Anyway. We hung out for a while. The market wasn’t much but we did drink some Ivorian beer which was a nice change of pace. Cramer, met some nice Liberian ladies who were also there for market day and quickly made friends.

The trip back was pretty good. We took the advice of some locals and took the Karloken to Kanweaken bypass. We still had to go through the Triple Header again, but after that we missed a lot of nastiness, and the road was even a little shorter. Don’t ask why we didn’t do this the first time. Here is a little video montage of our 4WD exploits with some cometary.

I’d also like to take this time to talk about what worked and what didn’t work on the trip. Consider this a little product review of must haves, and must leave behinds for intense off-roading, on roads in developing countries. What broke: My expensive off roading Old Man Emu shock absorber. The bolt on the top where the shock attaches to the frame totally sheared off. This made for a very bouncy ride home. I had to be gentle with Midnight over those bumpy roads or else her back end would just swing out. Also we had a fair bit of over heating. Here Matt and I are pouring more water into the radiator. It seemed that caked on mud had a lot to do with it, but the problem persisted even after a few good cleanings. The 4WD system on the 4Runner. I got stuck in a really small bit of mud coming back from Fish Town and realized my front wheels weren’t spinning. After some Googling on my phone using Lonestar’s GPRS service we figured that the 4Runner had a pneumatically actuated front differential that engaged the front wheels and that, that was the problem.  But Googling on my phone wasn’t super fast or fun, so I called my dad in the states who Googled around some more and then based on his research suggested we switch the suction lines on the pneumatic actuator. Much to my surprise this worked. We just left 4×4 engaged from Harper to Zwedru. No point in taking chances. The brakes also took some intense wear. It seems the 4Runner has a metal plate around the front disc brakes to protect them, instead this just trapped rocks and mud in there and tore up the brake pads. Midnight is currently at No Lemon. Right now I’m just hoping the bill is under a thousand, cause I still have to pay for the body work.

We had 4 Midland GXT1050 walkie talkies with us. They were great for inter car communication, and coordinating our assaults on the rutts, but the chargers didn’t seem to hold the walkie talks tight enough for charging while on the road. I had a pair of Hela spot lights mounted to the front bumper, they were donated by Nick Conway, a friend back in the states. They were absolutely great for the night driving that we shouldn’t have done, but had no choice to do. I was also impressed with my Asolo boots. They were totally covered in mud, but my feet and socks were dry and clean. Also the wicking north face pants, and REI shirt I had were great. Depsite the heat, I recommend long pants for such trips, you’re gonna get dirty. Also the generic tow rope, shovels, machetes, bottles of water, and 2.5 million candle power flashlight were must haves. Andrew had a Wern winch that was super handy for pulling out other people, though we never needed it on our own cars.

And that’s about it,

John.

Check out my friend Andew’s blog where he talks about our next big trip. http://andrewarriving.blogspot.com/2009/12/operation-waterwheel.html. And I’ll do a real post sooner or later.

Here’s another update on ICT in Liberia, the progress and the challenges. First of all I had the chance to tour the downtown offices of Libtelco. Libtelco, formerly known as the Liberian Telecommunications Company (LTC), is a state owned telecom operator. Back before the war LTC owned all the land lines in the country. Then the war came, all the lines were looted so the rebels could sell the copper, and then the wireless operators came in. So LTC has been rebranded as Libtelco and is hoping to get a piece of the market. I’ll talk more about that later. But first the cool stuff.

I’m a sucker for redundant power systems in a country with no reliable source of electricity. So on the left is a picture of Libtelco’s massive battery back-up. I wish I could wow you with impressive numbers and words like “mega-watts”, but all I can remember is that it’s big. They have everything in triplicate to ensure zero down time. On the right is a pic of their industrial sized UPSs. They use these when switching between their generator, the Liberian Electric Company, and the battery back-up to ensure a seamless transition.

On the left you see a shot of their gateway with the other operators in the country. All of this is over microwave links and then E1 lines. Sadly, this is a voice only gateway, no data interconnect exists in the country for the time being. I’ll also talk about this more later.  On the right is a shot of their Sun powered billing system. All very impressive for Liberia.

Libtelco has built out a CDMA network in the Monrovia area, it’s interesting that they departed from the usual GSM which is ubiquitous in Liberia, and most of Africa for that matter. They’re hopes are to leverage CDMAs faster data rates (compared to 2G GSM technologies, but not 3G and 4G) to provide ISP services to organizations in Monrovia, and fixed wireless services like faxes and PBXs. Libtelco is also building a data center for hosting servers.

I must admit I’m a bit unsure of the market for these servers. I’ve been told that they sold out of their wireless modems for the ISP service, but that the sales of wireless land lines and faxes haven’t been so hot. I’ve also heard that their ISP service drops out on occasion. I haven’t used it enough to know if it drops out anymore than the other ISPs here, but I hope they get this resolved soon.

A while ago I talked about a project I worked on where PDAs were used to collect data in the field and then send the data back to Monrovia via the cellular GPRS data networks in the country. Again in September I worked to help do another round of data collection. However, this time the VSAT that we had used for a static IP address to host our server was unavailable, so we needed another place for hosting. Our server runs on a 12″ Thinkpad, being so small I knew that all we really needed is someone to let us sit the laptop on their desk, plug it in to a power source, and then give us a couple of ports on a static IP.

So I called a few of the local ISPs. Comium was never able to really give me a straight answer. They said they could do it, but I never talked to anyone who could make that kind of executive decision. The IT staff at Cellcom were all about it. They knew it was a super simple request, then their management got a hold of it.  They said that, “these requests will demand from my engineer some expensive time”, and that they’d charge us $500 a week. Which is about 20 times the cost it would be in the states for one-thousandth the bandwidth. So we didn’t go with them. Then I spoke with Libtelco, and they said since we only needed it for two weeks that they’d do it for free out of good will. Now that’s marketing. Cellcom could learn a thing or two from them. I never got around to calling Lonestar and I don’t have any contacts there. To my knowledge this is the first instance of collation hosting in Liberia.

Libtelco did a great job. I came in with our laptop server, set it on top of their rack, plugged it in, set the IP address info and it worked perfectly. Took all of 15 minutes. As far as I know there was no down time and the connection was fast (for Liberia). There staff was also very professional and competent, which you just don’t get enough of here. So I’m all about Libtelco for hosting, though It’ll be interesting to know what they rates will be for more permanent hosting.

Assuming the rates are good I hope they’ll attract other customers. It’d be cool to see a real data center arise in Monrovia. I know the trend at the moment is for each ministry or business to host their own servers. Which might make sense if you just want a file server, but for someone that needs their box out on the net with five-nines up time, you’re better off letting someone else who has triplicate redundant UPSs and massive battery back-ups handle it for you.

Also on the IT front here in Liberia is the need for more international bandwidth and interconnection. On that note, some unsubstantiated rumors: On the lack of bandwidth front I’ve heard rumors that MTN, the South African telcom giant that owns Lonestar, has expressed interest in paying about $10 million to plug into the SAT-3 fiberoptic cable that runs off the coast of Liberia. As I understand it the Liberian government has yet to OK this. I believe the official line is that the government wants to be sure that this doesn’t give Lonestar an unfair monopoly on bandwidth in the country, and the Liberian Telecom Authority has recently dealt with some internal issues and needs some time to figure out how they’ll handle this. I’ve been told that Libtelco would also like to do this, but being a state run organization of a country that currently has Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) status, they can’t take out a loan to make it happen.

There are also two new cables being laid off the Liberian coast, GLO-1 and Main one. Here’s an article with more info on Main One here. There’s some buzz that Liberia will connect to one of these. Also some people are looking at setting up a microwave station in San Pedro, Cote D’ Ivoire, the closes place fiber optic cable reaches, and beaming some bandwidth over the boarder to Harper, Maryland County and then distribute it to the rest of Liberia.

As I mentioned above there are voice interconnects between the major operators, but nothing for data. So if I want to send a file from my computer using a Comium internet connection to someone using Cellcom, my file goes to Comiums satellite, lands in Lebanon, goes through the internet, then back up through another satellite to Cellcom’s office and then on to its destination. Obviously this is tremendously inefficient. It forces the file to go through the bottle neck of a satellite twice. A more optimal route would be for the file to go through my computer, to Comium’s office, over to Cellcom’s office and then to it’s destination. Already Libtelco, Comium, Cellcom, and probably Lonestar have networks in country that could handle way more bandwidth than their teeny tiny VSAT connections can support. If all the operators were connected content hosted in Liberia could be accessed much faster than is currently possible.

What is needed is a central point for each of the major ISPs in Liberia to link up. This is called a peering point or an IXP. At the moment no one has stepped up to do this. I know Libtelco would like to do this, but the politics of the state owned operator having control of that make it a hard sell. I don’t know why the other operators haven’t moved towards something like this. I imagine they’re probably being a little competitive with each other and focused on other short term gains.  Either way, it’d be cool to see it happen.

A couple weeks ago Meredith, Heidi (my coworkers at the Clinton Foundation), and I drove up to Yekepa to visit Mount Nimba. Arguable Liberia’s tallest point (I’ve heard that there’s a higher point in Lofa). I’ve uploaded the  GPS file and the Google Earth file should you want more details about where we were and how we got there. Getting there was very straight forward. The road to Ganta is paved, though there are lots of annoying pot holes along the way. Especially between Gbanga and Ganta. I hate driving on paved roads that have been torn up, it’s just no fun. I’d rather be on dirt. After Ganta I got my wish and we road on a fairly good dirt road. We were told to watch out for a big hill between Ganta and Sanniquellie. Apparently when it gets wet it gets slippery, and cars just can’t get up it. It hadn’t rained for 2 days when we got there, so we had no trouble, though there were some very deep rutts, I could see how it would be a nightmare when wet. On the way back. we passed taxis on the road, so somehow they’re making it up which always blows my mind and makes me feel silly for driving around with a 4×4. Anyway. We were able to go from Monrovia to Yekepa in 10 hours taking our time and stopping along the way.

Yekepa is a mining town. Back before the war it was run by the Liberian American Swedish Mining Company (LAMCO) , so Yekepa’s infrastructure is very nice, paved roads, street lights, and such. The sorts of luxuries you just don’t see in many other parts of the country. Now Yekepa is run by Arcelor Mittal. This was evident by all the private security guards we met, and the total lack of any Liberian National Police officers in the town. Thanks to LAMCO the road to Mount Nimba is paved to all but the very top. Which was a little anti-climatic. But the last quarter mile or so required a little four wheeling so that was fun.

None of us could get over how beautiful Mount Nimba was. It didn’t really feel like Liberia.  Not that Liberia isn’t beautiful, it is, but Mount Nimba was so different. The air was cool and dry, and the vegetation was different. granted Yekepa is about 2000 feet above sea level and Mount Nimba is nearly 5000 feet up so that’s kinda what you’d expect. It’s kinda hard to explain, and I imagine part of it is that I’ve been in Monrovia for so long that to see something new is super cool. I like how Meredith put it when we were driving up. As we came out of the jungle into some grassy areas she noted that it was like  Scottish highlands and then as we came to the top and saw the stepped sides of Mount Nimba she said you get a bit of “Machu Picchu action.” Just check out the picture on the right. As you can see there were some pretty incredible vistas and somehow we were lucky enough to have absolutely perfect weather. Not too bad. The guys we met in Yekepa said it snows some times in January. I’ll be back up to check out that claim. Also here’s a short video showing our drive down from Mount Nimba.

Finally I wanted to end with another antidote about driving around Liberia. I was coming back from Robertsport, Grand Cape Mount county with a few friends in the car when I was stopped at a check point. The Liberian National Police officer that stopped me, just looked plain mean. He had a scowl on his face, and appeared a bit rough around the edges. Everyone in the car saw it coming. I noticed that he wasn’t wearing his cap, badge, or ID card. I had just that week been told by a US Embassy person that my tax dollars paid for these items. So I decided that the moment he gave me a hard time I’d tear into him about his sorry state of dress and demand to see his superior.

He walked up, I said “Hi”, he said “Hello”, and as his eyes scanned the car I saw him stop at the front passenger seat. His lips slowly moved and he spoke under his breath, “Don’t bribe a police.” He was reading my Carter Center sticker that I had just put on the dash board. He looked up and waved me on. Didn’t say a word. As soon as we pulled away the car erupted in laughter and we called the Carter Center country director to thank him. Apparently to stop corruption we just need more stickers.

This is a little story that illustrates what I love and hate about living here, but first a little about my younger years. Back in the day I had the amazing privilege of serving as a volunteer fire fighter at Station 17 in St. John’s County, Florida. I was underage for most of it, and never went through all the classes that made make you a “real” fire fighter, so while I wasn’t allowed to enter burning buildings, I still saw lots of auto accidents, brush fires, operated the water pumps, and even the Jaws of Life. I used to get so excited when my Dad’s (he was the fire chief at the time) radio would go off, “beep, beep, beep, Station 17, auto accident with injuries on I-95 north bound. Approximately 1 mile south of county road 210…” It was such a rush.  We’d jump in his pick-up, go to the fire station, take the fire truck and pass through the parked cars on the interstate like Moses in the Red Sea. It was awesome. So I can kind of understand why the Liberian Presidential Special Security Service (SSS) drive like idiots, it’s hard not to when you have that kind of power, but I digress…  Anyway, it was a great experience and I learned a lot about first aid. I was never an EMT, but I know a fair bit of what to do, and probably even more importantly, what not to do, when you come across an auto accident.

So I was excited to get to use this knowledge last weekend. I was driving back from a surfing weekend in Robertsport, Liberia with Myles Estey and Katelyn Hendricks. We saw some Liberians try to flag us down for a ride and I was about to pass by then, but then noticed an SUV in the brush with its wheels in the air. I hit the brakes and threw her in reverse.

We all jumped out and started accessing the scene. Myles used to work as a rafting guide, so he also had a lot of first aid experience. I grabbed my first aid kit, Myles and I put on latex gloves, and then started seeing who we could help. There were 5 people in the car, and it turned out to be a Liberian National Police SUV that had flipped. All the people were conscious and breathing. 2 had minor cuts on their head, 2 were just banged up and soar, and one was complaining of sever neck pain and couldn’t walk. He could feel his limbs and move them, but it was too painful for him to move. We first put bandages on the guys with cuts and tried to clean them up a bit. Myles and I decided that we shouldn’t move the guy with the hurt neck, Varnie, since we didn’t have a stretcher. So I was to drive the other 4 to the hospital 10km back in Robertsport, and then have them bring their ambulance to collect Varnie. We knew there was a real chance that there would be no working ambulance, so the back-up was for me to get a neck collar and a stretcher, throw it in the back of my SUV, and then move Varnie.

This is the part I love about living here. I love that just because I learned a few first aid things and have a first aid kit, I can stop at an accident and really help some people. We were the only car that passed by for a long time, and certainly the only car that contained people that had any clue about what they were doing. The usual Liberian thing to do would be to grab him by his arms and legs, and through him in the first taxi to drive by. There’s no 911 here, so the hospital wasn’t going to know about any of this. I love the adventure of not being able to rely on 911, ambulances and life flight.

But this is the part I hate, or at least get really, really frustrated and annoyed with.

We get to the hospital and it’s at the top of a hill with just a muddy dirt road leading up. It’s rainy season and had just rained the night before so there were literally little streams of water running down the road. Who thought that this was a good place to put a hospital without a paved road? So now I have to choose between getting stuck and putting all these people through another rough ride. I decided it wouldn’t do anyone any good to get stuck, so I put it in 4 high and gunned it. My passengers weren’t too happy, but we made it up.

I get to the hospital, hop out, and start telling the people sitting there what happened, what patients I have in my car, and that we need to go back for one more, but then I realize that I’m talking to a bunch of patients. There are no doctors or nurses around. The nurse is over in some other building and she just sorta strolls over without much hurry. So I yell at her, “Why you walking so?” and make a running motion to indicate that I’m not impressed. It’s about this point that I got kinda… bossy, maybe is a good way to describe it. The nurse starts taking the people back to the examination room, and I’m trying to explain that we need a neck brace, stretcher, and ambulance to get another guy. She has no idea what a neck brace is. Stabilizing the neck is the most basic thing you do for someone that’s been in a trauma accident. So I just start going through her closet and find one. Then I ask about the ambulance. “We have an ambulance” the nurse said in a very indignant tone. And they did, a brand new, shinny Nisan patrol with all the stickers from the aid organization that donated it, but the ambulance driver wasn’t there.

They were gonna take the other car into town, find him, drive back, then drive to the accident, but then someone who doesn’t work at the hospital was like, “you can’t just call him?” so they call. Some random guy and the nurse jump in the ambulance, drive into town, get the ambulance driver and then head off. I will admit that I was excited to drive quickly behind the ambulance with my flashers on through town. If you’ve seen traffic in Liberia you’ll know that the flashers are important.

So now we’re driving at unsafe speeds, 70mph, on a dirt road with some lose gravel and bumps to the accident site. We get there and Myles and Katelyn have erected a nice little shade tent for Varnie who is in and out of consciousness and crying out that he’s going to die. He was slightly melodramatic.

When I was a volunteer fire fighter, to move someone like Varnie, we’d collapse the wheels of the stretcher so it’d lay flat, have several people roll the patient on their side, put the stretcher against their back, and then lay them flat. We get the stretch out of the back of the ambulance and realize that the legs of the stretcher are fixed at 2’. Which means the height is only appropriate when in the back of the ambulance, and really, you’re not gonna roll him around in there so why not just have a flat board with no legs? What ambulance company thought this was a good design? In America (yes I know it’s not fair to compare the two countries, I’m just saying someone has thought about this and come up with a solution) the legs of the stretcher collapse flat and then fold down to a normal height for pushing around in the hospital. It’s also at this point that we realize there is nothing else in the ambulance. No IVs, no bandage, no antiseptics, not even a Band-Aid. Completely bare, no one had thought to stock it. This was probably the first time it had been used since it was donated.

Myles and I decide to use a surfboard, roll Varnie on that, carry him on the surfboard to the stretcher, slide the surfboard out from underneath him, and then put the stretcher in the ambulance. Myles goes over to the car and starts getting a surf board off the roof. I hate for things to get too serious, so I look at Myles untying the boards and with a straight face say, “You thinking the short board or the fish for this?” referring to the two different kinds of surf boards we had. Myles just looked me with a face full of confusion, anger, and dumbfoundedness. I could see him thinking, “What? Is he serious, should I use the short board? How can he be joking at a time like this, but does it matter? maybe he’s not joking…” It was hilarious, Myles and I still laugh about that moment. After a second Myles just grabbed the board on top, the fish.

The nurse and ambulance driver were just standing there. They were just letting Myles and I do everything, which was nice since they weren’t arguing with us about what to do. But a little scary since they were the trained professionals and Myles and I had just lived in North America.  Even Katelyn, with no formal training that I know of, had the sense to just talk to Varnie and keep his mind off the pain. At the very lease the nurse should have been getting Varnie’s vitals, and talking to him about his injuries. So we go to move Varnie and they’re still just stand there. This 6 foot tall ambulance driver is standing right next to Katelyn, this gossamer 5’8”, 110lb white girl, as she bends down to help lift 170lbs of Varnie. So I had to tell him to help lift.

Right as we get Varnie situated on the stretcher another car stops behind us. I didn’t really pay attention, but then I hear someone behind me say, “This man has a C-spine injury and needs to go to JFK”. “holy crap someone knows what they’re talking about”, I thought.  The man who had said that turned out to be the chief doctor at the hospital in Robertsport, one of 52 Liberian doctors in the country (this isn’t counting aid worker expat doctors). He was just returning with a bunch of Ministry of Health (MOH) employees packed in the back of a pick-up. I was glad he said that because the ambulance driver then immediately took Varnie to JFK, Liberia’s premier (I use the term loosely) medical facility, two hours away in Monrovia. However, the nurse had taken off Varnie’s shoes. This was her contribution to the moving Varnie into the ambulance. I threw shoes in the back of the ambulance, the chief doctor dude then took them out. Saying, “he doesn’t need shoes in the hospital”. I don’t know if he’s ever been in JFK, but I would never walk in JFK without shoes, so I threw the shoes back in. Varnie still has his shoes.

The ambulance pulled away. The chief doctor guy and the other people in his car where all very nice to us and told us thanks for helping. That was really cool. It was nice to get some positive feedback. Myles and Katelyn both did an awesome job. There’s a good chance had we not insisted on only moving Varnie with a backboard and with a neck collar he could have seriously hurt his neck.

Later that night we checked up on Varnie and he had indeed made it to JFK with his shoes. We talked to him a few days later and he was back in Robertsport. The x-ray machine at JFK was broken so Varnie just left the hospital without knowing for sure that he didn’t have  broken neck, and now he’s not wearing his collar all the time. I just pray he doesn’t look over his shoulder too quickly for the next 6-8 weeks.

And that’s emergency medicine in Liberia. It’s exciting to be in a place where you have to fend for yourself, and you can be an make a big difference at an accident just by taking some simple steps to be prepared, but very sad that the main reason it’s like that, isn’t due to a lack of resources, but apathy and ignorance.

You can read Myles take on this story here.

I had the chance to visit Kpatawee Falls in Bong County earlier this month. I drove up there with Gaurav, Meredith, Andrew, and Guthrie. We had originally started off with a few other people but their vehicle broke down not to far from Monrovia, so we forged on alone. We drove up Saturday afternoon and stayed at a guest house right outside of Gbanga. The name of the guest house escapes me, but it was a nice place. I brought my GPS along for the trip and have a Google Earth file of the trip including both the hiking and the driving, and for those of you who own a Garmin GPS you can import this Garmin Data file into your GPS if you want to follow our path.

Guthrie had been to the falls before and had been to the first and second falls, and had heard of a 3rd set of falls, but wasn’t sure how far they were. So we packed as though we’d be on a 6 hour hike, but it ended up being much shorter than that. I think it took us just under an hour to reach the third and final falls, which weren’t that impressive. The picture at the right is the 2nd set of falls. And the picture up top is the 1st set of falls.

The parking area is right at the foot of the first set of falls and is fenced in and well groomed. We arrived really early so there was no one there when we set out, but when we returned there were a few locals standing guard. They charged us few Liberian Dollars per person for security and upkeep of the park. They even gave us a receipt. It was all very professional. We ended up having a lot of fun swimming around the falls. A couple kids from a nearby village showed us which rocks you could jump off of and not break your neck, so it was a lot of fun. The picture to the left  is the parking lot, and the one on the right is looking down from the top of the falls. On the way home we made this short little film.

In other news Flag Day was August 24th and I celebrated by decking out the car with this Liberian flag. Someone had the good business sense to get a bunch of these flags in time for the Liberian Independence (Independence from what?) day and Flag Day. I don’t know who it is, but it’s a great idea. Tons of cars had them and it’s nice to see some patriotism in Liberia.

Running off the success of the “Don’t Raze Me Broh” shirts, which you can see our lovely spokesmodels wearing here, we’ve made a 2nd run of “Trying Small” Obama shirts. We’ve even started to experiment with white ink. If you want one, act quickly, they’re flying off the shelf.

Finally, I wanted to thank the Carter Center Liberia for making the best bumper sticker of all time. So far I haven’t been pulled over. Check out the use of that article.

So let me give a little background here. Mary Broh is the Mayor of Monrovia, well sorta. She wasn’t elected by the people, she was appointed by Ellen, and I’m not sure (someone correct me if I’m wrong) that her appointment has been confirmed by the rest of the government. Broh has made headlines with her aggressive clean up campaign in Monrovia. She’s even sparked some public disturbances. While the city needs to be cleaned up, and definitely needs to have some zoning and right of way laws enforced Broh’s methods are a little harsh for such a fragile country. She just shows up and bulldozes homes and businesses that aren’t up to code, knocks over street stalls, kicks over wheel barrow and scratch card booths. She’s even physically assaulted a few marketeers.

Again, I think we all agree that Monrovia at some point needs to cleaned-up, but the country is also still very, very poor. To completely destroy someone’s livelihood in a country with 80% unemployment because they’re too close to the sidewalk may not be the best way to help. Further more, Broh’s campaign is being carried out in a very random and ad hoc manner. There’s no transparent process that is being applied to help people know when and what she’ll be doing. Also the law on squatter’s rights and zoning isn’t clear. And even if it is clearly written out in some volume in city hall, the common Liberian has no idea what there rights are, what the law says, and what due process they should expect. Because of Broh’s ties to the president many feel that she can just do whatever she wants. All these things undermine the rest of the governments attempts at earning back the trust of the people through good governance. And finally, it’s much easier to destroy something than to build it back up. Yes she’s cleaned up a lot of shanty towns, but now there’s just piles of rubble. She’s not building new markets to replace the stalls she burnt down (yeah she even burns stuff down), nor is the government supplying land for people to build new homes on.

In response to this an associate of mine has printed up some “Don’t Raze Me Broh” t-shirts. Obviously playing off of the “Don’t Taze Me Bro” line made famous in the US elections last year. The idea is to help people speak out against the poor governance practices Broh is demonstrating. If you want one they’re $8 each. We even have girl sizes. And with each shirt you buy another shirt will be donated to a Liberian to help them protest as well. If you want a shirt drop me a line. Shipping is extra.

Ironically, when two of the t-shirt creators were buying blank shirts in Water Side market,  Broh showed up and slapped one of the vendors just as the t-shirt creators were buying shirts. Broh then stopped to shake the white peoples’ hands. Amazing.

Speaking of victims of Mary Broh… A while ago some of the amputee guys I try to help told me that a guy from Europe named Jean Risse was going to give them over $1000USD to start a car washing business. I was impressed at the amount, that’s quite a loan here. Since the guys would need to email their new business associate I offered to do all of that for them since they don’t exactly have access to reliable internet (technically I don’t have access to reliable internet, but that’s all relative here). So I’ve been emailing with Mr. Risse who works for a microfinance NGO called 2Unite. After a lot of back and forth,  and some pointers  on how to write a business plan, Jean agreed to wire over the funds. So I’ll keep you posted on that. I’m excited for the guys. If all goes well, this could make a huge difference in their lives. Jean put a little blurb about this project on the 2Unite website here, and here it is in English, sorta.

I was at the TRC conference for Reconciliation a few weeks ago. The conference was held at the Unity Conference Center in Virginia, Montserrado County. I was super impressed by how nice this facility was. While it had obviously suffered during the war, it was still a very nice facility. I really like seeing things that remind you of what Liberia was before the war. To that effect I learned this week that the fall in GDP brought on by the war was the largest in recorded history. If you want to see the Unity Conference Center head out towards CeCe beach or hotel Africa and take a right at the sign.

On the way to the Unity Conference Center I was pulled over for not having the safety sticker that says proves my vehicle is safe. I would go off about how ridiculous the stickers are, how you can spot the cars with no bumpers, turn signals, or head lights with out a sticker, and this is just one more way to harass drivers, but that’s not the point. So I talk to the guy for a while and I tell him there’s no process for getting the stickers, that I was never told I needed one at the Ministry of Transport when I registered the vehicle, and that no one really knows where to go to get a sticker. After talking for a while the police officer tells me “The ticket for not having a sticker is $75[USD] (which is absurd), but since you work for TRC, just give me $35[USD].” To which I replied, “I’m not gonna bribe a police officer.” Then the most amazing thing happened. He looked at the window, yelled at the cop who had my license and was writing a ticket, “He’s not gonna bribe us. Lets go.” And they left. Not only that, but they left in such a hurry that the one cop left his hat in the car. Thus the picture above.

I thought long and hard about it, and decided it’d be better to be a nice guy than a jerk, so on the drive home I gave the officer his hat back. I think he’ll leave me alone for a while. And I did finally catch the LNP’s traveling safety inspections, after driving to two different places. Here’s the officer checking that my horn works.

Finally, someone here sent me this picture of a shot up van durring the war. It’s pretty incredible so I just wanted to post it. It really gives you an idea of how bad the fighting was and how intense it got at certain points. I’m told this vehcile used to be parked by the bridge in Freeport.

If you’re like me, an expat driving around Liberia with a private car license plate, you probably get pulled over all for various traffic infractions you didn’t even you know you committed. If you’re fortunate enough to have a UNMIL, Republic of Liberia, Consular Diplomat, or Non-Governmental Organization (this only works when it’s on a shiny white SUV) license plate, this doesn’t apply to you. You can drive like an idiot all day long and not get pulled over.

The problem is, aside from the socioeconomic profiling that stems from corruption, that no one really knows the traffic law. Can I legally put a surf board on the roof of a taxi? Is it illegal to make a U-turn when there are no traffic signs in the country? What is the speed limit on a pot holed road in a shanty town?

Well, a while ago I got pulled over and after talking my way out of it, I agreed to buy a copy of the Liberian Vehicle Traffic law from the officer for $20. A day later I had my copy of the law. It was in a very nicely bound book. Each page seemed to be photocopied out of an even older book. Just by looking at it I got the feeling that somewhere, some Liberian police officer was missing his copy.

I think the law is dated to some time around the ’70s. So it may not be the most up to date law, but it’s the only law you can get. There’s no driver’s hand book, or other publication that informs the public on how to drive. In light of this lack of information I’ve posted the entirety of the book here for anyone to educate themselves on how to drive in Liberia. I also had a little help from an independent scanning contractor.  I hope this will lead to a better informed, and safer driving public. If nothing else I’d especially like to point out section 6.35.6, which discusses the use of high beams. This is one of my pet peevs here.

LIB Vehicle Traffic Law 1 – Cover to p369 (8 pages).pdf (5.1mb)

LIB Vehicle Traffic Law 2 – p370 to p376 (7 pages).pdf (2.9mb)

LIB Vehicle Traffic Law 3 – p377 to p400 (24 pages).pdf (10.2mb)

LIB Vehicle Traffic Law 4 – p401 to p420 (20 pages).pdf (8.5mb)

LIB Vehicle Traffic Law 5 – p421 to p439 (20 pages).pdf (8.1mb)

LIB Vehicle Traffic Law 6 – p440 to p446 (7 pages).pdf (2.9mb)

LIB Vehicle Traffic Law 7 – p447 to p458 (11 pages).pdf (4.5mb)

LIB Vehicle Traffic Law 8 – p459 to p467 (9 pages).pdf (3.7mb)

LIB Vehicle Traffic Law 9 – p468 to p492 (25 pages).pdf (11.6mb)

LIB Vehicle Traffic Law(pdfs).zip (57.8mb)

So yeah, I kinda left off in the middle of the story and then started another road trip. What can I say, I’m a terrible blogger. Anyway. So Day 4 we make it into Guinea. Guinea was awesome. The roads were better, they were worn and had character. They weren’t some newly cut trail made by the UN that washed out every 3 days, they had grooves worn smooth by thousands of vehicles. It was a lot of fun to drive on. Then we got to the paved road, which even had a shoulder, and I made the mistake of taking this picture. The guard at the check point saw me and got really upset, but by the time he walked up to me I now had the GPS out, so I told him it was a GPS. Then Jeff took over in french and we spent the next hour trying to explain what a GPS does, and then explaining that we weren’t spying out the location of their bridges. I wanted Jeff to tell them about Google Earth, and that we already know where everything in the world is, but I didn’t think that’d be wise. So after a while we were allowed to go, but it was quite an ordeal. They even pulled the “In your country you don’t go around taking pictures of things” line, which we can’t stand, because America is free country, and as long as your not on a military base, you can take pictures of anything and anyone.

We got to Nzerekore and spent the night in the Hotel Bakoly. Jeff and I went to the market and bought some vegetables and then the nice lady at the hotel whipped up an amazing salad. We all ate it and felt great. I also discovered a crack in the frame of the cargo rack of my bike. So we took it to the local welding shop where they stuck a piece of rebar into the hallow tube frame and welded it all back together, stronger then over.

On the way out of Guinea we had some of the most amazing driving ever. The road was windy, up and down, no gravel, and best of all, there were no villages along the way to make you slow down. It was awesome. I crouched down low, and gassed it. I was flying around corners as fast as I could. Then, I got passed by a Guinean cyclist. I tried to keep up, but couldn’t. Then, 10 minutes later, I got passed again, and this time, by a guy who had a passenger. So much for my awesome driving skills.

Right at 5 we pull into Liberia. We got stopped by immigration because I didn’t have my yellow fever card. I’ve been in and out of countries in Africa 7 or so times and have never been asked for it, now the one time I forgot it, I’m asked for it. We told the immigration officer that we wouldn’t have residency permits if we didn’t have yellow fever vaccines and after a while they let us pass.

We spent the night in Ganta and had dinner at the legendary restaurant, Abudja. As usual it was delicious. We then spent the night in some guest house that had DSTV. We watched a wonderful National Geographic show on poisonous animals and talked about how we’d be screwed if we got bit by a snake in Liberia. I’m told that all the anti-venom in the country is in some hospital in Sinoe or Maryland, and we weren’t driving near those counties.

The next day we headed to Buchanan along the rail road from Yekepah. It started off as a wonderful drive, but got more and more… what’s the word… developed. Wide roads, they got smooth, traffic even. It was just lame. The upshot is that we went through 3 counties in Liberia and only stopped at one check point. Compare this to my European vacation where we drove through 5 countries and were stopped at, well, there were no check points.

In Buchanan we visited DJ Bob who had just moved the world famous club “Black and White” form Harper to Buchanan. As always the place was looking good and Bob’s remixes were the delight of the evening. We even got a tour of the place by Mrs. Bob. Which included their stash of 90’s arcade games. I was very excited to see that shooter game “Maximum Force”. I love that game.

The next morning we easily crused into Monrovia. Both tires on my bike were terribly out of round and I needed an oil change, but life was good, and we were alive. Next I’ll finish the European road trip, but first I need to finish uploading all the pictures, and now that I’m back in Liberia, that’ll take the rest of the week and then some.

When we woke on day 2 in Kortie Town we had another shower and breakfast and then walked over to Dougamai, the big village in the area. We saw the graves of chiefs and other great men in the middle of town, and met some palm wine tappers. Before getting back on the road I got to hold the youth chiefs “single barrel.” I finally realized that Liberian hunters use single barrel breach break shotguns and not hunting rifles. Needless to say I enjoyed this moment.

So we finally made it to Voinjama around 12pm. We were met by Johnny who was a professional surveyor and had done work for the Carter Center and other organizations to evaluate various things. He had even had experience with surveys on PDAs. Something I’ve had an interest in lately. Johnny was a really great, really sharp guy, and we had a lot of fun with him. First we took our bikes to a local mechanic, he was just a kid who didn’t speak English very well. Jeff’s bike needed a lot of fixing after the wreck, I wanted my kick stand fixed and a fender was starting to come loose so I wanted that taken care of before it got worse. After communicating our needs we had lunch and then just walked around Voinjama.

Voinjama was great. It had such a wonderful wild west frontier town feel. A few county seats in Liberia have at least one or two paved roads, but voinjama was all dust, and some of buildings even had facades that seemed sort of western. We drank tea, went to the top of “pak bat hill”, a hill overlooking all of Voinjama.

At the end of the day we went back to the mechanics place and picked up our bikes. We had a lot of ground to cover the next day so we wanted the bikes back before dark. To the left is Mohamed, the mechanic that worked on the bikes. He was a really nice kid.  And I really liked this photo of this kid posing by an engine that’s supposed to be in the process of being rebuilt.