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.

Last year I was approached by Jeff Austin, a good friend who works for the Carter Center in Harper, he wanted to know if I’d be down with retracing the steps of Graham Greene as recorded in his book Journey Without Maps on motorcycles. Obviously, I said yes. It took us a little while to work out our schedules, but after a while we picked April 12th – 18th. Well, we actually picked the 11th-18th, but Jeff had some flight issues getting to Monrovia, so we pushed it back a day. I’m planning on writing this trip up day by day, and as always I’m like 3 weeks behind. So just bear with me. Days 2-7 will come, sooner or later, probably later. In the mean time enjoy the video and here’s a Google Earth file of our trip.

I was rolling on my Chinese made 150cc “jungle bike.” Jeff was riding an Indian 100cc TVS Star. Check out the sweet external fuel tank we rigged up. We started off at 7am from Monrovia. We stopped for gas at the last Total station on the way out of town. Unfortunately, I had a catastrophic kickstand failure while putting air in my front tire. It was kind of a bummer.  It seemed that a nut had fallen off the bolt that holds the kickstand in place. We also had to wait for all the fluids in the engine to drain back down before the engine would start again. But after 15 minutes of waiting the bike started, and before we drove through red light we found a place on the side of the road that had a replacement bolt, so we were off.

The road past red light was pretty good and I was quickly doing my bikes top speed, a whopping 85kmh. Things went pretty well, though I did manage to pull out the tube from my CamelBack causing me to have a very wet backside for a while. Thankfully, I was in Liberia and I dried off in about 20 minutes. Our first stop was the Booker Washington Institute (BWI). BWI is a technical school outside of Kakata, Margibi County. Jeff’s mom had a friend, who had a relative, who had a memorial at BWI. So we went there looking for the only white guy who had a memorial. As you can see, we found it. I should know the name of the buy, but I don’t. He was the first principal of BWI, and is also buried on the campus.

We next headed up to Gbanga,Bong County to the Carter Center office there. Jeff had already been in touch with the staff at that location so we could stop in for lunch. When we got there Nyan, the man in charge on the ground in Gbanga, met us and provided us with a wonderful lunch of rice and soup. We also saw Arthur who had driven Jeff, his mother, and I around Bong mines a year ago. To the right you see the group shot from lunch.

After Gbanga we wouldn’t see a paved road until Guinea. However, the road from Gbanga to Lofa was very good. We were able to reach the Lofa County border in very little time. Here‘s a shot of Jeff and I on the bridge over the Lofa River as we were crossing over. It was really pretty and very exciting for Jeff and I as this was the first time either of us had been to Lofa county.

From the border of Gbanga and Lofa we headed to Zorzor. There we fueled up inquired about the road condition and decided to press on and try and reach Voinjama by night fall. As a note I just want to say how awesome it is to have stop and asked about road conditions before traveling. It just feels so hardcore and exciting. I remember in college going on a road trip with friends from Atlanta to New Orleans, but we didn’t have to ask how I-20 was, did it get washed out, were all the bridges still there. Though I guess that still might not be true of New Orleans, so that’s a bad example. But you get the point. That element of adventure is lost in American Interstate based road trips
So we headed out. We were flying down and up some pretty bumpy and rocky roads. We had to balance finding smooth paths through the mine field of baseball size stones and wash outs, and staying on our side of the road. These dirt roads are one lane, and if some SUV comes flying over a hill, you had better be on your side of the road.

Jeff had been practicing off road driving in Harper and was riding pretty hard. I was impressed that I could barely keep up with him when he was on a bike with a smaller engine that wasn’t made for such off road conditions. I was thinking that all that practice was paying off. I was also thinking that I should ask him to slow it down a notch till I had my high speed off-road motorcycling down. Well before I could mention this to Jeff, I looked up and saw his back wheel buck-up into the air and then the whole bike went sideways as Jeff flew off. Jeff had hit a patch of loose gravel and lost control. Thankfully there was a wide enough distance between the two of us that I didn’t hit him. I pulled up and checked on him. He wasn’t hurt bad but was a little shaken up. He had scraped up his arm pretty bad, but no major injuries.  Luckily there was already a nurse at the village where the wreck took place. He was there helping someone who had had a machete accident. So he jumped over and took control of the situation. He was pretty cool. I love seeing old guys who have that confidence from years of experiences reign in a situation, “Get me some water. You two pick up the bike, put it there. You get some alcohol. You come with me. Where does it hurt? Can you bend your arm?” After 45 minutes or so we were back on the road. Jeff’s bike was rideable but the handle bars were bent a little bit and the instrument panel was damaged. We were now pretty late and night was coming so we continued on, but slower.

After a while it was getting dark and we could see and hear a storm coming in from the East. Jeff and I realized that we weren’t going to make Voinjama ahead of the storm, so we decided to ride to the next big village and ask for lodging. It was pitch black when we rolled up to the next village. We could barely see the huts in the moonlight as the storm crept over. I had to fight with my kick stand so Jeff made it to the village before I did. When I got there he was already drinking palm wine with the elders. I don’t think we ever asked for anything. They just talked to us about what we were doing and where we were going, and that we wouldn’t make it, then we were told to park our bikes inside a hut’s porch, then asked if we wanted hot water for a shower, and to wait a minute and rice would be coming. It was such a sweet hook-up. Everyone was so welcoming, kind and generous. My favorite thing was that no one spoke of money, let alone asked for anything. We needed a place to stay and they were just helping out. We ended up sleeping in one of the bedrooms of the village youth chief’s hut. It was really nice. We had a bed and mosquito net.  The picture at the top is me and one of the guys in the village with his “African head lamp.” After talking for a while we realized that we were in the home village of Mr. David Kortie, the Carter Center logistics officer who had arranged our paperwork for this trip. The name of the village was Kortie Town. What a small country.

Just wanted to update a few things and make some corrections.

I’ve discovered that Libercell has towers in Grand Kru county, and Libercell offers GPRS data service. Not sure if this means that Libercell offers GPRS in Grand Kru, but it would seem so. This would mean that you potentially have a choice between Cellcom and Libercell for GPRS/EDGE in Grand Kru county.

More and more I’ve noticed that my cell phone tells me that EDGE data service is available when I have my Lonestar SIM card in my phone. So I think it’s safe to say they have EDGE now. Scratch that.

I’ve started using a Lonestar SIM card in my laptop for email checking and stuff, and my laptop reports that I’m only getting GPRS out of Lonestar. Cellcom was working great, but at $60 a month it was more than I needed. I just use it to check and send email when in the field, so Lonestar’s $1 an hour rate is more inline with my usage. It seems to be more unreliable than Cellcom, but if I leave it on for 20 minutes i’ll be able to download a few emails and send a couple. That’s all I need so I’m happy. At least till someone thinks a 3MB attachment is a good idea.

Finally, I wanted to talk about Libtelco (AKA: Liberian Telecom Company, AKA LTC). Back in the day LTC ran the few land lines that Liberia had. Then the war came, the phone lines were looted, and LTC fell into disrepair. Now, it’s been brought back and renamed Libtelco. They’ve build up a modern CDMA network across Monrovia. Why you’d use CDMA in a part of the world that is exclusively GSM is beyond me, but that’s what they did. I think part of it may be that they’re targeting businesses who want PBX, fax, and ISP services, and not individuals who want to talk. They have a list of their services here, and a list of prices here.

Libtelco is also government owned, just like it was back in the day. The latest copy of the Liberian ICT policy has Libtelco playing a major role in the country’s ICT development. They’ll get to do things like be an international peering point, build out networks for universal sevice, and hopefully a local peering point so that the other major ISPs can send data around Monrovia directly, rather than up through a VSAT, over to europe, then back up a VSAT, and back to Monrovia. Recently a feasiblity study was conducted to see if Libtelco installing a fiber optic ring around Monrovia would make sense. The study concluded that it would make sense. If it’s done right, and they get buy in from the other major ISPs, businesses, and the government plays along, such a network could be really cool.

This past weekend (4/3-6/2009) Andrew, Debb, Ashley (all from ORR), Laura, a MSF doctor, and myself went to Sapo National Park. Before we went we tried to learn as much as we could about the park and what to expect. We found most web resources out dated, and none of them had any solid technical data, the kind you use to know how to get there and where to camp. So I’m gona try to provide tons of technical details. I brought along my Garmin Etrex Venture HC GPS, so I was able to get a fair bit of data. I’m sure there’s a better way to get maps and coordinates to display on a wordpress blog, but I don’t know what they are. If someone out there can recommend some cool plugins that’d be great.  Anyway…

Before we left we registered with the FDA and were told that there’d be a $20 per person park fee. We opted to pay this when we arrived at Sapo. Be sure you do this before you head out.

We left Monrovia around 4:30pm on Friday and headed towards Buchanan. Vehicle security was one of my main concerns. I didn’t want to camp where the car would be out of sight. So we drove to the first beach we could drive on and camped there. We ended up here (N5.83736, W10.02473). We spent the night without a problem. We didn’t even see anyone else, which is rare in Liberia. We did see someone with a flashlight 200 or 300 yards from our camp, but they never came up to us. The road from Monrovia to Buchanan is pretty bad. It’s paved, but has so many pot holes that you have to drive painfully slowly most of the way. From Monrovia to Cotton Tree you can easily do 40mph-50mph, after cotton tree until you reach Buchanan you’ll be lucky to do 30mph.

We woke up at 5:30am, broke camp and headed out at 6:26am. The road from Buchanan to River Cess County is great. The road has been rehabilitated by LCIP (Thanks USAID, and US tax payers), so it is a wide and fairly smooth dirt road. Our average speed on this stretch of road was 29mph. Not half bad. When leaving Buchanan, drive all the way through town, turn left at the T in the road, then cross over the rail road tracks, then when you see a decent looking dirt road on your left turn there. You’ll pass a Buchanan Renewables depot, after that take the right when the road forks. Then you pretty much just follow the main road. There will be a fork for Cesto City, just keep left. There’s another fork where you have to stay right.  There’ll be a sign for malaria awareness or something and in the corner you’ll see someone has written “Greenville ->.” So follow that and go right.

We arrived at the turn off for Sapo  from the main road at 12:15pm. We had traveled 113 miles in 5 hours 24 minutes for an average of 21mph. The turn off for Sapo is at (N5.26641, W9.02344). You’ll know you’re at the turn off when you see a big sign that Says “Sapo” and encourages you not to log, mine, or hunt in the forest. We also had to stop there because of a Bureau of Immigration check point. We all had to give them copies of our passport and wait for them to enter our info into their ledgers. I would go off here about how corrupt and annoying this is, but that’s not the point of this post.

So then we headed up a smaller road toward the Sapo office. We pasted several signs that said Sapo, but none of them gave any indication as to when we should turn. We just kept asking people as we drove through. Finally we came to Jolly Town(N5.38854, W8.80732), where we turned right to head toward the town where the Sapo HQ is located. From the turn off to Jolly Town we drove 19.2 miles in 1 hour 8 minutes at an average speed of 17mph. Needless to say the road was worse.

From Jolly Town we drove 2.8 miles to Sapo HQ in 15 minutes at a speed of 11mph. Sapo HQ is located at (N5.35391, W8.81452). The roads to Sapo were all pretty good, mostly dusty with a little mud here and there. We only used 4wd a few times, and only as a precaution. At HQ we met the warden, Mr. Blamah S. Goll (blamahg@yahoo.com, +231-6-581-397). He was a really nice guy and seemed to understand our mission of adventure and exploration. He had been working with the park for some time and had even traveled to other parks in of the world, including America, so he seemed to understand how to cater to tourist and run a park. We chatted for a while then met the town chief and elders. That part was actually kinda cool. It was a fun opportunity to bust out my Liberian English. And everyone is impressed when you tell them you’ve been here more than a year. They just call you a Liberian, makes you feel good.

We had been hoping to conquer Sapo on our own, but Blamah told us we needed guides and that they weren’t optional. Part of the reason is that you have to cross Sinoe rive to get to the park and you need someone to bring the canoe for you. So we headed out for the park with our guides, Junior and Alfonzo.

From the Sapo HQ we walked 1.9 miles to the Sinoe river crossing(N5.33684, W8.79965). There we took a canoe across the river and hiked another 1.0 mile to Michael’s Camp(N5.33460, W8.78933) where we pitched our tents. The camp was created by the guides when they go on patrol and as a base for making new trails. Contrary to some of what we read online, there are lots of trails in Sapo. They aren’t marked and are a little iffy at times, but are easy enough to follow. You cross over lots of creeks and streams and sometimes the bridges are nothing more than fallen trees with no hand rails. Our guides would cut tree limbs for us to use to as walking poles to steady ourselves as we went. So not exactly like hiking the AT, but better than cutting your own trail.

Our first night we just stayed at Michael’s Camp. We arrived there pretty late in the day, so we just made dinner and slept. At night Laura and I went with Alfonzo for a night patrol. That was awesome. I had miscalculated the humidity and how much I sweat, so I had sweated through my shirt, and had taken it off before we went on the patrol. So it felt pretty awesome to be going through a jungle at night with no shirt. I kinda felt like Leo in the movie The Beach when he’s running around towards the end, but without being crazy, it felt very primal. Alfonzo showed us a dyger(spelling?) call. A dyger is some sort of dear thing? Anyway that was cool, but we didn’t see any animals. Finally after going for an hour I asked if we were walking in a circle. Alfonzo said no, “The road we took will carry us back.” So we headed back. The poor guy was just gonna keep walking till we said otherwise. It was also really impressive to watch Alfonzo walk. His head lamp would dart down at the ground then sweep left to right. Laura and my head lamps just looked down.

The next morning we left our tents and packs at camp and just took some water and food in smaller bags and did a loop. Junior and Alfonzo assured us it’d be safe, and they were right. I had some trouble getting a satellite lock through all the foliage at first so I didn’t get the first part of our hike, but in all it was just over 8.5 miles. As we were hiking Alfonzo spotted boot tracks from the night before. It had rained at around 3:00pm the day before, so he knew the tracks were fresh. Then later he saw the same boot with a dog foot print. Alfonzo and Junior said they knew who it was because only one guy had a dog in town, and that they could go arrest him for being in the park illegally. A few minutes later Alfonzo picked a spent shot gun shell off the ground, 12 gauge, bird shot. I asked what he would hunt with bird shot. They said Dyger’s or other small mammals. Then Junior told me that sometimes they’d take out the bird shot melt it into a slug and put it back into the shell to hunt elephants.

On our hike we went straight from Michael’s camp to a junction they called Transit #8(N5.34027, W8.74425) there we turned left and came to the Transit #8 camp(N5.35270, W8.74543) a few feet from there was the Sinoe river so we took a mid day dip and ate lunch. Then we followed the trail back to another camp called Camp 1(N5.34513, W8.78700). Finally we ended up back at our camp.

The next day we woke up at 6:00am, headed out at 7:00am, and were back at the HQ around 8:30am. All told we had hiked 14.3 miles. My only regret was not realizing that I’d sweat through everything I owned. I should have brought some clothes in a plastic bag to wear at night after rinsing off in the stream by our camp site.  Instead I wore my rain pants and no shirt. And I also realized how silly rain gear is here. You sweat so much without rain gear on that if it did rain, you’d be just as wet if you wore rain gear, even if it GORE-TEX. You might as well take advantage of the fresh water and let it rinse you off.

We were supposed to pay our guides $5 a day, per guide, but we thought they did a great job, and apart from taking tourist around, they don’t get paid, they just volunteer at the park. Se we gave them $10. I felt kinda bad about this because I could tell that the park warden was really trying to establish rates and stick to them, and I hate encouraging “tipping” for people that have just done their job, but our guys were great and deserved more. It was the best customer serviced I have yet to experience in Liberia. So, if you hike after us and have to pay $10 and fill ripped off I’m sorry, and you’re a cheap skate.

At 9:24am we took off from park HQ and headed to Monrovia. We got back to Monrovia around 9:00pm, which wasn’t half bad. From Sapo HQ to my apartment in Mamba Point was 226 miles. We took a lunch break and stopped for dinner in Buchana so we could have easily shaved 3 hours off our time. I could tell my off road driving had gotten better as we were consistently getting speeds in the upper 30s on our way back, until Buchanan. I perfected pumping the break just as the car goes over the large bumps in the road. This causes the front to lower and follow the curve of the bump down, and lifts the back of the vehicle up so it can clear the bump. I could shoot over a bump causes by a 4’ culvert at 20mph+. I was proud of myself. One time we came up on a pretty ugly dip at over 30mph, I pumped the break and we just sailed over it like it wasn’t there, it was nice.

And that’s the trip. It was good stuff, and I hope to do it again with more time. I’m told in rainy season you have a better chance of seeing wildlife and the roads are still passable, so maybe later this summer?

Just a quick surf post to let all interested parties know that Mamba Point went off today. For the first time since the end of rainy season last year, Mamba Point was rideable, and then some. Myself and others enjoyed some wonderful 6′+ waves that went on for days. We were able to pick-up the waves infront of the orphanage and then hop off when we were even with the old Ducor Hotel. All in all a great day. Looking forward to more large rainy season waves. I wish I had some pictures, but for someone reason everyone wanted to surf, and no one wanted to take pictures. Maybe next time. Today and yesterday a very lage swell has been hitting Liberia. This is responsible for our joy in Mamaba Point. People have told me that Robertsport was also huge today.

For valentines Leah Kaplan and I planned a fundraiser 80’s slow dance party. The funds were to go to a orphanage in Kakata, about an hour or so north of Monrovia. Anyway, it was obviously a lot of fun. We even got a few, not so slow dances in. People even dressed up for it, as evidenced by this photo to the left. We were able to raise well over $400 for the orphanage. To ensure that the money is properly used Orphan Relief and Rescue, a small NGO operating here in Liberia, will oversee the distribution of the money. Regrettably, Leah’s company pulled out of Liberia right before the dance, and she missed it. She was missed

Then the weekend after a few of us went on an exploratory surf trip to Buchanan in Grand Bassa County. Buchanan is about 2 and half hours away from Monrovia. The road there is paved, but it’s so tore up that you have to drive super slow to not hit every pot hole. It’d be better if it wasn’t paved and just smoothed out by the occasional grader or something. I had heard rumors that they fixed the road. These were not true.

We never found the beach were we’re supposed to. The directions we had said go to the end of the road. We had an in car discussion about what constituted the “end of the road”, and whether the people who wrote the directions were as “hardcore” as we were when defining the end of the road. In our quest for the end we took a sweet jungle by-pass to get around a tractor that was stuck in the middle of a one lane trail along the coast. It was sweet; we were literally driving through the jungle. I love moments like that. Sadly, I got my first flat tire in Africa from this little off-road jaunt.

Finally, after trekking for several minutes off the main road, we arrived at this amazing little village next to a river that let out to the ocean, it was beautiful. Unfortunately, the waves weren’t super great. We did have a fair bit of fun riding the class 1 rapids from the river into the ocean and then riding waves back into the river, just to get pushed back again. That was pretty cool, but took a lot of work to time it right.

In some more technical happenings, my crack squad of research assistants (RAs) and I did some major work to rebuild the wooden enclosure of the MObile Story Exchange System, or MOSES. The old enclosure was designed to be bullet proof. It housed our most important project and so needed to be strong. It also weighed 100lbs, took up all the space in the 4Runner, and had to be plugged in. So we redid a few things. The new system now comes in two halves. The bottom half is the power pack that houses two 12 volt 80amp deep cycle batteries hooked up in parallel and a 1500watt inverter/charger.  To date we’ve never run out of juice and have run for over 8 hours, it’s a thing of beauty. The top half contains an audio amplifier, two 6″x9″ speakers, the laptop MOSES runs on and the Plexiglas panel that the 19″ LCD is bolted too. The new system is much lighter (though the batteries weigh a lot) can easily fit in the back of the 4Runner, and doesn’t need power. It’s great. People at the TRC, where we built it, have told me, “Thanks for the hard work.” I think that’s the Liberian way of saying, “Nice work.”  Since I didn’t really do the hard work for them, and secretly, I really liked getting to use power tools again. My favorite part was getting the drill bits out of the drill for my RAs. The drill was made to be tightened and loosened by hand, but the RAs were hesitant to rev the drill and pop out the drill bit. Special thanks to Matt Cramer and Andrew Tyler for loaning me the tools.

Finally I got the first ticket of my life in Monrovia. I was on Broad street heading west at the Randal Street intersection.  I wanted to do a U-turn and as usual there was the normal crazy traffic, in which you wait your turn, edge forward and then either take your turn or wait for someone to let you in. But instead of pulling up past the little, I don’t even know what to call it, the thing the police stand on in the middle of the intersection to direct traffic, and then turning, I just started to turn. I had pulled about a foot forward when I noticed the cop, who had just noticed me and stood up to direct traffic and stop me. Then he realized I was white and waved me forward. He gave me a lecture about how that was illegal, I should have gone past the police stand.

I knew he was right, and that I was just being lazy with my driving. I didn’t want to “compromise” AKA bribe him to not give me a ticket. In fact, we even had a little tift where I was pointing out why compromising isn’t the way to go and he said, “But why this is Africa, you can’t change Africa”, and I looked him straight in the face and said, “I can try.” I don’t think he liked that very mcuh.One of my friends told me next time I get the, “this is Africa” line I should ask if they like their African salary, or African benefit package, if we should keep the 300 LD (5 USD) bribes, and the 100USD a month salaries. Well, I went with the usual call their bluff since they can’t write tickets and insist on a ticket stategy. To my amzement the commanding officer on the scene had a ticket book. This is defenitly a step forward, though still needs a little polish. For instance I was sited for “wreckless driving” and not obey the directing officer, who wasn’t directing anything till he saw a white man. I also got slapped with a $1500 LD, $25 USD. The cop that pulled me over said, “be nice to my friend and give him one thousand-five.” I’m pretty sure he was really saying, “show this guy he can’t change Africa, charge him a lot”. Everyone I talked to, Liberian and expat, said that was too much. Still beats the ticket price in America, though in America I would have just waited for my light to turn green, and we don’t put crap that you have to drive around in the middle of our intersections.

Paying the ticket was surprisingly pleasant. I had to go to the Ministry of Finance, pay the ticket, then take the receipt to the police station. The nice ladies in the ticket department were very helpful and had everything processed in a matter of minutes. To ensure that I paid my ticket the ticketing officer took my dirver’s license, and again I was amazed that they had it there waiting for me. So law and order is, slowly, coming back to Liberia.

So first of all let’s talk about the surfing. It’s been getting good lately. This picture to the left was taken at Kendeja, 30 minutes from where I live. And yes, that is me on that lovely little wave. It’s a still from a video that a friend took, so excuse the poor quality. This past weekend I was at Robertsport where we had 8′-10′ waves. I caught the biggest, longest, and awesomest wave of my life there. I was at Shipwreck beach, 100 meters away from the rocks where the shipwreck is, and I ended up past the next set of rocks, being dragged towards the 3rd set of rocks. It was sick. Sadly, my video crew wasn’t there. But I’m looking forward to more big rainy season waves.

Now onto some old business, Barack Obama became the president of America, and this was a very exciting time for people here. A large group of Americans and caring internationals gathered at the Krystal Ocean View hotel to watch the inauguration. A lot of Liberians were very excited. Everyone that was anyone had their Barack Obama t-shirt on

Not to be outdone by Americans, back in America a couple of true patriots threw an inaugural ball here. They hired the band from Garden Cafe which was a great choice. Those guys played all the latest hits, as well as some classics. As they night whined down they let Amy Kirkwood play guitar while I played bass. I haven’t played bass in a long time, so I enjoyed the chance to play. It was also nice surprising my friends with a hidden talent. Thankfully Amy played the only 2 songs I know how to play, Sweet Home Alabama and Steve Miller’s the Joker.

As part of my research duties I toured the Nancy Doe Market on 5th street in Sinkor. As you can see this is no ordinary African market. This 3 story concrete structure gives the market ladies (and a few guys) shade and a safe place to setup shop. You can find pretty much everything here, from the peppers pictured below, to rice, oil, and even the African version of Tupperware.

Finally we come to the issue of traffic. The past couple of weeks Chinese contractors have been painting the lines on the newly paved roads. While this is great news, especially when trying to decide what lane you’re in at night; it has caused some of the worst traffic I’ve ever seen. While it lacks the awe inspiring glory of a 16 lane parking lot in Atlanta, the halting of Monrovia’s only thoroughfare through town completely incapacitates the city.

This is only made worse by government employees, who are a little over zealous about getting to work on time, hoping over and driving in the wrong lane. Twice I’ve nearly had head on collisions with people who think they really need to be on time. Which is interesting, given that Liberia is not known for being punctual? I understand the President and Vice President have certain security concerns to worry about, so they get to drive in my lane of traffic, but it’s a little dangerous to the rest of us when every other government big wig comes flying around the corner in my lane. Hopefully, this will stop once the traffic resumes its usual level of chaos.