Tuesday - Workday Commute in Liberia

I used to think that going to work was the worst part of a job. It’s still true. However, I feel that my daily commute of 20 miles taking over an hour might differ from those in the city, crawling along in bumper-to-bumper traffic.

In the pouring rain, I get picked up by a mud encrusted Toyota Land Cruiser along with about five other passengers. As the guest of honor, I get to share the front passenger seat with staff member Tommy, who fortunately is also thin, while the rest cram in the back seat. Soon we leave the broken pavement of Gbarnga and head on a muddy track north. It’s a bit wetter than yesterday, as the road resembles a river. Dominic our driver, skillful navigates over wooden bridges he can’t see and we slide up and down rutted slippery slopes.

He stops the car and calls out to “check the tires”, which is code for time to pee. Gratefully we all pile out for some relief. It seems like we are going through a green tunnel with a forest of mostly rubber trees, destined to provide latex for Firestone tires. We continue on in four-wheel drive, passing several small settlements of earthen shacks with smoky fires coming from the cooking area. Eventually we reach our job site in Gbenquelleh village, Bong County. It’s another elementary school with 20 farmers waiting for me to conduct a workshop on food processing, and build a solar dryer in the rainy season. Just another tough day working in the jungle, can hardly wait for the ride home.

However, the local farmers are glad to see us even though we are a little late. It is the second day of the workshop. Yesterday we talked about sanitation, food processing, marketing and forming co-ops. Today we will build a Sun Works solar food dryer, our second on the assignment. The first carpenter, actually named Joseph, pre-cut most of the pieces for the other two to be built. This allowed us to get them inside of our vehicle, and to save time building them with less skilled labor. I chose this design because it can be made with hand tools, is inexpensive, and is fairly waterproof, important in the rainy season.

On the way back to Gbarnga, we stop at a village to purchase some fresh palm wine, an indigenous slightly alcoholic beverage made from the sap of the Royal Palm tree. It looks like lemonade and is slightly sweet and still fermenting. Its good for just a day or two before the fermentation process uses up the sugar and turns it bitter, but it is tasty now. We empty out our water bottles and they are filled from a gallon jug with fresh palm wine, which will be my dinner beverage tonight, setting us back about 20 cents each.

Eventually we return home, and I take a refreshing cool bucket bath to wash off today’s grime. Tomorrow, we will return to finish building the dryer and cut up Chile peppers and Bitter Balls, a local variety of eggplant, their main crops to be dried in their new food dryer. Hopefully, it won’t be raining.

Ralph Bucca
Princess Anne, MD