People and Dogs

Here are some photos of people in Sierra Leone I have met:

This is Idriss, my driver, posing in front of the company car.  I try to take photos of African birds to show my mother, who is an avid bird watcher.  Idriss tries to hit birds on the rural roads we drive on.  For my mother's sake, I won't say how successful he is.    I am always saying to him 'Tek Tim', meaning 'take time' or 'go slow'.  The other workers that ride in the car call him Killer.  Nuf sed.

This is our office administrator back in our Freetown office.  She is a very valuable asset and is a key reason for our successful operations in Sierra  Leone.  She has government ministers and businessmen all over the country on her speed dial.  Everyone knows her.  The General Manager of the airport commented yesterday to me that is was the first day in two months she hadn't called him for something.  I told him the reason was: she was now calling me at the airport instead.  He seemed relieved that someone else was doing her bidding.  Did you read my blog post about us making an emergency landing in Conakry?  Well, she single-handedly got the Sierra Leone airport open and got us permission to land, so we could finally reach our destination.  She is single and loves to dance all night at the clubs on weekends.  She was orphaned in the civil war, and was raised by Catholic nuns.  She supports all her brothers and sisters in her home.

Our Chief Security Officer and his daughter.  Mohammed is in charge of seven security details, one of which is our security crew for our camp at the airport.  He, like everyone I work with here, is extremely polite and hard working.  He asked permission to take the cardboard boxes at the work site home with him.  He wanted to sleep on them.

Being a security guard is Bai's first job.  He is 19 and reports to Mohammed.  One of the perks of the job is the new uniform.  All these guys take meticulous care of their uniforms and boots.  I'm sure it is the nicest thing they own.  Bai wanted to have his photo taken, and posed it himself.  I'm not sure how to give him a copy of it, but I'm sure the office administrator can figure it out.

Here are two schoolboys walking to school.  All schoolchildren wear uniforms chosen by their school.  The roads and street in the morning are full of smartly dressed children in traditional British-style school uniforms.  The rural schools are poorer, and the uniforms simpler.  In the city,  I have seen starched white shirts and bright skirts and pants of blue and green and red.  Some schools have the girls wearing berets.  The Islamic schools will have brightly colored matching headscarves for the girls.

Many people sell coconuts out of wheelbarrows along the streets.  For 50 cents, this man will take his machete and whack off the end of the coconut so you can drink the milk inside.

Lobster fishermen showing off their catch.  Note that this species of lobster has no tail.  It's still good eating, though.

This is what every dog in West Africa looks like.  Yellow and white, long nose, long tail, medium height.  Every. Single. Dog.  Maybe it's the same dog I'm seeing over and over?  Anyway, they trot down the roads like they are heading to a job, and walk with confidence through the markets and houses like they own the place.  No one seems to bother them or even pay attention to them.  They, like the chickens, just co-exist with the folks here.

Rural areas

Here are some photos of the rural part of Sierra Leone.  The most interesting things I cannot photograph.  I find the people and the markets and their houses the most colorful and fascinating.  However, I am sensitive to their dignity.  I would not like it if a stranger got out of a car in my cul-de-sac and started taking photos of my house and my children in the yard.  Then again, my children don't play outside.....  Anyway, I only try and take wide shots or nature shots.  If I have people in my photos, I always ask for permission.  First my hotel:

Entrance to Hotel

My room from the outside

My lizard friend.  Note German Shepherd for scale.  Actually he is about a foot long.

Boys playing soccer in schoolyard

Cassava root cost 2 cents a piece from this girl

Crops are planted in mounds, not rows.  The heavy rains won't wash them away.  

 

This is the type of hand pump common in West Africa.  Living Water Intl maintains pumps like this.

Village Mosque.  Pronounced 'mox', like 'ask' is pronounced 'axe'.  Not kidding.

Pulling a net in from the sea

Inspecting the catch

Baby Octopus

Jellyfish is a common in the catch, too

Posing for a photo

Clothes drying on fishing boat

You know those cheap t-shirts you gave to Goodwill?  They end up in Africa.  I don't know how many elementary school shirts I've seen such as "Bluebonnet Elementary Field Day 2006!".   I've seen "Bear Crossing - Canada" and "Jewish Heritage Day" with a huge blue Star of David on the chest.  The best was a 10 yr old kid wearing "I'm Here! I'm Queer!  Let's Dance!"

Photos of Freetown

Before I headed to the rural area around the airport, I spent a day in the city at our office.  The capital city of Sierra Leone is Freetown, built where mountains meet the sea.  From the ocean, the mountains look like a lion and that is why the first Portuguese sailors named the area Lion Mountain.  Freetown was started by the British and was the place they freed slaves they captured from slave ships heading to America and the Caribbean in the early 19th Century.  Little history is preserved here - most folks are just thinking about day-to-day.  There are few historical sites, but a big one is the 'slave steps' rising from the harbor to a huge cotton tree in the center of town.

Slave steps are under the tree at top of hill

The city is built on the sides of the mountains.

Suburbs

We ride a ferry to get to the airport.  The ocean inlet is about five miles across.  Here are some views from the ferry.:

Fishing boat in front of Freetown

Mercy Ship - a charity hospital ship.  Naomi  Devers can tell you about her daughter serving on this ship.

The private ferry service

The ferry I am riding.

The ferry arrives.  There is a mad rush to get the taxis.

Idriss and Brent look for Palm Wine

My Sierra Leone friends have always talked up palm wine to me.  It is a common alcoholic drink in Africa made from the fermented sap of palm trees.  However, they always say to stay away from the stuff in the cities.  The city stuff has to be transported from the rural areas, and then is usually watered down.  I've been told that I want the fresh stuff in the countryside.  Well, on Sunday, since I found myself in a rural part of Sierra Leone, Idriss my driver and I went looking for palm wine.  The market places in the countryside have all kinds of agricultural products for sale, but apparently palm wine is not something that is sold openly.  I got the impression it is like beer in a dry county.  You have to ask around.  So Idriss stopped men on the road and started asking where palm wine could be purchased.  After a couple of shrugs, we got someone to point down a path off the main road.  We drove about five minutes with no one in sight until we came to a village square.  Idriss asked a man and a kid overheard the question.  The kid said he could take us there.  We let him hop into the back seat and off we went into the jungle.  Has anyone seen The Wire?  This is how you buy heroin in Baltimore.

We pulled up to a shack and the kid got out.  Idriss did the talking to an elderly man there.  The guy looked me over and agreed to sell.  He needed a container to put it in, though.  I had a 2 liter water bottle about half full.  I took a big swig and gave it to the guy.  He put the bottle to his lips and drank the rest.  A few minutes later, he came back with two liters of palm wine in my water bottle.  Now Idriss had to bargain for the price.  I had given Idriss three dollars to work with.  Idriss got it for a quarter.  Two liters of wine for a quarter.  That should tell you the quality of the stuff.

After drinking about half a liter, I poured it down the toilet.  It was mildly fermented, so hardly qualified as alcoholic.  It also tasted like carbonated morning breath.

Tifman in American

Idriss, my driver, and I were sitting in the Land Cruiser under a tree waiting for some trucks to arrive.  We were showing each other hand signs from our cultures,  I was asking him about thumbs up - which means 'one love' here - and the finger/thumb OK circle - which doesn't mean anything here.  After I taught him the middle finger and he taught me a couple of things, the conversation turned to him getting his phone stolen from his car while he was driving in Freetown.  He was going slow in traffic and someone reached in, grabbed the phone, and ran.  That was a big deal to him.  I told him how it is common in the US, and when you park your car you have to hide your valuables or someone will break the window and steal them.  He was dumbfounded.  He asked me to repeat it to make sure he heard it right. 

Then he asked: Why are there tifmen (thieves) in America?  Aren't there plenty of jobs?  There are no jobs here.  An African man steals to feed his family.  Why do they steal in America?

I really didn't have a good answer, except to say the thieves are lazy and don't want to work hard at the plenty of jobs available.  My point was brought home later when I saw the crew out mowing the grass around the runway at the airport.  They mow the grass with machetes, not power tools.  They work from first light to about 11:00, when it gets too hot.  They are in a line and slowly advance, swinging their machetes high above their head as they stoop to get a low cut.  I'm sure the mowing crew worker is feeding his family in a way I can't imagine having to do.

Living Water, Intl.

I am not going to complain anymore about my 'hotel' room. I met Robert and Ruth Search of Living Water, Intl. They are staying in this hotel to take a break from living in the rural areas and to celebrate their wedding anniversary. Living Water is a charitable organization based in Houston that drills and maintains water wells, builds latrines, and educates the folks about hygiene. Robert and Ruth are the only ex-pats here; they have spent four years empowering teams to do this work for themselves. The Searches have adopted a local orphan girl, Mariatu, who is now four and the favorite of the hotel staff. Ruth invited me to see what they are doing in the villages, and I hope to have the time to do so. Coincidentally, our family already contributes to Living Water because of its Houston and Africa ties. I encourage you to look it up on the web.

Random Liberia Notes

Today is my last day in Liberia.  I will spend the next two weeks in Sierra Leone.  This post contains random photos I have taken around the city this week:

Here is a billboard in front of the National Election Commission.  They will be conducting the election a week from Tuesday.

Ballots not Bullets

This is part of the Student Center of the campus of the University of Liberia.  There are 17,000 students on this campus – all commuters, no dorms.  Many of the facilities are open air like this one

Study Hall

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Seasons Greetings from Charles Taylor

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The house of Charles Taylor, warlord and former President now on trial in The Hague for war crimes.  He still has his Christmas lights up

 

 

Many aspects of the civil war are still under the surface in society.  Violence against women was common in the war as a tactic of fear and intimidation.  The attitude is still present.  This billboard reads “Stop Rape – She Could Be Your Mother”.  The phrasing is awkward, but the sentiment is real.

You are welcome at the Ducor Hotel

The Ducor Hotel sits on the highest point of land in Monrovia and overlooks black cliffs on the edge of the sea.  It was once the premier hotel in Monrovia, and a source of pride for the city.  The hotel and grounds are still impressive.  However, after the war began it was abandoned, and for twenty years has housed families of squatters.  Earlier this year, the squatters were ejected and construction began for the renovation of the hotel, much to the joy of the city and the nation.  It is just Liberia’s luck that the funding came from Libya and Muammar Qaddafi.  I have heard that squatters have returned.

Sunday drive to Robertsport

Today we got out of the city and took a Sunday drive three hours north to Robertsport and its surfing beach.  The roads are washed out from the rainy season, so our 4 wheel-drive was necessary to maneuver through the holes and ruts.  The only problems we had were 'checkpoints' on the way.  One was legitimate, manned by real policemen who wanted to see our passports.  The other two were groups of six or seven young men with logs and rocks in the road to stop traffic.  They wave and motion the cars to stop, they ask for money, then the logs are removed from the road.  At least that's what I imagine they are doing, because we didn't stop.  We were in a 4 wheel drive, remember, so we just gunned it and ran right over their barricades.  It gives one a great thrill to wave at angry youths while running over their money-making venture at 30 mph.

We drove through abandoned rubber plantations, where the jungle has reclaimed the plantation, and rubber trees and vines and palms mix.   New palm oil plantations are going in, where the rubber trees and wild vegetation has been burned and cleared and young palm trees are now planted in rows for miles around.

I first heard of Robertsport from a video on You Tube.  It is a film called Sliding Liberia, and it is about surfing kids that travel around the world looking for the perfect waves.  Check out the trailer on You Tube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0eru45CK5Y&feature=related

Before the war, Robertsport was a bigger tourist town than it is now.  Large hotels and public buildings now stand stripped and molding in the vegetation that has reclaimed the sites, but the location of the town is beautiful.

Note the clothes drying on the road

What they have now for tourists are makeshift tent shelters on the beach for the surfers and guests. 

The beach bar is just a lean-to with plastic tables and umbrellas on the beach.  The don't have a menu.  It's water, beer, and whatever they cook that day.  Today was fish, rice and beans.  

The view was fantastic

There were only five or six Westerners surfing and about the same number of local kids surfing with them.  I was the only one on the whole beach who didn't have a swim suit.  My bad.

Forced cameraderie

The forced camaraderie is hard after a while.  I've heard all the stories already.  There are three of us here in a two-room office for 10 hrs a day.  We walk around the block together for lunch.  At the end of the day we go back to the hotel, and have drinks and eat dinner together.  Breakfast the next morning is the three of us together.  This goes on for ten days here.  One of the guys and I are temporary, so we sit at opposite ends of a conference table with our laptops.  He is French and doesn't speak English well.  I speak no French.  That doesn't stop him, though, because he is a very friendly and talkative guy.  I would call it "joie de vivre". He pulls out his translator a lot but his jokes don't always translate.  Plus, he is hard of hearing, so I find myself speaking loudly and slowly and very self-conscience that I look like the parody of the American tourist in a foreign country.  Oh, did I say his personal space is very French, too?  He's just a little too close, and touches a little too much, and when he walks down to my end of the table to tell me something,  I can feel the breeze from his hand gestures when he talks.  I like the guy, but I'll be ready to head to Sierra Leone on Monday.

The Rich and The Poor

West Africa Modern Chic

I had the chance to look at this new house just built here in Monrovia.  It is two-story and 2200 square feet.  It has a living room, dining room, kitchen and laundry room downstairs, with an attached apartment (for a cook) of two small bedrooms, sitting room and bath.  Upstairs is a Master bedroom, two large bedrooms with private bath and two smaller bedrooms with hall bath.  The house has good security with a 10 foot wall topped by razor wire. It has its own well and a generator house.  It is one of the nicest places I’ve seen in Monrovia, with A/C in every room (not central A/C) and wired for satellite.  This house would be about $250,000 in Houston.  The cost to lease?  Unfurnished (no electricity – supply your own generator, no security people, no furniture, pay your own water bill): $5500/month including tax.  Furnished (generator, furniture and security people): $8200/month including tax.  Oh, and they want one year up front.  Over $100,000 to RENT it for a year. 

Now, the housekeeper that cleans my room every day here at the hotel makes $5/day.  I leave $2 on the pillow every morning and you can see her lurking, waiting for me to lock the door and go.  I don’t blame her a bit.  She would live in a house like the ones you can see below, outside the wall of the house we looked at. 

View from second floor of house looking at the generator building

 

Houses in rainy-season flooding

Liberia is one of the poorest countries in the world.  But there are two economies and no middle class to speak of.  You have money or you don’t.  I pay $200/night for a room in a hotel that would be the fourth-best motel in Hereford, TX – yet I am glad to pay it.  It is clean, neat, bug-free, with A/C and hot water.  It meets my Western standards.  They charge $200/night because they can.  They know I’ll pay it.  The guy that owns the house knows that Westerners, or the Liberian diaspora that have spent years in the US and are returning home, have certain living standards.  They charge $8200/month because they can.  And we won’t blink an eye to pay for that to rent the house for office space.  It is a myth that the poorest countries are the least expensive countries.  Sure I could live on $5/day here, but I won’t – and the folks looking to earn some money off of me know that.

Rig Visit

There was an empty seat on the helicopter today, so I hopped on to fly out to the drill ship.  The ship is about 30 miles off the coast in about 7000' of water.  My job here is to support of the drilling from shore, but the morning was slow and I took the opportunity.  The ship is an impressive piece of machinery.  It is capable of drilling in up to 8000' of water. It is 830' long, has 7 decks, and can house 200 people.  I was just a tourist and had a friend show me around.  Here are some photos:

At the airport.  Our helicopter is yellow and does not say UN on the side.

The smaller boat is a supply boat for heavy loads the helicopters can't handle.

Painters are always painting.

The Moon Pool - the hole in the bottom of the drill ship where all the drilling equipment passes through.