On
Friday, after running, bathing, washing clothes and getting some awesome fried
banana dough balls for breakfast, I went to Milea’s school just in time to
watch her Gender Day classes. On Fridays for this marking period, instead of
doing chemistry, Milea instituted Gender Day. She is so passionate about gender
equality and always tries to work it in to lessons she teaches her students. On
that Friday, she asked who in the class washed other people’s dishes the day
before. Only the girls, and all of them, raised their hands. Those left, the
boys, were called up to the front to wash some crusty old school dishes. They
all did a great job scrubbing the dishes super clean, but some of them,
especially the older students, were clearly more embarrassed than most. When
the girls started making some comments about the boys, Milea emphasized that
girls making fun of boys for doing these kinds of tasks was also an issue that
needed to be worked on. Gender equality goes both ways, with both genders
supporting the other and neither limiting nor degrading the other. She also
told this great story about one of the Liberian PC staff members who tied his daughter
to his back, as women normally do, to comfort her, even in the presence of
important men who came over to his house. Milea pointed out that being a good
father and making his daughter happy was more important than trying to look
like a “manly man” in front of these other men. Gender stereotypes be gone!
They're all clean, Ms. Lind!
The boys are nervous to start washing
Some cool cats outside the classroom
The ABC class (the littlest nuggets) takes place in a palava hut outside
A primary classroom. I love these patterned openings in the walls!
Going home with the buckets
Milea
and I went home, then soon enough we motorbiked to Kahnplay (the town with the
market we visited a few days earlier), then to a bigger town called Saniquellie.
It was a very dusty and windy motorbike ride, and I made a note to buy some
sunglasses ASAP. We arrived in town and walked to Abigail’s house. A fellow PCV
who taught at the high school there, Abigail had a really big house, and had
started cooking spicy plantain soup with rice. I met some of the other PCVs from
Nimba County (the northeast county in Liberia, the one Milea lives in) who had
also come over. And as PCVs from all over the world tend to do, we instantly meshed
together quite well.
The
next day, we decided to tackle the adventure of climbing Mount Nimba. We all
squished into an SUV, including one riding “VIP” (see bottom for an explanation).
We drove a little over an hour through Yekepa to the mountain, then got out and
started walking up a paved road to the top of this mountain. We carried sticks
to swat away the swarming biting flies that ambushed us as we walked up, and
soon I had lots of swat marks on my legs. We hiked up past all kinds of old,
abandoned and gutted mining equipment and also climbed all over it. So this was
why the road to the top was paved: for all the mining vehicles.
Starting the hike
Some of the abandoned mining equipment
We
hiked up farther across sliding rock shards to a waterfall where we refilled
our water, then on a path up toward the top where we saw the mountain drop away
and fade down, down, down into the fog of Guinea. This mountain was right at the
border between Liberia and Guinea, so we were staring out into a whole
different country. We could have easily hiked down into it, as there were no
fences or anything. We ate some snacks along the way, including some awesome
leftover rice bread, and shared some small coconuts.
Hiking farther up
Next,
we hiked back down to the Blue Lake, an old quarry filled with beautiful,
reflective water, which was at the base of a stairstep mountain shaped by lots
of mining. We swam in the cold water and imagined what kind of beasties lived
deep in the lake, and which one of us might get swallowed up first. Then we
hiked all the way down and retroactively paid the park rangers, who were not at
the entrance when we first got there that morning. We hung out in the ranger tent
for a while, chatting with the rangers and each dutifully paying our 200LD
entrance fee.
The Blue Lake
Since
it was starting to get later in the afternoon, we speed walked back to Yekepa,
a relatively fancy town built to cater to the mining companies. We sat down and
some of us ate at this surreal cafeteria thing, which felt so out of place in
this country. Then Abigail’s friend met us there and we all went to his house
to hang out, eat spaghetti and luncheon meat (spam), and admired his super
heavy mining equipment-turned-barbells in the back yard.
These were deceptively heavy
Chilling in the back yard
On
the way back to Saniquellie, we took a car whose driver played the same song
four times in a row, the giant speakers blasting it through the whole car. He
probably would have played that one song on repeat the entire way back to
Abigail’s house had we not said something about it. That seems to be a trend
here, playing the same song over and over and loving it. I was squished up in
the back row, one of four people back there, so my shoulders were kind of
sideways and my arm was hanging into the trunk. With easy access to the awful
speakers, I was fooling with the wires on the subwoofer of this hatchback,
trying to unplug it to make the ride a little more tolerable and not so
deafness-inducing. I laughed so hard when I learned that the person sitting on
the other side of the back seat, was also doing the same thing with the other
subwoofer next to him.
Apparently giant grasshoppers live all over Africa, not just in Lesotho
Fun
things about Liberia:
1)
ATMs here give out
USD, then you have to change them to LD on the street. Each guy advertises his
exchange rate (when I was there, it fluctuated between 90 and 110 LD per USD),
you hand him your USD, then you get a whole mess of LD at that rate.
2)
“You my friend,
yeah?” says everyone instantly after you introduce yourself. Uh, sure…I guess I’m
your friend…why not?
3)
Milea is so happy
for Obama-branded everything, especially Obama umbrellas over food stands and
Obama Smoothline pens.
4)
Riding “VIP” in a
car means riding in the trunk, normally in a hatchback but not unheard of with
a normal trunk. It’s a legitimate expression that people use, and riding VIP
can be roomier than sitting in the normal seats, because up there you have to
squish (at least) two in the front passenger seat and four in the back seat.
5)
People sell gas in
these glass gallon jars (lots of them previously being mayonnaise jars) by the
side of the road. Another popular roadside product is palm wine, which just
comes straight out of the palm tree and ferments over the course of the day.
6)
Almost every price
must be negotiated, including small basic items, but especially bigger-ticket
items and transportation.
7)
Choosing a motorbike
driver is of the utmost importance because of several factors. Because the dirt
roads are so bad, crashes are fairly common, so you want one who is a) not
drunk, b) wearing a helmet and closed shoes, because this shows he’s more conscientious
about safety, and c) responsive to your haggling and will not try insist too
hard on the white person price.
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