The last week in January I embarked on a triumphal pre-birthday tour of Lofa County in northwestern Liberia. I had plans to visit some of my Peace Corps brothers and sisters, see more of this country, and eat some new food- Lofa is known for its toborgee soups, the unique ingredient of which is a special baking soda called kitalee, a culinary and digestive adventure to be sure. I’d traveled a lot on the west side of Liberia on mostly paved roads, and I figured I’d level up my travel mojo and tackle the Lofa highway, which is all dirt road north of Gbarnga. The travel gods had been with in my previous ventures, and I was ready: pigtail french braids pinned up under a headscarf, cargo shorts and sports bra (best place to carry money while traveling!) clean, ipod fully charged, backpack locked and loaded in the back, sunglasses on, prepared for whatever the road could bring. Of course, the travel gods despise hubris above all things.
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| waiting for my car to fill at Gbarnga parking in Kakata |
The journey up was fairly smooth. It only took a couple hours to fill a taxi at the Gbarnga parking here in Kakata (filled taxi= 2 persons in the front passenger seat, 4 persons in the back seat, all the luggage/parcels of frozen fish/random bagged livestock/mattresses and potentially a couple of passengers riding ‘VIP’ in the cargo area. This will be important later). A Chinese company has been contracted to pave the road from Kakata to Gbarnga, so the first two-hour leg of the trip was on gorgeous smooth new coal tar road broken up by sections of rutted dirt tracks bypassing paving-in-progress. We got a flat tire a little over halfway there, but that’s practically a guaranteed part of the experience for travelers off the beaten path to Monrovia and the driver had it swapped out for the spare and the car back on the road in ten minutes.
I had already arranged for the driver to drop me at the Lofa parking in Gbarnga, since it is one of the largest cities in the country and pretty spread-out. Once I retrieved my backpack, it took less than half an hour to find a car going all the way to the town of Voinjama, the county seat of Lofa, approximately six hours north. We back seat passengers squeezed in as helpful loaders slammed our doors for us, and we were on the way surprisingly quickly. I popped in my headphones, started up a roadtrip playlist, and opened a packet of chocolate biscuits to share with my neighbors. When you ride in the back seat of a taxi with three other adult-sized humans, creative physics is required. Usually two people sit leaning slightly forward and two sit back against the seat, thus alternating shoulders quite nicely. There is nothing to be done about hips, but once the doors are closed and the car starts moving, everyone shifts and settles into a reasonable level of (very close) comfort.
The next day I got to explore Voinjama a little bit, checking out the market and ooh-ing and ahh-ing appropriately over the paved roads (a work in progress, but in the active sense of the word progress, which was good to see), the surrounding hills, and the small park area in the center of town with benches and landscaping and a little painted fence. Voinjama has one of the few government-constructed multilateral highschools, which means some students are enrolled in a vocational track alongside their academic work, and graduate with a certificate and some marketable skills, like carpentry, agriculture, electrical wiring, or baking. There is also a mountain on one side of town with a round gazebo-style palava hut built on top, and you can hike up to sit in the hut and watch the sun rise or set. I spent a lovely day cooking and eating and playing games and having awesome conversation, and got ready to leave the following morning for my final destination, a town called Foya in the tip-top corner of the country, where Liberia touches Guinea and Sierra Leone.
Lofa county is beautiful. We drove through gorgeous mountains and forests, small towns and tiny villages of mud huts with thatched roofs, goats and chickens and puppies in the dust of the road. The mountains around the town of Zorzor (halfway to Voinjama) may be the most picturesque place I’ve seen. Most cars making the run from Gbarnga to Voinjama stop in Zorzor for refueling for both humans and cars. We had another flat tire just south of Zorzor (again, fixed at pit-crew-worthy speed...flat tires make very timely stretch breaks too...) so we also waited there while the now-flat spare was patched and re-inflated. We arrived in Voinjama at around 8pm after one more flat tire (changing it in the dark posed only a momentary challenge) and I met up with my host and another NGO worker for some palm butter soup and a cold club beer at a cookshop, full of the victory of a successful day of travel.
The next day I got to explore Voinjama a little bit, checking out the market and ooh-ing and ahh-ing appropriately over the paved roads (a work in progress, but in the active sense of the word progress, which was good to see), the surrounding hills, and the small park area in the center of town with benches and landscaping and a little painted fence. Voinjama has one of the few government-constructed multilateral highschools, which means some students are enrolled in a vocational track alongside their academic work, and graduate with a certificate and some marketable skills, like carpentry, agriculture, electrical wiring, or baking. There is also a mountain on one side of town with a round gazebo-style palava hut built on top, and you can hike up to sit in the hut and watch the sun rise or set. I spent a lovely day cooking and eating and playing games and having awesome conversation, and got ready to leave the following morning for my final destination, a town called Foya in the tip-top corner of the country, where Liberia touches Guinea and Sierra Leone.
The road to Foya is one of the most terrible roads in the country, but that car ride was surprisingly smooth, without even the flat-tire-stretch-break I anticipated. I had unprecedented luck getting a car and dealing with other associated logistics. The driver was able to drop me off in the center of the (admittedly not-very-big) town, and I met up with my hosts, who showed me around. Since it is so close to the borders with two other countries, Foya has a pretty unique feel. Most people there speak Gisi in addition to Liberian English, the money changers have Guinea francs in addition to Liberty dollars, and they eat their potato greens fried in red oil over country rice. But in this place, as in most places in all three countries, you can also find evidence of the war. Twenty-one years ago, there was a massacre in Foya and there is a palava hut built on the site in remembrance of those who were killed.
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| two-foot-deep ruts on the road to Foya |
I was only in Foya for two days, but it was long enough for me to get a Gisi name: Yawa, meaning ‘fifth-born’. I added it to my collection: I’m Weade, ‘last child,’ a Grebo name given to me by my host family, who are from Maryland county, beacause I was there last Peace Corps host-child. I also have a Bassa name, Morpu, or ‘bright skin’ because I’m white. So in addition to tasty food and gorgeous pictures and very excellent celebration with some friends, my trip to Foya also netted me a new and lovely name.
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| Foya Central High |
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