Into The Bush

I quickly threw a bunch of clothes into a bag, made sure my camera and camcorder were charged, jumped into some shoes and rushed out the door. Thanks to a last minute plan, I was leaving smoggy Monrovia behind for a week and heading off into the bush.

A large part of what EQUIP Liberia, the NGO I’m volunteering for, does is to train community health ambassadors. It’s a pretty sweet program. People volunteer for a series of workshops and trainings stretched over a 15 month period. The trainings are all about disease prevention and basic hygiene. Most importantly the CHA’s (as they are called) are equipped to carry what they’ve learned back to their communities and share it through giving health talks, performing dramas, and living out what they preach. Its been a program with HUGE success. When you drive through towns where CHAs are active, you can see a drastic change.

The reason I am explaining this is because I was rushing off into the bush to be a part of three different graduations of these community health workers. My job was to take photos and video for future use in newsletters and promotional material, but that was really just an excuse to get out to some of the more remote parts of Liberia and meet some amazing people.

Destination number one was Karnplay. It was a squeaky clean town by Liberian standards. There were no piles of burning garbage on the side of the road and a lot of the large trees had been left in the midst of all the buildings. The children were unusually polite and serious, too shy to even laugh at my obvious whiteness. We stopped at one house. The small 4 year old boy standing outside took one look at Chris, my fellow Canadian volunteer, and booked it inside, apparently scared that “Jesus” had come.

(school children in Karnplay)

The ceremony was beautiful. It was complete with dramas and a song with the lyrics “Diarrhea is not fun so follow my advice / Wash your hands after poo-poo / Wash your hands after poo-poo / Diarrhea is no fun so follow my advice.” There was one graduate who had started his training years earlier but had to flee with the onset of the civil war. He had faithfully come back ten years later to complete what he began, because of his desire to serve his community. There were younger graduates thirsty for the knowledge, and elderly looking for a way to serve the towns where their grandchildren and great-grandchildren now live.

After the ceremony, the graduates brought out a “little” gift for us EQUIP staff as a thank you. My jaw dropped as they carried in seven bunches of bananas, two bunches of plantain, two pineapples, a whole bag of avocadoes, a pumpkin, and some chickens.
Karnplay was also the place where our car decided not to start. One failed push-start and an opportunistic mechanic later, we were back on the road.

Our Land Cruiser was now packed with goods, the chickens peeing all over the floor and the bananas shifting around precariously on the roof rack. We rolled and bounced our way down the rough dirt road towards Garplay. It seems like all the towns in the area end with “-play.”

About three hours and just as many sketchy log bridges later we pulled into Garplay. It was another gorgeous town, on a slight hill so that you had a view of the expansive rainforest around it. Since the ceremony here wasn’t until the next day, Ma Ester, the regional CHA trainer kindly put us up in her round house.

Soon the kids started to gather, wrestling in the yard. One boy started singing spontaneously and we all held our breath, because it was the most beautiful and fragile voice. After he finished we all clapped and he got really shy, but he sung later for us.

When a good crowd of kids had assembled, I pulled out a pack of bright orange balloons that might very good friends from home had sent me. The kids went nuts. Soon Garplay was filled with groups of children running pell-mell after balloons.

(the children of Garplay)

Around the soup pot that night we had an interesting discussion. We were talking about the different types of meat that the Liberians eat. We had covered the usual suspects like goat, ground-hog, snake, and monkey when Paygar, our Liberian friend said, “But the best meat of all is the chimpanzee. I love the chimpanzee!”
Chris, my fellow volunteer, was quick to interject. “But the chimpanzee is almost extinct. It almost finished!”

“Then we will finish it!”, declared Paygar with a large amount of pride.

That night I sat on the porch and played guitar, a new found skill of mine. Once in a while, and it happens quite rarely, you find yourself in a place void of worries or concerns. That night, sitting on that porch in that little village of Garplay, under a canopy of endless stars, and singing songs for God, I felt completely at peace. Everything was the way it should be. Sarah and Chris, the two other volunteers, came out to join me and we just passed around the guitar and worshipped into the night.

The next day’s ceremony was a smashing success. More songs, more dramas, and more beautiful people.

We headed off to our last destination, burdened with some more plantains. The road was long and soon we found ourselves driving in the dark on a bumpy road, getting pin-balled from side to side. We had just navigated another treacherous log bridge when we ran into real trouble.
A local and his machete proved to be providential and in a matter of minutes he had us through. Bonglay ended up being completely willed with sheep. Not the white, fluffy type on rolling green hills, but the matted-wool, floppy eared, dusty type that poop everywhere. Jerry the regional CHA trainer, a big man with a bigger voice, made us feel welcome and showed us to our beds.

Our beds ended up being in the most peculiar and pretty house in Liberia. Here in this remote jungle town an older couple had carefully nurtured an immaculate dwelling. The walls were covered with an eclectic mix of paintings, family photos, and framed shots of the London Tower guards. I even found a VW poster in one corner of the kitchen. A beautiful queen-sized bed was a welcome site.

Under the morning light Bonglay appeared as a town very much alive. The ceremony was big and noisy. We had to make it all the way back to Ganta that day, so after a quick bowl of rice with groundhog (which, by the way, is delicious) we jumped into the Land Cruiser and headed back.

Coming back out from the bush I felt like I left a little part of me there, under those stars surrounded by those trees and all those beautiful people.

(cooking a cassava snake)