Tri Repetae

Dogon Region of Mali

2006-06-27T16:57:00.000Z

Dogon Villages are easily identified by their distinctive square graineries. Most house compounds will have at least two, this one being a "men's grainery", with three doors, used for storing the millet meal that is their staple.

The Dogon are famous for their lavishly carved doors, mostly on their graineries, but occassionally on the houses as well. The faces on either side of the door are representations of the town Spiritual Leader and the Spiritual Leader's wife.

The Dogon region runs along a magnificent escarpment, and much of the earlier villages were built along the face of the cave. It is only recently, with more security, that the people have left the old houses and moved onto new villages on the floor. The last people left the cliff houses about fourty years ago. The structures are entirely mud-brick, and some of them border on being nearly a thousand years old.

2006-06-27T16:56:00.000Z

This is typical architecture for the town Spiritual Leader's house. The rergular pockmarks provide small ledges on which small icons and dolls are placed.

The cliff villages were built in an intricate three dimensional layers, with the streets and paths frequently running directly above houses or below the graineries. Suspending the graineries in the air has the strong benefit of preventing rats and rodents from being able to burrow into the food supplies.

The towns at the top of the cliff have slightly different architecture, with most structures made of stone instead of mud. On the left is one of the town's meeting places. The super thick roof of thatch keeps it quite cool, even in 105 degree weather. They are built low, with an interior height of around three feet. It is where all the men will gather to lounge, but also to settle disputes. The roof is kept purposely low, my guide claimed, to keep people from arguing. If you get angry, you hit your head.

2006-06-27T16:55:00.000Z

A view from the top of the cliff. We hiked up there and spend a night in a village at the top, sleeping on the roof of the houses. Most villages are actually a cluster of several smaller settlements, grouped closely together. Most are divided into seperate Animist, Islamic and Catholic communities. This is the height of dry season, with the rains expected to come in the weeks following my visit. The entirty of this view is actually farmland, although the soil currently has the consistency of dust. You can see in a few palaces in this photo that it has actually been plowed, but otherwise there are no telltale signs that it is able to support life. Come back in December, and the area is solid green.

The house of the Spiritual Leader in another town:

The town hunter.

And his house:

2006-06-27T16:54:00.000Z

Mopti, Mali

2006-06-14T16:02:00.000Z

I just got back to Monrovia from my trip to Mali. After flying into Bamako, I took a 12 hour, overnight bus ride to Mopti. Mopti is primarily a salt trading port located at the joining of the Niger and Bani Rivers. The salt is brought down from the Sahara in caravans to Timbuktu, and then loaded on small boats for transportation to Mopti, where is is exchanged for grain to be brought back up.

The construction in the entire region of East Mali is entirely mud brick, with the walls recovered with a fresh layer of mud every year after the rainy season. The mosque in Mopti is a classic (although relatively new at 80 years old), of the architecture of the region.

The boats are made in Mopti. Local blacksmiths will melt down scrap metal, usually from old cars, for the nails and other running gear for the boats.

The wooden hulls are fitted together by hand by local artisans.

2006-06-14T16:00:00.000Z

Some photos from a trip up and down the Niger and Bani rivers.

UN Corrpution and Human Rights

2006-05-18T22:12:00.000Z

A recent report highlights a major problem of the UN in Liberia--the exploitation of local women by people in positions of power. The problem is something that I, and many others I'?ve talked to here, have seen first hand

The problem encompasses not just locally hired civilian workers, but many members of the military contingents to the UN. The UN provides upper-middle class Western pay standards to workers and soldiers that frequently come from countries with much lower standards of living. The result is that the supervisors and Commanders will overlook quiet indiscretions in fear that an investigation will reflect on themselves? something that few are willing to risk.

The recent report by Save the Children- UK, concentrates on the exploitation of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and refugees in the many camps in the area. The perpetrators in these cases tend to be Liberians hired by WFP and other UN agencies to administer their programs in the country. This is a story that I have heard many times in the two IDP camps in my Area of Responsibility. The report also highlights the practice by other authority figures throughout the country, most disturbingly, local teachers who engage in various forms of bribery in lieu of tuition (which is frequently on the order of $20US per semester), or in exchange for passing grades.

The problem isn?'t just the local hires, though, but to foreign UN workers and soldiers. It is a practice that I had noticed by at least one former member of my team, and is apparently widespread among the peacekeepers and military observers. Most will rationalize having a girlfriend by asserting that no cash is changing hands, but will pay with large amounts of food for the families of the girls, vehicle rides, or implicit promises of visas.

For many UN workers, both Liberian and foreign, the jobs are extremely well paying, and a one year mission as a military observer can provide for a full retirement for a soldier when he returns home. The result is an extreme risk-avoidance, which shows up not only in normal duties, but also in the discipline of fellow workers. Priority is given to avoiding controversy, and not to accomplishing the mission.

In one recent incident, a military observer on another team reported the inappropriate sexual relationships of two fellow team members, and simultaneously requested a transfer to another team, to avoid retribution. This member's chain of command ensured that the investigation was squelched before it even began, and even denied the transfer request, putting him at risk, at the mercy of his teammates. The commander and team leader didn't want the situation to reflect poorly on them.

In a recent article, Claudia Rosen points out the ?fundamental problem "[is] that senior U.N. officials enjoy the privileges of sovereign immunity, but because the U.N. is not a sovereign state, they are spared the accountability that tends to come." But this problem extends not just to U.N. diplomats, but even to low level UN employees working in failed states. There is no functioning local law enforcement system, and few perpetrators are held accountable by their home governments once they've been repatriated.

The only system of punishment that the UN has is repatriation or being fired, and the loss of salary that comes with it. There is no viable system available to hold people responsible for their actions in failed states like Liberia. The result is that the actions of the UN is damaging thousands of young girls, and reinforcing the system of corruption that got Liberia to this state in the first place.

Local Art

2006-05-15T00:07:00.000Z

2006-05-15T00:01:00.000Z

A photo of the border with Guinea, Liberia is on the far side of the creek, and a Liberian customs agent we took with us in the foreground, in Guinea.

A few kids currently living in the Maimu IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) Camp.

A young mother with her child in the town of Beletanla.

Gbaomu Gold Mine

2006-05-02T16:42:00.000Z

Last week I found yet another gold mine, buried deep in the bush, except this time it was much larger than normal. It was a nice, hard hour plus walk through the bush, and down a rarely used path until we came upon a picturesque creek winding through the forest.

We scrambled along the creed for a ways, over quite rugged rocks and miniature waterfalls until we came to a narrow diversion canal directing water to the side. Following that for a hundred meters, and we stumbled across the first of seven claims. There were a good thirty workers there, and they claimed to produce about 18 grams a day, working entirely by hand.

The miners reported that the mine was over "10 shovels" deep, so considering a standard shovel is about four feet long, that's pretty deep. The workers had dug down about ten feet to the bedrock, and were digging the rock with nothing but hand tools.

The workers are powered by palm wine, provided by the local brewer. Trust me, its sweet, but otherwise tastes like standard moonshine. Our guide, expecting to get some small, small, endulged in a good sized glass of palm wine himself. He was just about stone drunk on the way back, and couldn't stay on the path. We teased him about being drunk, which he denies, and confiscated his kitchen knife, returning it to the town chief when we made it back to Gbaomu.

It is hard to pick out on the photo, but check out the dozen or so gold flakes on the top half of this rock.

2006-05-02T16:01:00.000Z

2006-05-02T12:34:00.000Z

Traffic Advisor

2006-04-28T15:25:00.000Z

Whenever I’m depressed and frustrated with the ineptitude of the UN, I am always brought back by some of the locals-- there is a strong and flourishing spirit here. They have a wonderful flair, mixing humor, religion and pride into their local color. You can see it in some of the town names; small groupings of mud houses with dirt floors go by the name of Money Sweet-ta, Poor Boy Town, Say Where, Bigboy Town, Smell No Taste, Underwear, Monkey Tail, the list goes on. Some of the more unimaginative simply name their town for themselves, the town chief. And here, there is no shortage of examples: Francis-ta, Thompson town, Sarah-ta, and on. Others are just a little overly descriptive of their sole notable feature, such as Waterfall, Youth Mission, Public Work Garage, the slightly optimistic White House, not to mention Tobacco Farm, New Building, Tomato Camp, or One House Town. Surprisingly enough, there are six houses in One House Town. The creatively named A_99 stands in a league of its own. There’s also a town called Camp II. I’m not sure where Camp I is, but I can point you to Camp II. And people will get fiercely defensive of their names. At one point on our map, there are two closely adjacent towns, Pelepolu I and Pelepolu II. Now, all the locals know the surrounding area pretty intimately. But when you stop in Pelepolu and ask the town name they’ll tell you Pelepolu. They’ll give you directions to a town fifty kilometers away, through the bush, and over three broken bridges; but can’t tell you the name of the town two hundred meters down the road. When you ask the name of the other village, they just shrug their shoulders and look away.

A friend of mine clued me to start asking people’s middle names. A Liberian will tell you that their middle name is Little Boy or Smooth, or something even further out there. A kid who is not yet eighteen years old will look you in the eye and insist that “Old Man” is written on his birth certificate. As for first names, it is quite common to find someone named Prince. But the first names around here are more commonly reflective of their deep seated religious beliefs. Seemingly half of the male population will have Old Testament biblical names, Abraham, Issac, Joseph (never Joe, mind you), David or Josiah. We have two guys named Moses who work as security guards at our accommodation. And when I ask a Liberian how they are doing (“How the body?”), it is not uncommon to get an “Ohh, God is good,” or a “Thank the Lord.”

For Liberians, most own nothing, and so to be able to buy anything of substance is a tremendous achievement. Nowhere is this more evident than on their cars. Many of the taxi drivers that I've talked to worked for NGOs for several years to afford the vehicle they are driving. It represents tremendous achievement and an ability to save and work hard for a reward. As a result, you'll pass vehicles with "Successful Prayers" written on the rear bumper of a car or taxi. Although, the one labeled "My Year of Divine Speed" is perhaps the most appropriate. So Liberia follows the common developing world custom of writing slogans or encouragement on their cars: “No food for lazy man”, is the African classic, but I’ve also seen "Don’t envy, pray for me", "Jesus Loves You Mr. Brown", "Tired Man" or "What God Bless is Blessed." Oddly enough, the bad grammar is frequently repeated with infallible consistency.

But the result is that their cars offer an interesting insight into the local's thoughts. Well, taxi and truck driver demographic, at least. Although "Things Will Never Be the Same Again", is seen on multiple vehicles, it is quite rare to find something that acknowledges the war directly. "No Peace, No Love" is much less common than "Jesus Never Fail", or some similar formation. In general, the spirit is not quite optimism, not quite resignation: "To be a man is not easy", "God Judgment, No Appeal" and "Why Dream?" are only occasionally peppered with a taxi proclaiming "Better Day Ahead". The social stature of owning a car is often directly confronted with a reflection of the recent national trauma, best epitomized by one truck's cab asking "Why Envy Me? WHY?" The sayings tend to reflect a feeling of lack of control, and a willingness to put their lives and their future in the hands of the Lord.

While the painted sayings are limited only by the driver's creativity and wry humor, the country is severely lacking in a diversity of stickers to put on their cars. This is surprising considering the universal habit of covering the entire rear window with faded pieces of bizarre social expression. Giant “City Boy” and “Challenger” stickers adorn the back windshields of most taxis. There are about three different Jesus stickers, one of just his bust, one full length in white robes. There’s also the classic with a cute baby in diapers looking up and straight at you with the note “Jesus, please forgive me.” But at first glance, Liberia seems to have a fascination with the early eighties, as nine taxis and minibuses out of ten will be decorated either with two stickers of a young Madonna (the Pop Princess, not the real one), or is a large decal of Sylvester Stallone in the Cobra movie logo.

But the Cobra stickers aren’t just an out of date pop culture reference. The recent war means that almost all these cars were purchased in the past three years, and what stickers to display a recent decision. As the preponderance of 50 Cent T-shirts display, the locals can be moderately up on western culture. These decals and logos mostly have meanings, even if non-obvious. A “City Boy” is a taxi that won’t take you into the bush, but only within and in between large towns. “Challenger” is a means of putting those who read it on notice, that if you work hard and save your money, you too can own a car. In all fairness, I have yet to figure out a deep meaning to Madonna, but others can be more ominous. During the latest phase of the civil war, the rebel group LURD was initially divided into three battalions, the University of Bullet, the Voltage Movement, and from Bopolu County, the Cobra Movement. The Deputy Chief of Staff of the LURD, Seeya Sheriff, was popularly known as General Cobra. Considering that the LURD was heavily known for its widespread atrocities, a taxi driver doesn’t just go and put a picture of Sly Stallone in front of a Cobra logo on the back of his cab lightly. It is there to send a message.

Fourteen years of war, and barely two years on, the entire country is still trying to catch its breath. Forget picking itself up and moving on, it is still at the dazed stage of trying to figure out where everyone is and what to do next. People are just returning home, and picking through the mess that lies around them. None of the farmers are working the large fields they used to, but trying to eek out some a subsistence crop. A patch of a dozen rice paddies, each a half acre square, is mostly overrun with weeds, and one sole paddy hosts a small cluster of corn and rice. Houses were destroyed, or neglected, and public facilities like roads have been torn apart and have disappeared into the bush. There are largely no seeds to be had, not to mention money to buy them, so people wait on a handful of NGOs to pass some out. There is no economy, no regular source of gasoline or rice or batteries.

So over this lies an unspoken tension. Despite the Taylor business, it wasn’t one man alone who tore this place apart. Bong County, along with Lofa just north of us, was Taylor central. There is a lot of sympathy for the man here. Those that speak out say that they feel sorry for the man. Or, refusing to believe what happened on the other side of the country, they look at the buildings that were only burned by the LURD and ask why Taylor is the only one on trial. But mostly, the old men in the village will lament, “it doesn’t change my troubles” to have him put in jail.

Ex-combatants get favorable status from NGOs and the government in employment. So, of the 5% of the population that does have a job, 90% go out to ex-combatants. The war was one that we in the west aren’t used to. There was no politics involved, just control. So, warlords (from all sides) get elected in the new government. I’ve had a couple people remark that, in retrospect, they wish they had become combatants. Then they’d get training and food and work.

This leaves the interesting current to the Christian faith that I see here. It does not reflect what I’d label optimism, or even hope. Tired old men have seen the worst in life; don't trust their neighbors, but beam with pride at the sight of an American officer. It’s easy to get cynical when people tell you that ex-combatants from both sides have just forgiven each other, and now work and play side by side. Over what petty jealousies have I held a grudge back home? But mostly, they never hated each other to begin with, but just got caught up in this desperate grab for anything more than what they had. We’ve forgiven each other. But does forgiveness necessitate forgetting?

So the colorful names have changed, but the color remains. Black Diamond, Nasty Duke and Dragon Master have receded. General Cobra and General Peanut Butter have been elected to congress. Ex-combatants linger, and people’s faith changes. So you see a man on the side of the road, without a shirt on his back, and covered in sweat, hauling a hundred pound sack of grain for fifty cents profit. Ask him how he is, and he’ll reply, “Thank the Lord.”

Baletanla

2006-04-28T13:12:00.000Z

The joys of being a Chief Elder:

Here is some older painting on a house that has survived. Note the graffitti from during the war:

The kids with their new soccer ball:

Martin-ta

2006-04-28T10:50:00.000Z

UN Corruption, Part II

2006-04-16T16:26:00.000Z

The worst part of the corruption in the UN isn't that it just wastes money on spectacularly expensive projects. It is that the corruption exists in every department, at every level and in every sector of the UN, at least here in UNMIL. It exists in headquarters, in almost every military unit, and it exists on my team.

Just over one month ago, I was in Monrovia, and walked from UNHQ to our apartment. Less than two blocks from the headquarters, on Tubman Boulevard, the primary road through town, I noticed several Nigerian soldiers on the sidewalk receiving money from a local businessman. The back of the UN truck was filled with a stack of over a hundred loaves of bread from the UN bakery. These soldiers were openly selling the food, and did not even take note as an American officer, in uniform, walked by, gawking.

The sale of United Nations food here is commonplace. Most of the street side stands are, coincidently enough, stocked with the exact same brand names of food as we're served in the mess. The fact that it is sold to the locals is widely rumored, although the bread incident is the only one I have personally observed. To my local contingent, the UN provides weekly shipments of fresh fruit. But in three months, I have been served exactly one apple, and only see grapes when some General is visiting town.

Amazing enough, you can see these fruits on sale at the local markets, despite the fact that they arent grown in Liberia. Many other contingents are worse, with troops seeing very little of the food that is provided by the UN.

I have personally seen local taxis fueling at the UN only gas station, and there is widespread reselling of UN gasoline at roadside stands. In the logistics section, HQ briefly launched an investigation into the amazing amount of lost diesel fuel, only to have the investigation quietly die after a week or so. One of the other American military observers tells me that he has personally seen soldiers at routine checkpoints taking cash from local drivers.

In my own team, one month before I arrived, there was a vehicle accident from drunk driving that was unreported. DUI is common, and in the recent weeks several locals were injured from a serious hit and run incident in Monrovia.

The UN has no real threat of enforcement of its own ranks except repatriation. Even that is no real threat, as most commanders, nervous to protect their own UN paychecks, sweep most incidents under the rug, not wanting to bring attention to themselves or their units. The incidents that to get investigated take months to complete, by which time the offending member has collected thousands of more dollars, and is probably already on his way home. Outside of the human rights abuse cases (which I'll go over in a future post), there are no IG channels to report incidents to except your own commanders. No performance reports from the UN will follow a person home, and very few countries will prosecute crimes that their soldiers and citizens commit while on a mission. There is simply no means for enforcement, and this fact is well known to everyone here.

UN Corruption, Part I

2006-04-15T09:13:00.000Z

The daily corruption in the United Nations is wasting tens of thousands of dollars on building a private golf course for the Bangladeshi generals, while thousands of Liberians continue to lack sufficient food to survive.

Liberia is a country with a per capita GNP of around $800 per year. The country has been devastated by fourteen years of civil war, resulting in over two million people being displaced to IDP and refugee camps in the region. The population is still returning home, and is attempting to restart basic, subsistence agriculture.

The problems in the country are two-fold. One, the basic resources needed for farming have been lost, while two, the transportation infrastructure has been mostly devastated, by the war and the annual torrential rains that wash out roads. Even if farmers can produce basic cash crops, they lack the ability to bring them to market and earn reasonable prices.

The resources needed are largely simple. The land which was last farmed in 2000 has become overgrown, and most farmers will spend months attempting to rehabilitate them, clearing bush, tilling soil, rebuilding irrigation canals and planting crops. All done by hand. Meanwhile, there are no trained blacksmiths in the towns to make the axes and shovels necessary; and no iron to make the tools from, either. Most markets do not have rice seed available, and much of what is sold, are bad seeds to begin with. But the lack of initial investment capability of the population means that the most farmers can't purchase the few seeds that are available.

In the meantime, most locals are relying on basic gathering techniques, on the remnants of the pre-war tree farms to build up the necessary cash to finance their living. In Liberia, they fall back onto two cash crops that are not victim of the annual growing cycle: rubber and palm oil. Palm oil will earn a local less than one dollar (US) for a five gallon jug. These 40 lbs jugs have to be hand carried to market, generally around two to three hours walk from their farm. Rubber is somewhat more lucrative, with a going price of around $300-700 per ton, but this also has to be man-transported to one of the many rubber purchasing stations, relegating families to harvesting only a couple dozen pounds per week.

But because of the transportation station, these prices are dramatically below normal market value. Half of the roads depicted on the maps have simply disappeared. Some have popped up elsewhere, but even those are plagued by disappearing bridges. The ability to bring the basic cash crops out of the towns, and to bring in much needed supplies, such as raw iron, tools or tin sheets for roofs. On one patrol recently, I was humiliated by constant stream of local people, around 50 in all, walking five miles to a village I had just visited, each of them carrying one 4x6 sheet of tin roof. I could have put the entire load on my nearly empty vehicle, but instead, eight year old kids are pressed into hard labor to do the portage.

The UN has the capability to improve on this situation. In country are a dozen military Engineering Companies, attached as a part of each sector's peacekeeping Battalion. These assets can and should be used to recondition roads, build proper water drainage and repair and strengthen bridges in our AOR. We have one Company of Bangladeshi engineering troops about a half click from my house. With rainy season barely one month away, it is important that as much work as possible get done before the beginning of May as possible. But, here in Bong County, the Sector 3 commander, a Bangladeshi one-star General, has reallocated those assets to building himself a golf course. Every day for the past month, on my way to the office, I've driven past two or three bulldozers sitting in the middle of a field, building up a tee box and conditioning a fairway.

This is not just negligence, but outright corruption. Tens of thousands of dollars of assets are being redirected away from the task of rebuilding Liberia, and assisting with the security and humanitarian situation in this country. Never mind the fact that the soil is to clayey, and the large clumps of soil make an inadequate surface for a flat fairway. Mere yards away from where the first hole will be situated, dozens of locals line up to beg for rice that is literally the table scraps from the peacekeeper's meals.

The transportation situation in this country is desperate. Much of the Liberia is inaccessible by road. And, in general, no NGOs or peacekeepers will go where they can't drive. There are thousands of Liberians who will suffer through one more rainy season, miss one year's worth of harvest, and be unable to get access to medical care because one General wants to play golf. This situation needs to stop immediately, with UN assets directed back to the mission of UNMIL, rebuilding Liberia.

Sanoyea

2006-04-09T12:08:00.000Z

The Clerk for Sanayea District, Bong County:

The Sanoyea Town Jail:

And the Market:

Moses Gets Some New Sunglasses

2006-04-09T12:01:00.000Z

We hire a local security firm to provide some guards for our house in Gbarnga. They are well paid for Liberia ($75US per month), and are given some uniforms to wear to work. They are pretty standard security guard uniforms, like you'd see on the States, polyster all. So none of the guys normally really wear it, they might wear the pants and go with some other shirt (if they have a shirt at all). Or, they put on some shorts or cut off pants and wear the shirt, with one button buttoned, not tucked in, andd all of it washed once a month, if at all.

So, last week, Moses bought himself a new pair of sunglasses. Immensely proud of them, he washes his uniform, and comes to work with his nicely pressed uniform, shirt tucked in, strutting around our front yard with his posture ramrod straight. I get home, and ask him why he's all dressed up today, and he tries to claim "no reason." Noting the key piece of new wardrobe, I start teasing him about wanting to show of his new sunglasses, and he bashfully tries to deflect the answer as a couple of the other guards start rolling on the ground in laughter. He was straight of central casting for CHIPS.

As the area is rebuilding, I'm noticing more and more murals and painting on the houses. Here is a standard example. Note the depiction of the three key phases of Christ's Life, the Birth of Jesus, the Cruxifiction, and the Disco Phase.

Gbamokolieta

2006-04-08T16:19:00.000Z

International Women's Day

2006-04-08T16:02:00.000Z

The Town of Garr

2006-04-08T11:12:00.000Z

Here's a few photos from the town of Garr, on the extreme East of our AOR (Area of Responsibility). They sit at the end of a long side road, and are a classic example of the Liberian culture. The town itself is about 15 houses and a population that they claimed was in excess of three hundred people.

Note the slogan written on the house behind them:

And I guess their soccer team must be well known.

The King of Garr:

Update

2006-04-05T13:44:00.000Z

Hello all, I'm on my way down to Tubmanburg today and will be spending two days doing some long patrols with my main man Brian down there, and back to Gbarnga on Saturday. I've been okay, but was laid up for a day on Monday because of some bad food, but I'm back in prime shape and ready to roll. Outside of that, our well has been running dry lately, and my teammates are too cheap to spend the $50 bucks to get it dug deeper, so I've been on a minimal shower schedule as well. Now, if only the Bangladeshis would turn our power back on at night, that'd be nice too. I have a few posts in the works that should be up soon, and hopefully sometime before Saturday I should have a whole slew of photos up too.

Border Guard

2006-03-28T21:36:00.000Z

Last week, on a patrol up to the Guinea border, we walked an hour past town to one of the four river crossings to talk with the customs agent who mans the outpost. The place was in the middle of the wilderness, literally miles from anywhere. The St Pauls river flowed through, separating Liberia from Guinea, and there on the border, in the midst of the bush was an old man, quietly checking all who passed. Josiah was a wonderful man, proud of his post, and taking his job seriously. He quickly took to his foreign visitors, quick to tell us everything that passes, how much he charged and how often people walked through. For this job, he received no formal salary, and I pressed him on what he does with the customs fees. He tells me that he takes them up to the regional office every few weeks, but confided that the office will usually let him keep seventy-five percent or more as a per diem. Here is a man, who lives in a small mud house, and walks an hour to work every morning. He tells me that his one request is for the customs department to come and build him a small shelter in his post, because when it rains, he is left out standing in the shower. The remittances that the customs office lets him keep amounts to maybe four dollars a week, but even in the bush, that is not enough to survive. Although his family does not live in the area, he relies on his brother and sisters, he tells me, to farm and to help him live.

Not convinced that they had customs agents at all four postings, I asked the names of the other three, which he promptly rattled off. The fourth name on the list, though made me blink. In the middle of the bush, working on the edge of the river, in the far reaches of northern Liberia, stands one John the Baptist. I look around at the wilderness, and cant think of a more appropriate place. I didn't ask Josiah if he eats locusts, but we laugh together at the shared thoughts. Josiah tells me he isnt sure how John got that name, but that is the only name he is known by. I ask if it is his legal name, and Josiah shrugs. Disappointed by the lateness of the hour, I tell Josiah of my resolution to return soon, and to meet John the Baptist.

When were done getting the information that we wanted, I finish with a little pep talk. Informing everyone of the importance of the border, them this is how the weapons and fighters first flowed into the country seventeen years ago, I remind them that they stand on the frontlines of peace in their country. As I give this little speech, I see Josiah stand taller and swell with pride. He stands a little taller and gets that shine in his eye. One man, with no defenses, insufficient salary, food and shelter may not be the best way to safeguard the region, but it sure helps. These small, independent officials have only returned to work out here in the past month or two, and their presence is a sign of progress, however meager.

The Crater

2006-03-24T13:03:00.000Z

Sometimes one image will stick with you, something so simple and concise that you can forget the rest of the details, and know an entire place, just by one image. Over a month ago, we did a patrol down to Bong Mine, a former iron mining town not too far from Monrovia. The abandoned strip mine dominates the town, with a massive terraced scar carved out of the top of the small mountain a mile north of the city center. The old refinery is visible, just below it, with its rusting, steel skeleton looking like it hadnt been touched in decades. The town itself was odd, and it took a while to sink in that every building in town was made of concrete, without a mud hut in sight. Sure, they still showed the ravages of war, none of them painted, with telltale scorch marks framing the windows and doors, salvaged, ramshackle roofs, if they were even occupied. Most barely stood at all, crumbling, with little more than one or two corners standing above the telltale foundation. This had been a wealthy town, once.

A short railroad ran from the port in Monrovia directly to Deans Town, and dead ended, abruptly, at the foot of the mine. Unlike the main railroad which bisects the country, this one still works, nominally. All the rails were still in place, as were most of the ties. Two flatbed cars stood on the tracks just off the main market, stacked with fruit and produce that were going to get hauled off to market in the capitol. Frankly, even today, with the mine devastated, and years away from being brought back into action, the town was orders of magnitude better off than any other town that Ive visited. The railroad, although it cant handle any freight that weighs more than a few hundred pounds, provides an economic lifeline that no other place in the county has. As we drive up to the mine, the remnants scattered through the area reveal a past of a sophisticated operation as good as any of that in the states. The strip mine itself had once been serviced by several large trucks, but all that remains of them is the axles and wheels demonstrating what they once were here. The wheels are six feet in diameter, meaning that just the tires of the things had been maybe nine feet. Dozens of workers are up there, tearing apart scrap metal and loading it onto two additional flatbed train cars. The salvagers work by hand, and carry the pieces down the hill on their backs and sell it to somebody, who ships it off to Monrovia.

This had once been one of the primary sources of funding for the various besieged governments. The rebel groups, more interested in tearing down the government than building their own capacity, had simply razed the area. Except for the Tucker Bridge in Monrovia, no other places showed the scars of the battles that had raged here, barely three years ago. Buildings were scorched and showed craters from direct hits of RPG fire. Dozens of cars littered the side of the road into town. And in town, the population was loaded with ex-combatants.

Bong Mines is a town of several thousand people. Next to Gbarnga, it is the largest in the county. The local Liberian National Police (LNP) tells us that it is home to nearly two thousand ex-combatants. This is out of a population of maybe ten thousand.

We went up to visit the LNP, who had just relocated their headquarters. They had moved their HQ up to the top of the hill, away from the busy town market because thats where it had been before the war. This was their rightful place, and a faded, worn cement logo above the main entrance backed up their claim. The five of them were all old, with one of them maybe clocking in in his forties. They were proud, and insisted on respecting formalities as we showed up.

The building was like all others in the town, unpainted, previously burned, and lacking a roof in most sections. Weeds sprouted through the concrete, but the place had been swept of debris, and little offices set up in several rooms, rickety wooden chairs, sometimes behind an equally small and teetering table.

We met with them in that room, and talked with them for about a half hour. Yes, they were getting paid by the government, but that was all they were getting. The officers would purchase pens and paper out of their own paychecks to write their reports on. They had no manpower, no training, no communications, not even a single cell phone, and had no access to transportation. They were formal, giving us each of their full titles, and carefully taking down our names and titles as well, to include in their report. Fights raged on every day in town, as the ex-combatants, making money from their salvage operations, purchased alcohol and got in scuffles. The officers had no way to prevent it, and couldnt stop anything once it had gotten started, either.

But the whole conversation, one image kept drawing my eye, and I couldnt help but to stare at it. The police chief was behind his little table desk, sitting erect in his creaky chair. The rest of us, three military observers, and his four inspectors and policemen, were lined up in two parallel rows down the side of the walls, facing each other. But, right there, right at eye level while you were sitting; not four inches directly behind the police chiefs head; the pockmark from a single bullet had been carved in the cement wall, testament to the fate of his predecessors.

Liberian Roller Coaster

2006-03-21T13:55:00.000Z

They say that you learn something new every day. Yesterday, I learned, in case any of you are in an emergency situation where you need to drive an old Soviet APC, first gear is to the left and down, not to the left and up. Otherwise it's just like a bus with Standard Transmission.

We had just a short patrol, out to downtown Gbarnga to talk with a couple of Government mining officials. When we got to their office they were in the middle of a meeting, so Liu and I backed off and promised to come back in an hour. On the drive out, I had pointed out Charles Taylor's mansion, which is clearly visible from the highway just outside of town. To kill a little time, we decided to head out there and nose around.

In 1990, when Charles Taylor suddenly appeared with a small army on the border with Ivory Coast, he moved forward, and within a couple of months was able to take control of 90% of the country, everything except Monrovia. From then until 1997, when he was installed as President, Gbarnga served as the capitol of Taylor-land, and shortly after arriving here, Taylor used it as his base, not just for government, but for training and equipping his warlord army, the NPFL. This, along with several houses for him and his family, sits on a huge farm on the edge of Gbarnga. The front of the farm stretches for over 2 km along the road, and whenever I ask someone how far back it goes, the response is, "It never ends."

But today, the entire complex is completely deserted. In a country overflowing with refugees, and people squatting in ramshackle houses and planting small gardens everywhere, the farm is almost completely barren of people. The houses, while crumbling, stand unused for shanty style lean-tos. The expansive stretch of rolling green hills remains almost completely devoid of usable agriculture, except for two or three small, small patches of corn or banana trees. No Liberian wants to get caught on Charles Taylor's farm if he comes back.

So we roll up, and the house is even larger that it looks from the distant road. It is two stories, with a four dozen columns towering over a dramatic sweeping steps, and a pinnacle with "CT" directly overhead. All made of concrete, mind you. The place was unfinished when the last period of the civil war broke out in 2003, and it remains in this state today. We had a chance to wander through it, with nearly a dozen bedrooms, a couple grand staircases inside, and several porches high above the terrain with some grand views of the lush jungle around you. Unlike many of the buildings in this country, it doesn't bear obvious scars from the fighting, but closer examination reveal a few scattered bullet holes, and a dozen casings and discarded ammo boxes litter the floor in a few places.

But as we bumped up to the house, and came up the driveway we noticed a dozen brightly colored flags in the back courtyard, and stumbled up into a group of Bangladeshi soldiers conducting some kind of training. Most of the soldiers were sitting inside in chairs in nicely lined rows, and facing a board with an instructor talking to them. They quickly rubbernecked as we approached, and a couple came out to greet us.

We were quickly introduced to the young Bangladeshi Captain running the training, and he invited us to poke around the house and then to sit down with him at a table set aside in a separate room for some tea and cigarettes. The local BANBAT (Bangladeshi Battalion) was conducting some APC (Armored Personnel Carrier) driver training, and today were working on navigating at low speed through tight turns and with the severely limited visibility that the APC affords.

After having something to drink and some fresh fruit, the Captain invites us down to take a look at his APC. We crawl up the thing and settle up on top while a Corporal guides the monster around the track. The ride is quite smooth, with fifteen tons of mass to cushion the ravines and bumps along the way. After that, we jump down inside the thing and I settle in the driver seat with Liu in the commander's chair to my right. The controls are decidedly familiar, with a large steering wheel, clutch, brake, accelerator and gear shift right where you'd expect them. I get a guided tour to the control panel and the facilities and workings of the thing. Dropping the clutch to the floor, I'm told to press the button marked battery, and then the one marked start, and the thing quickly jumps to life with a nice deep rumble growling away twenty feet behind me.

The clutch is seriously heavy, but I quickly get the thing moving, and launch my way around the track. Visibility is through a small foot window directly in front of me giving a whole fifteen degree field of vision, and then five more little windows, narrow slits an inch high and five across, each with mirrors providing miniature periscope systems for viewing across a slightly wider field of vision, but with serious blind spots in between the windows, not to mention beside and behind you. I guess you usually rely on the commander sitting with his head up out the window and guiding you.

I get around the track, without knocking over a single flag or even stalling the thing. I think people around here are continually impressed with how well Americans can drive. Sure, it's a little bit wider than my old Caviler, but the principle's still the same. Trading spots with Liu, I immediately start messing with the commander's battle sights in the right hand seat. I swivel the things right and left and continually point to random switches, implicitly asking if I can flip them or not. About halfway around the track, Liu gets seriously confused, and is quickly entirely off the path, bulldozing a half dozen flags in the process. At this point, the Bangladeshi troops watching from the house are thoroughly enjoying themselves, as Liu wanders around and then proceeds to drive the entire track backwards.

We get out, and spend a little more time taking photos and just generally poking around. We retire for another few minutes so everyone else can get a cigarette, and we try to excuse ourselves to get back to town for our meeting. The Bangladeshi Captain insists that we let him take us on a roller coaster ride, so we hop back aboard while he settles into the driver's seat.

Liu and I crawl to the top, and on directions, I take a perch on top of the fifty caliber gun turret. We're told to hang on tight, but frankly, there's not that much to hold on up there. I find a small attachment point, and grab it with my right hand and desperately attempt to grip the light with my left. We go roaring off, down the road to explore the farm a little more. He gets the thing up to over sixty kilometers an hour, slamming on the breaks periodically to make over-exaggerated, wide turns. We roll over a dozen hills and wind through the roads flying past Taylor's sister's old house and a few other scattered buildings. After a while, we come up on a small lake and go tearing over some bush in an attempt to turn around. On the way back, I duck a few times to avoid the lashing of trees from the side of the road, but on one instance, get a nice solid whack right on my knee from a tree branch two inches thick. We slow down and wheel around the last turn. My hands are sweaty from trying to hang on, and I loosen my right hand to adjust it a bit. The driver pegs the gas, and I go tumbling backwards, rolling over the fan of grenade launchers just behind me. The Bangladeshi Corporal helps catch me as I get back a hold with my left hand in place of my right. I pull myself back into place as the APC pulls back into the back courtyard, all in one piece.

As If There Aren't Enough Checkpoints Already

2006-03-18T19:40:00.000Z

With fifteen thousand troops in the mission, the peacekeeping presence here is actually quite significant; the largest in the UN. But their deployment is quite concentrated, usually in company strength or larger, and only along the major roads. So although this may violate the first rule of counterinsurgency warfare, i.e. that the counterinsurgent should live in direct contact with the population; it does mean that there are plenty of troops to man the checkpoints. Along the main highway, more than a half dozen checkpoints stretch across the road in the three hour drive from Monrovia to here, with another half dozen past our complex on the way to Guinea. All these look the same, with two men at each end in sandbagged posts, and a serpentine limiting the road to one lane. These are a severe annoyance to the Liberians, but tend to provide enjoyment to the members of the UN, as they see how fast they can do the giant slalom in the giant white SUVs as you get waived straight through.

Well two weeks ago, a couple locals decided to engage in a age old money-making scheme, and set up shop on one of the primary side roads about a half hour drive from here. Stopping passing cars, they demanded a couple dollars toll to let them pass. Needless to say, word of this quickly reached the UN security forces, and they launched a raid at 0400 in the morning a day following and swept up the entrepreneurs.

So then earlier this week, two others decided to set up a similar scheme, but with a twist. They picked the main highway, about 5 km from here. Now, to overcome the problem of getting cars to stop, on the high speed paved road, they just let the peacekeepers do it for them, setting up shop directly in the middle of a UN checkpoint, mere feet from armed peacekeepers. Now, you would think that this situation would be easy to solve. But the head of security shows up, after nearly an hour of operation, to find that the troops hadnt even moved the bandits. A crowd, consisting of the entire adjacent village, had gathered, and were arguing about who owed who just how much money, as the peacekeepers looked on, somewhat bewildered. It only took security about two minutes to grab two drunk guys and throw them into the back of a UN Civilian Police (CIVPOL) vehicle, but it makes you wonder why the guys with guns couldnt have done that a little bit sooner.

How You Can Tell a Real MILOB

2006-03-16T21:15:00.000Z

So, on our way down here to Buchanan, we decided to take the back way, so that we’ll see more of our AOR (Area Of Responsibility). And, if things went smoothly, we would be able to shave off nearly one hour from the long route that sticks to the paved roads. We knew the roads through Bong County quite well, and knew that once we crossed the border, the road is really nice, and actually maintained. Things always sound better in theory.

We set off Wednesday after breakfast, and make record time through our AOR and reach the bridge over the river separating our teams in a record three hours. We pause to take some pictures of us on the old train bridge, and to admire the jungle reflecting off the mirror smooth water. Some locals pass us on their way to see some friends on the other side, and we chat for a short while. They inform us that the next bridge is out, but they don’t seem too concerned, so we jump back into the car and press. A few clicks later, we reach the site of the construction. About twenty Liberians are working on a good sized span over a small creek, while a small patrol of Bangladeshi troops look on. Although the bridge itself is in good shape, the dirt approaches to the four foot diameter tree trunks that span the creed aren’t finished, so we won’t be able to go over the conventional way. Undaunted, the locals wave us to a track through the trees just to our right, and dozens of tire tracks mark the detour.

At this point, I’m driving, so we veer right, around a grove of trees. The well driven path then dives into a span of water maybe fifteen feet across, but of unknown depth. The deep mud tracks leading into this are a mess of two foot ruts. Several of the workers and run over, and are waiving us off of that approach and back right. About this point, two guys come popping out of the bush and pulling vines away, trying to indicate our new plan of attack. Nervously, I pull over to the area and nose the car into the bush. After a thick row of trees, the stream continues, and a few more gesturing Liberians indicate that we drive into the bush, crank a hard left and drive up the creek, here about six inches deep, and back onto the road. I send Maksat out of the car to investigate and to marshal the car around the sundry tree trunks.

Now, normally in situations like this, the best advice is to trust the locals. They have plenty of experience, and know the area far more intimately than we can. Plus, they will usually waive you onto the path that everyone else takes. I'm quickly learning that although they frequently have good insight, this isn't always the best policy. As we look at the vanguard of bush, it’s quickly apparent we’re the first to attempt this innovative route. I back the truck up, move over a few feet and reenter the bush from a different angle to avoid the sundry trees and get a straight shot to the creek.

With the encouragement of the locals, I take the truck into the bush, and commit to the plan. After grinding through the first few feet of vines, the front wheels drop out from in front of me and my tires start spinning. A half dozen Liberians jump behind the truck, and with their encouragement, I get the chassis over the ledge; and dive down into the little valley. The rear tires start to grip again and push us farther forward, eventually dropping the entire truck into the muck that is the riverbed. All four tires start spinning helplessly and the vehicle takes on a severe list. Now we’re really stuck.

The rest of the work crew comes over, as do the Bangladeshis, and we spend the next forty five minutes attempting to dig out the mud under the truck. We put boards under the tires, and attempt to dig out under certain tires to get the vehicle more level. But very quickly we spin the tires enough to kick the dirt out from under all of them until the entire of the chassis is sitting on the mud.

The Bangladeshi Major informs us of a logging truck working just down the road, and dispatches a vehicle to go get it. Ten minutes later, the growling of a diesel engine presages the entrance of one of the meanest looking tractors around. Six foot tall tires are mounted on a short squat truck, with a blade on the front and giant winch on the rear. Meant for quickly bulldozing the bush to pull down hardwood trees, this thing is all business.

It first sets up on the far side of the bridge, and they drag it’s cable and attach it to the front of the car. This doesn’t look at all good to me, because the cable is at a ninety degree angle to the direction of the car, and will be attempting to pull it sideways. I try and inform a couple people of my concerns, but they apparently don’t share them. The tractor operator starts pulling on the winch, and quickly my fears prove correct. The front tire wants to go sideways, and so only succeeds in stacking up a pile of mud that is soon reaching over the hood. The vehicle doesn’t want to roll forward, as anyone who has done basic vector geometry could tell you. My shouts eventually get the attention of the operator, who can’t see the truck himself through the foliage, and he shuts it down. The consensus quickly falls on pulling it out from behind, and then dragging it forward through the original opening next to the bridge.

The tractor drives over the bridge, and comes around behind. The first aborted attempt has angled the car differently, and you now can’t pull it straight back. At this point, the Liberians lack of ecological sensitivity shines through, and the tractor proceeds to tear open a new hole behind the truck, bulldozing a dozen small trees and countless vines, opening a nice, new, wide berth through which to pull the truck straight back. Spinning around, we hook up the winch to the back of the truck and proceed to pull it through twenty feet of thick clay mud and back up the steep but short embankment. The mud doesn’t want to let go, the front bumper of the car is pulled a good six inches outward, but we survive, with no mechanical damage.

Back out of the mess, we still have to cross the bridge. So, we hook up the winch to the font of the truck, and let him pull us merrily through the first alternate path. We were delayed only ah hour and a half, and are quickly back on the road down to sunny beaches of Buchanan. We’ve spent the past two days with MILOBs from the rest of the sector, and take pride at pointing out our mud caked, obviously damaged car; informing them that you can tell which MILOBs actually do some work around here.

2006-03-15T09:19:00.000Z

Hey everyone, sorry that I havent gotten a post up in a week. I have two posts in the works, but havent finished them up yet. Meanwhile, Ive been in Gbarnga for the past week, but havent been on too many patrols. Under my protests, my Deputy Team Leader has told me to not go on a couple patrols because he thinks that I was too busy doing some office work. But, Im heading on down to Buchanan tomorrow for a sector operations meeting, and will be back this weekend. Buchanan is down on the beach, so it cant be too bad. Ill get some more up when I can.

2006-03-08T15:27:00.000Z

Elmina Castle, Gold Coast, Ghana

2006-03-07T23:51:00.000Z

Elmina was another fortress, just 7 km from Cape Coast. It is just barely visible in the third photo in the post on Cape Coast Castle, at the end of the peninsula sticking out from the beach. It was built by the Portugese, but later captured by the Dutch, after they landed up the beach, and put some cannons on top of a hill dominating the fortress. After taking control of the area, the Dutch protected their flank but building a second fortress on top of the hill. The castle itself is surrounded on three sides by water, and has two moats on the fourth side that was home to several crocadiles. The palm trees in the photos below are growing in the currently dry moat. There is a fresh water river flowing out that seperates the castle itself from the beautiful little fishing village of Elmina. Much like Cape Coast castle, Elmina was clearly built around serving the slave trade. It had about a dozen dungeons that once held nearly one thousand people at once. There were two additional cells just off the main courtyard. The one on the right was for soldiers, and was ventilated, lit, and had a place for food. The door on the left was for troublesome slaves, who would be thrown into a room with no ventilation and allowed to die of thirst or suffocation before the bodies were thrown into the ocean. The Door of No Return:

Kakum National Park

2006-03-07T23:37:00.000Z

Heading north of Cape Coast about 20 km, was Kakum National Park. It's primary claim to fame is a series of suspension bridges, about 30 meters above the jungle floor, bringing you through, and above the jungle canopy. The view from up there was absolutely gorgeous, and the canopy was so thick that even looking straight down, you could not see the forest floor. I spent several days traveling with two American medical students, and when we were on the hike back from the canopy walkway, we were accomponied by two Swedish med students. Halfway back, we heard a short gasp from Sylvia, the Swede, followed by "a snake!" She was walking directly behind me, about ten feet back. Her exclaimation, of course, caused us to rush back to check it out. A green mamba, over six feet long, had been sitting on a branch, adjacent to the trail. It was a yellowish green, and fit in quite well with the jungle foliage. Scott, Trey, and I had walked right past it, with it maybe eighteen inches from our left elbows. We had evidently scared it, causing Sylvia to see it as it slithered back up the tree. We crowded around, about five, ten feet away as it slowly crawled up an adjacent tree. We got a second look at it, but unfortunately, we were all too slow to get any good photos.

2006-03-07T23:31:00.000Z

It was fun to watch the local fishermen head on out and haul in the catch. They would launch a large boat, usually with about five crew. The would struggle against the surf for the first several yards, aggressively paddling in time with each other while the sound of thier songs and chants would drift over the crashing waves. When leaving shore, they would let out their nets behind them, and would eventually run from the beach out several hundred yards.

Cape Coast, Ghana

2006-03-07T22:54:00.000Z

I spent several days in western Ghana, crawling around some of the old slave castles built by the Europeans. Fort Amsterdam was built by the Dutch in 1595 and later rebuilt by the English.

Cape Coast Castle was also built by the Dutch, this time in 1637, but passed through Swede hands before being captured by the English. Unlike the more standard castle construction of Fort Amsterdam, Cape Coast castle was clearly built around slave trading. While Fort Amsterdam, and some of the very early castles had a more symmetrical construction, the later forts had most of their firepower oriented outward, protecting against attack from other European navies, but not as concerned with pacification of local tribes. But it was also clear in the size and location of the slave dungeons. The holding cells are much larger, and located very close to the exit directly to the beach through the Door of No Return.

The surrounding city of Cape Coast, hometown of Kofi Annan.

2006-02-24T01:10:00.000Z

Off to Ghana for a week. I will post some photos as soon as I get back.

2006-02-24T00:33:00.000Z

2006-02-22T18:55:00.000Z

Naming Your Town

2006-02-22T18:38:00.000Z

Classic Liberian dialogue: "What's this town name?"

"Faulkner-town."

"What's your name?"

"William Faulkner."

Home Sweet Home

2006-02-22T18:26:00.000Z

I'm back in Monrovia for a few days, and will be in Ghana next week on leave. There is something comfortable about coming back home to the Nigerian APC sitting out front. It just helps you sleep easier at night.

Propaganda

2006-02-22T18:19:00.000Z

Just a friendly health reminder for everyone at home.

2006-02-19T18:14:00.000Z

Across the River

2006-02-19T17:44:00.000Z

After taking a day to dry out from my last patrol, I set out this Wednesday to the town of Gboata, lying on the border of Liberia and Guinea. It is a small town, of maybe one or two hundred people. Its market day, so the town chief is out. We sit down and meet with the school principal, instead. By the looks of the town, all the adults are at the market, as we are quickly surrounded by dozens of kids, and two adults. After a while, two teenagers show up as well. The principal teaches in a school on the edge of town, with about one hundred fifty students. Both he and the five teachers who work for him are all 'volunteers'. Although obstinately working for the government, they just laugh when asked if theyve been paid.

This is all too common a problem. In Monrovia, there are a number of slightly odd signs about, which warn "stop bribery in our schools." According to our security guards here in Gbarnga, this is the only way that the teachers make a living, by letting their pupils purchase better grades from them. The children of our guards, however, are all lucky enough to be able to send their kids to schools run by various missionary organizations. There, the teachers are paid, and the quality of their education is much better. But in the smaller towns, the residents aren't so lucky. You would hope that in the bush, all the residents of a town would gang to support the teacher, and in theory, this is what does happen. But the reality is that when the teachers are put in the position of depending on others for survival, they tend to show more leniency to the families that help them a little bit more.

Surprisingly, the town does have some promising government presence of a different kind. The far edge of town is manned by two officals, one who works for the Liberian customs agency, and the other who works for immigration. They even have a little gate crossing the road, and a Liberian flag on a crooked, twenty foot long bamboo pole to make it all look official.

The closest operable market for the town is across the river, in Guinea, so today, on market day, a large number of people will head over there to sell coffee and coconuts and cola nuts. The market is also better stocked than most in Liberia, allowing them to buy second hand clothing and batteries and little cubes of chicken soup. The customs agent reports that he dutifully writes down the names of everyone crossing the border in his book, and that nobody who doesn't live nearby crosses the border there. Only locals, he says, about ten or fifteen on market day. The rest of the week, it's quiet.

We have them join us in the truck, and we drive the one kilometer past the town, and to the river. The river however is currently just a large creek. A huge tree lies across the water, just to the side of the road. We get out of the truck and run across. Too easy. We look back at the river and comment that I'll bet people can drive across. Of course, they reply, no problem. The water is less than two feet at its deepest, so Liu and I try to gauge how firm the sand is. "I'll try it," proclaims Liu and he demands the keys from me. He runs back across, starts up the car, and promptly drives into Guinea.

We had noticed a couple people up the road a little further, and while we were messing around at the border, a minivan full of about twenty people with five feet of cargo on the roof stops up there, and they begin to unload. We jump into the car and try to drive on by. An old man, who had been there from the start, keeps waiving us over and yelling something at us, so I park and we get out, next to the van. Nestor, another team member starts rattling off in French with the man, and promptly informs us he is Guinean customs.

We try and negotiate our way past him, wanting to drive up a mile to check out the market. He refuses so we throw a load of questions at him, through our interpreter. He claims much the same; that no one comes by except on market day, and even then only ten or so. Another vanload of people arrives, and they start unloading, waiting patiently to have their stuff checked. It appears the standard procedure involves the customs agents at check through the baggage, which is quite promising. The agent tells us he checks for weapons and drugs. When I ask about people smuggling gold or diamonds, would he notice those, he waves me off, "they use the main road."

We bid farewell, and return back across the border. The two Liberian agents have taken their places on a couple previously unseen wooden chairs, waiting for the people to cross, sitting upright, and trying their best to look official. At least they're trying.

Forty Workers to the Rescue

2006-02-16T13:52:00.000Z

Several days ago, a patrol in the south east extreme of our sector came back with news of a gold mine not too far from the town of Rock Crusher, where they had been. The problem is that the town of Sega is inaccessible to our vehicles, and is about a two hour walk from the furthest extent of the drive. The locals also bragged about a nearby waterfall, not too far from the mines, said to be the largest in Liberia. None of the towns are on any of the maps we have, and the area is completely untouched by the UN. Immediately, Shahab and I started making plans.

We decided to go with a four man patrol, with two people staying with the vehicle, and two of us on a foot patrol to the mines and then the waterfall. We gather plenty of food for a full day, and set out at 0630 on Monday morning. It is three hours down to Rock Crusher, and we arrive a little after 0930. Asking directions to the waterfall, the locals point down the lane of empty stalls that are used for the local market once a week. Curiously, we drive through the narrow lane, worried about knocking down the feeble structures with our big, white SUV. After making our way through there, and rounding a couple houses, a small path shows itself in the grass, and that quickly opens up into a full-fledged road. Its no wonder previous patrols ever discovered the road, without three locals insisting that there is a road there; you never would have noticed it. We blast out of Rock Crusher with the GPS recording the path of our new-found route. I wonder how many other hidden roads lay waiting to be discovered on the opposite sides of towns we fly by every day.

We pass through three little villages, tucked away into this little corner of Liberia, each time asking for the waterfall, and each town verifying that the end of the road is Kpallah. Through each village, the road continues to get sketchier. As evidence of how little this are is traveled, the road never continues through the towns. We just have to wind through the huts in the direction the townspeople point us toward, and the road eventually picks up again on the other side. Nearly four hours into the trek, we pull into Kpallah. The village of Sega is an hour and a half to two hours walk from here, with the waterfall another thirty minutes to an hour past that. We pull our bags out and ready ourselves for the hike. Berhanu lets us know that he is going with us, so we decide to leave Nestor with the truck.

According to the guidebooks, Liberia is covered by two types of terrain, broadleaf forest, and grassland. The term grassland is deceptive, however, as the grassland is covered with a thick tangle of bushes and vegetation which rise about ten feet high. The area is still fairly heavily forested, with dozens of trees, coconut, pineapple, banana and rubber, springing up every acre. The primary difference between the two types of cover is that in one the canopy is forty feet above your head, in the other, you walk through the thick of the jungle canopy. But Liberia is also a fundamentally humid place. There is no escaping the 80% humidity, and many mornings we awake and drive to breakfast through some of the thickest fog imaginable. Although the fog will burn off by early morning, the rest of the humidity hangs in the air, and leads to generally overcast days. If you take a look at some of the aerial photos from my helicopter patrol, the distance is quickly obscured by clouds, destroying the possibility of nice clear photography.

The reason this is important is shade. On our foot patrol last week, we were blessed by the overcast Liberian skies. Although the temperature was in the high eighties, and we were certainly soaked with sweat from our two hour walk, we were able to survive quite well. On Monday, however, the skies were mostly open, and unlike the western part of our AOR, this was grasslands, not proffering much in the way of shade. The temperature was in the low nineties, and Im sure the heat index would have been well over a hundred.

We set off from Kpallah, with one man as our guide. We start our march south, making good time over the nice wide trail. We quickly cross a stream on two thick tree trunks, and make our way up a steady hill. The trail curves slowly to the east and then back south after passing through a small village of a dozen huts. Ten minutes into the journey, a stream of sweat, building up on my forehead, rolls down, and lands solidly my glasses. Another falls down before I can clear my distorted vision. I remove the glasses. We make our way across the endless litany of hills and descents, and wind our way south. Occasionally a felled tree lies across the path, requiring us to pause, and exert ourselves to climb over. We cross three more creeks, each time balancing on a thin tree trunk bending under each step. A little over five kilometers and one hour into the trek, we pause as a second village, this time of four homes. We are informed that Sega is only a half hours walk from here, and we press further.

The trails back into the bush are covered in a large variety of butterflies, constantly swarming around. They are predominantly quite small, most less than one inch in length. The most common have black wings will two yellow stripes down them. There are dozens of others, green and red and blue and orange. At one point along this path, I step on a small branch, half the length of my foot, and two dozen, tiny little black and orange butterflies scatter every which way. They are minute, all around a quarter inch in length, and they fly in a tight little flock, pouncing together on random parts of the track in large groups.

The sun has been dominating us, as we move under small blocks of shade and heat, and it is taking its toll. The path pushed relentlessly upward, somewhat steep for the first distance after the second village. The ground levels off a bit, gives me some temporary relief, and continues to push upwards. Another large felled tree, this time several feet in diameter requires us to take a detour off the main path and around it. We pause for a little food about twenty minutes into this leg just before a final small stream. I eat a cookie, but I am sweating so hard that I cant salivate. I try to drink some water, but the crumbs absorb all the moisture and I cant wash it all down. I take a second cookie, and decide thats enough. We get back up, and finish the five minute walk to Sega. We enter a small clearing of three houses, but our guide directs us to the left, and we soon enter the main village, with more than twenty building.

The townspeople soon gather around to gawk at the three drenched, soaking visitors. Suffering from severe heat exhaustion, I lie down on the first shaded bench I can find, and ask Shahab to take the villagers over somewhere else to interview them. I stay there and try to cool down and recover slightly. Too quickly, Shahab, Berhanu and several of the towns men return. I am not in good enough condition to continue the additional half hour to the waterfall, but the gold mine is only about five minutes away. Im feeling good enough to make it there, so I ask our guide if he will carry my pack.

We head out on a tiny path, with about four men having just joined us. Two of them were just walking out of the jungle with shovels and a flat metal pan, but turn back to lead us to their workplace. After a few hundred meters, the jungle opens enough to allow room for three or four small holes in the ground, each five to ten feet square, and filled with water. They direct us past, and crawling over a few more, we reach a slightly larger clearing, with a dozen more similar holes. Four more guys are at the back of this one, shovels in hand, watching as we arrive. Some of our guides shout something in Kpelle, and the workers set aside their shovels, and make their way over to us.

The holes are three or four feet deep, and all about the same size. There is one trough laying next to one, with several pieces of carpet in it, similar to the one we had seen in Deans Town, but smaller, to be used for separating the gold and the mud. In the town, when we had asked what they do for work, the answer had been, farming. Shahab had directly asked how many people worked at the mine, and the reluctant answer betrayed their feelings about us knowing about the mine. If we had not known about it before hand, we probably never would have found it. The workers here are similarly reluctant. They are not hostile, but unlike Deans Town, where the workers had proudly showed us the process, here the answers are more tentative. They dont volunteer anything until directly asked. Answers are as short and direct as possible.

They claim that the boss man is in Monrovia, where he sells the gold. Of course they have a government permit for the mine, despite the fact that the county mining agents we had interviewed had never volunteered this location to us. The workers claim that they will pull out maybe one or two grams of gold per week, but we have the feeling that the mine is a little more productive than that. The workers are paid L$500 for each gram, and are supported by the local village for food. According to what they volunteered, this accounts for a weekly income of $8-15 US that is split between the eight workers.

We pack up and thank them for their time. What hopes I had that I might make it to the waterfall have been dashed by the twenty minutes of standing, so we split up. Shahab and Berhanu heading off with two guides to check that out, and I head back to Sega to rest. Reaching town, I sit in an open, covered structure with a bunch of children and a couple of the towns women. I negotiate for a small bunch of bananas, and pay them about fifty cents after they refuse to take any money for it. I eat one, and spend my time taking photos of the kids playing. One baby is deathly afraid of the white man, and starts crying every time I look his way or wave at him. Each time, his mother laughs and then starts feeding him to shut him up. She keeps trying to encourage him, and this process repeats every twenty minutes. Two of the boys pull out two baby opossums to play with. One mother, probably a couple years younger than I, informs me that they are having some bush meat for dinner. I try to tell her that you should not let the children play with the animals like that, because they carry disease. She dismisses me. A little later, a little girl, of about five comes back over, this time playing with a large beetle as if it is a doll. At one point she even puts it in her mouth. Every time I take a picture, I turn on the preview on the back of the camera, and show them the photo. People will come running from across the village to crowd around and take a look at the little, three inch photo.

The townspeople ask me about help. They need clean drinking water, a school, a clinic, a lot of the same complaints that we hear in most villages. We try to tell them that if they fix the road, then NGOs will come. But they dont go places unless they can drive there. We insist that the trail could be easily fixed, and the locals tell us that it had been a road before the war.

After an hour and a half the others return. They are desperate for a rest, and we hit the trail back home after twenty minutes. It is after two, and we want to make it back to the car by four so we can be home by dark. Once again, our local guide takes my bag, and for the first bit, we are going strong. I completely dont recognize the trail for the first half hour. It is still quite wide, big enough to drive a car down if the bridges were repaired and the trees cleaned up. It is quickly apparent that the road was not only allowed to fall into disrepair, but had been broken on purpose. Because of the gold mines, and in order to protect the town, the village cut itself off from the outside. It is apparent from looking at several of the felled trees that they were cut down, with the nice straight cut mark that tells of a power saw. At the mine, several of the workers had said that there was no mining there during the war. But, later, one other had pointed to the first few holes, and tells me they are from the war. Maybe he meant before the war, it is hard to tell. But, whether or not it worked, Sega had tried to insulate itself from the rest of the country. But now, it is struggling with the consequences of that decision, and Im sure, trying to decide what the likelihood of more war in the future if they do repair the road.

We get to the second village, one third of the way back, and moving quite a bit slower than before. We collapse there and rest for ten minutes, before pushing onward. The hills are not significant, and according to our GPS track we never climb or fall much more than 200 feet, but the road is killing us. We wind through the bush, for forty five minutes more. Along the entire path, there are lots of little trails branching off every several hundred meters, each time diverting into the real bush. Here, where we are walking, it is cleared, nice and wide, but the small footpaths dodge off to the right and left. Most of them go to small farms. Not too big, though, not much more than what we would consider a small garden. Like the rest of Liberia, much of them are wild cassava, cocoa nut, banana trees and the rest. The agriculture remains little more than hunter-gatherer in nature. Some of the more sophisticated farms are small fields of rice, which require careful irrigation. But I see little evidence of these along this route, nothing is directly on it. Just small paths to the scattered farms.

We make it to the first village, now two thirds way back to the vehicle, but just about unable to go on. The GPS informs us that it is only 2.1km, straight line, but there is a long slow curve, adding significantly to the hike. We press on, only to have me call another halt halfway. Now we have 1.4km straight. Berhanu surprises us by pulling out a box of pineapple juice, having hid it from all of us this entire time. We down the box, and summon the courage to finish. When we finally make it back to Kpallah, and the vehicle, it took us three hours to retrace a path we covered in little more than ninety minutes that morning. With the tree of us in bad shape, we decide to let the new guy drive us back. It is a little after four, and we should be able to make it most of the way back to the teamsite by dark. We pull out of the village, and three minutes later, come to a narrow bridge, about fifteen feet long, and composed of seven or eight logs. It is just wide enough for our car, but we send someone out to guide him. They get their signals crossed, and we wind up with our front right tire hanging precariously off the bridge.

Were stuck. We switch drivers, but the weight of the vehicle is now sitting on the front differential, and we wont move anywhere. We scavenge a few decent sized logs and attempt to place them under the front tire, but we cant find anything long enough. We get something in front of the tire, and try and go forward and get it back onto the bridge, but quickly break the half-rotted log.

One half hour into this, it starts raining. Hard. I pull out my light raincoat, but I guess Im the only one with the foresight to always carry one with me. One hour ago, the cool rain would have felt good. But now, were already drenched with sweat, and we have a little more than an hour before dark. We continue to work on the car, and move it backwards, almost off the bridge, but then another temporary log breaks. The embankment to the creek is vertical, about five feet, and we cant prop anything under it to get the tire on something solid for traction. With all the weight hanging forward and right, the other tires just spin when we try and move the thing. We repair back into the vehicle for a five minute break, and to share a hot MRE four ways. We continue to try to wrestle logs that weigh more than we can lift in our condition, to make some sort of progress.

Shortly after we got stuck, two women carrying baskets on their heads had passed by us, and they apparently had spread word that we needed help. Over an hour after getting stuck, a hoard of thirty to forty Liberian men shows up, all at once. They throw themselves at the problem, and within thirty seconds, four of them are carrying one really nice log from well into the forest that we had desperately needed. A little while another one arrives. We quickly back off, with Shahab behind the wheel to try and back whenever the locals want us to give another try. I spend much of my time, sitting on the bridge, just watching the chaos. There are men everywhere, shouting and gesturing and pointing. They try having twenty people just push the car, with many of them lifting up on one corner. The put logs in various places. Rocks several times the size of my head are found and heaved into place. They try rebuilding part of the foundation. They try placing the jack in several different places. But every time we try and back the vehicle, it doesnt move. Instead, the spinning of the three tires instead causes some torque spin, with the rear of vehicle slowly inching right, with every try. Shahab and I are worried that when we get the thing off the bridge, it will be at an angle pointed off the road, where we can't straighten it out again to get across the bridge.

We have no radio comms to inform our team where we are, and that we are stuck. We are running dangerously low on fuel, and are tired. It is now well after dark, and even if we get it on the road, we have a three hour drive ahead of us. The most bizarre part of the night came when I was sitting on the edge of the bridge, watching the work. I see a figure on the opposite side of the road climb up the embankment from the creek, not using their hands. I realize its a woman, with two cats under her arms. She crosses the road, steps by me, crosses the bridge, and disappears into the darkness. What she was doing down in the creek with the workers, and why she had two cats, I dont know.

The Liberians have been slaving away for several hours, and are still working tirelessly, shouting back and forth in Kpelle. Even if we had the energy to help, we wouldnt understand what they were saying and would be more of a nuisance than a benefit, so we just stand back and appreciate the help. They dig out a significant amount of dirt, and add foundation for a log under the bridge. Working with just two flashlights, the rain continues to pour. At one point a couple other Liberians come walking down the road, carrying some produce in bags. The others start shouting, help a brother out! Help a brother out! and the new workers throw themselves into the operation. More than four and a half hours into it, with nearly a dozen people pushing, the vehicle finally grips, and begins to pull itself out. A cheer goes up. We get off the bridge, and back up.

At this point, we still need to get over it. It is pitch dark, so with Shahab driving, I slowly marshal it across. I have two Liberians, one on each side of me holding a flashlight on each front tire. Shahab has the parking lights on, trying to make out my directions without blinding me. The bridge is just barely wide enough for the car, and we have both tires perched on the crown of the two outside logs. We inch the car across, making adjustments more than once every foot. We finally get across.

We gather everyone around, and thank them for their help. Its nine oclock, and we can make it home by just after midnight, but nobody is too happy with driving after dark. Their leader informs me that he is hurt, so I give him some first aid, and thankfully its just a shallow cut. The four of us, thank them again, and give them some small, small. I gave them $20 US, and the rest a little less than that. Still, thats two weeks worth of labor at the gold mine.

Into the Bush

2006-02-11T11:01:00.000Z

The nice thing about Liberia is that you never get lost; youre simply exploring areas that dont exist on any accurate map. The official, printed maps are horrible, with roads that dont exist, and town names that are simply incorrect, where anything is there. Instead, our team relies completely on a large hand drawn map in our office, which has been definitive. It isn't to scale, but it does show the roads and towns that are there.

So, this past Wednesday, on patrol, Shahab and I headed north to the Guinea border to check out any smuggling activities going on. Heading about 60 km north, we run in to a platoon of Bangladeshis who are escorting some government officials to remote towns, and talking to the villagers about the importance of securing Liberias borders. The country has no armed police force, no border security or army, and only about 100 cops for the entire county. The only enforcement is the local people, and we rely on them to inform us if they see anything suspicious.

After sitting in an open hut in the town of Shamkpalai listening to the conversation, which was taking place mostly in the Kpelle language, we hop back into the car to continue to Darninia. We pass a nice clinic on the outskirts of town heading north. We cross bridges that get ever more sketchy, and I start sending Shahab out to check each one. Hell walk on a tree trunk, and after it quivers too much, he'll note the more sturdy one laying next to it, and marshal me onto the good ones. The road, which as this point was passable, starts dwindling down; it soon is little more than a footpath. I place one front tire on the path, and let the other meander across the grass, and we soon pull into Lawah. We get out and start asking the locals how to get to Darninia, as weve reached the end of the road. They tell us it is a three hour walk, and vehicles cant go there. We ask about getting to Kolonta, which should be on the way; and they tell us we can drive there, but we missed the junction at Shamkpalai.

We head back to the clinic, and after asking a few nurses, spot the alternate road to Kolonta. Its not a road really, just another footpath, but the jungle has been cleared, giving a nice wide berth to drive down. Just slightly wider than a car. After marking our spot on the GPS, we launch westward. For the first time, weve spotted a gross inaccuracy in the team map, and were still not sure where everything is. The trail is actually quite nice for a vehicle. Unlike the mud roads that soon accumulate ravines and potholes in the rainy season; the grass keeps the ground flat. From time to time the jungle closes in on us, and tree branches reach out and lash at the paintjob. We pass one steep clearing, where dozens of trees have been cut down, and a small stack of nicely planed boards lays next to the road. Four miles along the trail, we pull into a town of two dozen houses. For the first times on patrol, I immediately feel a little uneasy. The town is completely full of women, even the children are only girls. One mother is feeding her baby as our white UN mammoth pulls out of the jungle and into the town. The people just kind of stare at us, completely startled by our sudden presence.

We ask a few women the town name, and after much wraggling, confirm that we've reached Kolons Town. A couple teenage boys show up, and we ask the way to Darninia. The vehicle cant go there, they inform us, a one hour walk. Shahab looks at me expectantly, you ready for a hike? We grab our bags, unload unnecessary stuff and grab our extra water. Our two guides launch ahead, and were off into the bush. For two miles, we roll over hills, wind through the trees and hop over streams. The footpath is quite nice, and fifty minutes later, we roll into yet another village, the fabled Darninia. We round up some villagers (strangely enough, this town is completely men) and sit down to quiz them on the border. The border is along the river, another hour walk. But, when they cross into Guinea, the locals head back a ways to yet another village, three hours away, as theres no canoe at the closer area. I think both of us are disappointed that its getting late and we dont have the time to go and actually cross ourselves. That'll have to wait for another patrol.

The villagers subsist on fairly basic agriculture, bringing palm oil and food to Guinea to trade for clothing and some other small goods. The closest market is across the border in Guinea, so thats where they bring their goods. We ask about some of the geography and locations of other villages. We quiz them on what all people bring across the border, and if theyve seen suspicious activity, or large numbers of non-locals. Finished with our reportage, we ask if they have any pineapples or bananas to sell. The answer is negative, and our stomachs grumble in anger.

We set off back to the vehicle, and get to a junction that the boys had informed us was an alternate route back, but hilly. We ask about taking the alternate route back, and our guides just giggle at us. Nervous about our hosts reactions to the route, we confer about what to do. Somewhat apprehensively, I ask Shahab, you want to take the adventurous one, don't you? His confirmation settles that, and we off, back the long way. We wind through a different set of trees and over various other creeks. This route is a little more informative, and we pause to check out some palm trees that have been felled for harvesting, and the palm oil that is being pulled out, some being made into wine. We meet a woman and her two small kids living in an open shelter, nothing more than a thatch roof over some open wooden supports. They have a bunch of dried prawns lying in a pan next to the fire, which they fish from the streams. Soon after, the boys stop to grab some raw cassava root, and promptly start peeling it with some pocket knives. I grab a little for myself. Its texture is somewhere between an uncooked potato and a tree branch. Surprisingly enough, it tastes like a tree branch. As we rumble alone the path, small grains of wooden blandness sit in my mouth; I down a half liter of water to wash it away. Fifty three minutes later, we emerge back into Kolon-ta, every inch of our uniforms soaked with sweat.

During much of the war, the entirity of the local populations fled Liberia, crossing into Guinea, Sierra Leon and elsewhere. The fighting followed many of them. Now, nearly three years after Charles Taylor was forced into exile, the population is just now reestablishing itself. Most of the villages are still waiting for the fruits of their first harvest, and many are still subsisting on the backs of the United Nations WFP. I press many of the town chiefs to get a feel for the number of people still missing. They never want to offer an estimate, as many will never return. Thousands have decided to try Monrovia, different parts of Liberia, received invitations to resettle in the US, or have been killed. My feeling is that 80-90% of Liberians have returned, but many are still flowing back. A recent trip to the Liberian office for Refugees and IDPs showed hundreds still returning to Bong County each month. I spoke with a nice kid, Joseph, today, who returned to Gbarnga only two weeks ago. But Joe spoke of the DR Congo, and of Zimbabwe and of Sudan. Despite the appearance UN peacekeepers there, war still ravages on. He tells me Liberians, on the other hand, are tired of war. Liberia will be fine, now. A sentiment Ive heard a hundred times since Ive been here.

Hunting Gold

2006-02-09T13:05:00.000Z

30 Jan 06

Last week, Monday, we set out for Deans Town, which was known to be home to a large number of large gold mines over the past couple of decades. Deans town is in the far east section of our AOR, and nearly three hours drive, 120km from the team site. We set off early in the morning, and one hour away, we came across the destroyed bridge shown below. We got out, spent twenty minutes figuring what had happened, and checking up on the situation. After crossing the temporary bridge, we were back on our way, turning East, crossing through Money Sweet-ta and a dozen similar villages. We hit another road and head southwest along the old railway for about twenty minutes before reaching another artery and cross what remains of the rails. Through another two villages, at the second one we stop to confirm directions. In a town with twenty or more houses, there is one old man in the ghost town. We call him to confirm the village name, and the fifty year old springs up with the spryness of an eight year old, bounds across the hundred yards that separate us to welcome his visitors. His enthusiasm for any sort of human companionship made me feel bad for only wanting to get a town name and jump back into the car. He wants to know my name, and welcome us in. I shake his hand, exchanging the traditional Liberian greeting, reversing the handshake, loosening and half releasing until you are just holding his four fingertips and then snapping our middle fingers as we pull our hands away. It feels odd, engaging in what I consider a third grade secret handshake with every Liberian and respectable elder.

I pile back in to the Nissan Patrol, and ten kilometers later we roll into a weird oasis. Weve reached an apparent gold company mining camp, several large concrete buildings, electrical wires running between them, an HF radio antenna and air conditioners hanging out of the windows. But what really caught our attention was a shining yellow Caterpillar tractor.

The saddest thing you note around here is any means for carrying burdens except for human beings. In Monrovia, just up from the Gabriel Tucker Bridge, always you pass two kids probably not more than ten, pulling a cart, by hand, of a hundred gallons of water up the steep hillside to sell downtown. On Yesterdays patrol, between villages we passed a column of over twenty kids, each carrying one piece of corrugated aluminum sheeting, four feet by eight feet. The train was nearly a half mile long, carrying a load five miles or more, for what amounts to enough roofing for one small house. One thing this country could use is a simple beast of burden, something other than dozens of children.

So for us to see a tractor, especially one in working shape, is a rare order. We get out of the truck and ask for the manager. Apparently there is one man working there. A geologist, trained in the states, is collecting samples in preparation for opening up some mechanical mining in the area after the embargo is lifted. We sit down with him for nearly an hour, asking about the region, who is mining there, etc. He claims that although his company has exclusive rights to the area, there is plenty of mining done by the people in town, half a kilometer up the road. The company doesnt want to kick everyone off their land, as they have to work around there. We thank him for his time and head into Deans town.

At the edge of the village, we pick up the local pastor, and he helps us find the Town Chief, Mining Inspector and the Justice of the Peace. The mines draw plenty of ex-combatants for work, and they quickly earn a little money, get drunk and cause trouble. The Justice of the Peace complains to us quite loudly about how there is no order in the town and no respect for the law. There is frequent fighting, but no weapons, and no organized gangs. There is no Liberian National Police (LNP) presence, and the UN Peacekeeping troops only do infrequent patrols.

The Mining Inspector is young, maybe early twenties, and he assures us that there is no illegal mining in the area. There are about seven legal claims, of which two are active, and of course, theres no alluvial mining at all. His talk of two mines confirms the claim by the company employee of two primary leads being followed. We pile back into the car with the Mining Inspector, and head out of town, to check out the mines. We pass several open areas, were large dirt holes show evidence of human mining activity, but they all look somewhat abandoned. We pull up to the one mine that is working today, and we meet the miner and some of his workers lounging next to the mine.

The mine itself is incredible, about a forty foot hole in the ground, with about a dozen workers in it, digging it by hand. The thick heavy clay of the Liberian soil is damp, and some water collects in the bottom of the mine. A number of workers are toiling away with hand shovels, taking some dirt, and tossing it up, ten feet to the next terrace as the soil works its way up. The bottom of the mine will quickly fill with water, so a pump is used to dry it out, and siphon the water into small pools on the side thats used to process the ore and separate the gold.

We move over to one of the the pools, where three women are standing in knee deep water, taking the dirt, and panning it in large bowls. They remove the aggregate, and look for some small flakes of gold. The washed soil is then piled next to a still, which is a ten foot long run of wood. The mine workers place a wheelbarrow basket with large holes in it at the top of the still, and put small woolen rugs along the length of still. Two additional workers stand at the top, one shoveling dirt into the top, and the other throwing water over it, periodically stopping to check for flakes of gold. In the half hour we are there, the women find some, as do the men at the still.

The mine workers operate in teams of about five to fifteen, with one boss man directing the work. Each team operates the full length of the process, first pulling the dirt out of the mine and then washing it to look for the gold. When they get lucky, a team will clear about one gram of gold in one day. The miner pays the boss man 500 Liberian dollars (or about $9 US) for each ounce, but then takes back 200 LD because he feeds all the workers. So for one day of extremely physical labor, the mine workers are luck to have $5 US to split between the team, with the boss man deciding how much each persons share is at the end of the week. It will average to a little more than fifty cents a day, depending on the type of labour you do. One worker I interrogate admits to making about 1500 LD, or about $27 US in the past month. The miner tells us there are about forty people working at his mine, and we see three teams in action, one digging, and two washing their dirt. [See photos below]

We spend a while talking and joking with the mine workers. All of them are ex-combatants, and they inform us that they are simply re-processing the same mine that the LURD had exploited during the war. These mines were a key source of financing for the rebels, but they had dug through it very quickly, and were not very through. The mine workers inform us that one of their number had been a general for Charles Taylor [see photo of him with Shahab below]. He is currently 21, and had joined the rebels when he was eleven, and had been elevated to the rank of general by thirteen. The shy figure looked away, obviously annoyed for being called out. When Shahab asked him how he became a general so quickly, the other mine workers shouted because he was good at killing while everyone else enjoyed the laugh.

Photos from the Gold Mine

2006-02-02T14:04:00.000Z

2006-02-02T14:01:00.000Z

2006-01-31T22:01:00.000Z

As I had mentioned on my first patrol, one of the primary obstacles to movement around here is not the condition of the roads, but the status of various bridges over the thousands of relatively benign looking streams. On that patrol, we had to take a long, circular route to get to a large chunk of villages not too far from us in Gbarnga. Now, that alternate route may be compromised. On our way to the gold mine on Monday, we crossed a major bridge that I had crossed last week, just past the village of Lehleh. One of the local truck drivers had decided to get an entire shipment of cement bricks to their destination, when the not insubstantial load proved too much for a poor bridge made out of a dozen tree trunks.

The driver was injured, but had been treated at the area hospital and released. He was back out at the site, and the locals were attempting to give him some assistance pulling his truck out. They’d been at it for two days. It looks like they’ve made a lot of progress.

According to one of the guys on my team, that bridge had been out for several years, and had just been completed last September. Yes, a five month life span. Something tells me, though, that is longer that the replacement bridge, constructed about twenty feet to the left of the last one, will last. The good news was that on inspection, the foundations of the original bridge appeared undamaged, and repair the bridge will just require a new span of about ten tree trunks, and redoing some of the earthworks leading up to it.

We returned back along the same route. Upon reaching the bridge another truck, the same size as the one now stuck precariously on the old bridge, was stuck on the temporary bridge. The only thing I could think of was how we hadn’t made a map of the alternate, five hour route home. The second truck had made it almost all the way across, but was having trouble making the sharp turn and getting up the steep hill of loose dirt. They had been at it for nearly an hour. I hopped out and marshaled him, and after about three minutes, the truck was on his merry way, much to our relief.

My Favorite Village

2006-01-31T20:17:00.000Z

On yesturday's patrol, amongst all of the other swashbuckling action, we had the opportunity to pass through what is now my favorite Liberian village: Money Sweet-ta. No seriously; that's it's name. I'm not making that up. There's like a whole five huts there, I think the below picture probably encompases pretty much the entire population.

Update

2006-01-31T18:18:00.000Z

I'm back in Monrovia for a couple days, the land of A/C, reliable internet and a hot shower. Just here doing laundry and taking care of some miscellaneous paperwork at HQ. I've added a couple of photos to my earlier posts, so scroll down and check them out. I'll have another post up soon on Monday's patrol, chasing down gold mines, former warlord Generals, and destroyed bridges.

Gunships Painted White

2006-01-25T21:10:00.000Z

Liberia remains heavily forested, and especially during the wet season, access to much of the country can become a problem. Access, even in the best of times, is tricky, with several MilOb team sites reachable only by helo or resupply ship twelve months of the year. The UN has a surprisingly strong air force in country, with a total of twenty helicopters and two fixed wing cargo aircraft. Half of the helicopters are contractor-run, and half are operated by the Ukrainian military.

This geography makes patrol of much of the jungle area, as well as the ill-defined borders a real problem. In an attempt to keep a show of force up in these remote areas, UNMIL conducts routine air patrols of the entire country, and our teamsite runs two each week.

So Tuesday, my second day in the team, I spend with my head hanging out of the window of a Ukrainian MilMi-24 helicopter gunship, as we cruise over eastern Liberia at low levels. When we hear the sound of the two Hind gunships overhead, I grab my bags and head out to the airfield. We conduct the patrol with a pair of helos, with a representative from the Bangladeshi peacekeeping battalion on one, and me on the other.

The Mi-24 Hind D is a mid-70s vintage Soviet attack helicopter that was developed after watching the USs creation of the aircrafts role in Vietnam. The Hind can carry up to eight combat troops, as well as a full load of armaments on its stubby wings and in its nose. Im not too sure how you could fit eight troops and an engineer in the tiny little cabin, but thats the stats. It wound up being a little to heavy to be a fast, maneuverable gunship, and too loaded with ordinance to be a high capacity cargo ship.

After meeting the pilots and the interpreter, I loaded up onto the lead gunship and we spin up the engines. After asking, the interpreter dugs out a paper thin set of ear protection headsets, which I put on over my earplugs. Holding up the high safety standards that the Eastern block nations were known for, the interpreters safety briefing consisted of dont smoke, and put away your alcohol. He looked at me funny when I motioned to ask if I should put on my safety belt, so I took the hint and promptly spread myself in a comfortable position on the floor and hung my head out the open side window.

We taxied to a takeoff and lifted into the air. Turning north, we climbed out to about two to three hundred meters. Small villages dotted the landscape as we cruised up twenty minutes to the Guinea border. The area around here, while not mountainous, is very hilly, and pulling north, the ruggedness of the hills slowly increased. The ground was intermittent spots of grassland and small bush marbleized with wide streaks of rubber and coconut trees.

With the bright tan of the foot paths clearly visible against the lush dark green of the vegetation; it was easy to see the occasional Liberian walking into his hut or along a path. We trek to the border and make the turn East. To this point, I almost never see a village of more than two huts, but instead see single homes scattered; each a couple hundreds meters to the next. The few people I saw were certainly discernable, but only occasionally were we low enough to be able to tell, for instance, if they were holding a gun or doing some other suspicious thing. There was very little visible farming, but the occasional small rubber plantation was apparent by the patches of trees planted in perfectly straight rows. The four or five roads we covered stuck out with the set of two parallel footpaths. Other than their occasional reminder, the look of the countryside has probably changed little in the past thousand years. Occasionally, the number of homes would get sparser and the steady flow of trees would reach up into the air to grab us.

The jungle rolled on peaceably underneath us, with the home to the monstrous, incessant thumping barely five feet over my head. We turned north and passed Ganta, a huge metropolis of a couple hundred widely spaced homes, their relative wealth (sic) proclaimed by the number of gleaming metal roofs covering the humble mud abodes. I start to notice some scattered plots of farmland, none more than half an acre. Several are identifiable as rice paddies, most of the others likely cassava root. We continued to along the border, eventually turning southeast and soon looking out over Côte d'Ivoire. The landscape became rougher here, with one or two hills that had tentative claims of being titled a mountain. Here were more hardwood trees, fewer rubber, fewer huts and villages and paths cutting through the forest. Continuing to follow the border for another hour, it is easy to see how little control any government has on the area, not even people control this area. The open, easily penetrable borders and tenuous lines of demarcation are havens of smuggling and control by various rebel factions of all nationalities.

The hills settle down somewhat, and the hardwood trees give a nice relief to the eye as their occasional yellow and brown hues that remind you of an early fall evening. The trees recede a bit, opening up more and more to grasslands. Homes reappear, separated by at times nearly a kilometer, sometimes more, and consolidating into a village of a dozen huts once or twice.

Having traveled south a ways, until we were abreast Tapeta, we make an westward turn, for home. The trees return. The small clearings of grasslands disappear completely. And with them goes any sign of civilization, or people of any type. As recently as six months ago, there were reports of small groups of bandits, training in the remote area several kilometers south of here. UNMIL mounted some operations and dispersed what they could. But up here, at nearly a thousand feet, the tree cover was thick, and signs of people nonexistent. A solid and steady sea of green, combinded with the steady and visceral thumping of the main rotors overhead. Trees continue to wash by. Your interest returns when you see the first village in 20 minutes; in an endless train of green. Occasionally, a thin stream of palm trees flow through the monotony, giving you some texture at least, even if it didnt accord any chromatic relief. No roads and very few footpaths.

The water throughout the country, though plentiful, tends to flow almost exclusively in small streams, if they even deserve that name. Along one road in our AOR, a fifteen kilometer stretch of road yields fourty-seven bridges. So, from the air, few are visible, just two riversone of which I get to see twice. It was a nearly hour long leg over this vast emptiness, and the helo returns to base and touches down gently more than two and a half hours after departing. Slaughtered, I stagger off to the chow hall.

First Patrol

2006-01-24T16:21:00.000Z

I arrived in Gbanga Sunday night, and met most of my team members. We have 12 members on our team right now. Our deputy team leader is a Lieutenant Colonel from Kyrgyzstan, and our current operations officer is from Pakistan. In addition, we have officers from Egypt, Paraguay, El Salvador, Russia, Serbia, Ethiopia, and Senagal. I havent met my team leader yet, who is from Jordan, nor have I met my roommate. Im sharing a room right now with a Major in the Chinese Army, but he is on leave for the rest of the week.

The teamsite isnt too bad, I guess, but it certainly is sparse. We are living in a one story concrete house surrounded by a concrete safety wall. During the war, nobody in Liberia could afford razor wire. As a result, most of the security walls around here are topped with shards of glass that have been mortared in place in an attempt to keep people from climbing the wall. In Monrovia today, most compounds have concertina wire, but I guess those luxuries havent made it this far out, yet.

We are lucky in that our accommodations have running water and 24 hour electricityits kind of pleasant to drift off to sleep to the gently humming sound of generators in the distance. The water isnt hot, nor is it drinkable. Most guys purchase it in Monrovia and bring it here themselves. The house itself doesnt have any windows. Or rather, it doesnt have any glass in the windows, just some bars to keep people out, and a rather coarse mosquito net that I suppose helps a little. Ive set up a cot in the corner and draped it with my own netting, and sleep in my own little anti-malaria bunker. Almost all of us eat at the local Bangladeshi battalion officers mess. The food is good, but most everyone complains that its too spicy, but its not bad.

On my first full day at the teamsite, I headed out on a patrol with two veteran team members, and one other rookie. The days mission was to try and find an illegal gold mine. During the conflicts, both here and in Sierra Leone and the Ivory Coast, rebel warlords would utilize diamond and gold mining to finance weapons for the fighting. As a result, the United Nations has imposed an embargo on these items from this area, in an attempt to slow the fighting.

On a previous patrol, villagers had reported that some mining operations were taking place nearby, so we returned to the site today to attempt to get to them. We are pretty lucky in that we have a nice paved highway running the length of our AOR (Area of Responsibility), and this greatly improves our mobility, especially in the rainy season. But, being that Liberia has all of two paved roads, the rest of the going is pretty rough. The most significant limitation, though, is the lack of real bridges on the dirt roads. The town we were heading to today is only about 20 km from where I am, but because of a bridge that is out on the more direct road, it was about 70km and nearly two full hours, one way.

The paved road here isnt too bad, but it is nowhere near as nice as the trip to Tubmanburg. We could frequently get up to 50km/hr, but boulder sized potholes pockmarked the road, as did washouts where mud covered the asphalt for a few dozen yards, and required us to slow every several hundred yards.

After heading through town, we quickly dumped off onto a side dirt road, and the going was fairly smooth for the first five or ten miles. The area around here is not very well documented, and so at the office we have a large map of our AOR up on the wall, but nobody really looks at it. In the next room, we have an equally grand piece of acetate with a hand drawn map of the area, showing the major roads, villages and what clans inhabit which regions. The places of roads can vary dramatically. Some roads are there, some are not, and the formal map is frequently just plain wrong. Most of the villages have different names on the two maps, so we just go by the hand drawn one. If we want to stop by someplace and ask the people there what the name of the village is, the second is the only map worth using.

At every major village of ten or more houses, we would pull over and ask those on the side of the road what the name of the village was. We would then resume bumping along as Id attempt to type in the town name as a waypoint in my GPS. The nature of a rain forest is that it is crossed with minor streams and rivers, requiring us to traverse dozens of bridges. The nicest bridges are little concrete culverts, and dont require us to slow down at all. After that, some small places are bridged with 2x12 or 4x12 lumber, and only span three or four feet. Everyones favorites are those made of two foot diameter tree trunks, cut eight to twelve feet long, and slightly planed on one side. Lay four of those out, and you have a first class bush-bridge. You dont even flinch until you come across small spans linked with branches less than about six inches, then its time to set out and guide the truck across.

After about circumscribing about a 270 degree arc on the map, we made it to the village that we were looking for. After chatting with some of the locals, we doubled back one kilometer, took a different fork and checked a second village. The same old man who had informed us about the presence of the mine appears. We ask him where the mine is and he returns with a town. When we confirm, he says no. We ask again and get a different town. This goes on for five minutes as he says theres a gold mine in the sector, but gives us the name of a village much farther away. Finally, my patrol leaders become confident that all he is doing is telling us about a mine we already knew about, we thank him for his time and begin our trip back.

The Village of Kpolokpalar

Not wanting to make a complete waste of the day, we take a side road to check out a village our team had not visited before. Five kilometers further on, we bump up to a fence blocking the road, and get out and ask the villagers how much further the town is. The open the gate and we proceed, past a small school and a nascent two acre rubber tree farm. It is easy to spot the rubber farms from just the random rubber trees, because on a farm, the trees are planted in nice straight rows. We bounce along the road and into a gathering of villagers about twenty people strong, and ask for the town chief.

One of the more interesting characteristics of the local villages is how young the town chiefs usually are. The chiefs are usually picked freely from the village people, and my team has even run into some female chiefs. My teammate informs me that he thinks they are usually ex-combatants, and is not sure the politics about how the young guys get picked. This town is no exception, and the cheif is no more than about twenty, and quite quiet. (ed note: the town chief is directly behind my head in the photo, and the one who did all the talking is two to his right in the white shirt.) He is proud to say he is chief, but just watches with amusement when we ask questions. We repair back to the village proper, and find a shaded open area with a nice roof and several benches in the center of town. In the process, we pick up about twenty or thirty more people, the vast majority of them kids less than about ten.

We take up position on two benches at the head of the little town meeting area, and the leaders take up a bench opposite us. At one end sits one of the eldest men in the village, I would place him at about forty. At the far end is the mischievous town chief.

We ask a standard battery of questions, are they happy with the elections, are they happy with the government. They tell us want we want to hear. Who did they vote for? Dazed for a minute, one guy in the back spits out Ellen. The others pick up on the meme, Ellen, of course. When we ask them if they are saying that just because its want we want to hear, they decline to answer.

The man who is responsible for the census arrives with his book, and we ask about the population. One thousand, five hundred, he answers. And 83 houses. It doesnt take a math genius to figure out that the former figure is a little inflated. The number of people has swollen to around 50 or 60, and Id say the population is a little more like two to five hundred. Ive been told that the towns will usually exaggerate their size, in a feeble attempt to get more attention from NGOs, but that the number of structures is usually correct.

Asking about refugees, they claim that during the fighting, about 50 people flee to Guinea, and about one thousand head off to another Liberian town up by the border. The older man, who has done all the talking, then informs us during this time, 47 people had been massacred in one day in the village by a group from the coastal town of Buchanan called LPC, which we had never heard of. The old man informs us that he was there for it. When we ask how he survived, he goes into a long description of where the fighters were, where they lined people up, where people were killed, pointing out the exact houses the whole time. When asked if they fought back, he quickly denied it.

They declared that they had four former combatants, in the only question that the town leader was interested enough in to answer. The town declared that the ex-Coms were not causing problems, and that they had no weapons. They claimed that they fought for the governmentwe showed we were skeptical, but they stuck to that story. The young chief continued, with his mischievous eyes, to watch a situation quietly. There was a look in there, as if this conversation was out of his control, but progressing in a manner that didnt alarm him. He was curious, but staying out of it, and letting his elder answer our questions.

The town was in okay shape, as they claimed they built the school, and were paying the two teachers by themselves. There was no UN marking on the sign for the school to dispute this. They said they farmed cassava root for food, and were starting to try growing rubber. The only need that they claimed to have was for clean drinking water, but a Liberian boy with a UN badge was present, and confirmed that he was been hired to dig wells, and that the town was in the process of getting one well, and one latrine, which should only take about a week.

Satisfied, we packed up and left the little town behind. This being my first experience out here, well see how typical of an encounter this is. Youre never quite sure how much of their stories to believe. Despite the obvious atrocities (and I believe the story about a massacre there), the entire population who survived has returned home, and they are resuming life, as meager as it is. It is promising if they have built the school themselves and have been supporting it, without any help from outsiders, either government or foreign. With a prospect for some cash crops, I hope that they can move on.

Editor's Note

2006-01-24T16:19:00.000Z

It seems that the UN has blocked access to blogs on their networks, so I have limited ability to update posts here. I do have the ability to submit posts via e-mail, but I have no way of uploading photos. Whenever I get to Monrovia, I will try and get some pics up, but for now, you are stuck with my literary skills. And, as a picture is worth a thousand words, get ready for a few thousand words. Also, because I can't double check what got posted, for now you will have to live with the numerous typos and bad grammar that may appear.

On my way out

2006-01-21T19:19:00.000Z

I’ll be heading reporting out to my teamsite tomorrow. I’ve been posted to the lovely metropolis of Gbarnga (pronounced bon-ga), which is about a three hour drive northeast of Monrovia. I’m not too sure what the comms situation will be like up there, but I hear that’s it’s a pretty nice site—but everything’s relative. I might not have the chance to post anything for a while, but I’ll get something up as soon as I can. My cell phone will work up there, so, those of you that have my Liberia number can, in theory, still give me a call. P.s., a better version of that deployment map can be found here.

Tubmanburg

2006-01-21T18:38:00.000Z

Today a couple of us took a short trip up to Tubmanburg to check out Brian's teamsite. It was the first chance I've had to get out of Monrovia in the two weeks since I've been here. It's great to get outside of the tangle of people and traffic and concrete of the city. Heading north from town on the one decent highway in the country, we were able to average about 50 mph-- blazing speeds.

The city of Monrovia is a tangle of crumbling concrete buildings, ranging from two to 10 stories tall. Only one of them has glass in its windows, and many are missing the façade and outer wall, with everything exposed but the frame, and pockmarked by bullet holes and years of neglect. Many of the business and most of the schools and government buildings are surrounded by a concrete wall, creating a protective compound to shield it from war. We are convinced that a week and a half ago the country received a shipment of paint, the first in years. Even post-inauguration, the city continues to be painted for the first time in over a decade.

Between the buildings and compounds and the water are crammed a mess of shacks and shelters in which the population of the city live. Most are comprised of a skeleton of wooden poles, roofed with random pieces of corrugated metal, and with walls made of whatever scraps of wood, metal or cloth that could be scavenged. The lucky shop owners have been able to squat in an empty metal freight container, which can be effectively locked to protect whatever worn tires or produce they have in inventory.

So jetting north today in our Nissan Patrol gave me my first wonderful sense of space I’ve had since getting here. After crossing the St Paul River, the next ten miles are an open marsh, with wide pools of water surrounded lush green vegetation. There was a definite sense of people living out there, with dozens of kids swimming in various ponds and streams along the side of the road, but we did not pass too many villages or homes.

A few miles on, we were out into the rain forest that covers much of the country. Villages dotted the countryside, each one a walkable distance from the last. In the most hopeful sign for the country was a very real sense of repopulation of the countryside. At every village we flew by on our way north there were a number of small huts in various stages of construction. There are about three or four primary types of architecture that you see up here. Along the road were a number of mud brick factories, but we only saw a few scattered buildings made from them. Inside Tubmanburg, a town of a couple thousand, the architecture was mostly unchanged. Surprisingly, the town was not very built up, and contained only about a dozen concrete structures, mostly Churches or government buildings, and none more than one story tall.

By far the most prevalent kind of structure is of a mixed, wooden-mud brick construction. Long, narrow tree branches of about a three inch diameter are used to frame the main load bearing points of the house. Then, a grid of thinner poles is used to form the walls, placed in a grid of with about six to nine inch spacing. This is done for all the exterior walls with slightly thicker poles in the vertical and narrower ones lashed horizontally. A thick layer of dried weeds is used for the roof. The frame of the building is plastered with about six inches of mud and allowed to dry.

In a few of the villages about half of the structures were of a simple A-frame construction, with the same reed roof. But, judging by the number of latticed huts being worked on, a significant repopulation of the countryside is underway. A Pakistani Major at the teamsite claimed about 80% have returned to their villages in the area. During the civil war, many different rebel groups would sprout and quickly take large sections of the countryside. It was easy to see how this could be done. Of the dozens of villages scattered through the forest, none held more than one or two dozen families. Exposed and vulnerable, a group of five teenagers with weapons would instantly dominate a village. Give them a means of regularly acquiring gasoline, and they could control an entire region. As a result, the war saw half of the rural population flee to the defensible squalor of Monrovia.

With the UN has come a reestablishment of security for these villages. People have started to filter back, to basic homes, but with space, clean water supply, and the ability to start some basic agriculture. Slash and burn farming was evident in several acre-sized regions of ashes. The agriculture, though, was sparse, little more than small gardens, none more than a quarter acre, interspersed among the huts and rubber trees.

After checking out Brian’s teamsite and Bomi Lake, we turned around and returned to Monrovia by two in the afternoon. I’m sure I’ll be posting a few more pictures of the countryside, but it was nice to return to the relative modernity of our apartment with electricity and air conditioning. With the lush vegetation that covers much of this country; it is unbelievable that it has been destroyed to the point where it has to import most of its food. This country will not be able to go anywhere until it has repopulated the countryside and is able to make the move from its complete dependence on foreign aid, past the point of subsistence farming, to having the infrastructure for a real agricultural economy.

Regional Concerns

2006-01-20T00:44:00.000Z

In 1990, when Charles Taylor invaded Liberia, he had raised his army in Sierra Leone, and crossed the border, eventually seizing power in Monrovia. A decade later, when the LURD and the MODIL challenged Taylor's rule, it is believed they did so with the help of neighboring governments in Guinea and Côte d'Ivoire. From 2003 until late last year, the United Nations was running peacekeeping missions in the three contiguous countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Côte d'Ivoire. At its height last year, the UN had over 40,000 troops between them.

Several experts have observed that UNMIL, with it's current contingent of about 15,000 soldiers, is being pulled in two conflicting directions. It is the largest current UN operation, and is under tremendous budgetary pressure to draw down now that the permanent government of Liberia is seated. Simultaneously, others are seeing it as the basis of a broader, multi-national West African mission. With the closing of the mission in Sierra Leone last year, UNMIL has helped to steady the nascent government on Liberia's borders by stationing some rapid reaction forces in Freetown.

In a radio address by President Johnson-Sirleaf today, she listed her priorities for the new government. Before electricity and sewer, and before the implementation of anti-corruption transparency programs, the president claimed that establishing sovereignty of the borders is at the highest of priorities. There have been recent claims of recruitment in Liberia by combatants in Côte d'Ivoire. When they're paid, members of the Liberian Military Police (LMP) live on a salary of $18 USD a month. In a country with 80% unemployment, an offer of a steady $85 per month to fight elsewhere is very attractive.

Word of this comes as the situation in Côte d'Ivoire is deteriorating. The French government, with UN backing, had established a transitional government in 2003. The terms of this agreement have expired, with the country still divided between government and rebel forces. The UN authorities recently committed a faux pas when it recommended, last November, that President Laurent Gbagbo remain in office for an additional 12 months, but this week did not extend the same recommendation to the Parliament. This has led to four days of violent protests and counter-protests in Bouake, Guiglo and the capital of Abidjan, most of them directed at the UN. The United Nations is stuck in a difficult place, with the Dioula angry at the UN for disbanding the parliament, and Gbagbo's supports angry with the UN for not allowing them to clamp down on the demonstrations. The crisis came to a head earlier this week when UN soldeirs were forced from a number of camps and then Gbagbo requested that the UN withdraw. Add to this the continuing possibility of collapse in Guinea. This leaves a historically volatile region in a tenuous position, with the Ivory Coast continuing to churn just as Sierra Leone and Liberia are beginning to show progress.

More Monrovia

2006-01-18T17:01:00.000Z

Small Signs of Progress

2006-01-18T16:47:00.000Z

In the past week, we have begun to see several construction projects starting. So far, citywide, we count a total of four. You have to start somewhere.

President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf

2006-01-16T18:09:00.000Z

The atmosphere in the streets today was more than jovial. The majority of the streets in town were shut down, and security was visible everywhere. Half the population of Monrovia lined the main street, and they danced and waved shouted at us for our two mile walk to the capital. Much of the crowd recognized us as Americans and would shout "Thank you for coming!" and "Thank you, Americans" or "It's is a good day!" to which we would shout our congratulations. There was a mess of people, with the majority of the women dressed up in traditional African dresses, brightly colored. The Liberians could not get up to the Captial building for the ceremony, but instead lined the street to watch the diplomatic convoys speed past and to listen to live reports on small hand-held radios. In several groups across town, men would beat on tribal drums while the women would swirl around in dances.

We made it to the gates of the Capital and were able to listen to the cremony from less than 200 yards away, but our view was blocked of the actual stage. When the seven foreign heads of state were being introduced, the loudest cheer for the president of Nigeria, who had initially come in in 2003 to stabalize the place. But after moving on to other DVs, the applause for Laura Bush was much louder; but nothing approached the reception for Condoleezza Rice.

Ellen's speech was good, talking at length about the desperate poverty in the country and the need of regular jobs for the heads of most households. But, she riled the crowd up the most when she spoke, at length, on the need to eliminate corruption in the government. After claiming that her words were not just the feeble promises of another politician, she announced a new policy that every single member of her administration must declare all their financial assets publicly, and this was the biggest applause line of the day. Then, to ensure that certain people got the message, she said that she expects that the Speaker of the House and the President Pro Tempe do the same. Here's to hoping that she can carry through on this.

Inauguration

2006-01-16T16:53:00.000Z

We were able to get through most of the outer layers of security with our uniforms and UN berets, and stationed ourselves at the gate of the Capital, between it and the Presidential Mansion. The vehicles pulled up and disgorged the heads of states of seven African nations, Secretary Rice and the First Lady, and Ellen herself. On the procession out, they all stopped within 20 feet of us while the President received a salute from the National Police. We were able to get a good sight of the DVs. Laura Bush did an obvious double take when she spotted the American soldiers over on the side, and her and Condi waved as us numerous times while they stood uncomfortably in a gaggle of a hundred African presidents and prime ministers. Needless to say, we did not envy the Secret Service one bit.

Legislative Leadership

2006-01-16T00:36:00.000Z

In 1980, when Samuel Doe seized control of the Liberian government, one of the most notable characteristics was that it was the only coup in history has was led by a Master Sargeant in the Army, and not by the officer corps. For the previous 150 years of Liberian history, the government, military and economy had rested in the hands of the Americo-Liberian descendents of former slaves, despite constituting only 5% of the local population. The 25 years of instability and civil wars that followed were the result of the long disaffected, indigenous majority attempting to set up a succession of equally repressive dictatorships reflecting only one or two of the 9 tribal groups in the country. From 1980 on through '96, different parts of the country were controlled by various splinter groups. From Doe's PRC arose the NDPL, dominated by the Krahn, but aligned with some Gio and Mano rebel forces. For a while, Monrovia was controlled by the INPFL, but for much of the 90 was run by Charles Taylor's and the Gola RUF. Throw into the mix at various times the LPP and the Krahn LPC and the Lofa LDF.

None of the various groups proved to be much of an improvement on the previous groups, and all committed grave atrocities, especially in more remote areas of the region. In 1990, when the INPFL captured Doe, he was paraded through the streets, but only after having been beaten, with his ears cut off and publicly castrated. In 1996, Charles Taylor was elected president of Liberia after running with a campaign song that proclaimed, "He killed my father, he killed my mother, I will vote for him". During Taylor's rule the fighting only intensified, with new rebel groups emerging. The Krahn dominated LURD emerged in 2000, and after being joined by the MODIL in 2003, were able to force Taylor to flee and set the conditions for intervention, eventually, by the UN.

In a promising show of unity during the presidential elections late last year, Liberians overwhelmingly voted for candidates who represented an end to the highly ethnic tensions of the past 25 years, with George Weah and Ellen Sirleaf-Johnson combined garnering over 70% of the popular vote. Weah was a former soccer pro in Europe who ran on an outsider's anti-corruption platform, and Ellen, a former World Bank official bringing a strong academic background to the government. Following a run-off election in November Sirleaf-Johnson was proclaimed president-elect and is expected to be inaugurated tomorrow morning.

But the sign of unity that was brought by the Presidential election was undercut by the regional voting for Congress, as highlighted by this past Friday's selection of legislative leaders:

Representative Edwin Snowe, former son-in-law of notorious ex-president Charles Taylor was elected as Speaker of the 64-member House of Representatives. The speaker is the third in rank in the government hierarchy after the president and vice president. Senator Isaac Nyanebo, a former advisor and Secretary General of the rebel group, Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD), which battled the government from 1999 to 2003, was elected Senate President Pro Tempore. ... Snowe is one of four newly elected parliamentarians who are on a UN Security Council Travel Ban and Asset Freeze List for "on-going ties with Charles Taylor."

As a result, the new legislature being run by two former (and opposing) warlords, one of whom is an internationally recognized war criminal. This only shows that the regional tensions remain strong, as reflected by local voting patterns; and some very violent men remain in positions of great power.

Monrovia

2006-01-15T12:07:00.000Z

The city of Monrovia sits on a narrow peninsula between the Atlantic and the Mesurado River, and includes Bushrod Island on the north-east side of the river. The city stretches along this area, about five miles long and nowhere wider than a half mile. With the influx of IDPs (Internally Displaced Persons-- refugees who stay in their home country), the population of Monrovia has swelled to around two million. The infrastructure is entirely destroyed, with no sewage or garbage system except open latrines. During a typical run along the beach, it is common to pass several people squatting, relieving themselves.

The majority of the city is large, concrete buildings that have been entirely reduced to their structural skeletons. People have squatted living establishments where ever possible, reinforcing the structure of five story buildings with wooden sticks. In between the previously built up town center and the water, surrounding us on all sides, shacks made of every imaginable material, scrap wood, metal and cloth have been errected and crammed in amongst each other. Two bridges connect Monrovia with Bushrod island, the Gabriel Tucker bridge and a second one which is the center of the city's open market, and is impassable today in a vehicle through the choke of shops and merchant carts.

During the civil wars, both in 1996, and again in 2003, the rebel groups had been able to take control of most of the country, driving down from the countryside and taking control Bushrod Island, but unable to cross the moat that effectivly protects the capital. With the secondary bridge destroyed, this led the the Gabriel Tucker bridge becoming the center of the most intensive fighting. The first photo is taken from the bridge today, looking at two prominent buildings in Monrovia from which government snipers were able to control the bridge and prevent the captial itself from being overrun. Note the bullet holes which riddle all the lampposts and pocket every visible wall.

The most notable thing about the country is how young it is. According to the CIA World Factbook, the median age is 18 and the life expectancy for a Liberian is not even 39. The people on the street look it. It is rare to find a Liberian who looks much over 35, and the average taxi driver looks 14. People swamp the street everywhere, and it is not uncommon to see 14 year old kids with missing limbs, begging on the street. The endemic poverty and unemployment is everywhere, but the area here is surprisingly robust. The CIA lists about 2000 cell phones in country, but that number is dated 2001, and I can tell you is is definately out of date. Prepaid cell phones are everywhere, even in the bush, and the little scratch off cards for $5 of service are practicly the national flower, they are laying everywhere.

Propaganda

2006-01-15T12:03:00.000Z

About every five feet in this town is another propaganda billboard proclaiming some sort of hope or warning. "Liberians: Unite, don't Fight!" "Citizens beware, women have the right to vote!" or "Condomize: stop HIV/AIDS". Here is a classic that stands next to the UN driver training and testing office.

Cleaning up for the Inaguration

2006-01-15T11:50:00.000Z

The most amazing transformation over the past week has been to watch the Liberians clean up Monrovia. Or rather, one street in Monrovia. Buildings and curbs have been painted, the streets have been swept. An incredible amount of garbage has been removed from the sides of the streets. Several buildings have even recieved glass windows. In the past day or two, they have even been adding lines on the street for the lanes. People still ignore them.

These photos are from earlier in the week, and you can see the beginning of this happening. The streets are still clogged with cars, UN vehicles, stalled taxis and thousands of pedestrians. Previously, and still today in outskirts of the town, the sides of the streets would be piled, literally three feet high with garbage, much of it pathetically on fire.

The best gas station in town

2006-01-15T11:42:00.000Z

Your standard Monrovia gas station. Quite frankly, these guys must be connected, to have thirteen gallons of gas available. Most poor guys only have two or three on sale.

Footballer Weah concedes Liberian election

2005-12-22T03:56:00.000Z

The Observer is reporting that George Weah has withdrawn challenge to the outcome of the election. Current reports contradict, which the Liberian Observer reporting that Weah has withdrawn his claims of irregularities in last month's presidential election, while the BBC claims

Mr Weah is not dropping his claims of being cheated, but said he would drop his action to give Liberians "the opportunity to carry on the business of national recovery and redemption in an atmosphere of tranquility"

This is generally good news, and may help to minimize violence and hopefully help stabilize the government, although smaller tribal clashed continue to flare up around the country. The fact that Weah has not completely withdrawn his claims of irregularities does, though, leave open the possibility of sporadic violence from many of his lingering supporters. With the recent engagement, though, and reports that president-elect Johnson-Sirleaf may open a post for Weah in her government does bode well. In unrelated news, the UN has voted to continue the sanctions against Liberia in the trade of arms, diamonds and timber. This will cause Liberia's economic recovery to continue to stagnate, and prevent a faster recovery, but a recent report by the UN suggests that corruption within the business and government continue to be endemic

In its report, the Panel notes that requirements for lifting the embargo on Liberian rough diamonds and timber have not been met, while recent agreements on iron ore suggest that Liberians cannot rely on their Government or the international community to protect their interests. Instead, it said, transparent business negotiations are necessary.

Ellen and Weah meet

2005-12-21T04:45:00.000Z

President-elect Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf and loosing presidential candidate George Weah meet in a promising development since Weah's recent provocative speeches:

President-elect of Liberia, Mrs. Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf and defeated presidential candidate of the Congress for Democratic Change (CDC), George Manneh Weah on Saturday held major discussions behind closed door. The Chief Mediator in the Liberian peace process during a reception rather spontaneously arranged the impromptu meeting between Mrs. Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf and former football legend, George Weah at the Executive Mansion. -snip- Although details of the meeting between the President-elect Sirleaf, and Amb. Weah, were not disclosed, but sources close to the meeting divulged that their discussions centered on maintaining peace and stability in the country. Political observers said the discussion between Amb. Weah and the President-elect is a significant break through in the Liberian process. It is the first time that the two political leaders have held closed door discussion since the end of the runoff election. Mr. Weah had persistently decried massive fraud in the run-off, which Mrs. Sirleaf overwhelmingly won.

Time will tell if Weah backs off the rhetoric in the weeks leading up to the 16 Jan inauguration.