Gbarnga Mission | Liberia – West Africa

So you’re wondering if I made it back after our truck repairs?… John 2 met me at Eagle Electric around 6:30 and the workers loaded up the truck. We were off! However, an hour into the journey (about 8pm), all the dashboard warning lights were on again. We pulled over in the village called “15 Gate” and found the new belt was shredded and wrapped around the fan. Where does one find a belt after dark in 15 Gate? Turns out that John 2 knows a lot of people…and he had a friend who brought out some tools and a fan belt that fit. After $30 and a flashlight assisted repair, we were back on the road. It was nearly midnight by the time I dropped off John 2 and got to the guesthouse. That bed felt good.

We started school lunches this week and the cooks are trying different foods each day to determine which is the most “popular”…I think they’re trying to avoid waste and fill everyone’s stomachs. The cooks are working under the same “kitchen” used for preparing meals for the workers (a few sticks with corrugated metal on top) so there’s a bit of coordination to get about 70 meals cooked on the open fire. The process will be much better once the school’s kitchen we’re building is completed. 
The girls below are enjoying a meal of bitterball soup over rice…don’t you just love their little green jumpers!

My biogas experiment seems to be progressing well. The gas collection chamber continues to rise (about 8-10 inches so far). By the end of the week I hope to fry an egg over a Bunsen burner.

Over the weekend I took a ride to Foekalleh to see the rubber and palm farm that Tumamee and his brother own. Besides the size of the farm being impressive, I was most impressed by the forethought Tumamee has which is uncharacteristic of most Liberians. His family owned the property from a time when land records were poor and squatters could easily dispute your ownership rights. Tumamee had enough insight to plant rubber trees as a way of staking claim to the land and get a future return for his efforts. So, 13 years later, he’s about to tap these trees for latex “sap” (to be processed into rubber). I learned about bananas on this little field trip also. Did you know they cut the entire banana tree down with each banana bunch harvested? I thought the tree grew bananas year after year. Here’s Tumamee (left) with his brother and some other guy I don’t know.
Tomorrow we visit Cuttington University and the BRAC office in Suakoko to research poultry farming.

In between everything I’ve been building a couple of cabinets for the kitchen. I’m trying rubber wood panels for the cabinet doors and drawer fronts…supposedly the bugs don’t eat it. It’s a cross pollination of IKEA meets Liberia.