Plants and Animals

Some of the plants in the jungle were really interesting. The trees were huge - not only tall but with immense trunks. Some had growths that looked like fins at the ground level. The fins could be almost 2 ft tall and about 3 inches thick and looked like a bench. They might be 15 ft long, running along the ground. There were tall trees where the trunk wasn't actually connected to the ground, it was just supported by a series of vines. The trees gave a lot of shade over the path through the jungle, and it kept us somewhat cool while we were walking between villages. We would look for a nice breeze to make a comfortable spot for a break while walking. We figure that we walked about 80 to 100 miles during our 2 week trek in January. I walked about another 40 to 50 miles in February and March. The villagers don't measure the distance in miles, they measure it in hours. What takes them 3 hours to walk would take us 4 hours. They are a lot faster, as they have been walking all their lives, they are not overweight, and they are used to the heat! We walked a total of 47 hours in January when we visited 13 villages. In February and March, I walked about 26 hours to and from the villages where we worked on the wells. I knew in advance that we would be doing a lot of walking, and I was somewhat apprehensive about it. Looking back on it, it wasn't too hard. It was very interesting. I'm ready to do it again!

We didn't see many animals along the trail. The hunters have cleared them out. We did see evidence of the animals. We saw elephant footprints and broken down trees where they had crashed through the jungle, near Kondesu. We also heard some elephants crashing through the trees, but we didn't see them. They are very dangerous, so I'm glad we didn't see them. We didn't have any way to protect ourselves. It's like avoiding bears in Alaska.

They had some animals in the villages, but they don't raise them on their farms. They keep a lot of chickens in the villages, and I had hours of entertainment watching them. In Lowuma, they had 2 sheep that the government had distributed. The villagers carried them in from Fassama (7 hours). While I was there, a new lamb was born. That was exciting. So, they are on the way to repopulating. Previously, they had lots of sheep, but they were all eaten during the war. The villagers keep cats, dogs, and monkeys, but they don't treat them like we treat our pets. Our pets are better cared for than their children.

I have more photos of plants and animals in my photo album.

Bugs

The children in the villages love catching termites and eating them. A few days after a heavy rain, they come out in force, and the kids are up early in the morning scouting them. The first evidence that I saw of the termites (besides the damaged buildings) was their wings. There were wings all over the ground one morning, and the kids were having a hay-day. After they catch them, they fry them up in a pan and eat them. They're kind of crunchy, and they do have some protein, but I didn't care for them. They left a scratchy feeling in my throat. I'd have to be pretty hungry to eat them. The kids enjoyed them, though. They also eat them raw, which may not be such a good idea. The termite mounds are impressive. I have a photo here of Bekki and Stan in front of one. The black box in the photos is a video - take a look at it.

Another disgusting delicacy is the bamboo worm. It's about 2 inches long and 1/4 inch in diameter. They say it's real sweet, but I didn't have the guts to try it. For something sweet, I'll take sugar cane. We chewed some of that, and it's good.

Have I mentioned that Bekki doesn't like grasshoppers? There were plenty of them around.

There were also a lot of butterflies. They seem to come out more in the afternoon. Beautiful colors - blue, green, black & white, yellow.

What's for Dinner?

A note about the photos. I cannot get them embedded into the body of the text, so I'll describe them here. The top one is the 16 ft+ boa constrictor that we ate in Lowuma. Next is the community vat for processing palm oil. Center is some people that we met along the trail, walking to the market with their bush meat. Next is a closeup of the smoked monkeys - you can see a paw sticking out. The bottom one is some people we met on their farm close to the trail, showing the rice that they are harvesting.

I have had people ask me what I ate when I was up country. I ate what was available! The villagers live a subsistence lifestyle. They eat what they can produce by farming, hunting, or trapping. They grow rice, cassava, eddoes, types of eggplant, peppers, onions, pineapples, oranges, bananas, plantains, potatoes, jackfruit, mangos, peanuts, and maybe something else that I've forgotten. They usually eat one meal a day, and they must have rice. If they don't have rice, they say they haven't eaten.

They use palm oil, processing it from the palm nuts that grow wild. There is red palm oil, which comes from the fruit of the palm, and there is brown oil, which they process from the palm kernel. I helped them with the processing. What a chore. The palm kernel oil is delicious, so it's worth the work. I'm posting a photo of a big vat where they process the palm oil. This is in the village of Gbeleyankei, and all of the people use it. It would hold about 400 gallons! They live a communal lifestyle, so they share in the work and the product. They take care of each other.

Dinner usually consists of rice and soup. The soup usually has meat from the forest, such as monkey (yuck), porcupine (yum), anteater (yum), snake (yum), chicken (can be yummy), deer (can be yummy), catfish (yum), or other things that may not sound as good! They don't believe in wasting any part of the animal, so the deer stew even had part of the hide in it. Once, they cooked chicken which had un-laid eggs in it. Otherwise, they wouldn't eat eggs, believing that you are taking away somebody's child. I always picked things out of my food - like fish heads and bones - and left them on my plate. Somebody then took my plate and ate the rest. They don't waste anything. I was there during the dry season, when food is more plentiful. I understand that in the rainy season, they don't eat so well.

When the hunters bring something home, they share it with others in the village. One man shot a boa constrictor snake while I was there. That was delicious! It was 16 ft 4 inches long, so there was a lot of meat on it. They shared with the whole village. Since they don't have refrigeration, they smoke everything to preserve it. While on our village trek, we met people along the road that were taking dried monkeys to market. There is a photo of that posted above. They put the whole dead monkey on a rack above the wood fire. They have about a 2 day walk to go to market, where they sell the "bush meat". They will then buy things like salt and sugar. They also buy caustic, which they use to make soap. And of course, they buy shotgun shells for hunting. Fishing is done with hand-made nets.

So, what's for dinner tonight? I'm having chicken breast - boneless and skinless. I'm spoiled.

Hauling sand and gravel

We need sand and gravel to make the culverts, so we use the native materials. The villagers dug sand and gravel out of the stream in Lowuma, and in Gbeleyankei, they got gravel from around the village. The whole village got involved, even the children. In Gbeleyankei, they had to haul the sand from a stream 1/3 mile away. The sand and gravel from the stream was nice and clean, but the gravel from around the village was not clean. It had palm kernels, sticks, dog poop, and other things that don't make for strong concrete. So, the gravel had to be cleaned. There's not nearly enough water for washing it, so we screened it with a fenner. The fenner is a basket used for sifting rice to clean it. I tried my hand at it, as you can see in the photo. Four women worked all day to clean enough gravel for the culverts. In Lowuma, the well crew used a mosquito net to sieve the silt from the sand and gravel. We had to use the materials that were available. The villagers had to haul the cement, tools, and pump from Fassama; we don't want to haul any more than is necessary.

Please take a look at my photo album. I have lots more photos there. The link is on the main blog page. Also, I welcome your comments and questions!

Preparation of Well Culverts

While the digging is going on, we are also preparing concrete culverts for casing the well. The culverts are 36 inches outside diameter and have a 2 inch thickness. Wire mesh is placed in the center for reinforcement. After the concrete cures, the form is peeled off. Koko came up with this method to replace their previous method which uses a heavy steel form. The steel form is very difficult to carry by hand through the jungle. The sheet metal was easy to transport, and it worked very well. We made 19 culverts in Lowuma and 17 in Gbeleyankei. They were allowed to cure a minimum of 10 days before installation.

By the way, if you are wondering how to pronouce "Gbeleyankei", it is Bee-yan-kay. Accent on the second sylable. Lowuma is contracted to Lo-ma. The Kuwaa like the "Gb". It sounds mostly like a "B".

I learned a little of the tribal languages. The people in both villages are part of the Kuwaa Tribe, but they speak different languages. In Gbeleyankei, they speak mostly Kuwaa, and in Lowuma it is mostly Bandi. When you greet someone in the morning, you say "Good morning," and then you ask them how was their sleeping place. They should respond, "No fault with God". That's a little different, isn't it? When speaking English (the national language of Liberia), you greet them, "Good morning. How are you?" and they respond, "Thank God". They are glad to be alive. Greeting people is important to them. Relationships are important. Americans need to slow down a bit to be culturally appropriate in Liberia. In the morning, the villagers walk around and greet each other before starting their day. During our assessment trek, I walked around with Pastor Chris in the morning.

Digging a Well - African Style

Digging a well African style is not like drilling a well in the U.S. In the isolated Belle forest in Liberia, we had no electricity, no power tools, no fuels, and the only transportation was by foot. The villagers carried the tools and materials on their heads for about a 7 hr walk from the end of the road. We hired a well technician named Koko to plan and supervise the well installation and to monitor it after completion. Koko had a crew, including John, Justine, Mambu, and Morris. My last posting had a photo of the crew posing by the well culverts in Lowuma.

The well is dug by hand with a pick and a "digger" or "pingaling". The digger has a sharp, flat surface to smooth the side of the hole. The dirt is shoveled into a bucket and hauled to the surface with a rope. Usually, the hole is 40 inches in diameter, and the crew climb up and down the sides of the hole, using small dugouts for toe-holds. In Lowuma, Mambu started the hole before we arrived, and he made the hole with a 40 inch radius, instead of diameter, so it was too wide to climb with toe-holds. They used a ladder or they pulled each other out with a rope.

In the photos, you can see the tools used for digging. The pingaling has a long handle and looks like the ice breaker we used in Alaska. There is another long piece of bamboo standing up next to the pingaling; we used this to measure the hole diameter. You can see Mambu's back in the photo. It's back-breaking work!

Another photo shows John coming out of the well on the ladder. The ladder is home-made from native materials. The people are very capable in making things from their native materials.

Justine is coming out of the hole with a rope, after we reached the limit of the ladders. There wasn't any OSHA representative on site, so I just tried to keep people alive. It is risky work.

Morris is a villager from Lowuma who volunteered to help by pulling the dirt out of the hole. He then joined us in going to the next village of Gbeleyankei. I think he learned something from the experience, and we enjoyed his company.

The hole was dug until we reached water, and then we tried to get another 6 feet. When the water was coming in too fast to keep up by bailing it out by hand with 2 buckets, we had to call it quits. At the end, Justine and Mambu were digging in waist-deep water. The Lowuma well was dug to a depth of 35 ft, with about 4 ft of water depth on March 17. During the rainy season, the water depth will be more, and at the end of the dry season, it may be less. We bailed the well and got more than 100 buckets of water (about 300 gallons) in an hour, so the water influx was strong. I believe that it will be sufficient for the village. At any rate, we had worked for 3 days to deepen the well and were unable to, with the tools at hand.

That's all for now. I'll continue with more details on how the wells were installed.

Please give me some comments / feedback about the photos or questions about what we did. Are the photos too large and causing delays in loading? I know that not everyone has the good internet capabilities that I now have. Later!

Success!!

We have successfully installed wells in 2 villages that previously had none! That is so amazing. It is life-changing for so many people.

The villages of Lowuma and Gbeleyankei are now filling buckets of water from a well, instead of from a stream. The wells were completed last week, after I had left the jungle. The well technician, Koko, said that they celebrated by dancing. I wish that I could have been there, but maybe I can go back next year and see it for myself. I'm posting a photo of Gbeleyankei's stream here.

It was such a wonderful experience for me that I dont know for sure where to start recounting it to you. I decided to tell you the good news first - the success - rather than chronologically. I will continue to make postings on the blog with details of the well construction and my experiences.

The work was all done by hand, as there is no power in the villages (just manpower). The whole village was involved in the work, from bringing sand from the creek to lowering the culverts into the wells. I'm posting a few photos here, to whet your appetite. The people are very hard-working and strong. They dug sand out of the stream to mix concrete for the culverts. In Gbeleyankei (pronounced Bee-yan-kay), they carried buckets of sand on their heads for about 1/3 of a mile. I walked out there with them and took photos, but didn't offer to carry anything back. Women much older than me did, though. I've had a comfortable life, that's for sure.

Besides the 2 new wells, we plan to repair 4 wells that are currently not pumping - in Gatema, Konjade, Kenata, and Kalata. The Gatema repair will be substantial, requiring installation of more culverts. The other 3 wells only require the pump to be set deeper, as they are currently above the water level.

More to come.....