Buchanan

So I'm a couple months behind in stories and adventures. We've had Jamie's sister and family visit in December and my parents visited in February. I plan on having a post soon about those visits, but first one about a trip we took last week with my parents. On of our security guards, Morris, has wanted us to visit his village near Buchanan for months. We took the opportunity to visit the surrounding area and show my parents a little of the Liberian countryside.

Before we get to those pictures, a boy came by the house last week with a small sea turtle he wanted to sell. Here's a picture of it in one of the boys hands. Colton went and got some money from the Sacras to buy it, and then went down with the Sacra boys and his brothers to release it on the beach. Cute little guy...

Back to Buchanan. The route to Buchanan takes you past the airport and briefly through the Firestone rubber plantation. After you leave Buchanan you hit some road construction. There are a few miles of beautifully paved roads...then back to reality. About halfway there you get to this bridge...

The heavy road construction and other trucks have taken their toll. Here you see a beam that supports the road decking is loose.

The truss supports on the sides have also taken a beating.

But there was a crew there reattaching the decking. We had to wait 15 minutes while they finished their welding.

Here they are straightening out some of the decking before they weld it.

We made it across the bridge and to the junction to drive to Morris's village. Unfortunately, we found out the bridge was out to his village. We decided to visit his sister's village instead because it was closer to the road. So we turned around and spent a little time at the market along the highway before heading to his sister's village. As usual, Blessing drew a pretty good crowd.

People wanted to know where her parents were and why she was with white people. Here's Jamie explaining about her cleft lip.

The crowd eventually grew until they were blocking the road and we had to move on before someone got run over.

So we headed on down the road towards the village. We had to travel around maybe 6-8 miles of dirt road to reach the trailhead.

We hiked about 20 minutes to get into the village. It was a smallish village with 10+/- houses. As usual they were excited to have visitors. Here's Blessing saying hello.

Kobe and Colton waiting in the village palava hut.

Our host Morris.

Walking through the village checking out the houses.

Like usual, we handed out some glow bracelets. The kids enjoyed them in the daylight, but I'm sure it was more exciting in the village after the sun went down.

A few of the houses in the village.

The village photo...

Many of the houses had some sort of paint decorations. Some were handprints, some footprints. This one looked like they took a chicken and dipped it in paint before smacking it against the wall...just a guess.

The boys and grandpa in front of a termite mound on the way to the village.

After visiting the village we went onto Buchanan and had dinner before heading back home. Around 8pm, after the sun had set, we got a flat tire. Luckily the area we stopped to change the tire was wide and left plenty of room for working while all the dump trucks flew by. By the time the car was ready to go again there were a group of children who had gathered around and were dancing to a small radio they had. Morris asked them what they were listening to and they replied French English. More to come...