Tractor Trash

Today we took the narrow, winding road up the Nimba Mountain Range to what used to be known as LAMCO (Liberian American Mining Company). 

Built in the sixties, the Swedish company once had 2,000 expat employees and 25,000 Liberian workers. What seems to be the biggest difference between LAMCO and the new Indian mining company today, Arcelor Mittal, is that the Swedes really invested in this community.  I hadn’t realized before that African Bible College was the largest establishment not owned by LAMCO in the entire county of Nimba.  The Swedes built a community big enough to accommodate thousands of people comfortably.  It included 3 big schools, enough housing for their manual labors and management staff, tennis courts, a huge golf course, 50-meter swimming pool, theater, ice cream store, grocery stores, and everything you could dream of.  Their foundations were built to last, and the Swedes were here to stay. 

I learned from my Dad that their disagreements with Samuel Doe, the dictator that started the war in 1990, led to the end of the company’s relationship with Liberia.  The war destroyed everything in its path, including the booming LAMCO community.  Just like my grandparents and the staff at ABC, they were some of the last people to flee Nimba county before the rebels invaded. 

We stopped near the foot of the mountain where LAMCO was mining its iron ore, and pulled up to what used to be massive generators.  My Dad counted eight of them – huge turbines twice the size of a human being.  On the other side of the road were the remnants of the old conveyor belt that would haul the iron down the mountain as it was mined.  Though all the steel was rusting and cement blocks had fallen from the foundations around us, we stood in awe as we admired the massive structures now decaying before our eyes. 

We reached the top of the mountain, and pulled up to a graveyard of tractors left behind by the Swedes just before the war.  My brothers, Bess, Cozz and my Dad climbed in and out of rusted front end loaders, bull dozers, and massive dump trucks neatly parked beside one another.  The huge tires had either flattened, or been stripped of their rubber by looters.  All the glass windows had been broken into, and most of the valuable materials were taken as well.  Even some of the tractors were decorated with white graffiti.  My Dad can remember watching the Swedes drive past them in their wapcos, and even recalls riding on top of them.  We can’t figure out why the Swedes left such valuable tools behind.  Maybe they were in a panic to leave.  Maybe they intended to come back because they underestimated how long the war would last.  Maybe the Liberian government wouldn’t allow the tractors across the boarder.  It’s a mystery.

A pyramid of chiseled away rock loomed above us.  It’s all green now.  The jungle is beginning to claim back what the strip mining did to the mountain.  But the Liberians we have talked to would all agree that the days are now more difficult without LAMCO. They wonder if Nimba will ever quite measure up to what it was before December of 1989.

-Ashley