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

Five o'clock Football at ABC

Brazil beating Spain in the finals of the Confederation Cup three nights ago was big news, but Levi and Vanndel showing up in Yekepa with a soccer ball has been an even bigger hit. Give a boy a ball and he'll make friends anywhere. At 4:45 p.m. each day the community boys start coming to ABC. The crowd is growing each day. Word is out --  the Chinchen boys love soccer and anyone from age 7 to 14 is invited on campus to play.

Boys from the community coming to play football -- supervised by an ABC student (on left) who has made it his job to be the official referee.

Vanndel can't wait until the afternoon and the big game.

The next generation enjoying football.

Rock climbing in the mine

Paul says the kids did great rock climbing the walls of the mine but he did it as a teenager at night with monster trucks driving by!

Abandoned LAMCO Mine

30 years ago the Swedish mining company,LAMCO, was mining some of the richest iron ore in the world (70% pure iron ) in the mountains right behind the ABC campus. Sadly, the massive mining operation -- one of the largest concessions in the world was abandoned practically overnight.  We visited the abandoned mine today. Mammoth mining equipment sitting like rusty, frozen dinosaurs from an era that is gone forever. Yes, there is a new Indian mining company working a nearby mountain, but nowhere near the scale of what the Swedes were doing three decades ago. 

Wapco - huge mining dump trucks that we used to flag down in the middle of the night as teenagers while camping up in the Nimba mountains. The Wapco drivers thought we were nuts, but would wave us aboard with big grins. We would then spend hours riding around with the driver standing on the front ledge of the Wapco as the driver drove down into the pits to have his truck loaded, and then miles back across the mine to the gargantuan rock crusher where the driver would dump the ore into a seemingly bottomless, roaring machine that would smash the boulders into bits of gravel.

A two-mile long conveyor belt brought the ore down the mountain to these huge Train loading iron ore silos.

Wapco grave yard.

Strip mining crater at the top of Mt.Nimba.

Are you my mother?

One International School Breeds Another

My old school in Yekepa, Liberia, is now war torn and gone with the wind, but it was once a bustling model of what a genuine international school should be like. My twin brother Palmer and I had great friends from Norway - like Christian Simeon who won the unhandicaped Liberian Open when we were in 9th Grade, from Spain - like Ricado Mullians who bragged 35 years ago that Spain would one day win the World Cup, from France - like Jean-Pierre Mezentine who taught us early on how superior the French culture was, and of course from Liberia - like Oliver Daniels who would one day run for his country in the 1984 & 1988 Olympics and room with me at Biola my senior year of college.  It was truly an amazing, tremendously well run school that had kids from literally dozens of countries whose fathers or mothers all worked for the huge Swedish mining company, LAMCO.  

This school was called E-SCHOOL and it is actually the school that we copied when we built and had the vision for the ABC CHRISTIAN ACADEMY in Malawi. Yes, for those who have been to our school in Lilongwe, even down to the design of the shade covers that run in front of the classrooms! (see picture below)

Liberian Palm Butter

We are blessed to have two ladies helping our family while we are here at ABC in Yekepa. The lady on the left is Rebecca and the one on the right is Marie. These ladies were here early the day after we arrived and announced, "We are here to help your family".

It's a good thing, too, because today with no cooking gas, I was at a loss. My children were making fun of me because I kept saying, "We are going to starve!" Nothing has been further from the truth. Rebecca and Marie were quick to say, "Don't worry ma. We know how to cook on the fire. We will have palm butter and rice and fried cassava chips with pineapple. Leave everything to us. Never mind."

The children loved dinner and loved Paul's favorite Liberian dish -- Palm Butter and rice.  Even our picky eater Vanndel gobbled it all up!

Pizza Panic

The girls are making pizza for lunch today.  We have a small problem. The gas canister for cooking that we bought on the way up country had a leak and ran out after just 3 days. So we have no gas to cook and the generator goes off at noon. ABC University in Liberia does not have electricity but relays on its own generator. We only have power for twelve hours each day. There are no electric dryers, so we hang our clothes out to dry, which is a challenge with the heavy rains coming every day this time of year. I asked for an iron and they brought me am old cast-iron iron that you fill with hot coal. No electric irons are allowed. No blow dryers or curling irons or hot rollers, because they draw too much heat and too much power from the generator. We also have to keep the fridge closed and have not had ice since we arrived. All hot water heaters are on timers and you have to set the timer an hour before a shower to get hot water.  Paul's getting a lot of good ideas for things to implement in Malawi!