Lutheran Mission

(Paul) LUTHERN MK YOUTH HOSTEL is where my twin brother Palmer and I lived our senior year of high school. Yes, the beach being only a hundred yards from our front door was a bit of a distraction, but we loved being with a great group of a dozen MKs who had all grown up in the bush like we did, and were totally excited to be in the big city.

The front of the house.

Our bedroom window was the back left facing the ocean. The wall and apartments were not there 30 years ago. Just a plantation if palm tress between our room and the beach.

We stayed at this part of the compound as a family from time to time when visiting Monrovia.

The American International School of Monrovia

(Paul) My old high school, ACS, has reopened after the war as an American elementary school - The American International School of Monrovia - reason being there are no international high school kids in Liberia!  For that matter we've been here for three weeks and besides our 6 we've only seen 3 expat children the whole time in the country.

Durectly behind me is the entrance to ACS that Palmer and I entered every morning, and further back is the gym where I played point for the Sun Devils. George Gervin (aka The Iceman) was my hero at the time, so as you can imagine there was a lot of funky dribbling and passing going on. Palmer and I were co-captains of the varsity team our Senior year -- not necessarily because of our great skills, but more because the pool of talent had shrunk significantly ater the 1980 coup d'ete (yes, that means 'off with their heads'), when a number of our Americo-Liberian high school friends Dads were executed on the beach by the People's Redemption Council ("In The Cause of the People the Struggle Continues!") - an extremely gorey ocean-front firing squad scene with drunk soldiers firing wildly at elderly statesmen tied to telephone poles buried in the sand - an event captured and made public by an award-winning Life Magizine photographer.

The gym.

Beautiful gym facilities.

Paul's old math class.

Sections of the school are still war-torn and abandoned, including the Library below.

Overloaded pick up truck and a monkey?

The road from Baffu Bay to Monrovia was brutal.  It's 206 miles - I looked it up online but it took 12 hours!  The road was horrible and its rainy season.  Paul drove the Toyota Tundra and lost both lower floodlights in mud puddles.  The Land Cruiser with Cozz, Ashley and Levi fished one out of the muck. Logging trucks have torn up the road.  There were many bridges and swamps along the way as well. We suspect this is why there was not a road this route when Paul was younger.   I will add that the road from Bucannon to Monrovia was beautifully paved - by the Chinese.  We were thankful when we hit that part.

As we were driving along we came across several of these overloaded pick up taxis.  This one I tried to get while leaning to the right navigating a mud puddle.  I was shocked one man was on the side of the truck trying to push the side to balance it.  I have no idea what his plan was if the truck tipped over.  I doubt he could have jumped out of the way fast enough.

As we passed the truck I spotted a monkey on top.  We flagged down the driver and told him he had a hitch hiker.  It was a pet!

The owner put the monkey down for the kids to see.  He wouldn't take food but enjoyed a drink of water.

Liberian monkey.  Sadly we saw another one if these monkeys being sold as bush meat (to eat) in a village further along the trail.

Deforestation - the road to Baffu Bay

Paul and his family never drove to Baffu Bay because there was no road.  They had to fly in on a small plane and land at Tournata (named after RG LeTourneau founder of LeTourneau College in Longview, TX).  Tournata was a mission station built by LeTourneau.  It was supposed to be a tent making venture mixing logging with evangelism.   The mission had housing and missionaries, a school, a church, a hospital and an airfield -- all on Baffu Bay.  Liberia National Airline even landed there.  It was suddenly and unexplainably abandoned.  The locals say that one day ships and boats pulled up and the missionaries walked on board and left.  They left everything behind.  It's a mystery.  Paul says as a young boy his family used to stay in the houses - complete with furnishings.  Evidently the missionary pilots that flew the Chinchen plane knew the missionaries that had been there.  They had left before Paul's family ever arrived in 1970.  They took Paul's father to see the old mission.  It fascinated him.

There is a road from Sino to Tournata now making it possible for us to visit (the best dirt road we were on this whole trip).  It was built by a Malasian company who has stripped the Forrest and cut it all down to plant miles of Palm tress for palm oil.  It was sad to see the jungle gone but we did see the palm trees now about 2 feet high in some areas.  This area once so rural may change now.

We visited this area because Paul's father had built a house on Baffu Bay for his "vacangelize" program.  That is vacation plus evangelization put together.

You can see a new palm tree up close and the jungle line off in the distance.  It was shocking to see so much Forrest cut down.

VACANGELIZE House at Baffu Bay

(Paul) VACANGELIZE

Few people know this, but Dad started one of Africa's very first Short-term missions programs called VACANGELIZE - Vacation and Evangelization. Dad needed help training pastors in rural parts of Liberia so he developed the VACANGELIZE program to get couples and families to Africa for the summer - part pastor-training and teaching, part family holiday. Some of our family's long-time relationships (Boersmas and Yelvertons) began at this remote stretch of beach, where no car had ever been, accessible only by plane, BAFFU BAY. 

The Baffu Bay house was completely looted and destroyed during the war.

Baffu Bay beach.  Very secluded and private.  The waves are rough and big but we had the whole beach to ourselves.

The Indian Almond tree where Paul's father sat and planned for African Bible Colleges, Inc.  There are several of these trees in front if the house offering shade.

Someone has built another house next to ours on the beach.  They were very welcoming. It's the custom in this area to 

welcome guests with cassava and coconut as a refreshment.  They say the cassava in this area is the best because it grows on the sand.

Paul and Bess standing in the doorway to Paul and Palmers room at the Baffu Bay house.

All that remains of the stripped house is moms pink tile in her bathroom shower.

Paul's father put seashells in the cement door frame to help the concrete because no stones were available on the secluded coast.

The road next to the house back towards the mission of Tournata.  All the houses are gone now.  All that remains of this mission is an overgrown airstrip, a hospital (it looks renovated) and an old abandoned church building.

This was the church at Tournata.  It was once the largest church building in Liberia.  We were told it is abandoned and no longer in use.

Into The Jungle

The Sapo National rainforest is a protected Forrest.  It's huge.  I say this because I spent four hours walking in it.  

We drove about two hours from ENI to the Forest.  We took a packed lunch and a liter of water for each of us.  Eight bottles of water in one backpack that we designated Levi to carry.  We also took a first aid kit and all the boys had knives.  Cozz got the prize for the biggest hunting knife I've ever seen.  I forgot one thing though - the snake bite kit!  We did however get a blessing from the paramount chief in the village that marks the beginning of the trail.  We are all African enough to figure that was worth enough for the journey.  If we did this again I would camp in the village and hike early the next morning.

Ashley was thrilled to see the canoe walking down the path in front of us.  She really wanted to ride in a canoe like her Grammy down the many rivers in Liberia.

We walked for an hour through the buffer zone across many creeks and swamps.

At the Sinoe river we stopped for lunch before the canoe ride to the "Sapo Jungle".

Annabelle, Levi and Bess were the first in the canoe.  We had two Forrest rangers with us for our hike.

I felt like Hepburn in the Movie "African Queen" crossing the river.

My bush babies.  Notice Ashley, Annabelle and I all wore white shirts.  They wanted us to change but it was all we had.  They claim there is no white in the forest and the animals are afraid of the color.  Oooops.

We hiked another hour over roots and through swamps to "Vera camp".  The camp is named after a German  lady who studied chimps for two years living here in the Sapo rainforest. I fell badly once but so did Bess and Vanndel who smacked his temple on a huge knotted root when he went down. 

We were hot and sweaty and stinky. Levi sat on the bench above with Cozz and we heard a crack and looked up to see both of them crashing to the ground. 

The guides were very knowledgable about the chimps in the area.  That particular area had six chimp families.  Next to the camp they showed the children where the chimps  cracked their nuts using stones as tools.  Chimps are very social animals and polite.  They crack the nuts and pass them to their leader who keeps them until they are done and distributes them equally so they can all eat together.  The movie "Chimpanzee" was filmed in this Forest that extends into Ivory Coast.  I strongly  suggest you rent the Disney movie and watch it.  It's fascinating and you will see the Forest as we did.

Paul with our ranger guides Kollie Borlay and Augustine Nimely (beside Paul) and Annabelle.

A chimp nest high in the tree tops.  Chimps never sleep in the same place two nights in a row.

Huge trees with mammoth roots we had to climb over.

Plandabalabo Village

(Paul) In Africa there are always very nice nice villages and villages that were clearly under the control of dark and evil powers. Plandabalabo was definitely one of the latter. Their drums beat all night while the young men got hammered on Cane Juice (sugarcane whisky). The people were uncharacteristically cruel and deceptive -- often at odds with ENI Mission over the oddest things, like accusing dad of poisoning their sickly cows and a short term missionary lady of being a white witch.

It was interesting walking thru the village once again - this time with my family. Things had changed, the mission and the witness of Christ had definitely had an influence on these people over time. There were two prominent new churches, brightly painted right in the middle of the village. The town's Clam Chief was our former cook, Robert Chaie, and the town Mayor was a former Cub Scout buddy of me and Palmer, Junior.

Bess with her favorite village pet - a goat.

Paul with Robert Chaie holding a Cocoa pod that chocolate comes from and what the unique Coke bottle was designed from. No. There's not any chocolate in Coke, but the artist commissioned to design the CocaCola bottle looked up the wrong picture. True story from the Coke museum in Atlanta!

The huts in this area are unique with the bamboo mat sides.

The road through the village is covered in animal dung. They let the pigs, goats, ducks, sheep and dogs roam free. Vanndel was a poop magnet. He kept stepping in the waste wherever we went.

The trail back to ENI mission.  The children followed us everywhere we went.

Levi next to a rubber tree.  We used to make rubber bouncy balls from the sap.

The little girl in red is holding a Liberian bush baby doll.  It's made from bamboo with hair to braid at the top.

The children love to see themselves on a camera.