Earlier this week, I joined a few colleagues for a trip to Voinjama, the capital city in Lofa county. Lofa is in northeastern Liberia and it borders Sierra Leone and Guinea (http://www.humanitarianinfo.org/liberia/mapcentre/reference/country_pdf/LIB001Counties_County%20Capitals_Districts_20040319.pdf)
The first three hours of the trip are on paved road (not without a good amount of bumps and potholes) and the last five hours are on dirt roads. I took some Dramamine as a precautionary measure. The condition of the roads tends to be worse in the rainy season, and even though we bounced around a lot, I’m told we were traveling on one of the better paths in the country.
As we drove north to Lofa I was struck by how green everything was! There were farms and ponds and thick forests, and it was obvious that we had left the city far behind us. Voinjama has lots of hills, and it was wonderful to take advantage of them and walk, run or hike on our own! The stores and restaurants that we saw looked quite similar to those in Monrovia, accompanied by the same signs advertising a long list of items you can purchase or consume inside (a list like: soup, pepper, concrete, zinc, and batteries is not uncommon).
Our driver, James, grew up in Voinjama, although he left during the war when fighting got too intense. He took my friend Meredith and I to his family’s village. Of the nine houses that his father had constructed there, only two remain. James showed us the school he went to and the business his father used to work for. I could tell by the way he described his childhood that he had really enjoyed it, though when war came in his teens it changed everyone's way of life.
Lofa was particularly hard hit. Fighters frequently crossed the borders in and out of Liberia from Sierra Leone and Guinea. Today, there is a new hospital in Voinjama and many international NGOs have a presence there. Voinjama felt quite peaceful and I couldn’t really imagine intense fighting happening there, although we saw enough ruins to remind us. One building we passed at an intersection was absolutely riddled with bullet holes. I think it’s a small grocery store now.
I really enjoyed the people of Lofa. Outside of the NGO presence, cars aren’t particularly common in Voinjama, so wherever we went, people stopped to stare and wave. Some children would cry out, “white women! white women! white women!” when they saw us, and we did make a couple of babies cry…but I suppose that is to be expected. We definitely look like strangers to them. It will be strange to come home and just blend in again. Where’s the fun in that?
The first three hours of the trip are on paved road (not without a good amount of bumps and potholes) and the last five hours are on dirt roads. I took some Dramamine as a precautionary measure. The condition of the roads tends to be worse in the rainy season, and even though we bounced around a lot, I’m told we were traveling on one of the better paths in the country.
As we drove north to Lofa I was struck by how green everything was! There were farms and ponds and thick forests, and it was obvious that we had left the city far behind us. Voinjama has lots of hills, and it was wonderful to take advantage of them and walk, run or hike on our own! The stores and restaurants that we saw looked quite similar to those in Monrovia, accompanied by the same signs advertising a long list of items you can purchase or consume inside (a list like: soup, pepper, concrete, zinc, and batteries is not uncommon).
Our driver, James, grew up in Voinjama, although he left during the war when fighting got too intense. He took my friend Meredith and I to his family’s village. Of the nine houses that his father had constructed there, only two remain. James showed us the school he went to and the business his father used to work for. I could tell by the way he described his childhood that he had really enjoyed it, though when war came in his teens it changed everyone's way of life.
Lofa was particularly hard hit. Fighters frequently crossed the borders in and out of Liberia from Sierra Leone and Guinea. Today, there is a new hospital in Voinjama and many international NGOs have a presence there. Voinjama felt quite peaceful and I couldn’t really imagine intense fighting happening there, although we saw enough ruins to remind us. One building we passed at an intersection was absolutely riddled with bullet holes. I think it’s a small grocery store now.
I really enjoyed the people of Lofa. Outside of the NGO presence, cars aren’t particularly common in Voinjama, so wherever we went, people stopped to stare and wave. Some children would cry out, “white women! white women! white women!” when they saw us, and we did make a couple of babies cry…but I suppose that is to be expected. We definitely look like strangers to them. It will be strange to come home and just blend in again. Where’s the fun in that?
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