Tim Travels Liberia

On the way to Kakata, it really is a big jungle outside of Monrovia

I promised you all a blog post and I’m nothing if not a promise keeper. Last week I had the great opportunity of traveling around to different areas of Liberia and checking in with some of the people I had trained in DBT a few weeks ago. It was great to get out of the office and see some of the country that I’ve been living in for the last month and a half.

On Monday I went out to Kakata. Kakata is about an hour East of Monrovia. It functions as a gateway into the interior of the country. It’s a quaint little town of a few thousand people. They have a huge open air market, a hospital, and a few schools. On the way out houses stood intermittently next to the road. Most were made from concrete blocks and aluminum roofs but some were made from mud bricks that were that orange brown color. I’d never seen a mud brick house before, so that was novel.

Cottonwood Health Center and Subie, the security guard our front

On Wednesday I went to Cottonwood which was out by the Firestone plantation. If you remember from a previous post the Firestone tire company has a big presence out here. I drove through the rubber plantation which was interesting. They tap the tree and hang a bucket under the tap and I assume the rubber constituents flows down into the bucket. So everywhere you looked you’d see rows of trees with little red buckets hanging on them. Cottonwood has an interesting history. When Firestone first came to the area the inhabitants of Cottonwood refused to sell their land so the little community exists on the plantation but is completely independent of it.

On Friday I went to Monrovia Central Prison which was interesting and avid followers of my life will note this is not my first time in prison. When I first walked in I was surprised to find myself directly in the prison yard. Which we then proceeded across to the complete opposite end of the compound where the clinic was. A lot of the men yelled at me, “Hey white boy” which was a little unnerving. I wasn’t around long but the conditions of the prison seemed a far cry from the prisons of the US. Most of the prisoners wore faded orange pants and a variety of different shirts. They appeared to be able to wander anywhere without much supervision. I saw a few guards wandering about but there didn’t seem to be much order imposed on the prisoners. Another intern told me that as part of his project he’s doing a survey of the prisoners and their living conditions. Apparently overcrowding is a serious issue in the prison. This same intern told me that most cells designed for two people are actually housing three. The trainee I met with also told me that there are approximately 1,000 prisoners in a prison designed for 600.

The gate for the only mental hospital in Liberia

Also on Friday I went to the only mental hospital in Liberia. It’s supposed to hold 60 people but Alex, one of the people I work with, told me that at times it houses up 90. I didn’t take any pictures except for the one of the front gate but the inside of the compound was taken up by a large grassy yard bounded on four sided by the long dormitory building, an open air eating area, a tall border wall, and some administrative buildings. In the yard, residents dried their washed clothes and sheets by spreading them out on the grass. The dormitory was just one long building with rows of beds for all the residents, there were no private rooms. But the overall feeling of the hospital was very therapeutic. The clinicians I talked to all seemed very sincere about their work. The buildings are dilapidated though, there's not a lot of funding for the hospital right now

Bonus picture of hanging out at "Linda's House" on Saturday

So that’s about it for last week. It was great to get out and see some more of Liberia instead of just the area surrounding my house. Hope you’re all doing well. Feel free to email me at timdaniel25@gmail.com and say hi!