Liberia saga continued

Another of T's African saga, reproduced without permission. The pictures are indelibly inked in my mind - the red earth, kids smiling away through their poverty and the mud houses that remind me of Kerala some 30 years back. (Well, there are parts of Kerala which still look like this.)

" I'd gone to a place called 'Cape Mount' last week. It was a 2 hour drive from Monrovia. Our office had decided to spend a few days living with the communities we work for. Given the poor state of affairs in the capital city, you can only imagine what the rural areas must be like. We spent a lot of time in the class room of a local school discussing ActionAid's strategy for Liberia. The school obviously didn't have electricity so we had to carry our generators from Monrovia. The one thing - a bed at night - that we take for granted when we plan to spend 3 days somewhere is also asking for too much in Liberia. So where did everyone from office sleep? On the floor of a local office which was nothing more than a cement hut with a tin roof.

This is not to say that the place wasn't beautiful. In fact, because there is so little development - the country side is lush green with a splatter of huts here and there, and lots of children running around. Food was very basic but tasty. The women who cooked us lunch insisted that the best cassava greens were made in this part of the country. Unlike in India, in Liberia people eat not only the root ( i.e potato and cassava) but also the plant - what they call potato green and cassava green. These are cooked together with a combination of meats. The closest I can think of is 'Saag meat' or Meat with spinach in India. Well, the cassava green in Cape Mount was indeed good. Anyway, attached are a few pictures to give you a sense of Cape Mount."