Africa 2022

Sunday was a stay-in day, fully. Except for forays upfront for food, I wrote the day away in RLJ room cool – 20 deg. C is my jam -- fulfilling pre-trip commitments.

Now, as with the world over, it’s Monday. We will try for Cuttington again, only this time with some calculated counter to the psychotic human road-cram that will set in after sunrise. Pre-pre-dawn, we start, with the pavement filling but not so severe as to thwart our way through Coca Cola and northward.

The city's behind and population eases but never absolute. Always are knots of young men or girls walking the shoulders, like schools of fish in rhythm behind the lead. The sun comes up over largely no-holds jungle to the left and Firestone’s tight forest-rows to the right, the edge of the largest (second largest?) (one-million-plus acre)

Tim Bowles

7 chapters

25 Jul 2022

Day Four - Up Country

July 25, 2022

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Bong County

Sunday was a stay-in day, fully. Except for forays upfront for food, I wrote the day away in RLJ room cool – 20 deg. C is my jam -- fulfilling pre-trip commitments.

Now, as with the world over, it’s Monday. We will try for Cuttington again, only this time with some calculated counter to the psychotic human road-cram that will set in after sunrise. Pre-pre-dawn, we start, with the pavement filling but not so severe as to thwart our way through Coca Cola and northward.

The city's behind and population eases but never absolute. Always are knots of young men or girls walking the shoulders, like schools of fish in rhythm behind the lead. The sun comes up over largely no-holds jungle to the left and Firestone’s tight forest-rows to the right, the edge of the largest (second largest?) (one-million-plus acre)

rubber plantation on the planet. Ohio-based Firestone began on this government-leased land in the late-20s. While Japanese Bridgestone bought the company in the 80s, it remains “Firestone Liberia,” a commercial nation within a nation.

In Yet Another Irony Department: 23 Liberian kids challenged this quasi-nationhood in a 2006 U.S. federal court suit, seeking damages for child labor and de facto slavery under the 1789 Alien Tort Statute. Irony: average wage on the plantation is significantly higher than prevailing rate over the country; it is just way lower than the American standard.

Firestone Liberia prevailed five years later. The suit alleged that Firestone forced children ages six to 16 into labor to assist their “tapper” parents and guardians to meet daily latex quotas, work beginning at 4:00 a.m.

Yet, the appeals court found the lawyers failed to demonstrate the extent and stress of an average Firestone child’s work and how that differed from Liberian children living outside the plantation.

“Conceivably, because the fathers of the children on the plantation are well paid by Liberian standards, even the children who help their fathers with the work are, on balance, better off than the average Liberian child, and would be worse off if their fathers, unable to fill their daily quotas, lost their jobs or had to pay adult helpers.”

Thus, exploitation and virtual slavery perceived through a Western lens is, in Liberia, a legal advantage over an even lower status quo.

We cross into Bong County. The way rises toward Gbarnga (bon-gaa), Taylor’s early war headquarters. The Iron Gate checkpoint was once just ahead of that town, where a passer-through might experience his final brutal moments at the arbitrary hands of Taylor’s boys.

Cuttington’s gates arise beforehand however. We turn in and up the aging blacktop to the administration building. This is oldest degree-granting institution on The Continent, with renowned graduates and once touted as the “Harvard of Africa.”

The campus is widespread, well-treed, and today quiet in the final weeks of break. Our entre' is another of those no-coincidences, our work and association over the last seven-or-so years with its now president Romelle Horton, when she was with the education ministry and later at AMEU Monrovia.

While Romelle is now out on break, we establish our line with

deputies (including Rosemarie Santos, also a colleague from AMEU).

Older Liberians hold an advantage over many others: they know how bad it can get. And, like those youth back home who didn’t experience 9/11, there are close to a million young of this nation for whom the civil wars are but a story, however non-fictional.

Yet, the not-yet-old set are by no means blind, working from idealism to advance life’s quality while their elders hopefully share that aim from a “Never Again” drive to create a tangible legacy before checking out.

Our new Cuttington colleagues are certainly so dedicated. They are responsible for its returned renaissance. Thus we resolve to create a suitable Study Tech-based teacher training pilot and initiative.


The way back to RLJ is as beautiful, reggae accompanying and only a little longer than the three-hour journey up. Progress through the Coca Cola stretch, on this the eve of July 26, is mercifully liquid.

Tim Bowles
Paynesville, Liberia
Monday, July 25, 2022

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