(This may be the best story I will ever get to share.)We set off on Friday morning for a weekend camping excursion to Robertsport. A group of about twenty eager Mercy Shippers piled into four yellow taxis (and one white one), starry-eyed and ready for whatever adventures the Liberian roads might throw our way.
Or so we thought.
We started out in real style, siphoning several mayonaise jars' worth of bright pink gasoline into our tank and heading out into the great unknown. The first flat came around two hours in, shortly after exchanging the paved road for an exponentially dustier dirt one. Watching the taxi drivers change out the spare with speed comparable to that of any Nascar pit crew, we got the feeling they'd done it before.We eased back into our cars (rattling around empty by Liberian standards, since we only had one person sitting to a seat) and took off down the road. Our driver (who we think was named Suri, although he seemed unaware that he shared a name with such a famous baby) seemed to have taken driving lessons on Route 22. Following Jersey-close on holey dirt roads didn't seem like the best idea to any of us, so we urged him on to ever greater feats of speed, egging him on to pass the other drivers until we rode at the front of the pack. This had two benefits; we weren't getting covered in the cloud of dust kicked up by the other cars, and we weren't going to rear end anyone. We settled back to enjoy the ride.
The road to Robertsport is punctuated by some seventeen or eighteen small, numbered bridges. I'm not sure exactly which bridge we were crossing, tires steered carefully onto the wood planks that pass for steel girders here, when we felt the impact. The dirt cloud had done its worst, and we had been hit from behind by another taxi.
I've never been in a real accident before. (Just like I had never had a needlestick injury before, so I suppose it's par for my Liberian course here.) It's interesting to note that time really does seem to slow down. I had a series of several quite coherent thoughts (interlaced with several not-so-properly-worded ones) in the time it took our car to break through the railing on the side of the bridge and fly off the road, coming to rest firmly in the bush. My favourite of those thoughts was probably Dang it. This means we're going to have to cram more people into the other taxis, and I really don't want to do that; I'm hot enough as it is.
Sitting there in the green light of the tall grass, we took stock. No one injured. Peggy perhaps took the brunt of things, since the back of her head absorbed the inertia of the guitar perched on top of the luggage, but no one was even bleeding. As we climbed back onto the road, our heroes came along. Clad in camo and their distinctive baby-blue hats, the the brave (and brisk) men of the Pakistani UN army rolled up in their truck and stopped to lend a hand. There was a moment when we thought Beardy (not his real name, although there's a photo of him in my Robertsport album) was going to pull the car out with his bare hands. With a little explanation from our Hindi-speaking new friend Phil, Beardy was convinced to wait. I don't know if it's because we were all from NGOs or if they were having a good day or if it's just their custom to pick up dusty, stranded travellers, but before we knew what was happening, we were cozily seated atop a load of bamboo, pressed up against new friends carrying large guns, and making our way along the road towards Robertsport to the sound of a soldier singing a quiet song. It was one of those moments where you're reluctant to blink because missing any part of what's happening just isn't acceptable.We eventually made it to the Pak-Batt 7 base, packed into the remaining cabs and rattled off towards the beach. A testament to the hardiness of Liberian taxis, our original car eventually rejoined the group a kilometre or so away from the campsite. A testament to the hardiness of Mercy Ships doctors, nurses and HR reps, we redistributed ourselves, everyone arriving triumphantly in their original cars.
The next twenty-four hours were spent in an idyll of sand, surf, and Liberian villages. We swam and sunned and built campfires and walked to town amidst the customary throng of kids. Honestly, if someone had decided to create my idea of a good time, it would have looked just like this weekend. Didn't quite get to fulfill my dream of sleeping out under the stars, since there were no stars to be had. We did, however, get treated to a lightning storm followed by torrential rain, so it was a good thing we had been provided with tents by our friendly 'campground manager' Dominic.Yesterday we decided to leave early, just in case we met with more troubles on the way home. Providential decision, that, although not quite on the scale of the journey there. Another tire fell victim to the dirt road, and this time there was no spare. (And I have no photos of the action, since my camera was tied up in my bag which was covered in a thick layer of orange, Liberian dirt, compliments of our taxi's glaring lack of back window.) We left the other car and drove the half hour to the paved road where we found a roadside mechanic shop. I use the term shop fairly loosely. It was a wall-less palm-frond-and-bamboo hut with several guys huddled underneath hitting tires with hammers. I'm not sure what exactly it was they were doing, but our taxi driver seemed satisfied, because he grabbed a tire, left us sitting on the side of the road and headed back out to the bush.
As we waited, I, true to form, started making eyes at a small baby. I told his mother he was beautiful and she responded in what seems to be typical Liberian style; she untied him from her back and handed him to me. His name Jusu was all the introduction we needed. We played for a while, and when I went to give him back, she asked me if I would carry him with me to America. It took some time to explain that I actually didn't live in America at the moment and that my five roommates on my ship wouldn't really appreciate the addition of Jusu, however cute he may have been.
The fearless taxis rolled up, we piled back in (rather more crammed than on the way out, since we were, this whole time, one taxi short; it had been 'arrested' following the accident) and headed home. With the exception of one small hiccup where our driver got impatient in bumper-to-bumper traffic and decided to lean on the horn and drive in the left lane for a while, people and cars just barely scattering out of our path, we made it back without further incident.
I've said it before- I may never come home; I love this too much.
