May 14th was a national holiday in Liberia and I took a weekend trip to the Grand Bassa County which is to the east of Margibi County where Harbel is situated. The holiday is called “Unification and Integration Day” and it’s a day to promote unity among Liberians regardless of their tribe or clan, religion or economic status.
Top quality road but poor use...notice the left side wheel
The origins of this holiday can be traced to the National Unification Policy which was introduced by the late President William Tubman who led the country from 1944 to 1971 and was arguable the most popular and well respected presidents of Liberia. Before President Tubman, among many discriminating practices, women were not allowed to vote and the indigenous people were second class citizens who paid taxes but could not vote and were marginalized by the elite Americo-Liberians.
Today, the anniversary of the introduction of this policy is celebrated as a holiday and even though originally it was intended for integrating the Americo-Liberians and indigenous people, today its main focus is to promote unity in all aspects of Liberian society.
St. John's river
It so happened that the holiday fell on a Saturday which meant that we did not need to work that day and had an actual weekend to do something. I had this weekend marked on my calendar to visit Buchanan which is the capital of Grand Bassa. I had heard several of my colleagues talk about the pristine beaches here but the idea of making a hurried one day trip never quite appealed to me. The holiday weekend provided me with the perfect opportunity to visit a place in Liberia that I had never been before.
Rocky outcrops at Sunset beach
I was joined on this trip by Ravi, who is a Network Analyst and like all other Indians here (except me) hails from the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu. I was also fortunate as the Security Operations Manager was kind enough to assign a driver and let me borrow his pickup as my sedan wouldn’t have taken too kindly to the road to Buchanan.
Waves
The boundary of Grand Bassa starts right on the other side of the Farmington River from the company’s concession area. If you have followed my earlier blog then Farmington River might sound familiar because it’s the river from which we generate our Hydro-electricity which supports the bulk of our factory and housing electricity needs.
Trying to catch one
The city of Buchanan, also called Gbezohn in Bassa language is a further 75 kilometers from this boundary. A Chinese company called Chico is currently rehabilitating the road between the exit point of the Firestone concession area and Buchanan and they have about one-fourth of the road completed which I am glad to report is up to international standard. The rest of the road even though not in very good shape is far better than the one to Maryland County which has become sort of a reference for me.
Village of Bakolin...notice the decoration on the house walls
A little over an hour from Harbel we passed a bridge over the wide St. John river which originates in the Nimba mountains on the Guinean side and flows through the counties of Nimba, Bong and the Bassa before eventually emptying into the Atlantic Ocean close to Buchanan. The name of the river was given by Portuguese explorers who spotted it on St Johns feast.
Path to Bakolin beach
A further 30 odd minutes later we reached Buchanan which is a city only in text. In reality it seems more like a small town and probably the highlight of the city is the port which is currently being rehabilitated by Ancelor-Mittal which is also close to finishing restoration of a rail line from the town of Yekepa in the north of Nimba County to Buchanan port. When the rail is fully functional Ancelor-Mittal will be hoping to haul iron over from the Nimba Mountains to the port.
Palava hut under construction
Since Ravi had been there before he advised us to go to an area called as The Loop which is a stretch of coastline right past the port. First we stopped by a place called as Sunset Beach which has a few palava huts by the beach and a big rocky outcrop which made a good vantage point for looking into the massive waves.
Running to set up the goal posts so we could kick some ball
Thereafter we went further along the loop to a village called Bakolin which was a beautiful little village with adobe huts that were liberally splashed with brushstrokes of white paint. Evidently the huts were decorated that way because the President of Liberia, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf had recently visited the village and as per the Bassa tradition they decorate the houses with white paint when someone important is visiting them.
Probably inspired by Jackie Chan movies
A small path from the village led to the beach of Bakolin which is clean and fairly quite. The villagers of Bakolin built a palava hut and regularly clean it to make sure it is clean. One of the guys who maintain the beach also showed me a Nile monitor lizard he was selling for five US dollars and was checking if I wanted to buy it as a pet. The poor lizard’s fate seemed sealed since it would end up on somebody’s plate for dinner if not a pet.
Miles of pristine beach
Coconut tree roots...buchanan has serious land erosion issues
After a short while at the beach, a few kids showed with a futbol and were quite eager to test their stills against the white man. Upon noticing that the kids were grooving to the African songs that were played by our driver in the pickup parked by the beach, I asked the kids if there was a song that they wanted to be played and they asked for a popular song from Ghana called “Pressure”. Check out the video here to see some of the awesome moves of the kids to the song.
The entire coast to the east of the Bakolin was pretty secluded as I remember walking for about an hour and half without seeing any other living thing other than the coconut trees swaying in the balmy wind and crabs rushing to get back into their holes at the sight of this intruder.
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