Gbarpolu County I – Flag Day provides a unique opportunity

The Liberian Flag (left) and US flag (right)        images from Wikipedia

In August, we had a public holiday called the “Flag Day” which commemorates the making and adoption of the flag of Liberia which has a very uncanny resemblance to the flag of USA (instead of 50 stars there is just one single big star). An interesting story goes that ages ago there was a need to hoist a flag for the country and the officials had none so they hoisted an American Flag instead. That led to a realization of having an independent flag for the nation of Liberia and thus the current Liberian Flag inspired by the US version was created. I am not sure how much truth there is in this story but it makes for a very interesting tale.

Of all the public holidays in Liberia, the Flag Day along with Tubman’s birthday (Nov 29th), I believe are the least significant. The most significant one obviously is Christmas followed by Independence Day (July 26th) though Liberia was never colonized. 

Route from Harbel to Bopolu via Monrovia and Tubmanburg


It’s also very interesting to note that right before the Christmas and Independence Day holidays there is a marked shift in the attitudes of most Liberians. They spend a great deal of their earnings during these holidays and since the culture of savings is virtually non-existent they seek other ways of timing their expenses. One of the ways local rubber farmers improvise is by accumulating their rubber and selling it to various purchasing companies (ours included) right before the holidays so they take home a bigger amount. There is also a general expectation of getting payroll advances or monetary gifts around this time. So if anyone is coming to Liberia don’t be surprised if you are asked “Where is my July 26th?”…it generally means “Please give me some money on the occasion of the July 26th celebration?” The same goes for Christmas.



The chaos that is Monrovia





Going back to the holiday for the Flag Day, it so happened that the Government of Liberia wanted to have a referendum on four different election related matters and hence declared the day right before Flag Day as a public holiday so the people could take part in the referendum. For me it presented a fantastic opportunity to skip out of Harbel. We normally work on Saturdays so the weekend essentially comprises of only Sundays. Due to this I can’t take extended trip within Liberia for more than a day. I could not let this opportunity let go so I quickly came up with a plan to visit Gbarpolu County, one of the counties I have not yet visited.

A random shot of a curious kid

Another random shot of a typical shed


After getting the necessary permissions I was assigned a driver, Abu. Abu comes from the Mandingo tribe and of all the drivers for expats; he was probably the most knowledgeable regarding Gbarpolu. As usual, I packed some sandwiches, fuel, camera, binoculars, lots of water and a few basic clothing and was all set.

The county of Gbarpolu was created as recently as 2001 when it was split from the greater Lofa County. It’s got Lofa to the North, Bomi to the south, Bong to the east and Grand Cape Mount and Sierra Leone to the west. To go to Gbarpolu we had to cross through Monrovia. Thankfully, the traffic was light and the dreaded Dualla market area on the northern edge of Monrovia was passed without any traffic congestion. Since the plan to go to Gbarpolu was made on short notice I never had enough time to research or to find any contacts who could lead me into the jungles of the county. My objective like the journey to Lofa was to hike around the jungles hoping to see some wildlife and maybe experience the local culture of the residing tribes. This is where Abu came in handy as all through the journey he dialed several numbers to eventually get a contact that would get us in touch with a hunter for me to head into the bush.

They say that in Liberia, everything works on relationships and once that is established people are more than willing to help. I got my journey planned on the fly thanks to Abu’s relationships!

Jungles along the way...dense and pretty but not the same class as the ones i saw in Gabon