Ganta

Weather: We spent a week watching the water drain from our sandy yard after the floods of last Sunday-Monday. The weekend was lovely however, with almost cloudless skies and moderate temperatures. Nice breezes too. Monday the 28th dawned clear, but by mid morning is cloudy and still. Temps in the mid 70sF.

Last week, to celebrate the beginning of our fourth year in Liberia, Renita and I traveled northeast to Ganta, a town near the border with Guinea. We were joined by Allen Gweh, Acting National Director for LEAD. Allen invited us to visit his home church, Trumpet Baptist, in that clean border town, and we accepted the invitation. The roads were fairly bad the entire way, so the trip of 120 miles took us five and a half hours. But we got there and had a delightful time with these dedicated souls. The highlight for me as usual was lunch, where I ate gio boy, also called G.B. (with fingers of course) and soup, with some tasty jollof rice. G.B. is a courser, less gooey, more flavorful version of dumboy, the recipe of which we covered in an earlier post.

After lunch we toured a family cassava farm and some businesses, then headed back to reach home by nightfall. Thought you might like to see the sites, so here are some images.

Where we wuz...

To get there and back by dark, we left early.

On the way, a nice field of rice...

... and a lovely field of UN armored personnel carriers...

Ganta at last!
The trip to Trumpet Baptist was a bit jarring...

...but we made it. My back was killing me, thus the crooked pose.
In the church, they held a very nice welcome for the us by the leadership.

LUNCH! I'm dipping some G.B. into our soup as one of the deacons to the right eats the jollof rice sans spoon-- 'twas worth the back ache.
Allen Gweh, acting National Director of LEAD on the left, visits a potential LEAD-sponsored furniture business.

Yers Trooly joins the group for a walk through a family sized cassava field. The family in the lower right. Very nice family.


Time to head back home!