I recognize that I’m posting, in fact, less and less frequently. I’ve been sort of thinking about this a bit, and realizing that (a) I’m not actually that much of a writer and, (b) when things have hit a certain level of ‘normalcy’ I’m less inclined to write.
So, my apologies for those of you waiting (hoping?) for more frequent updates. I’m not someone generally prone to journaling-type activities, so this is still a new thing for me.
That said, there are still probably plenty of things for me to write about. Today, I’ll take a few minutes and talk about...stuff.
Sanniquellie. Pronounced (as I mentioned in the part), pretty much exactly as it looks: san-ni-QUELL-ie.
What to say? Well, it’s got one main road (you can see it from space on google earth – if you zoom in really far). Also, it has a ‘lake’. You can also see this on google earth. It’s not the sort of lake you’d want to take a swim in, unfortunately. Mostly, it’s used for fishing and washing cars. Quite the nice combination.
There are minimal services available in town. While it is the county seat, that doesn’t mean much. There’s a police station, the UNMIL headquarters, jail, administration building, hospital, a few schools, one radio station, and an assortment of shops on the main road. There is also a market area in the centre of town with both an outdoor and indoor market. The outdoor market is a great place to find flip-flops (at the bargain rate of ~$0.50 per pair) and the indoor market is a great place to find dried monkeys. I haven’t yet priced those out, but it generally depends on the size of the monkey and the desirable-ness of the part you’re interested in. The hands, for example, are quite cheap – but don’t contain a lot of meat. The legs are a bit more expensive. If you’re really wealthy (or hungry) you could maybe even buy a whole dried monkey, but it’s more likely you’d just pick up an arm-bone to gnaw on on your way to work. Or whatever it is you do with your day.
On the main street, near the radio station, there’s a small shop called “Princess Bar” (if you’re in the know) or “Post Provision Shop” (if you read the sign). It’s here that I can go in the evening and have a (usually) cold beer, often not even expired! They’ll kindly move a small table and chairs out onto the side of the road so there’s a place to sit, and then you can sit and have your beer with a good amount of passerby-watching and a minimum of road dust – this section of the road is paved.
If you’re more ambitious, or don’t like to people watch, you can go the Bat Connection, a ‘restaurant’ that has beer and soft-drinks in addition to the menu. The menu is quite extensive – pepper soup and rice.
Pepper soup? Pepper soup is the staple food made in restaurants. It’s a spicy soup, using lots of locally available hot peppers (tropical climate!), a dash of tomato paste, water, and meat.
I don’t generally ask a lot of questions about the meat. The meat is “bush meat.” This is a polite way of saying “it’s whatever we could find dead today in the woods”. On a really lucky day, bush meat may be “antelope”, which is a small black or red deer that you can occasionally find. On an unlucky day, it may be ground squirrel, rat, or opossum. Other items featured in ‘bush meat’ are: the odd snake, chicken, pig, beef, goat, ‘raccoon’ (I haven’t seen one of these yet, so I can’t verify what it really is), or my personal favourite “whatever you can run over in your car”.
Indeed, the most exciting parts about trips to the clinic or out in the car are when a small animal tries to cross your path. The reason is simple – if the driver can manage to hit the critter, that’s one less meal he needs to buy. The second anyone in the car spots any sort of hit-able animal near the road, the pedal goes to the floor, regardless of the road conditions.
So far, no driver has managed to tag himself a lunch while I’ve been on board, but that’s not for lack of trying. It’s surprisingly difficult to tag a squirrel on a cart-road in a 4000lbs land-cruiser going 20km/hr. But let me tell you – they try hard!
Pepper soup is really quite tasty. I’ve had it a number of times now and not had intestinal difficulties (thankfully, it’s usually simmered for a whole day).
In town there are a few ‘general stores’ from which we get our local provisions. These include: Floyd’s store, Patrick’s store, Suah’s store, and…hmm…Prince’s store. Floyd by far has the most provisions – we can get everything from Bacardi to bug spray and from Pringles to post-diggers. Floyd is a bit of the town ‘godfather’. He owns a lot of the land, and is in fact building a huge new store across the street.
Patrick, Suah, Prince, and others have smaller stores with higher prices but it’s still nice to go there from time to time. They have only a fraction of the things that Floyd has, but it’s nice to support the small business-person.
I suppose I should mention what I mean by the word “store”. A store is a room with shelves. Patrick’s/Suah’s/Prince’s and most other stores are maybe about 15-20 feet square and stacked full. Floyd’s is a bit bigger – quite a bit bigger – and he also has a cargo container out front for overflow goods. The store has one barn door in front. And…yeah, that’s it.
Let’s see…what else about Sanniquellie? Well, it’s quite busy on market days. Maybe someday I’ll have a picture – it’s quite a nice sight. Hundreds of people milling about, lots of stalls with a wide variety of goods trucked in from Guinea or sometimes Monrovia, all the cheap watches, undergarments, shoes, backpacks and more you could ask for, as long as you don’t expect them to last more than a couple of months.
Sanniquellie also has a water tower, a remnant from when Liberia was a successful republic with plenty of infrastructure and the like. In truth, there’re still water mains you can see in the town on the main road. Granted, they’re cracked and destroyed, and totally non-functional, but you can still see them. It’s quite interesting to walk through town, see the water mains, the water tower, the still-standing electrical poles (even with wires! – although, no power here), even street light poles (a few) – all indicators of how functional the county once was, before the war. A couple of weekends ago we made the trek to the water tower and climbed to the top of the tower for the commanding view of the town that it affords us. From the top of the tower – maybe 200-225 feet, you can see for miles, and the whole of the town unfolds in front of you. We went up in the evening – Jens, Stefan, Alanna, and myself – to catch a view of the town plus maybe get a bit of the sunset. We would’ve loved to stay for the whole sunset, but then of course you’re trying to climb down a water tower in pitch darkness. I was not in favour of that. So we left a bit early.
But it was still quite nice. The view, the quiet, the relaxing…all very nice. In classic Liberian fashion, about 15 minutes after we reached the top a small pack of children noticed (from way down below) that there were a bunch of quiploos up on the tower. So there came a chorus of tiny voices, accompanied by waving of hands, from 250 feet down and 500 feet away…”Quiploo! Quiploo! Take my picture!” Classic.
Yep…I believe I’ve rambled enough for right now, Ciao – everyone, keep in touch – keep writing notes and comments as they give me good ideas on what to write about. If you have questions – ask them! in the blog here as a comment – I’ll take a stab at answering.
Ciao-
taj
