When the time came to head home, I was NOT ready to go anywhere. I mean, check out the pictures in the Sliding Liberia post below. Would you want to leave that to return to battle of the taxis and the mud? The sky had opened up, the sun was starting to set, and I was sitting with Alfred and the hard-core expat surfers who are all incredibly interesting. But the rest of the interns were about to leave me behind and we most certainly didn’t want to be dealing with those patches of mud in the dark.
This time we had backup. My friend John had a 4x4 and some sort of equipment to get us out is we got stuck (presumably more effective than a piece of twine!). Since cell phone is spotty along the road, he told me to call him when we made it to the main road. If he didn’t hear from us, he’d come looking.
The road was wet but since there weren’t any major downpours it was pretty much the same story as coming in. Every time we went through a mud patch or a puddle we all got out of the car, so there would be less chance of getting stuck. One car got stuck twice in the mud (same car every time, so I’m inclined to blame the driver), but by now we were adept at getting it out. One of the incidences occurred right next to a group of men working on building a bridge, so we had plenty of help pushing the car out.
At one point we saw a huge plume of black smoke rising up in the distance. They were burning rubber (rubber by the way is one of Liberia’s primary exports). We stopped and the car filled with smoke. Then we realized the smoke was coming from the engine, not the fire ahead.
Fortunately, whatever it was it wasn’t fatal because before long we were on our way. But we were approaching the part of the road I was most concerned about: not another mud pile but a hill. We’d made it down the hill, but Jacob was worried we wouldn’t make it up since we were sort of sliding down the gravel. Fortunately once again, we made it up the hill and before we knew it we were on the main road.
I called John to let him know his services wouldn’t be needed.
You’d think we’d be smooth sailing from here, but nope. It ain’t over until it’s over in the motherland.
After several check points and dealing with the same hassles of having one driver with out a license and another from Guinea, we made it to the outskirts of Monrovia. The area that was jammed with traffic on the way out was once again bumper to bumper coming home. The markets were still bustling, remarkably. By candlelight.
Suddenly our car stopped. The battery had died. We got out and pushed. The engine started running again. Ten minutes later, the car sputtered its last dying breaths and came to stop by the side of the road. Of course it did. We were maybe 25 minutes from home.
We called ahead to another car (recall there were three) and they came back for us. We proceeded to argue for fifteen minutes with the driver over the extra $10 he wanted to take the three of us the rest of the way (as if we weren’t already going to give him more than $60 for the day!). Finally all six of us crammed into the car for the final stretch into Monrovia.
You’d think the story ends here, but nope. After dropping some of the others off, two of us remained in the car headed back to our house. It started to pour. The driver pulled over to roll up the windows – by literally opening the doors, grabbing the windows on either side, and pulling them up. Then readjusting the little pieces of wood jammed in to hold them up when necessary. Javi and I were doubled over in laughter at this point.
Then we almost got into an accident and had to swerve off the road.
Then, finally, miraculously, we were home.
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