Mississippi Burning— Plus Elvis… The 10,000 Mile North America Bike Tour

August 6, 2016 / Curt Mekemson / 36 Comments

I met this little fellow in a Natchez Trace Information Center in Kosciusko, Mississippi. He looked like he wanted to give me a hug so I decided to pass him on to you.

“That boy is one tough son of a bitch.” –John Hamilton Carpenter

My friend, Morris Carpenter, picked me up in Jackson and gave me and my bicycle a ride to his home in Philadelphia, Mississippi. I’d be spending a week with him and his wife Marianna, the first major break in my bike ride. Morris and I go way back, all the way to 1961 when we were in student politics together at a community college in Northern California. Later, we both served as Peace Corps Volunteers in West Africa. I’ve written about that experience in my book, The Bush Devil Ate Sam. Our paths have crossed numerous times since.

Morris lives on Azalea Drive so I photographed one.

Morris lives on Azalea Drive so I photographed a bush of them.

When my first wife and I parted ways, Morris even got the kid, our 70-pound Basset Hound, Socrates. Morris was living in Maine at the time, working for the Penobscot Indians. He had kept Socrates for us while Jo and I had spent six months travelling in the South Pacific and Asia. When we had returned and Jo had decided that she wanted a more stable, middle class life than my love of wandering and work for nonprofits supported, I’d called Morris with the bad news and asked if he could keep Socrates for a while longer. “He’s my dog now,” Morris had declared. He had fallen for the lovable, stubborn hound.

Socrates' grand dad had been a Canadian and America champion, or at least his papers so claimed. To us he was just a lovable dog who kept me company on backpacking trips.

Socrates’ grand dad had been a Canadian and America champion, or at least his papers so claimed. To me, he was just a lovable dog who kept me company on backpacking trips. Those feet could move more dirt than a steam shovel. I sometimes had to file environmental impact reports on his digging. (Kidding.)

Now Morris was working for the Choctaw Indians as their housing director. He had picked up his expertise by rebuilding villages in Vietnam destroyed by the Viet Cong. In coming to Mississippi, he had come home. His roots were deep. His mom and dad had moved from the state to Northern California in the early 40s where his father had gone to work in the lumber industry. Morris, like me, had been born in Southern Oregon. For a while, when his dad had gone off to fight the Japanese in World War II, his mom had moved Morris and his sister back to the small town of Conway, Mississippi to live with their Uncle Wilson. The community is approximately 25 miles west of Philadelphia.

Morris has now retired. When he worked for the tribe, their primary source of income was light industry. Now it is this Casino located just outside of Philadelphia.

Morris has now retired. When he worked for the Choctaw, their primary source of income was light industry. Now it is this Casino located just outside of Philadelphia.

Morris still had many relatives living in the area. I was invited to a gathering of the clan. They wanted to meet Morris’s friend who was so crazy he would go on a 10,000-mile bike ride by himself. We sat around drinking bourbon and eating delicious Southern fried chicken while I entertained them with tales of life on a bicycle. Afterwards, Morris told me that his cousin, John Hamilton Carter, had said, “That boy is one tough son-of-a-bitch.” Morris assured me it was a compliment.

One day he had taken me for a ride over to Conway to revisit his childhood home. While we were out and about, he had driven me by the earthen dam outside of Philadelphia where three young civil right’s workers had been buried in 1964. They had been killed by the Ku Klux Clan in cooperation with the local city police and county sheriff’s department. A Baptist preacher had orchestrated the murders.

The Pearl River as it winds through Neshoba County, Mississippi. Authorities would drag the river for the slain civil rights workers until an informant told them about the dam.

You see a beautiful, bucolic sight like this in Neshoba County and wonder about the prejudice, hatred and violence that once existed in the county.

You see a bucolic site like this in Neshoba County and wonder how such prejudice, hatred and violence could exist in such a beautiful place.

The three had been working to register black voters. Mississippi had passed a constitution in 1890 effectively blocking blacks from voting. Using law and violence, the state had maintained the status quo since. Supreme Court rulings in the early 60s had challenged such laws. College students from throughout the nation had been recruited by civil rights organizations to help out during Mississippi’s “Freedom Summer.” Many Mississippians had been infuriated with this outside interference in their state. Thousands had joined the KKK.

I had listened to recruiters for the effort that spring at Berkeley. The idea appealed to me but I had to work summers to pay for my education. While I was driving a laundry truck between Placerville and Lake Tahoe, the young people were killed. Several students at Berkeley, including Mario Savio, had heeded the call, however, and spent their summer in Mississippi. The Free Speech Movement at Berkeley that fall had grown out of the University’s efforts to block students from participating in such efforts. I’ve blogged about my involvement in the protest.

A massive investigation by the FBI was ordered by the US Attorney General, Bobby Kennedy. The FBI designated the effort, Mississippi Burning. (The 1988 movie Mississippi Burning starring Gene Hackman and Willem Dafoe was loosely based on the 1964 incident.) Eighteen individuals were eventually charged. When the state refused to prosecute them, they were tried in federal courts. Seven were eventually found guilty and received relatively light sentences. None served more than six years.

Interestingly, in 2004, a multi-ethnic group from Philadelphia urged that the issue be revisited. As a result, the 80-year old Baptist minister and sawmill owner Edgar Ray Killen, who had avoided prison earlier, was charged with orchestrating the murders, found guilty, and sentenced to serve 60 years in prison.

At the end of the week, Morris had driven me back to the Trace and I had restarted my journey. He had watched me until I disappeared. “I was afraid I might never see you again.” he confessed. Morris thought what I was doing was too dangerous. If you want danger, I had thought to myself, try rebuilding a village the Viet Cong had burned down when the Viet Cong was still in the area.

This pull off along the Natchez Trace is known as Pigeons Roost for the thousands of Passenger Pigeons (now extinct) that once roasted in them.

This pull off along the Natchez Trace is known as Pigeons’ Roost for the thousands of Passenger Pigeons (now extinct) that once roosted in these trees.

There is nothing endangered about this pretty daisy (Fleabane, I think) that was growing at the site.

We pulled off to check out these beautiful horses.

Peggy and I pulled off to check out these horses.

While we were there, a bike tourist who was riding the Trace, Don Glennon, stopped to talk with us. His outfit looked a little neater, more organized, and more waterproof than mine had.

While Peggy and I were talking with Don, I suddenly felt several bites on my leg. Fire ants had worked they way up though a crack in the cement sidewalk and were rapidly moving up my leg. Much faster than it has taken to write this description, I was in the van and had taken by pants off. Nasty, nasty bugs they are! I had scars for weeks afterwards. The photo above is a fire ants nest.

While Peggy and I were talking with Don, I suddenly felt several bites on my leg. Fire ants had worked their way up though a crack in the cement sidewalk and were rapidly moving up my leg. Much faster than it has taken me to write this description, I was in the van and had taken my pants off. Nasty, nasty bugs! I had scars for weeks afterwards. The photo above is a fire ants’ nest.

A day later found me in Tupelo where Elvis Presley had been born. What better place for an Elvis-sighting? Maybe he still haunted the area. When I had graduated from the eighth grade in 1957, our music teacher had asked us to choose a song to sing at the ceremony. We had chosen Love Me Tender. Our choice was immediately squashed. Young women were already swooning at Elvis concerts and they squealed when he wiggled his hips. The older generation was going bonkers over this threat to our morals. We were offered a compromise: The Civil War era song, Aura Lea. Presley had used the tune from the song for Love Me Tender.

BTW: Elvis claimed, “I’m not trying to be sexy. It’s just my way of expressing myself when I move around.” Um, yeah.

This road takes you to the Presley Museum in Tupelo that is located where Elvis was born.

The house that Elvis was born in and where he spent his first years.

A bronze statue of the young Elvis with guitar in hand.

NEXT BLOG: I hide in a brick outhouse to avoid a tornado.

Chapter 16: Dirt Roads Don’t Have White Lines… Peace Corps Tales

December 11, 2012January 24, 2015 / Curt Mekemson / 6 Comments

Welcome to “The Dead Chicken Dance and Other Peace Corps Tales.” I am presently on a two month tour of the Mediterranean and other areas so I thought I would fill my blog space with one of the greatest adventures I have ever undertaken: a two-year tour as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Liberia, West Africa. Every two days I will post a new story.

When I have finished, I will publish the stories in digital and print book formats.

A ‘mini-mart’ was waiting for us when we arrived in Ganta. Included were these containers of monkey meat. Note the skulls in the blue basin and the tails behind the basins.

When we boarded the Pan Am jet at JFK, we abandoned the life we had known. Three-inch cockroaches, a rickety outhouse, and a hole-in-the-ground well came with the territory, as did boiling our water, reading by lantern, and eating chop.

And so what? We had kids to teach, collard greens to eat, and a zinc roof to keep out the rain. Serving as a married couple, we also had each other… our own little society. Plus we had Sam. He was bright, funny, and provided an introduction to the Kpelle culture. He also did many of the chores.

Life was almost too easy, too routine. We were good at self-entertainment; it is a primary survival skill for Peace Corps Volunteers, but we had jumped from racing down a multi-lane freeway to walking on a dirt path. The tumultuous year at Berkeley, marriage, Peace Corps training and Africa had happened bang, bang, bang. Now life was more like drip, drip, drip.

After two months we were climbing the walls like bug-a-bug. We needed a break. Relief came in the form of an invitation from our friend Morris Carpenter. He had escaped from Yopea and landed a job teaching sixth-graders in Ganta, 30 miles upcountry from us. Wellington Sirleaf, the Peace Corps driver, dropped off the note. Since there was neither phone nor mail service, Wellington was our once a week contact with the outside world.

I found it ironic that Morris and I lived closer together in Liberia than we had in California. Getting from Gbarnga to Ganta, however, was more challenging than getting from Diamond Springs to Auburn. We had two options: money bus or taxi.

The money bus was the more colorful choice. Think of taking a giant cargo van, cutting out windows, attaching a roof rack, and cramming it full of people, pigs, chickens, goats, bags of rice, fresh produce, luggage boxes and anything else a Liberian might need to survive on or sell.

These workhorses of the Liberian transportation system disdained schedules and stopped frequently. Minimal shocks, uncovered wood benches and bumpy dirt roads guaranteed butts were begging for mercy inside of 30 minutes. Packed conditions denied wiggle room to relieve an aching tailbone but might provide a kid or rooster for your lap. And there was always a chance of a breakdown accompanied by the fervent hope your driver would fix the problem in less than three hours.

We decided our daily life provided enough cross-cultural adventure and opted for the taxi. We packed a bag, left Sam in charge of buying a chicken, and walked into town to where the taxis gathered.

A dirty, grey, battered Peugeot was leaving for Ganta “small,” in a short time. “Ten dolla,” the driver informed us. “Five dolla,” we countered. Seven was the agreed price for the two of us. Then it was time to “wait small.” The driver wanted more passengers. After about an hour he gave up.

Any thoughts of a civilized trip in to Ganta were dispelled in the first five minutes. The driver drove like he saw a green mamba in his rearview mirror and the snake was gaining. While the law required us to be on the right side, dirt roads don’t have white lines. I doubt it mattered. When a car-eating pothole was located on our side of the road, we were on the other, even on a blind curve. It wasn’t a game of chicken; it was Russian roulette. Occasionally the driver would honk his horn.

Fortunately, the ride was relatively short. Our introduction to Ganta was a barrier backed up by an armed soldier.

“You pay,” the driver informed us. He had neglected to tell us there was a fee for entering the town. Turns out it was a bribe, or a dash as they call it in Africa. “Five dolla,” the soldier demanded as he looked at us menacingly. It made me angry but I took out two dollars and handed them to the driver. “Five dolla,” the soldier repeated. I shook my head no. The soldier glared at me again and then took the proffered money. Ever so slowly he opened the gate.

Dashes were a way of life in Liberia as they are in much of the world. It was a game we had to play, but we didn’t have to like it. “Asshole,” I mumbled as we drove off.

Ganta’s taxi stand included a mini-mart. Tribal women were sitting on the ground and selling a variety of items. One woman wearing a black and white wrap around lappa featured five metal basins filled with what appeared to be smoked animal parts. I looked more closely. A small, shrunken-head sized skull glared up at me with vacant eyes. A dozen or so other skulls looked elsewhere. Another basin contained legs; another split rib cages, and another long, curved tails. It was monkey meat. I looked more closely at the skulls.

“You buy?” the woman asked. “No thank you,” I replied a bit to hastily. Monkey brains were not on my list of preferred foods. She laughed.

A small boy appeared in front of me and shoved a boiled egg in my face. “Ten Cents.”

“I will give you ten cents to take us to Teacha Carpenter’s house,” I countered.

“Twenty.” “Fifteen.” “Okay.” We had struck a bargain.

Teacha Carpenter was waiting for us with a cold beer and laughed at our stories. He was a veteran PCV at the end of his term. We were green Volunteers at the beginning. Our traumas were everyday life to him. He had his own tales. An army of mice lived in his attic.

“I hear them doing parade drills every night. Back and forth, back and forth with the sergeant barking orders.” He hired Metternich the Cat to solve the problem. Each morning Metternich deposited two or three dead rodents for inspection. He was making a significant reduction in the mouse population. Besides all the mice he could eat, Metternich took his pay in chop.

Morris had planned a tour of the local leper colony for us. In particular, he wanted us to meet Freddie, a wood-carver he had befriended. Leprosy, Morris explained as we walked over to the colony, is hard to catch.

We were glad to hear there was little danger but still wary. Most of what we knew about the disease related to the old horror stories, the ones that led communities to ban lepers to remote locations. Losing body parts is scary. While leprosy might not be highly contagious, it was still contagious.

A neat row of cabins surrounded by banana, avocado and palm trees announced our arrival. It seemed that the lepers were well cared for and well fed.

The leper village in Ganta, Liberia as it looked in 1965.

Freddie reinforced my opinion. He had a lean-to studio and was dressed in a clean white T-shirt, jeans, and polished brown shoes. Chips were flying as he chopped away on a block with a curved head adze. The smell of freshly cut wood permeated the air. A scroungy brown and white dog was lying off to the side. It opened an eye, gave a partial wag, and went back to sleep.

I couldn’t stop myself from checking to see if Freddie had lost any limbs. Except for grey blotches on his hands, he appeared intact. A devil mask was displayed beside him. Other carvings were stacked against the wall.

Freddie the Carver at work in his studio. A medicine mask with horns is on the left.

Freddie grinned as we admired his carvings. It was obvious that he took pride in his work, that he had found a way to soften the fright his disease must cause.

I was developing a taste for African art. Its primitive subject matter jumped past my rational mind and captured my subconscious. I found one piece particularly appealing. Two large feet were connected to stumpy legs that disappeared into a shapeless robe that flared downward from the neck. There were no arms. A gigantic head with a mouthful of 28 teeth and a large nose topped off the neck. It was like a circus clown, both scary and humorous.

“It’s a Bush Devil,” Morris explained. The Bush Devil, so named by disapproving missionaries, was a powerful force within the tribal society. I happily broke out five dollars and bought the piece.

Back at Morris’s we ate four-pepper chop, drank more beer, told more tales and went to sleep with mice marching back and forth in the attic.

Chapter 6: Dr. Livingston, I Presume… Peace Corps Tales

November 21, 2012January 24, 2015 / Curt Mekemson / 2 Comments

When I have finished, I will publish the book digitally and in print.

My friend Morris Carpenter at home in Mississippi… some 45 years after he welcomed us to Liberia.

We made it to the right terminal on the right day and at the right time. In fact, our paranoia insisted we be four hours early. We watched lots of planes take off and land.

Finally, we found ourselves flying over a rough Atlantic. To quote Snoopy, “it was a dark and stormy night.” Lighting danced between the clouds as we struggled to deplete the airplane’s complimentary booze supply. We toasted each other, we toasted the fact we had made it, and we toasted Liberia.

“Good morning.” The pilot’s speaker driven voice woke me from my booze-induced sleep. Jo and I scrambled to look down and were met by a vast sea of green broken occasionally by small clearings filled with round huts. Tropical Africa!

There was brief stopover in Dakar; French-speaking Senegalese served warm coke and stale ginger snaps for breakfast. It’s the type of meal you really should forget but never do. Two hours later we dropped into Robert’s Field, Liberia’s International Airport. The stewardesses wrenched open the door admitting a sudden blast of heat and humidity. Roaming the streets of New York City in August had prepared us for the weather but not the view.

Striding across the tarmac to greet us was my old friend Morris Carpenter. He and I had been in student government together at Sierra College near Sacramento.

Morris was a year ahead of me and transferred to Chico State College at the end of my freshman year. We remained close friends via long, handwritten letters. During his senior year he joined the Peace Corps and was assigned to Liberia. His letters from Africa were part of my inspiration for joining. Little did I dream that Jo Ann and I would end up in the same country.

All grins, we tumbled into each other. I couldn’t resist saying, “Dr. Livingston, I presume.”

Morris, as he put it, had been camped out on the Peace Corp’s Director’s desk in Monrovia for a month seeking a change in assignment when our arrival was announced. He quickly volunteered to pick us up. The Director, recognizing an opportunity for Morris-free time, had agreed even faster.

On our way into Monrovia, Morris filled us in on life in the Peace Corps as ‘it really was.’ One year of living in Liberia had coated his youthful idealism with a thin veneer of cynicism.

His first assignment had been as an elementary school teacher on Bushrod Island located next to Monrovia. That career came to a crashing halt. He caught the Principal squeezing hot pepper juice into a young girl’s eyes. Whippings were common in Liberian schools but the fiery liquid was over the edge. He grabbed the Principal’s arm.

“You are a ‘small’ woman,” he angrily accused her, which is a major insult in Liberia. As it turned out, the Principal was a cousin to one of Liberia’s ruling elite, which made her a ‘big’ woman. Morris was booted out of the school within 24 hours.

Peace Corps staff was sympathetic but powerless. They found Morris employment as a Public Administration Volunteer in the Liberia Department of Education where he spent a frustrating six months attempting to establish a modern filing system. It didn’t happen. The Department served mainly as an income producing opportunity for the relatives of prominent politicians. Finding files was not a required skill set.

“I couldn’t get past ABC.” Morris grumbled. He was much more successful at his night job: locating Monrovia’s best bars and bar maids. It was time to move on.

Morris requested a rural Up-country assignment. And he got it. Peace Corps found him a job teaching at an elementary school in the small village of Yopea. It was about as rural as Peace Corps assignments went in Liberia. Getting there involved driving 130 miles Upcountry on Liberia’s main dirt road and then following a small dirt track for 20 miles to the tiny village of twelve huts, a two-room school, and a Care kitchen.

He shared teaching responsibilities with the Principal. His job was to teach the fourth, fifth and six grades. Students came from surrounding farms as well as the village. Life was much quieter and more productive than it had been in Monrovia.

If it became too quiet, he escaped to Monrovia and its bright lights on his Honda Motorcycle. Morris told us he would have been happy to finish off his Peace Corps experience in Yopea. “I liked the Principal, enjoyed the kids and built a basketball court.”

He didn’t, however, like the Volunteer that Peace Corps assigned to work with him a few months later. JCC was a fundamentalist from Tennessee who considered it his responsibility to convert the ‘heathen’ Liberians. This may have been appropriate behavior for a missionary but it was inappropriate for a Peace Corps Volunteer.

The dislike was mutual. JCC did not approve of Morris’s lifestyle. Adding fuel to the fire, Peace Corps required that the two share a house. The close proximity didn’t work. Morris wanted a divorce. “He was just too goofy.”

Morris hopped on his Honda and zipped in to Gbarnga to meet with Peace Corps’ Upcountry rep, Bob Cohen. “I want JCC out of my village,” Morris demanded. Bob told him that it was only a personality clash. “Go back to work.” Morris went back to Yopea all right, but he packed his bags and headed for Monrovia.

“Either find me a new assignment of send me home,” he told the Liberia Peace Corps Director.

And that’s where we came into the picture.

Morris dutifully dropped us off at Peace Corps headquarters in Monrovia to begin our in-country orientation and take care of miscellaneous bureaucratic chores. While Jo Ann and I had been playing at the World’s Fair, our fellow volunteers were sweltering through hours of meetings. Now it was our turn.

The Tragedy of Liberia

April 7, 2011January 23, 2015 / Curt Mekemson / 1 Comment

Bob and Gerry Branch invited us to stay at their apartment in Monrovia while JoAnn and I were ‘trained.’ In this photo, Bob watches a funeral parade outside his window while Jo looks at the camera.

(At the end of the last blog, my ex-wife and I found ourselves stranded in New York City because we had mistakenly flown to JFK one day late and missed our flight to Africa. In this blog, we reach our destination.)

We made it to the right terminal on the right day and at the right time. In fact, absolute paranoia insisted we be three hours early. We watched lots of planes take off and land.

Finally, we found ourselves flying across a rough Atlantic. To quote Snoopy, “it was a dark and stormy night.” Lighting danced between the clouds as we struggled to deplete the airplane’s complimentary booze supply. We toasted the fact we had made it, we toasted Liberia, we toasted Jo’s mom for her hundred dollars and we toasted toasting.

I finally managed to fall asleep and only awakened when the pilot announced good morning. Jo and I scrambled to look down and were met by a vast sea of green broken occasionally by small clearings filled with round huts. Tropical Africa!

There was brief stopover in Dakar where French-speaking Senegalese served warm coke and ginger snaps for breakfast. It’s the type of meal you really should forget but never do.

An hour later we were dropping in to Robert’s Field, Liberia’s International Airport. A stewardess wrenched open the door admitting a sudden blast of heat and humidity. Luckily, roaming the streets of New York City in August had prepared us. What we weren’t prepared for was the view.

Striding across the tarmac to greet us was my old friend Morris Carpenter from community college days in California. He had joined the Peace Corps the year before and been assigned to Liberia. By some quirk of fate we had been assigned to the same country and would end up living closer together than we had in California.

All grins, we tumbled into each other. I couldn’t resist saying, “Dr. Livingston, I presume.”

Morris, as he put it, had been camped out on the Peace Corp’s Director’s desk in Monrovia for a month seeking a change in assignment when our arrival was announced. He quickly volunteered to pick us up. The Director, recognizing the opportunity for Morris-free time, had agreed even faster.

On our way into Monrovia, Morris filled us in on life in the Peace Corps as ‘it really was.’ One year of living in Liberia had coated his youthful idealism with a thin veneer of cynicism. There were good reasons.

Liberia was a country that had been born and nurtured in paranoia. Its origins dated back to the early 1800’s when slaves were being freed in the New England and there was a growing concern about the expanding population of free black people. While most Northerners accepted that slavery was wrong, few were willing to accept their freed slaves as equals.

In the South, where slaves outnumbered their owners, fear replaced concern. Insurrection was a real possibility. Henry Clay, Andrew Jackson, Daniel Webster and a number of other prominent Americans proposed a solution: ship freed African-Americans back to Africa. The American Colonization Society was founded and a portion of the west coast of Africa purchased. Approximately 11,000 freed slaves eventually shipped out.

Life was bleak and dangerous at first. The natives weren’t overly happy at seeing their long-lost cousins appropriate tribal lands and the Americo-Liberians (ALs) constituted a very small percentage of the total population.

The ALs had learned their US lessons well though and soon established themselves as the ruling elite. They took control of the government, education, and military. The natives were regarded as second-class citizens.

Power and privilege were the results but it was power and privilege accompanied by an underlying fear that the majority native population would rise up in revolt. This in turn led to a siege mentality and paranoia somewhat similar in nature to that felt by the white minorities in the Southern United States prior to the Civil War. I would see and experience several examples of this paranoia during my stay.

Close economic and political ties were maintained with the US over the years. Starting in 1926 Firestone entered the country and eventually cut down vast swathes of rainforest to plant rubber trees. As we drove by a rubber tree plantation on our way to Monrovia, Morris explained that the industry was now suffering from labor problems that the military had been called in to quash. Apparently workers were striking to earn twenty-five cents an hour.

On an outward level, there were a number of similarities between the United States and Liberia. English was the national language, the currency of the country was well-used American Dollars, and the flag was red white and blue complete with eleven stripes and one star. Upon arrival we even learned that the commanding general of the Liberian army was named George Washington. Not surprisingly, the government and the judiciary system were patterned after the American system.

In reality the government was a one party state controlled by the Americo-Liberians and whatever justice existed was heavily weighted toward keeping them in power. While change was underway when we arrived, it was too little and too late.

The failure to educate and bring large numbers of tribal Liberians into the economic and political system from the beginning was one of the major factors leading to the tragedy that Liberia would suffer over the next three decades. Americo-Liberians, tribal Liberians and the country would suffer terribly due to this negligence.

Morris dutifully dropped us of at Peace Corps headquarters to begin our orientation and take care of miscellaneous bureaucratic chores. While we had been playing at the World’s Fair, our fellow volunteers had been sweltering through hours of meetings. Now it was our turn.

Another married couple from Group VI, Bob and Gerry Branch, generously agreed to host our stay. They lived in a second floor apartment that overlooked one of Monrovia’s main streets. It provided a birds-eye view of life in the city.

Monrovia was overflowing with impoverished young people living in crowded tin shacks.

Monrovia was bursting at the seams with impoverished young people escaping from rural areas. Tin shacks fought for space as extended families struggled to find shelter from tropical downpours. Taxi and money-bus drivers, using their horns for brakes, filled the air with unceasing noise while the barking and growling of mangy dogs filled in around the edges. Evening air was tainted with the unique smell of cooked palm oil, smoke and moldering garbage.

Of course it wasn’t all bleak, assuming one had money. Monrovia had several good restaurants, a modern movie theater, an air-conditioned supermarket and a large paperback bookstore, all of which we came to appreciate over the next two years. Most Americo-Liberians did quite well. President Tubman lived in an impressive mansion on the outskirts of the city.

President Tubmans Mansion in 1966.

For our part, we were quite relieved to learn that our assignment wasn’t in Monrovia. Originally, we had been assigned to an elementary school down the coast in Buchanan. It was supposed to be a plum assignment so naturally another couple grabbed it when we failed to turn up.

We were left with their jobs; Jo would teach first grade and I would teach second in the upcountry town of Gbarnga. (Upcountry was anywhere inland.) Apparently this was our punishment for partying too long in Auburn. So be it…

(Note… in my March 3 blog I reported on how Phil Weisberg was arrested for holding up a sign criticizing Mrs. Tubman. Phil has since responded that he wasn’t arrested but was seized by security agents and later released.)