Rachel and I decided we would travel to Zwedru to see the area/ visit Nick, Amy, Jenny, and Chris (although Chris missed the message)! Dry season means the roads are good enough to make the 10-12-hour trip on the long dusty (dirt) road. For anyone who knows me they know I hate traveling, especially here in Liberia where you are crammed in a car like sardines, with no air conditioning, unsure when/ where your car will break down. Even still, I want to see Liberia while I’m here and you can only really travel in dry season, so we decided to make the trip.
We had it as planned out as well as traveling in Liberia will offer, I woke up at 5:30am, got my house together, and was down at Gbartala taxi spot by 6:30am. I was hoping (because everyone wakes up so early here) that cars would be waiting to go, and we could just pick up Rachel in Suakoko and be on our way to Gbanga to catch the next taxi, but no such luck. I waited about a half hour until a car was finally going that direction, we stopped in Suakoko, grabbed Rachel and was in Gbanga by 7:30 am. We then got another taxi to Ghanta (thankfully Gbartala-Suakoko-Gbanga-Ghanta are all on the paved road), filling the car was relatively quick, and we reached Ghanta by 8:30 am. In Ghanta we went to the bakery/ the gas stations to grab some snacks then went to Zwedru parking. We put our name with the taxi guy and waited for the car to fill up, including us, the car had 4 people inside, we just had to wait on 2 more people. Our goal was to arrive in Zwedru before nightfall, being it take 8-10 hours from Ghanta we wanted to leave around 10 am. The car didn’t fill up until around 11:30 am, so once again, true to Liberian time, we were running behind. The car consisted the driver, a male and female in the front seat, me, Rachel, Old Ma Ester (who we made friends with) and another girl in the backseat. The first half of the trip went well, we made it to Tappita, the halfway point by 3:30 pm. We were making great time, only 4 hours left until we reached Zwedru, meaning we would be there around 7:30 pm. We just had to pass through one immigration checkpoint before we were on the second half of our journey, when ALL HELL BROKE LOOSE.
Immigration checkpoints for us means getting out of the car, showing our Peace Corps ID, getting back in the car and leaving. The drivers they show the car information/driver’s license, and if you’re not Liberian it means showing whatever documentation you have, and if you don’t have proper documentation, there are still things you can do/give to pass through the checkpoint. Typically passing through goes smoothly and you are on your way within minutes. That was NOT the case for us. The two females that were in the car did not have proper documentation and was being held in the office by one of the officers until they could pay the fine. After about 30 min the guy inside the office dismissed them, allowing us to leave. The officer outside (the one who told them to go inside initially) got angry that he was not consulted before they were dismissed, and the two officers got in a huge argument/fight. A third officer decided to call the head honcho to come solve the issue between the fighting officers / to carry the girls to the main office in town.
Rachel and I were initially relieved when they called the head honcho, thinking he would solve the issue quickly, so we could be on our way. The guy finally arrived (we had been there for about a 1.5 hr. now), yelled at a bunch of people, told our taxi driver that he was taking the girls to the office in town, and that we were free to leave. Little did we know, the girls in the car had not paid the 2,500LD it cost to get to Zwedru at the main office in Ghanta, claiming they had money in Zwedru and he would be paid on arrival. The taxi driver agreed to this since they had a load in the car that was worth more than both of their fees to get there, meaning if something happened he would keep the load as their payment. This also meant that although there were people who paid the 2,500LD fee he would not leave the girls. The taxi driver could have easily taken the load with him and dropped it off to the people who were paying the girls traveling fees, but he wouldn’t do it. Well being they were “booking” the girls overnight until they paid the fine, we were stuck. In training PC taught us that if we ran into issues we should call Prince, head of security, he would talk to whoever in charge/ help us solve the issue. After yelling, swearing, physical fighting, crying, and general chaos (of the officers and the girls involved) we decided to call Prince to see if he could talk to the officers/head honcho to release the girls, so we could be on our way. FINALLY, after they talked to Prince (for the second time) they released the girls and we were free to go. We had now been there for 3 hours, making it 6:30 pm. To say we were pissed at the driver was an understatement, he had decided to stay with the girls, although everyone else had paid, because he had money “invested” in them that he wanted back.
Finally, we all packed into the car, right as we started to go it started pouring. We drove about 2 min from Tappita, attempted to make it up this dirt hill, and the car couldn’t make it. We all had to get out of the car, walk up the hill in the pouring rain (we were DRENCHED) , so the car could make it up the hill. The car made it up the hill, but ma Ester, Rachel and I decided the weather was too much and we wanted to turn back, to stay the night at a guesthouse. The driver and other passengers assured us that the road past this hill was flat/ we wouldn’t run into any more issues. Reluctantly we told him that we would continue, but if we ran into any further issues, he would need to stop at the closest town to wait the weather out. We drove for about an hour (rain had stopped) until he pulled over to check something out under the hood of the car, it didn’t seem like an issue/ we quickly resumed driving. We drove for another 15 minutes until he pulled over again. He said that his headlights were losing current and he needed to fix it, what he meant was the car died. It was 8pm, we were stopped on the side of some dirt road with a dead car, and it was about to rain again. Ma Ester told us there was a small village up the road, and we could spend the night on a bench until the car was fixed, clearly Rachel and I were never going to do that, so we told them that the next car that passed we would flag down and ask them to take us to the nearest (large) town, which was Toetown, and happen to be where ma Ester lived. The next car that passed was a huge like 10-wheeler truck. We flagged him down, the driver, ma Ester, Rachel, and I all got in and drove to Toetown. The plan was the driver would get the piece he needed to fix the car and would motorbike back to the car, where the other passengers were waiting. He would then drive the car the rest of the way, stopping in Toetown to give ma Ester her load (she had 2 bags of cement in the car) and continue on. The hate Rachel and I had for the driver was severe, so we decided to try and get reimbursed and either stay the night at the guesthouse or ask the truck to drop us off in Zwedru. We asked the truck to carry us the rest of the way, they agreed to carry us for 700LD, this was to me the best option, the car was able to handle the dirt roads, was extremely roomy, the driver friendly, and at this point it was 8:30pm/ we had been traveling for 14 hours, and just wanted to get there. As a backup plan, we asked Ma Ester where the guest house was (totally unaware at the time that there was a LR6 PC in this town), she kept saying we could stay at her house, that he had no idea where the guesthouse was, she knew where it was, just wanted us to stay with her. She kept saying, but where would you stay... and would answer it herself saying- my house hahaha. She said we could take a bath, change our clothes (we were still wet from standing in the rain) and she had a nice big bed/warm blanket for us. She almost had Rachel convinced, until I reminded her that most likely her roof was not sealed, that the bath was most likely outside and ... spiders. We asked our taxi driver for our money back, being he wasn’t carrying us the entire way, we wanted to be reimbursed for the distance we still had to go. The driver told us that he had spent all the money attempting to bail out the girls and was unable to reimburse us at all. This added to our utter hate for him but decided we would bring up the issue in Ghanta at the taxi spot when we got back/ wanted to rid ourselves of this back-luck driver and carry on. The truck carried us the rest of the way, 3 hours later we arrived in Zwedru. What should have taken us 4 hours, took us 9 hours, totaling the trip a whopping 17-18 hours.
We got to the house, took baths, chatted small, and passed out. In the morning we decided to go to the PC office in Zwedru, grab motorbike helmets, and visit Jenny at her site. Jenny’s site is a tiny site about 40 min outside of Zwedru, we decided to surprise her, well surprise her because she doesn’t have reliable cell service, so there was no real way to tell her we were coming. We met Jenny at her school, walked around her site, seeing her house, meeting her neighbors, and getting egg bread at the local tea shop. We stayed until about 5:00 pm, convinced her to come back to Zwedru, and all got motorbikes back to Nick and Amy’s house. Once we got back we went to grab a beer at Jwalo, and I got introduced to my first street meal. I got chicken and something that was like rice, but made with cassava, from a street vendor, it was DELICIOUS. The best chicken I have had so far in Liberia. While there Rachel O and Ryan B met us and we all just chatted/hung out.
The next day Amy presented at a Liberian ran NGO, she was the guest speaker for there launching party. She spoke on why education for women was important and killed it. The entire program lasted about 1.5 hours, it was a great program, unfortunately a lot of the “big shots” they invited didn’t show up. After the program we went to a Nigerian restaurant. The food was pretty similar to Liberian food, I got Cassava soup/rice, the only real difference was the amount of spices they used. After we filled our gut we went for a tour inside the market. The market is huge/ better organized than both Kataka and Gbanga market and I bought 2 lappa, one of which has zebra on it, it’s a pretty solid find ha. We went back to Nick and Amy’s place, rested small, before going back out to get ice cream/pizza. Yes, Zwedru has ice cream! I got chocolate, if you ask me though it tasted more like marshmallow ice cream, which I was totally fine with. We walked over to the guest house Florida’s, where we ordered pizza, Rachel and I split a lover pizza (meat lover) and a chili pizza- DELICIOUS, once again, a best in Liberia, 1000 times better than the pizza I had in Monrovia. We hung out, saw Rachel O and Ryan B again, then called it an early night and headed back to the house to play some games.
The next morning, we had to be up and out of the house by 5:00am to get to NGO parking. Zwedru has a parking spot where NGO cars will go to fill up before making the trip to Monrovia. These are cars that can make the 10-hour trip without (not all the time) breaking down. We got there, hopped into a pickup truck, and by 6:30 am we were on our way. We didn’t run into any issues. We made it all the way to Ghanta by 2:30 pm. Ghanta is the point in the trip where we are no longer on a dusty road, but on coaltar. We went to the Zwedru taxi spot and complained about the taxi driver, in hopes of being reimbursed for our 700 LD. We were not reimbursed just then, but he apologized, said they would review the facts, talk to the driver, and would give us a call (spoiler- haven’t heard back). We walked to the gas stations to stock up on American food, went to the bakery to get some meat pies, and went to get a car.
We arrived at the taxi spot, talked to the head guy, put our names down, he told us we were the first 2 in the car and we wouldn’t leave until the car was full. We knew this would take FOREVER, we told him that we were going to try and find another car, to which he said that was fine. I sat on the bench and watched our stuff while Rachel went to the road to find a different car. While I was sitting there 2-3 people started talking to me asking me all sorts of questions about America and what I was doing here. None of this was out of the ordinary until Rachel came back and told me she found a car. We went to the taxi guy and told him we got a different car, to take our names off the list, and he agreed. We walked to the taxi and I noticed one of the guys was following us (clearly had been drinking). I got to the car and he asked for my number, I told him no, that I wasn’t here for man business, and out of nowhere he sat in the front seat. I told the driver he was to move from here, and as the car filled up he got out of the car. We were set to leave, drove up the street to get gas, and we looked behind us and saw the front seat guy following us on motorbike. When he caught up to us he started yelling at the driver about how he broke the law/ how he will go to jail and all this shit. The driver said he could bring up the issue to the officers at the immigration and after more arguing we all drove on to the checkpoint. We arrived at Ghanta immigration, the guy was yelling at the driver/to the driver/about the driver, he was a mess. Rachel and I got out of the car, pulled the officer aside, told her how after I rejected him he got in the car/ started following us, she said she understood, she talked to the other officers, they kept him there and waved our car through. After dodging that bullet, we were on our way, about 20 min into the drive we heard a POP, we pulled over and the tire had spoiled, the driver and one of the guys in the car got the spare and started changing it. While pulled over a kid on a motorbike ran into the car. I can’t make this shit up... there was a car that was passing us, apparently the motorbike driver went to the side, so the car could pass, didn’t see us, and ran right into our stopped car. Luckily no one was hurt/ he wasn’t going that fast, he did however manage to crack the drivers backlight. The accident was of course met with a lot of yelling (from the passengers not the driver) on how the motorbike driver could have hit someone, could have killed someone, and how they should take the bike as payment until he could pay for the light. Then 2 other motorbike drivers pulled up and begged that they not take the bike, that the kid just didnt know how to drive, and he was sorry. A random girl from the village we were stopped in front of came up/ started yelling to one of our female passengers, they got in a mini argument, that ended with the female passenger yelling about how the girls mouth looks like butt HAHAHA. The driver handled the situation well, he kept a calm head, forgave the motorbike kid/ let him go on his way. After those hiccups we didn’t run into any other trouble/ both made it safely to our sites.
The take away from our traveling excursion is that anything goes when traveling, you defiantly can’t have a set travel plan, you must be VERY flexible, know that somehow it will all work out, and must remain calm. Rachel and I never personally ran into any issues at any checkpoints, no one was ever rude or mean to us, I never felt unsafe by the people we were surrounded by, and when we did have a problem (the guy following us) security was there to help us out. Traveling here is so different then America, never in a million years would an old ma welcome you to stay at her house, or would you get into a truck and safely make it to your destination, just proving the fact that Liberians in general are very friendly/trusting people. Traveling to Zwedru proved that I am able to travel here in Liberia. Traveling is one of the things I hate the most, after this experience I feel confident I can travel around/ can handle anything that comes at me. Most importantly it showed me that I owe Rachel a HUGE thank you because without her I most likely would have lost my shit like 12 times ha-ha.
We had it as planned out as well as traveling in Liberia will offer, I woke up at 5:30am, got my house together, and was down at Gbartala taxi spot by 6:30am. I was hoping (because everyone wakes up so early here) that cars would be waiting to go, and we could just pick up Rachel in Suakoko and be on our way to Gbanga to catch the next taxi, but no such luck. I waited about a half hour until a car was finally going that direction, we stopped in Suakoko, grabbed Rachel and was in Gbanga by 7:30 am. We then got another taxi to Ghanta (thankfully Gbartala-Suakoko-Gbanga-Ghanta are all on the paved road), filling the car was relatively quick, and we reached Ghanta by 8:30 am. In Ghanta we went to the bakery/ the gas stations to grab some snacks then went to Zwedru parking. We put our name with the taxi guy and waited for the car to fill up, including us, the car had 4 people inside, we just had to wait on 2 more people. Our goal was to arrive in Zwedru before nightfall, being it take 8-10 hours from Ghanta we wanted to leave around 10 am. The car didn’t fill up until around 11:30 am, so once again, true to Liberian time, we were running behind. The car consisted the driver, a male and female in the front seat, me, Rachel, Old Ma Ester (who we made friends with) and another girl in the backseat. The first half of the trip went well, we made it to Tappita, the halfway point by 3:30 pm. We were making great time, only 4 hours left until we reached Zwedru, meaning we would be there around 7:30 pm. We just had to pass through one immigration checkpoint before we were on the second half of our journey, when ALL HELL BROKE LOOSE.
Immigration checkpoints for us means getting out of the car, showing our Peace Corps ID, getting back in the car and leaving. The drivers they show the car information/driver’s license, and if you’re not Liberian it means showing whatever documentation you have, and if you don’t have proper documentation, there are still things you can do/give to pass through the checkpoint. Typically passing through goes smoothly and you are on your way within minutes. That was NOT the case for us. The two females that were in the car did not have proper documentation and was being held in the office by one of the officers until they could pay the fine. After about 30 min the guy inside the office dismissed them, allowing us to leave. The officer outside (the one who told them to go inside initially) got angry that he was not consulted before they were dismissed, and the two officers got in a huge argument/fight. A third officer decided to call the head honcho to come solve the issue between the fighting officers / to carry the girls to the main office in town.
Rachel and I were initially relieved when they called the head honcho, thinking he would solve the issue quickly, so we could be on our way. The guy finally arrived (we had been there for about a 1.5 hr. now), yelled at a bunch of people, told our taxi driver that he was taking the girls to the office in town, and that we were free to leave. Little did we know, the girls in the car had not paid the 2,500LD it cost to get to Zwedru at the main office in Ghanta, claiming they had money in Zwedru and he would be paid on arrival. The taxi driver agreed to this since they had a load in the car that was worth more than both of their fees to get there, meaning if something happened he would keep the load as their payment. This also meant that although there were people who paid the 2,500LD fee he would not leave the girls. The taxi driver could have easily taken the load with him and dropped it off to the people who were paying the girls traveling fees, but he wouldn’t do it. Well being they were “booking” the girls overnight until they paid the fine, we were stuck. In training PC taught us that if we ran into issues we should call Prince, head of security, he would talk to whoever in charge/ help us solve the issue. After yelling, swearing, physical fighting, crying, and general chaos (of the officers and the girls involved) we decided to call Prince to see if he could talk to the officers/head honcho to release the girls, so we could be on our way. FINALLY, after they talked to Prince (for the second time) they released the girls and we were free to go. We had now been there for 3 hours, making it 6:30 pm. To say we were pissed at the driver was an understatement, he had decided to stay with the girls, although everyone else had paid, because he had money “invested” in them that he wanted back.
Finally, we all packed into the car, right as we started to go it started pouring. We drove about 2 min from Tappita, attempted to make it up this dirt hill, and the car couldn’t make it. We all had to get out of the car, walk up the hill in the pouring rain (we were DRENCHED) , so the car could make it up the hill. The car made it up the hill, but ma Ester, Rachel and I decided the weather was too much and we wanted to turn back, to stay the night at a guesthouse. The driver and other passengers assured us that the road past this hill was flat/ we wouldn’t run into any more issues. Reluctantly we told him that we would continue, but if we ran into any further issues, he would need to stop at the closest town to wait the weather out. We drove for about an hour (rain had stopped) until he pulled over to check something out under the hood of the car, it didn’t seem like an issue/ we quickly resumed driving. We drove for another 15 minutes until he pulled over again. He said that his headlights were losing current and he needed to fix it, what he meant was the car died. It was 8pm, we were stopped on the side of some dirt road with a dead car, and it was about to rain again. Ma Ester told us there was a small village up the road, and we could spend the night on a bench until the car was fixed, clearly Rachel and I were never going to do that, so we told them that the next car that passed we would flag down and ask them to take us to the nearest (large) town, which was Toetown, and happen to be where ma Ester lived. The next car that passed was a huge like 10-wheeler truck. We flagged him down, the driver, ma Ester, Rachel, and I all got in and drove to Toetown. The plan was the driver would get the piece he needed to fix the car and would motorbike back to the car, where the other passengers were waiting. He would then drive the car the rest of the way, stopping in Toetown to give ma Ester her load (she had 2 bags of cement in the car) and continue on. The hate Rachel and I had for the driver was severe, so we decided to try and get reimbursed and either stay the night at the guesthouse or ask the truck to drop us off in Zwedru. We asked the truck to carry us the rest of the way, they agreed to carry us for 700LD, this was to me the best option, the car was able to handle the dirt roads, was extremely roomy, the driver friendly, and at this point it was 8:30pm/ we had been traveling for 14 hours, and just wanted to get there. As a backup plan, we asked Ma Ester where the guest house was (totally unaware at the time that there was a LR6 PC in this town), she kept saying we could stay at her house, that he had no idea where the guesthouse was, she knew where it was, just wanted us to stay with her. She kept saying, but where would you stay... and would answer it herself saying- my house hahaha. She said we could take a bath, change our clothes (we were still wet from standing in the rain) and she had a nice big bed/warm blanket for us. She almost had Rachel convinced, until I reminded her that most likely her roof was not sealed, that the bath was most likely outside and ... spiders. We asked our taxi driver for our money back, being he wasn’t carrying us the entire way, we wanted to be reimbursed for the distance we still had to go. The driver told us that he had spent all the money attempting to bail out the girls and was unable to reimburse us at all. This added to our utter hate for him but decided we would bring up the issue in Ghanta at the taxi spot when we got back/ wanted to rid ourselves of this back-luck driver and carry on. The truck carried us the rest of the way, 3 hours later we arrived in Zwedru. What should have taken us 4 hours, took us 9 hours, totaling the trip a whopping 17-18 hours.
We got to the house, took baths, chatted small, and passed out. In the morning we decided to go to the PC office in Zwedru, grab motorbike helmets, and visit Jenny at her site. Jenny’s site is a tiny site about 40 min outside of Zwedru, we decided to surprise her, well surprise her because she doesn’t have reliable cell service, so there was no real way to tell her we were coming. We met Jenny at her school, walked around her site, seeing her house, meeting her neighbors, and getting egg bread at the local tea shop. We stayed until about 5:00 pm, convinced her to come back to Zwedru, and all got motorbikes back to Nick and Amy’s house. Once we got back we went to grab a beer at Jwalo, and I got introduced to my first street meal. I got chicken and something that was like rice, but made with cassava, from a street vendor, it was DELICIOUS. The best chicken I have had so far in Liberia. While there Rachel O and Ryan B met us and we all just chatted/hung out.
The next day Amy presented at a Liberian ran NGO, she was the guest speaker for there launching party. She spoke on why education for women was important and killed it. The entire program lasted about 1.5 hours, it was a great program, unfortunately a lot of the “big shots” they invited didn’t show up. After the program we went to a Nigerian restaurant. The food was pretty similar to Liberian food, I got Cassava soup/rice, the only real difference was the amount of spices they used. After we filled our gut we went for a tour inside the market. The market is huge/ better organized than both Kataka and Gbanga market and I bought 2 lappa, one of which has zebra on it, it’s a pretty solid find ha. We went back to Nick and Amy’s place, rested small, before going back out to get ice cream/pizza. Yes, Zwedru has ice cream! I got chocolate, if you ask me though it tasted more like marshmallow ice cream, which I was totally fine with. We walked over to the guest house Florida’s, where we ordered pizza, Rachel and I split a lover pizza (meat lover) and a chili pizza- DELICIOUS, once again, a best in Liberia, 1000 times better than the pizza I had in Monrovia. We hung out, saw Rachel O and Ryan B again, then called it an early night and headed back to the house to play some games.
The next morning, we had to be up and out of the house by 5:00am to get to NGO parking. Zwedru has a parking spot where NGO cars will go to fill up before making the trip to Monrovia. These are cars that can make the 10-hour trip without (not all the time) breaking down. We got there, hopped into a pickup truck, and by 6:30 am we were on our way. We didn’t run into any issues. We made it all the way to Ghanta by 2:30 pm. Ghanta is the point in the trip where we are no longer on a dusty road, but on coaltar. We went to the Zwedru taxi spot and complained about the taxi driver, in hopes of being reimbursed for our 700 LD. We were not reimbursed just then, but he apologized, said they would review the facts, talk to the driver, and would give us a call (spoiler- haven’t heard back). We walked to the gas stations to stock up on American food, went to the bakery to get some meat pies, and went to get a car.
We arrived at the taxi spot, talked to the head guy, put our names down, he told us we were the first 2 in the car and we wouldn’t leave until the car was full. We knew this would take FOREVER, we told him that we were going to try and find another car, to which he said that was fine. I sat on the bench and watched our stuff while Rachel went to the road to find a different car. While I was sitting there 2-3 people started talking to me asking me all sorts of questions about America and what I was doing here. None of this was out of the ordinary until Rachel came back and told me she found a car. We went to the taxi guy and told him we got a different car, to take our names off the list, and he agreed. We walked to the taxi and I noticed one of the guys was following us (clearly had been drinking). I got to the car and he asked for my number, I told him no, that I wasn’t here for man business, and out of nowhere he sat in the front seat. I told the driver he was to move from here, and as the car filled up he got out of the car. We were set to leave, drove up the street to get gas, and we looked behind us and saw the front seat guy following us on motorbike. When he caught up to us he started yelling at the driver about how he broke the law/ how he will go to jail and all this shit. The driver said he could bring up the issue to the officers at the immigration and after more arguing we all drove on to the checkpoint. We arrived at Ghanta immigration, the guy was yelling at the driver/to the driver/about the driver, he was a mess. Rachel and I got out of the car, pulled the officer aside, told her how after I rejected him he got in the car/ started following us, she said she understood, she talked to the other officers, they kept him there and waved our car through. After dodging that bullet, we were on our way, about 20 min into the drive we heard a POP, we pulled over and the tire had spoiled, the driver and one of the guys in the car got the spare and started changing it. While pulled over a kid on a motorbike ran into the car. I can’t make this shit up... there was a car that was passing us, apparently the motorbike driver went to the side, so the car could pass, didn’t see us, and ran right into our stopped car. Luckily no one was hurt/ he wasn’t going that fast, he did however manage to crack the drivers backlight. The accident was of course met with a lot of yelling (from the passengers not the driver) on how the motorbike driver could have hit someone, could have killed someone, and how they should take the bike as payment until he could pay for the light. Then 2 other motorbike drivers pulled up and begged that they not take the bike, that the kid just didnt know how to drive, and he was sorry. A random girl from the village we were stopped in front of came up/ started yelling to one of our female passengers, they got in a mini argument, that ended with the female passenger yelling about how the girls mouth looks like butt HAHAHA. The driver handled the situation well, he kept a calm head, forgave the motorbike kid/ let him go on his way. After those hiccups we didn’t run into any other trouble/ both made it safely to our sites.
The take away from our traveling excursion is that anything goes when traveling, you defiantly can’t have a set travel plan, you must be VERY flexible, know that somehow it will all work out, and must remain calm. Rachel and I never personally ran into any issues at any checkpoints, no one was ever rude or mean to us, I never felt unsafe by the people we were surrounded by, and when we did have a problem (the guy following us) security was there to help us out. Traveling here is so different then America, never in a million years would an old ma welcome you to stay at her house, or would you get into a truck and safely make it to your destination, just proving the fact that Liberians in general are very friendly/trusting people. Traveling to Zwedru proved that I am able to travel here in Liberia. Traveling is one of the things I hate the most, after this experience I feel confident I can travel around/ can handle anything that comes at me. Most importantly it showed me that I owe Rachel a HUGE thank you because without her I most likely would have lost my shit like 12 times ha-ha.