After a hectic month in deepest darkest Sinoe County acting as Area Coordinator and managing the base, I was due to travel from Greenville (‘capital’ of Sinoe County) back to the bright lights of Monrovia yesterday and it was a typical laid back Liberian experience. No really. The communication line between Monrovia UN office and Greenville office was down due to bad weather (always a good start when you’re planning to fly rusty old UN choppers) meaning the flight manifest hadn’t arrived so no-one knew for certain what time the flight would be leaving, despite the fact it goes every Friday at the same time as far as I can tell, or whether I was in fact even on the list to fly. Having heard rumours of 2pm, I decided to give myself a good hour’s grace and aim to be at the UN base by 1pm. All morning I heard logistics running around looking for the key to Cruiser-12 (the one, as some of you may have heard if you’ve emailed me over the last week whilst I’ve been managing the base, that was in a really nasty accident last week – in which praise God no-one died – but which is halfway to being fixed minus quite a lot of glass in its windows and half the back caved in), but didn’t realise the relevance of this to my travel plans until about 11.30 when I thought I ought to begin prodding logistics to make sure there was a vehicle on base to take me to the airport. Turns out there was. Just the one – Crusier-12, minus a car key. And the spare key didn’t work, apparently something to do with the large amount of water that got into the vehicle from its bungee off a bridge last week, though quite how this affects the ability of the spare key to start the car when the normal key worked when I drove it on Thursday night…anyhow. So. No vehicle. All morning every time I asked, people had been totally laid back about flight times, but all of a sudden the same staff kept appearing and asking me why I was not at the airport since the flight usually left by now. Thanks guys. A car that we couldn’t start, a large bag since I’m not coming back to Greenville again, and no transport to the airport – not even a motorbike on base because all the field staff, motorbikes and vehicles are out in the field running workshops, hauling participants and doing project work.
Cue rapidly trying to hire 2 motorbikes and drivers from outside the compound: I left on the first whilst the security guard was tying my suitcase precariously onto the back of the other; backpack on, clutching my laptop to my chest with one hand and holding on with the other, riding along the dusty ‘back route’ to the airport, through puddles left by last night’s heavy rain, across a football field, through people’s backyards, swerving around a hand pump or 2, all the while scouring the sky and listening out for the tell-tale chopper noise that would tell me I was too late.
I made it to the UN base with 5 minutes to spare; the UN plane, otherwise known as the Dash, taxiing down the runway as we rode up to the gate rather than one of the rusty old choppers – hoorah! My bag on the rented motorbike behind made it with 1 minute to spare. Rushing into the building, without, it transpired, the correct paper work, and a bag that was about 20kg above the appropriate weight limit I managed to charm the MOVCON guy into letting me board. That is until of course the flight plan changed. I then sat in the UN concrete hut in Greenville for 2 hours waiting for the UN flight to ‘dash’ to Harper further down the coast and back to Greenville, before flying, hopefully with me and my bag on board, to Spriggs-Paynesville UN Airport in Monrovia. The flight had been supposed to go straight to Harper and then to Greenville on its way back to Monrovia, but the weather was too bad to land in Harper and they’d had to come back and land in Greenville instead. After 2 hours and the plane still hadn’t left Greenville, the plan changed again – they would take me, the only passenger getting on at Greenville, go back to Harper with the other passengers who’d wanted to go directly there from Monrovia, then fly direct to Monrovia from Harper. By this stage, the sky was getting darker and darker and the rain was pouring down, the flight captain walked passed me on the way to the plane murmuring to his crew mate that he didn’t like the look of this weather, and I began to think that Greenville was a nice place to stay after all and who needed a warm shower and a decent bed n Monrovia?
So. We flew the 40 minutes to Harper, at low altitude through thick cloud and horrible turbulence, where we had 2 aborted attempts at landing – wheels down, losing a lot of height rather more quickly than I was expecting, popping out of the cloud and realising we were far too close to the ground, back up into the cloud and round to try again, before the captain came on the intercom and said we were giving up and going back to Monrovia, where all on board except me had started their journey close to 8 hours beforehand.
How different from flying the UN helicopters – the suave chirpy multi-lingual flight staff came around the cabin taking down all our details since they hadn’t received the manifest with the names of who was flying, and during a particularly queasy-making bit of turbulence where he was forced to buckle in next to me until it calmed down I remarked that at least it was shorter than the chopper flight, to which he muttered under his breath, “and you’re more likely to get to your destination in this one”. Now it’s confirmed by a UN bloke I’m glad I have no more chopper flights to go. As we passed over Greenville and flew towards Monrovia the weather improved and the sun came out, with a rainbow encircling the plane and white UN choppers visible against the green far far below. It was an odd experience to be suddenly above fluffy white clouds travelling this route between Greenville and Monrovia, which I’ve done before on a chopper, rattling and shaking low over the green jungle, or by road, bumping along bright orange dirt roads for 12 hours: calmer (once the turbulence ended), more serene and distanced from the real Liberia.
As I stepped off the plane, back in Monrovia for the first time in a month, I was the only one pleased to be there: the other passengers were back again for the first time in, well, 9 hours of flying around on the Dash, and for some it was the second time this week they’ve tried to get to Harper. The Dash only flies on Fridays so they’ve got the longer chopper ride to look forward to again for the next attempt…
Back in Monrovia, I find out the hot water is no longer – the tank was full of rust and apparently growing some sort of bug so they’ve removed it. So no cold bucket baths but cold showers instead… But I can testify that at least the bed is comfy 
