Chimpanzee Island: A Canoe Ride Through . . . #X*&%@

. . . we interrupt our scheduled blogcast of “Chimpanzee Island: A Canoe Ride Through Mangrove Swamps Near Monrovia” due to rain, instead, we present “Wulki Farms: No Chimpanzees Here, But We did See Animals and Got Out of Monrovia!" I was hoping to leave Monrovia with a big blog sendoff.  About a month ago notice went out for a CLO (Civilian Liaison Office) sponsored trip to Chimpanzee Island.  Chimpanzee Island is an island on . . . I should just let you read for yourself:

I was the fourth person to sign up and pay for the trip.  I was ready to go!  Not in the advertisement is the fact that Chimpanzee Island was created as a safe refugee habitat for chimpanzees taken from the wild and recovered, usually from the streets of Monrovia.  Other than to perhaps get some lessons for my chimpanzee imitation (which Ann assures me is hilarious - well, she does when she can stop laughing), I was less interested in the chimpanzees than the opportunity to cruise around the mangroves and photograph.  

Unfortunately, earlier this week word was sent out that the trip was cancelled.  All the heavy rains we’ve had in recent weeks have raised the river levels and increased the rate of flow to unsafe levels, and made the roads (typical Liberian dirt . . . now mud) nearly impassable.  Given that as much as I’d like a final adventure before I leave Liberia, I actually want to leave Liberia sitting in a plane seat instead of in a coffin.  So, while I was a bit disappointed, I took it in stride.

Sosse, our CLO Coordinator, however came up with another trip the group could take.  Wulki Farms, or as their gate says “Wulki Farms - Farmer’s Paradise.”  So . . . back to the show! 

Wulki Farms is a working farm.  And a petting zoo.  And a “resort” where you can go swimming, and horseback riding and apparently any number of things.  It was all of those things and more!  All in the grand Liberian tradition which means not done very well.  Ok.  I was a bit disappointed.

Now it definitely was a working farm, and we got to see a lot of the production areas.  In the front they had a bunch of chickens and the horses they used for rides,  which a bunch of kids did while we were eating and relaxing.

We also got to see the donkeys, which are apparently used as part of the farm’s working operation (and not as crocodile food).  

The manager of the place didn’t understand why we wanted to walk from the gate the mile or so, uphill to the restaurant area.  But we did.  Along the way we stopped by several of the other work areas where we went into buildings where quail eggs were hatching, the growing rooms where quail and chickens are kept to grow (the brooding building I think it was called) and . . . well, we skipped the slaughter house for some odd reason. 

From the brooding building I saw one of the small farm plots, but other than that, there wasn’t a lot of “farming” to see.

All in all, the day was nice, fairly hot with heavy storm clouds over head and thunder rumbling off in the distance.  As we made it up the hill, we actually got some decent views of Liberia.  As I’ve said before, once you get out of Monrovia, there’s pretty much vegetation everywhere.

When we got to the top of the hill it was pretty much meal time.  Which was good because it soon started raining, and raining and raining.  And while the kebbe and kofta were pretty good, service was extremely slow.  So slow that we had to skip a couple of things (yeah, they could take us to the pens where the ostriches are!) and go home.  As it was, we got home well after dark.  

I’d been hoping for trails to walk down, places I could stop for some nice photographs but that was not to be.  

Some people in the embassy keep harping about ecotourism, but the fact of the matter is this country isn’t advanced enough for that.  They don’t really grasp the concepts, don’t have the infrastructure to make it work and are years away from being ready to do it right.  I guess I was hoping for too much.  Perhaps a boat ride through the mangroves wouldn’t have been nearly what I was hoping for either. 

Still, it was nice to get out of Monrovia and to see beautiful green Liberia from the ground one last time.  Wednesday’s view of the forest will be from an airplane and will be my last view for quite some time, if not forever.  So yeah, today was all right.  It was good to walk around and see the bush one more time.