102. Fishtown, Liberia

Prize Winning Home in Fishtown

102.

Fishtown, Liberia, Africa

We arrive after sunset and are hustled through the darkness into a gas-lamp lit room by a serious group of men.

The headmen of the village are waiting for us. They sit on wooden chairs on one side of the room and the missionaries and I are invited to sit with them.

More men women and children crowd in and soon the room is completely jam-packed filled.

Missionaries and headmen deliver dignified speeches alternately.

When the headmen speak, all the men in the room chant phrases in unison at the end of their short remarks which sounds quite musical—like a litany perhaps, or an abbreviated Greek chorus.

All of the important men are wearing suits cut basically on the western style but with practical short sleeves. It is hot here.

One amiable village elder dressed in a bright pink suit has had a bit too much palm wine and is soundly scolded by one of the black missionaries. (All the Lutheran missionaries with us are black except Brother Joe.)

The Fishtown village schoolteacher graciously invites Joe and I to sleep in a bedroom in his house.

I sleep without the cargo of lead clouds or silver fog I mentioned before and wake very refreshed.

In the early morning sunshine, Fishtown is revealed as a hamlet of some twenty circular huts with thatched roofs like big coolie hats. There are also two or three huts with rectangular floor plans and zinc roofs. The teacher’s house is one of the newfangled dwellings.

Our host brings a bucket of hot water for a morning shower at his private “bath fence”, an open-air enclosure for ablutions. The slit trench commode is nearby— enclosed in a bamboo framework covered with banana leaves. These simple hygienic facilities are primitive but perfectly clean and very suitable for the climate and locale. I notice no unpleasant odors, flies or mosquitoes.

In fact, I like the natural classic African architecture Fishtown so well I award one of its houses my own:

First Prize Private Dwelling; Fishtown, Liberia, West Africa

Construction details: The floor is covered with a plant juice/dirt mixture that hardens like cement. The walls are made of adobe clay spread over a bamboo framework and dried. The roof is thatch resting on supporting wooden poles. All of the construction materials have been gathered nearby and no metals, plastic or manufactured materials have been used.

The only furniture is a clothes trunk and a simple bed. The house contains no knick-knacks or appliances.

The homeowner has used black, white, red and blue colors made from local plants and minerals to paint murals of an alligator and a fish on the front porch wall of his residence.

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