Salayea A Trip Up Country
Beth Holtam Remembers Salayea – In 1958, Our Board Advisor Emerita, Beth Holtam, and her husband Jordan, visited the town where our next project will take place. Fifty-five years later, Salayea is still a remote town, a six- or seven-hour drive from the capital in the best weather. The Lutheran Training Institute burned down in the civil war. Today, it is a vocational day school.
SALAYEA: A TRIP UPCOUNTRY!
It was 1958, and Jordan and I were excited to plan a trip “up the road” –one of the first since we had arrived at Cuttington College in central Liberia earlier that year. Dry season (which occurs between September and May) was the best time to travel the unpaved, laterite roads. We were going to Salayea, about two hours away, to register a Liberian student (our first among many), to continue his education at the Lutheran Training Institute (LTI). Jordan also wanted to see LTI because he was planning a 4H-style project for mission schools with boarding facilities; baby chicks would soon arrive by air from Heifer Project USA.
Jordan had settled into his new jobs as Head of the Agriculture Department and Manager of the 1500-acre College Farm. We had come to know our first community of International Neighbors: the staff of the college, who were mostly American missionaries, but included a French professor, a German anthropologist, and a German maintenance man. The college at that time was a Mission of the Episcopal Diocese of Liberia and served about 300 Liberian students. The first student to enroll (in 1948) was now the Dean of Men.
At LTI we had a delightful visit with the Takyis, Lutheran missionaries from Ghana. Then we drove to Bellefanai near the spectacular St. Paul River, and on to Salayea and Zorzor, where there were two well-established Lutheran Missions.
We had read somewhere that there were probably more missionaries per square inch in Liberia than in any other country. Most missions had schools, helping to compensate for the fact that there were very few rural public schools back then (and no public school went beyond the eighth grade until 1960). In addition to schools, since the founding of the republic missions had provided hospitals and leper colonies. These were scattered all over the country.
That first visit, Jordan was in the right place at the right time, as there were several pastors gathering in Salayea to plan an overnight visit (at a later date) to a village deep in the “high bush,” where they would meet with a church group. Jordan, happily, was invited to join them. They walked on bush paths for eleven hours to reach the village. There were hired carriers for the loads, but the most amazing thing Jordan learned that day was how to keep from being hungry and thirsty on a such a long walk in the tropics: one chewed on a wondrous bitter nut from time to time, a natural source of caffeine, and an easy thing to carry in one’s pocket: the Kola Nut. And yes, it was the same cola nut that was the secret ingredient in Coca-Cola when it was first produced as a patent medicine!
What about that “4-H” project? Well, the chicks did arrive at the schools, were raised with instruction by Jordan, and eventually provided students and staff with “Rhode Island Red Chicken-Every-Sunday”!