Life Radio

When undertaking field activities, often government partners throw in curveballs, which is their right to do. Last night's was that the project team needed to be on a 'talkshow' on Life Radio in the main district town of Zorzor at 7.30 this morning. We scrabbled some content and coordinated who was to say what. Being far from an expert in conservation in Liberia but knowing that by far Liberia retains much more forest than other West African countries, I cobbled together some words about the importance of forests here and why the Norwegian government is funding lots of work on climate change and forestry, including our project.

Appearing on the radio always seems to be a last minute scramble. I was once foisted onto BBC Radio Wales to talk about our Global Trees Campaign initiative when people who actually work on it weren't available. I had to quickly swot up on monkey puzzle trees in Chile.

After the talkshow passed smoothly, we went to meet an important local character, the District Commissioner, who was selling banana chips outside her office when we arrived.

There was some faffing on leaving Zorzor because one of the drivers has chicken pox. Then we had to reconfigure ourselves for the journey because people wanted to cram into the backseats with a free spacious pick-up bed directly behind. The visiting European's mind gets excited about riding with the African air blowing in his face. The resident African cannot understand why someone would lower his status to ride in the back, even if his limbs would be free to move. I had red dust all over my face and hair, and panda eye marks beneath my sunglasses for the remainder of the day, but it was certainly worth it.

As we departed to assume our positions for the talkshow, the sunrise colours were beautiful.