Madina

Over the river from Nekebozu (see yesterday) is the village of Madina, the venue for today's meeting. Very similar community concerns here, conveyed with more passion and unruliness.

This village is newer, largely populated after Christian-Muslim tensions in the civil war drove the people of Nekebozu apart. However today some elders were referring to an earlier abandonment of Madina in 1990, after which elephants invaded crop fields. Since the late 1990s when the Muslim Mandingo resettled, crop raiding by elephants seems to have been an ongoing problem. I asked a colleague about the attitude towards Islamic dress here as most women weren't wearing what I perceive to be traditional garb. 'This is Liberia', was the response, which I take to mean that Muslims in Liberia are chilled out about covering their heads.

During the meeting warm-up, the facilitator (male) instructed the female audience members to split themselves up as 'women talk plenty'. I was silently outraged at this stereotype playing out but it wouldn't have been appropriate for the one foreigner in the crowd to do anything, and any protest would have been met with the blankest stares by both genders.

Either less attuned to lapse into outrage, or indoctrinated into the sexist status quo, most likely both, the women dispersed themselves obediently. I'm sorry they didn't get the chance to natter about which shade of toenail varnish is the most becoming for the back-breaking work of carrying buckets of water from the river up the hill to the village. I consoled myself with the successes of women's liberation elsewhere. In the UK women would take great delight in telling a man to roundly stuff himself if he dared to suggest their gossiping would interrupt a meeting.

The image is of the Nekebozu-Madina river crossing. In the early morning the scene was already a hive of scrubbing clothes and carrying water, with someone operating the raft system that crosses between banks. The exposed roots attest to the power of this river during the height of the rains.

During a meeting break a young woman balanced a baby clamped to her breast and a bowl containing hundreds of grasshoppers, which she was de-winging. These are eaten as a delicacy and protein source. However I learnt that although easily killed at any time, grasshoppers are spared as youngsters to enjoy their full taste later. Whatever cultural tradition dictates this practice, it's likely to lose in a cost-benefit analysis. The crop damage caused by grasshoppers as they mature is likely to be more harmful nutritionally than the protein gained from devouring them, especially if the grasshoppers attack crops also high in protein, such as beans. This is the type of thing that's fascinating to learn, but I'm very unsure whether it will ever change. You only have to look at Brits throwing themselves down hills after wheels of cheese to note other traditions that are against people's own interests.

Zorzor is one of those small provincial towns that aren't pleasant but are necessary to buy sellotape, pineapples and a cold can of coke. We drove up in the afternoon. In the one spot where our internet dongle worked well, an obnoxious argument erupted between a group of men playing cards, the stench of smoked fish was overpowering and a baby chimpanzee bolted out of an open pharmacy door, seeking freedom. After confirming the dude in the pharmacy was the owner, I took a snap of the shop to report to the forestry authorities. It's not a remarkable sight for the citizens of Zorzor, as baby chimpanzees will be kept as pets in forested areas where they naturally occur, but it's highly illegal, not to mention dangerous.

Alice asked what was likely to happen to the chimp when it got older. I guessed it would either end up caged miserably and abused as an adult, handed to the wildlife authorities from where it may find its way to a sanctuary (of which Liberia has one) or killed after becoming too aggressive, its meat eaten and hands used in traditional medicine.

The sight of the innocent baby scampering out of the pharmacy door, and thinking of its less-than-bright future, was quite heart-breaking.

It's my dad's birthday and I would have managed a Zorzor-Staffordshire phone call had the parents' screening system been less of a barrier. Apologies daddy-o.