First Crossing Attempt:
I didn't get it. I did not get that the border was closed. Finally I broke down after surmounting evidence that there was no transport to Liberia aside from the motorbikes. Not only could I not get a better transport deal, but all the locals confirmed that was the price. It was getting late and time in my Africa trip was winding down. I wanted to get to Liberia that day so I paid the money. Liberia was to be the highlight of my Africa trip (which it turned out to be). It was Africa's American country, and to be so close to it merited some effort to get into it. So I paid my motorbike driver the money and off we went. We came to a checkpoint where there were half a dozen policemen chilling on chairs next to a road block. They were not happy to see me. My driver pulled out some money to hand to a policeman which the policeman rejected. My driver was confused. It seemed he had not had this problem before. The police yelled at me telling me the border was closed and that I could not pass. No bribes would be accepted. So back to Danane we went. I was confused.
Second Attempt:
When we got back to Danane I demanded forcefully my driver give my money back. He wouldn't. I told him he had to because we did not go to Liberia. I then offered him $8 if he gave my money back so I got back my $32 of my $40. I then stormed off to the central police station and asked some police guy inside of it if it was closed. He said, the border was closed and I could not pass. I asked for special permission to pass, that I had a Liberian visa. He somewhat agitated said "no, the border is closed!"
Upon leaving the police station I was approached by another guy who said he could get me to Liberia. I had nothing to lose so I went with him. He took me to a tailor shop where a few notable characters appeared. One was an English speaking Ivorian who had worked in the past in Liberia and explained he could arrange my passage and another was a soldier who claimed his authority as a soldier (he showed me his ID and everything) would work things out. The English speaking Ivorian then demanded I pay $100. I was put off. That is a HUGE sum of money. I was faced with a big dilemma. I explained to this man I could go into Guinea and enter Liberia from there to try to lower the price (that would have involved going back to Abidjan and waiting 3+ days there for a visa, time I didn't have which would have meant skipping Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone and going back to Mali where I had traveled from before entering Cote d'Ivoire or pay the smuggle price). The English speaking Ivorian explained the fee was so high because I was white. As I was white I could possibly be a reporter or something like that which the police were afraid of. They didn't want their allowing people through a closed border business to be discovered or brought to greater attention. Consequently "things" cost more. Seeing I had no other options I decided to do it, but was unable because I did not have $100 and Danane did not have an ATM. A $100 is way too much money to be carrying and way more than I ever needed on me while traveling in Africa.
This mean I had to go back to Man which in theory should have taken two hours but took all day because Africa.
3rd attempt to find a way across:
That evening back in Danane I began to wander around town again I was approached by another motorbike smuggler who offered to take me to Cote d'Ivoire. I explained to him I could not because of the complication of being white. I told him a had a friend in Liberia waiting for me (I did) and that I was sad because I could not see him. That touched the heart of this good young man. He said there were some "white men" at a United Nations military camp (left over from Cote d'Ivoire's recent civil war) a little outside town who could maybe help me. He took me there on his motorbike. I walked up to the gates of the UN compound and asked the UN soldier there if he spoke French. He did not but came back with one who did. They were Moroccans (Berber Arabs). I explained my plight and asked him if they could take me to Liberia during one of their patrols. He responded that they did not do such things.
4th attempt:
Turned down by the United Nations soldiers, I got back on my friend's bike and went to town. The guy who had driven me there offered to let me stay in his house for free when two more Ivorians smugglers showed up on motorbikes. They offered to take me to Liberia for $40. I explained I had tried but they said they could do it. That sounded much better than the $100 the other people offered. They requested I stay in a particular hotel (that cost $4 but the guy had tried to rip me off before when I had investigated it that morning by charging me $7) which I did as that was to be our meeting point. The plan was they would come pick me up at 5 in the morning. I was up at that time waiting for them and they never came (I had slept about four hours that night). At 9 am I was so fed up with waiting and the whole situation so I decided to screw the whole Liberia operation. As I was about to leave they showed up. I said, fine I will try it. They claimed they had a special way they went. So I jumped on and within a few minutes we were at the police post I had been to the day before. The police came over yelling that I could not pass. They were extra extra mad this time. So back to Danane we went. I was furious. My driver had failed. I also went through the whole lose $8 scenario again.
5th and FINAL attempt to get across Liberian border (the interesting part):
As I was walking to leave town a white guy in a nice car pulled up next to me. He was a Frenchman busy cutting down Cote d'Ivoire's last hardwood forests to send to Europe and was astonished to see me there. He said there were only two white people in that whole region of the country and that he never had seen any white tourists there. He offered to take me breakfast which I declined after which I headed on my way. I decided to consult my Australian friend Aiden Ellis-Patterson on my phone who himself had crossed the border a couple months before. He described his own smuggling experience (he went from Liberia to Cote d'Ivoire in the middle of the night for $60) to me and encouraged me to not give up. I went crawling back to the English speaking Ivorian in the Tailor shop. He asked me what took so long. I did not tell him the truth that I had tried to get by with less money. I then paid him and waited. After about an hour of waiting he came in very angry. He yelled at me "why did you try to cross this morning?! You should have just come straight to me!! Now all the police along the whole border will be looking for you!" I said, "So can I not go?! Fine. I don't need to. I will go to Guinea (which I learned later also had a closed border) or Mali!" He told me to calm down and that he would work it out. Another hour later my motorcycle smuggler showed up. It was the same boy who had tried to take me that morning. That explained how the English speaking Ivorian man knew about my earlier attempt to cross the border.
This is the most stupid thing I have done in Africa or in most of my traveling.
I got on with and off we went. My smuggler yelled at me "HOLD ON!" I have no pictures of the experience because, well, I was holding on for my life.
We first went through rice fields (not in them but on the dikes around them) and over small plank bridges over various channels between fields. The path we were following came up to a house, the inhabitants of which had placed a gate over the path. One came out and my driver gave him a few dollars worth of CFA. The gate was opened and off we went. We paid another couple small bribes and then got onto the main road that lead to Liberia. We had circumvented that first checkpoint I had already visited two times. Soon after getting on the road we saw two Ivorian policemen on motorbikes. They spotted my white skin and starting blowing their whistles for us to stop. What happened next terrified me. My driver put his pedal to the metal and we sped away with them in hot pursuit. We were soon off the road on another dirt path that lead into the jungle. I instantly regretted my decision to get smuggled as for one of the first times up to that point in my life, I thought I could die from what I was doing.
As we raced down twisty jungle paths and over single log bridges that crossed small streams I couldn't help but be in awe of the beauty of the place. There were many village peasants on the paths. My driver would honk the bike's horn and these peasants would literally jump and dive off of the path. They had tattered clothing, baskets on their heads and old rusty machetes. As I looked behind me to see if they were okay from their diving out of our way, I saw they had huge grins on their faces and were waving at me. Africans seriously are the world's warmest people (well, at least most tribes of West Africa are). What scared me more is when we zoomed through villages. These villages had no electricity and the houses had walls made of mud plastered onto stick frames with thatched grass roofs. There were many children in these villages who would scramble and hop off the path as we came through. They would hop up and down waving at us as we drove away. It would have been nice to spend more time in such places to meet these people but given the circumstances that was not possible.
We then got to a truck road where there was another motorbike rider and a police checkpoint. The policeman came out. He was not a happy camper. He was yelling at me and I was getting upset. There was a second motorcycle rider who apparently was part of the smuggling operation who was waiting there for me. He got off his bike and walked up to the policeman. He pulled out a 10,000 CFA ($17) note and put it in the policeman's hand. Even after that the policeman was yelling at him about me. As that was happening we zoomed away. That other smuggler who paid the bribe soon caught up. He was part of the operation "get white man across border".
The last police checkpoint was the most peculiar of the three I had to get past. There was no yelling and the police invited me to sit down. They asked me where I was from and we talked about some random stuff (Trump and Hillary) when my motorcycle smugglers gave that policeman a 10,000 CFA note. It was time to leave. As we were leaving a motorbike with two policemen on it showed up.
I told my driver that if he were in America he would probably win bike races. Seriously though. His skill in riding was to me out of this world. The fact we did not crash and die at any point during that ride or kill anyone in those villages and jungle paths is amazing to me. He then requested I help him get to America. I abandoned that topic. He also talked about how his goal was to get to Spain and inquired if I had been there (I had not).
Before we got to the border we stopped. It was just me and my two smugglers in the jungle. They requested I give them money, claiming they had been paid almost nothing for their troubles (which was probably true as it was the English speaking Ivorian man in the tailor shop I had given the money to).
I was in a tough spot. They could easily turn me into the police. I was in the jungle. I did not know where Liberia was. I did not know the way to Liberia. I did not know how close or far it was. Freak, they could have killed me and stolen all of my stuff and no one would know about it.
So I am ashamed to say it but I caved. I first them a 5000 CFA note. They demanded more. So I gave them another 5000 CFA note. They then demanded another 10,000 note for the police who had just shown up at that last police post. They said there would be trouble if I did not give them the other 10,000 CFA note. I caved. They then demanded more. I told them I did not have more money to give, which was the truth. I needed the rest to get to Monrovia, were I ever to enter Liberia. So they requested a gift.. "to remember me." I caved and gave them my shorts (I never used them much anyway).
They then took me to the Liberian border which is the Cavalla river. I was free! I had made it to Liberia. (Probably not what the freed American and Congolese slaves felt when they got to Liberia but still a good feeling).
There was a raft on the river. I paid the raft operator about 50 american cents in CFA to cross on it. I wanted to wade across the river but given how much I had just shelled out ( $151 on the most recent smuggling operation) I just paid the fee to the poor raft operator and was taken across.
On the Liberian side of the border there were two young men with motorcycles and several uniformed Liberian border guards and officials who accepted me without any problems. Given the size of the border post and the trail I had taken to get there, it was obvious this was not a main border crossing. I honestly had no idea where I was, just that it was Liberia.
P.S. Before you all start calling me a stupid idiot for falling for the bribe and smuggling scheme, the border was in fact closed. President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia had opened the Liberian border a few months before while the Ivorians had refused to at that point in time. The Ebola epidemic was over and risk of contracting the virus was very low (in spite of there being a few isolated cases that appeared even after I left Liberia). I had my Liberian visa and was ENTERING not LEAVING the previous Ebola epidemic area and so I do not consider my actions detrimental to humanity (by me spreading the Ebola virus that is) and my actions completely legal and justified.
I didn't get it. I did not get that the border was closed. Finally I broke down after surmounting evidence that there was no transport to Liberia aside from the motorbikes. Not only could I not get a better transport deal, but all the locals confirmed that was the price. It was getting late and time in my Africa trip was winding down. I wanted to get to Liberia that day so I paid the money. Liberia was to be the highlight of my Africa trip (which it turned out to be). It was Africa's American country, and to be so close to it merited some effort to get into it. So I paid my motorbike driver the money and off we went. We came to a checkpoint where there were half a dozen policemen chilling on chairs next to a road block. They were not happy to see me. My driver pulled out some money to hand to a policeman which the policeman rejected. My driver was confused. It seemed he had not had this problem before. The police yelled at me telling me the border was closed and that I could not pass. No bribes would be accepted. So back to Danane we went. I was confused.
Second Attempt:
When we got back to Danane I demanded forcefully my driver give my money back. He wouldn't. I told him he had to because we did not go to Liberia. I then offered him $8 if he gave my money back so I got back my $32 of my $40. I then stormed off to the central police station and asked some police guy inside of it if it was closed. He said, the border was closed and I could not pass. I asked for special permission to pass, that I had a Liberian visa. He somewhat agitated said "no, the border is closed!"
Upon leaving the police station I was approached by another guy who said he could get me to Liberia. I had nothing to lose so I went with him. He took me to a tailor shop where a few notable characters appeared. One was an English speaking Ivorian who had worked in the past in Liberia and explained he could arrange my passage and another was a soldier who claimed his authority as a soldier (he showed me his ID and everything) would work things out. The English speaking Ivorian then demanded I pay $100. I was put off. That is a HUGE sum of money. I was faced with a big dilemma. I explained to this man I could go into Guinea and enter Liberia from there to try to lower the price (that would have involved going back to Abidjan and waiting 3+ days there for a visa, time I didn't have which would have meant skipping Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone and going back to Mali where I had traveled from before entering Cote d'Ivoire or pay the smuggle price). The English speaking Ivorian explained the fee was so high because I was white. As I was white I could possibly be a reporter or something like that which the police were afraid of. They didn't want their allowing people through a closed border business to be discovered or brought to greater attention. Consequently "things" cost more. Seeing I had no other options I decided to do it, but was unable because I did not have $100 and Danane did not have an ATM. A $100 is way too much money to be carrying and way more than I ever needed on me while traveling in Africa.
This mean I had to go back to Man which in theory should have taken two hours but took all day because Africa.
3rd attempt to find a way across:
That evening back in Danane I began to wander around town again I was approached by another motorbike smuggler who offered to take me to Cote d'Ivoire. I explained to him I could not because of the complication of being white. I told him a had a friend in Liberia waiting for me (I did) and that I was sad because I could not see him. That touched the heart of this good young man. He said there were some "white men" at a United Nations military camp (left over from Cote d'Ivoire's recent civil war) a little outside town who could maybe help me. He took me there on his motorbike. I walked up to the gates of the UN compound and asked the UN soldier there if he spoke French. He did not but came back with one who did. They were Moroccans (Berber Arabs). I explained my plight and asked him if they could take me to Liberia during one of their patrols. He responded that they did not do such things.
4th attempt:
Turned down by the United Nations soldiers, I got back on my friend's bike and went to town. The guy who had driven me there offered to let me stay in his house for free when two more Ivorians smugglers showed up on motorbikes. They offered to take me to Liberia for $40. I explained I had tried but they said they could do it. That sounded much better than the $100 the other people offered. They requested I stay in a particular hotel (that cost $4 but the guy had tried to rip me off before when I had investigated it that morning by charging me $7) which I did as that was to be our meeting point. The plan was they would come pick me up at 5 in the morning. I was up at that time waiting for them and they never came (I had slept about four hours that night). At 9 am I was so fed up with waiting and the whole situation so I decided to screw the whole Liberia operation. As I was about to leave they showed up. I said, fine I will try it. They claimed they had a special way they went. So I jumped on and within a few minutes we were at the police post I had been to the day before. The police came over yelling that I could not pass. They were extra extra mad this time. So back to Danane we went. I was furious. My driver had failed. I also went through the whole lose $8 scenario again.
5th and FINAL attempt to get across Liberian border (the interesting part):
As I was walking to leave town a white guy in a nice car pulled up next to me. He was a Frenchman busy cutting down Cote d'Ivoire's last hardwood forests to send to Europe and was astonished to see me there. He said there were only two white people in that whole region of the country and that he never had seen any white tourists there. He offered to take me breakfast which I declined after which I headed on my way. I decided to consult my Australian friend Aiden Ellis-Patterson on my phone who himself had crossed the border a couple months before. He described his own smuggling experience (he went from Liberia to Cote d'Ivoire in the middle of the night for $60) to me and encouraged me to not give up. I went crawling back to the English speaking Ivorian in the Tailor shop. He asked me what took so long. I did not tell him the truth that I had tried to get by with less money. I then paid him and waited. After about an hour of waiting he came in very angry. He yelled at me "why did you try to cross this morning?! You should have just come straight to me!! Now all the police along the whole border will be looking for you!" I said, "So can I not go?! Fine. I don't need to. I will go to Guinea (which I learned later also had a closed border) or Mali!" He told me to calm down and that he would work it out. Another hour later my motorcycle smuggler showed up. It was the same boy who had tried to take me that morning. That explained how the English speaking Ivorian man knew about my earlier attempt to cross the border.
This is the most stupid thing I have done in Africa or in most of my traveling.
I got on with and off we went. My smuggler yelled at me "HOLD ON!" I have no pictures of the experience because, well, I was holding on for my life.
We first went through rice fields (not in them but on the dikes around them) and over small plank bridges over various channels between fields. The path we were following came up to a house, the inhabitants of which had placed a gate over the path. One came out and my driver gave him a few dollars worth of CFA. The gate was opened and off we went. We paid another couple small bribes and then got onto the main road that lead to Liberia. We had circumvented that first checkpoint I had already visited two times. Soon after getting on the road we saw two Ivorian policemen on motorbikes. They spotted my white skin and starting blowing their whistles for us to stop. What happened next terrified me. My driver put his pedal to the metal and we sped away with them in hot pursuit. We were soon off the road on another dirt path that lead into the jungle. I instantly regretted my decision to get smuggled as for one of the first times up to that point in my life, I thought I could die from what I was doing.
As we raced down twisty jungle paths and over single log bridges that crossed small streams I couldn't help but be in awe of the beauty of the place. There were many village peasants on the paths. My driver would honk the bike's horn and these peasants would literally jump and dive off of the path. They had tattered clothing, baskets on their heads and old rusty machetes. As I looked behind me to see if they were okay from their diving out of our way, I saw they had huge grins on their faces and were waving at me. Africans seriously are the world's warmest people (well, at least most tribes of West Africa are). What scared me more is when we zoomed through villages. These villages had no electricity and the houses had walls made of mud plastered onto stick frames with thatched grass roofs. There were many children in these villages who would scramble and hop off the path as we came through. They would hop up and down waving at us as we drove away. It would have been nice to spend more time in such places to meet these people but given the circumstances that was not possible.
We then got to a truck road where there was another motorbike rider and a police checkpoint. The policeman came out. He was not a happy camper. He was yelling at me and I was getting upset. There was a second motorcycle rider who apparently was part of the smuggling operation who was waiting there for me. He got off his bike and walked up to the policeman. He pulled out a 10,000 CFA ($17) note and put it in the policeman's hand. Even after that the policeman was yelling at him about me. As that was happening we zoomed away. That other smuggler who paid the bribe soon caught up. He was part of the operation "get white man across border".
The last police checkpoint was the most peculiar of the three I had to get past. There was no yelling and the police invited me to sit down. They asked me where I was from and we talked about some random stuff (Trump and Hillary) when my motorcycle smugglers gave that policeman a 10,000 CFA note. It was time to leave. As we were leaving a motorbike with two policemen on it showed up.
I told my driver that if he were in America he would probably win bike races. Seriously though. His skill in riding was to me out of this world. The fact we did not crash and die at any point during that ride or kill anyone in those villages and jungle paths is amazing to me. He then requested I help him get to America. I abandoned that topic. He also talked about how his goal was to get to Spain and inquired if I had been there (I had not).
Before we got to the border we stopped. It was just me and my two smugglers in the jungle. They requested I give them money, claiming they had been paid almost nothing for their troubles (which was probably true as it was the English speaking Ivorian man in the tailor shop I had given the money to).
I was in a tough spot. They could easily turn me into the police. I was in the jungle. I did not know where Liberia was. I did not know the way to Liberia. I did not know how close or far it was. Freak, they could have killed me and stolen all of my stuff and no one would know about it.
So I am ashamed to say it but I caved. I first them a 5000 CFA note. They demanded more. So I gave them another 5000 CFA note. They then demanded another 10,000 note for the police who had just shown up at that last police post. They said there would be trouble if I did not give them the other 10,000 CFA note. I caved. They then demanded more. I told them I did not have more money to give, which was the truth. I needed the rest to get to Monrovia, were I ever to enter Liberia. So they requested a gift.. "to remember me." I caved and gave them my shorts (I never used them much anyway).
They then took me to the Liberian border which is the Cavalla river. I was free! I had made it to Liberia. (Probably not what the freed American and Congolese slaves felt when they got to Liberia but still a good feeling).
There was a raft on the river. I paid the raft operator about 50 american cents in CFA to cross on it. I wanted to wade across the river but given how much I had just shelled out ( $151 on the most recent smuggling operation) I just paid the fee to the poor raft operator and was taken across.
On the Liberian side of the border there were two young men with motorcycles and several uniformed Liberian border guards and officials who accepted me without any problems. Given the size of the border post and the trail I had taken to get there, it was obvious this was not a main border crossing. I honestly had no idea where I was, just that it was Liberia.
P.S. Before you all start calling me a stupid idiot for falling for the bribe and smuggling scheme, the border was in fact closed. President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia had opened the Liberian border a few months before while the Ivorians had refused to at that point in time. The Ebola epidemic was over and risk of contracting the virus was very low (in spite of there being a few isolated cases that appeared even after I left Liberia). I had my Liberian visa and was ENTERING not LEAVING the previous Ebola epidemic area and so I do not consider my actions detrimental to humanity (by me spreading the Ebola virus that is) and my actions completely legal and justified.
