If that didn’t make you laugh…you have issues.

Last month, I spent two weeks in rural Liberia with the The Niapele Project, a nonprofit organization focused on sustainably improving the lives of impoverished children. 

Rice farmer in Mawah, Liberia. (Photos: Julie Thiery)

I spent most of my time outside of Monrovia, in the town of Handii, in what is known as Lower Bong County. I focused much of my energy engaging with China Union, an iron-ore company located in Bong Mines that recently signed a $2.8 billion contract with the Liberian government. In exchange for mineral rights, China Union promised to create local jobs and help build local infrastructure, schools and hospitals.

Aware of the power the company leverages, The Niapele Project organized an event on July 27^thto showcase its work helping local rice farmers increase crop yield and sell more rice in the local community.

China Union representatives seemed to be open to helping this initiative, as an alternative to importing rice from abroad. (They also agreed to buy local seafood for the company cafeteria). But the meeting wasn’t all business.

The day ended in a riveting football match between that pitted The Niapele Project and China Union members on one team against clan elders on the other. The elders kicked ass, 3-0. (A second match was played between the elders and the youth group. The elders – not so old, as it turns out – won again.)

All parties in the community recognized it was a great way to bring everyone together. Proving yet again that the football – the European kind, not the American kind – is one path to eventual world peace.

The elders won both games. They weren’t so old after all.

The women of the bread-baking collective.

In my time there I was also fascinated by the women in Handii, who voiced an interest in creating a breadmaking business, and I was to help make that dough rise – pun fully intended.

Thus, the wife of the Lower Bongo County’s head of development – a woman named Ma Tenneh, who also happened to be my Liberian host mother – and I went to Monrovia to buy tinware and ingredients that the local women would need to begin their enterprise.

Their company, Wilkema (love or unity in Kpelle, the local language), was born as more then fifty women took to their new stoves and made their bread to showcase on the festivities that day. Awesome!

My time in Liberia was invaluable and precious.

So much still needs to be done to build the country up again but it was invigorating to be with The Niapele Project, a 501c3 registered non-profit organization that is based in the United States, that understands that the best gift to impoverished Liberians is to provide tools to allow them to build a sustainable community & economy, from which so much else that is good also follows.

This starts with children – aka the future of the community – being properly and consistently fed and educated, based on programs created and managed by community itself.

Fresh, local and delicous.

Interested in knowing more (or even volunteering one day)? Check out The Niapele Project or send me a line by clicking on my name at the top of this post.

Happy to connect anyone inspired to volunteer.

Julie (aka Bike Attack) Thiery joined the June 2012 Roadmonkey expedition to Vietnam, cycling 300km through the Central Highlands and building a house for a homeless mother & daughter in the Mekong Delta.

I’ve led 4 Roadmonkey expeditions to the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro, the highest point in Africa. It is a huge, and very difficult, accomplishment. Many people ask me how to best prepare for Kilimanjaro success. Read on for a succinct list of my personal recommendations for what to do before and during your Kili hike.

2009 Roadmonkey Jolie Altman, and her Kili summit shout-out

1. Mental conditioning is key. If summiting is important to you (and it should be) you need to put your body and your mind in a position to succeed. Many people don’t realize the mental challenge that Kili presents. Be mentally prepared for that challenge. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched young men from other groups near ours start out on Day 1 preening with bravado in their camouflage gear and smoking cigarettes, only to end up whining by Day 3 about the altitude, about the toilets, about their nausea, about their blisters – blah blah blah. They lacked mental toughness. And they don’t summit.

2. Respect the moutain’s power. Here’s the way I think of it: Disrespecting mother nature will eventually get your ass kicked, big time. In the old days, Tanzanian mothers feared for the lives of their sons who dared to climb Kilimanjaro; such was the respect given to the unforgiving weather and altitude near the cloud-wreathed summit where gods were said to live.  There are no gods at Uhuru Peak, but you’re wise to take the power of nature and altitude extremely seriously. Diamox (or generic version, acetazolamide) helps mitigate altitude sickness.

3. Gear up, the right way. Bring the essential equipment to succeed: comfortable hiking shoes, for obvious reasons; ear plugs, to tune out snorers and wind at night; wet wipes, for a restorative tent “bath” before dinner each night; and a pair of warm wool socks for only sleeping in. Avoid over-gearing yourself. Those who think fancy gear will help them summit are fooling themselves. Nothing beats preparation and a comfortable pair of boots.

4. Sleep with your batteries. Keep your camera and phone batteries in your sleeping bag at night, as they drain rapidly in cold. Or bring a solar charger, which is a great way to keep charged for good photos.

5. Bring non-sugar hard candy. In the dry air above 12,000 feet, your mouth gets dry on the trail. Hard candy or throat lozenges work well. Absent any, place a pebble on your tongue; it keeps your saliva glands active.

6. Prepare for a dusty downclimb. Bring a surgical mask or a bandana to avoid eating and breathing dust on the downclimb. And remember: going down is harder than going up. Your quadriceps muscles and knee joints are in for a test.

7. Have a plan for photo management. Prepare a way to keep your camera within easy reach as you’re hiking each day, so that you have no excuse for not taking a photo when the opportunity presents itself. Some of the best photos are the result of having a camera ready to shoot in an instant. Be ready!

8. Drink a lot (of water). Bring at least two 1-liter high-quality water bottles for your personal daily supply on the trail. Do not re-use spring-water bottles you bought at the store; it’s not a smart alternative. Your drinking water will be boiled each morning and then poured into the bottle you present to the porters after breakfast; you don’t want plastics chemicals leaching into your water supply. (Also: at night, ask your porter to fill your bottle with hot water. A great way to stay toasty in your sleeping bag.)

9. Save your knees. For those with knee or back issues, use hiking poles on the downclimb. Use them to use your upper body as much as possible to relieve the pounding on your lower body. Better to have sore shoulders and arms for a couple days than a wrecked back or throbbing knees for weeks.

10. For women, plan ahead if your cycle will coincide with your time on the mountain. If you experience great discomfort, absolutely do not be shy about telling your guide, who will probably be a man. The guides are incredibly supportive, experienced and dedicated to getting you to Uhuru Peak. And there’s absolutely nothing they haven’t heard before. Help them help you succeed.

The August 2010 Roadmonkey crew, with guides, at Uhuru Peak

11. Learn to love the outhouse. Be prepared for peeing and pooping in wooden outhouses for several days in a row. Sometimes they’re clean; a few may be nasty. There will not be sit-down toilets. Keep a roll of TP in your day pack. Pay attention to your body; you have to keep your GI tract healthy and moving along.

12. Dance. At least once during your Kili climb, you’ll arrive at your camp exhausted from hours of hiking, and the porters, who arrived an hour or more ahead of you, will break out into song and dance to greet you. Don’t be lame and just take photos. Dance with them, too. You only live once.

13. Hang out with your porters. Get to know a little bit about your unbelievable Tanzanian support team: Not just the guides but also the porters. Porters are the Ironmen of Kilimanjaro. They will outpace you, at altitude, while carrying 50 pounds of gear on their necks, treading in battered sneakers (aka trainers for our British friends) that have the soles falling apart. Few speak English, so ask your lead guide to translate your thoughts and questions into Swahili.

14. Avoid kid beggars. Reward kid entrepreneurs. On your final day, after summiting, you’ll walk 3 hours through a rain forest back to the gate where you’ll end your Kilimanjaro journey. Near the end, small boys may emerge from the forest to beg for “chocolate,” or your water bottle, or the carabiners dangling from your pack. Don’t do it. It’s not the kind of cultural exchange you want to perpetuate. Once at the gate, however, a legion of young entrepreneurs will offer to wash your very muddy boots while you wait for your guide to claim your summit certificates. I recommend paying $2 or $3 to get your boots scrubbed. It feels great, it helps the local economy and everybody wins. So keep some dollars, euros or Tanzanian shillings on hand.

15. Tip fairly and clearly. Show your guides and porters some love with a tip that rewards the infinite patience and energy that got you to Uhuru Peak. But make sure to present the tips openly & in front of porters and guides alike, so there is no dispute over who gets how much. A few guides at some outfitters have been known to demand a percentage from porter tips, as a kickback of sorts. That shouldn’t happen.

Hopefully, these tips will help you prepare and relax for a wonderful Kilimanjaro experience. Don’t forget to visualize standing on the roof of Africa. Keeping that visual will help you get there when you’re barfing up breakfast onto your shoes on summit day.

Hong Kong is the city where I grew up. I spent my first 17 years there and I would say that I had a happy childhood. It is true that Hong Kong is a prime example of Darwinist principles. Survival of the fittest. You see this everywhere: in schools, at work, and even in the local fast-food chains where hungry Hong Kongers fight for a seat. Growing up in such an environment, I dealt with a lot of pressure, just like anyone else. Let’s not even get into going to extra tutorial schools every day after school.

Dominic Ching Nam Wong in ~1993 in Hong Kong, with his grandfather

Though it has its flaws, it is a great city. Hong Kong gave me a beautiful childhood.

During my first 3 years, I lived in one of the city’s oldest neighborhoods, with my grandparents while my parents had to work in a different part of town. My grandfather would take me to the local toy store and I would ask him for every single toy. The owner always gave me a piece of candy. Those were the days when Hong Kongers were friendly.

No matter where you live, cities change and so do the societies within them. Hong Kong’s social values have changed tremendously since I was young. Small businesses have vanished, replaced by corporations. Humanity gradually disappears and is replaced by skyscrapers. Commercialization is now considered normal and people believe in money. This is not the Hong Kong that I know

I miss the days when all my classmates would go to Kowloon City, across the Victoria Harbor, to play Internet games with the string of curry fish balls bought from the street vendor. I miss the days when my family and I went on bicycle rides along the Shing Mun River. My classmates no longer talk about that cutie from the all-girls school across the street anymore; they talk about who got a job at JP Morgan or graduated from law school.

By the way, I went to the same secondary school that Bruce Lee attended (La Salle College). Unlike me, Bruce Lee was kicked out in 10th grade for fighting and skipping classes.

It feels odd telling you Hong Kong is a great city while complaining about how it has lost its traditional values. Maybe it is because it’s my hometown. You simply can’t dislike the city that raised you, no matter how different it is from the way you remember it. It doesn’t matter how the city is going to change, my good impression of Hong Kong always stays in my heart.

There’s a Chinese saying, “The moon is brightest when viewed from your own house.” At the end of the day, I know that the night scene from my house’s rooftop is always the most beautiful in the world.

Dominic Ching Nam Wong, a Roadmonkey intern, graduated from UCLA in August with a BA in International Development Studies and in Spanish and Portuguese, intent on working for an adventurous California-based startup.

(Continued from last week’s blog post)

So I’m sitting at Denny’s Steak Pub – an island of working-class Caucasians floating in a sea of beer and surrounded by working-class South Asian immigrants, in Brooklyn’s Kensington neighborhood. The kind of place that can’t be bothered to change its sign outside even though it hasn’t served steak or any other food since “the 1980s,” according to the bartender, who appeared to be speaking from first-hand knowledge. The kind of place whose TV set, behind the bar, had blown its picture tube around the time the bar’s last steak was served.

In short, the kind of place where everybody knows your name…except mine.

illustration: Graham Smith’s “Survive the Dive 2″

“Who dafucks dis guy?” said the extra-large figure behind me, bumping my chair. I hunched over my lamb gyro on the bar and gave him a quick glance. The man bellies up to the bar – quite literally, as his pear-shaped body is theatrically large – and looks at me. Then he claps me on the shoulder.

“How ya doin?” I said to him, firmly but friendly, with a mouthful of lamb from the joint next door. Friendly but firmly, because when you’re the only non-hoodie in a down-n-deep-Brooklyn bar, you gotta meet the inherent challenge of “Who dafucks dis guy” confidently but without A) appearing like a tough guy or B) showing undue frailty.

The large man – 6’2”, white, 50ish, glasses – offered his enormous right hand, a catcher’s mitt of a hand; we’re talking a Christmas ham of an hand. Which I accepted with a newcomer’s nod.

“I’m just kiddin’ ya!” the guy said, leaning close enough to smell the bite of Maker’s Mark on his breath. Another clap on the shoulder. “What’s ya name?”

“Paul,” I said, shouting slightly, without being sure why.

“Paul, huh?” The man said. As if “Paul” was perhaps code for A) lost social worker or a B) gay cruiser. “Where you from?”

“Well, I live in California now, but I’m in Brooklyn because I’m heading up to the Adirondacks, upstate.”

“Adirondacks?” the large man, eyebrows arched, turned and repeated to the bartender, Jimmy. Jimmy shrugged and nodded at the same time – a Brooklyn way of saying, “not bad” and “whatever” all in one gesture.  “Whaddya doin’ there?” the big guy asked me.

“Scouting a new expedition for this company I run. We create expeditions that include an ass-kicking adventure and a volunteer project that we do for a local community in need.”

“Dat’s amazing,” the guy declaimed. “Jimmy, didja here that?”

Jimmy shrugged & nodded: Whatever.

“So you must be in pretty good shape, then, uh?” the guy said. “You some kinda mountain climber?”

“Not really,” I said.

At this point, I wanted to eat my dinner out of my styrofoam container and drink my Stella and watch what remained of the Rangers playoff game against the Washington Capitals.

“That’s really cool,” the big man said, not really pulling his whiskey-n-water eyes from me. “I mean, I could never do that,” he added, gesturing one of his mitts toward the girth. “I’m not in shape!”

My turn to smile & shrug. Whatever.

He wandered off to talk with someone near the pool table. Jimmy the bartender said the guy had been there since 11am, when his overnight shift ended and was on a familiar bender.

To my left, a bald old man in glasses was arguing Obama tax policy with an inebriated middle-aged woman. A few barstools to the right, a young guy with a trendy Brooklynesque beard was commiserating about how good the Miami Heat were compared to the punchless Knicks.

This place was a classic. I felt the spirit of Charles Bukowski blow in from the sidewalk (escorted on a pillow of Marlboro exhaust). The Rangers lost.

Tomorrow I’d drive north, into the Adirondacks wilderness, and explore the other side of New York State.

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