Gbarnga, Nimba & the Interior

The interior was home to the peoples who formed most of Liberia's population — the Kpelle in the centre, the Mano and Gio (Dan) in Nimba, the Loma, Kissi, Gbandi and Mandingo in Lofa, the Gola in the north-west, and the Krahn and Grebo in the south-east. Long-distance trade linked the forest to the Mande world of the savanna, and Mandingo traders brought Islam along these routes.

The Liberian government extended its authority over the interior only slowly. Missions such as Ganta Methodist Mission, founded in 1926, and Cuttington College, which moved to Suacoco near Gbarnga in 1948, brought schools and hospitals. Later the Liberian American-Swedish Minerals Company (LAMCO) mined iron ore in the Nimba mountains, building Yekepa and a railway to Buchanan.

The region was central to the civil wars. Samuel Doe was a Krahn from Grand Gedeh, and in December 1989 Charles Taylor's National Patriotic Front of Liberia entered Nimba from Côte d'Ivoire; the conflict soon took on ethnic lines, with violence against Gio, Mano, Krahn and Mandingo civilians. Taylor ran his territory from Gbarnga in the early 1990s. A later rebel group, LURD, active from 1999, made its headquarters at Voinjama in Lofa. In 2014 Lofa was among the first areas of Liberia hit by Ebola.

Kpelle is the largest language group in Liberia and dominates Bong County, while Mano and Gio are spoken across Nimba, Loma in Lofa, and Krahn and Grebo in the south-east. Liberian English connects them all. Most people are Christian, while the Mandingo community is Muslim, and traditional beliefs remain strong.

The Poro and Sande societies shape adulthood across much of the interior, with bush schools that teach custom, craft and responsibility. The Dan (Gio) of Nimba are known internationally for their carved wooden masks, and Loma, Kpelle and Mano masquerades appear at funerals, initiations and celebrations. Iron rods known as Kissi pennies once served as currency among the Kissi, Loma, Kpelle and neighbouring peoples.

The wars left deep ethnic wounds. Disputes over land and belonging have occasionally turned violent since, and reconciliation work continues.

The interior's towns are small. Ganta, a trading hub on the Guinea border with roughly 40,000 people, is among the largest; Gbarnga, the Bong county seat, is a university and administrative town; Voinjama, Zwedru, Sanniquellie, Bopolu and Fish Town are county capitals of a few thousand to a few tens of thousands. Most people live in villages and farm upland rice, cassava, plantain and vegetables, with cocoa, coffee, rubber and oil palm as cash crops.

Mining is the main industry: ArcelorMittal exports iron ore from the Nimba range, and informal gold and diamond digging draws young people to parts of the interior. Logging and forest concessions bring money and conflict over land. Roads are the defining issue — the difference between getting crops to market or not — and rainy-season isolation is part of the rhythm of the year in the south-east.

Upland "country rice" grown on the farms of Lofa, Bong and Nimba is the foundation of every meal, eaten with palm butter, cassava leaf or potato greens, or with soups made with bitter balls, a small bitter garden egg. Fufu and dumboy made from cassava are eaten with pepper soup.

Forest products fill the markets: palm oil, kola nuts, wild mushrooms, snails and plantains. Bushmeat is widely eaten and considered a delicacy. Lofa and Nimba grow coffee and cocoa, sold as cash crops more than drunk locally. Groundnuts, roasted corn and fried plantain are the snacks of the road, and palm wine and cane juice are the drinks of village gatherings.

Gbarnga is the hub of central Liberia and was Charles Taylor's wartime headquarters, with Cuttington University nearby at Suacoco in Bong County.

In Nimba, Ganta is a lively border market town with the old Methodist mission. To the north-east, Yekepa sits below the Nimba mountains, where decades of iron-ore mining have cut into the ridges while the forested slopes of the East Nimba Nature Reserve remain protected; the range continues across the border into Guinea and Côte d'Ivoire.

In Lofa, Voinjama is the gateway to the north, with the Wologizi range in the county, rising to Mount Wuteve, at about 1,440 metres the highest point in Liberia. Its forested slopes are an Important Bird Area and hold forest elephants and western chimpanzees.

In the south-east, the rainforest of Grand Gedeh and River Gee is home to western chimpanzees, pygmy hippos and giant pangolins. Part of it is protected in the Grebo-Krahn National Park, and Zwedru is the base for trips into the region.