The Boys of Area-T Zone: Our City of Light and Life

The Boys of Area-T Zone is a story about the lives of some of the children that grew up in the beautiful city of Yekepa, located below the Nimba mountain ranges, in northern Liberia, West Africa. I tried to bring some of my memories of this city into this book. Yekepa was a concession area built by LAMCO JV Operating Company, the company that mined iron ore in these mountain ranges for many decades. The human resources from the LAMCO School System (LASS) as well as from other school systems in and around Yekepa can be seen in every sector of our society today; in government, NGOs, private sector, etc. If you are one of the persons who also grew up in Yekepa, this story will definitely take you back to the glorious days of our city; the days when ‘manna’ literally fell from the top of Mt. Nimba. In my mind Yekepa was divided into what I called zones. There were thus two zones; Area-T and Area-F zones. My story is meanly based on the zone in which I lived (the Area-T Zone). No doubt lots of activities and good deeds took place in the other zone (the Area-F Zone). There were even lots of activities and events that took place in my own zone that I did not capture in this book; they were all equally important. My story did not end my stay in Yekepa. In fact, it took place when I was a teenager, playing marbles in the red dust of Area T, riding sidewalk taxis on the dusty hills of Areas T and S2, and venturing in the heap of wastes at the company’s main dumpsite. My story ended before I graduated from High school and from the Liberia Swedish Vocational Training Center (L/S VTC). It ended before I started lecturing at schools in the community. But my story captured some of the things we the boys of Area-T Zone did. I may remember many other things when I am further writing part 2…X of this book. One event I will surely capture in the next part will be LAMCO-65 football team’s remarkable match against the Zahn Clan Apollo-19, played in Duo Boowi in 1971.