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Mombo is the seat of another of the Episcopal Mission schools, in charge of a young native teacher called Varney, and his wife who was formerly a nurse in the hospital. Varney was playing football with his boys when we arrived and came over to greet us with a wide smile and a charming unaffected manner quite different from the customary pomposity of the educated Liberian. He has a school, a dispensary and a chapel - all of mud with thatched roofs. The little chapel was quite sweet, with arched windows,and a large piece of country cloth which had been woven with a design of crucifixes hung behind the altar.
There is also a nice rest house here, with a dining room, verandah, and two bedrooms. Our boys set up camp, and Mrs. Varney sent over large bowls and pans containing rice, chicken, palm butter and boiled eddoes. 
May 14 - At eight o'clock we were on the road again, stopping various villages along the way to visit with people Mr. Paul knew - either small traders or native Mission teachers. In only place an old man with the worst case of yaws I have yet seen came up and insisted on shaking hands with me. As soon as we were out of sight I borrowed one of Bill's alcohol vials and disinfected my hands as well as possible. 
We lunched by the roadside off sardines, pickles, biscuits and jam, and reached Bendaja at two o'clock, where we were greeted most hospitably by the Paramount Chief Boima Quae - a picturesque old character famous in Liberia for having led the Gola uprising some twenty years ago. He prepared his rest house for us, even furnishing beds and bedding. The house is circular, with two doors and four windows, provided with wodden doors and two sets of shutters to each window. Inside were two beds, two big tables, several chairs, a large sideboard, matting on the floor, and quite a lot of wood-carving around doors and windows and even one octagonal panel set into the heavy matting of the ceiling. He produced for us a fine set of china, and put good pieces of country cloth, as well as embroidered sheets and pillow cases, on the grass mattresses on the beds. All we had to do was hang up our mosquito net. 
On the walls were some Japanese posters, a postcard picture of Rome upside down, a scene of horseback riders in what appeared to be the Rocky mountains, an Arabic script, a photograph of President Barclay, and a certificate to the effect that Chief Boima Quae had been awarded a gold medal by the Liberian government. 
The Chief's head woman, an attractive young thing called Fermatah, who is quite a flirt, cooked country chop for us, and it was good. Rain fell during most of the afternoon, but toward evening I wandered down one of the nearby trails, and found monkeys in trees actually in sight of the town. Monkeys here are not killed for food, and we had been told that they were more tame than in any other part of Africa. 
This is a Mohammedan town, although the Episcopal Mission has a school on the outskirts, and five times a days one hears the call of the muezzin, and the men repair to the mud-walled, thatch-roofed mosque, which has a lattice-work screen of bamboo hanging on all four sides. 
May 15 - We spent the morning chopping up a big termite nest, a mound about six feet tall. In it were millions of termites - workers, soldiers