“They came
in at the time we needed them most,” Dr. Solomon X.Y. Jallayu,
President of Grand Gedeh Community College said after CHINENGR-17 built a
driveway off Kannah Road to the new GGCC campus in Garloville, Zwedru,
early this month.

The college opened its doors in 2013 and, pending completion of its campus, operates in temporary quarters at the Zwedru Multilateral High School.
 
But even as construction work at the campus progressed, concern grew over the absence of a proper access way to college, which is all but cut off from the main road by about a kilometer of marshland. And with the rains approaching, management sought help from the Chinese Engineer Coy through the UN Field Office in Zwedru.
 
It was no quick fix, given the topography of the area and its damp, loose soil. Remarkably, though, the Chinese engineers pulled the job in a matter of days.
 
First, they cleared the 800-metre driveway of sludge, then backfilled the excavated stretch with laterite, which they then levelled and compacted to give the road a firm surface. Ditches were also excavated on both flanks of the access way to provide drainage.
 
“They did extremely well,” Dr. Jallayu said, as he mused over the prospect of relocating GGCC from Zwedru Multilateral High School in Kudah By-pass to the new campus off Kannah Road in Garloville.
 
“That was one of the basic reasons why we so badly wanted to move to our own campus,” said the GGCC President. “Squatting in the compound of a High School has been embarrassing, but to move into our new campus we needed that access road.”
 
After WVS Tubman University in Harper, Maryland County, the college is the only other institution offering tertiary education in southeastern Liberia. It currently boasts six departments, including Agriculture and Forestry, Business and Public Administration, Science and Technology, Education, Health Sciences and Divinity.
 
The GGCC has an enrolment of about 300 students.