Qualla: Lake Piso https://qualla.com/lake-piso en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:09 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/e/9/p/y/lake-piso-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Lake Piso https://qualla.com/lake-piso Lake Piso: Introduction https://qualla.com/lake-piso/ Photo credit Bethel. Anthony Chisom, CC BY-SA 4.0. The name means "pigeon's hole." Long before it appeared on any nautical chart, the Vai people watched flocks of pigeons descend on this brackish water to drink, and they named the lagoon for the birds. Today it is called Lake Piso - also Lake Pisu, also simply Fisherman's Lake - and it spreads across western Liberia as the country's largest lagoon, an oblong sheet of water pressed between green hills and the open Atlantic. The pigeons gave it a name. The fishermen gave it a livelihood. And the world, eventually, gave it a designation: a wetland of international importance.

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Image: Bethel. Anthony Chisom | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/e/9/p/y/lake-piso-wp/e9py-lake-piso-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Lake Piso: Where River Meets Tide https://qualla.com/lake-piso/ Photo credit Bethel. Anthony Chisom, CC BY-SA 4.0. Lake Piso is not quite freshwater and not quite sea. It is brackish - a mingling of the two - because a single narrow inlet links the lagoon to the Atlantic, letting the ocean's tides breathe in and out across its surface. Rivers feed it from the land side: Mole Creek, the Mafa, ...

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Image: Bethel. Anthony Chisom | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/e/9/p/y/lake-piso-wp/e9py-lake-piso-where-river-meets-tide.mp3 0:06 2 full Lake Piso: Seaplanes and Pigeons https://qualla.com/lake-piso/ Photo credit Bethel. Anthony Chisom, CC BY-SA 4.0. During the Second World War, the quiet lagoon found an unlikely role. Its broad, sheltered surface made an ideal landing strip for aircraft that needed no runway, and Lake Piso became a base for Allied seaplanes - flying boats setting down on water that had known only fishing can...

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Image: Bethel. Anthony Chisom | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/e/9/p/y/lake-piso-wp/e9py-lake-piso-seaplanes-and-pigeons.mp3 0:06 3 full Lake Piso: The Lake That Took the Mourners https://qualla.com/lake-piso/ Photo credit Bethel. Anthony Chisom, CC BY-SA 4.0. Water this useful is also water that can turn. On the nights of December 13 and 14, 2002, an overcrowded wooden ferry named the Papa Friends 2000 was crossing the lagoon near the mouth of the Mafa River. Aboard were roughly 200 people, most of them returning from the funeral of a...

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Image: Bethel. Anthony Chisom | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/e/9/p/y/lake-piso-wp/e9py-lake-piso-the-lake-that-took-the-mourners.mp3 0:06 4 full Lake Piso: Homeland of the Vai https://qualla.com/lake-piso/ Photo credit Bethel. Anthony Chisom, CC BY-SA 4.0. The land around Lake Piso is Vai country, and has been for generations. The Vai are remembered far beyond Liberia for an extraordinary achievement: in the early nineteenth century, one of them, Momolu Duwalu Bukele, developed a writing system - a syllabary of their own design, on...

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Image: Bethel. Anthony Chisom | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/e/9/p/y/lake-piso-wp/e9py-lake-piso-homeland-of-the-vai.mp3 0:06 5 full