Amy Waddell, from Upper Teesdale, is spending six months in south-east Liberia as the communications intern for Merlin, the international medical aid agency. In the third of her dispatches, she explores a country that has gold at its fingertips, but barely enough water to drink.

I’D never been on a health assessment before – but in Grand Gedeh county it seems to involve squeezing five grown men and me into a very small jeep.

Merlin, the World Health Organisation and County Health Team are following up on increasing reports of pertussis, or whooping cough as it’s more commonly known, one of the biggest killers of children under five.

The jarring journey, along deep green avenues of rainforest and past paddies of “swamp rice”, leads us to Bartijan Camp. A labyrinth of opensided, cracked-mud huts clings to the sloping hillside. Bartijan, a gold mining camp, is a far cry from the scattering of houses that usually make up Liberia’s communities.

We set out on foot, accompanied by a guide from the camp, asking parents if their children are suffering from a cough ending in the tell-tale “whoop whoop whoop”. Unable to explain the symptoms to many, the team resorts to acting out the coughing sound, much to the amusement of onlookers.

We wander through narrow alleys, leaning over the waist-high walls of people’s homes. Women answer the team’s questions, slowly stirring cast-iron pots of rice and fish.

Empty sacks piled high with glittering gravel dot our route. As Lorenzo, Merlin’s clinical supervisor, squats down to take a closer look, our guide warns us not to touch. “There are bits of gold in there. If you touch the gravel people will think you’re stealing gold on your fingers,” he says.

I struggle to keep up with the team as children accost me to take their photos, striking cheeky poses before running at me to see their beaming faces on the small digital screen.

I walk into the middle of the health assessment questions and a half naked toddler starts to scream. “He’s never seen a white woman before,”

his mother laughs as she hoists him onto her knee.

Our guide takes us to the top of an eroded bank, looking down on a well.

A couple of teenagers are pulling up water, using plastic cans attached to ropes. “Only this well and one other provide water for the whole camp,”

the guide explains. Nearly 9,000 people live in Bartijan: that’s equivalent of only two wells providing water for everyone in Barnard Castle, Middleton and Staindrop.

Water, rather than whooping cough, is at the top of Bartijan’s agenda.

A visit from our team of health workers provides the perfect opportunity to air the camp’s concerns.

Still, the guide knows it’s completely out of our hands.

Bartijan’s not privy to the same privileges as Liberia’s other communities.

With no traditional chief, but a camp master instead, it is not recognised as an established town – a status which would secure basic services such as water. Still, with its shops, police station and bustling family life, there is nothing transitory about this place.

The team manages to finish their assessment without finding any symptoms or a single case of whooping cough.

Making our way back through Bartijan, passing open doorways where crouching men separate gold from muddy gravel, we’re told how the camp is doing everything possible to start the process of appointing a traditional chief.

For the time being, the people of Bartijan have gold at their fingertips yet barely enough water to drink.

More often, I learn about Liberia on the long drives – up to 12 hours – between Merlin field sites. As the white jeep bounces along the south-east’s red mud roads and popular Ghanaian beats blaring from the CD player, we pass people walking single-file on the roadside. Women balance washingup bowls on their heads that brim with vegetables such as cassava and banana-shaped plantain. Some carry great bundles of logs. “So they can make fire to eat,” a Liberian colleague informs me.

He muses that thousands of people fled this way during the civil war (1989-2003). As rebels took over the country, masses left their homes further north to head for the Cote d’Ivoire border.

Back on the road, bockabao hills blur as we bump along. I explain that we don’t have anything like the towering dirt turrets back in the UK and that we call them termite mounds.

Gender roles are a hot topic of conversation.

Most of my colleagues are men and it surprises them to hear that a woman can be independent, the bread-winner in her family. Many Liberian women must still seek their husband’s permission even to go to visit their sister for the afternoon.

On one drive, Darius and Willie, a Merlin driver and radio operator, told me how Liberian men must tend to their large, extended families. If a man’s wife wants something, a new lappa (wrap-dress) or something for her hair, he must get it for her.

My jaw drops when I hear that wives leave husbands if they’re out of work for a while. Children will refuse to run to their father when he returns home from work, if he isn’t adequately providing for them.

But Willie told me one of the saddest stories. His wife, who lives in Liberia’s capital where there’s better schooling for their daughter, had recently miscarried. Willie could barely afford to pay for the treatment she needed.

In the hospitals and clinics that Merlin supports, services are free. I didn’t realise that elsewhere in Liberia people must pay. Darius highlights the harsh reality that Merlin is one of the few organisations offering free health care.

As I leave Liberia, my home for five months, I can’t help but take with me the positive resolve with which Liberians approach their lives, day in day out.

Greet a Liberian with, “Hey. How d’ body?” and he’ll reply, “Trying”.

People like Darius and Willie, and communities like Bartijan – they really are.

■ More information about Merlin’s work around the world is on merlin.org.uk