Friday, November 30, 2007

Embarrassing but true: Confessions from Liberia

I decided that after 3 weeks here, it's time to bare it all, or at least some of it!

•This week Nelly asked me if the mosquitoes got my face too much – I had to explain that’s just acne/zits/pimples taking over my chin because my face is always sweaty here
•We can’t put toilet paper in our toilet anymore because it gets so angry – we carry it to the kitchen trash can instead.
•I find it nice knowing that each night the floors will get swept and the dishes will get washed and it’s not my responsibility.
•I haven’t shaved my legs in over a month and don’t really feel like doing it during my bucket bath; they might stay like this indefinitely.
•Most days I’m pretty sure I smell bad but usually the guy next to me smells stronger so I don’t worry about it too much!

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

''She's scary''

That’s what I imagine my water-boy would say about me, that is, if he does actually talk! I think he might just be really shy, but I’m always very nice to him and still he acts super timid. Nelly laughed tonight after he left and told me that he’s afraid of me! Who knows! Haha

If anything, the water-boy should think I’m wonderful and this guy Paul that I met two days ago should consider me scary. He seemed like a genuine, nice human-being when we met walking down my road on Monday, he works for an organization that we’re also working with for the peace festival and since i still strive to develop a social network here i decided it wasn’t a bad idea to exchange numbers...but now I’ve changed my mind! He won’t stop calling! Monday evening he called two times (I explained I was working still and said I would call him Tuesday when I had a chance after work) but Tuesday he called at 7:30am (which i ignored) and then again at 9am, which is when I found myself answering the phone to tell him that yes, I want some friends but he is upsetting me by calling too much and i asked him to stop. He seemed to get the message; I was irritated still yesterday afternoon so I didn’t call him ever. Then today he started up again, called three times (while i was working) throughout the day before I answered this afternoon and explained that he needs to back-off! He explained how his ‘instructor’ told him that today’s friend might be tomorrow’s saviour (not sure at this point if he thinks i’m jesus) and that he should give all his efforts to friendship. I countered with: I don’t need all your efforts, please chill out. He said he’s concerned for me and feels a responsibility and I explained that he doesn’t need to worry, I’m fine. The conversation eventually ended with him asking how many times a day he should call me, and me explaining that he should not call at all, zero times a day, he should just chill out and I will call him when work is not so busy and if I’m interested in speaking with him any further.

I’m not sure if this is the general aggressive approach of the Liberians pursuing friendship – but it was a big red flag in my book and made me question his motives. Even if he does think i will provide his salvation tomorrow, i’m not sure he would get it at the rate he’s badgering me! And no, i will not marry him and take him to America (it wasn’t asked but i was starting to feel unspoken pressure). I’m approached several times each day by ‘friendship seekers’, always young men who want to know all about me and openly declare that they want to me my friend. This guy Paul was the best shot i’ve had at friendship since i’ve arrived here, but he blew it! Good riddance.

The moral here: friendship is hard, at least it seems to be when you’re a white American lady in Africa!

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

what's cookin!?

Many have asked the question: So what do you eat? Here are some answers!


Potato green soup
* - potato greens, chicken and other seasonings boiled together and served with rice.
*don’t let the word soup fool you, most often it just means stuff cooked together

Fried baita ball & okra soup – baita balls (mildly hot peppers), okra and other seasonings, combined with fried bottle-nose fish, booni (tasty dried fish – like eating fish jerky!), other sea creatures i couldn’t identify, some spare rib; all this boiled together and served with rice.

Pepper soup – made with the leftover fish heads from a previous soup cooked that day, boiled together with baita ball, okra, other seasoning; this one is actually served in a broth. We had it with cooked fufu (a fine white powder soaked in water then boiled into a slimy-mashed-potato-like paste that has a slightly sour flavour, you don’t chew it, just put some on the spoon and swallow it down).

Fried water green soup – water greens (look like big spinach leaves with some pink on the stems) chopped finely and boiled with dried flying fish and some pig’s feet, plus some vita. Boil it down, use plenty of oil and serve with rice.

Sugared palm nuts – palm nuts (eaten raw by chewing/sucking on them to get the meat that is under the red, stringy skin without breaking a tooth on the pit) fried then doused in sugar and simmered a bit more. Eaten without rice! Haha Sucked on/chewed carefully as a snack.

Rice – most often prepared with vita (like a chicken bouillon cube), baita balls and okra. Accompanied by some meat from a stand up the road – fried chicken, fried hot dog (they say sausage), fried fish.

Beans – because the prep time to soak the beans and additional cooking time (1.5-2 hours) is so long we’ve only cooked with them once so far. We added a dried flying fish (different than booni, flying fish is a bigger fish with more meat) and vita and some other stuff then ate the concoction with rice (of course!).

Bananas, oranges, tangerines, pineapple, oranges, boiled sweet potatoes, fried sweet potatoes, oranges, crackers, peanut butter, oranges, grapefruit, quaker oats with powdered milk & sugar, oranges, coconuts, palm nuts, bread, oranges, oranges, oranges...

Sunday, November 25, 2007

any given saturday

You’ll find the girls (Nelly & Antoinette) up around 7 cleaning the house and me up and by 8:30 to drink hot tea and eat bread with them. Soon we’ll be discussing when the water-boy will show up and what things they should buy at the market to make a soup for the day. After this and that I’ll walk the 15 minutes up to the Junction to meet James and head to a noon meeting. We’ll decide to walk and the sun will be surprisingly hot so that by the time we get there (20 minutes later) I’ll be covered in road dust and have sweated through most parts of my shirt. Outside the gate of the home for our meeting I’ll be swarmed with six or more local boys, all shaking my hand and then just staring with small grins, while James phones the man and learns that although we are outside his home for the meeting that he scheduled with us at this time, he has gone to town unannounced. We’ll wander back to the main road and head for the Junction, me joking that at least we didn’t pay to ride a cab there! Along the way I’ll be delighted to see grapefruits for sale along the road, 4 for 25 Liberty Dollars. At less than 50 cents US for the bunch I’ll ecstatically put them in my bag.

After enjoying the soup of the day and taking a wee nap to refresh, the girls and their friend Lucia who’s hanging out for the day, will announce they’re going to the Old Road and that I should come. Quick outfit change later, my original outfit still sweaty, we’re out the door. A cab ride to the Old Road, wandering down through the shops and stands, the girls greeting friends they pass, a visit to Antoinette’s home and then we’re heading to the beach – me with once again sweat-soaked clothes. We’ll meander along the beach for a bit, argue with some boys trying to charge us to walk down the rest of it, and then head back for the main road. While walking we’ll try and try to catch a cab but all are six-full as they pass. There’ll be encouragement that I should get the cab because maybe they’ll stop for me and after a few minutes I will have flagged us a ride – although not a cab! This is Liberia, so to me a pick-up truck passing with no riders in the truck-bed looks like a viable alternative to walking the miles we are from home. After agreeing on a price with the driver and with his 2 friends shifted to the truck-bed, Nelly and I take the cab with Antoinette and Lucia in the back. The idea will spread impressively and as we stop and slow in traffic a couple other random riders will hop in the back, and then pay appropriately as they’re arriving at their destination. When nearing the Junction traffic will back-up and faster than we can realize it, our driver will barge into a wedding convoy of decorated cars. We’ll honk and wave a bit but mostly just laugh in semi-embarrassment as our beat-up pick-up makes its way obnoxiously through the intersection. Then we’ll be out, walking the rest of the way home to eat leftover soup.

With no rest for the weary, we’ll soon head back to the road to buy a gallon of gasoline for the guzzling-generator and a pack of mineral water for my rehydration needs. With the departure of Matthew from the compound, we’ll wait around in the dark until we can find the Poppy to start our generator. After over a month since my last hair cut I’ll be eager to plug in my clippers, but as I do there will be a small but mighty flash of light from inside the device. Soon I’ll be laughing out loud at the realization that my clippers have expired and my hair will be left to its own devices. After boiling the kettle, Nelly, Antoinette and I will retire to the porch to take in the slight breeze while sipping hot tea before cutting off the power and settling into sleep.

Thursday, November 22, 2007

gobble gobble!

abbe ewell -reporting from liberia, a place where 'thanksgiving day' is celebrated on the 1st thursday of each november! yep, i missed it by one day when i arrived almost 2 weeks ago so now i'm here and there's no turkey or family gatherings in site! haha

it's been a great day though - i can say that on thanksgiving day in 2007 i hand-washed my first bit of laundry, ate cold oats in evaporated milk for breakfast, trimmed my finger & toe nails, ate an orange the liberian way for the first time, went in a cab to the city center all by myself for the first time, ate a Bounty candy bar that i smuggled in from the UK and was thankful for it's existence, and had a 'feast' for dinner that contained all 3: beans, rice & sweet potato (usually you just make 1 per meal)!!! hope everyone was able to enjoy time with family and friends, or atleast that you were able to marvel at small meaningful accomplishments as i did!

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

in my hand...

i am holding my passport which is now officially stamped, signed, verified and approved with a 1- year Liberian Resident Permit!!! woohoo! i'm a resident of Liberia!! which also means i now have re-entry status, so if i got somewhere i can get back in the country without a new visa. i'm super excited!

p.s. jumped for joy this morning when i got my toilet fixed (again) and was finally able to bleach the whole sucker! i don't fret over cleanliness very often, but my bathroom was waaaayyyy beyond my own comfort zone for hygiene!

bed nets for everyone!

Here’s a little insight into what I’m up to at work these days...During her visit to Liberia, the German Chancellor committed to donating 300,000 mosquito nets to help the nation combat malaria around the country. German Agro Action is an NGO posted up in Liberia already and they have been tasked with the distribution of the nets. AYDAP is already a member of the Malaria Steering Committee run here by the Ministry of Health and has several trained staff and volunteers that worked to distribute bed nets/raise awareness earlier this year. So we were eager to show support to German Agro Action and express our interest in setting up a distribution in a couple areas that we have solid contacts. Monday we created all the documentation requested for the expression of interest, including proposed staffing needs and budget for distribution, logistics plan for the project, and information on AYDAP’s assets and experience. We submitted it all on Monday and will wait to here if they want our assistance come January-June when they aim to be distributing.

We won’t be working the entire 6 months on the project, only about 1 month; using multiple teams of volunteers our region for distribution would take only 1 week to distribute and then 1 week of follow-up to check for proper usage. The original approach through the Ministry of Health was to target outreach to pregnant women and children under 5, but it proved hard to track and monitor so the most recent plan (which all agencies distributing nets in Liberia are to use as a guideline) is 3 nets per household, based on statics that average homes in Liberia have 5 people in them. Our selected area will require just over 10,300 nets to be distributed and is in a county that no other NGOs have worked with or focused on so hopefully we’ll get picked up by German Agro Action to reach this community.

Sunday, November 18, 2007

mic-check 1-2, 1-2

So here is the what’s what of my first official adventure in africa!!! Sorry for the huge dramatic pause, internet is not the friendliest here but i think i’m back in the game! i posted below 7 new blogs..i know it’s a lot so pace yourselves, haha. I kept typing them up since my arrival just didn’t have a connection to post them...so in rapid fire succession this is it: the good, the bad, the ugly! The most recent is just below this one, so if you want to read them chronologically you gotta scroll down or use the links on the right side of the page to find ‘Getting through Africa’ and read up! Busy week ahead of me so there should be more updates on AYDAP and Liberian life flowing your way soon...

Patience and steadfastness

Happy Friday! Today is my 1 week anniversary in Africa!!! And now that I’m becoming seasoned in Liberian life (haha) I feel wiser...well maybe not quite yet, but I do feel a little less ‘green’. As James keep saying: ‘you expected it all’! Apparently Jerry noted to him several times prior to my arrival that I was well-read in things Liberia and wouldn’t be alarmed how my new life would be. This is mostly true – I mean in so many ways it is what i expected. And in the other ways of life in Liberia, the less expected ones, I find myself realizing just how important patience and steadfastness can be! It’s a lot of psychological work for me personally. Getting used to all of the waiting when I’m coming from a fast-paced life in Chicago. And also the slowness that is felt during transitions – when you are suddenly an infant again: not having the knowledge to feed or bathe yourself, let alone get to town! But I’m learning, and learning as fast as I can. It is amazing what just one week can do :)

marathon training

So today (Nov. 14) was the hottest yet! And while i sweated my way through numerous crowded cab rides and errand-running downtown to get my resident permit and re-entry visa paperwork started I began to wonder if the banana, room-temp leftover rice and spoonful of peanut butter that I ate this morning would be enough to sustain me on such a day as this one! I know that sweating is a good sign and I’m trying to keep tabs on my own perspiration so I can figure out if I’m getting enough water. And I realized that being a Westerner who moved to Liberia is like training for a marathon!

I’ve come to decide that it’s all about redefining what my body needs to sustain itself and conditioning myself to function in ways that I haven’t had to before now. I mean if all these people are eating rice every day and still walking around carrying things on their head then I should be able to perform normal day-to-day functions on a diet of fruit and rice plus a bit of protein (minus the head-carrying part cause that would make my neighbors think I’m a crazy white lady – not just ‘white lady’ as the children shout from their homes). So I’m weaning myself off my Clif Bars and am trying to use them only in emergency situations – i.e. if I’m trapped in the bank again for hours and hours of processing. But I’m starting to think that I might be able to survive on 2 meals a day: breakfast of fruit, bit of PB and some starch/carb and then dinner of rice/potato/pasta plus some protein (most likely fish, chicken or sausage from the road stands). But we will have to wait and see!

p.s. I ‘flushed’ my toilet successfully for the first time this morning!!! I’ve learned that it’s all about the amount of water that you put in the bucket, the angle that you pour it from and the height of the bucket above the toilet. You see, if you miscalculate these things you end up splashing water from the toilet (eww!) onto the floor or worse onto your own feet...and I’m still not sure how to really CLEAN things here so I do not want that to happen!

Tantalizing Tuesday

Had a good meeting this morning with the team – James, Terrence, John; they gave me my proper welcome and orientation to AYDAP, including briefings on what they’ve accomplished thus far as well as security information regarding my life in Liberia. Basics were covered – keep you bag in front at all times because shady people will try to steal your stuff – to the more exciting details of living in Africa – the UN has a curfew in place for people like me, I should be home by 12 midnight each day and not leave out until atleast 6 am. Learned something fun today: I live in Paynesville! All this time I thought I lived in Monrovia!! Haha apparently I’m in a town just outside the capital city, sorry for the misinformation. Bought drinking water at a mini-mart of sorts this afternoon, got a large bag filled with 30 individually sealed squares containing 500ml of water each for 80 Liberian Dollars = $1.34 US. Yep, so even though I can’t drink the well-water, it’s comforting that the cost of drinkable mineral water is outrageous like in the USA!

And the high exchange rate still amuses me – when I went to that bank last Saturday I received 60.25 Liberian Dollars for every US$1. Things are cheaper here when calculated against that exchange rate, but you still have to carry a lot of money on you to get anything done. A cab into the city center is LD$30 if I walk the 20 minutes from my compound up to the Junction (also known as the Red Light – although the light doesn’t function these days). It’s about a 30 minute ride from there if traffic isn’t too bad and you don’t stop too often for people getting in and out – yep, it’s reassuring to know that somebody (God bless the Liberians) recognizes that many people can share the same cab. This is something that always bothered me in Chicago – 1 person gets their own cab even if you’re heading in the same direction. So here we do it the more economical way with 4 people in the back seat and 2 people up front, plus the driver. But this afternoon I got to take a cab unaccompanied for the first time and I was delighted when we stopped and 1 person got out of the back seat and 2 got in – one girl sat on the other girl’s lap – they laughed as they did it and i couldn’t help but laugh too. They said ‘first time you’ve seen this!? It’s Liberia!’ I was cracking up!!

Nelly made some tasty country rice for dinner and I ate a smoked fish we bought from a stand up the road with it. Creepy how the fish was looking at me but I made it happen – protein is protein right now and I’m not about to complain if it still has its eyes! Maybe I’ll go with the chicken tomorrow, it’s a wee bit easier to manage!

Manic Monday

It was hot all day. It took John and I almost 2 hours just to get into downtown. It was hot. Really hot. The simple task of depositing traveller’s cheques into the AYDAP account took over 6 hours and somewhere in the middle I considered moving away from – away from Monrovia, Liberia, West Africa. Away to anywhere but here. Thankfully I had a Clif Bar in my bag and it sustained me through the ordeal. And I know that new beginnings are rough and that soon I’ll be livin’ la viva Liberia! But I gotta keep it real – and today I did the mental math on how long I would ‘have’ to stay in order to consider this a real adventure and in order to not be referred to as a quitter for the rest of my life! Haha When we eventually made it back to my compound I had a list of 4 crucial questions/concerns that I presented to James, in list format mind you, and which he did his best to provide answers and reassurances for. He’s a good man that James is! Once some basic needs were tended to – i.e. getting the neighbor boy to bring water to my house (for ‘flushing’ the toilet, bathing with a bucket, doing dishes, etc), assessing where to go to buy more gasoline to get my generator functioning again so that I could enjoy 2-3 hours of noise-filled electricity each evening, and determining where/how to buy some food because I could not last on peanut butter, molded bread and oranges for much longer. So as you can imagine, having such things off my mind helped easy the ‘I gotta get out of here I’m being held against my will’ feelings of mid-day.

the beach - that way?

If you turn right when leaving the gated compound that my house is in you can follow the road past shacks and abandoned buildings until you reach the cement block makers. Veer left and continue through the tiny collection of ramshackle homes and past a few other block-making groups. Eventually you’ll wander past children who shout hello and wave excitedly seeking your acknowledgement. You will have seen a glimpse of the beach at this point but still the path is not a direct one. Asking locals they all point in the same direction, same as the way you’ve been heading, but their explanation that you can just follow the path isn’t proving as easy as it sounds. Choosing your route based on what looks like a main road, as opposed to a path that leads to someone’s back door, you eventually stumble upon a narrow, well-worn path. After the first couple above-ground cement burial boxes that you pass you think it was just a fluke, but within moments you are travelling down this windy, narrow trail through a graveyard that contains perhaps a hundred or more above-ground cement tombs. It is a well-worn path so the safe assumption is that you’re not venturing down a taboo road of sorts. The beach is not far off now and just past the graves you arrive to stares from young and old. It’s obvious that neither you nor your two local escorts are carrying food to sell, a hand-made canoe for fishing, or have the necessities for weaving fishing nets – you don’t belong here. This is the beach. Waters of the Atlantic crash into the shore with such velocity that it seems an amazing feat for the fishermen to navigate their canoes out to sea and miraculously back to shore. Children lie on the beach and laugh as the waves roll them all around while serious undercurrents display their force not far away. The journey back is not as adventuresome; you head straight to the main paved road, make a left and follow it to the familiar vendors where you make another left. Navigating the dirt road that leads to your home, within the gated compound with its barbed-wire along the top of the walls, is still a journey. The rainy season is just ending and the road has three mini-lakes of murky water that spread the entire width.

Mawolo Compound

My home, as I referred to it for the first time today (Nov. 13 – I was walking home and a boy asked where I was going), is one of six small houses in the Mawolo Compound, opposite the SKD Sports Complex (recently renovated soccer stadium). There are 2 bedrooms, living room with attached dining room, small kitchen and bathroom. I enjoy a pleasant breeze from the Atlantic when I sit on the front porch to watch the lizards chase each other. My neighbor has a pet monkey that I’m pretty sure is racist! Seems to get along fine with everyone else but looks at me disapprovingly and sometimes sticks its butt in the air directly at me. Our houses are all painted cream with red trim and don’t have power or running water. The bathing via bucket in the bathtub doesn’t bother me as much as the inability to flush the freaking toilet! Nelly (Jerry’s daughter) is staying with me so I don’t wander off or starve to death! Lol There is a man who guards the gate, we don’t know his name but he proved helpful when our toilet wouldn’t ‘flush’ the other day and when we need our generator fired up each evening. The wall around our compound is maybe 6 feet high with a spiralling spread of barbed-wire along the top that spans an additional 2 feet upwards – i think it’s there to keep the riff-raff out, not so much the wildlife since there aren’t big guys like elephants in these parts. The compound was built post-war (in the last year or so) and having a fence with a guard is a selling point since there are many many people in this area and it’s nice to have your privacy a bit.

I have a TV – this amuses me considering there’s no current except when the generator is on which would make it impossible to hear the TV if I even had cable or reception of any sort. I’m aspiring to have a radio someday soon that way I can stop being so creepy: always sitting on my front porch pretending to read a magazine while I listen hopefully for the sounds of a neighbor’s radio! Nelly doesn’t say a lot, yet! I think she’s warming up to me though – yesterday she said ‘It’s hot’! I might of pee’d my pants with joy except that I had sweated out what little water I had consumed that day! She is 21 and is almost done with school at this point – because of the wars all public education was practically suspended for like 14 years. There’s a man (Ali) who stays in the compound who owns a construction business in the city center and knows my AYDAP colleagues – he let them borrow his truck to pick me up from the airport. He comes by to check on me most evenings, and has a couple younger guys that work for him that stop by sometimes too. They’re very ready to assist and aren’t even creepy! Haha I would talk to the monkey if he didn’t hate me! At this point I’m still figuring out the basics which are pretty overwhelming – but I’m eager to talk and joke with anyone who wanders by my porch! There are also 2 baby girls aged 14-18 months. The still cry when they see me (even though the one is half white) but I’m hoping that soon they won’t be scared any more!

Oh yeah, my mosquito net looks great above my bed – it’s like a princess bed! Haha And my 60 SPF sunscreen is rocking my world - a little dab will do ya, I decided the first day when I discovered how sticky/smeary it is. And I think I’m tanning through it, or maybe that’s just dirt!

Getting THROUGH Africa

The tricky part was not getting to Africa, but getting to where I wanted to be once on this magnificent continent. Saying my route would be less than pretty was perhaps the understatement of my life! It was downright horrendous. The important thing is that I made it, alive, and with all of my belongings. For anyone who has a story of a ‘travel nightmare’ that they like to share when others gripe over travel inconveniences and misfortunes – this one’s for you!

It’s most simply put into numbers: 4 different airplanes, 5 joyous take-offs, 5 successful landings, 5 interactions with customs, 2 times explaining why I don’t have a visa for the African country I’m leaving (I just arrived on a plane 4-7 hours ago and haven’t left the airport, I swear), 3 hours in Ghana when I thought I wouldn’t ever leave (didn’t have enough cash to buy my final plane tickets – the bank’s computer system was down simultaneously), 1 hour 40 minutes sitting next to a Nigerian man who persisted that he wanted to ‘take care of me’ while I’m in Liberia, 2 bottles of Coke from different countries – British version is good, Morocco’s was lacking, 5.5 hours sitting with an empty seat between me and a Lebanese man who wanted to convince me to sit next to him using English and French, 2 times of being overcharged for a beverage because I didn’t have local currency and they could exploit me for my US dollar, 15 minutes of holding up the check-in line in Morocco because I couldn’t understand the woman telling me my bags weighed too much – eventually the language barrier wore her out and she just let me go, 20 USD paid for overweight baggage leaving Ghana (should have been 70 USD but my airline friend who supported me during my ‘no cash to buy my ticket’ crisis told the baggage guy I didn’t have any money so he gave me a break!), 10 minutes wasted riding a bus to the wrong terminal in London after I confirmed with the man that I was going to the right place + 15 minutes sweating profusely while trying to get back to the correct terminal after the woman told me I was not going to make it in time, 4+ men trying to hustle and carry my bags in Ghana, 3 AYDAP volunteers greeting me with hugs in Monrovia, 45 minute truck ride seeing the lush, green country of Liberia on the way to my new home.

Wednesday, November 7, 2007

it is not pretty...

but i do have new flights reserved for tomorrow! my 12 hour trip via 3 planes has been transformed into 26 hours via 4 planes, including a 7.5 hour stop-over in Ghana early Friday morning! So I will make it into Monrovia on Friday during the mid-afternoon heat. I'm ready for the time discomfort but the main crushing set back - the new tickets are costing me an additional $600 or so. The price you pay for passion and volunteerism!

Long travels await me so I'm off to bed! Next post won't be for a few days after I'm settled and have wandered into a free wireless connection but stay tuned :)

becoming Scottish

It's about that time friends...I gotta get outta here! I'm becoming Scottish!

Glasgow has been very good to me and I've met some wonderful people but I have to get to Africa! I'm super excited about my anticipated departure tomorrow and can hardly wait to feel the West African heat! This past weekend I had the opportunity to travel around Scotland a wee bit. Went north to visit Loch Lomond on Saturday - beautiful nature area and the lake provides crisp, clean drinking water to some surrounding areas. On Sunday we headed east to the far side of Scotland where it meets the North Sea. That evening we went to dinner a the home of AYDAP's volunteer accountant for a 'send off' of sorts for me as I'm preparing to leave this week.

And amusingly enough, I found out yesterday that my flight into Liberia doesn't operate any more, apparently the airline has cancelled their service from Casablanca, Morrocco to Monrovia (but not because of safety concerns Mom, it's just a fluke) So I'm waiting a wee bit anxiously today to hear more from my travel agent in the States about what the next step is for getting me from here to there! All things will come together, just a hilarious hiccup in my plans that I thought my faithful readers might enjoy! haha Good news is I noticed it yesterday when I was double-checking my booking so I know in advance and not when I'm stuck in Casablanca...though that might have made for a better story! So today I'm repacking my suitcase and gearing up for travelling south in the morning...one way or another I will make it to Africa in the next couple days - I've come this far, there's no turning back!

Friday, November 2, 2007

the ironing

so busy busy day today! and exciting news...it didn't rain! perhaps the first day since i arrived here that it was kinda clear-sky!

I spent all afternoon talking through 'all things Liberia' with Jerry. We covered details about my lodging and well-being as a new resident in a foreign land and got into some of the AYDAP nitty-gritty. We were able to share a lot of ideas about the Peace Festival that's in the works for February and I consider the brainstorm to have gone very successfully - we typed up notes along the way so that soon it will all be conveyed to the team in Liberia. Ironing out more details will be my first task post 'observation phase' when I arrive. I'm very eager to be in Monrovia a week from today and to be settled so that the work can begin!

gooooo AFRICA!!!