I Am the One In Ten

News bulletin of the day from Liberia one week ago today, from the morning radio as I ate my plantains and hardboiled eggs:

• National Oil Company of Liberia, ltd. was called before the congressional ways and means committee to explain their "extravagant and wasteful spending." The company was unable to produce documents justifying said spending and the hearings were postponed until the documents could be produced.
• All non-administrative/security personnel at all government health facilities have gone on strike (and are still on strike one week later) protesting the lack of both a promised wage increase and their current wages.
• A 3-month-old baby was found with its head chopped off behind a hotel in Nimba county, and no one came forward to claim the body or offer information to aid the investigation.
• A coalition of bishops and other religious leaders in Liberia is imploring the government not to yield to international pressure to legalize gay marriage on the grounds that doing so would result in a downward spiral of moral decay in Liberia like in Soddom and Gomorrah 

Days here are difficult enough without corruption, ineffective or nonexistent social systems, violence, and discrimination. My intestinal tract has staged a full-on rebellion this week against an unknown food or beverage, which is a common occurrence for everyone. The most plentiful and financially available means of public transportation (pen-pen motorcycles) results in enough road accidents to field an entire soccer team composed of drivers who are amputee accident survivors. [true fact, and I think they are even a winning soccer team!] Most people don't have much concept of budgeting or saving money for a rainy day.

And yet I am reminded that true, lasting, powerful change, while it doesn't come overnight, or even in ten years, is possible. A beautiful piece in the New Yorker yesterday gives, as Vince our country director says, some context to the work we do here, and the ways we can help. The strongest change and importance lie in the "slow ideas," the personal relationships formed when we take time, and truly get to understand the people we want to help. I asked my students to write a letter to me on the back of the quiz they took last week. I got several "Dear Miss L, I greet you in the name of Jesus our Lord, and I pray you take me back with you to America" or "Dear Miss L, I wish you have a happy 26" but I also got a very heartfelt letter from a young woman who is probably 13, who told me she would never forget how I helped her, and that she would always want to do well in math because of me. I am not sure how long that will last, but the fact that it was true even for a moment means I am in the right place, doing the right thing.

The only way to open opportunities for people here is through one-on-one relationships. This week, in addition to teaching seventh grade geometry at Model School, I am meeting with the principal of Lango Lippaye school, where I will be teaching for the next two years. All of us trainees have the chance to sit down with our administrative counterparts and go over some of the challenges facing these schools: lack of clean drinking water and seats for students, little or no enforcement of academic calendar and standards, nonexistent resources for teaching. My school is considerably higher-functioning than the average, due mostly to the tireless efforts of Principal Robert Za-Za. I am very excited to build a relationship with him, and with my students and fellow teachers. There is so much to do...

She Puts Color Inside of My World

Learning happens best in a reciprocal relationship, where the teacher and student both participate in both aspects of instruction. I had some great experiences of that relationship with a young woman named Annie this weekend that taught me "things I never knew I never knew." 

Annie and her brother moved in to Rev. Dickson's house about a week and a half ago to spend time in Kakata for school. They are from Nimba county, and I don't know if they are actually blood-relatives or just more adopted children. Annie is in 10th grade at Model School, where us LR-4 trainees have been perfecting our teaching craft on volunteer summer school students from the Kakata area. On Saturday, Annie came to me after breakfast and asked me to "lecture small" on cells and their organelles, the subject of Friday's lesson in her biology class. I got some 'rough sheet' scratch paper and we went through the parts of a eukaryotic cell, the difference between rough and smooth endoplasmic reticulum (rough ER has ribosomes sitting on it, like stinging ants on a blade of grass), golgi bodies ("the post office of the cell" "..." "like, when you go to Red Light to get a car to the east, a transport center" "oh!"), etc. It was pretty enlightening for me in terms of literacy level and general mental perspective of Liberian students, and it was fun besides.

Annie is a perfect example of the average Liberian student. She recognizes the benefits of getting an education (especially for women) and is willing to work as hard as she can to get access to those benefits. Even in the face of non-existent resources, teachers with no knowledge of their subject matter and no concept of the craft of teaching, and all the challenges that come from being a woman in this country. Her academic work ethic would put the valedictorian of my high school class to shame and she has "the ganas, the desire," as Jaime Escalante would say. She also has a general work ethic that puts me to shame. 

Women in Liberia work so hard- household chores and child-rearing fall almost entirely on them. And more and more women, encouraged by the example and under the influence of the Iron Lady of Liberia herself, Madam Sirleaf, have careers outside the home in addition. So on an average school day, Annie gets up somewhere around 5:30 am to haul water for the barrel in the bathroom, sweep the living room floor, and help with the children. She then walks about twenty-five minutes to get to school by the beginning of first period at 8 am. After school finishes at 12:30, she walks home and does laundry (by hand, with a washboard, involving yet more water hauling, ferocious upper-arm strength, and knuckles of steel), runs to the market for ingredients for dinner, helps with food prep and clean-up, and reviews and memorizes her notes from that day's class, all before the sun goes down at 6:30. I do less than half the work she does in a day, and I find myself longing for a post-lunch nap. 

On Sunday morning I got the buckets, soap, and washboard together to do laundry (for the third time on my own, thank you very much!). On my way out to the front yard's dedicated cement laundry slab, Annie was instructed to help me. Despite my insistence that not only could I do it myself, but I already had done it myself, I was not allowed to haul up my own water from the well. Annie turned out to be very helpful, actually. She was able to impart the secret wisdom of washing underwire bras effectively, the true value of doing whites before denim, the proper length of time to let clothing soak, and how to tell that your 'clean' clothes are actually clean. She also solved the mystery of where people hang their underwear when putting clothes on the line: under a light blouse or t-shirt! It is apparently just fine to hang bras in the open, but no one should see the other unmentionables. I had been bringing them in to my room to dry in private, but the shirt thing works perfectly. That revelation led to a discussion of dress and comportment of young ladies in Liberia. It is totally ok to show leg from the knee down, and shoulders/arms are no problem. But any thigh at all is, as Annie says, "not good-good at all." The way a woman dresses is a signal of how much she respects herself, and the respect she demands of others in their dealings with her. Being tutored in hard work and self-respect by this amazing high school student prompted me to ask her more about her life. 

Annie is the oldest girl in her family, though her brother Ozinga (spelling almost certainly NOT correct)  who is living with us is older than she is, and I think she has another older brother too. She informed me that it was very important for her to do well in school so that she could help her younger sisters (academically, financially, and by example) to do so as well. She will be in 10th grade at Lango Lippaye High school here in Kakata starting in September, and she is 19 years old. She is smart and strong, and has a wicked sense of humor which was turned towards me quite frequently over the course of the weekend, especially at my attempts at plating hair- apparently what I know of as a french braid is actually a 'country plat' and thus pretty unrefined, at least on a Liberian head. 

Annie and girls just like her are my future students, and the future hope of this country: flexible and funny and brilliant and beautiful and so hard-working. They face challenges that this middle-class white girl from Northern California couldn't imagine five years ago. After spending this weekend with her, I called on Princess, Comfort, Mercy, Bendu, and Hawa more than I called on Homphery, Timmothy, Muistafa, Arona, and Joseph for geometry answers in class today.  How could I not do everything in my power to set these women on their immensely difficult and immensely important paths? 

Everything But the Kitchen Sink

Everything surrounding the subject of food here is vastly different than in America, from where and when and what you purchase as ingredients, to prep and cooking time and storage, to presentation, taste, and impact on energy level and digestive processes. Despite those differences, I feel like I'm eating pretty well here. 80% of my meals contain rice, but they also have a variety of soups (potato greens, cassava leaf, kidney bean, pumpkin, okra, eggplant, pepper, etc) made to the same basic pattern as below: onion, peppers, tomato paste, and the namesake vegetable, which is usually super fresh. There are no processed foods, and no storage, so everything is cooked and eaten fresh. And when I'm not eating rice and soup, I'm usually eating plantains and hard boiled eggs (my most frequent and most appreciated breakfast). I just looked up the nutrition facts online, and plantains have almost twice the potassium bananas have. I also eat  'plenty' pineapples, butter-pears (avocados), and other local fruits. 

At my insistence, Munah taught me to make kidney bean soup over the coal pot this weekend. I was very excited to learn because a) it is one of my favorite meals here, and b) I will be living in my own house in less than a month, and I will have to do everything for myself. The moral of this story is PATIENCE, because cooking by coal pot (or just in Liberia in general) takes a looooong time.

Kidney Bean Soup

Ingredients:
1 'cup' (aka 12 oz can) kidney beans, or dried beans cooked and prepared in advance
50 LD worth of chicken (roughly one thigh/drumstick combo plus "small more")
2 small onions
1ish handful of small and VERY spicy peppers
6 oz pouch of tomato paste
1 Vita/Maggi cube (shrimp-flavored boullion cube, pretty much straight MSG I think, the secret ingredient in almost all Liberian dishes)
+/- 1 cup Argo oil or red oil (I used considerably less, since I don't find a thick film of oil floating on my food as appealing as Liberians do)

Prep time: 1 to 1 1/2 hours depending on how fast you can get your coal pots lit

The kitchen I worked in is the dedicated cooking space behind the house, furnished with a cement half-wall, a plastic chair for the guest, a wooden table, and a couple of coal pots:

counter space, cutting board, and stove

kitchen sink and cupboard

Start the coal pot, using left-over hot coals from the morning or a small twist of rubber lit and placed under the piled charcoal. Fan coals to get them started, and BE PATIENT, because it takes FOREVER for the fire to be hot enough to cook on sometimes. 

First, wash and skin the chicken. Then boil it 'nice' with one chopped ('slashed') onion and some of the vita cube. While it boils, slash the second onion and the peppers, open the can of beans (with a knife: place tip on lid of can, hit base of handle with flat of palm, rinse and repeat until lid can be pried off), and add tomato sauce. When the chicken has boiled sufficiently, pour it and stock into a bowl. Put half the oil in the pan to heat and remove bone shards from meat. When oil is hot, add onions, peppers, tomato paste, beans, and chicken/stock. Add more oil and vita to taste, and leave on fire to simmer until 'dry'. While the liquid is simmering off the beans, start the second coal pot for rice. Wash rice thoroughly, picking out any rocks, bugs, or other foreign matter. Don't measure the water-to-rice ratio. Instead, just add 'some' and check frequently during the cooking process to add or remove water until desired 'softness' of rice is achieved. Serve soup over rice from communal bowl/pot. Eat with fingers or spoons. (Except in the case of American guests. They should be served alone inside at the table, with door closed to keep out mosquitos, air and light, spoon not optional.)

The end: it was delicious (even consumed alone listening to Liberian compliments through the window screen). I will not starve living on my own.

Just a Mirror for the Sun

As part of our training, we trainees of LR-4 got into bush taxis on Saturday morning and headed in to Monrovia for an orientation weekend/American food fest.

Mitch, Amy, Mike, and Sarah in the back seat

The road from Kakata to Monrovia is coal tar (paved) the entire way, so aside from the pot holes, makeshift speed bumps (piles of earth constructed by villagers to slow traffic through their neighborhoods), speeding pen-pens, and heavy trucks, the ride was smooth and easy for our convoy of cars. The drivers who picked us up at Doe Palace were admonished to "take time" so we made the journey at half-speed.

The roads in Liberia are populated by the ubiquitous white land cruisers with icons on the doors for World Food Program, Save the Children, UN, the World Bank, and others from the alphabet soup of NGO's operating here, by pen-pen (motorcycle) taxis, bush taxis kept running on prayers, and giant trucks belching diesel exhaust piled high with large bags of coal. Looking out the taxi window (or even at the dashboard of the taxi, decorated with a stuffed llama and flags for Liberia and Monserado County) reinforces how much of a stranger in a strange land I am sometimes. The dual feeling of familiarity and strangeness together happened all weekend long. 

Part of the plan was to hit Red Light transit center on the return trip, so we took ELWA junction road to bypass the insanity on the way in. Once you get close to Monrovia there are intersections with actual street lights, though the volume of traffic seems to render them less effective. 

an uncharacteristically quiet corner of Red Light

pen-pen boys waiting for passengers in Red Light

The architecture here is mostly civil conflict revival featuring half-built or half-destroyed facades, with a smattering of modern construction and some left over buildings from the building boom of the 1960's and 1970's, arguably the best decades for style of any kind, let alone architecture. But there are some interesting buildings, and even the falling-down structures tell a powerful story.

new construction at the corner of Tubman Blvd and ELWA junction

When we arrived in Monrovia we checked in to St. Teresa's convent/hostel/school, had an 'american' meal at Monroe Chicken (KFC-lite), and set out on a walking tour of Monrovia. Our group, led by an LR-3 and a response volunteer, took us along United Nations drive past the white-walled compounds to go with the white land cruisers and up the hill to the old US Embassy and the masonic lodge. The land on which the US Embassy housing currently stands used to be the British embassy grounds until they pulled out during the war and the US laid claim to it. The bluff looks out over the Atlantic ocean, with private beach access and a truly impressive view, and is the highest valued real estate in the city. 

On some levels I am impressed with the infrastructure I saw in Monrovia. We have been watching documentaries about the conflict and its aftermath, so the images I had in my head of Monrovia were of broken bridges and empty streets populated by child soldiers. The reality of ten years of development and rebuilding are paved streets with gutters (still overflowing into the street, but there) and a bustling, if, informal economy. Progress is gradual but visible, which is encouraging.   

Our tour took us past the new US embassy building and up (again) to Ducor Hill and the abandoned hotel perched above the city. After coming down from on high, we stopped to rest small and have some water at the Bamboo Bar on Broad and Randall streets, the busiest intersection in town. 

across the street from the US Embassy

Randall Street

After our rest, we wandered through the controlled chaos of Waterside Market, whose concentrated commercial energy reminded me very strongly of the big market in Accra: streets full of vehicles and people, sidewalks lined with shops and stalls and vendors, everything imaginable for sale. 

Our tour group won a trivia contest from Vince, the country director for Peace Corps Liberia, and the prize was a ride in Vince's 4Runner to dinner at a steak house (!) and dessert at an ice cream parlor (!!). Through the two American meals, a real grocery store, and driving the night streets of Monrovia listening to the Beatles, I was caught up in the foreign-familiar feeling of the place.  I asked one of my fellow trainees what she thought the strangest part of the trip was, and we couldn't make up our minds if it was the food or all the non-Peace Corps ex-pats and other white people. Those things seemed as foreign to me as the roadside attractions on the drive down. Monrovia was a nice adventure, but it was really good to get back home to my host family, take a bucket bath, and have some pumpkin soup while talking jazz and blues with my host brother. I guess the next two years of my life are going to follow the same theme, of new and old, and I get to learn from both of them.

You Can Check Out Any Time You Like

The Ducor Hotel was the 5-star jewel of West African hospitality when it opened in 1967. Now it sits, a strangely creepy and beautiful gargoyle perched on the top of Ducor hill, overlooking the city of Monrovia. As part of our walking tour of the city, guided by an LR-3 and a response volunteer, we got to climb up to the roof and explore.

The hotel closed in 1989 when tensions grew and threatened the political stability of the country. During the civil crisis, people moved from the slums into most of the rooms of the hotel, where they lived until the government kicked them out in 2007. Now there's a security guard and his entourage holding court where the concierge used to sit. The wide marble staircase that curls up from the lobby is green with algae and moss now. The diving board still extends out over the deep end of the swimming pool, but the pool itself has just a few feet of toxic brown sludge in the bottom. The stairs are dark and slippery and there are holes in the walls for gun barrels to peek out. But for all the violence and decay felt through the whole building, there is still a haunting, compelling beauty.

Waterside Market and Mesurado Bridge

Broad Street and downtown

TIA

This red earth, it's in our skin. The Shona say the colour comes from all the blood that's being spilled fighting over the land. This is home. You'll never leave Africa. - Col. Coatzee, Blood Diamond

A good conversation with some beautiful, interesting people at lunch today, talking about the truth of this idea...

Anniversary

When I'm going about my business here in Liberia (waiting for the Peace Corps car in the morning, greeting everyone I walk past on a weekend afternoon walk, joking with Zayzay our training manager, doing laundry with my brother Delwin and teaching him to swing dance) I don't think about the civil crisis that ravaged this country. There isn't much about the daily life of Liberians that indicates how recent the conflict was, and for all that this is a 'hardship post' for Peace Corps volunteers, it really doesn't feel like it. Maybe that will change when I get to my eventual site, who knows? But I have another month of training left. And if the last three weeks are any indication, that month will both drag and fly by while my brain struggles to process so much new information and so many new experiences.

The conflict that ended ten years ago next month started on Christmas Eve, 1989 when Charles Taylor crossed into Liberia from Cote d'Ivoire with about a hundred geurilla troops. He capitalized on the pre-existing tensions between tribes, the weakness of President Samuel Doe, and the desperation of the general populace to build his army. Over seven years he gained control of 90% of the country, made and broke a dozen peace treaties, and created a 'small boys' army of 8-15 year old boys on drugs with guns. He then 'won' an election and while a sitting president worked to destabilize his neighbors and dominate the blood diamond trade. And when the lives of his people were at stake and he was being indicted for war crimes, he refused to step down from power until forced to by ECOWAS and the UN.

After an interim government held power, Liberia elected Ellen Johnson Sirleaf as the first female president in Africa. She faced greater challenges than maybe any other head of state taking power: a country barely emerged from 14 years of violence, no functioning infrastructure whatsoever, $370 billion in debt to IMF, World Bank, and various countries, and a history of working for or with some of the leaders responsible for the mess. It took tireless effort, shrewd negotiation, and an O-Ma's touch to bring any order at all to the chaos and hurt of civil war. And there is still much work to be done.

The international community is looking to the August anniversary as a benchmark, an indication of how far Liberia has come. The UNMIL mission here is scaling back from its original 15,000 troops and support personnel to not quite 3,000 by next year. Rule of law is slowly replacing mob violence as the arbiter of justice. And while the education system is seriously flawed, it has improved tremendously and will continue to do so. But when I talk to my host father, he says that he isn't celebrating the upcoming historic day. It marks the end of the war, yes, but it also marks the point at which Liberians could not help themselves and required outside forces to intervene. It is an international occasion of celebration but for some people here it is something they would move forward from without looking back rather than a victory to be celebrated and discussed.

But Liberia is coming up on the tenth anniversary of the end of their civil crisis, and since we have been reading and thinking and talking about that period of Liberian history (can it be history if it was within the lifetimes of most people I've met?) it is in the forefront of my mind. Walking down Old Main Road (road is such a generous word, actually...) I can find evidence of the conflict and the time elapsed in fallen-down abandoned buildings from which are growing jungles of grasses, palms, and paw-paw (papaya) trees. I told my host family last night that I think Liberians have some of the greatest potential of any country in the world because they have been able to move through hell on earth and find reconciliation  rebirth, and recovery. The paw-paws will be ripe in just a few months, and boys will go out with long sticks to poke them down from their clusters and eat them or sell them. From the shell of a ruined house, something new, different, fresh, and nurturing is growing. And I think that is one of the most beautiful, joyful things I have seen.

I can not imagine a more perfect place for me to be than right where I am right now...

Please Take Time

The shortest distance between two points is a straight line, but sometimes you don't know where one point is, or you haven't figured out the concept of distance yet, or the idea of 'straight' doesn't make sense for the world in which you find yourself. So finding that shortest distance, that smuggler's route, the backroad, takes a little time. Here in Liberia, if you want someone to slow down and be careful in any context (for instance, a driver going too fast on a terrible road in the dark in the rain), you say, "Please, take time." It's a simple idea, but the application can be complicated, especially for someone who struggles with impatience and control. This past week is a perfect example.

Last Sunday was Adoption Day, and in true Liberian fashion, it was a capital-E Event. All the host families sent at least on representative to Doe Palace to pick up their bouncing new baby Peace Corps Trainee. Sam Sampson, one of our Liberian training staff, served as the MC. There was supposed to be a cultural demonstration in the form of drumming and dancing that was rained out. All the Trainees were seated facing our new prospective parents and I didn't think I would be nervous, but I was pretty excited by the time the 3:00 ceremony actually started at 3:45 (Liberian time works much like Ghana time did and a lot like Navajo time, for those of you who read Tony Hillerman novels: not at all on the same scale as we are used to...).

My name was the third one called, and my new father came up to the front to give me a hug in a dapper grey suit coat with short sleeves over a white tank top. Once I joined him in the group of prospective parents, I gathered from context clues that he was a pastor at one of the (many, or as they say here, plenty) churches in the neighborhood. Since I was close to the beginning of the pack, I got to sit with a lovely smile on my face waiting for everyone else to be adopted and trying to make (awkward) conversation with my new father trying to find common ground. I was able to deduce that I have at least one younger sibling, a brother who was at that very moment celebrating his graduation from Kindergarten. Once the ceremony concluded, my host father showed me to his vehicle (a nice, late-model, extended-cab Nissan truck!) and helped me load my belongings in the back-most people had sent their stuff in advance since they were walking or catching a taxi to their new homes, but mine had stayed in a little pile under the carport and now that mystery was solved! We were also apparently providing rides to other Trainees and their new families, so the extended cab was packed, bush taxi style, with a crowd of people in all their lappa finery. 

Once we dropped everyone off at their homes, we headed to the Kindergarten graduation celebration, which was held at my new father's church. I really think it was an excuse for three more hours of church, and I got to sit up on the dias at the front as an honored guest/new daughter of one of the church leaders, so I had to at least pretend to pay attention. I got to meet my little sister, Abigail, who is 4, my brother Delwin, who is 17, and my mother, Winifred. The graduate, Royal, is 6 and going into first grade next year. After the graduation ceremony (and sermon, and collection), everyone came back to my new house for another sermon and a (surprise!) speech from the new American Peace Corps and a tasty and celebratory meal of joloff rice. I set up my bug hut and mattress while it was still light and was pleasantly surprised when the bulb hanging from my ceiling went on! I took my bucket bath and sat down with my family to watch part of some american movie about army soldiers training for war.

Reverend Roosevelt Dickson's house is more of a compound, actually. A duplex unit and a half-built two-story house are surrounded with a high cement wall entered through a (rust)red set of metal gates on which is scrawled "Be Aware of the Bad Dog." The yard is grassy, with a small paved area off to the side for laundry and kids' baths. One half of the duplex houses my family and the other is rented out to another Liberian who works for Save the Children, which has an office down the road. The front door opens into a living room with comfortable chairs and a shelving unit holding a tv/dvd set-up (my family has a generator that they run for a few hours every night). There are two bedrooms and a bathroom off the main room to the left, and a small, dark kitchen that opens onto a back area outside. Most cooking, food prep, and clean up are done out the back, where there is more light and space. There are also attentive animal friends waiting for scraps of food to fall from above. My family has a young cat, a very bedraggled duck-like creature, the advertised Bad Dog, his lady dog wife, and their three (5 week old?) puppies. The household consists of my Papay and Ma, Delwin, Royal, Abigail, and a 13-year-old who I think is my sister. In addition to the blood relatives, there is a small boy named Raj who is (I think) the son of the woman who comes to help cook and clean while my Ma is at school all day for teacher training. The noise and bustle of everyone getting ready feels like home in the best way...

Monday morning was an exercise in confusion, but at least I started it after a good night's sleep. My first breakfast was cream of wheat, hard boiled eggs, and pineapple, and I was not able to finish all of it. I really didn't want to go back home to my new family on monday evening after training, mostly because I was very unsure of my place in all the usual routines, or even what those routines should be. I got home and sat down with Delwin to have a little chat about things like how to flush the toilet (pour some water in the bowl from a barrel in the corner of the bathroom), get water for my bath and to put in my fiter for drinking ("Oh, I will fetch it for you!" "I really think you should show me, though." "Next week, next week I swear I will."), or participate in chores ("Ah! No, you do not need!" A battle I have yet to win). I also had the hilarious experience of trying to describe my favorite sport (ice hockey) to someone who has spent their whole life living right above the equator. He was with me through goalies and nets, through offensive and defensive players, through a small disc of rubber hit with sticks, but the expression on his face when I mentioned the thin sheet of ice that forms the playing surface or the special skates (shoes with...knives on the bottom?) was priceless. And I felt much better after figuring out some of the daily household routines. 

For our Liberian English class on tuesday we had to go to the market and purchase the ingredients for, and then cook over a coal pot, ground pea (peanut) soup. Our group, Tree Goats, did well with the purchasing and set up, but the stress of the previous days was getting to me, and a gentle rebuke from one of the training staff sent me into a frustrated, hysterical meltdown that took a while to subside because I kept getting frustrated that I hadn't stopped crying yet. I had taken so much pride in the fact that I was adjusting so well to (coming back home to) West Africa, hadn't been sick, hadn't been confused. And it took me aback to be confronted with the fact that though I have done this before, I am not immune to the ups and downs of culture shock, or above the stress of relocating to a new place and acclimating to a 100% new environment and people. The demands I placed on myself were perhaps too strict. And I needed to crash in order to realize that I could let go a little and ride the wave of new experiences. Our soup turned out quite delicious, as well, which helped.

On Saturday I made Delwin teach me to draw water (And it turns out that it comes from a well in the corner of the yard, hauled up in a five-gallon plastic can on a long rope. It was apparently very impressive that I was able to haul it up on the first try without help...), I asked my Ma to teach me to do laundry with a washboard and a bucket (my right ring finger knuckle will never be the same, I'm sure), and I requested a guided walk to the market so that I could orient myself and find my way around town more effectively. I can give directions to my house from the coal tar road (bend left on Old Road, go past the green church with the nice windows and no bend-bend for long time, then bend left and its on the left opposite CH Rennie hospital), and I feel much more settled into my new family, my new community, and in Liberia in general. I even know the shortcut (at the video club on Old Road, head up the hill behind the nice o-ma's house, walkabout through the grass up to the parking station behind the broken water treatment plant, then take Old Main Road up to the coal tar) to get to Doe Palace if I feel like walking home.

I think I've found my straight line, and learned to be patient with my family, the training program I'm in, and most of all myself. I am slowly adjusting to the pace of life here, and I have to remember to take time, and it will come as it is meant to come.

eidt: my new siblings!
edit 2: now with bonus host mother!

Delwin, listening to blues and jazz music last night

My Ma, Winifred, getting her hair braided by Munah, with Raj's help

Raj

Abigail

Royal