Hey Hey!

Hello from Banga!

Tiffany and I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving weekend with family and October is treating you well. 

I’m sorry we haven’t posted much in the last little while.  To be honest there hasn’t been much to post about.  Tiffany and I have definitely settled in well to our house (yes, we can now call it a house, not a home, but a house), and are fast approaching the two month point in our trip.  Much of our days consist of Tiffany getting up earlier than me to do work, then we spend the afternoon reading, playing cards and writing, and then an evening of dinner and maybe a TV show or two on our computers.  It’s been about a month since we last made our way down to Monrovia meaning our food supply is very short and we have become more creative in what we eat.  Cabbage has become a staple of ours since we started seeing it in the market.  We like to make cabbage rolls, and a poor man’s version of an already poor man’s borscht.  Being in seclusion like this without being in the city also makes one go a little crazy and Tiffany often has laughing fits brought on by nothing.  Often, we’ll be sitting outside when all of the sudden she starts to laugh and the more I ask her what she is laughing about the more I laugh and after a few minutes we are both laughing hysterically with stitches in our side and still have no idea what caused this fit.  Although it’s a little crazy, it’s one of the best parts of our day. 

Although Tiffany’s work may not be going exactly as planned, our time here hasn’t been completely in vain.  We have met and talked with many very interesting people.  Yesterday afternoon, Tiffany and I decided to take a motorbike into town to have a beer at our favourite drink shop where you can buy beer, Fanta, Coke and some household necessities like toilet paper and washing powder.  This place has become our favourite because they usually have a newspaper for us to read and also because of one woman who works there.  Being that we are usually their only customers, we often talk with her about her family and her life experiences.  She was very proud to tell us that her eldest daughter lived in the States and was practicing to become a nurse, and that one of her sons had applied for a scholarship that would take him to Canada.  Maybe it’s because we’re from Canada, but she told us how much she loved Canada and how great a country it is.  She said she also has other family who live in Ottawa.  After discussing this and finding out that she was 54 years old, (she looks about 40, much like many other people here who age very well.  One of our guards looks to be about my age but I recently found out that he is 39 years old with 5 children!) the conversation turned to some of the atrocities she experienced during the war here in Liberia.  She did spend much of the war in Ghana where many people fled, but she also witnessed some terrible things.  She told us of a time when she and her children were walking along the side of the road when a rebel soldier confronted the man who was walking directly in front of her and her family.  Without any reason or explanation, the soldier shot the man dead right in front of her children, thinking it was her husband.  It wasn’t, but obviously the intention was to instil a deep fear in her family.  She also spoke of how soldiers would ask people if they wanted a “short sleeve” or a “long sleeve,” which meant they would either chop off just their hand at the wrist or one’s arm just above the elbow, not even sparing babies or children.  It was really unbelievable to hear her stories as we sat in the same town where the rebels were based not long ago, and to see the resilience of the people to come back to the same place; as she said “there is no place like home.”  While she was telling me the story, I realized why religion is so important to people here.  After experiencing the atrocities they experienced it is no wonder that they need something to believe in beyond this life and to guide them.  It is one thing to hear about this on the news (if it makes it on the news) and another to hear it first hand, which makes it all the more real and instils a desire to help.  This is the same realization that Tiffany had when she spoke to the genocide widows in Rwanda.  Hopefully we will be able to share more stories as they come along.

On a lighter note, one interesting observation we had while drinking our beers was to understand how a rural gas station operates in Liberia.  Men sit under a V-shaped corrugated tin roof on a slap of cement surrounded by plastic barrels filled with gasoline, which they then siphon out with their mouths into industrial sized pickle jars in order to know the quantity of fuel they have.  Whenever a motorist arrives the men siphon the fuel with their mouth and a garden hose into the gas tank while spitting the excess fuel from their mouth back into the pickle jar so that they don’t waste any.  Often fuel runs out entirely in the town and everything comes to a standstill until the fuel truck arrives from Monrovia.  We are lucky that we are only 4 hours away from Monrovia with a decent road, as Voinjama (15 hours away on an impassable road during the rainy season) has been out of fuel for months.

While gasoline may be hard to come by at times and the dry season is apparently upon us (according to Liberians) the rain is still here in great supply.  Tonight it abruptly began down pouring with rain and as Tiffany made dinner, I ran around hauling buckets of water in and out of the house in my boxers trying to collect as much as possible.  We have a newfound appreciation of the amount of water we use.  We suspect that we gathered around 30 gallons of water (and could have collected double that if we had not run out of buckets) in 30 minutes time, giving us enough water for the next 5 days.

We are looking forward to this Sunday as we are planning to go back to Monrovia for three nights where we have decided to splurge on a pricey hotel room with air conditioning, hot showers, high speed wireless, espresso, satellite TV and an infinity pool all overlooking the ocean.  Yes it sounds expensive and yes it will be, but yes it is also worth it!  We figure we won’t spoil ourselves during the next six months very often so we deserve a little break from Gbarnga and the boredom.

To end this long post we thought we would update everyone on our tentative timeline.  Since this job has not been what Tiffany expected, she won’t be extending the contract past the end of February.  At that point we will make our way to Tanzania for two months where we plan to go on a safari, explore the area and lounge with drink in hand on the beaches of Zanzibar.  Although it will be getting into the rainy season there, we are hoping for warm and sunny afternoons and are excited to have something to look forward to.  This will bring our arrival into Canada at the end of April/beginning of May so we can help Mike and Roo celebrate their recent engagement and spend time with all of our friends and family while saving a bit of money for our own wedding! 

We will update again after our awesome trip to Monrovia and we hope all is well with all of you!

Happy Thanksgiving!!

October 10, 2010

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

 Kevin and I have even found a way to celebrate it here!  Last week we went into town and bought a bunch of groceries from the ladies at the market (and one guy who had the most delicious baguettes!)  We then came home and inquired about where we could get a chicken.  Jefferson, one of the security guards here, lives in the house with a ton of other families, right in front of us and they had chickens to sell, so we arranged to have one for Saturday.  Saturday rolled around and a woman came to our door and when we answered we were presented with the live chicken we were planning on eating that evening!  We then asked if they could kill and clean the chicken for us as we did not want to do it, and really don’t know how (and have no real desire to learn!)  We watched out of our window as a man next door took the chicken and amongst a great deal of squawking there was a swift swipe with a knife, and our dinner was dead.  A couple of hours later we got the chicken, which was in pieces with an egg and the liver and some orange ball things that we didn’t know what they were (we threw these out!)  We also made mashed potatoes (the potatoes are not the same as at home and are sweeter here, almost a mix between a yam and a potato but still white), squash, and a surprisingly good stuffing considering the lack of necessary spices!  So last night Kevy and I ate our delicious dinner, drank wine and said thank you to the dead chicken on our plate.  Oh and I don’t know who of those reading has eaten chicken that is truly local and who has been active but the meat was far less than those sold at home and it was much tougher, but good all the same.  This made us think once again about what hormones must be pumped into the food we eat to make it that big and tender! 

Also as I write this I am comfortably perched on our new living room furniture!!  We got two arm chairs, a small couch and a coffee table all made of bamboo, which is donned with foam cushions covered in striped neon green and white fabric with bright pink flowers all over it and writing that says star.  Weird I know.  We did not get to choose the fabric but it certainly adds colour to our place! 

Aside from this the week has been fairly dull.  It was payday here finally (though they forgot to add me to the payroll so I didn’t get paid yet for September but should soon) and the rest of the staff finally got paid for last month and we are now up to date with that which is a relief!  Everyone’s spirits are up and our dam construction project in Samay is complete and the Garmu dam will be complete by the end of this week, so progress is being made.  I am going into the field tomorrow to see some of our communities and I am looking forward to that.  I also attended a meeting on Friday with representatives from all of the agricultural focused organizations in Bong County where we update one another on our activities and offer suggestions, ask questions etc.  This meeting lasted 2.5 hours as everyone often got sidetracked into tense debates about how development should be done here, criticising some of the other’s approaches.  It is interesting to get to hear what people think here and compare that to what I was learning last year. 

Kevin and I also were given a big bunch of plantains by our cleaner Judy this week and our guard Joe gave us 4 coconuts.  We cracked some open and drank the juice until Kevy knocked over the glass we poured it into!  Oh and due to the crazy heat here, combined with Kevin’s broken beard trimmer, he shaved off his beard!!  It has been a long time since we have seen his face beardless!  He has also been helping Joe build a garden on the property where Joe is going to plant water greens and potato greens, so that has been a nice thing for him to do. 

Well that is basically it for our week!  I hope you all have a fantastic Thanksgiving, we will be thinking of you all!!

A Slow Week in Banga

We are reaching the end of the rainy season here in Liberia and if you ask a local, they’ll tell you that it won’t rain at all after October 15^th.  So we have been having no rain during the day, but a fair amount in the evenings, making sleeping a bit less sticky.  This past week has proven to be quite uneventful for both Tiffany and me.  Tiffany has been doing office work since her last foray into the field for the season’s first harvest and I have been reading a book that Tiffany recommended.  It’s called Emergency Sex and for anyone who has done international aid work or is interested in it, you have probably heard of and read the book.  This book was quite different from the others I have read since coming here, but I really enjoyed it.  Emergency Sex reveals the stories of three individuals who worked for the UN in several different countries during the 1990’s.  The tag line for the book is ‘A True Story from Hell on Earth’, which seems very indicative of the places they chose to work in.  The story starts in Cambodia in 1991 where they establish a democratic election, to Somalia in ’93 then onto Rwanda and Haiti in ’94 and then to Bosnia and Liberia.  The stories they tell of the situations they put themselves into are unbelievable.  Well worth the read for anyone interested in being blown away!  I’m sure Kelly could attest to that.

The other small point of interest is that Tiffany and I have purchased some living room furniture!  We are very excited about this and can’t wait to sit on something other than plastic lawn chairs.  We are getting a small couch, two arm chairs and a coffee table.  They’re a set, come with cushions, and are made out of bamboo with cushions on them.  We saw the guys working on them when we were walking into town a few days ago.  We haven’t gotten them yet, but they should be finished in the next day or two.  We haven’t really figured out how we are going to get them back to our place, but I’m sure we’ll work something out.  I’m pretty sure we paid a white man’s price, but we did bargain with them and got it for around what we were willing to spend. 

On Saturday we decided that we would go into town to a restaurant called Serengeti for lunch for a change of scenery.  We took motorbikes for the 10 minute drive there and found that we were the only customers.  We ate rice with kidney beans in a palm oil sauce with chunks of some fish and another meat (with think it might have been porcupine or some other small animal).  It was decent but we make better food at home and for cheaper so I’m not sure how often we will eat out up here.  Plus we were only gone for an hour, so basically it wasn’t really worth it.

Other than that, as I said things have been quite slow.  Tiffany and I played cards last night and whenever one of us lost, we had to take a small shot of Pastis.  Pastis is a very strong alcohol I believe is from France and is made, I think, from anise seed, so it tastes a lot like black liquorice.  Pastis is also super cheap at $2 US for a two sixer and you can buy it anywhere.  Needless to say, Tiffany drank a little too much and had a rough time getting up this morning.  Luckily for me, I slept in.

Oh yeah, as many of you know, I planned to grow out my hair and beard.  Unfortunately that idea came to a quick end when I realized how hot I already was.  So I asked Tiffany to give me haircut with my beard trimmer.  Regrettably, the trimmer died mid cut and she had to complete the rest with a pair of children’s scissors.  I now have no beard trimmer and a haircut that looks like it was done by a blind man.

We hope all is well with everyone at home and that you all have a great Thanksgiving!

Happy October!

October 1, 2010

Hello everyone, it is Tiffany again!  It is now the beginning of October and we have been here over a month now.  This week I was able to go back into the field again for the first ever rice harvest in Samay for the Swamp Rehabilitation Programme here in Liberia.

On Thursday, Lamine and I headed out early to the site via his dirt bike, but luckily we ran into the FAO and WFP people in their Land Cruiser and I was able to ride the remaining hour and a half ride to the site much more comfortably, especially given the rain and copious amounts of mud everywhere.  The road was the same muddy and potholed road I had been on before, so getting stuck in the mud was not unexpected, but we got out just fine after a few tries through.  Eventually we arrived in the community of Samay, which is fairly small, comprised mainly of small mud-brick houses with dried palm leaves as roofs. 

The community all gathered under a large covered area along with myself, Lamine, and Richmond our Agricultural Technician, as well as representatives from FAO, WFP, the Minister of Gender and Equality, the Ministry of Agriculture, and other government members.  After many loooong speeches (people here love to talk and talk and talk) the women danced, sang and played music on these strange looking hollowed out wood contraptions.  We then walked down to the dam VIA constructed, which was just completed this week and then walked out into the rice swamps (along bunds, which are raised pathways).  The whole swamp is 16 hectares and about 2 hectares was ready for harvest.  They lined many of the women and all of us guests along the bunds and gave us a little knife where all at once we pronounced the rice ready for harvest, cut through the tape and then started cutting the rice stalks as a symbolic gesture of the harvest.  We cut quite a few stalks for about 20 minutes and took pictures etc.  It was a fantastic experience to get to see the first ever harvest of this programme and to see how excited all of the women and community members are to harvest and sell their rice.  The community is looking to expand their swamp to the next community and I could really tell they are extremely hard working and excited about the future prospects for development.  After we walked back up to the community and ate some rice and hot pepper sauce with a small piece of mystery meat on top that the ladies had prepared for us.  It was super spicy but actually quite good.  The day was really rewarding and I came home with a rice stalk as a souvenir for Kevy to see.

Today we walked into town and got more produce as well as some strange bottle of alcohol that smells like black liquorice or sambuca called Patis, some big bottles of Club beer and two bottles of wine.  Our evenings can be quite dull so we plan to spread that out over the next little while.  We also arranged to have some couches made for us, which are partially completed and we will have them by Tuesday.  This will be really nice as it will finally mean we have somewhere comfortable to sit aside from our bed (which really is not comfortable at all!)  It is getting extremely hot and while I am writing this Kevin is lying on a towel on the concrete trying to cool down after our 2 hour walk to and from town (while we listen to the e-book of Harry Potter of course!)  We have also been doing afternoon excersizes in our living room, running laps of our small house, as well as I have been doing a lot of yoga.  We plan on going back into town tomorrow for lunch at Serengeti, a Liberian restaurant that the guards suggested we try.  Other than that things are going well and one month is over, plus it felt like this week flew by.   We hope everyone is doing well and thanks to those who sent us messages as it is really nice to hear from people back at home!

Lots of Love,