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,