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!