"Nothing is easy in Liberia"

A familiar saying here in Liberia is, "It not easy-o"... just stating that nothing is easy here... Things that should go smoothly, rarely do. Things that take a few minutes at home, end up taking half of your day here. Let me just give you a few recent examples from this week:

1. Six weeks ago I went down to the airline office to buy my tickets for my vacation that I'm taking next week. I booked all four flights and paid for them... only to find that when I went to confirm the flights yesterday, I had none. No worries, as of today, I am on three of the four flights... for some reason I am on a waiting list for the final flight, but I'm not too worried about that since it is the flight back to Monrovia!

2. Driving to town to confirm those flights, my first turn is a left onto a small bypass. There is a pickup truck coming off of that bypass wanting to turn left onto the road I am on. Instead of yielding to me to turn left, he decides to just keep pulling out, and out and out... where soon there is barely enough room for me to take my turn left around him. As I am trying to squeeze by him, he is looking at me like I am the one who is in the wrong. I continue driving into town, which in itself is an adventure, with little to no rules for driving, much less people dodging in and out of traffic. My mission that morning was to find a store that could make a copy of our house key... since we have six people and three keys. Sounds easy, right? I go to the first store which advertises key copies on the window. I ask the nice man behind the counter if he can make a copy of my key, but he doesn't have the right kind of blank key to cut. So off to store number two, to find the same story there. Stores three, four and five... same story. So I decide to give up on the idea since I was running out of time and the vehicle was needing to get back to the office for the next person to use. As I was driving up to store number three, there was one parking spot on the right open... one that would need parallel parking. So as I waited for the truck to pull out and completely block all traffic as he turned around, I had made sure that my blinker was on. (I have learned the hard way to always use your blinker... even AFTER you turn the corner, or you may be pulled over for wreckless driving! LOL) So my blinker is on and I pull ahead to do my parallel park, to find that a taxi is right on my rear end, BLARING his horn, ticked off that I would even THINK about reversing at a time like this. Well, this is the only parking spot in the next 5 blocks, I am not giving this one up. So I sit and wait. And he continues to honk. I put the car in reverse, waiting patiently. Finally he figures out that I am not going to go forward, and backs up enough for me to do my parallel parking. As I park, I look to my left and he is stopped right next to me, looking at me as if waiting for an explanation. Tempted to say "this is what they call parallel parking. Try it sometime!" Instead I rolled down my window and said, "My man, my signal light was on." The blank stare in return told me that my explanation meant NOTHING to him, and off he drove.

3. Last weekend we decided to make the 2 hour drive up to Robertsport for a day of surfing. Corruption alway has been big in Liberia, but President Sirleaf has been working pretty hard at stopping it, especially in the LNP (Liberian National Police). We were on our way back to Monrovia, driving through a checkpoint that we have passed through hundreds of times, when the officer signals me to stop. I stop, take a deep breath and roll down the window.

"Afternoon Officer."

"Afternoon Ma. Do you have anything for me today?"

Deep breath by me.

"No sir, I don't."

Blank stare.

Looks in the car at all my passengers.

A hesitated "ok." he says and waves me through.

A similar thing happened just the other day after I brought someone to the airport. Usually I am driving our SP vehicle which has license plates with our organization on it. As soon as the police see it is a NGO, they wave us through. This particular day I was driving one of our rental cars, which license plate indicates a personal car. Any other time I pass through no problem. This time, I get signalled to pull over. I pull over to the right and wait for the imenant request. "Ma... it is cold out today. You have tea for me right?" I just looked at him and said "Not today sir."

That is just the tip of the iceburg of regular occurances over here... many times people around me will laugh and say "wow you get excited about the little things, don't you!" and I reply, "YES!" With that being said, most days its the little things that make my day, but at the same time, its the little things that can be so frustrating. So, I'm leaving for a week of much needed vacation this weekend to Paris! I'm praying for rest, fun and the hottest showers imagineable! :)

An Ordinary Sight

This is a very normal sight to see in our house, especially at night... all of us in the living room with our computers on our laps. Usually the internet at the office is so slow that we have little to no connectivity, and it is much "faster" at our house at night with only 6 of us connected instead of 60! Sometimes I wonder if we had a fast internet speed, if we would be on our computers less because we wouldn't waste so much time waiting for pages to open? I don't think that is a question I will have answered in Liberia unfortunately. But I am very thankful for the access that we do have on a regular basis!

This is what Liberian's call "Homework." Little thistles that stick to all of your clothes when you walk through longer grass... and you spend a LOT of time at home picking them out of your clothes!

This is not an ordinary sight! The other night we were sitting around with our computers (see above) playing music which led Emily and I to line dancing. It was great! Makes me miss wedding dances back home! We decided we need to have a line dancing party... so I better learn more than what I know now!

Making our mark

Most times as you drive down the bumpy dirt roads and look at the houses you pass, you see different paintings or patterns that the house owner will paint on his house. This past year, since we started working in the remote area of Bokomu, we found a new painting we had never seen before... a picture of our SP chopper, which is the only "vehicle" these Liberians see, since they are so remote and have no road that accesses their district! So in this particular way, we are making our "mark!"

Filter Drop

One of the things I love most about my job is that every day is different. I could be in the office one day, driving a team up country to show our projects the next, or photographing one of our 35 projects! This past Tuesday I joined the Water and Sanitation (WATSAN) team on a "Filter Drop" with the helicopter, sling loading 14 water filters into a village with no road access. The village is located on the top of a hill, surrounded by swamp land, with no roads and only small foot paths. With no real logical way to carry 14 heavy filters in, we used our SP Chopper to do the job in just a couple hours.

All of our supplies were on the soccer field ready to be packed in the nets.

Situating the filters on one of our four nets. Each filter weighs 300 lbs empty!

Picking up the first load

Off they go to provide an entire village with clean drinking water!

Usually when we do sling loading, the chopper has a good 20-30 minute turn around time, which lets the team on the ground have enough time to get the next load ready. This time, the village we were dropping in was a THREE MINUTE flight! So they had to be on the ball because Dan was back ready for the next load in 6 short minutes!

Making sure the load is ready to go

Incoming...

Ben, our Water and Sanitation Coordinator in Foya, watches his water filters arrive.

Quickly trying to move the filters off of the landing site before the next load arrived... Ben told me to go ahead and move this one... all 300 pounds of it... Yah it didn't go too far!

Once the filters are in the homes, they need to be leveled and installed with the proper medium.

This woman was so happy for the filters, she sang and danced the whole time we were there. She also took the initiative in her village to build a church! I love the Ellen poster in the back... Featuring our President, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the first female President/ruler in Africa.

Once the filters had arrived safely on the landing pad, they needed to be moved into the village and into each house. Both dolly's we had broke in the rush to get the filters off the landing pad, so the guys rigged up a "stretcher" to carry these heavy filters into the village.

Flying back to Monrovia, dodging quite a few rain showers. As long as you can see over the next ridge you are ok! :) Gotta love rainy season flying.

Just goofing around in the back of the chopper. I think we were laughing so hard that Dan (pilot) could hear us through his helmet in the front! He turned around to see what all the noise was about... and this is what he found!

Taya had her camera and took a few pics of me at work.

Yekepa 09!

Since everyone works non-stop, we figured it would be good to get all the girls to go away for a weekend trip- this time to Yekepa since most of them had never been there! So we loaded up two landcruisers with ten women and off we went!

Of course it wouldn't be a trip to ABC without having a snake killed... here is a black cobra, about 6 feet long that was killed in the generator house.

We took the ladies to all the "hot" spots of Yekepa.. one being the old train station... here are all the SP ladies, just missing two!

Hiking on the mountain.. in the clouds.

There is our landcruiser up on the left.. SO beautiful up there!

I think I need to wear a different shirt... I am realizing that I wear this one a lot!

Back at the house we all pitched in to make my famous pizza!

Here it is!

ABC Farm

Ladies picking rice to transplant. I love the vivid green color.

We were on our way to see a newly found waterfall, but with all the rain the bridge was washed away... next time!

No worries, we got out with no problem. These vehicles are amazing!

Monkey nuts!

So this is one of my favorite fruits in Liberia... Monkey Nuts. Or Litchi if you prefer. Just little red furry balls of goodness!


You pierce the skin and peel it away to find a large white grape like fruit, with a large pit in the middle. Pop it in your mouth and grind away the fruit and spit out the pit. It can be a bit sticky, but oh so good! Sometimes when we are traveling up country we will buy a whole bag off the side of the road and just dig in!

Great friends, Good times

I was privalaged to have two great friends of mine out here to teach VBS for 7 weeks! Alison and Lisa definitely roughed it by serving and teaching deep into the bush each week, Monday-Friday. SInce the area they were working in has no road access, they were flown in and out by our SP helicopter. They experienced some deep cultural issues and darkness, but also were able to see over forty children enter into the family of God!

Alison and I on our beach the day before she left... one ONE sunny day we had all seven weeks!

Hanging out with the kids...

Using the handpump that SP had installed for clean water.

Once their rice is harvested, it needs to be beated and sifted... I tried my hand at sifting it but I didn't have the right rhythm!

Typically when you go to these villages, you have a following of 20 kids watching your every move. During the first week of VBS I went in with the girls. As they were preparing for the first session, I was trying to keep the kids away from them... So I attempted to teach 100 kids how to play duck duck goose in a language they didn't understand! It basically ended up being kids chasing each other around the circle... but it kept them entertained for a while!

We took a guitar into the bush for a week, the kids liked to sit around and listen to the strumming.

My buddy Felix.

This little guy would come and sit on our laps and sleep- anytime of the day! So cute.

Rice and Sauce time... our one meal a day besides our oatmeal packet at breakfast.

Hanging out at our bonfire on the beach, back in Monrovia.

We met this older lady in Gbarngay who was telling us her story about how she knows President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and had helped her out of jail back in the 70's.

I was finally able to see the little baby I had named after my dad- 7 months later, here is Dean!

We finally had a non-rainy night on a weekend in Monrovia, so we celebrated with a bonfire on the beach!

Taytay and I

We had a great visit with MaryLou Fisher, our SP health expert... we had been talking and learned that she grew up in LeMars! Then I had gone to the grocery store and actually found Wells Blue Bunny drumsticks... so to celebrate 4th of July, we splurged and treated everyone to our Wells Blue Bunny treats! She was so excited.... at $12 a box!

Our ride back to Monrovia, loading up the chopper.

Felix and I hauling our stuff to the landing sight to load up the chopper.

The hard working VBS team!

I got home and a guy had this chimp, asking if I wanted to buy him.

The ladies on their way into the bush for the week.

Setting up our little portable water filter for the week.

Brushing my teeth in the bush. No sinks here!

This is our shower stall

Our Latrine, freshly painted.

Alison praying with the new believers in Morequaleh!

260+ kids stuffed into this church. And all sitting still and quiet.

Lisa and Al praying with the new believers in Gbarngay.

Scars on a little two year old girl from the bush society.

Their sins are nailed on the cross and covered with the blood of Christ!

These kids have never had the experience to color a picture... so coloring time was a highlight!

Thanks Lisa and Al for sacrificing your precious summer to spread the Good News in Bokamu! We miss you around here!