Stuck in N'Zerekore... again

Here I am again… stuck in N’Zerekore. The last time this happened it took me 2.5 weeks to get out.

I packed two nights ago and checked in with John Welwolo the next morning in the office to be sure that the flight was still on. He got a radio message at 10AM saying that the flight was a go and to get yourselves to the airport. A line of white SUVs with huge radio antennae on the front took off down the one-lane dirt road to the N’Zerekore “airport”…

… just to get there, weigh our bags, get laminated blue pieces of construction paper that were called boarding passes… and then get sent home. Whoops. The line of white SUVs with huge radio antennae went right back down the road.

Today, I was about to take a sip of my morning instant coffee with powdered milk when John knocked on the door and said that I needed to be at the airport at 9AM. It was 8:53. Excellent. No coffee for me.

Threw my stuff back in the bag and ran to the aiport. Got the boarding pass. Gave them my bag. And the plane came. Circled... and circled... and circled.... and flew off. They said come back tomorrow.

And the line of white SUVs with huge white antennaes went back to N'Zerekore.

This is getting really frustrating. Puke on the World Food Programme. I really wanted to go home today.

My Take on West Africa...

... from the car window of the IRC Landrover in a village outside of N'Zerekore.

TP

This morning, as I wandered through our N'Zerekore field office, three people responded to my question, "Do you know where I can find a roll of toilet paper?" with "What are you going to use it for?" Uhhhhhh... do they REALLY want me to answer that question? It almost parallels my high school experience when clueless Dawn Stephenson peered in through the crack in the bathroom stall door to ask, "Jennifer, what are you doing in there?"

And I also got to explain to my housekeeper what a carrot is too: Orange... grows in the ground... eaten by cartoon rabbits... uhhhh.... ??

I really do wonder sometimes if I am speaking English or not.

Grocery Stores and Colonization

It’s funny how you can see who colonized which countries or who has the greatest ties to a country through their grocery stores. They say that Sierra Leone is very British, Guinea is very French, and Liberia is definitely oh-so-American... it was the most exciting shopping experience I've had in a long time. So I'm now stocked up on America via Monrovia. I’m attempting to get back to Guinea with:

• 4 bottles of Kraft BBQ sauce
• a jar of Vlastic sweet pickles
• 2 boxes of Fruity Pebbles
• 1 box of Aunt Jamima pancake mix
• A-1 steak sauce
• Ranch dressing
• Wishbone Italian dressing
• 4 containers of Folgers Hazelnut coffee.
  

Anyone inspecting my suitcase is going to be pretty perplexed, but I’m a happy camper… as long as I can get on the plane with this stuff... keeping my fingers crossed.

Lovin' Liberia

I'm lovin' Liberia so far [everyone thinks I'm being sarcastic when I say that, but I'm not]. Liberia is a country on the rise... there is a spirit of optimism here and a hope that the future is going to be better. There are signs in front of dilapidated buildings saying "Future Home of the Ministry of ____". There are plans being made here. The people walking around don't look like skeletons. I can't say any of those things about Guinea right now. [Picture to the right is the future home of the Ministry of Defense -- also currently home to hundreds of displaced squatters....Could you imagine squatters taking over the Pentagon? Funny thought there!]

The UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) is everywhere here... I suppose I should have expected that since this is the UN's largest peacekeeping force ever. I think that half of the vehicles in Monrovia have UN painted on the side, and everything from roads to supermarkets have been named after the UN. And, much to my surprise, they also have a gym near here with YOGA classes... and salsa classes... so I did yoga with the UNMIL force on Thursday. It was the first yoga class I have ever been to with more men than women.

I'm staying in the Country Director's house which has leather sofas, marble floors, about 20 air conditioning units and no hot water heater. Talk about bad planning!! So I boil my water every night and put it in the bucket in the bathroom and dump it over my head.

While I'm here, I'm working with Dorothy, an enormous and motherly woman from Zimbabwe who is the program manager of the $6 million IRC Liberia/Sierra Leone CYCLE project (Combating Youth and Child Labor through Education). I'm helping her prepare for a US Dept. of Labor audit this coming week (eeeeek!!)... It's a huge project... exactly what I'm interested in... and I'm excited that I've had the chance to work here.

Now, to quickly explain the top photo of me (looking god-awful!) and the photo to the left: They were taken on the top of what used to be a huge and very expensive hotel in downtown Monrovia, but now is home to thousands of squatters -- displaced people from the conflict. The driver and I climbed the 10ish flights of stairs to the top of the hotel seeing the children playing soccer in the halls of the hotel... laundry hanging... no electricity... a market on floor #3... a woman cooking and selling food on floor #6... and the best view of Monrovia from the top.

Downtown Monrovia