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