Puddles

Yesterday was Sunday, we spent the morning eating breakfast, then having church at home. I led some songs ont he guitar, and we read from the bible and prayed. Later in the day Kathleen and I decided to walk up to the Catholic church, which is up the road from the house, on top of a hill. They get a great breeze there, and you can look over the neighborhood.
The roads here are dirt, except for the main highway, and some main roads downtown. Other than that, dirt, or in some cases, mud. The mud/dirt here is red. And slimy. I was wearing my red shorts and black tanktop. Perhaps not the greatest outfit to be walking around in on a Sunday afternoon, where every one else is dressed up nicely for church (I know, I am a slovenly Canadian) Anyhow, that is sort of beside the point. As we walked down, we decided to bypass the VP's house, as we didn't want to walk past all the security who would recognize Kathleen, and me in my red shorts and all. The road we took, happened to have a very large puddle, one that took up the entire road. I am wearing my handy dandy flip flops. We ask a lady standing nearby, she says, "walk on the wall", so we climb up on the fence and balance our way across to the other side. (I was glad for my outfit by this point and quite happy I was not wearing a dress) Where in your neighborhood would you have to walk on a fence to walk down the road. Then we decided to take a trail back to the main road. We had to ask for directions twice. A girl graciously showed us the way back to the road. Things here are always changing, new buildings going up, puddles emerging from no where, people here are very flexible, they just find a new path, or a different way around. You got to be inventive sometimes. I admire that. Here sometimes trails lead right through peoples front yards. I always feel a bit guilty walking through peoples yards, but, thats just what you do here.
We eventually made it to the church, where we sat on the stairs and enjoyed the view and the breeze. One of the students (I assume studying to become a priest) came over and chatted with us. It was nice.

Thoughts and Observations

June 22, 2006

Interesting observations of the day.
Being yelled at as driving by in car “Hey Baby”, not so unsusual, the unusual part, guy yelling it is a 50 some year old police officer. I cannot imagine this happeniing in Canada. How do you respect the law when they are disrespecting you.
Man directing traffic....waving through traffic using his stop signs. seems a little confusing.
Irritation: open man holes on the highway. Just unsafe.



Coconut Plantation
Finally we have made it to our destination. To do interviews at Cocnut Plantation (remember the place with no coconuts or any sort of plantation) Today was our second day of interviewing, Tuesday we did 3 interviews which took maybe 2 hours. Today we did four
which from 9:30 to noon. By the end I was exhausted. It doesn’t seem like much, and it probably doesn’t help that I was sick yesterday. We go to the Group of 77 first, on Newport St. and pick up Henry, one of the counsellors, then we drive down the road to the Coconut Plantation. Coming down the road, we see a man being pushed in wheel chair down the road off to hustle for the day (beg) He is a man we are to be interviewing. Henry gets out and stops him, asks him if he remembers that we were coming to talk to him today. I guess he figured we took to long in coming and so was going to take off. We drive up and park the car next to some “houses” put together shacks with whatever there is available, there is garbage everywhere, broken glass. Children start to come and see who the white lady’s are in the car. They wave and I say hello. The man parks his wheel charir.We want to go to his house to do the interview. The chair won’t fit, so he gets down from the chair, and using his flip flops on his hands he crawls, leading us to his house. Through the garbage and glass...this is where he lives. Kathleen and Henry both ask if he wants help, His friend says, “he is a strong man”. We walk down a narrow passage, different smells assail my nostrils..food cooking, body odour, the smell of salt from the beach and a plethura of other aromas which I can’t necissarily distinguish, nor do I really want to dwell on. We go to the end, the ocean is just down the bank from the house. We go inside, it is very tight, and once insde very dark as there are no widows, and of course no lights. There is a mattress on the ground, one foamy propped up against a wall, we sit on small wooden bench. The floor is dirt, or perhaps it was cement. The whole room is about 10 feet square. There are four or five of them who sleep there. The mans legs are withered. From what I understood, he believes he was witched as a child, and got sick from some food he ate causing what appears to be polio, but he says is not.
This picture is not an isolated one. It is very common. I try to imagine what it would be like to live in a shack right on the beach with no prospects in my future but to beg from passing strangers. It is not a pleasant contemplation.

Gas and Chickens

Today has been an interesting day. Monday. The day we all dread,
going back to work. This was my day.
7:55 Kathleen yelling...Rebecca get up its 8 o'clock.
Rebecca moans, gets out of bed, gets dressed for breakfast. You never
know who will be dropping by, even at this hour in the morning, so
showing up for breakfast in my jammys is not an option.
8:05 eating my cream of wheat with a little brown sugar.
8:15 group devotions with Kathleen, James, Morris (the children's
tutor) and Martha ( the housekeeper) ; (should have been at 8 but
apparently we all slept in)
8:30 go back to my room and get dressed in some going out clothes,
spent some time meditating about life and my role here and drink my
coffee
9:00ish leave for down town. Part way down the road realize empty
light is on. Decide to pull off at earliest convenience. Pull off at
small filling station. Pull up. They say, only fuel. I ask, no gas?
No gas, only fuel (I guess they call diesel "fuel" and gas "gas")
stop at next filling station, no gas. Drive for about 15 more
minutes...no gas. They have all run out of gas apparently. How can a
gas station run out of gas....it seems ridiculous to me, but not so
surprising. Finally, about 10 more miles down the road we pull into a
gas station. They have gas but are charging 35 more cents per gallon,
even though the price is supposed to be 3 dollars US. We are on empty
and don't have a lot of choice. Last time I was here, people were
selling gas out of 1 gallon glass jars. One place, their pump was
broken, so the man was siphoning the gas with his mouth. Apparently
selling gas out of jars is illegal, but you still see people doing
it. Somehow, this just doesn't seem safe.
So we are continuing our journey into town. Traffic is moving at a
snails pace and we are stuck in it for about 30 minutes. I find out
later from a man that it was because it was raining so hard earlier
in the morning. I mean, really who wants to drive in the torrential
rain. I swear, gnomes have been digging more potholes into the road.
I think today there was more than on Friday, perhaps not, maybe they
are just procreating. Oh, and of course, then there is a man on the
highway, set up with big cement blocks, blocking off one lane,
filling in holes....he has no proper signage or anything. That is an
accident waiting to happen.
When we reach our turn off, we hear sirens. The vice-president is on
his way to work. All the vehicals stop to let his convoy of about 5
vehicles through. (sirens mean someone important is coming through
and you better get off the road) We continue. When we reach our
destination, I wait out with the car, and Kathleen goes in to see
about us going and doing some interviews with potential candidates
for resettlement. As it turns out, this was not a good day, because
we were unable to go and do our interviews. The VPs wife was coming
for a special thanksgiving service. We turn around and go home. I did
enjoy visiting with the children out at the car though. I ask them
their age and names...there is apparently 200 children that go to
school at this compound, 40 of them are residents, others come from
the neighborhood. The children in residence,some of them have parents
that they live with at the compound, some have been seperated from
their parents during the war. I am looking forward to going back and
hopefully getting to know some of these kids and families. We will
return for 9am tomorrow to start our interviewing. Yay.
We get home at 12:30, just in time for lunch. Potato greens and rice,
with boney (dried fish) and some beef which the kids wouldn't eat
because they said it was gone off. I ate it, hopefully there will be
no ill effects tomorrow. I had a really yummy hot pepper with mine.
mmmm.
This afternoon I did some email. This was interrupted by the
chickens. They had escaped. I planted parsley two days ago, and in
fear of them scratching up my seed, I went out and rounded them up. A
while later, chickens out again. Apparently there is a hole in the
coup. The kids round them up this time. Josh my nephew did a patch
job on the whole. Apparently there is a second hole. I think they are
still out there putting naughty chickens back in their coop. The big
problem are the goats. While you are trying to get chickens back in,
goats manage to escape. They can run faster than the chickens. I
better go out and see if my auntly help is needed. I'll admit, I
don't feel like I have accomplished too much today.
Thanks be to God that tomorrow is a new day.

Week One WeighIn

June 15, 2006

Wow, so this is my one week anniversiary since arriving. I am adjusted and sleeping in again, just the way I like it. This morning at 7:30 I was laying in bed, still half asleep when I was rudely jolted into full consiousness by my nephew Josh who took it upon himself to wake me. He had a balloon filled with air and was letting it out slowly through a thin hole...creating a very high pitched screech. Yeah, I am not a morning person, I don’t know why....I claim it is genetic (yes, a feeble excuse)
So, I am sure everyone is dying to know what I have been up to. It has been a bit of a different week. Last Saturday night we hosted 15 peope (13 of them engineers) from the US and Canada who were over here working on a Library/school project for a mission headed up by a friend of Kathleen and James (my sister and brother-in-law). They were only here for a week. We made some great fish and seafood chowder (well Kathleen did) Joy and I made chocolate cake and biscuits. Mmm. I had a nice visit with a girl from New York City who is a Engineer Student.
Monday was my first day of official “work”. I met with Kathleen and she gave me my job description. I have a few projects.
1. Interviewing disabled people to assess whether some of them can be resettled, and what their needs are.
2. Develop and teach a conversational english class...to be held twice weekly. I am relying on a lot of help from Kathleen on this one. (yes, this scares me a bit....the teaching, not getting help from my sister...can I do it? )
3. With any free time, work to organize and begin cateloguing books...there will be lots more coming when we recieve the container we are shipping on June 24th
4. Starting up or working along side another person doing a weekly kids bible club. This should be a lot of fun, and definately something I have had a little more experience with. I always worry though, about being able to communicate well with the kids, and of course, if they will like me. I know I am silly!!

So that is my stuff. I will be taking one step at a time. I need lots of prayer and help from God to be able to do this all. I think it will be quite a challenge.

Tuesday I went with Kathleen downtown to where I will be going to interview people. The first place is called the Group of 77. There are two buildings when you drive in the gate. One is for administration and training, the other is where all the people live and they have a little school for the children. There are 130 people living at this facility, all with physical disablilities. I met two children, Boima and Patience...Boima jerks all over, but has never been diagnosed...I think he is perhaps 9. Patience apparently doesn’t speak. I don’t know if anyone knows why. They were very cute. There are adults there as well, missing limbs, or in wheelchairs. The needs in this place are so many, but it was encouraging to see that they have a little room set up as a clinic with a nurse, and one or two people that are counsellors on staff. Words don’t do justice, so I will have to take some photos for next time.
After leaving there we drove down to the very end of the road, practically on the beach. I thought we were going to a place called Coconut Grove and was thinking, are we lost? People all standing around staring at us in our car, very obviously out of place. Yep...this was the Coconut Grove...not so much of a grove really, but more of a shanty town. All these shacks, occupied by disabled people and their family, living on the edge of the beach, with garbage everywhere, everything is sand. Lots of children in rags. We went and visited with one lady who has withered legs...she gets around by walking on her hands and feet. These are the people we need to be helping. Can you imagine being in a wheelchair and trying to wheel home through the sand....not easy.

Wednesday I went with Kathleen to her Literacy classes. She teaches two, one for adults who can’t read, and one for teachers. It was nice to see what it is all about and to meet her students. In the evening we hosted a reception for two diplomats from the Canadian Embassy in Ivory Coast and maybe 8 Liberian leaders from different areas...like a pastor, a business men, several government type people. Yeah, it was a bit different for me, never having met a diplomat before and here they were in our home. I spent most of my time with the children and in the kitchen. I felt a little underdressed for the occasion and did not want to offend anyone. Socially I always feel awkward here, I am afraid I don't know all the rules and will end up saying the wrong thing, or wearing the wrong type of clothes. I guess I really just need to get over myself.

Today I completed a newsletter for Grassroots Ministry (the mission I am with here) and I started working on my Anatomy and Physiology. Yay. Finally. I am such a bad procrastinator. Yep, studying sudoriferous glands and the such. Good times.

Sorry this is so long. I feel like my blog will become more interesting though, I promise, I know I know, I think I have said that before.
It is sort of funny, when I see men here that I knew before, we greet each other, the usual nicities. But when I see women (this has happened several times) they tell me, “your big, you put on weight” I say, yeah I know, I went back to Canada and got fat. I take it as a compliment...really how else would I want to take it. You know, the big booty is popular in this country. I did tell James and Kathleen though, if I go back to Canada weighing more than when I came, I will not be impressed. I feel like all I have done since coming is eat. I’ll keep you updated...I need a measuring tape :) BEC

Arrival

June 9th, 2006, 3:05pm Liberia

Imagine my surprise. I was on the last leg of my flight, from Senegal
to Monrovia, trying to catch a little shut eye, when I looked up, and
there was the President, Madame Sirleaf-Johnson. She was on my
flight, and took a walk around the plane to say hello to the people.
My impression was that she seemed very caring and genuine. Also on my
flight, half a plane full of Swedish UN soldiers. The one I sat next
too, not so chatty, and didn’t say one word to me. Maybe he was tired
too.
As I walked off the plane the warmth and humidity hit me. It was
raining lightly as I walked into the airport. The airport is smaller
I think than the one in Nanaimo....jammed packed with all the people
from the Boeing 747...all jostling and trying to get their luggage
from the one conveyer belt. Amazingly within about 10 minutes I had
gotten my luggage and gone through customs and baggage check...they
didn’t even open my bags. I got outside...no James or Kathleen. I
wandered down the way, I had met a girl on the flight, and she stuck
with me and got her driver toput my bags in their vehical so as I
would not be hastled by all the people milling around. About 10
minutes later James and all the kids showed up. Driving down the road
many things are familiar. The lush green country side with palm
trees, dirt roads veering off the highway, little gas stations, where
they sell gas out of glass jars, people walking down the highway
waiting for taxi, taxis with odd sayings on them. You can tell that
things here are changing though, lots of construction going on as
people are moving back into the country, even the airport with its
crush of people seemed more organized. I have my passport stamped for
15 days before I have to report to the immigration office, despite
the fact that I have a one-year visa from the embassy in Washington DC.
When I got to the house, Kathleen was here to greet us, she had just
gotten home from teaching her literacy class. The kids painted me a
welcome sign, and then of course I had to meet all the animals, the 4
goats, countless chickens (maybe 20), their new kitten who appears to
be half-starved, their old cat Whiskers and new pet monkey that was a
gift, and two dogs. Let me tell you, I was not too pleased about the
rooster who jolted me out of my sleep this morning at 3:50 am....what
a time to wake up.
Joy and I (my 10 year old neice) share a bed. The kitten slept in our
room and was making weird noises this morning, it sounded like it was
hissing so I lay there in the dark imagining that some creature had
got into the bedroom, like a snake. I tried to find the flashlight
several times without any luck, and then tried using my indiglo watch
to see what the noise was all about. Eventually at about 5, I woke
Joy up to find the flashlight, I think the kitten was just lonely and
needed some TLC. Right now Kathleen is at class teaching again, James
is outside working on a carpentry project, and I am trying to stay
awake so that I can sleep tonight. I still find it hard to believe I
will be here for the next six and a half months, I am curious to see
what the time will bring.

Airports continued

June 8, 2006, 5:25am London Time
I have made it from the outer purgatory of the airport and into the
passport control, departure gate heaven. It is like walking from
night into day. It smells good, there is nice music playing,
everything is bright and shiney. Yesterday as I waited in the airport
I did not think I could make it, at one point, I considered catching
a plane back home, just to get out of the stinking airport. I was so
tired. I looked into getting a hotel room, but couldn’t with the 55
pound price tag. I phoned a few bed and breakfasts, but they weren’t
much better at 45 pounds a night. So I decided to perservere. I
checked my two big bags for a small price into storage, so I didn’t
have to lug it around and proceded to attempt sleeping on my handbag
and pillow in a chair. I didn’t actually sleep at all. I am not even
sure how many hours I have been awake at this point. At one point I
went to the bathroom and threw up... I think it was the salad on the
airplane. Its at times like these when I wonder, God, what is going
on. I did feel better though after my throwing up, and then ended up
meeting two ladies from the US who I spent most of the evening
talking with, one a young single mothher who had missed her flight
and another who was travelling in eastern europe. I was amazed at the
number of people spending the night in the airport....all sprawled
out on benches and chairs. I think those two ladies were my saving
grace, as they made the 15 hours or so go that much quicker, and it
is always nice to not feel like you are the only one too cheap or
poor to pay for a bed to sleep on.
One thing I wish I had packed in my carry on....deoderant.
Very thankful that I did carry my toothbrush and toothpaste...that
has come in very handy.
Every time I travel I swear to myself I will pack lighter....that has
yet to happen. You will all be happy to know that I didn’t pay for
extra luggage, and if everything goes as planned, I will see it next
in Africa. ( I was 3 kg over....even after putting all the heavy
things in my carry on. Only two more hours and I will be in the air.
Yay.
PS maybe I will go see if they sell deoderant in this end of airport
heaven:)

Airports

Airports - June 7, 2006 2pm London Time
Well here I am in Gatwick. Approximately 17 hours till my departure
for Brussels and then Liberia. Whose brilliant idea was it to hang
out in the airport for 17 hours? they should be flogged. Yeah, I
haven’t even been here an hour and I am finding it a challenge.
Presently sitting down by the shops and food court. I am sitting on a
somewhat hard bench, there are some softer looking chairs, but I feel
too tired to gut up and push my cart full of luggage anywhere. Maybe
after I have sat here for another hour. Very tempting to spend money
when there is nothing else to do. But wait, I do have one large novel
Les Miserables calling my name, oh and that bothersome Anatomy and
Physiology. Ack. the flight here was fine, it was about 10 hours I
think. I watched one movie, which I have already forgotten, and lay
there with my eyes closed for about four hours, wishing I was asleep.
Breakfast was a ham and cheese croissont ( I have no idea how to
spell that). I was disappointed that there was no fruit cup, I was
really looking forward to a fruit cup. Now I am sitting here wishing
I could sleep. The wireless here is not free. 6 pounds for 1 hour. It
seems a bit much, so I am resisting the wireless. I did have a very
nice little bus ride from Heathrow to Gatwick. Saw a little english
countryside...some sheep, some cows. Rolling hills, I am sure you can
imagine. Nothing to crazy. In some ways it just feels like home,
except maybe that it seems like I am on an episode of coronation
street, except not on a street but in an airport. Ah, my computer
still thinks that it is 6:14 am. I have been awake now for about 24
hours. Only 17 hours I tell myself....
Well, I am sure in a few more hours I will have some more brilliant
observations to make about the british or their airports....
BEC

The Final Days

I am down to 3 days left on Canadian soil. I had a going a party for myself tonight. Just family. Only 18 of us. It was nice, low key. I made beef tacos, with some help of course (thanks girls). I am not done packing. Yes, I am a procrastinator.
I think goodbyes are overrated....perhaps because I don't like saying it. I would rather say, see you later. I don't know, goodbye just seems so final. And to be honest, I don't actually start to miss people, usually until about two weeks later. That is my magic time frame. Two weeks. Thats when it suddenly hits me, I am in Africa....and I don't know what I am doing here, and I miss my friends....then I cry myself to sleep. I'll let you know how it all turns out.
Well I really do wish I had something more profound to say, the profoundness usually finds its way into my brain at about 1 in the morning, then I am just full of amazing and insightful things to say, but I am just so exhausted by that point I just lay there as the ideas whirl around.
Well i am off to decide how many tank tops I really need, and should I take the white one, or should I leave it at home.....decisions decisions.