Birthdays & Friday.

July 5, 2006

My last entry as a young 27....
Apparently, according to my atlas, I am 11, 109 km away from home. That’s pretty far.
Today, lets see, what did I do?? Got up, had breakfast, drank my coffee, had my bath, studied Anatomy/Physiology, had prayer meeting, visited with friends, had lunch, watched the kids, played games with William ( I taught him Yatzee, he is only 5, but caught on pretty well, I won:) Then we played Dynamic Memory and he whopped me.:(I had seven, he got 24. Just goes to show that young minds are that much quicker. I just figure I have a lot more junk cluttering mine up and so really he has the advantage.) The other kids went out to the beach to play with friends so it was just me and William. We shared some of my special chocolate from Canada. Shh, don’t tell the others or they’ll want some. I bottle fed the deer, shot some hoops with the boys, and now I am having a little quiet time. Tomorrow I turn 28. I am no longer “mid-twenties” I have reached the “late-twenties”. I can’t believe I have gotten to this point already. Man time flys. I considered making my own cake, but I thought I would wait until tomorrow in case someone else wants to, I would hate to steal that pleasure from them. I think it will be a quiet day. We have work to do in the morning, interviewing people down town, then I am hopefully going to a screening of a documentary made about Liberia at some friends place in town, then perhaps after getting home, we will have a bit of a birthday dinner. Thursday night we have spaghetti, it is our western food of the week. To be honest I prefer the rice and soup (what we would call sauce). Today we had water greens ( just what you would imagine, green leaves that grow in the swamp) and smoked fish on rice. It was yummy, thouigh perhaps a little heavy on the red oil. Well I think that is all for now. Until next time. Bec.
PS. Kofi Annan was here for two days, I didn’t get to see him but he did drive by our house in a convey twice. We had a tank parked out front gate for the day just to be be on the safe side. We live on the way to the airport, so pretty much everyone drives by our front gate.

July 8, 2006


Friday Night. Enjoying the entire expanse of my bed. Joy is off at a sleepover, so that means I can sleep in peace without the worry of being kicked or jabbed in my sleep. Today was a good day. Kathleen, Onesimus and I drove up to Kakata, which is just over an hour away. Once there we went to an NGO office, ZOA (its Dutch and stands for South East Asia something or other, but now they are in Africa). We got some recommendations from them for families to help with resettlement. We took one of their employees, Lucy with us and drove an hour on a dirt road into the bush to Nhayn Community. Just after leaving the highway, we drove through several large puddles and got the engine wet and stalled the engine. I had visions of being in the woods for hours waiting for help. Thankfully (after some heartfelt prayer on my part) and after drying out for a few minutes the truck started again. Later we came to a very muddy area. I told Kathleen, I don’t think we can make it, Oneisemus got out and checked it out, then Kathleen got out and assessed the depth of the grooves through the mud, and apparently she thought we could make it, and we did...I was amazed. I am glad I was not driving. We drove through about 3 smaller villages. In one village there was an older man with one leg in a wheelchair on the road facing down hill, appearing stuck ( remember this is a bumpy, dirt road ) we got Onesimus to get out and help him to the side of the road. I guess the man thought great, some young strong man to push me, and so he got Onesimus to push him back up the hill. There were all these other young men, sitting on the side, just watching. I wonder how this man normally get around, if anyone there helps him. Everywhere we passed, they see that there are two white women, and all the children wave and call out hello, or “white woman, white woman”. The roads are so bad, and we were driving so slow, that you have time to say hello to the people that you are driving by. Some of the mud houses have designs that people have painted on them, or sayings they have printed on. I asked a man up there, if you have a good roof, how long with a mud house last, “long time” he says. Some of them were built before the war (which began 1990) That is pretty impressive considering the torrential rain, that can occur over a four month period every year. Good roofing is the key. We arrived at the village, it is fairly large, with a school and a clinic. In 1994 during the war, soldiers came through and everyone fled to the bush, and they burned the place down, destroying most peoples homes. From what they told us, the old people that couldn’t run away, they herded into a building, locked the door and burned the building down with them in it. These are autrocities that are hard for me to fathom. Some people that escaped to the bush also died, from sickness, or becuase they just weren’t strong enough. We were to interview 5 families, but only 2 of the women to interview were there. The other three had gone to town. A woman in the next village had just died in childbirth and so they went to town to make funeral arrangements and to mourn. From what I gather, the baby was over due and perhaps even was a still born, and then the woman died after the baby was born. They carried her to a clinic, but either they couldn’t do anything for her, or it was just too late. The realities here are harsh and unforgiving.
Our interviews went well and when we were done, we turned around and headed for home. Thankfully some of the puddles had shrunk with the sun. As we went, we past several swim holes where the boys were all having their baths. We bought some monkey apples (like leechie nut) and two bags of coal, for half the price it would be in town. We passed lots of rubber trees, all planted row after row. I was sad to come back to the city with its noise and garbage heaps everywhere and all the crush of people. I think I just am a small town girl at heart. On our drive out to Nhayn Community it was reminiscent of the drive out to Zeballos or Tahsis on the West Coast. just less mountains and more puddles. Makes it feel just a little bit more like home.