Kevin in Liberia

Its Purpose: to raise awareness of current social, political, ethical, and spiritual issues within a relief and development context in Liberia. Its effectiveness is simple: It relies on me, the author, to provide insightful, and often debate-sparking material that will encourage you, the reader to get engaged through comment contributions, emails, and promoting others to read, re-think, and respond to the important issues discussed.

I know not which is most profitable to me, health or sickness, wealth or poverty, nor anything else in the world. That discernment is beyond the power of men or angels, and is hidden among the secrets of your Providence, which I adore, but do not seek to fathom. ~ a prayer by Blaise Pascal

Monday, July 25, 2005

July 26th in Liberia

07.25.05

Its been quite a while since my last post. I believe I left off with an interesting story about roaming around a beached ship. Well its been about two weeks since that and there has been a few developments since then. The count down begins to when Jonathan leaves. Its under three weeks until he takes off. The official transition at EQUIP has now begun. All of his tasks are going to be pushed onto me to get me into the full swing of things. I believe this is when all the true fun begins, work-wise that is. John, our water engineer from Seattle, came to Monrovia from Ganta for a few days of non-Ganta activity. It seemed like we were out surfing almost every afternoon after work. Nothing beats a little sunset surfing. The waves weren’t that great but John insisted on surfing and I was up for the workout. A couple of days I wrecked my back in one wave that basically picked me up, opened me up and stretched me out like a flower and then proceeded to slam me into the sand. My back has hurt ever since. I have no idea what’s wrong with it but I do know that it hurts! Today I swore that I wouldn’t go surfing but then as I sat on the beach watching the other guys out there I had to run back to the house, get changed and grab my board. The waves were actually pretty good today and it was no problem getting out past the breakers. The last few days its basically been like a washing machine out there. Not fun at all.
The government corruption continues in Liberia. I read a news article the other day that the transitional government scandalously spent $2 million USD on brand new Land Cruisers. Its going to be interesting to see what the elections bring to Liberia. Only time will tell I suppose. It would be nice if the government actually spent money on the people…say, maybe some new roads! Operation Pothole just isn’t panning out quite as planned I would have to say.
Tomorrow is July 26th which happens to be Independence Day for Liberians. Apparently on the 26th Liberians will randomly come up to me and say “My 26th on you, oh!?” They expect you to give them something for them saying that. My goal is to say that to every Liberian who comes up to me so they’ll have to give me something instead. We’ll see how that goes. It could get expensive tomorrow. Word on the street is that they have just the most ridiculous holidays over here just as an excuse to have a day off work.

Anyways, this update was rather lacking but there hasn’t been much going on as of late. A lot of fun social activities and new people would pretty much characterize these last couple weeks. Well, its 730pm and I’ve only eaten a sandwich today so I should really look into that. Over and out…..

1 Comments:

  • At 5:03 PM, Blogger Gaillie said…

    Thanks, Kev, for the update. I just saw this today, I'm guessing several days after it was posted. I'm not sure what day it is anymore...

    We just finished up with Camp Meeting and all went well. Russ went ahead and renovated the cabin- you wouldn't recognize it anymore! Only lack of funds and time prevented greater things from happening in there

    I will have my computer set back up in the office within the next couple of days so I will be able to contact you soon

    Yes, time is getting on... I hope that the mongoose is well (I want one...)

    Hope you are safe

    Love you lots

    Momsie :)

     

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