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

Wednesday, January 11, 2006

New Years at Robertsport

After a delightful Christmas season and not a whole lot of work for the few days afterwards we decided to spend the New Years in Robertsport, a world-renowned surf hotspot known for the amazing size and form of its waves. Well, that description might be a bit premature but give this place five or ten years of development and I’ll throw down a personal guarantee of 5 or 10 Liberian Dollars (LD) that this place is going to be a surf and tourist getaway. The views are amazing, waves unmerciful, and water warm and full of colourful and playful wildlife. Robertsport may be one of the only places in Liberia where you might be able to find a “C”assava Snake, “C”assava Fish, and “C”assava Root all in a .5 km radius of each other. Well that might be a lie. I’m sure anywhere you look in the water on the coast you could find a “C”assava Fish, anywhere in the long grass you could find a “C”assava Snake, and anywhere in the ground you could find a “C”assava Root (just ask a certain someone who takes giant behemoth cassava roots to UN coordination meetings). For all those Samaritan’s Purse people reading this…yes, that’s “C” as in Cassava.

So, back to the New Years in Robertsport. Someone must have told the moon to stop its gravitational pull because the waves in Robertsport were atrocious. I think the largest wave I rode that weekend had to be about a three footer. What I can say is that I officially did ride the smallest wave so far here in Liberia. It had to be about one foot or so…maybe even 6 inches. It had the perfect curl and the break was amazing. This one did take me by surprise and it took quite the push to get into but once one drops into a six inch wave they know it! I’m sorry the surfing picture isn’t a very spectacular shot but it’s a very realistic depiction of the goings on. I'll have to get Mark, the one who actually took this shot, to snap the camera when I'm actually standing up next time! Nice work Marky Mark.

So besides the hair raising surf, the highlight of the weekend had to have been singing “Leaving on a Jet Plane” at the top of our lungs around the campfire at about 11pm New Years Eve with Marcel and Peter. Man, we were sure “blastin’ it!” I must have been so light-headed from the previous night of singing our heads off that I ended up losing my glasses and leaving my shorts and rash guard behind when we left. Being the lucky character that I am, Sam, a Lebanese surfer and ex-MSF employee who we camped with on the beach ended up bring my shorts and rash guard back but until today I still haven’t seen my glasses. I think they were inside my tent when I turned it upside down to shake all the sand out of it on the beach. Oh well, they’re only a piece of metal with some glass in between. I’m sure I can find a lot of metal and glass on the streets here in Monrovia. That's my next homework project.

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