Re-cap of the past week

Hello friends & family,

I have been away for a while...My chances of sitting by the internet long enough to write anything here have been fiew. I have been concentrating on the applications for next semester and in preparing project. Markus was sweet enough to leave my application in today (thank you boo), so I can now give my undivided attention to my work here. These past 2 weeks have been good to help me get used to the new setting, understand the dynamics of the culture and learn about the necessary cares that one must take here (for example, bucket showers, using Dettol in a bucket of water to desinfect the water before bathing, then smelling like a clinic for a while, but with your skin extra soft! hahaha). But now its time to get my hands into the mud and do some serious work, which feels good. (After my accidental Malarone overdose, which made me depressed and loose total interest on being here, im happy to feel interested in my work again! Lesson learned. Remember when you took your pills during the day. Do not overdose on malaria pills).

Sitting last week at the internet restaurant/lounge of the Royal Hotel, I observed that slowly the enormous room started getting filled with oficial looking people, with patches with the UN flag and several other nationalities on their arms... There I am, sitting on one of the couches, trying to do some work, and getting incredibly distracted by the 50 or so officials sitting a meter away from me... It turns out that they were the representatives for the police forces of the world (something like 40 nationalities) that are in Liberia to work for the UN. The Jordan official was leaving, so they were having a goodbye lunch. The Macedonian representative was very friendly and talkative, she asked me to take a picture of them with their camera and told me about the project they have to educate and empower the women who did not get education during the war... She was loud and very charismatic, the first Macedonian official to enter the UN Mission in Liberia. Here are the pictures I took, Argentina was also there, Sweden, Norway... very interesting.




That same day was Tommy's birthday, so after the day working i moved next door to The Living Room. Guess what it is? A FANTASTIC sushi restaurant! Very nicely decorated, lounge style, and with sushi worthy of comparison to the best Ive ever had (I eat a lot of sushi). I was surprised! I mean if anything, sushi was not something I expected to find here... But this is Monrovia, and I guess the most unexpected things can appear in unexpected places...




Since I am a communications student, I could not help but notice all the informative posters, posted all around the city, containing info about getting help if one has been raped, how to avoid "runny stomachs" (diarrhea), about AIDS and testing yourself, condom usage, violence and mob attacks... Different organizations, such as Doctors Without Borders and different NGOs are behind the posters...They came as a chock really, but I imagine that in a place in post-conflict state, where the media is limited (TV only runs some hours, since there is no electricity without generators) a good way of reaching the masses is through enormous and very depictive artwork...





Here is another message that I liked, found in Peter's t-shirt. He is one of the ground officers working with the school projects for EFA... Here you see him with Harry and a school teacher, holding up one of the seedlings planted in a school tree nursery... I need to write this in portuguese later, for my grandfather, because the plants in the bottom picture are Cacau trees!





(Miss Beatriz, a very sweet lady with her very sweet pupils... right next door from the children who sang for me...)


My one day of rest, Thinkers beach with Nancy, Kaiza, Tommy and Ampem (EFA staff)... We had some music (Mr.Garnett with his modern ipod and speakers has an incredible portable soundsystem) and Nancy and Kaiza even did some dancing!