Fotos First

WELCOME TO LIBERIA
What an amazing country I have stepped into.
Liberia is a lot of things,
and I hope that these photos can begin to do justice
to this amazing country.

Here is a typical road and at typical little town, with the requisite children staring and frantically yelling WHITE WOMAN (lots of pointing and waving) WHITE WOMAN.
They yell lots and lots just in case I didn't here them the first time.
Its pretty darn cute.

He is a student at one of the schools I visited with the World Food Programme's food monitoring group. We visited around a dozen schools each day last week recording how much food they had used and auditing their accounts. There wasn't a whole lot for me to do, so I made friends with the kids and let them play with my camera.

Big eyes stare.

This kid is roasting peanuts to sell

I didn't mean to scare you, but I saw a guy carrying this by the tail the other day and asked if I could look at it and take a picture. He clearly didn't want to be in the picture, but he set up this nice little pose and let me snap away. As I was taking a shot some kid snuck up and grabbed the tail and yanked it really hard, making the whole animal jump. The crowed that had gathered had quite a laugh at my expence, after I screemed and jumped around for a bit.

Hey sitemates! Im so glad these guys are here to keep me company. Soon Russ and I will be living in a nice little house just ouside of town. (Russ and I also served in Bolivia together, and somehow ended up here in the boondocks of West Africa, small world?)

Liberian food. Many have been asking "What's it like?" - Its mostly rice with "soup" on top- thats the red greasy stuff. Its way to spicy for me so I try to find a hunk of fish and pick through that for a while. Russ and Kelly (my other sitemate) are champs and sweat out all the spice.

more kids

joining in on a little game of kickball

Every bus or car ride usually involved a little bit of this. ie cussing, rain, and more people watching then helping. I was one of the former.