Not sure where to start, but after a year and a half I am leaving Liberia! It’s been pretty crazy for sure – it feels like my last month here has gone by in a flash. I have had so many things that I wanted to get done at work before I left – I am feeling really terrible for leaving my great staff. I wanted to stay for at least 2 years, since the program and the staff suffer each time there is a turnover in senior management (which happens all too frequently). I won’t go into the details, suffice it to say that it is time. Liberia isn’t the easiest place to live and work for sure, but I am surprisingly sad to be leaving…Nick and I have made this our home, met awesome people, and finally in our last few months here have really established an amazing group of friends (why does it always happen that way?).

But I am ecstatically happy at the same time! I’m not exactly sure what’s next – but it looks like it will be a good few months off, visiting our families in SA in MN, going on an extended road trip, who knows.

Our last day in Liberia was great. Some colleagues felt that they should give me a going away party over lunch, whcih was actually incredibly awkward – everyone felt like they had to stand up and say a few words, including my boss (with whom it is no secret there is no love lost between us), but the thought was nice. But it was a great chance to say goodbye to the many staff I will truly miss. After dealing with a few last minute issues (surprise, surprise), I left early to go have a mimosa at home and kill one last bottle of champagne we had in the fridge.

A group of us then shuttled out to Marlin’s Corner, one of my favorite places in Liberia. It’s about a 45 minute drive with all the traffic, but it is well worth it. It’s probably the most relaxing place in the city, right on the water, a great place to watch the sunset. With Club beer (the local Liberian brew) on tap and 75 cent beers during happy hour and the BEST fish ever, it was the perfect place to say farewell to Monrovia. After dinner we headed to the Red Lion for a few more beers and a rousing game of darts. It was a great night!

Now we are on our way. The house is packed up, the bags and Squeekers are (almost) all checked in, and we are off to SA. I didn’t know that I would be this sad to be leaving – as I said, the last few months have been hard, but there are a lot of good memories here! Who knows, maybe I’ll be back someday!

Today I officially turn 30 years old! Let the jokes begin…

I wasn’t sure what to do to celebrate the big milestone. The Monrovia party scene is an odd one – you either have a small gathering of people, or you have a big party that nearly everyone in Monrovia feels entitled to show up to, whether you know them or not. I didn’t really want to supply booze to the entire expat community (nor did I really have the time to plan it), so I decided to ring in my 30th with a much more low-key event.

My bday falls on a Monday, so I decided to celebrate the weekend before. As has happened the last few years, there have been a few kinks in my plans. A few weeks ago Nick found out that he might have to be in Abidjan over the weekend…he did everything he could to make sure that he could be here for the party. And it was integral to my plan to have him here – I wanted to have a brunch (my favorite meal – breakfast food that you don’t have to get up early for!), and he makes an amazing quiche! 🙂 Actually, birthdays always mean a lot to me, and since this was a big one it was great that he was able to finagle a way to be around.

A bunch of friends came over around 11am, and we moseyed over to the pool. Despite a huge night out the night before (and the wicked hangovers that came with it), Nick was up SUPER early to start cooking (I helped of course!). We had an awesome spread of home– banana bread, tzatziki and pita, fruit salad, chocolate brownies, ham and mushroom quiche, and best of all, Nick managed to make me a special treat…BAGELS! He figured out how to make sesame bagels (not at all easy), one of the things I missed from home. My mom also figured out with Nick how they could get a cake made for me in Liberia – who knew? With the amazing spread, friends, and tons of mimosas, we had an awesome brunch. We hung out around the pool all day, soaking up the sun and having a great time.

My actual birthday has been much quieter – Nick couldn’t manage to stay today and is off in Abidjan. I had dinner with a friend, enjoying some sushi and margaritas. Overall 30 has gotten off to a good start!

I heard a lot about Robertsport before I ever visited. I was never sure if I should believe the hype, or whether the glowing reports were the product of over-worked, stressed out development workers who had been in Liberia a bit too long.

Robertsport, a city only 3 hours outside of Monrovia, turned out to be a welcome break from dirty, gritty Monrovia. The first time we went, we used our contacts at the Red Cross (where Nick worked) to get tents to camp on the beach. Shortly thereafter a South African diamond prospector developed some land, building a number of posh elevated tents, a bar and a toilet/shower block. This made it much simpler to just pack up on a Saturday and head out for the night.

The trip shouldn’t take as long as it does, but once the well-paved road gives way to the dirt track, the going is slow. The potholes are intense, and in the rainy season there is the danger of getting stuck in the mud. But mostly it is an uneventful drive.

When you reach Robertsport town, the destruction from the war is all around you. There are amazing old buildings that are abandoned and overgrown with weeds, churches and homes with windows that have long been broken. As you make the turn off to start the descent back towards the sea, the glittering Atlantic spreads out in front of you. The surfers of the group peer closely to see what the waves are like, we all look at the long horizon to get a sense of what the weather has in store for us, and we start heading down to the beach.

Before the camp was built, you were met by a group of local men who would offer to help – catch you fish for dinner, build you a fire, organize the tents, and keep watch during the night. There’s less to think about at the camp – Joe’s staff tell you which tent you’re in, you haul your bag and cooler up to your room, do a quick change into your swimsuit and run off the beach for a first swim.

The water is amazing – I prefer the days without much wave, when the warm, clear water is like a bathtub that you can just splash around in. At other times, the surf is intense, and you prepare for a battle every time you head for the water, knowing that you have to swim constantly against the current just to end up in about the same place you got in.

My favorite part is sitting on the veranda of the tents, either watching the sunset with a beer in the evenings or relaxing with a book the next morning, listening to tunes on my portable speakers. Walking along the stunning beaches it is very hard to remember that you are in Liberia – it really is the clichéd ‘different world’ from Monrovia or up-country. It’s such a great place to forget for awhile about all that work waiting for you when you return to the office on Monday. Robertsport also made me think just how lucky we are – though living in Liberia can be pretty difficult at times, here we are just a short drive away from pristine beaches that sometimes feel private, made just for us. I remind myself how much people would pay to go on an amazing vacation to a spot like this anywhere else in the world!

While I was away in Bangkok in early June for a work conference, my boss and colleague decided that my apartment was too expensive. I totally agreed – the real estate scene in Monrovia is absolutely ridiculous, and landlords charge exorbitant fees ($30k+ per year is the norm for a two bedroom!) for places that are not very well maintained at all. But it was a bit of a shock to come back to Monrovia only to find out that I had to find a new apartment and move in the next week…especially since Nick was out of town.

Luckily a friend knew of a reasonably priced place coming available in her compound. The area is called South Beach – sounds chic, doesn’t it? It is a small group of only 6 apartments, attached two-story places. The address (Gurley Street) is actually a pretty dodgy area – but it is built adjoining another, posh-er group of apartments called Mega Compound. At the end of our street is the beach – but there is also an informal settlement, which are basically just shacks that house most of Liberia’s population.

The house is a loft-style place, and it is one of the most unique places I’ve seen in Monrovia. Most of the apartments we’d seen, including our own, have monstrous rooms with marble or tile floors, intense over-sized furniture, ostentatious decorations, etc. In most places you couldn’t imagine having enough furniture to ever fill the place or make it cozy.

While I was away in Bangkok in early June for a work conference, my boss and colleague decided that my apartment was too expensive. I totally agreed – the real estate scene in Monrovia is absolutely ridiculous, and landlords charge exorbitant fees ($30k+ per year is the norm for a two bedroom!) for places that are not very well maintained at all. But it was a bit of a shock to come back to Monrovia only to find out that I had to find a new apartment and move in the next week…especially since Nick was out of town.

The ‘Pink Palace’, as one of our friend named our compound (it’s kind of pink-ish red…) is the opposite of all of this. The downstairs is one room, which has a tiny kitchen area and living room, high ceilings with wooden beams, and dim-sih lighting. The open stairs curve around to the upstairs, where we have a big open bedroom with built-in wooden closets, a big table we use as a desk, a huge wicker chair with overstuffed pillows and a small bathroom. One of our friends said the place reminds them of a ‘chalet’ – I’m not sure if it’s exactly that, but it is definitely cozy.

Like almost all places in Liberia, our apartment is powered by generator. Unlike our last place, we no longer have power 24 hours a day. We have about 18 hours a day – from 5pm – 8:30am and from 12-2pm. It doesn’t bother me much during the week, since I am at work most of the time. But poor Nick – he is often home during the day, and has to plan ahead to make sure he has everything he needs (laptop battery charged, ipod if he wants to go for a run, email downloaded, etc) before the power goes out. On the weekend it is a challenge – we want to make toast and the power goes off, so it’s back to toasting bread over the gas stove. Or we feel like we should not ‘waste’ the power and hang out at home when it is on, heading for the grocery stores or the pool when it’s off. We try not to open the fridge much, and it gets pretty hot very quickly without the AC. Makes sleeping in kind of a pain!

The parking situation is a bit dire – there is only a very small parking space, enough for each of the houses to have one car parked there IF and only if everyone parks well. Of course that never happens. I routinely get frustrated when I come home that some idiot has parked their giant SUV crooked, taking up two spots, or has parked me in in the morning. I’m getting better at backing out of tough parking spots.

The best part about our place is that the compound next door has a pool that we can use. It’s just a minute away, and almost makes up for having no porch or view whatsoever (our windows look onto the parking lot). But we plan to take full advantage of the outdoor space we have! I have been swimming laps, and it’s great to be back in the water, even if I get dizzy from the million flip turns I have to do (it’s not a very big pool). It’s not heated, but it doesn’t need to be – in the dry season the sun practically boils it so it feels a bit like a bathtub.

I’ve attached a few pics so you get an idea what the place looks like. The strange looking animal is a duiker – it has a gimpy back leg and lives in the compound. It’s pretty tame, as you can see!

I wasted a lot of thought over which of the two oversized, overly posh houses we would choose to live in – the one had fancy furniture you couldn’t find anywhere else in Liberia and a huge jacuzzi tub but was (too) close to the office (my colleagues would live upstairs) and had a ridiculously loud generator at the back. The other was right in town and a drive from the office, a ‘slight’ bug problem, huge white rooms that I couldn’t imagine ever being able to fill up and that echoed when you walked around, a tiny kitchen, but a fabulous porch…

We chose the porch. The previous tenant had built wooden benches along two of the railings, had cushions made to cover them and big overstuffed pillows in orange, blue and white to throw against the railings. He had also had billowy white curtains put up along the railings to offer some privacy from the guards as they made their frequent rounds (more to stave off boredom, I am sure), the bright midday sun and the glare of the security lights at night. After work we tossed out the pillows, poured the wine, put on music and just hung out. Sunday afternoons were spent lazily reading on the porch, napping in the sun and wishing the rusty ceiling fan actually worked. I brought back colorful lights from a trip to Chatuchak in Bangkok to light the place up. Friends ate burgers and hotdogs grilled by a rowdy bunch of South Africans on the 4th of July.

Only a few things marred the relaxation of the porch. As many places along the coast in central Monrovia, the beach near our house was used mostly as a latrine, so sometimes when the wind blew the wrong way….well, you get the idea (we called it ‘poo-poo beach’ for a reason!). There was also a finicky water pump at the house next door that wouldn’t stop running – Nick tried everything to insulate it, but for quite awhile it just ran and ran LOUDLY…eventually it got replaced, which meant we were submersed in quiet again. So nice! A mean tom cat took a dislike to the porch at one point (not sure what it ever did to him) and decided to spray…ew. But we got all that sorted out, and that porch was really the best part of the house.

We never did manage to paint walls or hang nice curtains, or even come close to filling up the space. The bugs were exterminated, for the most part – you can never fully get rid of roaches when you live a few blocks from the sea. But none of it really mattered because we hadn’t chosen the house, but the porch. Now that we’re moving out, what makes me the saddest is leaving our little slice of (almost) heaven.

I’ve gone once or twice to the Monrovia Hash recently – no, not some seedy drug den! Anyone who’s been an expat in a British influenced place probably knows the hash – the running club with a drinking problem. This past weekend the group organized a trip on the train towards Bong Mines – we rented the whole two cars, and had one ‘open’ car with a bunch of plastic chairs (a lawsuit waiting to happen in the US) and the ‘indoor’ car which has the run-down, dilapidated (and as I found out, roach infested) seats. We traveled for about an hour, got down in a small village and did our run, then set up a huge BBQ. They ran out of water, so I just drank beer! Tired and sweaty, we piled back on the train and went home – I was COVERED in soot by the time we got back!

I loved the sign on the window of the train – it lists out the prices for passengers and their cargo, but goes so far as to distinguish between the price of cats/kittens, ducks/ducklings, goats/nannys, etc. Good to be precise!

It was a neat little trip – the railroads in Liberia at one time spanned most of hte country, but were largely destroyed during the war as they were used to ship government troops to the fighting areas, and the towns around them were pretty much destroyed. There is talk of rebuilding them, which would be huge for private investment and farming, as it would allow the iron ore, food, rubber and other goods to by-pass the TERRIBLE roads and get their products to market much more efficiently.

I finally made it out to the field here in Liberia! All my previous trips have been limited to Monrovia and the surrounding areas – like any capital city, it can’t begin to represent all the diversity of the outlying areas. It’s so nice to to get out and see the country a bit!

Historically, the area on the coast around Monrovia was the center of all the development in the country. The settlers from America set up home here, and because of the difficulty of traveling and communicating with the ‘interior’ of the country, didn’t move much beyond the coast. Lofa, which is one of the largest counties along the Sierra Leonean and Guinean borders in the northwest of the country, was also probably the most devastated by the war. Some estimates say that as much as 95% of the population were displaced – forced to flee from their homes and seek refuge in neighboring countries. Many more people here speak French from the time they spent in Guinea.

I’m staying in Voinjama, the county headquarters and the biggest town in Lofa. It’s a bit like the wild west here, as one of my colleagues said. The main street is full of colorfully painted wooden shops selling the usual phone scratch cards, gasoline (of a dubious quality) out of glass bottles, bread, some canned food and other basic provisions. The terrain is really rocky, and the dirt roads are rutted and hilly. Most of the government buildings are still in complete disrepair – no windows or doors, just shells really. We drove past one fenced compound where you could imagine a tumbleweed was going to blow by at any minute!

I’m staying at a small guesthouse called the Lofa Lodge. It’s quite nice, really – just a small house with a porch where you can sit outside and have a cup of tea, a little bar which pumps music on the weekends but doesn’t attract much of a crowd, beds with decent mattresses. Electricity almost all night. No running water, but at least they bring you warm water in the mornings for bucket showers! Our office isn’t far from here, and is really nice – painted bright yellow, with colorful flowers and landscaping. It’s all just so much more quiet and relaxed than Monrovia.

I’m here to work on a proposal with some of the staff, so I haven’t had too much time to see the surrounding area. There isn’t much of a nightlife it seems, but the people seem fun. The only place to eat in town is PakBat – the Pakistani UN Peacekeeper’s battalion. They charge a small amount for really great food.

Just a little glimpse into Lofa. I’m hoping I get a chance to come up here more often – it’s such a great break after Monrovia. It feels so much more relaxing…

I headed up to Voinjama in Lofa County today. I’ve flown in any number of small planes, but it was my first trip in a helicopter!

You can get up to Voinjama by car, but helicopter is SO much easier. Our cars do make the trip up from Monrovia in the rainy season, but I’ve heard so many stories of huge trucks and cars getting stuck in the mud and blocking the road for hours. Doesn’t sound like a lot of fun. It’s easier in the dry season, but the dirt roads are terribly bumpy, and the trip can take anywhere between 10 and 15 hours! There has never been a paved road in all of Lofa. It’s been pretty neglected in terms of infrastructure.

The helicopter was pretty cool. It’s an old Russian MI-5 – you feel like you’re in some old war movie, and going to have to parachute out any minute. There were only 5 of us on the flight, so we had plenty of room to spread out on the bench seats that line the walls. The windows were open during the flight, which was nice and breezy but a bit rough when I couldn’t close them in time to block out the dist when we landed!

The landscape in this part of the country is amazing. It’s hard to believe anyone actually lives here – from the air it is just forests as far as the eye can see. The weather was overcast and a bit foggy, which lent a kind of ethereal air to the acacias poking out above the tops of the other trees. The rainy season here is just ending, so things are still lush and green. We’re in the northern hemisphere, just above the equator, so we are going into the drier, hotter winter months. I was surprised to see that a few of the trees had turned bright reds and oranges, and even a few that looked almost hot pink! Reminded me a bit of home.

So you know that I’m in Liberia, and that I have a new job. But I realized I never really gave much more detail than that…

Just for clarification, I am in Liberia and not Libya – they sound similar but couldn’t be more different! (Though Khadafi did have some pretty close ties with Liberia during the cold war – it is even rumored that he owns the Pan-African Plaza hotel that was converted into the UN HQ in Monrovia…not to mention all the arms deals, military training, etc.)

Liberia is a small country in West Africa, surrounded by Sierra Leone, Guinea, Cote d’Ivoire and the Atlantic. I won’t go into details about the tumultuous history of the country – I tend to be pretty long winded on the subject since that was a large part of my MA thesis! But the general gist of things is that the country was founded in 1847 by freed American slaves that were sent back ‘home’ (though none of them were likely from Liberia). As such, it was the closest thing to an American colony – the Americo-Liberians, as they were called, brought a bit of the South to Liberia. Remnants still exist – they built Southern style plantation homes, brought organizations like the Masons to Africa, wore fancy suits and hats, and developed the small swath of land on the coast. Some say they took their cues from their former countrymen even further, treating the ‘native’ liberians with about as much respect as they’d been treated with, leaving most of hte country undeveloped. Eventually the different tribal groups became fed up, and sought retribution. Led by Samuel Doe, the masses rose up against the Americo-Liberians. Doe and his government had no experience governing, and Liberians became disillusioned with his repressive, inefficient government. Charles Taylor led a rebellion in 89 to unseat Doe – called the 1st World War. The battles were bloody and lasted until a tentative peace was arranged and hte elections of 1997, when Taylor was elected president. The 2nd World War began in 1999 and, if possible, was even bloodier than the first. At the end of 2003, UN and ECOWAS deployed troops, Taylor sought asylum in Nigeria, and the country entered into the current era of peace.
This is obviously an INCREDIBLY oversimplified version of a very complicated story, with a lot of holes, but it should give you a basic idea…

So what am I doing here? I was hired as the Deputy Director of Programs for the International Resuce Committee (IRC) programs in Liberia. The IRC is one of the largest non-profit organizations operating in Liberia – they’ve been active here since 1997. We run Health programs where we support a number of clinics and hospitals with drugs and medical staff, Education programs that support the development of teacher training curriculum and increasing the access to education for the most vulberable kids, especially girls, and Gender Based Violence prevention program. My job is to support the Country Director and the techincal specialists who run the programs, working to develop proposals that will get us new funds and troubleshooting the myriad things that can (and always seem to!) go wrong on the programs. It’s a huge job – the Liberian staff I work with are amazing, but most of them have not had easy lives and haven’t had tons of education or experience, and so while they are experts and the best people to work with Liberian communities, sometimes routine things can be a lot of work.

So, those are the basics of where I am and what I’m doing. Basically it’s a lot of work but I really believe in what we are doing.

Standard disclaimer – anything I write on here is my own opinion, and in no way represents the views of the IRC….

In the last few weeks, I have become very attached to our front porch. The house is an old giant, with two separate floors of 4 bedrooms/3 bathrooms/1 kitchen each. We normally use the side entrance, by the carpark, and bypass the front porch and door completely, with the exception of a few parties we’ve had out here, but during the last month I have sat out here pretty much every day.

The power goes out at the house from 10-12 every morning. My routine has become to take a book or my computer, and come and sit out here at the flimsy plastic tables and chairs. The first blast of air after walking out of the ridiculously air-conditioned house is always hot and muggy. But after a few minutes I get used to the warmth, and the breeze that always seems to be blowing out here keeps me cool. After greeting the security guards, who are probably annoyed that I’ve taken over their porch, I dive into my books. The yard is filled with green plants – bushes, trees, ferns, palms. My favorite is the big tree right in front that is at the moment shedding copious amounts of hot pink petals all over the yard. Little lizards constantly scramble around feeding on ants and sunning themselves on the rails. When it rains I have to move the table into the middle to avoid the blowing water, but I am safe from most of it on the porch.

There is always a lot going on outside of our compound. Though I can’t see any of it over the 7 foot high wall topped with razor wire, I can hear and smell it. Most of the area we live in are fairly large houses and apartments occupied by government buildings and expats. But right near us is the JFK hospital, so there is a steady stream of cars, trucks and even ambulances driving down our little road. Across the road there are provisions shops selling odds and ends – bread, juice, cell phone scratch cards – as well as makeshift restaurants that serve bread with mayo and unidentifiable meat. My favorite is the man who walks by with a hotbox – basically a modified wheelbarrow that doubles as a grill from which he sells ‘cow meat’. A dilapidated, roofless old building, which must have been beautiful in its day, houses countless people including a baby which cries constantly. Above all the shacks you can see a DSTV satellite poking above the tin roofs. The newest addition is the movie house – someone has bought a small generator from which they run movies all day long. The volume is at full tilt and terribly distorted, but I can sometimes guess which films are being screened. Apparently they showed ‘Blood Diamond’ the other day, as I heard several Liberians discussing it at the bread shop – I would have loved to hear their opinion of the movie! Grilled food smells come over the wall around mealtime, mixed with smells of burning trash, exhaust, and so many other scents I can’t put names to. Though I am excited to get to work, I will miss my mornings out here on the porch.

I returned to Liberia for the third time last week, but this time was somehow different. I had worked here back in 2004, and returned in June of this year to undertake field research for my MA. Leaving in 2004, I was certain that I would be back, but I never thought it would take me nearly 3 years to get here. Landing at Roberts Airport in June was such a mixture of emotions – exhaustion from the trip, elation to be back, excitement to see how Monrovia had changed, and something I just couldn’t put my finger on. I remember breathing deeply, taking in the scent of sea, smoke and rain that had made its way into my subconscious as the embodiment of Liberia. It was great to be back.

Arriving here last week, as I said, was slightly different. No longer was the city an unknown – I felt like I was walking back into my life which had been on hold for a few months. It was also a bit scarier – this time I was here to stay, which brings with it all the anxieties of moving to a new city anywhere. Will I find a job that I’m happy with? Will I find people I connect with, make friends easily? What kind of social life will I have? Will I be able to find everything I need? Especially troubling in a transient field like development, will anyone I knew before still be here? Will things have changed drastically?

I have been here nearly two weeks, and in many ways I still feel like my Liberian life hasn’t begun. It has been an amazingly relaxing time – something I don’t usually do well. But until I find a job and start making friends, it somehow doesn’t seem real, like I’m really setting up shop here. But for now I am enjoying the little things – getting into a routine, going to the gym down the street, making dinner and even watching tv. Little domestic things I haven’t done in a long time. Trying to just take things slow and not worry too much about the future, enjoying my down time now while I have it. I’m sure the ‘adventure’ will begin soon enough!