Happy Turkey Day and Another Apple Cup Victory (Yawn...)

Another good week, and much more local knowledge acquired.  For now, I will let the pictures do most of the talking.

 One of the roads between our job site and residence.  I would say we walk up and down it upwards of 9,000 times a day.  Every time we are guaranteed multiple "white man" cat calls from little kids, followed by a wave.  I guess this is the fame I have sot for so many years.  Strangely enough, we have even encountered a couple little kids who were legitimately scared of us.  One cruel mom picked her kid up and faked bringing him towards us.  Needless to say, the kid screamed bloody murder.  Personally, I don't find myself overly intimidating.  In fact, quite the opposite.

 One of the countless examples of damaged buildings post-war.  We have heard from many sources that Kakata looks drastically different today.

 Arthur bringing the hammer, laying the foundation for the school.  

 The crew hanging, post lunch.

 We searched long and hard for a turkey, but you would be amazed at the lack of turkeys in Kakata.  Thus we went with the usual rice and fish to celebrate the day of thanks.  We decided that sharing a couple of Club Beers was going to have to do it for the celebration this year.  Cheers!

 Martar being a clown.  The man is a beast at digging foundations though.

 View from the site.

 On site mascots.  However in the words of my health adviser, "If you so much as get bit by a dog you are going to have to be on the first flight to Europe."  Thus, I stiff arm them like Marshawn Lynch.  They are pretty intimidating after all.

A couple of the daughters of guys on site.

 Ato after becoming a man, aka "batting" down a bat.  Bat count three.  I wasn't quite ready to step up to the plate yet, but I did heroically document it.

 Tim practicing his abilities on the large black bugs that get in every night.  Our nightly entertainment is Mark McGuiring them as far as we can.

 One of the many churches in town.  Liberians are extremely religious people.  Despite what they have struggled through in the past couple decades, they are still thankful for their lives.

 Research/data/blog/email center.  With the world's slowest internet.

 Just an example of what one of the trucks that are used over here looks like.  Imagine the car that you consider to be your biggest beater you owned in your life.  Now let that car age by about 5 years, have gone through 4 more accidents, and then sat in a junk yard for another 10 years.  Somehow Liberians are able to not only get functionality out of them, but use them on a daily basis.

 Parade/march for Woman's Rights through Kakata.

 This house is on the property that we are building the school.  At one point it was a super nice house, but it was destroyed during the war.  The house was completely looted, and the roof was ripped off.  We are using a section of it as our warehouse to lock our materials.

A few of the kids next door striking some candid poses.  As you can imagine, these kids love having their pictures taken.  I will try and get some pictures of the different shirts and jerseys over here.  From what I have seen, most of the shirts and jerseys seem to have been donated from the US.  I have seen some classic jerseys, and ultimately scared whoever was wearing it by showing my enthusiasm.  I am still waiting for something more local than a Seattle sports team, but so far I have seen plenty of Mariners and Sonics gear.

FIO is the Theme of My Trip so Far

Since touching down in Liberia, I have spent most of my time attempting to learn a new culture.  Clearly I have a lot to catch up on.  Liberians speak English, for the most part, but I would call it more of a Liberian English slang.  I am starting to get an ear for it, but have had to say, "huh" "come again" and "sure" (though I have no idea what I agreed to) many times already.  From the airport to Kakata, we drove through the Firestone Plantation, which has a huge presence in Liberia.  After about an hour on dirt, and finally paved but heavily potholed roads, we arrived at our place in Kakata.

Cribs: Liberia Addition

 Our Humble Abode

 View from our casa

 Living room.  2 nights in a row we had a bat fly in here.  On the first night I grabbed my computer and army crawled to my room.  On the second, one of the guys who lives here happened to be out back so I quickly ran and got him.  He proceeded to assess the problem, grab a broom, and with one hit I kid you not, knock the sh*t out of the bat.  Then just to reaffirm his savageness he then picked it up and poked it while laughing at me...

Where the "Malaria" doesn't happen... Get it?

They released the iPhone 5 over here already!

Some kids playing soccer right outside our place.

Meals have been a bit of a difficult thing for us.  It took us a bit to figure out how the system works.  But once we did, the lady who takes care of our house also makes us dinners (we aren't allowed to cook).  Typical dinner is similar to this: white rice and some unidentified fish.  I figure it's just better to not know...  Other than that, we eat a lot of bread, oranges, and bananas.  We have started to discover some of the little treats around Kakata, but that is taking more exploring.

This is Harrison.  He is the main guy helping us with our school.  Without him, we would be nowhere.  I found it funny that all Liberians do the same handshake.  It's essentially a high-five, followed by a snap as you release.  It doesn't matter if you are meeting an elderly lady or a young kid, it's all the same.

Main strip in town.  

I would have uploaded more pictures but I don't even want to admit how long these took.  It's funny, we had cell phones and wireless internet right away (it's the only option in Kakata).  But the internet moves at like 1st grade connection speed.  I don't know how Liberians have such patience.  Well, I will try and upload more next week.  As always email me if you are bored justmpratt@gmail.com and I will email you back but it probably won't get there until I get back. 

Departure Day

The day has finally arrived!  I can't wait to get going, although I am not overly anxious about the travel time.  In case you have interest in learning more about Liberia, I have a few recommendations for you.

Book-wise:

This Child Will Be Great by Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf (Current President of Liberia and first ever woman President in Africa)

The House at Sugar Beach by Helene Cooper


Documentaries:

Pray the Devil Back to Hell:  It won a ton of awards.  Awesome story about a group of women who rose up to try and put and end to the civil war in Liberia.
http://praythedevilbacktohell.com/

Sliding Liberia:  A documentary about the surf community in Liberia, as well as a brief history and so on...
http://www.slidingliberia.com/


That's all I have for everyone right now.  I will do my best to update everything with pictures and descriptions of what life is like as time moves along.  As always, emails are always accepted and encouraged.  Thanks for all the support.