So thats how you do it in Liberia???

So first off I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to all those that I have made suffer to read my blog whilst I was committing the egregious sin of now double spacing between paragraphs. It has come to my attention that certain of the would be readers are morally offended and utterly intimidated by the dearth there of. I did not mean to in any way upset your delicate grammar sensibilities, I can only blame it on the fact that I went to public schools as a child and that I am new to the blog thing... also I may or may not have eaten paint chips as a child, they are still trying to figure that one out. So I will make sure in the future to aid you in your attempts to read my random blathering to always put two lines in between paragraphs... Again I am sincerely sorry and may God have mercy on my soul... or something like that.
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So I have been helping plan a workshop that we had the last week where we brought in a bunch of community level advocates from the surrounding county to teach them about their basic human rights as guaranteed to them by the Universal Declaration Human Rights (which many of you know I carry a copy on me almost anywhere I go as essentially another book of scripture) and then I also read through the Liberian Constitution and came out with all of the Fundamental Rights guaranteed to them through their country. So the problem we ran into was that we basically had two separate groups at this week long workshop. We had about 2/3 of the people that were humble people from small little villages and towns that did not have much education if any (several were illiterate) and they had real issues that they wanted to know how to address. Like wealthy people coming in and tricking them into selling them half their land ( when you are illiterate you really don't recognize and extra zero when you are signing papers you can not read), and general rich taking advantage of the poor types of things. And then we had the kids from Bong County Student Union who were in my opinion for the most part a bunch of punks. I say this knowing full well that I basically saw a lot of my same attributes in them and fully admitting that I am also a punk, but whatever. These kids hi-jacked the discussion every time. No one else could get a word in as they would go off on tangent after tangent... it was so frustrating. But we were able to get a lot done and the different community groups were able to leave with a good plan to address real problems that were facing them in their communities and we will be checking in on them in the next couple weeks to see how those plans went.
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So anyway... Quick story about today. So Sundays are normally super boring, I do my little church service here and then i sit around all day making things from coconut shells and slicing the hell out of my hand or I read all day and then go to bed at like 8 because they don't turn on the power on Sunday. But today was graduation day at the local University so there are a bunch of parties going on all over. So I made my boss, Dayugar not JoeJoe, come and pick me up and take me around... First sign that this was going to be different is when Dayugar comes to pick me up and he walks from the car to my building with a beer in his hand. We first went to his cousin's graduation party which was much more decadent than I was expecting. they had cut down every palm bow on the block that they could reach to make this palm thatch awning thing that covered the whole front yard and dayugar had borrowed a bunch of chairs from DEN-L as well as some of the sound equipment so that there were huge speakers up front where people were giving formal speeches to the graduate who was nearly absconded by a giant stack of presents that rivals that of my family at Christmas. Anyway... soon enough the speeches ended and then came the alcohol, case after case of alcohol. I met a bunch of different people and talked for a while and then dayugar taps me on the shoulder with another beer in his hand, it was apparent that he had one or two more since we got there, that we were going to a different party. I asked if he was ok to drive and he said that he wasn't driving cause he was too drunk, I was relieved. Until I got in the car and saw that the driver had two beers he was working at the same time, while driving a stick shift on Liberian roads. I would have said something but 1 I was very impressed with his skill and 2 the roads were so bad that we went maybe 15-20 mph tops the whole way there and i figured the worst we would do is run over a chicken or hit a tree and stop.
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We go to the next place where they each get another beer. I start to figure out how to walk home from there. We make it to the next two parties where the people that are throwing them are not so well off so they do not have drinks for everyone but one has a live band and so i danced with a bunch of older ladies who thought it was hilarious to dance with a white man, i like to think they were laughing with me and not at me, and I got my picture taken with a lot of random strangers.
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we went back to Dayugar's cousin's party where he started to bump and grind with her... I'm just saying it seemed a little too close of a friendly relationship for me but hey, who am I to judge. After we had been there for a bit longer and as the alcohol was fully taking its course a fight broke out outside and everyone raced to go watch. I for one know how bad the demobilization process has been in this country and how many small arms are still... well... everywhere so I decided to move away from the fighting instead. It soon ended and I was about to ask someone to take me home when the goat soup came out, and it would have been offensive to pass on goat soup. It was probably the best goat soup I have ever had to be quite honest but i think i still prefer Campbell's new England clam chowder.
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So that was my Sunday, that was my day. Very interesting if you ask me. I got to do a lot of people watching a little bit of dancing, made a lot of new friends who I will never remember their names and if I see them in two days will not remember that I knew them but I am going to mark this one down as a successful night out in Liberia.