BLESSED!!!!

So let me share with you how blessed I have been, besides my run in with the rebel lion volley ball team as mentioned in the previous post of oh so long ago as yesterday, I have been getting hooked up. So first off I am in Liberia having this amazing experience and loving it over here. I get to do wonderful interesting things like lead workshops, take ferry rides (read as: ferry = some logs lashed together with vines) across hippo and crocodile infested waters, talk with people whose lives have been forever changed by conflict, etc etc.

In addition to this, while I have been here I have managed to score an apartment a mere block or so from the metro and in a new ward at church so that I wont have to go back to that horrible one I was in last year. The best part about the apartment,??? its within walking distance of the kabob palace!!! oh yeah! score! The only extra cost that the apartment had was that I had to admit to Jen that she was right about sending a shout out on the Colonial List Serve... you were right Jen.

Then the latest news is yesterday I had a follow up interview for a position at the United States Institute of Peace, who even knew the US had one of those? I thought we only new how to make war but turns out we do indeed have a congress funded Institute of Peace. Well I nailed the interview, I had the lady interviewing me laughing the whole time. She tried dropping some names on me and I knew each and everyone of them and could tell her all about their theories and what they had done and all that jazz. When i finished the interview I hung up the phone and yelled "I nailed it!!!" The African Interns that were sitting across from me were like, wait that was your interview? but you were laughing and joking the whole time. You didn't seem stressed at all. And quite honestly it really was a very pleasant stress free conversation. So yeah, I am working at the United States Institute of Peace as a Research Assistant doing work on the Economics of Violence and Peace. I will get paid less money than I got payed working at Taco Bell as a high school student but oh well. Good thing I have two bachelors degrees and half way through a masters degree right? anyway, got a job and its a foot in the door.

So the way I figured it, I will be coming home to school already to go with a huge amount of my research for my final thesis already done, I will be coming home to a beautiful amazing girl friend who somehow still hasn't figured out that she is way too good for me, I will have an apartment to move into straight off the plane, and two days after I get back I will start work at my new job in exactly the field I want to be working in. Wow has heavenly father hooked me up.

Horror of horrors!!!!!!

So I have broken my foot, well not really but my ankle sure hurts like hell. I have thus been restricted to doing only office work which I will be honest and admit is not my ideal work place but it does give me time to sit down and write out another blog post. Before you start to worry, I am fine. I wish I could say that I sprained my ankle in a more worthy cause like defending a group of nuns and school children from being attacked by rebels or lions or even better,… rebel lions but alas I cannot. I hurt it playing volley ball yesterday after executing a perfect smash (well, actually, I don’t really remember what the play was but for the sake of my ego and posterity I will say that it was actually while executing the most perfect of volley ball moves.) . However, coincidently, we were playing the game against rebel lions so that has to count for something right?

To remedy my vicious sprain my co workers have been trying to persuade me to let them pull it. From what I gather they think that they need to pull and push my swollen softball size ankle all over the place and in so doing they will push it back in line or something like that. I have tried to explain to them that it is not broken or dislocated or anything like that that I just need to keep it elevated and ice on it (by the way, there is no such thing as ice in Liberia) and I will be fine in a couple of days. Since I have been reluctant to allow them to yank on my foot till I want to punch all of them in the nose and I also passed on having the local “herbalist” (read what the western world would call a witch doctor) so instead everyone (I am currently looking at four tubes sitting on my desk) has brought me different creams and ointments. The writing on them is not English, nor any other language I speak, and as best as I can tell from a close study of the writing on the various tubes the medicine comes from Mars. That or Cambodia but I figure either one is going to be hit or miss. So they have all insisted on putting the stuff on my ankle themselves so I currently have four different creams working on my foot. I half expected there to be some sort of chemical reaction and for my foot to spontaneously combust. So far all it has produced is a pleasant cool sensation which I am hoping is not in actuality just my nerve endings being melted by the various chemicals that they are being bombarded with.

Oh well… anyway, all you need to know is that my foot is fine and I will survive… unless the rebel lions come back to finish me off.

one more week in the books...

so a week and a half ago or so i went down to the airport because there was a new intern coming in and because the airport was the closest place I could go to get strategic American things like deodorant, root beer and ground beef for important fourth of july reasons. Anyway so after I purchased my booty we had to wait at the airport for a few hours as the girls plane was delayed. I had two feelings while sitting there waiting around and seeing a couple planes land and then take off again (as you might imagine the Liberia intl. airport is not the busiest place in the world). So first thought was man, if I got on one of those planes right now i could be home by this time tomorrow enjoying a burrito and sleeping in a nice air conditioned room and seeing my friends. The thought that I actually had it in my power to make that happen was a slightly freightening, I mean really I had my passport in my pocket and I had my credit card with more than enough of a limit to whisk me away without another thought had I wanted/needed to. It really would be just that easy, no one would stop me I have it in my means to just pick up and leave whenever i decide that I have gotten too tired of being here or just don't want to play developing world anymore.

And then that made me think of all my friends here in Liberia that did not have that option. When things got bad there, like lets say a 14 year civil war that killed 300,000 people in a population of 3 million, my friends can not just go to the airport and take the next flight out while rockets explode around their houses. When things get bad there, like perhaps when the man that I met a month before in the small rural village of Goyala had a small cut on his foot that got infected because he lived in destitute poverty and could not afford to go to the doctor, when I met him it was the size of a football and he was in immense pain, I talked with people from his village yesterday, they said he had is leg amputated when he finally got to a doctor, his fault for being born in a poor country i guess, foolish man. why didnt he just use his amazing blue passport and his three by five inch piece of plastic to jet himself off to some better place where he could get all his vitamins every day and have access to clean drinking water? Thats what he gets for commiting the egregious sin of being born on the wrong side of the water and on the wrong side of a few arbitrary lands drawn through the middle of the jungle.

I sat watching the kids walking around selling corn or dvds or knock off watches and thought how they can not escape Liberia, Liberia is their future and they will never even see the inside of one of those giant metal birds they saw land and take off every day. I realized how un-commited I was to the plight of not just them but of all the poor in the world. How can I pretend to say that I care when in actuality if a war were to break out I would leave this country. I would get on the helicopter that my embassy sent for me, I would take that to the airport and i would get on the plane and I would leave the country and all my friends behind not knowing what would happen to them. I sure I am glad that I made sure to be born in the right country. I'm sure glad that my country was able to achieve its status by exploiting my friends and their status.

oh well, in case you cant tell my "I love America" day is over and I am back to wishing that we would just live up to the ideals that we preach so much. Alright I am done for now, I'll make the next post happier I promise.

4th of JULY!!!!!!

GO AMERICA!!! This is the one day of the year I allow myself to forget about the horrible bad wrotten hypocritical things that America has done/ is doing now and am unabashedly jingoistic. AMERICA #1!!!!

I was roused from my room this morning by a bunch of co-workers waving hand made American flags (with 52 stars and 12 and 10 stripes on them because they werent sure how many there actually were) and cheers of "YAY America." it is going to be a great day, unless of course it rains like crazy like it looks like it wants to do.

I reflect today and realize all the great things that America has brought to the world and the future of all things it still has to offer. The diversity, the ingenuity, the discovery, the constant looking forward at things to come, that is what makes America so great and keeps it as epitome of how things could be for the rest of the world. I am indeed very proud to be an American, especially today.