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.

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.

So this is what adulthood feels like?

So I still have a year to go before I graduate from my masters degree, however a year has never seemed so short. I am used to time seeming so fast when I look back but now I am thinking of all that I need to do before that year is up, scratch that, make that 10 ½ months and I start to get a tightness in my chest and I wonder what the hell I am going to do.
The future and responsibilities and all that jazz has always seemed far away… After high school I got to hide on a mission for two years and not worry about everything, after my mission there was college, after college there were still two more years of grad school. Now I have been on this earth for over a quarter century, I guess its about time for me to start participating.
So my check list includes the normal end of school kinds of conundrums I guess although I would like to think that my stress and pressure is somehow greater than anyone else’s. This, of course, is a fallacy. Still as I make initial probes looking at the job market, realize that my student loans that have sky rocketed with the onset of grad school with no scholarships at all (thanks a whole freaking lot AU!!! Jerks!!) and that the economy is indeed in recession, whether my incompetent president likes to admit it or not, and think about any other possibilities that come with adulthood and their fun times responsibilities (do I have to buy life insurance now, do I have to stop traveling all the time and “settle down”? what exactly is a 401-K plan and why does it sound like a breakfast cereal?) I cannot help but feel like I have one year till a giant bomb goes off right in the middle of my sheltered protected and privileged life.
Have I prepared enough? Can you prepare enough? Am I going to have to work at McDonalds because there are no other jobs and if so will they accept my previous experience pushing tacos as an acceptable predecessor to their fast past burger world? I gotta tell you sometimes disappearing in Latin America and saying good bye to everything seems rather tempting.
For all the heart seizing panic that comes with the concept of finally becoming a full fledged adult, there is also a sense of excitement. I am about to embark on a great journey, diving head first into the concrete swimming pool that is orthodontist appointments, stock portfolios and weekends spent doing house repairs (which I am more than positive would be positively correlated with phone calls to my dad just to check in and oh by the way… how the hell do I sweat pipes?) Yeah… definitely kind of exciting. I still have a long way to go though, still have many an obstacle to overcome and I am sure I will have quite a few miniature mental breakdowns while trying to figure out what to do.
Anyway, just some thoughts of what’s on my mind. As far as Liberia, well I am facilitating a human rights workshop for local community advocates. It has made me realize how much of a role my mom’s work as a parent teacher advocate when I was a kid has had on me. Now that I look back I can see a direct line from the work she did fight with Marquette Area Public Schools to make sure that my brother or any other mentally or physically handicapped student in the district got each and every right that was accorded to them by the laws and my own work to speak up for those that don’t have a voice and try to steer the world towards the higher road. So it’s all your fault mom, are you happy? Alright I am ignoring this quality movie that was bootlegged onto a vhs tape about 15 years ago when it was shown on TV and then it was burned to DVD. Now the picture looks like you are looking at it through a glass of water and listening to it through a pillow. But if I concentrate really hard I can almost tell what’s going on and I think it’s a pretty good movie.

Election 2008 from the Liberian Perspective...

So where do I begin with this. Well as you all probably know I have been all about Obama from the very beginning so I am putting that personal bias out there from the beginning so you can take this with a grain of salt if you so desire for all those that are of the more conservative mindset, or you can listen and think about it your call. But anyway...

So since the election started I have been in three countries for extended periods of time. I watched the Iowa results come in from a hotel room in Putamayo Colombia and listened to human rights workers there talk about how their country would get better with Obama in office because he would be less likely to fund their corrupt government that has them in the crossfire (Bush's strongest ally in this hemisphere is President Uribe of Colombia and continues to funnel them billions of dollars for their military which as proven links to para-military groups who are responsible for some of the most gruesome human rights violations you can imagine... good thing we are paying for it all, makes me proud to be an American). I talked with displaced people there that asked me the oddest question, or to me it was the oddest question, "will they let Obama win?" Not, "can obama win?" or "will obama win?" but "will they let him win?" The thought of whether or not the powers at be with their "swift boat" esq maneuvers had never crossed my mind, was I naive or were they overly cynical? Probably a little bit of both.

So in March I found myself walking around dusty side streets in the highlands of Peru as state after state voted and it looked more and more like he was going to run away with the whole deal. I walked around and saw handmade Obama posters put up in peoples windows and once finding out I was American the first topic of conversation was again "will they let obama win?" Was I missing something here that every one else knew that I didn't? Were they all privy to some sort of bit of information that had been withheld from me? Granted both Colombia and Peru both have horrible records of elections being stolen but the US's record is only slightly better with the supreme court deciding one election and then another being high jacked by swift boat BS and the unbearable thought of two consenting adults making their own decisions and living with the consequences.

Now I am in Liberia and it is Obama mania. Recently I was walking around the streets of Monrovia the capital, with my Barack Obama pin proudly placed on my bag for all to see and wow did everyone see it. Sometimes I couldn't walk more than 15 steps before another group of people would remark on my button and usually call me over to talk about Obama. Thankfully I just got done reading his books so I could tell them all about his story and what not. Again came that pesky question though "will they let him win?" So here is what I gathered from these talks of mine. Liberians like Barack Obama because:

- He is black and they are black and they think it would be amazing to have a black man as president of the United States of America.

- His dad was from Kenya, that was just one generation ago. Because of the war here many of them have family that have become refugees in the United States and it gives them hope that maybe their sister or brothers son that was born in America could become the president.

- It makes people believe in the Utopian image that is the United States of America. So many people want to come to America because it is the land of opportunity, the American dream and all that jazz. The defender of justice and the all around good guys. However the last 8 years with a war in Iraq that everyone except a few holdouts in the states recognizes was based on a lie, our making torture an official part of US foreign policy, our ignoring of international law and regulation, our down turn in economy, our negligence about the environment etc etc have all darkened that image. However with this one move the US has shown the world that underneath the dirt, filth and lies of the last 8 years we are still that shiny beacon pulling ourselves out from the mess we have made.

People around the world are in awe of the American experiment and what we are again accomplishing. In any other country no member of a minority group would ever get that far. Would a Turk ever become president of Germany, hell no. How about a Copt the president or leader of Egypt, I wouldn't hold your breath. Maybe a Shiite becomes the leader of Saudi Arabia or a black man becomes president of any of the countries in South America? yeah right. Only in America could this happen and it gives the world hope. Not just Americans are tired of the lies and the bully tactics the world is pretty sick of it as well.

Think of it this way, the election of the next US president will deeply effect the lives of every single human being on this earth nearly without exception and how many people actually get to vote in that election? of the 7 billion plus people only .3 billion actually get a say in this. So if you don't think your vote matters it matters a heck of a lot more than the poor guy sitting in his shack in Liberia that kissed the cover of "dreams of my fathers" when he saw a picture of Obama for the first time.

So I guess I will leave it like this, who will make our country more safe? A person that inspires the world over and reminds the world why America is so special and unique, or the guy that wants us to stay in Iraq for another 100 years. I know my answer better figure out yours...

preaching over for the day. To anyone that this post offended... I would say I'm sorry but I am not. Feel free to leave comments or e-mail me to talk about it though.