Shopping With Melvin

I love taking our social worker into the interior with us to investigate leads on children because Melvin is a shopper!  I am a little retail-deprived here in Liberia. I am married to someone who rates shopping right up there with getting a root canal, and so it is difficult to get Dave to stop at shops that look interesting. 

But Dave stops for Melvin! On our last trip to Buchanan with Melvin, we made several stops on the way home, so Melvin could load up with goodies.

We stopped at the crawdad boys. Melvin was not impressed, because the crawdads in the basket were not as large as the ones they were waving about to get our attention as we drove past. Melvin did not buy any crawdads, and chastised the crawdad boys for false advertising.

We stopped at the fella' holding the large grouper. It was a beautiful fish, probably 8 pounds or so. The guy wanted $5 U.S.  Melvin said that was way too much..."drive on, Dave."

We stopped at the guy holding a large ugly creature by the tail. It was an armadillo, except the Liberians call it an "ant bear". Melvin said this is a delicious animal to eat; kept saying the meat is "sweet", whatever that means! And it would make great soup or barbecue. But Melvin did not buy the ant bear, as the man was charging twice as much as Melvin thought it was worth.  That is a problem Melvin has when he is with us...because of the color of our skin, all prices go up!

We stopped at a market where a man wanted to sell a live fawn. It was so cute, and Melvin told me that it would make a great pet. If the guy had been selling a Black Lab, I would have gone for it, but I have a hard time seeing me playing fetch with Bambi. And do deer bark at strangers? I don't think so.

(Dave and Melvin take some time out from shopping to tinker under the hood)

Melvin bought two bags of coal, as the price is much better on coal the farther away from Monrovia one gets. And Melvin had Dave stop at the sugar cane stand, so he could bring sugar cane stalks home to his kids as a treat. Another stop for cassava, and yet another stop for cucumbers.  By the time we got Melvin home, he had coal and food for his family and neighbors. What a great shopping adventure!

Wishing you all a great day at the mall!
---Babs

With Fond Memories of Vella's Fruit Stand

Well, I guess the fruit stands in the California Central Valley have pretty much closed for the winter.  It is always a little sad when the last stand stashes the empty lug boxes for the season and shuts the doors against the rain and fog. However, here, in Liberia, the fruit stands never close!  The growing season is never over and the fruit stands stay open all year round.

When we drive inland, fruit stands are a regular part of the scenery. They are small "Mom and Pop" stands, owned and operated by people who live near the main roads. Most homes offer something for sale along the side of the road. Often, only one type of produce is available per stand, and often, there is not much of that item. Mostly, it is whatever is leftover from the garden/orchard after the family eats. Sometimes, there will be a pile of cassava, or a little pyramid of cucumbers. The neighbor's stand might have two pineapples on the table, and the neighbor across the road might be offering a pile of palm nuts or a bunch of bananas. Down the road, there might be three papaya , with some sugar cane.

We often stop on our jaunts into the interior for bananas and pineapples and watermelon. It would be difficult to find fresher fruit at a California fruit stand, although more variety per stand would be nice. There are some things that are impossible to find at these family stands, like tomatoes and navel oranges and lettuce and nuts. But then, mangoes, edo, and coconuts are not regularly found at the roadside stands in Modesto, either, so I guess it all evens out!  

Customer service is a big thing, for as soon as the car stops, produce is pushed through the open window, with the salesperson loudly stating the price. One can buy all the produce offered by the road without ever leaving the car. It is sort of "drive by shopping." If more than one fruit stand is in the vicinity, the car will be mobbed with people from every stand, hawking their wares. It is not a shopping experience for the timid!

But even as convenient as it is to get fresh fruit here from the roadside stands, no one offers a cup of coffee and a fresh-baked goodie from the bakery. Oh, I miss Vella's Fruit Stand. That place is a Modesto treasure!

Anyways, here's wishing you happy banana shopping!
Babs

"Oh, What A Night"

WOW! It was a doozy of a storm! 

Last night, just before midnight, the rain began. To say it was raining was like saying the Grand Canyon is a nice valley. Just when it seemed that the rain could not get any heavier...that no way could the air hold any more water droplets! and then the rain would ratchet up another notch! Within minutes, the ground surrounding our house was flooded.

Soon after the precipitation started, the lightening/thunder show began. We were at the epicenter last night, with several booms hitting at the same time as the flash. Lightening lit up the sky continually for an hour, often within seconds of the last bolt. It was wild. Now if you are a person who was raised in the Midwest U.S., this storm may have been "normal" for you; but for us native Californians, it was crazy. I am getting braver about the storms (the choice was get used to it or go totally insane!), but this storm was in the "Top Ten Storms That Can Freak You Out".

At one point, the main generator cut out and the whole village went dark. (Well, as dark as it gets with lightening bursting all around. It was like a crazy black light show!)  The generator is wired to a GFI. For those of you who are not technologically in the know, that means Ground Fault Interrupters. I personally have had this explained to me several times, and still do not understand! But apparently, last night there was a lightening strike close enough somewhere to cause the switch in the generator to know that for it's very survival, it had better shut down NOW or be fried.

One of us bravely ventured out into the wet, saturating night to re-start the generator in order to restore power to the security lights while the other one of us stayed inside, nice and dry (one of the perks of being technologically ignorant!) The storm raged overhead for an hour before slowly moving to the west. What a night!

I asked the children at breakfast this morning if the storm was scary. Most of them slept right through it! Lucky kids.

Wishing you a pleasant, dry day, with no interruptions to your "current" (electricity).
Love, Babs

A Sunday's Drive

Because of Liberia's close ties with the United States, many buildings and areas are named straight out of U.S. history books. A county is named Maryland. A town is named Hartford. The public medical facility is "J.F.K. Hospital."  Monrovia itself is named after president James Monroe. So Sunday, driving through the New Georgia area to get to Louisiana Baptist Church did not seem odd.

(A beautiful mansion in it's day)

We were checking a reference for a possible new hire at the village. In the process of finding this lady's home church, we discovered territory that we had not previously driven. We only got lost twice. Pretty good for us!

As we drove along the unpaved road, we asked people for directions. We were told to "continue on" and "just axe further down" and that we would see "the bulletin by the road."  We balked at crossing a bridge, but a gentleman declared "the bridge-o fine." As we got to an intersection in the the road, and had to make a decision of left or right, we were advised to "go down"  and later were told to "bend here." And we understood all these directions!  Our Liberian English skills are improving!

(This bridge has not been retro-fitted for anything!)

Forty five minutes from the main road, after dodging pot holes, creeping across two bridges, and sliding through several streams, we found the church on the top of a hill. What a lovely place for a church! We enjoyed worship with this small congregation who so warmly received us into their midst. How wonderful that our common faith transcends language and culture and skin color and hand-clapping abilities! (We still have none!)

(All dressed up for church)

It was a joy to worship our great God with newly found friends at the end of a muddy road.

Dave & Babs

A Hard Life

A Liberian cemetary

We met an older gentleman who was recovering from stomach flu. He went on and on in great detail, about how he had "the diarrhea" and how he was dehydrated and it lasted more than a week, but now he was better and gaining his strength back a little each day. "Thank the Lord" he said. It seemed like an odd conversation to us, with someone we hardly knew, but he was very pleased to have survived this bout with stomach flu and wanted to share this fact with us.

We all know people who are overly "in tune" with their bodies. Every ache and pain is a big deal that they seem to enjoy sharing with anyone who will listen. Upon our arrival to Liberia, I at first thought that this place was full of these types. Not so. Every illness, infection, accident, has the potential of being life-threatening. And Liberians are painfully aware of this fact. When they are recovering from some ailment, they freely praise God for healing. When employees return after an illness and we ask, "How are you doing?", they usually answer, "I am better; praise God!"  or they will say, "Trying small; praise God."  "Trying small", in this context, would mean they are slowly getting better. 

One of our employees had a baby recently, and she called Babs within hours of the event and said, "Mother, I have given birth and I am OK!" (The nationals call Babs "Mother.") In a country where the maternal death rate in childbirth is one of the highest in the world, it is an accomplishment to give birth and be well. She was happy to have had a baby and to be alive.

Last month, one of our maintenance men took a day off to bury his brother in law. The brother in law had a fever, and hailed a taxi to go to the clinic for treatment. In route, the taxi rolled over, killing him. He was thirty five years old.The next day, another employee had a niece die from unknown causes. Her niece was thirty four years old. Two days later, one of our mother's had an older sister pass away. She was in her fifties, "a good age." And then another employee lost a ten year old nephew from unknown causes, and a cook buried an uncle who died from malaria complications. It was a rough month.

Yesterday, we were reminded again how hard life is here in Liberia. I had to go into town. Going into Monrovia is not an activity I enjoy. It is much work! But I could put this chore off no longer. We were out of some essentials in the kitchen. At 8 a.m. I was out the gate, dodging pot holes filled with water from the overnight rain. About a mile from the highway, ten young guys flagged me down by standing in the roadway. The spokesman of the bunch said that they needed help getting their friend to the hospital. One of their cohorts was being transported in a wheel barrow. I was informed that he had been "chopped" in the head and was not doing well. Would I transport him to the clinic? Sure enough, this young man had taken a "chop" with a machete, right in the middle of the face. Being the gracious Samaritan that I am, I said, "You can put him in the back seat. Keep him from bleeding on the upholstery," and off we went. This young man did not need a clinic; what he needed was a trauma center and a neurosurgeon, but today the local hospital would have to do. His buddies informed me that everyone had been robbed in the area where they worked, and a neighbor thought this guy was the thief, so he chopped him.  When we arrived at the hospital some 30 minutes later, the victim was alive but not responsive. If he lives, his life will never be the same.

 

This is how it is here. If you get sick and have "the diarrhea" and you put off the visit to the hospital too long because you know the visit will use up all the money you possess, you die. If you deliver a baby and everything does not go well, you most likely will die. If you get into an altercation with a hot headed neighbor and you do not have friends that will run the neighbor off and load you in a wheel barrow and stand in front of a white man's car, you will die. 

So, when I ask that question, "How ya' doing today", and they answer, "Doing well, praise God", they are not answering flippantly. They are quite serious! They are alive today, by the grace of God.

 

 Dave

More Expressive Cab Drivers...

Road Hazard Ahead!

On any given day, one can come upon some driving situations that are far removed from anything we have experienced in the California Central Valley. 
Here are some traffic hazards we have encountered recently here in Liberia:

---How many guys can stand on the back bumper of a Toyota pick-up?

---Nothing like a parade to cheer up your day!  It was not even a holiday! You gotta love a country that can muster up a parade on a regular weekday.

---We were hoping this fella did not have to go far with his load of poles.

---Miles of mud, lots of jungle, and no cell service!  Sounds like the beginning of a horror movie to me!

---Home Depot delivers!