Merry Christmas

Life here continues to be a series of near-disasters as things fall apart on a regular basis- and as you say the natives and the non-natives do sometimes get a bit testy. We, in the logistics business, have an expression "logistics is the heart of the operation". To be sure, this is not appreciated by the medics here - we are 'an independent medical aid agency' they say. Yup.

Liberia is located in West Africa...just below the hump on the west side. Think the armpit of Africa literally and figuratively. It is 7 degrees above the equator so we have quite a tropical existence. When I first arrived, you could set your watch to the heavy monsoon rains. But that was after you installed your earplugs from the noise of the rainfall and the thunder. (The lightning show was always cool...). We are moving into the dry season and already the dust is flying. Christmas season here in Sanniquellie tends to be cooler; we sit about 500 m elevation. They call it the cold season and the nationals walk around in parkas as soon as the sun sets (we whities are just settling down to a G&T, thanking god for the heat to have abated somewhat). It does get cold at night, the other night it went down to 20 degrees and I had to go searching for a blanket, my nose was cold. Days continue to run around 35 degrees and it burns my bald pate.

Liberia has quite a history. Founded in the mid-1800s when the freed slaves from America tried to be foisted off to the British at Freetown, Sierra Leone. The Brits said ‘step off’ to the Americans we have enough of our own slaves to move about and dump somewhere. So the American armada of ex-slaves headed south and found a nice river mouth to found Monrovia (after the then president of the US Monroe). The freed slaves, having been taught by the southern white American masters that slavery was good, thought to get a bit of their own back and guess what? Yes indeed, these newly freed slaves played dress-up acting like their white southern plantation owners and "found” some slaves of their own. Yikes the cycle continued.

But in the end, Liberia (with the help of the US to be sure) held the longest stretch of development and stability in W Africa. Over 150 years. And things were good. While the Belgians and French were raping the land and the people in the Congo, Liberia was building schools, roads, electricity, water...you name it. We had some problems - Firestone came in and created some slave-like plantations for rubber. The mining companies came in and did their own raping for diamonds and iron ore. Still, things were better here than anywhere in Africa.

The saddest thing here is the regression in development. Liberia is now the third poorest nation in the world and the highest infant mortality. Yet this place is rich with diamonds, rubber, and forest resources. So when you drive around on roads no self-respecting forest company would possess you see evidence of such development - big water towers empty, power poles lacking lines, hospitals shut, asphalt roads... How far we have fallen.

Then things went bad in the 1980s. One dictator after another, pocketing billions and leaving his people destitute - if not suffering bullet wounds. Again in '92 and again in 2003. Since then things have been at calm with the aid of 15000 Bangladeshis, a few Swedes and a bunch of very pissed off and gargantuan Irishmen. We had the first elections here in a long while just this past November. Things went well and we have a new Prez - a woman interestingly enuf in macho woman-oppressing Africa which still cuts the clit off young girls. We hope for the best.

Food is poor here, we are lucky to get meat. Lots of carbs; potatoes, cassava, rice, lentils. All tasty enuf, just a bit repetitive.

Peace,
Chris.