Week 2

I've officially survived my first unaccompanied trip to the store in a car. I was able to find my way around and managed to avoid any accidents while doing so. It'll definitely take a while to get used to driving here. Friday night was spent in the company of my friend Jimmy (a USAID contractor I met on the plane coming here) who took me to a place called "Purple Rain." We had a great time having some drinks and dancing.

Driving around the city at night is very interesting. There are always lots of people out walking around. Also, many schoolkids sit outside of their homes doing homework by the light of a flashlight.

I spent this Saturday hanging out with my roommate to be and a bunch of his friends. I was basically with 4 Russian guys, all ex-military, who were thrilled to learn that my dad is also one of them. We grilled some delicious BBQ and Sergey (the guy leaving for Afghanistant) even made some homemade pickles!! Yum :)

Work has been very busy this week as we're dealing with a big infestation of caterpillars in one of the local counties. We need to figure out how to get hellicopters to conduct aerial spraying before all the crops are destroyed. I guess we could always release the lizards who would then be eaten by birds. But then we'd have to get gorillas and they definitely wouldn't freeze to death here :)

As in any broken economy, crime in Liberia is quite high. As of late, incidents of robberies of international UN staff have decreased while those against the local staff have been going up. Last week there was another armed robbery of a home of a local UN staff member where a dozen armed men broke into her home and took everything they could grab. At least she didn't get hurt.

We have a gym on base which is very convenient. A water pipe broke last week so we had to take showers from a bucket using a plastic cup :) I think I prefer those now because they're not as cold :)