I thought I’d start this off with a picture of my apartment. This is what my room looks like. I’m especially proud of my painting on the wall there. For months I’ve been staying strong and resisting the urge to buy a cliche painting of an African woman drawing water or carrying something on her head. But then I saw this image and I had to have it. First of all the colors are uniquely Liberian and not just generic Africa. I like the kid in the painting because he reminds me of why I’m here. Also, on the wall is the map of Liberia with little post-its that mark where I’ve been. So far I’ve been to 13 out of the 15 counties.

Earlier this month I attended a Barack Obama fundraiser. It was a lot of fun, it was catered and the food was amazing. It was so good. The caterer has since been hired by other friends of mine. They also were strict on making sure that only US citizens were donating. Apparently that’d be illegal if someone from another country donated. The fundraiser was hosted by Jordan Ryan, deputy special representative something of something at UNMIL. Basically the number 2 person for the UN in Liberia. We watched the VP debates and played Palin bingo, you listened for words like “gosh darn”, “energy”, “renegade”, and “hockey mom.”

On the one hand it was really cool to see people so excited about American politics. It was also a very fun social event. At the same time it seemed a little ridiculous to be raising money for Obama here. So many people are in more dire need of money here, and it’s not like Obama is hurting for cash. His campaign budget is roughly half of the Liberian government’s annual budget. I’m told $7000 was raised for Obama that night. That could send 70 Liberian kids to school for a year. I guess the idea is that if Obama is elected USAID will be restored to its former glory and then aid money will flow in, in the millions. But I think the impact those 7000 dollars would have on Liberia is much greater than the impact they have on Obama’s campaign.

Speaking of Obama and helping Liberians, I’ve undertaken a small venture to capitalize on the Obama craze. Inspired by a t-shirt worn by David McCann on his visit over here, I committed some blatant copy right violations, and downloaded an Obama logo from the internet, added the ubiquitous Liberian phrase “trying small” (roughly, “we’re doing our best”) and had it printed on shirts. I then turned the shirts over to my “authorized retailers”, Mr. Smith and his friends. Keep this on the DL, but the shirts cost around $2.50 to make and I told Mr. Smith to sell them to expats for $10. I told him I want my initial investment back, and that he’s free to charge what he wants. Smith and his associates were outside the Obama fundraiser and sold quite a few shirts.

Despite the success the night of the fundraiser, the shirts haven’t been selling as well as I had hopped. I think I may have overestimated the number of liberal expats in Liberia (the folks here for mining and rubber are probably republicans). I also don’t think Mr. Smith has fully grasped the target demographic and how to best reach them. But we’re working on it.

In work related news, I… GT had a box built for the kiosk project, now called MOSES(MObile Story Exchange System). The box will house the MOSES computer when he’s not on the road at the TRC office on 9th street. If you’re in the neighborhood you should check it out. It’s been drawing a lot of attention and I hope to have some formal write-ups on this for the boys, and girls, in Atlanta soon. To the right you can see the box and the carpenters who worked on it.

Finally, Oct 7th was my birthday. I’m now 27. I can’t believe I’m this old. Late 20’s what happened? What do I have to show for all my years? I’m so close to 30 and still don’t think of myself as having a real job. Which I kinda like. I get to do a lot of coo stuff in Africa. So I’m pretty OK with that. It’s just gonna be a while before I can afford a wife and kids, or a mortgage, (not that any one else in America can afford a mortgage right now anyway), or retirement. A lot of people started asking me for my address right before my birthday. So far I’ve received nothing in the mail. So I hope you didn’t send anything important. I also haven’t received my absentee ballot which is a bit of a bummer.

My birthday was celebrated with a few friends at the newly opened Japanase Steak House. That’s the name of the place, “Japanse Steak House”. I’m hoping to have full write-up on it soon. It was good, but very Liberian (took forever, half of the menu wasn’t available, the bill was a mess, you know… the usual).

Oh yeah, and a new club opened up in Monrovia. De Javu is Liberia’s latest night club. I headed over there with the roommates and a few other people on opening night. I liked it. The music was at bearable levels, it wasn’t smoky, and the AC was up to par, I didn’t get sweaty or anything. The cover was $15 which is ridiculous. We talked them down to $10 and I would never do it again. I’m morally opposed to covers, especially in the 3rd world. But for opening night I made an exception. The place reminded me of the places I went when I was 18, but not 21. It was a little cheesy, but really good for Liberia.

Finally, I wanted to leave you with this picture from the balcony at the TRC office where I work. Just another day in paradise.

John

<><

A couple weeks ago I toured three counties with Georgia Tech’s MObile Story Exchange System (MOSES). I was accompanied by my colleague Dickson Fully, IT Manager at the TRC. We went to Sinoe, River Cess, and Grand Bassa counties. Obviously I had a great time driving on some of these roads. The road from Monrovia to Grand Bassa is paved, but has so many pot holes that you have to drive really, really slow. To me this is the worse. The road from Grand Bassa to River Cess was good. USAID is paying for  a road renovation project, so it was a lot of nice rolling dirt roads.  Thanks, this is your tax dollars hard at work in Africa. The road from River Cess to Sinoe was a mess. Lots of mud and dirt. Some times it was pretty fast and some times we were down in 4L trying to not get stuck. Of course this was my favorite part.

I definitely found myself wondering why I went to school for so many years, when driving through the mud is all I want to do. At one point I kept to the right side of the road to avoid an oncoming motorcycle and just kept driving straight. Straight into a hole that held fast to our front left tire. I should have stopped, let the bike pass, then drove to the left side of the road where all the tire tracks were to indicate that, that is where I should have gone. Fully and I tried digging out the dirt around the tire so we could jack it up, put something under it, and then drive away. Every so often Fully would, stop, look at a rock, throw it aside and keep digging. I asked him what he was doing. He said, “They might be diamonds.” He also informed me that if it was a diamond we would be going straight to the airport. I never had to deal with this when stuck in the mud in Florida. We never found any diamonds. After an hour of pushing, digging, and shortening the life of the transmission, some very nice Liberians came along and pushed us out. They only asked that I give them $10USD in exchange for their services. Seemed fair to me, I wasn’t going to argue with them. Fully told me this was a good jungle experience for me. I agreed. I think we both bonded. I also learned that the 4Runner’s 4WD is more of a, “don’t get stuck driving on the beach” or “keep from spinning out when driving on snow” 4WD than a “drive through anything” 4WD. I had the car in 4L and where did all the might of the 3.4L V-6 go? To the one tire that wasn’t getting any traction. Some sort of limited slip or locking differential would have freed us in no time. Should have bought a Land Cruiser.

We also encountered several other stuck vehicles. Some we could help, and some we couldn’t. We used our tow rope to pull this truck out on the left. We scraped our selves up a little when we passed this lorry, on the right, that was stuck on a bridge. They had laid some wooden planks on the side of the bridge so you could drive around the side of the lorry and get on the bridge. We slid latterly in the mud and had a rubbed up against the lory. And finally we came across this SUV that was stuck at the bottom of a hill. We thought about pulling them out, but there was nothing but mud in front of them, and I was afraid we’d just slide right into their bumper. So we drove around them on the high ground.

On the right here is what GATECH-1 looked like after arriving in Sinoe, eight hours after we left Monrovia. As you can see the new shocks and springs make the 4Runner look pretty nice. And we never hit the frame once the entire time. Of course I was driving carefully, but some of the roads here were pretty rough on our ramblin wreck. She still came through shinning. So much so that Fully insisted that we have her washed at every stop. He pointed out that no one would want to crowd around a dirty car to a see a cutting edge piece of reconciliation technology. So we drove out into a stream and had someone wash the car. We even had a little dirt on the license plate that needed to be scrubbed off.

Over all our research work went well. We had large crowds most of everywhere we went, and people were excited to see what we were doing and be apart of it. I have a video of some of the best of from the trip, both driving and users here. As you can see in the picture on the left we had lots of people checking out what we were doing. This picture is from Buchanan, Grand Bassa County. Some of our best interactions came from a group of guys in Greenville, Sinoe. We setup in front of a tea shop where all the local men come to “lecture.” That’s what Liberians say, the don’t say discuss or talk, they say “lecture.” These guys gave some fairly insightful and well educated thoughts on the causes of Liberia’s problems going all the way back to its American settlers.

I also found a Shell station in Greenville, Sinoe County. The sign seemed a little shot up, but there was a boy with mayonnaise jars of gasoline and a hand panted sign that said “Shell” behind him so I figured it must be legit. There was a also a Texaco in town, but it didn’t seem to be doing so well. The picture on the left is a sunset over a grave yard in Cestos, River Cess county. My camera didn’t do a very good job of getting both the sunset and the tombstone. Trust me, it looked really cool in person.

In other news the TRC summer interns, Zoey and Kara left to go back to school.  The TRC staff had a going away party for them at the Garden Cafe. Garden is one of my favorite night spots in Liberia. Lately the ratio of regular girls to commercial sex workers(not to be confused with faith based or non-profit sex workers) has been a little low. Even still, with a large enough group of people it can be a really good time. Just be sure that you bring enough friends to achieve critical mass.

Every Friday Garden has the GML band playing everyone’s favorite Liberian, reggae, pop, and rock hits. The band is led by this guy. I have no idea who he is, most of us call him the “old guy.” The best is when the band sings Shakira’s Hips Don’t Lie. It’s a great song to dance to and the old guy can bust it out. This particular night out I learned that one of the TRC’s drivers sings back-up for the band. Here we are adding to the overall vocal harmony.

Finally, the TRC’s public hearings have been in full swing. They’ve had some of the major players in the civil conflicts come forward and speak about their involvement. As you can see from this picture of the Centennial Pavilion in downtown Monrovia, the house is packed.

John

<><

Once again I’ve managed to go a month with out any updates. When I started out I thought this would be easier than it is. The hard part is getting the photos up here, and we all know photos make the blog. Like this photo here. See if you can spot the white man standing at Water Side Market.

Water Side is where i took my friends David McCann and Stephanie Kruse when they arrived here to get a taste of Liberia. David and I studied computer science at Georgia Tech together for both our undergrad and grad degrees. He now works for Busy Labs in Accra. Steph and I went to the same church in Atlanta. She teaches special ed in the Gwenette County school system. Steph arrived at the beginning of July and has been helping the TRC with some copy editing.  The following is a brief summary of the high points of our adventures this past month.

I’ve noticed for some time that GATECH-1, my company car in Monrovia, has been riding a little low in the back. Especially when there’s equipment in the back and a back seat full of people. The tire would be an inch from the wheel well when the car is fully loaded. I found myself driving very slowly to avoid bottoming out on every pot hole, and there are a lot of pot holes here.

I took the car to No Lemon garage to see what could be done. Given the nature of the driving the 4Runner would be doing, they recommended heavy duty shocks and springs, which I fully agree with. Unfortunately, they couldn’t get the parts in for several weeks. They had to import the parts from their supplier in Australia. So I decided to work on a quick fix in the mean time.

I went down to the rubber market, and found four 4″x1.5″ blocks of rubber. I had the guys at the market cut these up into eight 2″x1.5″ blocks. This set me back a paltry 700LD. I then went home, jacked up the 4Runner, and shoved 4 blocks in between the each coil of the rear springs as shown above. Amazingly, this added about an inch and a half of lift to the rear of the car and fixed the bottoming out. The ride was even pretty good, no squirly backend or anything. This reminded me of the kinds of things friends in my neighborhood would do to raise their pick-ups when we were in high school. Though after a while a few of the blocks of rubber fell out, so a real solution to the problem is needed. I’ll keep you posted.

We also took the MOSES (MObile Story Exchange System, formerly known as the Kiosk) out to Vonzula, Grand Cape Mount county. We were invited to go there by David Kizolu, the TRC county coordinator for Grand Cape Mount. Vonzula is a market town about 20 (I’m making up this number) miles from Sierra Leone. We went on market day so the place was packed. There were some good interactions with MOSES and the locals, lots of good videos were recorded, and as always people seemed excited. I think Steph and David liked it because it was a break from Monrovia and more of a sampling of rural Liberia. Like a lot of places the capital city is not what the rest of the country is like. David and I met a lot of people from the surrounding area, and Stephanie was befriended by every child in the market. Some parents just asked her to the take the kids back with her, she declined.

What trip to Liberia would be complete with out going to Robertsport? So of course Steph, David, Carter Center Sean, and I rented a tent at Nana’s Lodge for a night to soak up the sun and the waves. The surfing was OK on Saturday, but Sunday was rainy and windy. However, we did have a good time walking down the beach. In this picture I’m riding down the sandy cliff of a stream created by rain water running from the hills through the beach and into the ocean.

On July 17th Monrovia saw its first ever trivia night. Founded by Sean Mcleay, trivia night was composed of a round of Liberian trivia, general trivia (music, movies, people, places), and  wild card trivia, with a final question. Between the first three rounds was a special picture question. Our team comprised of David, Steph, new roommate Sabrina, and me. Trivial was held at Taaj Indian Restaurant, with first place receiving a $50USD gift certificate and second place a $20USD gift certificate to Taaj. We dominated the Liberian trivia round but then hit some rough waters with the other two rounds. Thankfully, we had a strong showing in the first picture question and the final question, which was a science question. So we came in second. Not bad for our first try and David’s first full day in town.

In our quest to find touristy things to do in Monrovia, which isn’t easy, we ended up at the Monrovia Breweries, home of Liberia’s own Club Beer. When we first arrived we were told we had to submit a written request for a tour and then management would get back to us. These guys wouldn’t have any sweet talking, they were all business. But they did tell us that maybe we should come back at 2:00 when the boss man was back from lunch. So I left my business card and we went on our way. After lunch and a way fun ride on a random dusty road we came back to the Brewery.

We talked for a while, and again were told we needed to submit a request in writing. Then, right as we had started up our motorcycles to leave, they flag us down and said, “Why didn’t you tell us you were the people that left the business card? Come on in.” Apparently my business card constituted a request in writing, or something like that. So the assistant brew master, a very nice man named Sampon, took us on a full tour.

It was amazing. One of the best things I’ve done in Liberia. The picture on the top left is me in the brew house control room with one of the guys that runs the system. The picture on the right is of cans of hop extract. They don’t use fresh hops because it takes too long to ship them over from Germany.

There were several outstanding things about the tour, but for me the most amazing was that we saw no other white people working there. The whole place was run by Liberians, and these were some serious, on the ball, and very professional Liberians. Though the plant is Swiss owned it was so nice to see it Liberian run. Often I find myself struggling here with the lack of capacity in human capital, so it was very refreshing to see such an operation so well run by Liberians.

Another thing I enjoyed about the tour was the lack of OSHA/FDA restrictions. We went everywhere and saw everything. It was great. No, “don’t walk there it’s slippery or.”, “We can’t go past this point with out washing our hands.” It was all access. I mean we’re all adults, we don’t need the government telling us to walk slowly on a wet floor, I can see it’s wet. Though I must say that the plant was very clean, neat, and sanitary. They showed us all the things they do to clean out the system between brews. They also answered every question we asked. No, “That’s a trade secret.”

Some facts I found intersting about the plant.

• Contrary to popular belief the plant did shut down during the war.
• They brew Club Beer, and are licensed to brew Guiness Stout and Guiness Malta, very impressive.
• They brew a little less than 5 million gallons a year.
• They don’t export because they can’t meet the local demand as is!!
• Obviously clean water is important to them, so I was very surprised to learn that they mainly get water from the city of Monrovia. They said it’s usually pretty pure and if they do anything at all to the water they only add a little chlorine. They said the real problem is when they have to get water from other sources, then it’s not clean.
• A crate of 12 large club beers wholesales for 860LD. On average they retial for 100LD per bottle. So a profit of 28LD per bottle. That’s almost $0.50USD.

At the end of the tour we saw their bottling operation, also impressive, and had a absolutely delicious club beer. It was so hoppy and fresh. I asked when it was made, “yesterday”, was the reply. Amazing!

On that same day we also visited Hotel Africa. Built for a continent wide conference in the 70’s, Hotel Africa was at one time the largest hotel in Liberia, and I’m told it had the largest swimming pool in West Africa, and maybe all of Africa. As you can tell from the picture the building was very impressive. The pool is in the shape of Africa. In addition to the hotel there were casinos, restaurants and boutiques.

I was super impressed to see dry wall in the rubble. I haven’t seen dry wall since I’ve been here. They also had duct work lying around from the hotel’s HVAC system. Again, something I haven’t seen working here since I arrived.

I’ll end with a little bit about my life in Liberia. To the right is a picture of my favorite meal to cook here. I call it “John’s Skillet Surprise.” Because of the uncertainty of refrigeration and the price of most food items I’ve adapted by pan frying some potatoes and onions, and then adding adding eggs. Some times cheese or avocado can be added, a little garlic is nice as well. Often I’ll serve skillet surprise with ketchup. It’s around $2.00USD to make a plate of skillet surprise and refrigeration isn’t required for the meals components. Though I do prefer to keep the eggs refrigerated most of the day.

Is skillet surprise tasty? Just look at Sean’s face.

John

<><

This is a little out of date, but I finally acquired the mp3 of my appearance with Parker on UNMIL radio talking about the TRC. This was originally broadcast on June 6th, 2008. The mp3 can be downloaded here.

I feel like I sound kinda silly at times. I even let a little Liberian English slip from time to time. I imagine I just sound ridiculous to the average Liberian.

John

<><

I’m two weeks behind on my blogging and still pretty busy so I’ll be brief, or at least write a lot hastily. Two weeks ago I was able to go again to Robertsport, and once again it was a lot of fun. I traveled with a group that included the wife of one of the President’s senior advisors. So we had our own secret service guard traveling with us. He had a gun and everything, Glock-17 if you’re curious. I even had my car washed alongside the President’s motorcade of secret service vehicles. They were using a pressure washer and after a lot of talking they finally let me use it. I don’t think they understood why I wanted to do their job. I was just excited to be using a pressure washer in a country that doesn’t have running water.

The surfing was pretty good. Not as great as the week before, but still pretty good. Michael and I from right to play had a lot of good waves. For once we brought other people with us who had cameras. So we have some pictures of us surfing. Nothing to spectacular, but it’s still better than nothing. We also did some dusk surfing and had some awesome pictures of us against the sun set. Thanks to Amy Kirkwood and Gwen for the pictures.

We stayed at Nana’s lodge. After hanging out a bunch in their bar, I finally got to sleep in their tents. It wasn’t half bad for a tent. The power cut out at night, so the fan also cut out, and it got a little hot. The sheets were a little stiff, probably still brand new, but other than that I was happy.

In other news this week Jonathan Saah, who I had posted about a few months ago, received the check for his microloan. He was pretty excited about it. He told me he had already begun talking with the landlord of the place he wants to move his café too. He also assured me that he’d be very timely in his repaying of the loan. I’ll keep you posted on this business venture.

Two Fridays ago myself and a crew from the TRC made it out to Groovies night club. The local band was pretty good and the drinks were reasonable. It was a lot of fun getting to hang out with those guys. In this picture Fully and I are hanging out at the table. Other pictures is just really cool looking and of Fully. It has not other purpose for being here than that.

I also had the opportunity to take Mr. Smith, a blind double amputee I’ve come to know, to one of the MercyShips clinics to see if they could help with his eyes. Smith lost his forearms and eye sight in the war. I was told to arrive early at these clinics so Smith and I arrived a little after 7 in the morning and there was already 40 people in line. The folks there seemed a little thrown off that I was in line. I hate pulling the white card, so I told them we’d wait in line like everyone else, but after a while they made us move forward.

Smith is one of my favorite amputee friends because of his constant gratitude and pleasantness. He’s never given me a hard time about not giving him enough and is always happy to know I’m about. Plus, no arms and no eyes in Liberia just can’t be easy.

Sadly the people at the clinic said they wouldn’t be able to help Smith’s eyes. The blindness was caused by scaring to the eyes due to an explosion he encountered in the war, and not because of cataracts or other treatable causes. I was afraid of how Smith might take this, but he was very OK with it. He said he was just thankful to be alive and that God would help him.

After the clinic we both hung out at his place of dwelling for a while. It was modest, but not bad for a guy in his position. I met his wife and youngest son. He told me he had two other children that stay at a mission across town. His friend who leads him around told me that they can make around 200 Liberian dollars a day begging. That’s about $3.50 a day. At the end of the day they split it 50/50 he told me. While that is by no means enough money for anyone, it is enough for them to not starve. Smith asked me if I’d give his wife some money so that she could open up a small shop at the back of their home and sell stuff so he wouldn’t have to beg. I had him write down all the things he’d want to seed the business with and that we’d go shopping next week. I’ll keep you posted on that as well.

This past week was also super busy. I was asked by a diplomatic officer at the US Embassy to give a presentation on our work with the TRC to a congressional delegation that was touring Liberia. USAID had given the TRC half a million dollars and they wanted to know what the TRC was doing. So on Monday I got to present. It was pretty neat. They all seemed impressed by it. I really felt like my Georgia Tech education had prepared me for such an event. Since every project based computer class I took ended with a PowerPoint presentation. I just thought of it as another end of semester presentation and went with it, didn’t even get nervous. On a side note, the fridge in the conference room the delegation had taken over was pretty well stocked with beer and other beverages. They even had Sam Adams. I couldn’t believe it. They would have to flown that over here themselves since you can’t get it here. I was really bummed that I had to present and couldn’t just drink a Sam Adams and listen to the other presentations.

The US Ambassador to Liberia was also at the presentation. I was told that he was so impressed with the presentation that he had my name added to the embassy’s super exclusive July 4th party guest list. So on Friday I went there. That was super cool. It was held at the American School which I had never been to. It was as nice as my high school in the states. A lot of top government officials and foreign representatives where there. The Vice President was there and gave a speech. I think Ellen was out of town, otherwise I’m sure she would have been there. This is a picture of Kristen, who works with me at the TRC for another NGO and me at the party. Kristen’s presentation at the same congressional meeting also got her in the party. Sadly there were no fireworks, but we did get a presentation of the colors and the national anthem. That was very cool.

I’ve also been taking GT’s kiosk video project out and about. We went to Robertsport and Tubmanburg. I have some video of the unit being used here. It’s kind of crude, but get’s the point across. While at Tubmanburg we visited blue lake. Also, some of you may notice that Stephanie Kruse is now here with me. She’s hanging out and enjoying all that Liberia has to offer. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get her hooked up with a little bit of something to do while she’s here other than watching me work.

Finally this weekend two of my roommates left, Amanda Leese and Gwen. We had a going away party for them and Gwen, who is a PhD candidate study Pentecostal Christianity, was “flowered” by one of the churches she attends for her going away. We both got all dressed up in more traditional dress for the occasion. I was told we were fortunate that the service only last 2 hours instead of 4.

John
<><

So a lot of things have happened since I last posted. Usually I like to try and keep things in chronological order and preserve the flow of events from one to another. But to capture the business that was this past week, I’m just going to give little one paragraph accounts of the highlights from this banner week.

Tom, Aldoph, Laye, and I went to Buchana to do more cell phone usage surveys. On the way over there we stopped at a bridge to take some pictures and enjoy the scenery. I was walking along the bridge when all of a sudden I heard a loud explosion. I thought, “There’s no way something blew up, something big must have fallen, but what?” We were in the middle of the jungle, no big trash bins or other modern junk to be dropped. I spun around and 100 yards from the bridge was a huge water spout where something indeed had blown up. Now I was thinking the war was back on and we were being shelled. It turns out the man in the canoe 20 feet from the water spout was fishing… with dynamite. Apparently this is somewhat common. I was even told that this method of fishing is less preferable since the fish don’t stay fresh as long. Probably cause they’re blown up.

After the water fell back down, the man jumped in, and started throwing fish in the canoe. I feel like now I can go back to America and know that I indeed have seen everything. Tom and I also continued making research across Liberia. Here and here is the video from driving to Barpulo.

Continuing a theme from this summer I made two trips to the emergency room in one week. The first time was to take one of the security guards at the Carter Center to the ER to see his son who had been hit by a motorcycle. His son had a little cut above his eye, but was otherwise alright. I hear that he is now doing fine.

The 2nd time occurred after doing some kiosk testing at the University of Liberia. We were packing up when a bus drove through and clipped a power line. The line fell down and we all backed up to avoid getting zapped. A car drove up and people yelled at the driver to not drive over the line, but he kept coming. I’m not exactly sure what happened next because I didn’t see it, but I think a security guard was trying to move the wire before the car hit it and was either zapped by the line and cut himself falling down, or was cut by the wire when the car rolled over it and pulled it taunt, either way he hit the ground and when he got up he was bleeding everywhere from his chin.

Thankfully, the week before I had decided that it was ridiculous that I was riding around in a country with no emergency medical response system without so much as a Band-Aid in the car. So I made a first aid kit for GATECH-1. To treat the wounded man I went back to my days as a volunteer firefighter with Station 17 in St. John’s county, FL, I did the thing you should always do first in such a situation, I put on latex gloves. Then I grabbed some gauss and told the man to apply pressure to his chin. While trying to find out how the man was feeling and what he’d like to do next. A crowd had gathered and the driver of the car was now yelling and getting very, very belligerent. He was just going crazy yelling at people, and of course, people were yelling back, even the injured security guard would take the gauss away and yell back at him.

After a minute of this I walked away. I didn’t want to be in the middle of a brawl, and my efforts to help were being ignored. Thankfully, a second later a lady brought over the security guard and asked that we take him to the hospital. At this point his supervisor had shown up so we had him accompany us to the hospital. I still need to call the supervisor to find out how the guard is doing. The cut wasn’t too bad, nothing life threatening, but he definitely needed a few stitches.

Earlier at the University of Liberia, I had a great discussion with some students about American politics. Who is going to win our election is a big deal. One guy said McCain was going to win. I asked why and he said because some American’s don’t want a woman as president, and some don’t want a black man, so McCain is the only one left. Another said the he had been watching American news shows and the news anchor had made a remark that even he could beat McCain right now.

It was so nice to have a real, intelligent, and fun conversation with Liberians. It was very cool to hear their thoughts. One man told me how much he loved watching Wolf Blitzer on CNN. Earlier that week Sean from the Carter Center, Tom, and I had been making fun of Wolf Blitzer for his style of reporting. Always saying things like, “Now for those people who are at home, and who can’t see what you’re seeing, over there, where you are, on the ground, tell us what you see happening right now.” The Liberian gentleman said he liked Wolf’s calm composure. I said, “Of course he’s calm. He’s in America.”

Here are some pictures of our video kiosk project being tested around Monrovia. Check out that sweet tent.

We picked up a new GT person for the week. Martin Bednar is a master’s student who had worked on the video kiosk project and also wanted to test some ideas for aN Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system for cell phones. IVRs are what you get when you call a place and hear, “For finance press 1, for…” This was Martin’s first time in Sub-Saharan Africa, so Tom and I decided to have some fun with him. We had our research assistants, Aldoph and Laye, hold up a sign with Martin’s name on it. We told them to meet Martin and tell him that we had been delayed and that we wouldn’t be able to meet Martin at the airport. We also told them to tell him that it wasn’t safe to take taxis, so they’d have to walk 40 miles to town. We hid around the corner and watched martin get out of the airport, meet, the guys, and then start walking down the road. It was pretty funny, and Martin handled it well. He didn’t freak out about any of it. I was kinda impressed.

I spent 2 hours at Eco Bank trying to get my money out to pay rent. It was by far the most unpleasant thing I’ve endured while in Africa. Somehow it bothered me more than getting my stuff stolen. It was quite a test of patience. I just had to remind myself how fortunate I was to have money in a bank, and a place to pay rent for. Not to mention that I purposefully chose to come to a country with such an arcane banking system. But it really made me wonder how they can be so slow. I mean they do have computers at the counters. They aren’t looking up balances in a ledger somewhere. At least, I hope not.

I walked in on David “Deacon” Cortie at the Carter Center counting petty cash. He probably had $10,000USD on the table. I was like, “Whoa that’s a lot of money.” He said, “No this is nothing.” And I was like well that’s still a lot to me. He then told me how during the war he worked for MSF (Doctors Without Borders) and had helped them bring money in from Sierra Leone. During the war banks wouldn’t send wire transfers to Liberia, and airlines wouldn’t fly to Liberia, so David would drive to Sierra Leone and pick up $300,000USD to pay MSF’s expenses in Liberia!!! I couldn’t believe it. He said the white people where too scared of being killed by rebels so he would drive over there, hide all of the $100s under the upholstery and then drive back like nothing was up!!! Crazy.

For those of you who saw my post about Jonathan needing a micro loan, he has received the requested amount. I’ll keep you all posted on his progress. Thanks for all the interests. I had several people contact me.

It was raining the other day and I was leaving my apartment with the headlights and wipers on. The security guard ran up and tapped on my window. I rolled it down and he goes, “your lights are on!” He thought I had accidently turned them on and was worried I’d run the battery down. I explained to him how it was illegal to not have your lights on in such conditions where I come from. All I could think was that this country has a way to go. It really makes me sad, and angry, when I see all the totally dangerous stuff people do on the road here. I feel Sad because they’re going to kill themselves, and others, and angry, because it’s so pointless. So often motorcyclists don’t have their lights on at night, or will ride around with the helmet right in front of them on the handle bars, but not on their head. I just don’t think they know that when I plow into them at night because I can’t see them, they’ll die because they aren’t wearing a helmet. Or they think it’s cool to not have their lights on and not wear helmets. The later is even a problem in the states.

I’ve been pulled over 3 times this week. The first time was in the 4Runner. I think I was a victim of racial profiling, and not having NGO license plates. The cop told me he pulled me over because people often drive with expired or invalid license plates. I showed him the paper work and he let me go. I was then pulled over at the same intersection again on my bike for the same reason. I showed him the license plate on the back of my bike and he let me go. I was afraid he was pulling me over for passing cars on the right. Nope, just wanted to make sure my papers were in order.

The 3rd time I was pulled over because the guy from the TRC who I was giving a ride to didn’t have a helmet on. He said I was being arrested and would have to take my bike to the central police station. I asked how we would get there, and he said he’d ride with me up there. So I asked where his helmet was. He said he didn’t need one. So I asked why, if I was being pulled over for a passenger not having a helmet, he wouldn’t need one. How can you uphold the law, if you don’t practice it yourself? So after five minutes he let me go. If I had known I was going to be giving rides I would have brought my extra helmet with me. From my above statements I do believe in helmet use. I would carry the extra helmet with me everywhere if it wouldn’t get stolen.

And finally I was driving down Tubman Blvd with Sean, and another guy, when 3 UNMIL tanks pulled out from 9th street in front of us. To be honest they weren’t really tanks, just armored personal carriers, but they had tank tracks, and machine guns. It was kinda surreal driving behind tanks on the road. They were just cruising along like it was nothing. I didn’t have to pull over for them or anything like when the president drives through. Sean told me to get closer behind them to take a picture. I was like, “yeah right they might shoot us.” Sean said, “It’s the UN. They can’t shoot us.” Oh the UN.

Later that night I managed to get the Carter Center pick-up stuck when I tried to drive over a sidewalk after being blocked in at golden beach. I hadn’t counted on the rear wheels digging out the dirt by the sidewalk making the drop off from sidewalk to ground taller than the tire. I also didn’t know that I had to lock the front wheels to get 4×4 to work. Thankfully some nice folks came and we lifted the truck out. Sean can’t drive stick and so I’m his night time driver.

And speaking of Golden Beach, the famous beach front dining experience in Monrovia, Golden Beach’s beach is about half the size of what it was. This past weekend a huge swell came in from somewhere in the Atlantic. It brought 10 to 15 foot waves that reshaped the landscape. Michael and I tried to go out and surf them, but we couldn’t get out, we just got really tired really fast. At any rate, a lot of beaches here are now really small.

And that’s Liberia.

John
<><

That’s what our Liberian research assistants / interpreters told people we were doing when they explained the purpose of our visit.

This past week Tom Smyth, a computer science PhD student from Georgia Tech, came over to help start up a couple projects. One of these projects being the GTV mobile video story sharing system, and the other is an analysis of the motivations behind cell phone use in Liberia. We started off working on the GTV project.

One of our priorities was setting up a power supply for GTV. So we went to a couple shops down town and bought a 120 amp/hour battery and a 1500 watt inverter/charger. The inverter is pretty awesome. You plug it into the wall and it charges the battery while powering the stuff plugged into it. When the wall power cuts out, the inverter switches to the battery and keeps powering the stuff plugged into it. Basically, it’s allows you to make a huge UPS. You can keep chaining batteries together in parallel to make a system that can run for days. The Carter Center, Jimmy Carter’s rule of law NGO, has a 3000 watt inverter plugged into 4, 200amp batteries to allow their whole office to run for 5 hours when the generator shuts down for a break during the day. I was pretty excited to get to play with electronics. We bought a multi-meter to monitor the battery and diagnose problems. We also started thinking about how to convert watts, volts, and amps to watt hours of burn time for GTV. It was good ole nerdy fun.

We also needed to create a system to provide adequate lighting for GTV. We wanted to make sure that when we’re filming outside the users face isn’t a black silhouette against a super bright background, so we bought two 15 watt compact fluorescent bulbs. We wanted a focused light that would compete with the brightness of the sun. For this Tom had the brilliant idea to make reflectors out of pie pans. So I was testing the pie pan reflectors when one of the pie pans slid down and made contact with the base of the bulbs contact. Instantly both my arms became rigid, I yelled, and fell out of my chair. I needed a second to process what had happened, then had a good laugh. I’ve never shocked myself with 220 volts before.

Another exciting project that Tom and I were tasked with was performing Q-sorts surveys of mobile phone users in rural (non-Monrovia) Liberia. What’s a Q-sort you may ask? I’m glad you asked. It’s a method for determining a person’s position on one issue relative to another. In our incarnation of Q-sort we have a big mat with 31 cards. Each card says something like, “My cell phone lets me get more done in a day”, “I enjoy talking to my friends and family on my cell phone”, “I use my cell phone to stay in touch with my suppliers”, and “My cell phone makes me feel more secure.” The subject takes these cards and then arranges them on the mat from “Most like me” to “Least like me.” To make this task possible we’ve hired two Liberian research assistants, Laye and Aldoph. Both of these guys are great. Some of the best Liberians I’ve had the pleasure of interacting with. The biggest thing they help us with is explaining such an abstract concept as a Q-sort survey to the average Liberian. Laye would relate it to soccer, “Say I prefer Man U to Chelsea, but I prefer Liverpool to Chelsea and Man U. Then I would put Liverpool on the far right, Man U in the middle, and Chelsea on the far left.” We also taught Laye and Aldoph shotgun. Aldoph is now pretty good at riding up front.

Everywhere we went we’d draw a crowd, and people are always super accommodating. We first went to Robertsport and spent the whole day sitting on someone’s front porch. In a market town outside of Kakata we sat in the “offices” of the local lawyer. People want to know what we’re doing and it sometimes takes a while to explain that we aren’t working for a cell phone company or starting a school in Liberia. Oddly enough most Liberians have not met academic researchers on the streets.

For me the best part of this has been the driving. I love driving. The roads to most of the towns are paved for the first 40 miles. After that it can get bumpy. Even the paved roads are bumpy in spots. The road from Tubmanburg to Bapulo was nothing but dust, mud, and rocks. I was in a mild state of euphoria the entire trip. At the end of the trip our 4Runner was covered in dirt. I need to get the road pics and video from Tom, but it’ll be good when I do.

In addition to all this fine research I’ve also replaced all my stolen IDs. I spent a memorable 3 hours getting a new driver’s license. To reduce corruption there are 4 levels of indirection when paying for your license. First you go to the Min. of Transport where they give you a hand written bill. Then you go to the Min. of Finance where you hand the bill to someone who prints out a bill. Then you go to the teller in the Min. of Finance and give them the bill and the money. Forty-five minutes later someone comes out with a stack or receipts and calls out the names on them. Finally you take the receipt back to the Min. of Transport and there you get your license. Luckily, the Min. of Transport is across the street from the Min. of Finance.

While waiting, I met some very cool people. One guy asked if I was getting the license for my bike and I was like, “Yeah I am… How do you know I have a bike?” He said he had seen me driving around town. I still don’t buy it though. I have a helmet on when I ride; even my friends don’t recognize me when I drive by, but whatever. I also had some great conversations with people about coming to America and that you can’t just get off the plane, hail and cab and say, “I’d like to go to college and then a job please.” One guy was sure that he’d get a good job in the States, another guy was like, “No you’ll do labor.” I agreed with the later. Then we had another conversation about how inefficient the whole process of getting a license was. The guy said, “This is Africa” and before I could retort this old lady on the corner went off about how it’s not Africa, it’s them. It was great. It was so cool to be talking politics with the common man, and not just me arguing my western, college educated, think I know it all point, but to see Liberians discussing their differing views.

Also, after several weeks GATECH-1 has her vanity plates. Since the plates have arrived I haven’t been stopped at check points. A few days ago I found a hard spot on my foot where it looked like I had a splinter stuck in that the skin had grown around. I tried digging it out with my knife and all this puss came out. But when I examined it closer it wasn’t puss at all, but little white ovals. Kinda like insect larva. I was ever so slightly disconcerted by this. I went to the doctor and they checked me out, made sure the cut wasn’t infected and told me I was alright. I think I was gotten by a worm at the beach. So far I’m still alive.

This was overheard in Monrovia when one person was talking about a workshop for traditional tribal leaders about the country’s new rape laws:

1. Traditional Leader: “Can woman rape man? If so how?”

2. Traditional Leader: “If a woman is raped in the bush and no one hears it, is it still rape?”

Expat: “Yes.”

In traditional culture, if a man doesn’t force himself on a woman than it is thought that she must not be attractive enough. So a woman asked how many times a woman can refuse her husband before he can force himself on her. When told that a man can’t ever force himself on a woman, the woman was flabbergasted.

Soon Martin Bednar, another GT student, will arrive with the long awaited GTV system. Once that arrives, the real fun will start.

Also, special thanks to Tom for sharing his pictures with me for this post since my camera was stolen.

John
<><

Today the tailor finished up the fabric part of the Liberian tent prototype. I also picked up a shirt and some, “short trousers” too. They all three fit pretty well. Mr. Amsu Am Bility, the tailor, did a pretty good job.

The tent is to be used to protect the users of the GTV mobile video story sharing system from the sun and keep the glare off of the computer screen. Hopefully it’ll also add some visual appeal to the system. As though, a white man and computers isn’t enough.

I set up the tent at the Carter Center with the help of a few of the guards. It was pretty easy to setup, and it looked pretty good. They all thought it was pretty good. I asked them what they thought; two of them thought it was like a palava hut. This is really good. A palava hut is traditionally where people would come to discuss their problems and resolve them. Ideally that’s what would we would like to see happen with our system, but across all of Liberia.

John

<><