So I went to Sierra Leone last week, stopped off in Liberia for a few days and now I’m in Ghana. I’ll talk about this more, but right now I’m trying to catch-up on my blogging. I’ll have a full report of Freetown later, but right now I wanted to make a quick report on some surfing. And even later I’ll talk about Ghana and what not, but to get the ball rolling…

In freetown I hooked up with a couple Freetown based expats who took me surfing at Bureh Beach. On the ride to the beach I just hung my head out the window and soaked in the beauty of the Sierra Leonean country side, so I don’t really know how we got there.  It was about an hour east of Freetown. But we were here N8.20739, W13.15552. On a side note, I noticed Google maps seems to place the coordinates several hundred meters away from where I think they should be, so either Google Maps isn’t super accurate for West Africa, or my GPS was pretty far off. Anyway…

Bureh was gorgeous. After getting out of the car we passed a few huts and signs of human existence, but by and large the place was totally pristine. It reminded me a lot of Robertsport, Liberia. Bureh is a beach break, though sometimes the waves would break along the rocks at the far right of the beach making some left handed rides. On bigger swells a nice line would form and even a few small barrels. The guys I was with told me that the waves were a lot bigger and nicer the day before. Too bad I missed it. I still really enjoyed it. I had a quite a few nice little runs and enjoyed getting out. 

John

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This past week No Lemon received the new heavy duty springs for GATECH-1. Before the rear springs were pretty much shot, causing the car to bottom out all the time. The new springs have lifted the back by a good 4″. Just check out these before and after picturess. The car also drives a lot nicer over the rough roads of Monrovia. I’m very much looking forward to taking her out up country. In theory the car can now carry 600lbs over the standard load in the back. I had 5 people in the back plus the MOSES power pack. We drove from downtown to Congo Town with out bottoming out once. Amazing.

Shirley’s Restaurant serves local food but with more refinement than you’ll find at most local dining establishments. Located on 10th Street, beach side in Sinkor, Shirley serves cabbage salad, potato salad, and my favorite, fried rice, in addition to local rice dishes. I like the food for the following reasons: the pepper is put on the side; the meat is served as one big piece, thus there are no little bones to pick-out; the presentation is quite nice, and it tastes good. A plate of food will run you $150 Liberian dollars. Meals include a small cabbage salad with a “zesty” mayonnaise and spices dressing. Not a bad for two and a half bucks.

In addition to cooking at her restaurant, Shirley also bakes. She’s made many a wedding cake, and

she’ll be more than happy to pull out her rather impressive scrapbook of cakes she’s made to showcase her abilities.
The service at Shirley’s is also prompt and courteous. Compared to other local places I’ve been, Shirley is downright speedy. She also has meals well into the day for those of us who can’t pull away from work at the stroke of noon.

On the whole, Shirley’s is a great place with good food and friendly people, and it is relatively inexpensive. What more could you want from a lunch spot?

My immediate boss, Dr. Michael Best, arrived in town last week with his boss, Dr. Bill Long, chair of the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at GT. They came here to assess the situation on the ground, and bring me a new camera among other goodies. So this blog post has photos that I took. Just like the last time Dr. Best was in town we kicked off a whirl wind tour of ministries, commissions and institutions of higher learning. Our coolest meeting was with the Vice President, the Honorable Joseph Nyumah Boakai. I was really excited to have landed us this audience. He was a pretty nice guy. He listened to what we had to say and had some good feedback. He got us a follow up meeting with the minister of internal affairs, who really liked the kiosk, and even talked to me. I figured with a world famous leader in technology for development and the chair of a top tier research university’s international affairs school he’d want to talk to them. But he talked to me. I was busy taking notes when I heard him ask if I worked at the TRC. I looked up from my note taking to realize everyone was looking at me. So I told him I sat there, but also worked on other projects. It was nice to get to be a part of the conversation. Also, amongst our maelstroms of meetings was the Minister of Post and Telecommunications, the Minister of Information, the chairman of the Liberian Telecommunications Authority, the president of Cuttington University, Liberia’s premier private university, various members of the TRC, the Inter-Religious Council, the Liberia Media Center, and two separate meetings at the US Embassy. The pictures here were taking while we were at Cuttington University in Bong County, three hours out of Monrovia.

While at Cuttington Dr. Best and I watched the artsy-about-Africa-foreign-film Bamako on the kiosk. Clearly a good use of its 19” wide screen and built in speakers. The viewing experience was great, the movie was terribly boring. We both decided we’re not artsy enough for such films. I also got sick and threw up a few times. Despite my sickness I drove Dr. Best and Dr. Long to the airport in time to catch their flights home. We took the scenic route and passed through the Firestone plantation. It was really pretty on a rainy Liberian Saturday. The road was also in great quality. I guess that’s what you can do when you’re an exploitive multi-national.

So when I got home that night I was feeling a bit achy, so on the advice of a few friends and 50 Liberian dollars I got tested. Sure enough, I had malaria. It was 8pm so no doctors were available. So there was much debate on what course of action I should take next. Finally I decided upon the ACT treatment. It set me back 120 Liberian dollars. Who needs insurance with such prices? I was a little worried because everyone said the treatment would wear me out and I had a big day ahead of me tomorrow.

Thankfully I woke up Sunday feeling just slightly under the weather. So I decided to go for it and attend the Liberia vs. Senegal football match. Worrisome from the match two weeks ago, I arrived early and drove my motorcycle in case I needed to make a quick getaway. The first thing I noticed was that there was no traffic. This was in stark contrast to the crazy line of cars that formed in front of the stadium last time. A local branch of the Ministry of Youth and Sports even let me park my bike inside their compound. They were very nice. This picture to the left is of me and my apartment mate Gwen Heaner. We were all decked out for the game in our red white and blue.

The first thing that you noticed about this game was that your ticket not only had a gate number, but a row and a seat number. Kind of like a real sporting event. There were no crazy lines to get in the gate. I walked up, showed my ticket and was immediately let in. Everything was calm. There was no craziness at all. We walked in and found freshly painted seat numbers on every seat in the stadium. Lonestar Cell, Liberia’s largest GSM operator, sponsored the game and was handing out free water and cool aid, Liberian’s call it “juice.” This was to prevent the overheating and dehydration that caused deaths two weeks earlier. This was very much appreciated because Sunday was a very hot day.

Inside the stadium things were festive, but under control. Fans were drunk and singing 3 hours before the game but it never got out of hand. The stadium was almost empty. The cheapest seats were $5 USD which isn’t too expensive. The game was also broadcast on local television, so perhaps after the last debacle people thought it best just to watch on TV. Either way, it was all for the best because FIFA had observers at the match to ensure that Liberia could handle a FIFA sanctioned game. It would have been a terrible blow to Liberia for them to lose that privilege.

The Lone Stars, Liberia’s team, even played much better than last time. They were much better about passing the ball and held Senegal to a 2-2 draw. All the goals were scored in the last half of play.

This was unfortunate because I left after the 1st half to meet up with two friends on the Mercy Ship. Kim Robinson and Peter Fullerton were both leaving the ship, though Kim is coming back in August. They’ve both been really good friends to me and I’ve enjoyed their company immensely. Kim calls herself my African mom, which I’m fine with. We could use more moms in the world. She’s an amazing woman of Christ. I should be so lucky. We attend the evening service together then had Star Bucks coffee in the ships commons area.

On Monday the Malaria meds caught up with me. I felt absolutely worthless. My stomach hurt and I had no energy. I even had trouble concentrating and was completely unproductive, which might have been the worst of it for me. I hate feeling like I’m not doing stuff. What made it worse was that I was stuck at home with no electricity so there really wasn’t much I could do if I had felt up to it. Looking back on things I realized that I had felt really tired most of the week. I thought that I was just worn out from our busy schedule of meetings and things. So I was kind of glad that it wasn’t keeping up with two of my seniors that had worn me out, just malaria.

I was still pretty out of it on Tuesday. I also think that the medicine messed with my head. My thoughts would race a lot and I’d lie in bed thinking of the things I needed to be doing stressing out that I wasn’t getting stuff done and really worrying a lot. More than I would normally. I really wanted to go home. It was the most homesick I’ve been. I even kept telling myself that it was just the medicine, but it wasn’t much fun.

By Wednesday I felt a lot better. I had finished my ACT treatments and now had my head and my strength, but alas, the generator was out at the TRC. So I visited the supermarket and ran into my amputee soccer team friends. Rueben, the guy I talk with the most from the soccer team, wanted me to buy some tarpaulin for their “house”. It’s the rainy season and their house doesn’t have a roof. He said they need a roof so they didn’t get cold. I still don’t understand how they call it cold, I call comfortable, but that’s beside the point. So I let Rueben show me the house. It was a two room stick framed house with no roof. He said they had woven mats for the walls, but didn’t want to put them up without a roof to keep things from getting ruined.

So since I had a free day and the “I’m getting over malaria” excuse to not work, Rueben and I drove to the Red Light market to buy some tarpaulin. I hate Red Light market, it’s one perpetual traffic jam caused by bad planning, poorly enforced rules, and unregulated capitalism. As far as I know it’s the biggest market in all of Liberia. It’s just a mess. The ride there wasn’t as much fun as I had hoped it to be. It was awkward. Reuben’s a good guy, a bit pushy with the begging, but a good guy, we just have a hard time talking. His Liberian English and my American English don’t mix very well. But we did get to talk about his wife and two kids, and whether or not the Lone Stars would make it to South Africa in 2010, still a lot of awkward silence. So after waiting in traffic for an hour we pulled up to the spot where the tarpaulin guys were. There’s no way I was going to leave the car alone in this placed so I stayed in the car while Reuben got the goods. 15 minutes later he returned with the tarpaulin.

On the whole I felt pretty good. For $35 USD I had literally put a roof over someone’s head. In this case it was half of the soccer team’s heads. Reuben didn’t say much, but I could tell from the smile on his face he was excited. He had me drop him off were the guys lived who would help him put the roof on. I guess being an amputee you need some help with these kinds of things. I plan to go back and get some after shots of the house. I really hope this works out for them.

John
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Not to be outdone by its competition, Cellcom, Liberia’s second largest GSM carrier, has unveiled EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution) on its network. A GSM network supporting the EDGE standard in theory should support data rates of 384kbps. But that’s in theory.

I stopped by the Cellcom store the other day to have my SIM card activated and get the access point information.

They set the access point to: web.cellcomnet.net

As of yet I haven’t been able to get this to work. I don’t even see the EDGE icon on my cellphone (Samsung Blackjack). Back when I was in the states I had T-Mobile and the EDGE icon was always on my screen. So I assume it’s an issue with the network. But maybe my SIM card was never properly activated or something?

At any rate, I just thought I’d let the world know that the access point for Cellcom Liberia’s EDGE network is: web.cellcomnet.net

John
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Kate, a freelance reporter, Adam, works for the Clinton Foundation, and I went to Robertsport this weekend to camp and surf. We had a late start and a little trouble at a immigration check point so we arrived a little late. Why you need to have immigration check points in the middle of the country, in counties that don’t border other countries is beyond me. Unfortunately Kate had forgotten her passport so she had to pay a fine. The guards asked if in our country you could just go around with out a passport. Probably not, but you can drive from Florida to California and never be stopped at a check point. On the upside, we did get to pass over some fun little bridges that were being worked on. It was at this point Kate got out and walked. Adam and I stayed with the ship.

Once we made it to Robertsport we put the 4Runner in 4wd and cruised the beach till we found a suitable spot for camping. We found a lovely camp site underneath and old cotton tree. We setup the tent and had a fire going just as it got dark. We had a little trouble with the fire since everything was wet from the rains. Kate and Adam are both British, and they had purchased our food supplies so we had proper meals at all times. For dinner we had toasted bread and bacon or sardines and matubal. For breakfast we had toast, eggs, and tea.

We also had marshmallows after dinner. I haven’t done that in a while. We also went down to the beach and look for phosphorescence every so often we could see a little spec of light. The seas were rough so it was hard to make anything out in all the foam. We also met some very drunk South Africans who had built a small bar on the beach. The bar was empty, but they had plenty of beer. They invited us for a sit so we hung out with them for a while. They have plans to build a hotel on the beach. I think I’d rather the beach stay remote and natural. When we woke-up, they had already started drinking again. One of the guys was like a big kid, half of me was like, “this guy is ridiculous” and half of me was like, “That’s what I wana be like when i grow up.”

After packing up we started up the car to drive down to where the surf is. We made it about 10 yards before the car stalled. (To make things worse I could even get the key out of the ignition. After a little prayer I realized the car was in neutral and wouldn’t let the key out till it was in park… oops) We spent 3 hours trying to figure out what was wrong. While waiting we played with some of the kids on the beach. At one point we had a local mechanic come and look at the 4Runner.

The battery was fine so he figured it must be a fuel problem. This is logical. So we checked the fuel line under the car, it was a little loose, but nothing sever. Then we checked the fuel line in the engine. The mechanic wanted to take off the air intake hose and put some gas right into the carburetor. This would be fine, except that the truck is fuel injected. So there is no carburetor, just fuel injectors that precisely and efficiently inject gas right into the cylinder. I asked if he knew about fuel injected engines. He said yes, but then he kept trying to tell me that this little rubber vacuum hose that led into the throttle body was the fuel line. I tried to explain to him that there’s a metal fuel rail on a fuel injected engine, and that’s where the gas enters the fuel injectors . The fuel pressure would be too great for the little rubber hose he found. It was at this point that I realized we were in trouble.

Thankfully, an UNMIL staff member who was near by suggested we check the fuses. We checked them and sure enough, one had been blown. Not only had it been blown, but someone had already wrapped some wire around the fuse to short it out. This wire had fallen loose and caused our problems. We refitted the wire and the cart started fine. I was a little worried about this since fuses are there for a reason, and something at some point had blown it. So I decided to take the truck to a mechanic when I got back to Monrovia.

In the meantime we went surfing. The waves were great. I wish I had pictures but the surfing beach is a hike from where the cars go and we didn’t want to bring valuables with us. The biggest waves were about 6′ high. It was easy to get out and a lot of fun. I even caught a little wave. My only complaint was that it was a little crowded with 5 other surfers in the water at one break, and they were all better than me. So they’d catch a wave before I could and I’d get out of their way so my board wouldn’t get ran over again.

On the whole it was a fun trip with a little excitement. We made it back to Monrovia just fine. We didn’t even get stopped by immigration. The next day I went to the Toyota dealership. I figured they’d have the diagnostic computer for the engine. I wanted to make sure the hack job on the blown fuse hadn’t damaged the engine control unit (ECU). But they didn’t have the diagnostic computer! They only had the one for diesel engines. I asked if anyone in the whole country had it and they told me No Lemon did.

So I went to No Lemon. This place was awesome. It even smelled like a garage in the States. In 3 hours they replaced the blown fuses, tested the ECU, found that the wrong sparks plugs were in the truck, and that the fuel filter had been put on backwards. They fixed it all and then washed the car, all for $125.00. Not too bad. The guy I bought the car from had boasted about how he had only used genuine Toyota spark plugs, he even showed me the receipts. So either he went to great lengths to decieve me, or his mechanic was ripping him off. I imagine it’s the latter.

And special thanks to Kate for taking all these pictures and documenting our adventure.

John
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Today, Gabe and I went to see Angola play Nigeria in the African Amputee Football Cup of Champions at Anthony Tubman Stadium (SKD) in downtown Monrovia. The feel of the game and the stadium reminded me of going to see minor league baseball when I was a kid. The stadium wasn’t huge, but it was better than my old high school stadium. The seats even had little backs to them - not a full back, but a good 9 inches for you to lean against. There were even kids selling popcorn, candy bars, and yes, even beer. Gabe and I bought some snacks, but felt a little snobby since we were the only white people there and also the only ones eating snacks. But it did feel kind of homey to sit and eat snacks while watching sports. The game was also free to attend, which is always nice.

The field was in really good condition. The grass looked well taken care of, and the lines were clearly marked. My only complaint was that the field was smaller than a regulation soccer field. They may only have one leg, but that one leg is just as strong as anyone else’s. They could easily clear the ball from one end of the field to the other. If it were up to me the field would be longer. That’s all I’m saying.

The players all had professional uniforms and looked very sharp. If it weren’t for the peeling paint on the stadium and their lack of limbs, you would think you were watching professional players. I did notice that none of them had custom crutches that properly fit them. They all seemed to be playing with your standard one-size-fits-all aluminum crutch. One guy even had a pair of wood crutches that looked to be made out of a couple of sticks. This is a shame. These guys should have custom-made carbon fiber crutches with silicon gel pads and specially formulated rubber feet that are made to take the abuse of this sport. I know Tech has a prosthetics department, so I tried to think of who I should email over there to see if they can help. If you know, please tell me. Gabe and I talked about how you would think someone would sponsor these guys with some high tech equipment. I’m sure there’s some company out there that makes this kind of stuff that could easily afford to donate some equipment. I’m sure the American amputee soccer team isn’t using one-size-fits-all crutches.

All of that aside, the game was a lot of fun to watch. The players can pull some sick moves when they plant their crutches and then come swinging at the ball. We even saw a few slides. The action is pretty non-stop. It’s amazing to watch two players chasing after the ball. They can move pretty fast. The players also didn’t take any falls. I hate watching pro-soccer when one player barely taps another and the guy goes down grabbing his knee. There was none of that. These guys are too good for it. The crowd was also really into it, which made it even better. They would cheer and yell whenever something happened. Many times, people here will make a high pitched “eeeh” when something happens that surprises them. So it was cool to hear a whole crowd of people “eeeh” when a player pulled an awesome move.

When we left, Nigeria was up 1-0. It was a lot of fun, and I’m glad we went. I’d love to go again.

Later that evening I went to the Mercy Ship for a Bible study. I had my camera with me, and the sunset was pretty, so I took a few pictures of Freeport at dusk. I downloaded a hacked firmware update for my Canon PowerShot SD1000 that lets me shoot pictures in RAW format. I’m told this should preserve more of the color depth of my images compared with the camera saving them as JPGs. I don’t really know what I’m doing, but the colors did seem a little more vivid. Hope you like them.

John
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The Little ‘G’ on the top of my cell phone screen means that the network I’m using supports GPRS or General Packet Radio Service. GPRS is the entry level standard for cellular data transmission. GPRS falls under the GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) standard for mobile telephony. Commonly thought of as a second and a half generation (2.5G) cellular technology, GPRS allows for data transfers of speeds up to 114Kbps. The word “Lonestar” on the other side of my cell phone screen means I’m getting GPRS in Liberia.

Just last week Lonestar Cell announced their jump into GPRS. After Libercell, Lonestar is the 2nd carrier in Liberia to do this. The internet is about as slow as it is in the rest of the country, but it’s still good enough for email. Mobile phone apps like Google Maps and Microsoft Live Search work well enough but don’t really have any content for the greater Monrovia area.

Lonestar was the first cell phone operator in Liberia using the GSM standard. For a long time, they held a monopoly in the cellular market until Cellcom GSM came along. Today, they are the largest carrier with about 500,000 subscribers.  It will be interesting to see what this does to the already competitive GSM market in Liberia.

Lonestar has been advertising this service in the paper, but much to my dismay, with no technical details of how to get it to work. You have to go to a Lonestar store, and there they give you a little flier with a few specific details for Nokia and Motorola phones. The alternative is to wait in a huge long line for someone else to setup your phone for you. I had to do a little playing around to get it to work on my Samsung Blackjack that runs Windows Mobile 5, but after a 4 or 5 tries I got it. Here’s what I did:

settings->Connections->GPRS->GPRS->Add

Description: lccgprs

Connects to: The Internet

Access Point: internetlcc

Leave all the rest blank

Then settings-> Connections->GPRS->GPRS Authentication

GPRS Authentication: None

After that it worked just fine.

I’ve heard that Cellcom is set to deploy EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution), a 2.75G technology, on their network in the coming months. With a theoretical top speed of 473Kbps this will make Cellcom’s network a lot faster than Lonestar or Libercell. However, that will only work if the connection coming into Liberia is that fast when you split it amongst the whole country. At any rate, I’m excited about it. I’ll keep you posted.

John

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This past weekend David McCann became my most international friend. To date we have spent time together in 3 different countries on 3 different continents. So far we’ve both made it to Ghana, Chile, and of course The Sates. David has been working the past month for Busy Internet, in Accra, Ghana. Busy Internet is an internet service provider, and home to the largest internet café in all of West Africa. David is helping the company develop their latest venture, Trade Net. Trade Net is a mobile phone based system for buyers and sellers of natural goods to exchange prices and orders. I know David from Georgia Tech, where we both received our bachelor’s and master’s degrees.

On Friday I flew out to Accra. The flight was pretty nice and only 30 minutes late. Not half bad. I flew on Slok Airlines which recently resumed operations after some safety issues. I felt safe, and the flight was cheap. I arrived in Ghana and was pleasantly greeted by AC and running water. I needed David’s address for the immigration officer when I arrived, but I didn’t have it. I was afraid this was going to be a big ordeal, but the immigration office was very nice about it all. He called David for me to find out the address and let me on my way. It was all so nice, and orderly and professional… so developed.

I was picked up from the airport by David, Mark Davies, and Jim Forster. Mark Davies is the owner of Busy Internet. He started his internet career in the dot com days with a web based city guide and was bought out by CitySearch. Jim Forster worked for Cisco back when the company only had 30 employees. He now holds the title, “Distinguished Engineer” at Cisco. It was kinda cool hanging out with guys who have pretty much done what I’d like to do professionally. Now I just need to find a start-up to be a part of that’s going to be wildly successful.

After leaving the airport we went to Jamestown, the historic district of Accra. There we walked around the beach, hung out with some fishermen, and climbed to the top of the light house. It was really cool to see the fishermen and their boats. They still fish the same way they always have. At dusk they leave, fish all night, and come back in the morning. They use simple nets and boats whose hauls are made from a solid tree trunk. The light house offered some really nice views of the city and the boats coming in from the sea. It’s also fun climbing around stuff like this in countries where liability isn’t a huge concern.

Ghana is far more developed than Liberia. A country can do a lot when it hasn’t had a civil war in recent history. The roads were filled with cars, and not the white SUVs of international NGOs, but of civilians and taxis. The roads were even paved. They had traffic lights, stop signs, and it seemed that people were following some sort of traffic law on the streets. I was also caught off guard by the tourism in Ghana. Tourism in Liberia simply doesn’t exist. So it was a little strange for me to meet people who were just touring around. It was also weird, and nice, to be in a place where it’s safe enough to take a taxi at night, expats don’t have their own drivers, and a local will want to talk to you just to be friendly. All in all I really liked Ghana. The 24×7 electricity and running water was also really nice.

On Saturday David and I went down to Cape Coast. Cape Coast is where the British originally landed in Ghana and setup the slave trade. Consequently the town has a lot of British inspired architecture and is a very lovely place. At the center of the city is the old slave fort where slaves were kept before being shipped off to the old or new world. We started out by touring the top of the fort, where the British lived. This gave us some great views of the city, and with the sun out it was really nice to climb around and check stuff out. Then we went down to where the slaves were kept. This wasn’t as pleasant. The slave’s chambers were dark dungeons under the fort where up to a 1000 men and 400 women were kept at once. It was a very sobering feeling to know that I was standing where countless people had suffered so many unimaginable things. Usually I think I’m pretty good at imaging, and thinking of what something could be like, but standing there in the dark corner of a cell I just couldn’t picture knowing that I was going to spend the night there, eat there, and maybe die there.

Saturday night David and I walked around Cape Coast a bit. We hung out at a local bar, but it kinda sucked. I’m used to being around expats who work for NGOs , and to some degree, are there to help. It felt a little wrong to be around expats who were being jerk tourists. It reminded me of bars in Thailand when I was there. Young people just trying to get drunk and hook-up with each other. Not as exciting as talking about the national poverty reduction strategy and its economic ramifications with a friend who works in the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Liberia.

We also saw an open air Easter Eve service that night. It was a Charismatic service so the pastor would get super quite and start to cry a little, then yell and scream into the mic. It was a little ridiculous. People would be dragged out of the crowd to a tarp in front of the stage where they would be placed so they could wiggle and writhe without getting in anyone’s way. I’m assuming the idea is that they were under the influence of the Holy Spirit who was at work in their lives at that moment in some powerful way, probably kicking out demons or something. Not how I would spend Easter.

Sunday morning David and I went to a national park do to a canopy walk in the jungle. The place had 6 rope suspension bridges between trees in the jungle that you could walk along. It was pretty cool, but short. After you walk through it once you’re kinda ready to move on. But it was really pretty.

After that we came back to Accra and pretty much just hung out. For me this was really nice. I appreciated the break from working and worrying about utilities and other basic issues. We even went to a shopping mall where I bought an ice cream sandwich. It was awesome. Then David and I kicked back and relaxed. I watched Star Trek I on DSTV and surfed the net.

Monday we went to a beach in Accra. David and I had a trash fight in the water. We threw plastic bags and other floating debris back and forth. No one told me that the water was unsafe, and floating plastic bags don’t worry me as much as floating feces, something we have to worry about in Monrovia. At any rate it was a lot of fun and I got to meet some of David’s friend from Ghana. For dinner we went to a tex-mex sports bar. This is my first tex-mex experience since 2007. It wasn’t the best tex-mex in the world, but good enough for me.

Tuesday I flew back, and that was that. Overall I really liked Ghana. I told Dr. Mike Best, my boss, about my time in Ghana. He said, “Yikes. When Accra seems to be a relatively well running city you know you must be living in…. well…. Liberia.”

John
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This week I noticed power poles going up in Monrovia. The Liberian Electric Company (LEC) is using huge generators to supply parts of Monrovia with electricity. As I understand it power runs for 21 hours a day. I’m also told that the price is out of reach for most people, and that they can’t handle heavy loads. Which means you can’t run a house full of AC units off of it. But I haven’t confirmed this. It’s a great sign of progress, and no doubt means a lot to the residents. Hopefully, the LEC will be able to expand their coverage and lower their prices as they leverage economies of scale.

In other electrical news: Robertsport in Grand Cape Mount County has solar powered street lights. I only saw it during the day, so I wasn’t able to see how well, if at all, they worked. At any rate, it looks cool and is a step in the right direction. Parts of Tubman Blvd also have conventionally powered street lights. This makes dodging put holes on my motorcycle a lot easier.