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

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So after spending a few days in Liberia after returning from Sierra Leone I got right back on a plane and went the other direction to Ghana. I went to Ghana to do a little work with Busylab. They’re working on a mobile system for farmers in developing countries to get information on every part of the crop supply chain, from prices to shipping expenses and everything in between. They call the system eSoko, which is African for e-Market. I had the honor of working on the initial design of this ground breaking and ambitious project.

At Busy I was working with my long time friend David McCann. David and I have collaborated on some of the best computer science projects of all time. Notably the highly acclaimed networked Scorched Earth we made for CS2335 while undergrads at Georgia Tech. It was such an amazing piece of work that the TA’s had to make-up extra, extra credit to properly recognize the shear brilliance of the program.

Anyway, so for 10 days David and I, along with Xose and Andrea , worked on design, researching technologies and deciding how to handle key issues. It was a nice break from Monrovia. We spent all day in an air conditioned room with constant electricity. We even had not so slow internet. Though, after a while I did find myself getting restless from sitting behind a desk all day. I missed having to run errands in town or meet with people on things, but it was still nice to have a little break from Monrovia. One nice thing about the job was that I got to ride a Yamaha 250 to work. It was quite the upgrade from my Chinese 150. Not to mention riding on streets where you can go faster than 45mph.

Part of my break from Monrovia included watching lots of satellite TV, catching up on all the movies I haven’t seen, and watching the world’s economy crumble. On the weekend we went to Ada beach. It was really cool. It lacks the waves of Robertsport but it was still really a lot of fun. We took a 10 minute boat ride from a little resort hotel to a thin (200 yard) little peninsula between the Volta River and the Atlantic. We slept in little huts with country flags painted on the doors. David and I slept in the American flag hut.

In the morning the local fisherman stood on the beach and pulled in these huge nets that had the catch of the day. When they brought it all in we bought 4 cuttle fish fom them and made calamari. It was really good.

At the end of my stay in Ghana I joined Devine, one of the house keepers at the place where I was staying, for a peace march. We were marching to promote peace in Ghana with the upcoming elections. Already there had been some violence in the northern regions of Ghana. The march started an hour and a half late, but it was still cool, and fun to be a part of. I also got some way cool t-shirts from the event. Which is important, it’s hard to find a good t-shirt from a country here that’s not super touristy. So I was excited about that too.

Upon returning to Monrovia I met up with Guilhem, who I had gone surfing with in Sierra Leone, and we went to Robertsport for a day trip. The weather was terrible, but when we got to RP the conditions were perfect. It was great.

John

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Despite the omission of a few facts, the day was very good for the TRC. People were happy to see such “big fish” as they call them, appearing before the TRC. So many people came that there weren’t enough seats in the hearing hall, so people crowded by the windows to hear. The TRC even ran a speaker outside so people on the street could hear the proceedings.  UNMIL was also on duty that day ensuring that nothing happened at the hearings. I had heard some rumors that members of President Doe’s family were intending to kill Johnson when he took the stand. Nothing happened, but it was good to see so many guys in blue hats with AK-47s keeping the peace.

John

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Just a quick update on Mr. Smith and his family’s small business. Last time I had spoken with him he had asked me to give him another loan to build an extension to his house to put the shop. Currently, the Smiths kept all the inventory of their dried goods business in the corner of the their one room house. Expanding would give them some much needed space and give their clients a more professional shopping experience. However, at the same time Mr. Moses, Mr. Smith’s brother (different father, different mother) had also asked that I help pay for him to have his prosthetic leg refinished because it was starting to rub his leg raw, so I did that instead.

But the last time I visited the Smiths I was happy to see that Mr. Smith had gone ahead and taken the initiative to build the extension himself. You can see the extension in the photo at the top. This is definitely another positive sign of Mr. Smith’s business sense and his proactive attitude. So many people would have just waited for me to pay for it for them, so I was very impressed by this. He told me he still needed help getting some shelves installed. We’ll see about that when I get back from Ghana. 

John

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The roads in Freetown are much nicer than those in Monrovia. Granted, we didn’t go to some of the more run down parts of the city, but the major roads were notably lacking in potholes compared to the major roads in Monrovia. The run down parts of Monrovia aren’t even paved. At one point Jeff was talking with an expat in Freetown about the roads to Liberia. She went to great lengths to emphasize how bad they were. To which Jeff replied, “But you made it through right? So they can’t be that bad.” She then replied, “No, they were really bad.” Jeff lives in Harper in Liberia. Right now, in the rainy season, no automobile can drive to Harper, the roads are that bad. Thus, Jeff and I concluded that “bad roads” in Liberia and Sierra Leone mean different things. To the right is a picture of some of the wonderful roads in Freetown and in the background the green hills that the city is built on the side of. I really liked the hills, having all that vegetation in plain site on the hills helps to remind you that you’re in what should be a tropical paradise.  While Freetown is a step up from Monrovia it’s still a little under developed. To the left is a picture of another thing I really liked about Freetown, street signs, again something rarely seen in Monrovia.

Another great part of Freetown was the architecture of the buildings, as seen from these two examples. Sierra Leone used to be a British colony at one point, and you can still see their influence in the structures they left behind. The building on the right is of the Justice Ministry. The one on the left is just some building I really liked. I’m sure it’s more important than that, but I’d just be making stuff up if I tried to guess its importance.

Another novelty Jeff and I enjoyed in Freetown was the public Library. As of yet I haven’t seen a public Library in Monrovia. There may be one, I just haven’t seen it. At any rate Jeff and I were way exited to sit and read for a bit. Naturally I found a mid spring 2008 Popular Science. I was really impressed that they had such an intelligent piece of literature. I caught up on the latest gadgets that wouldn’t work in Liberia because we don’t have power there. We stayed at the Library for a good 3 hours. It was wonderful. 

One of the best parts of our time in Freetown was staying at the Faduma Guest house.  The owner was a guy named Stone who worked for the Sierra Leonean department of corrections teaching fine arts to those spending their days behind bars. Stone was a very nice host. One day a young man was over to negotiate for his daughter. He was so excited he gave Jeff and I a free beer, what a guy. Stone was also a big fan of American politics. So much so that the night Barack Obama gave his speech at the DNC, Stone woke us up at 2:00am so we could all watch the speech. It was pretty cool seeing people in other countries so excited about American politics… in a positive way. This is much different than the time I came up from a French subway in the middle of an anti-Bush protest.  Stone would watch American news and verbalize his agreement with Obama and Bidden’s speeches. He even talked with us about how ridiculous of a choice Palin is. It was a lot of fun talking with him. To the right is a picture of my room at the Faduma Guest House. The guest house is located at N8.48398, W13.26993.

Other highlights included the public park at the center of town and the many seafood dinners we had. A picture of the park is on the left.  Again, public parks like this are something that don’t exist in Monrovia. The picture on the right is the Hard Rock Restaurant. The restaurant is located on a large, hard rock at the beach.

John

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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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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

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]]> http://johnetherton.com/2008/08/27/sinoe-river-cess-and-grand-bassa-counties/feed http://johnetherton.com/2008/08/10/sharks-ice-cream http://johnetherton.com/2008/08/10/sharks-ice-cream#comments Sun, 10 Aug 2008 13:53:01 +0000 John Etherton http://johnetherton.com/?p=101 In my humble opinion, Shark’s is the best ice cream in all of Monrovia, and thus all of Liberia, hands down. As soon as it hits your lips you’ll instantly recognize the distinct taste and texture of real cream. No soft serve mix, none of that gelatin nastiness from Monaliza, but real delicious cream, the way ice cream was meant to be. When I was a kid my mom would buy heavy whipping cream, throw in some sugar, salt, and vanilla extract, kick on the churn, and make some of the best ice cream I’ve ever had. That’s exactly what Shark’s taste like, it’s great.

Shark’s is located down a small side road off of Airfield Road right before Sprigs Airfield. If you’re coming from Tubman, Shark’s will be on your right. Just look for the sign, turn right, and then it’ll be on your right. Can’t miss it.

Shark’s sells its ice cream in a variety of sizes that are reasonably priced. I go with the 75LD small cup, about 6oz. Unless you’re preparing for rainy season hibernation it’s about all the creamy goodness I can handle.

Shark’s also has a mobile ice cream sales force. You’ll notice that they’re ice cream cones retail for 15LD. This is in contrast to Shark’s main competitors, Quench Your Thirst International, who sells cones for 10LD. But once you have a Shark’s cone, you’ll gladly pay that extra 5LD. It’s just so good.

Shark’s Ice cream, the closest thing you’ll find to a Cold Stone/Marble Slab in the whole country.

So this past week I stopped by to check on the store. Mr. Smith happily told me he had sold 6 bags of rice since I had last seen him. At first I thought, “Hmmm six bags, I was hoping for more like 60, but it’s a start.” But then I saw the empty rice bags on the floor. I realized that in less than a month he had sold 6 50kg bags of rice!!! That’s about 660lbs for you Americans. Not to mention 12 gallons of cooking oil. The picture at the top left is Mr. Smith with his kids and Ruth standing in front of the empty rice bags and oil jugs.

After seeing the empty bags Mr. Smith showed me the tin can he had his savings in. He said every day he puts 50LD in it. I looked at the tin and asked how to open it. Everyone laughed, and said you don’t. You put money in it till it won’t fit anymore and then break it open. He told me he only puts 50LD bills in the can and not 10 x 5LD bills. He also showed me his current cash surplus. It totaled around $30USD. In a country where most people make less than a dollar a day, having $30USD lying around plus a savings tin full of money means you’re doing pretty well. To the right is Mr. Smith with his two children and the business’s money.

So far this seems to have been my first sustainable development success. The phone charging business I helped start when I was here last year is non-existent and the guy never paid me back, though his cell phone scratch card business is doing well. I’ve been told by some amputees at the super market that Ruben, the man I bought the tarp for to cover his house, has sold the tarp. Though when I talk to Ruben he tells me he’s just waiting to save up enough money to buy some woven mats for the walls.

At any rate, I haven’t lessened anyone’s situation and it feels great to see Mr. Smith succeeding. He told me he wants $50USD to buy a tarp and some building materials to construct a small shop on the side of his house. I think Mr. Smith has graduated from charitable donations to loans with interest.

John

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So at 1:00 I met up with Keith and Peter for a quick lunch break surf at Thinker’s Village. I hadn’t been to Thinkers in a while so I was shocked to see how much of the beach had been eroded. Several of their concrete palava huts were now lost to the see. It was crazy.

Anyway… The waves were small, but if you waited long enough a 3′ or 4′ wave would come by. We all had a few good rides. Towards the end of the day the wind picked up and the waves started to really suck. But, I can’t complain. I couldn’t think of a better way to spend lunch.

John

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