Orphan Relief and Rescue
Today the pace let up a bit. In browsing around online I’d run across an organization called Orphan Relief and Rescue. Since some of what they do is the renovation of orphanages (which is similar to what I would be doing here), I had contacted them and they got me in touch with a man named Andrew Tyler. It worked for him to meet up today so we headed over there to learn what we could about their work. They’re building a new orphanage near where Firestone has their gajillions of rubber trees, so after a brief overview of their work we took off to see it.
We got a flat on the way, but Abee (and his brother, who happened to be passing by) made short work of that problem!
The orphanage they’re building is really, really cool. When they’re done, it will be able to house 50 kids, with a wing for boys, a wing for girls, and a central cafeteria-type area. Once they’re done building this they’ll also build a school, which will serve both the orphanage, and the greater community which currently has no locally-accessible school. Andrew walked us through all sorts of details about everything from construction to material supply to how hiring and staffing in Liberia. I’m sure I didn’t absorb as much as I could, but what I did learn will be invaluable (to Mustafa, at any rate, if I don’t return ;)
We shall live!
Since we were in Firestone already, Gladys asked if we would like to meet her son, who’s staying with her brother there while she works for Shelter this week. We said, “of course!” so got to meet Amouchen (which means “we shall live!”). He was shy, but apparently that’s not typical! It was great to meet the little guy we’ve been hearing so much about. He’s having lots of fun at his uncle’s beautiful place, but we think he can come with his mom when they drop us off at the airport on Sunday.
Henhouse
Next we stopped by the construction of a poultry run that Orphan Relief and Rescue is about to start. It’s to support a different orphanage – they’re building a big one because they think it will go a long way toward helping that orphanage become self sustaining.
Evelyn’s
We finally dropped Andrew off to let him get on with whatever else he was planning to accomplish with his day, and headed into town. All week long Gladys and Abee have been telling us how wonderful Liberian food is, but not letting us eat any because 1) finding food that’s safe for us to eat is somewhat of an issue, and 2) we’ve been eating at ‘fancier’ places to meet with all these official-types – or else eating leftovers or cereal :) back at the guest house. So today we FINALLY got to eat at Evelyn’s, which serves Liberian food. It was lovely. We shared fish gravy with boiled cassava, and dumboy soup. Spicy, but really, really good!
The National Museum
After lunch, Gladys took us to the Liberian National Museum. I’ll pretty much let the pictures speak for themselves. Oh – and you’re not supposed to take pictures, but we must have charmed the guy because he told us to take all the pictures we want. When we told him we’d share them with him, he got excited and wanted us to take even more! We learned a lot about Liberian culture and history – but a ton of stuff was destroyed or sold during the war, so the collection was not huge. One stone idol-thing was actually in a German museum for a long time. They finally were able to bring it back, but it was so heavy they dropped it en route from the car to the door.
The Market
We wanted to get some things as gifts for folks back home and figured this would be a good time to check out the market so that’s where we headed next. It was hilarious hearing Mustafa go back to his bargaining roots – between he and Gladys the poor shopkeepers didn’t stand a chance. And it really wasn’t nice because people generally see white people and jack prices up, and Gladys was having none of that at all. I just hate disappointing peoples’ hopes of cashing in big like that! (Any bets on my chances of survival if I move here?! :) Ok, ok, so I did some bargaining also – I am my mother’s daughter, after all!)
We returned to the car and it was covered with people and stuff – hey, it was horizontal empty space on a busy street! You can see the guy trying to sell Mustafa stuff through the windshield. It didn’t take long for them to clear it off once Abee started the car moving slowly forward. More friendly honking, and we were able to inch our way out of the area.
We headed back somewhat early compared to the rest of this week. The fruit here has been amazing, and we had picked up some “plums” (mangoes) earlier today.
So we ended the day as probably most days SHOULD be ended – stabbing slices of mango and puttering about.
Mustafa had to get this photo of the letter he got from the Ministry of Agriculture – it really is something to have it after less than a week in the country…