Site exposure 7-10th
The time had arrived, LR 8 was in country and they were ready to be shipped off to current PCV houses to stay for a few days. I previously signed up to allow some of the LR8s to stay at my house and show them the ropes, so when I heard I got chosen to have them come I was overjoyed.
Thursday:
They arrived via taxi on Thursday morning and I walked into town to pick them up and there they were, all clean and new to Liberia ha-ha. I got them, and we immediately went to the school. Thursdays I just teach math, so they sat in on the end of my 10th grade math lesson and the entire 11th grade math lesson. True to Liberian fashion before we did anything we did by way of introduction, instead of just standing up and saying your name for introductions, Liberians (all the students, all of them) stand and say, by way of introduction I am ** *** of the David Feju Senior High School, Gbartala City, Bong County, as if everything but the name isn’t common knowledge ha-ha. After introductions the LR8’s (Claire, Delany, Steve, and Jon) sat down and watched wile I taught graphing to the 10th grade. When 10th grade was finished we moved to 11th grade and gain did by way of introduction and they sat down again and watched as I taught DMS-Decimal to the 11th graders. After class was finished we headed to the house and they unloaded their stuff and we relaxed for a bit before being bombarded with all the senior high kids. Apparently, the school, or John (counterpart), not really sure who, told the kids they needed to come to my house to do work. By work I mean they were told to cut down the grass in front of the house and clean up the weeds/sweep the area. This of course meant like 2 hours of making bracelets and asking a million questions to the new trainees at the house. After being sufficiently bombarded, we left the kids to head to the market to buy things to cook dinner. The boys (Surprise, JoJo, Elijah, and Lucky) and I decided we would cook outside while they were here, the first night being Pumpkin. We went to the market and I showed off all the new PCT (Peace corps trainees) as if they were the new price Gbartala had won. We bought all our supplies- rice, vita, onion, chicken, pineapple and bread for the kids who were doing work and headed back to the house. We gave the kids the pack of bread and after an additional hour of bombarding the PCT with questions I told everyone our new friends needed to go inside to rest and they all went home. We went inside and the boys (Surprise, JoJo, Elijah, and Lucky) went to the back and we prepared to cook on the coal pot. Cooking was pretty chill, it was the first time the PCT had seen a coal pot and the boys did 99% of the work so we all just sat and chatted/watched the kids get to work. I tried helping but Lucky was running the show and doing a good job at it. We finished cooking and I dished everyone’s food, we fed 9 people that night and spend about 400LD on everyone’s food, that’s about $2.85 cents for the entire meal, about .32 cents per plate. Shocking, I know! The rest of the night was spent meeting the neighbors, a couple of the PCT did some exercise in the back and just chatting.
Friday:
We all woke up and got ready for school, I am supposed to teach math and physics on Fridays for 10th and 11th, but with Friday being a market day, and always being low attendance, I end up teaching math/ combine classes for physics, or just play games for an hour or so and then go home. We arrived on campus to 3 students, not surprising for a Friday class. We spent about 30 min of the morning just lecturing with the students who came and as more came we combined everyone in one class and did math competitions. We started with multiplication wars, then division, addition, subtraction and eventually did a couple rounds of physics. The new PCT even joined in on the competition, which al the students loved. The goal was to always beat one of the Americans ha-ha. After we did that we went to the house and rested for about a hour before getting ready to go to Suakoko, something I do every week to market and reset my sanity by chatting with Rachel. This Friday was particularly special because Rachel and I had agreed to let Surprise and JoJo come along, something they had been begging to do for a year now. We all crammed into the car and were on our way. We lappa shopped, walked around the market, bought corn, and they even got to change money. Some of the PCT even got to bargain on some of the prices! After marketing we all went to Rachels house (Rachel also had 3PCT staying with her) and hung out for a bit. My PCT got to see her house, which was good for them, knowing not everyone gets to live in a tiled palace like mine (wink wink – sorry Rachel ha ha). The initial plan was to go to the cook shop by her house and make the group try fufu, but the woman cooking didn’t have any so toward the end of our excursion we all walked back up to the market and got egg bread at the cook shop. After eating it was time to get a car back to Gbartala. The 7 of us can easily fill (actually over fill) a car, so when I saw one of the Ma’s I knew told me to come to her car, that we would make it work, I knew we were in for an adventure. This car already had 6 people in it, and a goat! The Ma and 3 PCT piled into the middle, me, Steve, a host national, and driver in the front, Surprise, JoJo, and 2 random boys in the back, and if that wasn’t enough we had 2 people on the roof. That’s a total of 14 people in a car that is meant for 5. If that isn’t a true testament to driving in Liberia, I don’t know what is ha-ha. We all got back to the house, chatted with the neighbors small, came inside chatted small, and to bed everyone went.
Saturday:
I tried to let everyone sleep in as long as possible on Saturday. I remember first arriving and thinking, why does PC not let anyone sleep ha! After sleeping in we had big plans to wash and see the “mountains”, aka large rocks in Gbartala. I showed everyone how to wash, well wash my way, I told them that at homestay their family would show them how to wash and that is the way they will wash for the next 3 months, because even if you have a better way, there is no such thing when it comes to how they will want you to do it. I also told them that no matter how hard they try, or how good they get at washing a Liberian will always be able to wash 1000 times better. Even the small children can out wash me any day. I showed them how to do it and then sat back and watched/jokingly judged just like my sister Princess would, she would constantly tell me that there were no bubbles, or that it wasn’t clean still, or if there were bubbles but I didn’t scrub enough it was still not clean. So, as they cleaned I would tell them princess would say... then fill in the blanks. Princess would be appalled even today at things I consider clean, I’m like that shit soaked in bubble water for an hour, lets wring it out and call it clean ha-ha. While we washed, we started to draw quite the crowed, so Steve started to show some of the porch kids how to do yoga. This was hilarious because while he was doing one of the poses, Surprise goes, “that peckin is gonna tear his pants”, not even 2 seconds later we hear, ripppppp, the poor kid split his pants, and everyone died laughing. After our wash, technically clean, Liberian standards not clean, was done we all sunscreened up and got ready to head to the rocks. The plan was to first stop in the market and drop lappa off so everyone could get something made, and then stop in my old community, parade them around, then walk up to the rock area, stopping at Ma Mary (lived at the top of the hill) daughters place on the way. We walked up to the old community and Ma Mary was outside with her daughter beating country rice, this was super cool to see because she had like 4 different stations set up, so they were able to see every step in the process. Then we went to Auntie and Uncles house and sat down for a bit and continued around the community until we reached the road. We followed the road and started our hike to the rocks. The walk from my community to the rocks is about 1.5 miles, all dirt road, and hilly, so I made sure everyone knew not to push themselves, that if at any time they didn’t feel well or didn’t eat that I brought bars they could eat, and we could rest because if someone died of heat stroke 1. Becky would kill me, and 2. There isn’t much I can do. We made it to Ma Mary’s daughters place, rested small, sat in the shade, and drank some water, from her place the rocks are about a 5 min walk. After about 15 min we headed to the rocks, while we passed the Chinese rock crushing machine Surprise told us a creepy story. Apparently when the Chinese were here last, they have two bases where they have huge machines that crush rocks, well one of the Liberian workers fell into the rock pit, because there are no safety regulations to avoid bad shit from happening... got crushed like the rocks do. Gross I know. Finally, we made it to the rocks, did our obligatory hello/stated why we were here to the police to get approval to climb up one of the sides to get a better view. We got up there, took some pictures, saw the sites and headed back down. On the walk back home, we stopped again to rest small at Ma Mary’s daughters compound (I really need to remember her name). While we were sitting there I could see them piling a bunch of things by the road. I knew instantly this was all for us. She had a bunch of plantains, a huge bag of coal, 4 sticks of sugar cane, and a bag of corn. Everything totaling +500LD. It was too much, on top of having to tow all of this back to my house which was at least 2 miles away she was giving us way too much. I told her we could take everything except the coal bag (which alone was at least 200LD). It was all too nice of her, she said to come visit because the distance wasn’t a small thing, which was true, but honestly, we stopped more out of our own convenience, and her gratitude (very true to Liberian way) was so nice, but also too much. Surprise was PISSED I didn’t take the coal bag. He knows I rarely use coal, that I would spilt the bag between everyone, he also knows that he would then turn around to sell his coal and eat the money, so he talked about how wrong it was we didn’t take the coal for at least 15min into our walk home. We eventually agreed to let it be so. We stopped into the market on the way home to grab things for dinner, we were making potato greens on the coal pot and headed home. We got home and again the boys went to work making dinner. While I slashed the greens some of the PCT went to the pump to draw water with JoJo and Surprise. After everything was finished and our guts were full we chatted and again to bed everyone went.
Sunday
Everyone slept in and Evan came at 7:40 am to fill our water barrel, people slept through him coming in and out of the house filling the barrel, I was shocked ha. Towards the end everyone started waking up and at some point, between everyone waking up and Evan drawing water, Steve and Evan because best friends. Idk how but they did ha-ha, even talking about exchanging numbers! Once everyone was up we decided we would go to town to get their shirts and from there we would get them a car back to Kataka. We dropped all our things off at my friend’s place near the market and went to get their new lappa shirts/dresses. The tailor told me that they would be finished by 10/11am, and we got there by 11am and he hadn’t even started sewing the girl’s clothes. He told us to come back in 30 min, so we bought some breakfast and waited, got back and he still hadn’t finished. We sat around for an additional 30 min and he was able to finish Delany dress but not Claire’s. Being I was going to Kataka later that day to help with training I told her I would pick hers up and bring it later. I put them in a car, told the driver no funny business/ not to let the checkpoint give them a hard time and they were off.
I think the most stressful part of hosting was making sure I was feeding everyone enough. Being it’s just my one I never realize how strange I eat here. It’s like, yes let’s eat this entire pineapple in the morning, well shit, what happens if everyone doesn’t want to eat an entire pineapple in the morning, then what do I do ha-ha. Or let’s eat some peanut butter and cucumber as a mid-day snack, then beans and cabbage for dinner...well its defiantly not everyone’s cup of tea. I mean I don’t even love it myself. I felt like I was constantly worrying about how much they were eating as to not starve them or make them think they can’t eat once they get to site haha. We did eat a lot of corn, I don’t think before that weekend I really ever ate corn at site, I think while they were here we ate corn at least twice a day!
Concern aside It was a really fun experience having LR8 come stay with me. Its funny how the things you do every day are technically not normal, like you forget that all the things you do here are learned and don’t come naturally. That at one point (not long ago) I too struggled and was unsure of everything. It’s cool to see how far I have come in the last year. When I think about it I’m shocked that I’m even qualified to give advice/help people on what its like to live here, because I think sometimes that there isn’t anything special I am doing here. You forget because you do it every day that things like changing money, flushing the toilet, cooking, bartering in the market, speaking Liberian English, are hard and so overwhelming at first. It’s really cool to see/know that in such a short time I have really integrated into the Liberian culture and feel totally confident teaching/helping new PCT, knowing that in such a short time all the concerns/ worries they might have will dissipate and they will be confident/ready to help the incoming group much like I did (well shoot, hopefully did ha-ha).
** Oh and one of the days we toured the clinic in Gbartala- as you can most likely see by some of the pictures
The time had arrived, LR 8 was in country and they were ready to be shipped off to current PCV houses to stay for a few days. I previously signed up to allow some of the LR8s to stay at my house and show them the ropes, so when I heard I got chosen to have them come I was overjoyed.
Thursday:
They arrived via taxi on Thursday morning and I walked into town to pick them up and there they were, all clean and new to Liberia ha-ha. I got them, and we immediately went to the school. Thursdays I just teach math, so they sat in on the end of my 10th grade math lesson and the entire 11th grade math lesson. True to Liberian fashion before we did anything we did by way of introduction, instead of just standing up and saying your name for introductions, Liberians (all the students, all of them) stand and say, by way of introduction I am ** *** of the David Feju Senior High School, Gbartala City, Bong County, as if everything but the name isn’t common knowledge ha-ha. After introductions the LR8’s (Claire, Delany, Steve, and Jon) sat down and watched wile I taught graphing to the 10th grade. When 10th grade was finished we moved to 11th grade and gain did by way of introduction and they sat down again and watched as I taught DMS-Decimal to the 11th graders. After class was finished we headed to the house and they unloaded their stuff and we relaxed for a bit before being bombarded with all the senior high kids. Apparently, the school, or John (counterpart), not really sure who, told the kids they needed to come to my house to do work. By work I mean they were told to cut down the grass in front of the house and clean up the weeds/sweep the area. This of course meant like 2 hours of making bracelets and asking a million questions to the new trainees at the house. After being sufficiently bombarded, we left the kids to head to the market to buy things to cook dinner. The boys (Surprise, JoJo, Elijah, and Lucky) and I decided we would cook outside while they were here, the first night being Pumpkin. We went to the market and I showed off all the new PCT (Peace corps trainees) as if they were the new price Gbartala had won. We bought all our supplies- rice, vita, onion, chicken, pineapple and bread for the kids who were doing work and headed back to the house. We gave the kids the pack of bread and after an additional hour of bombarding the PCT with questions I told everyone our new friends needed to go inside to rest and they all went home. We went inside and the boys (Surprise, JoJo, Elijah, and Lucky) went to the back and we prepared to cook on the coal pot. Cooking was pretty chill, it was the first time the PCT had seen a coal pot and the boys did 99% of the work so we all just sat and chatted/watched the kids get to work. I tried helping but Lucky was running the show and doing a good job at it. We finished cooking and I dished everyone’s food, we fed 9 people that night and spend about 400LD on everyone’s food, that’s about $2.85 cents for the entire meal, about .32 cents per plate. Shocking, I know! The rest of the night was spent meeting the neighbors, a couple of the PCT did some exercise in the back and just chatting.
Friday:
We all woke up and got ready for school, I am supposed to teach math and physics on Fridays for 10th and 11th, but with Friday being a market day, and always being low attendance, I end up teaching math/ combine classes for physics, or just play games for an hour or so and then go home. We arrived on campus to 3 students, not surprising for a Friday class. We spent about 30 min of the morning just lecturing with the students who came and as more came we combined everyone in one class and did math competitions. We started with multiplication wars, then division, addition, subtraction and eventually did a couple rounds of physics. The new PCT even joined in on the competition, which al the students loved. The goal was to always beat one of the Americans ha-ha. After we did that we went to the house and rested for about a hour before getting ready to go to Suakoko, something I do every week to market and reset my sanity by chatting with Rachel. This Friday was particularly special because Rachel and I had agreed to let Surprise and JoJo come along, something they had been begging to do for a year now. We all crammed into the car and were on our way. We lappa shopped, walked around the market, bought corn, and they even got to change money. Some of the PCT even got to bargain on some of the prices! After marketing we all went to Rachels house (Rachel also had 3PCT staying with her) and hung out for a bit. My PCT got to see her house, which was good for them, knowing not everyone gets to live in a tiled palace like mine (wink wink – sorry Rachel ha ha). The initial plan was to go to the cook shop by her house and make the group try fufu, but the woman cooking didn’t have any so toward the end of our excursion we all walked back up to the market and got egg bread at the cook shop. After eating it was time to get a car back to Gbartala. The 7 of us can easily fill (actually over fill) a car, so when I saw one of the Ma’s I knew told me to come to her car, that we would make it work, I knew we were in for an adventure. This car already had 6 people in it, and a goat! The Ma and 3 PCT piled into the middle, me, Steve, a host national, and driver in the front, Surprise, JoJo, and 2 random boys in the back, and if that wasn’t enough we had 2 people on the roof. That’s a total of 14 people in a car that is meant for 5. If that isn’t a true testament to driving in Liberia, I don’t know what is ha-ha. We all got back to the house, chatted with the neighbors small, came inside chatted small, and to bed everyone went.
Saturday:
I tried to let everyone sleep in as long as possible on Saturday. I remember first arriving and thinking, why does PC not let anyone sleep ha! After sleeping in we had big plans to wash and see the “mountains”, aka large rocks in Gbartala. I showed everyone how to wash, well wash my way, I told them that at homestay their family would show them how to wash and that is the way they will wash for the next 3 months, because even if you have a better way, there is no such thing when it comes to how they will want you to do it. I also told them that no matter how hard they try, or how good they get at washing a Liberian will always be able to wash 1000 times better. Even the small children can out wash me any day. I showed them how to do it and then sat back and watched/jokingly judged just like my sister Princess would, she would constantly tell me that there were no bubbles, or that it wasn’t clean still, or if there were bubbles but I didn’t scrub enough it was still not clean. So, as they cleaned I would tell them princess would say... then fill in the blanks. Princess would be appalled even today at things I consider clean, I’m like that shit soaked in bubble water for an hour, lets wring it out and call it clean ha-ha. While we washed, we started to draw quite the crowed, so Steve started to show some of the porch kids how to do yoga. This was hilarious because while he was doing one of the poses, Surprise goes, “that peckin is gonna tear his pants”, not even 2 seconds later we hear, ripppppp, the poor kid split his pants, and everyone died laughing. After our wash, technically clean, Liberian standards not clean, was done we all sunscreened up and got ready to head to the rocks. The plan was to first stop in the market and drop lappa off so everyone could get something made, and then stop in my old community, parade them around, then walk up to the rock area, stopping at Ma Mary (lived at the top of the hill) daughters place on the way. We walked up to the old community and Ma Mary was outside with her daughter beating country rice, this was super cool to see because she had like 4 different stations set up, so they were able to see every step in the process. Then we went to Auntie and Uncles house and sat down for a bit and continued around the community until we reached the road. We followed the road and started our hike to the rocks. The walk from my community to the rocks is about 1.5 miles, all dirt road, and hilly, so I made sure everyone knew not to push themselves, that if at any time they didn’t feel well or didn’t eat that I brought bars they could eat, and we could rest because if someone died of heat stroke 1. Becky would kill me, and 2. There isn’t much I can do. We made it to Ma Mary’s daughters place, rested small, sat in the shade, and drank some water, from her place the rocks are about a 5 min walk. After about 15 min we headed to the rocks, while we passed the Chinese rock crushing machine Surprise told us a creepy story. Apparently when the Chinese were here last, they have two bases where they have huge machines that crush rocks, well one of the Liberian workers fell into the rock pit, because there are no safety regulations to avoid bad shit from happening... got crushed like the rocks do. Gross I know. Finally, we made it to the rocks, did our obligatory hello/stated why we were here to the police to get approval to climb up one of the sides to get a better view. We got up there, took some pictures, saw the sites and headed back down. On the walk back home, we stopped again to rest small at Ma Mary’s daughters compound (I really need to remember her name). While we were sitting there I could see them piling a bunch of things by the road. I knew instantly this was all for us. She had a bunch of plantains, a huge bag of coal, 4 sticks of sugar cane, and a bag of corn. Everything totaling +500LD. It was too much, on top of having to tow all of this back to my house which was at least 2 miles away she was giving us way too much. I told her we could take everything except the coal bag (which alone was at least 200LD). It was all too nice of her, she said to come visit because the distance wasn’t a small thing, which was true, but honestly, we stopped more out of our own convenience, and her gratitude (very true to Liberian way) was so nice, but also too much. Surprise was PISSED I didn’t take the coal bag. He knows I rarely use coal, that I would spilt the bag between everyone, he also knows that he would then turn around to sell his coal and eat the money, so he talked about how wrong it was we didn’t take the coal for at least 15min into our walk home. We eventually agreed to let it be so. We stopped into the market on the way home to grab things for dinner, we were making potato greens on the coal pot and headed home. We got home and again the boys went to work making dinner. While I slashed the greens some of the PCT went to the pump to draw water with JoJo and Surprise. After everything was finished and our guts were full we chatted and again to bed everyone went.
Sunday
Everyone slept in and Evan came at 7:40 am to fill our water barrel, people slept through him coming in and out of the house filling the barrel, I was shocked ha. Towards the end everyone started waking up and at some point, between everyone waking up and Evan drawing water, Steve and Evan because best friends. Idk how but they did ha-ha, even talking about exchanging numbers! Once everyone was up we decided we would go to town to get their shirts and from there we would get them a car back to Kataka. We dropped all our things off at my friend’s place near the market and went to get their new lappa shirts/dresses. The tailor told me that they would be finished by 10/11am, and we got there by 11am and he hadn’t even started sewing the girl’s clothes. He told us to come back in 30 min, so we bought some breakfast and waited, got back and he still hadn’t finished. We sat around for an additional 30 min and he was able to finish Delany dress but not Claire’s. Being I was going to Kataka later that day to help with training I told her I would pick hers up and bring it later. I put them in a car, told the driver no funny business/ not to let the checkpoint give them a hard time and they were off.
I think the most stressful part of hosting was making sure I was feeding everyone enough. Being it’s just my one I never realize how strange I eat here. It’s like, yes let’s eat this entire pineapple in the morning, well shit, what happens if everyone doesn’t want to eat an entire pineapple in the morning, then what do I do ha-ha. Or let’s eat some peanut butter and cucumber as a mid-day snack, then beans and cabbage for dinner...well its defiantly not everyone’s cup of tea. I mean I don’t even love it myself. I felt like I was constantly worrying about how much they were eating as to not starve them or make them think they can’t eat once they get to site haha. We did eat a lot of corn, I don’t think before that weekend I really ever ate corn at site, I think while they were here we ate corn at least twice a day!
Concern aside It was a really fun experience having LR8 come stay with me. Its funny how the things you do every day are technically not normal, like you forget that all the things you do here are learned and don’t come naturally. That at one point (not long ago) I too struggled and was unsure of everything. It’s cool to see how far I have come in the last year. When I think about it I’m shocked that I’m even qualified to give advice/help people on what its like to live here, because I think sometimes that there isn’t anything special I am doing here. You forget because you do it every day that things like changing money, flushing the toilet, cooking, bartering in the market, speaking Liberian English, are hard and so overwhelming at first. It’s really cool to see/know that in such a short time I have really integrated into the Liberian culture and feel totally confident teaching/helping new PCT, knowing that in such a short time all the concerns/ worries they might have will dissipate and they will be confident/ready to help the incoming group much like I did (well shoot, hopefully did ha-ha).
** Oh and one of the days we toured the clinic in Gbartala- as you can most likely see by some of the pictures