As a Peace Corps Volunteer, my students consider me an expert on everything. There are things that I’m relatively knowledgeable on, like English and birth control pills, and I share this knowledge with my students from time to time. So cleeearly, I know everything. Last night while I was sleeping I got a phone call from a distressed student.

What’s wrong? “My neighbor’s house is on fire. What should I do?”

I don’t know…. “I thought you would know what to do.”

Ummm, let's see...I think you should get all the people out. “Okay!”

click.

Shit, I just sent my student into a burning building, which probably has a thatched roof. Maaaaybe not good advice. I call back 10 minutes later.

Are you okay? “Yeah, but the house is still burning and there’s a baby trapped inside.”

Oh shit, I don’t know, sorry…I’ll call back later…click.

So the next day I found out that some guy left his house with his generator turned on and locked in his kitchen. The generator had been leaking gas, and he knew about it, and left it there, on, while his kids were sleeping in the other room. Maybe I am a freaking expert, because I know it’s insane to put a generator inside with babies, and I’m only a first-time generator owner with just a puppy and kitten, who aren’t even dying of carbon monoxide poisoning or anything. The baby lived, by the way. For now.

Which reminds me of the time a few weeks ago that I nearly burned down my own house…I left a candle burning on my nightstand and walked out of the room. The wind picked up and blew my curtain in. When I went back to my room there were flames going up the wall and melting my mosquito net…No biggie, a little water did the trick. I’m careful with my candles now… But maybe I’m not a freaking genius after all.

Be grateful for your electricity and firefighters….and the many other benefits of having infrastructure.

Class rarely happens here. Last Friday a group of some sort came from Monrovia to survey a few students from each class. School was canceled after the first period so that those students could go meet the people. Today, Monday, I’m teaching first period, and a ton of people walk up to the school. People start coming into my classroom and taking the empty desks, and I lock them out. A few minutes after first period finishes, the principal tells me that more than one thousand people showed up unexpectedly from the election commission, and took all the chairs from all of the classrooms. All these people were sitting in desks outside in the yard. Ridiculous. He says we can’t hold class without chairs, and cancels school for the day.

I’m an official farmer now. I ran away from the school farm and the creepy farm manager and planted a nice little garden at my house. So now I have to wake up extra early to tend my crops and feed all my animals. For a few days there was a chicken living in my kitchen, but she has been killed and eaten. I made a nice tomatoey dish with her. And cleaned up most of her shit from my house. I don’t think I’ll be raising chickens any time soon. Chasing her around my house was not fun. And she walked through wet paint, so I have chicken prints to always remember her by.

A lady walks by the house selling live catfish from a bowl on her head sometimes. Deeelicious. I just have to find someone to murder them for me, but I hope she keeps coming by.

I also got a kitty cat, Remi. He’s a cutie, and he caught his first mouse this morning! Success! Misa’s best friend, Bingo, died right around the time I got Remi, so he’s bored and driving us crazy. He also eats a lot of shit in his spare time. The kids outside tell me he eats shit a lot, and I’ve heard that some of it is from the “poop hole,” but I’m going to pretend like I didn’t hear about that. Gross.

Last week I walked out to the village of one of my students. That was pretty awesome, because it was my first time getting outside of the big towns. We had to walk an hour and a half out of town. Halfway down this dirt path in the middle of the bush was an immigration checkpoint, where they gave me a hard time for not carrying my passport. Wtf! But I got out there, camped in my mosquito tent, ate a lot of rice and soup. Swallowed some fufu. Fufu is a food, but you don’t eat it. Fufu can only be swallowed. Liberians like to ask, “do you love to swallow?” And on the way to the village I got, “My mom heard you love to swallow!” It is sooo hard to keep a straight face.

So when I got done swallowing, I did a little farming. I picked some stuff. Impressed everyone with my digital camera, and then I broke it. Seeing yourself on video for the first time must be funny. Finally I received my kitten, and carried him 1.5 hours back into town. They sent me the chicken a few days later. People here are so nice.

According to the rice scale at the store, I’ve lost 15 pounds since I moved to Zwedru. I had to have my tailor take my pants in 3 inches :( So I’m trying to eat as much as I can. I eat all the cookies I want and I don’t get any fatter. I guess it’s the non-stop sweating and walking/riding my bike.

I miss youuuu all of my friends from home. Birthdays remind me :(

Let’s seeeee. We finished our first marking period at school last week, and my exams finished Tuesday, so I spent the rest of the week visiting my friends Ken and Max in Tappita. It was pretty awwwesome. The roads there were horrible, but what fun. Spent a few hours standing on a hill in the bush, watching trucks being dug out of the mud, eating popcorn with movie theater butter, watching men swing shovels at each other’s heads, and yelling at UN peacekeepers for taking pictures of tired Liberians. What an adventure. I arrived a little sunburnt and muddy, as I had been sharing the front seat with a 6’5’’ tall man, and so had spent the day hanging out the window. The roads in Liberia….I’ll get some pictures up here soon. They are pretty remarkable. And totally more fun than administering or grading exams. Plus you get to meet some awesome people on the road.

Tappita was pretty fun. One evening we went on a bush hike..We were still in the jungle when it got dark and we found some houses and had to get an escort back to the main road. And then we walked to the brand spankin’ new hospital built by the Chinese, which is not in use yet. We got the security guard to take us to the top of the water tower, which was aweeesome. I love tall shit. I dropped my phone off the top onto the concrete, and it survived! Then we went inside the creepy empty hospital for a tour. Other than that we just hung out…I got to visit their school, eat their food, drink their alcohol…mmm it was nice just to get out of Zwedru.

This week I came back to school for the second marking period. There are 6 marking periods in a year, each 5 weeks long, with the last week of each being exams. This means that not a lot of class happens. Classes were cancelled Thursday and Friday of this week for all-day football games, which my 10th graders are doing awesome at. My girls just won the championship game, and my boys are playing theirs now.

I also failed 90% of my students the first term. None of them did shit, and now of course they’re all mad at meeee.

The wood-working department finished my desk and shelves this week, and they’re awesome. They’re made out of super nice heavy wood, which I’m betting was illegally logged. It’s nice to have somewhere to sit and finally get settled into my house…

Some of my students came over this week and I taught them how to eat ramen with chopsticks. Awesome. My students are a billion times cooler than the other teachers. I’m really enjoying getting to know them better.

I’ve had some trouble with the creepy farm manager, who took me into his office to tell me that he wants to be with me. I told him to give me back the rest of my effin seeds so I can garden at my house. He already let my crops die; my 120 broccoli plants are down to about 5. Sooo I’ve gotta get a new garden going. Too bad I suck at keeping things alive.

I’ve already been at site for nearly 2 months! It’s craaaazy how time flies! And in just 2 more months Atsushi will be here :D

What a long week...thank god it's Florida Friday. This week was just absolutely no fun at all.

For whatever reason, I agreed to be the sponsor for the 10th grade. Well, I agreed because I didn't know what it entailed. Turns out it means I'm playing mommy for a couple hundred students. If they have any conflict or problem with another teacher or student, they come to me first. If they get sick and want to leave school or miss a day, it's my job to write notes or inform others. Uggh and the damn student government elections were my responsibility. I have 3 classes, and one of them I swear we tried to hold the election 5 times before it was actually successful. It was just a shit show every time. People screaming and fighting, accusing others of rigging elections...but I got 2 of my 3 elections complete this week, and now have 2 class presidents at my disposal. Awesome.

Something else not-so-awesome happened this week. My dog murdered a neighbor's baby ducklings. It really sucks. The guy was pretty understanding about it. Everyone in the neighborhood has a dog, so I guess it happens. But it's disappointing, and now I have to keep my dog tied up or in the house. He's become a real hand-full lately. We think he's hit puberty.

I transplanted 120 broccoli plants, and that's not even all of them. I'll be eating broccoli nonstop! And I'm ridiculously excited about it.

So my principal had wanted me to build a cafeteria, and had even made up blue prints and an estimate. I let him know that I can't even seek funds for it right now, but that it was a good idea. Then one day I walked by a nice big room at school marked "cafeteria" on the outside, and completely empty. This space is like 10 times nicer than the one he wants to build, so I went and asked him about it. It's apparently supposed to be for the dormitory students, which there are none of, and there won't be in the foreseeable future. So after a couple of weeks of talking, I convinced him to use this space for the other cafeteria. And apparently market ladies just come in and run the show. You can rent the space to them, and it creates revenue for the school. We just decided to use that cafeteria today, and 5 minutes later he comes back and says the ladies will set up by Monday or Tuesday. It just seems so much more simple than building a shiny new building. There aren't restaurants close by, and I'm on the verge of starvation, so I'm super excited for school food. School food!!!

I discovered the library of the midwifery program that's attached to my school. I've officially moved out of my school's library. There's electricity, a ceiling fan, and nobody knows I'm here. I needed a hiding place from my 200 children.

Having a Kindle is, like, the best thing ever. I read the first two books of the Stieg Larsson trilogy, and I was like, oh no! I wanna read the third, but I'm in the middle of the African bush! Oh, wait, I have a kindle. Downloaded in 2 minutes. Also subscribed to Time magazine this week. Ahhmaayzing.

It hasn't been raining every minute of every day anymore, so that's been nice. I even got to ride my bike to school :) It gets pretty hot in the day time though. I don't think I stopped sweating all day yesterday...but when the sun goes down it cools off a lot, and becomes rather pleasant. And the stars are amazing out here. The full moon is awesome too, because you can really see everything, and be outside after dark.

I started French class this week. The teacher at school is giving me lessons. Being near the border of the Ivory Coast, a lot of people in my community speak French. There's also the local tribal language, Krahn, but I don't hear it enough to really attempt to learn it. Everyone who speaks Krahn also speaks English anyway.

I got chased by a chimpanzee today. Just minding my own damn business walking to school, and it spots me and just starts coming closer, until it's running at me and I'm running backwards screaming. All the Liberians laughed at me, and some women had to come chase him away :( How should one react in the event of a chimpanzee attack? Little baby primates are fine, but the big ones are scary as hell.

I’m adjusting to life in Zwedru. I start my days with the 30+ minute walk to school, which is pretty nice in the morning. Unfortunately the rainy season is letting up a little, and it can be hot as hell in the afternoon. Hello, skin cancer.

This weekend 4 of my peace corps friends came into the big city from their sites in Kanweken and Tapita. It was awesome, they got to experience Florida Fridays and Pasta Saturdays. Florida is the restaurant in town that serves pizza and fried chicken, and Florida Friday is the event of the week. Pasta Saturday is the creation of my housemate and Andrea, our site mate. Even more amazing than Florida Friday, if that’s possible. This week we had chicken alfredo, garlic bread, salad, and peanut butter cookies. This probably doesn’t sound amazing to those of you reading this in your developed countries, with your broadband and refrigerators. Nevermind.

I’ve visited the home of the Lebanese family in town a couple times, and let me tell you, it’s heaven. Ice cream, hookah, grapes, cold juice, apples, oranges….oh Zweeedru. Food heaven.

Teaching has been okay…..half of my students are older than me, but they certainly don’t act like it. I spent the past 3 weeks teaching fractions, and today started negative numbers. Holy shit….We’ll be working on adding and subtracting negative numbers all week. So that’s how it’s going. This is 10th grade, by the way.

The little farm I started at school is doing well. I have little sprouts of broccoli, tomatoes, squash, jalapenos, and onions. And some basil growing at my house. Lots of stuff can grow in Liberia, too bad they don’t grow anything. The market here is pretty big, and every table has the same 3 freaking vegetables: peppers, bitterball, and occasional cucumbers. My school’s farm grows tomatoes though, and I eat all of them. I used to ask, but now I just go harvest them myself. Liberians don’t like tomatoes! What!

I can’t believe I’ve been in Zwedru a month already! It’s flown by. I’ll try not to update about food next time. There’s just not a lot else going on. Besides eating, I read books and play with Misa. Oh, and my generator is finally in working order! Electricity! So there you have it.

9/7/2010

I started my first week of teaching. The first day went as swimmingly as I expected. I showed up to my first class, and it had a padlock on the door. They eventually found the key and got it open, only to find that the classroom was piled high with broken desks. The students were also nowhere to be found. I eventually found someone to help me, after asking plenty of the teachers standing around, all of whom shrugged. We found the students in the wrong classroom, and had them spend the rest of the class moving out the broken chairs, and moving good chairs in. So much for a proper introduction.

The next class went okay, but there were only 15 of the 54 students there. My only afternoon class was cancelled, as it was decided that the morning classes went so poorly that they might as well provide an orientation for the afternoon students. They had apparently not informed the students of their schedules, and no one knew where they were supposed to be. I spent the day figuring out the effed-up national curriculum, and making lesson plans, so it wasn’t a loss for me. I’ve been hanging out in the library, which is a pretty nice place.

Last Saturday my housemate Ruthia introduced me to the wonder that is sour milk, a frozen yogurt made from the local cows’ milk. Deeeelicious. And I was sick for the rest of the weekend. Our other site mate came over and they cooked pasta with yummy American meat sauce that evening. With garlic bread. Auuuggggh. Sadly I went to bed without eating, but it was still pretty good cold the next day. Zwedru is amazing. Also this week I’ve had ramen, a tuna salad sandwich, and a peanut butter sandwich…. I miss having someone cook for me, but it’s awesome not having Liberian soup on rice everyday.

I have a generator now, and it finally works. It didn’t for the first few days, but a mechanic came over and tightened up the spark plug or something, and it works now. A-mayy-zing. It’s like America inside our house now. He also fixed the leaking gas tank, which was causing gas to run all down inside the generator and would have apparently caused a fire/explosion had we been successful in turning it on. Problem fixed, and we didn’t explode last night. Good news.

Yesterday one of the neighborhood boys told me he had a monkey at his house, so I told him to bring it over. I was holding it, feeding it some bread, and my dog came up. I thought it would be a great idea to introduce the two. Nope, the monkey peed all over me. That little guy was pretty darn cute though. Poor thing will probably be tortured by children his whole life, until he is eventually eaten.

Atsushi bought his ticket, and will be here Christmas eve. We’ll be spending Christmas morning on the beach..aaaahhh I really can’t wait for x-mas this year!

And a happy birthday to Atsushi, sorry I missed your party again this year!

Well, I’m officially a Peace Corps Volunteer. We were sworn in last Friday in Monrovia. The president of Liberia herself came, which was awwwwesome. She gave a speech and we got a group photo. Woooo!

We went back to Kakata Friday night, and had to leave Saturday morning for our sites. So little time to say goodbye to our host families… I already miss my mama so much. She’s an incredible person, and so helpful. I just felt like she was starting to open up to me more, and we were getting closer..and then I had to leave. Don’t worry, Ma, I’ll be home for x-mas.

Saturday was super long…but we finally made it up to Zwedru. I had left my key in Kakata, and so had to stay at the World Food Programme compound with my two friends, who finished the journey to their site the next day. Oh, and the axle started coming off the car about 15 km outside of Zwedru. Amazing. So we had to stop frequently so the driver could kick it back into place. True story. It ended up being okay. The next morning the car got welded back together, and a carpenter came and broke into my house with a crow bar, and I got settled in.

I brought my dog Misa with me from Kakata. He’s been pretty cooperative about the whole thing. He’s adjusting alright to the American lifestyle too. He has his own mattress on the floor, a rawhide bone, and eats PB sandwiches. He also doesn’t get flogged. All of these things make him better off than the kids outside. Oops. He also has a little friend named Bingo, which is good, because he leaves me alone for a couple of hours a day. We have to be really careful though, because dogs can be stolen and eaten. :(

I started work on Monday. Ohhh man, I thought sitting through PC training was rough. And then I went to a 5-hour faculty workshop on lesson planning. My colleagues seem pretty alright though. The Principal is awesome. He’s been really helpful. He showed me around and fed me when I came for the short site visit to Zwedru. It seems like he’ll be just as helpful for the next two years. He gave me a new name too – Poyae! It’s a Krahn name, that’s the most prominent local tribe. I may try learning Krahn, but I definitely hear more English and French around here.

Today we had student orientation. It started 2 hours late, which is pretty typical. That’s alright, I’ll be reading a ton of books while I’m here. There is so much testosterone at school. There are only 2 other female teachers, both home ec. And the overwhelming majority of students are male. *sigh* very overwhelming. We start class on Monday. I’m excited. I’ve been sitting through sessions for 2 months, so it’ll be nice.

Oh, and I got a Schwinn! Nicest bike I've ever had... School is quuuite a hike from my house, so it'll be real nice. It's rainy season now though, and impossible to ride without getting muddy and wet. It'll be nice in the dry season, anyway.

I put some pictures on facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2071357&id=22102392&l=e0f9cac4ec

We're almost done with training!! Just two more days of sessions and then swearing in ceremony on Friday. Then I'm finally off to Zwedru! Oh, and the president of Liberia is coming to our ceremony! yaaay.

We finished up model school on Saturday, which went pretty well. It was only a two week thing to practice teaching, and it was pretty busy and went by quickly. It definitely made me ready to teach math.

I just spent the weekend with my host family, it was nice and relaxing. My sister came home from Monrovia for the first time in weeks, so that was nice. I'll miss her and Ma Linda...

Yesterday we went to the Firestone plantation, which is huuuuge. We went to the nursery and saw how they clone the rubber trees, and we went to a big wood processing place, where they make the wood all nice to be shipped off to America and made into furniture. It was pretty neat. But the best part was going to the supermarket, which was just like an American supermarket. Yesss ground coffee. And Skippy! And Skittles!

Well, it’s been over a month since I came to Liberia. Sorry it took me so long to update! I do actually have the internet now though! I managed to get a USB thing that uses cell phone networks. It’s slow, but it works all right…

The people here have been really awesome, and I’m having a great time so far. I’ve been staying with a host family for the past month. I have a ma named Linda, who I absolutely love, and lots of kids and aunties and uncles running around. Two of the neighboring houses belong to my aunties and uncles, so it’s a nice relaxed area, and it’s far from the road. Beautiful hills and palm trees. Fresh sugar cane and coconuts out in the yard…and my house is bright pink, and actually has a yard of short grass. It’s amazing. My host family also has a dog, Misa. He’s treated a lot better since I took a liking to him and starting yelling at the kids who used to beat him and throw rocks at him. He now gets regular baths, and knows ‘sit.’ My ma said I could take him with me to Zwedru, and bring him back in two years :) yay!

Zwedru! We finally found out our permanent sites, and went out for a visit last week! Since we’re the first 2-year volunteers back in Liberia, they’re putting us in pretty big towns. It’s not the village and hut that I expected from Peace Corps. I spent a few nights out there with my new housemate, Ruthia. She’s a Peace Corps Response Volunteer (PCRV), so she’ll only be here for 6 months, until January : ( It was a lot of fun, and a great break from host family, training, and Liberian food. In just a few short days I had pizza, pasta with pesto sauce, garlic bread, fried chicken, French fries, banana bread, and soft serve ice cream. And some trashy MTV reality television. So that’s where I’ll be living for the next two years…although I’m sure every day won’t be so yummy. The soft serve ice cream is on the walk home from school though. Ugggh, walking to school…I live a 35 minute walk away. It’s not too bad, similar to my walk in Korea, except that it’s hot in Africa. And sometimes dusty. My principal seems like a good guy, and the school’s pretty nice. So I’m excited to start working in September.

Also, my site is pretty far away. It took us about 8 hours to get there on dusty roads. It was bumpy as hell and we were covered from head to toe in red dirt : ) Oh, and crammed 7 in a 5-passenger car. But it’s suuuch a beautiful drive! I enjoyed it.

It’s not too hot right now, because it’s rainy season! I think I like rainy season. It can be a real pain in the ass when you’re walking through mud to get everywhere, but it’s so nice and cool. When I stepped off the plane here, it was the nicest weather I had felt in a few weeks. But it dips down into the 70s here, and all the Liberians are cold! I’ve seen a lot of jackets and coats!

I like all the other volunteers a lot, and training isn’t too bad. We’ve been doing model school for a little over a week, so it’s great to finally have some practice teaching math. It’s such a slow transition into Real Liberia. I’m still surrounded by Americans and busy everyday. It’s a lot different from Korea, where I had to just figure everything out for myself and adjust quickly. Adjusting to lack of electricity and running water hasn’t been bad! My kerosene lantern has a pleasant glow.

Well, it's not easy trying to update about the entire month. I'll try to update more often...

It just hit me that I really only have a couple of weeks until I leave for Liberia! Where does the time go.... Being unemployed in Madison really hasn't been as bad as I thought it would. It's been great seeing family and friends, and my puppy dog. I just got back from an awesome week playing with my Ohio family, and I'm heading out tomorrow for a camping weekend and Holiday World/Splashin' Safari (the best waterpark ever)!

Even though some members of my family don't understand why the hell I would move to Africa, they've been wonderfully supportive. My grandparents have gotten me lots of cool toys, and I suspect that they even enjoyed spending money on me :) My dad, Heide, and Atsushi have also bought/given me a ton of stuff/money. Everything has been a huge help, and I feel super prepared for hut-living. Got my solar charger, rechargeable batteries, headlamp, new camera, multi-tool, shortwave radio, modest new clothing, etc... :) I'm so lucky to have these people.

I also officially made my travel arrangements. I'm flying from Louisville to Philly on July 7th, and flying from there to Brussels, and on to Liberia the next day! I do believe we arrive on the 9th though, due to the time difference.

In Philly we just have a lot of meetings on the 7th and a lot of shots (oh no!) on the 8th. So that probably won't be a ton of fun, but I'm really looking forward to meeting the other Peace Corps volunteers!

Also, I'll have a cell phone in Liberia and maybe even service, although I'm not sure how reliable that will be. Apparently it only costs 10 cents a minute to call American numbers from Liberian cell phones, which is ridiculously cheap for an international call. I have no idea about the internet situation, but it will be limited.

You can send me letters and packages! I wouldn't send anything valuable. I guess try to send big envelops or small boxes. Keep in mind that I won't receive them for weeks or months after you send them, if I receive them at all (don't let this deter you from sending them! lol). Customs requires a full declaration of the contents before the box is received. So try to e-mail me a list of the contents in advance, and put a list of contents inside of the box as well. Got it?

Here is my mailing address:

Brittany Meredith, Peace Corps Volunteer

Peace Corps

Post Office Box 707

Monrovia, Liberia

Oh, and we won't actually be staying in Monrovia at all. We're training in Kakata, a city north of the capital. We'll be staying with host families during the 8 weeks or so that we're there. I'm really excited about that! My bad experience with my Tokyo host family makes me a little wary, so I hope I luck out with an awesome family this time! I bet they'll have loads of cool things to teach me. After a couple of months there we'll head out to our permanent sites, where I'll likely live with another volunteer.