I'm in Africa and volunteer! Go drink a beer.

First day as a PCV (08.28.10)
Well there is a lot to catch up on so I will start from the beginning. Before I do that I would just like it to be noted that I am eating a pack of peanut m&m’s, how you ask? We will get to that shortly, I know it is keeping you on the edge of your seat.
So the week started by us going to the Firestone plantation. It’s fucking huge. And there are trees everywhere. Now when they initially told me that rubber grew on trees I figured that they just meant that the tires grew on trees. Well I was shocked when I learned this is not the case, but that you actually have to remove a white goop from the tree and do a bunch of shit to like vulcanize it. The process of vulcanization does not entail giving one pointy ears and no sense of emotion, nor does it include living long and prospering (unless you are a CEO of the Firestone company). Vulcanization is the process that strengthens rubber polymers to make there more hard ass. Essentially it’s like taking the Jack Dawson Leo Dicapprio polymer (the weak polymer) and making it into the Danni Archer Leo Dicrapprio polymer (the hard ass mother fucker polymer.) Anywho we walked around and saw some trees doing there tree thing, we saw some tree cloning going on, and then we saw them make the trees into furniture. Now you will notice that I never once mentioned that we saw any tires be made or condoms, they don’t do that there. So I did not get a souvenir tire or a souvenir condom, which leads me to say fucking waste of a tour. I mean would you go on a beer tour if you didn’t get free beer at the end? Yea I didn’t think so. After this we went to the grocery store they have on the ginormo plantation which is where I got these delightful m&m’s that have now just been finished. I gotta say that for about 5 minutes I just sat in an aisle (the alcohol aisle) terrified of all that stood before me, I really did not know what to do, I mean they had shopping carts and everything! After getting my bearings I got the bare essentials to life, some candy, a bottle of Crown and some mustard. Great day!
The week was quite mundane after this, nothing much happened just closing of training and swearing in, and meeting a president, and singing the American national anthem in front of the president of Liberia and a few other people. Yep, pretty fucking mundane. I mean who doesn’t get the opportunity to meet a badass president and sing the national anthem for them (which Ken and I rocked), that’s just a regular Tuesday for most of my friends and me. But seriously the president is a very nice lady and she gave a rockin speech about being awesome and fighting zombie space cowboys, and relations between the countries and all that jazz. Overall it was a great speech, but I gotta admit I was most impressed by her strong stance on zombie space cowboys, I mean this is a problem we are all ignoring and we must do something about. If you love your cattle and brains, than you most certainly will not love ZSC’s. O did I mention somewhere in there that the 2nd in command US ambassador swore us in (the main one is out doing some shit.) He’s a rad dude, but more importantly I am fucking PCV! (peace corps volunteer).
After swearing in we smoozed with a few peeps, and then went to another grocery store in Monrovia, this one had mother fucking cold cuts, and goulda cheese. Let me just repeat that so it really sinks in I ATE A FUCKING COLD CUT SANDWICH IN AFRICA MOTHER FUCKERS! It was so goulda I deuced in my pants; which reminds me I gotta stop deucing in my pants so much here because I am running out of underwear real fast. Anywho after the ceremony in the Rove we headed back to Kakata where we hung out with the host families a bit and then went out and celebrated as volunteers. How do volunteers celebrate, well if you are awesome like LR-1 (Liberia group 1) is awesome you get down by kicking it with all your vol friends, bumping some Prince, and watching Hard Target. Now 1. if you don’t listen to Prince kill yourself because you are already dead and 2. If you haven’t seen this aweomse Jean Claude van Dam movie than my advice is the same for if you haven’t seen the other van Dam classic (Blood Sport), punch yourself in the fucking teeth you stupid fucking asshole. But take it a step further and knee yourself in the balls, ladies in this case I know you are excluded but that’s probably a good thing. Holy mother fucking shit on tits this movie kicks ass and then some, it makes every other 90’s action movie look like utter garbage. How? Because no other 90’s action movie has Wilford Fucking Brimley (of oatmeal and diabetes fame, and I also believe Walker Texas Ranger fame) shooting a mother fucking bow and arrow into bad dudes hearts. Did I mention that he is riding a horse while he is doing this. But wait it gets better because in the movie JCVD punches at least 300 dudes right in the dick before shooting them about 80 times and then round house kicking them right in the fucking face, like a lot, all with a beautiful mullet the likes which have never been seen by this world. Seriously that mullet is so beautiful that it simultaneously makes me go from 6 to midnight and shed a tears of glory. SEE THIS FUCKING MOVIE or regret it forever.
Today, my first official day as a PCV we started traveling to site, and mylanta more could not have gone wrong. Our car starts breaking down randomly while we are cruising down the road, but our totes ma gotes rocking driver fixes this problem by just revving the shit out of the engine a lot. As a side note I might recommend the next time your car has a problem don’t take it the body shop and waste your money, just rev the shit out of the engine because that really seems to fix any problem and it will save you a fuck ton of money. So after that problem was fixed we encountered our next one in long lineage of bad things about to come. So as we are cruising down the Liberian highway (dusty rocky, kidney punching path) we hit a particularly large bump and bent the shit out of our rear axle. No problem for our driver he just jacks the car and beats the wheel back into place. Great fix until we hit that next huge bump in the road, which was about 3 feet in front of us. So we spend the last 30 kilometers going about 2 mph’s (sorry about using KM’ for distance and mph’s for speed but that’s what they do here, it’s weird I know, but I am not doing the fucking conversions). We finally make it to Zwedru where we are staying for the night and we start to think our troubles are over. Wrong again! Trouble donkey punches real good and proper by not letting us into the volunteer’s house. The vol that lives there grabbed the wrong set of keys back in Kakata so instead of the keys to her Z-town house she had the keys to the K-town house, fucking damn it is all I can say at this point. So we go to the World Food Program to get a room for the night but o god forbid that be easy, nope the dude who rents out the fucking rooms is already out at the bars, so we had to go track him down and get the keys from to get into the guest house. Did I mention we are driving and doing all this in our still busted ass taxi, cause we were. But alas I am here inside this amazing building which has electricity and AC, so looks like I fucking win bitches! No falling asleep drenched in sweat tonight! I gotta say that the great Liberian saying “Do not trouble trouble and trouble will not trouble to trouble you.” Did not apply today. But all is well and swell, I had peanut m&m’s, I getta put my water bottle in the fridge, sleep with AC, and charge me shit so overall this day turned out totes bitchin. Now to go watch some mother fucking Blood Diamond. TIA mate.