Preachy, poopy, amardilloey.

I know I have said it once but I will say it again, because this is the kind of thing that people say over and over again, and if people don’t well than it is the kind of thing that I say over and over and you listen to. Waking up in Africa never loses its holy fucking shit this is awesome factor, it just doesn’t, I mean every time I wake up and walk out my back to door to do the kind of thing that people do when walking out there backdoor first thing in the morning, I always look at the golden morning sun shining down on the rolling vibrant green hills of rainforest shrouded in the mist that seemingly congregates there every night to have meeting about whatever large gatherings of mist meet about. The sun is trying to push the mist off the hills and the mist is holding on for dear life to its sweetheart hills, but eventually the sun will win out, the mist will move on and likely become clouds and the hills will sit there and wait for another night and another mist congregation. All this totaled and in much simple terms just means that the mist hanging over the hills in the morning is pretty rad to look at. After I do this I generally walk into to town and greet a whole shit ton of jolly people and buy everything I need for the day to eat and hang out for a little over $2 American. Yes, life here is pretty rockingly sweet. Throughout the day people will come by and hang out, some people I understand and we have good chats, some people we sit in utter and awkward silence before one of us decided that our utter and awkward requirements have been met for the day and tell the other person they have other business to attend to. Than I eat some food, and than I go to sleep. Did I mention that the whole time I am doing this there are birds, frogs, insects, monkeys, and I am quite certain a variety of other life forms providing a bitching sweet soundtrack to the day. I think this is a vague summation of why waking up and living in Africa never really loses its cool factor. I mean I gotta say walking and talking to nice people beats the hell out the walking around your average American street and having some ass hole tell you to fuck off, and while I am not 100% positive of this fact (some people are masochistic and might be into getting told to fuck off) I am certain that falling asleep to the sound of frogs and insects beats the hell out of falling asleep to police sirens (everyone loves a good sleep when they can get it, even masochist ass holes.)
I just finished grading, god do I hate grading. Especially when the kids do so bad, as they have done in this case. At this rate they will bankrupt me of red ink before Christmas time. I thought this was the future, where the fuck is my moustache having, bow tie wearing, paper grading robot named Steve?!?! What the hell kind of technological world do we live in that doesn’t have robots with mustaches? But mustachioed robots are beside the point, though a point that should not be forgotten, anyways grading is no fun, no matter if you have palm wine while you do it or not and I gotta say palm wine makes about every other thing in this world awesome, and that includes sitting in a tiny van reeking of vomit with 20 other people. If I ever met paper grading in a dark back alley I would kick it’s ass, actually no I wouldn’t, I don’t know how to fight, and am much more a lover than a fighter, but I would certainly have some very strong words for it and the way it conducts itself about.
Anways to make myself happy while paper grading I was thinking about how when I get back to America I am going to eat an entire platter of chic-fil-a nuggets. Seriously I am gonna knock back about 60 nuggets in one sitting, and then probably go puke vehemently for about 20 minutes, but I will be well practiced in the art of puking by that time. But as I was sitting there thinking about my nugget victory, I was also remembering that a flight from Monrovia to Hotlanta has opened. Than circuits started buzzing in my brain and all sorts of lights were flashing, and a hot fresh idea came to my head. I suddenly remembered that in the Hotlanta airport there is a Chic-fil-a. I could fly to Hotlanta, eat the nuggets, and be back on plane and in Monrovia all in a weekend! Sure it would be $2,604.60 nuggets, but I think anyone who hates Hitler will agree that these nuggets are worth that shit! So if you wanna see me in shorter than 2 years just meet me at the Hotlanta airport, we can do lunch and than get on with our respective lives.
In local weather news it fucking HOT AS SHIT HERE! I think this might be a little taste of this dry season I have been hearing so much about. So anyways this leads me to an important point, if you were really my friend you would send me an air conditioner, or at least some deodorant for the poor people around me. I am so mixed up in seasonal emotion right now I cant even explain it. Right now my body is telling me that I should be walking in cool breezy air, with leaves lazily dropping to ground, and dranking a bottle of whiskey to stay warm. But my mind and the sun scream, rather convincingly, its summer, its hot, you need to be sitting outside with one pearl snapped snapped, an icey cold PBR sittin in your right hand, and cigar in your left hand. Alas it is hot as shit so I will probably continue to enact my summer plan, but sub in palm wine for PBR, and a book for the cigar. But you better believe only one snap is getting snapped out there! Though I still miss fall in Denver something fierce, and I cant believe I am gonna have to miss an important upcoming Staff Meeting (party). Enjoy the fall friends!
Mornings, Weah, and Imodium. (10.19.10)
Another lovely morning in Africa, slowly my room has gone from pitch dark, to a faded royal blue and now finally the first rays of electric yellow sunlight are tumbling into my room like a five year old farm boy tumbing down a green pasture side. The sunlight strikes my white wall and illuminates some of the pictures I have hung out around my room. Mostly pictures of things and places that I love. These pictures that always make me happy, but they also serve to remind me of how much I miss everyone and all the places I haunted as a handsome youth growing up in America. Alas, they say the third and fourth months are the hardest for homesickness and it seems that yet again modern science is right, though I still think they are lying about things like global warming, and water being something we need to drink. Anywho I have found myself this month more time than any other, thinking about past times had. It really makes me sad and happy all at the same time, I am overjoyed that I met the people, but sad that I wont see them for 2 years and when I do see them, how much will have changed between us is a terrifying thought. But o well, we are all on to bigger and better things, and we had damn good times together when we had our days to have damn good times together. Thank god life changes, it should get rather dull if it didn’t.
Weah the welder has become one of my better friends here in Liberia. When I first met him he came slowly walking up to us, a stretched out grin that revealed his scattered teeth stained black with years of cigarette smoke. He introduced himself by saying that he has been friends with the Peace Corps since 1969, and went on to tell us the name of Peace Corps person he had befriended, James something or other, all Liberians seem to think that in America everyone knows everyone. That’s why I am friends with Akon and Jay-z. Weah has been a huge help to us acting as a procurer of many necessary items, and an incredibly nice man. One day while we were sitting in my small house we started chatting, and the subject of the war came up. Weah went on to say that he had spent most of the war with his family hiding in the jungle. Living in a few houses they built, and a small area for cooking. He went on to mention some of the horrible things that he saw the rebels, things of such horrid proportions it would a make an SS officer blush. This was his life for most of the 90’s, while I was in the middle of Kansas playing little league baseball, and sitting in air conditioning he was here in a jungle hiding for his life. Now here we are together, hanging out in my house. It is just odd how the world works that some live in such comfort with no fears, and others on this same exact planet, breathing the same fucking air wake up in the morning hoping just to eat and not get caught in the cross fire. It boggles my mind more that these 24 hours news networks might make a 2 minute mention of it, somewhere between there 1 hour long session on what celebrities just died, and than another hour long session espousing hate for the current president and claiming he is the antichrist incarnate. America *sigh*. God if we could just spend half the energy and money we exert on hating and killing each other, just took half of that and tried to build a better and peaceful world my mind swims at the possibilities. It just makes me laugh that Americans get pissed when they are stopped at a traffic light for too long and Liberians are totally in love with life as long as they have friends and families around. Anyways, back to Liberia, this story instilled me a tremendous amount of respect for Liberians, just five years ago they were in war that was unimaginably terrible and never talked about in America, and today they are the nicest people you could meet. It amazes me that they have that kind of mental strength. When I hear some of their stories all I can think in my mind is Jesus, I woulda have shit my pants 30 times over, and probably never smile again. And yet these people are working hard to rebuild a country that was stolen from them by greedy war lords, and I get to be a part of that. I get to help put in the first few bricks of a rebuilding nation, and I gotta say that is a pretty fucking amazing feeling.
In other more upbeat news. The restaurant has jollah rice tonight! Jollah rice is not only one of my favorite Liberian dishes but one of my favorite foods in general. As I have said before in posts, Liberians are nice people but terrible cooks (I thank goodness e’eryday that my much of my childhood was spent cooking with my grandma and thus I have some food sense), but I gotta say this Jollah rice is the mother fucking bees knees, the real grasshoppers ankle of food. It’s like spicy fried rice with bits of REAL cow meat in it. And thankfully my case of raging 3 day diarrhea has started to subside, thanks mostly to Imodium. I am pretty sure that Imodium works by putting tiny robots inside your body that than go to your lower end and build a huge damn right there on the spot. Yes, I am quite certain that is how it works, and has nothing at all to do with biochemistry and all that other mumbo jumbo that scientist claim they know. Anyways whatever it does it is really good at doing that, and therefore I like it. If I saw Imodium at a bar I would buy it a drink and thank it for all its hard work, than probably go on to drunkenly ramble about how it is the hard working pills like it that do that hard dirty jobs that keep America going, than I would probably ramble something about how Mike Row (dirty jobs) should be informed of Imodium and do an episode on it, then promptly there after I would pass out in the gutter and sleep peacefully till morning.
Later that night: O sweet lord why did I eat jollah rice when I was sick, I should known that oily spicy rice wouldn’t help with stomach problems! Curse this world! Looks like were going for 4 days straight tonight!