Public Transport. (08.30.10)
Aw public transport in Liberia, the bane of my existence, but also one of the greatest joys of my life. I had spent the early part of my day bouncing back down the red dirt road toward Zwedru in a pickup truck. We had to make it back to the Dru because funds were running low, and life without money means a life without food. So reluctantly we popped into the pickup truck and away we bounced down the road stopping every 5 minutes to pick up new passengers and shove them in the back, seeing as the small cab was overflowing with people and luggage (5 people people and 3 bags in total). I sat crunched in an uncomfortable and awkward position for 4 hours as our driver lazily made his way to our destination. Upon reaching Zwedru we walked about for bit picking up a few necessaries for safety and security of our house; after we met one of the vols who lives there and headed to the bank. We spent the next 2.5 hours at the bank doing our transactions, and finally finished and headed to grab a bite to eat, this would be the first thing I had eaten in 36 hours save the 3 double stuffed oreos I had for dinner the night before and 3 more I had this morning for breakfast. The meal was exquisite fried chicken, a “hamburger”, and potato salad. With our bellies full, we headed back to the taxi station to make it back to Kaewekan. After minimal argument and price haggling me, my roommate and 5 other Liberian men smashed into the yellow taxi cab that was to bump back across the red dirt road, which at this point had become a small red river due to the copious amounts of rain that day. We were moving slow to say the least as the cab was either getting stuck or slipping about the road, and every time we started to make good time we were stopped at a checkpoint and hassled about something or other until the immigrations officers were bribed satisfactorily. The car was alive with conversation about the bullshit of the checkpoint, how the Land Cruiser was the king of Liberian roads, and how the paving of this particular road would make Liberian life much better. We were also discussing the new mine that is being prospected an hour past Zwedru, as we talked day light slipped away and as it did I hung my head out the window to breath some fresh air, rather than the gasoline fumes that filled the cab. I watched as the light shrunk away on to its next destination, watched as the vast rainforest that sprawled out before me became nothing more than outlines of the gigantic trees that lay beyond the road. By this point it had become pitch black and I was watching the tall green grass that was illuminated by our headlights fly by. The grass and trees crept right up the road, the jungle was trying to reclaim what was rightfully its, and we are merely borrowing for the time being. I brought my head back in the car and chatted for a bit longer, than put it back out again, I closed my eyes and let the cool African night air blow threw my blonde hair, and listened to the sounds of the jungle. Now that I could no longer see it I could most certainly hear it, the calls of insects and frogs silencing the sound of our small engine. As we passed through one part the trees blocked out the night sky, we were swallowed by the jungle, we were in a tiny isolated bubble, the only thing that existed to me was us in the car and what our dim head lights showed up ahead, I closed my eyes again and relished in the fact that we were the only living souls out here, I breathed in deep and opened my eyes again to see that the blanket of clouds had broken up just enough to get a peek at the brilliantly beaming stars the night sky had to offer. I stared at them in amazement for a brief time feeling my utter tininess in the world, and as I did so, smashed against the door of this old Toyota corolla, sweaty and exhausted I thought to myself “why o why do I get to be this lucky?” I could be packed into a tiny cubicle or classroom, like many of my friends were at this very moment in America, but I was driving down an amazing red river hair blowing in cool night air, breathing the cleanest air in this world and staring into the seemingly endless array of stars our galaxy has to offer. This my friends is it, this is life as it was meant to be lived. Never in my life have I felt so at peace, so fucking happy. Breath deep, this is life and we only get one chance at it, so live it the fuck up however you see fit, for me this is it.
Drawing water. (08.31.10)
It’s really fucking hard. Pumping it, or pulling it from the well and carrying large amounts of it long distances and uphillish back to your house is really fucking hard because oddly enough in large amounts the combination of 2 parts hydrogen and one part oxygen is exceedingly heavy.
I also cooked some dinner tonight for the first time at the new site. I started simple with some spaghetti and garlic bread. The vols who lived here previous of us had left some turtle shell noodles and some sphagetti noodles so I decided to be economical and use those, poor choice. After 45 minutes of getting the coal started and the water boiling I dumped the noods in. The sphageck noods went well enough no problems there just some noodles, the turtle shell noods, well that’s a different story. I poored them into the boiling water without a bit of inspection first, what the hell was I thinking!?!? This is Africa and those noods had been sitting about for 4 months!!! Well when the noods came out so did some extra protein in the form of a bunch of little bugs. Now in America that’s enough to end a meal right there, throw those noods out and start over, not here. I told my roommate who was equally not appalled by the bug thing and we found a new game/pastime called fishing the bug out of our damn noodles. When they would zoom past in the boiling water you would try to catch them with a spoon. After a bit of doing this we agreed the boiling water would take care of any of the germs and the extra protein couldn’t hurt so finished up the sauce and bread and we crushed down on the food. Seeing as it was not fishy or oily it was the greatest thing either of us had eaten in a well forever. It is amazing how good, shitty sauce, noods, and a few spices can taste after not having had them for awhile.
O I forgot to mention yesterday the people in the cab told us even more about the cassava snake! Apparently you can eat it, and it is very delicious? It also makes a great cure for yellow fever or malaria, which leads me to two questions 1. Is there anything that this fucking snake cannot do? 2. Who the fuck is daring enough to battle this mighty beast just so they can have some dinner?
Well that’s about all I know, I believe for the month of September I am gonna try to go technology free, lets see how long I last shall we. Talk to you in October or whenever I crack (probs sooner than the ‘Tobes)
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Sunday, August 29, 2010
hey my leg is all orange!
Home (08.30.10)
We have made it to River Gee. As an important note I have a roommate now. They literally informed me of this on swearing in day, I mean they actually just put it into President Sirleaf’s speech to all of us I think it went like “blah blah blah development, blah blah blah American and Liberian relations, blah blah blah Tj you have a roommate now.” Anyways at first I was upset to get a roommate because I had my heart set on being alone out here, than we got to our village and realized how shitty it would be to be totes alone out here and was instantly pleased to have a roommate, plus the dude has oreos, so we will at least be friends until his double stuffed stash runs out.
Anyways the finishing drive out to site was as to be expected, bumpy and rainy, though the one surprise was when our driver let out a powerful stinker. Matt and I instantly looked at each other in blame via the side mirror of the car only to realize that our driver had pulled a fast one on us, or rather I should say he farted and stunk up the whole fucking car even with windows down. I mean really hats off to the man because that my friends is some powerful flatulence. It is good to be home in the rainforest, and it’s good to not be the only white dude at home in the rainforest. However, I did just wake up to a fucking mouse trying to get at my god damn skittles, got out of bed in a flash and brought that bag inside the mosquito net with me. Out here these skits are like gold man, fucking GOLD! Which reminds I better go check on the double stuffed oreos. But, also now that we are in the rainforest we must watch out for the vaunted cassava snake! Fo real’z this snake (at least in myth) is built up to be more mother fucking terrifying than a god damn dragon, I mean if I had to pick between slaying one it would be the dragon, as a side note if I had to pick between riding one it would also be a dragon, unless I get a carpet of cassava snakes, for some reason I really like the idea of riding a carpet of poisonous snakes. Anyways back to the myth of the CS, this mythical death beast of doom is the most terrifying thing you have ever heard of, seriously, I mean if you were scared of pussy ass shit like alligators, black widows, or carnival carneys, I would not even go on reading this because you, similar to me will not sleep for weeks! So onto the terrifying attributes of the CS: 1. It has horns, ooo and not just horns mother fuckers but POISONOUS DEATH BRINGING HORNS! 2. This thing sits in running water with its mouth open just waiting to bite you! On a Sunday afternoon this snake aint at home knitting a quilt for its grand kids, nope its lurking in a puddle mouth gaping waiting to take your life. Needless to say this mother fucker needs a serious attitude readjustment, but unfortunatelyJCVD is not here to punch it right in the fucking face (JCVD punches a snake right in the fucking face in the previously mentioned movie Hard Target). 3. This snake builds WEBS, its like the spider man of snakes! So not only does it have horns and always have it mouth open in puddles, it builds fucking WEBS! I mean who knew that snakes could even build webs! But the cassava snake can, I mean at this point I think the cassava snake can probably fucking teleport, but wait it gets even better! EVEN IF YOU KILL IT, IT WILL STILL KILL YOU, or something close to it! Seriously if you chop its head off, the head will spring at you and bite you which results with you on the floor dead as shit in like 1 minute. Or if they head cant spring at you, it will spring at the nearest thing like a tree and bite that and the kill the fuck out of some poor tree who wasn’t even involved in the argument to begin with. Finally saving the best for last, thankfully the snake cannot fly, but don’t worry folks it can soar. So it cant fly like some kind of bullshit animal, no it soars like a hardass animal should (ie bald eagle). This is why I don’t sleep at night, I sit here just waiting for the cassava snake to teleport into my tent and bite this shit out of my bitch ass.
I also cooked this last week, for 26 fucking people and let me tell you that shit was fucking hard dude. Seriously cooking for 26 people is hard in America but here, cookin on coal fires its ridiculously hard. Its so fucking hard that I cant even come up with a clever analogy for American cooking vs Liberian cooking. Seriously hats off to the people (woman and children) who cook everyday here on coal pots, it hot as shit, it takes forever, and you are defs gonna burn the shit out of your hand, at least Garrett, Ken and I all did. Anways after 6 hours of sweaty, choppy, cooking goodness we blew some Liberian minds with American food, so it was all worth it.
Alright I gotta try to go back to sleep because tomorrow I gots to get back in the taxi cab and head to the ‘Dru on a day trip to take of some bidnass, and than come back and start planning for schoolio! Also my computer is running low on batteries, so until I find some way to charge this bitch there might not be blog posts for awhile.
Also as a side note, to all my friend going back to Regis tomorrow Have fun! And I miss you all so much! I am so sad I cant be there this year, but I mean I am kinda busy educating children and fighting cassava snakes.
We have made it to River Gee. As an important note I have a roommate now. They literally informed me of this on swearing in day, I mean they actually just put it into President Sirleaf’s speech to all of us I think it went like “blah blah blah development, blah blah blah American and Liberian relations, blah blah blah Tj you have a roommate now.” Anyways at first I was upset to get a roommate because I had my heart set on being alone out here, than we got to our village and realized how shitty it would be to be totes alone out here and was instantly pleased to have a roommate, plus the dude has oreos, so we will at least be friends until his double stuffed stash runs out.
Anyways the finishing drive out to site was as to be expected, bumpy and rainy, though the one surprise was when our driver let out a powerful stinker. Matt and I instantly looked at each other in blame via the side mirror of the car only to realize that our driver had pulled a fast one on us, or rather I should say he farted and stunk up the whole fucking car even with windows down. I mean really hats off to the man because that my friends is some powerful flatulence. It is good to be home in the rainforest, and it’s good to not be the only white dude at home in the rainforest. However, I did just wake up to a fucking mouse trying to get at my god damn skittles, got out of bed in a flash and brought that bag inside the mosquito net with me. Out here these skits are like gold man, fucking GOLD! Which reminds I better go check on the double stuffed oreos. But, also now that we are in the rainforest we must watch out for the vaunted cassava snake! Fo real’z this snake (at least in myth) is built up to be more mother fucking terrifying than a god damn dragon, I mean if I had to pick between slaying one it would be the dragon, as a side note if I had to pick between riding one it would also be a dragon, unless I get a carpet of cassava snakes, for some reason I really like the idea of riding a carpet of poisonous snakes. Anyways back to the myth of the CS, this mythical death beast of doom is the most terrifying thing you have ever heard of, seriously, I mean if you were scared of pussy ass shit like alligators, black widows, or carnival carneys, I would not even go on reading this because you, similar to me will not sleep for weeks! So onto the terrifying attributes of the CS: 1. It has horns, ooo and not just horns mother fuckers but POISONOUS DEATH BRINGING HORNS! 2. This thing sits in running water with its mouth open just waiting to bite you! On a Sunday afternoon this snake aint at home knitting a quilt for its grand kids, nope its lurking in a puddle mouth gaping waiting to take your life. Needless to say this mother fucker needs a serious attitude readjustment, but unfortunatelyJCVD is not here to punch it right in the fucking face (JCVD punches a snake right in the fucking face in the previously mentioned movie Hard Target). 3. This snake builds WEBS, its like the spider man of snakes! So not only does it have horns and always have it mouth open in puddles, it builds fucking WEBS! I mean who knew that snakes could even build webs! But the cassava snake can, I mean at this point I think the cassava snake can probably fucking teleport, but wait it gets even better! EVEN IF YOU KILL IT, IT WILL STILL KILL YOU, or something close to it! Seriously if you chop its head off, the head will spring at you and bite you which results with you on the floor dead as shit in like 1 minute. Or if they head cant spring at you, it will spring at the nearest thing like a tree and bite that and the kill the fuck out of some poor tree who wasn’t even involved in the argument to begin with. Finally saving the best for last, thankfully the snake cannot fly, but don’t worry folks it can soar. So it cant fly like some kind of bullshit animal, no it soars like a hardass animal should (ie bald eagle). This is why I don’t sleep at night, I sit here just waiting for the cassava snake to teleport into my tent and bite this shit out of my bitch ass.
I also cooked this last week, for 26 fucking people and let me tell you that shit was fucking hard dude. Seriously cooking for 26 people is hard in America but here, cookin on coal fires its ridiculously hard. Its so fucking hard that I cant even come up with a clever analogy for American cooking vs Liberian cooking. Seriously hats off to the people (woman and children) who cook everyday here on coal pots, it hot as shit, it takes forever, and you are defs gonna burn the shit out of your hand, at least Garrett, Ken and I all did. Anways after 6 hours of sweaty, choppy, cooking goodness we blew some Liberian minds with American food, so it was all worth it.
Alright I gotta try to go back to sleep because tomorrow I gots to get back in the taxi cab and head to the ‘Dru on a day trip to take of some bidnass, and than come back and start planning for schoolio! Also my computer is running low on batteries, so until I find some way to charge this bitch there might not be blog posts for awhile.
Also as a side note, to all my friend going back to Regis tomorrow Have fun! And I miss you all so much! I am so sad I cant be there this year, but I mean I am kinda busy educating children and fighting cassava snakes.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
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.
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.
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Fingernails Jailcells and hay bails. This blog doesnt talk about any.
The great debate. (08.19.10)
For centuries, nay! Eons man has debated what the greatest, most influential invention has been. They debate the greatest and not the shittiest for two reasons the way I see it 1. Who really gives a damn what the shittiest invention is, I mean honestly what good does that do us? 2. We already know what the worst invention is, it’s the fucking shamwow. ITS JUST A GOD DAMN TOWEL! And its not even a good towel and some coked out tongue biter hawks it at you. I mean it wasn’t even hawked by the great B-Mays (RIP). Anywho sorry about the Shamwow rant, I just hate that god damn thing. Anyways, many people have said obvious things like fire, or the wheel. Yea those are cool and they are useful I mean who doesn’t love being warm and cooking shit and for the wheel well I love rolling things myself. Others say the airplane, or the telephone, again great, especially for the connectivity aspect of this world and yet still others say modern medicine or the internet has claimed the greatest invention in the history of the world. And yet other hornier people will say the fleshlight, although there vote also goes to internet for obvious gross reasons so they cancel each other out. Well folks I say shenanigans and bullshit to all of those! The greatest invention ever made in this world is the shower cup! I just got one for my birthday and I gotta tell you it has redefined not only the way I shower, but the way I see the world. I mean no longer do I just have to splash water on my body. NO! I have become civilized! I am living in the fucking future, and the future is a beautiful cuppy place! All of you who have “indoor plumbing” and “hot” water, ITS garbage, shower with a cup and then get back to me. Once that first glorious bit of cuppy cold water pours over your head it’s like staring god right in the face but better. Mmm the shower cup.
As far as why people don’t chew GB, I don’t really know, you just don’t and you don’t ask questions. Just swallow. Someone should put that on a T-shirt.
It’s me and the moon and 1 million Liberians. (08.20.10)
Did you know that one of the advantages of being an asexual plant was that you just had to spread your sperm on the egg? Or for that matter that plants made eggs? Yea well they do, I just found that out today from one of my students.
Well just another day of emo and Africa. Except this time it’s Something Corporate, god I love going back to high school via music. So as I sit here watching the rain fall for the 300th day in a row I am pondering on how to improve the game of baseball. I mean its still happening right now, they are still playing a god damn season of that fucking game, that’s just too much. So here is my advice, 1. Shorten the fucking season down. 2. (My preferred solution) Introduce fireball. Fireball might be the very concept that saves not only the game of baseball but the world. So for just one pitch for either team a game you light a baseball on fire. Now I know what you are thinking, a flaming ball going 90 miles an hour is pretty cool, but it’s not enough to make me watch 4 hours of bullshit! Well my answer to that is to also dowse both the bat and the all the baseball gloves in gasoline, thus providing enough flaming objects to entertain anyone! I mean people watch hours of people going really fast in circles to see one crash, which proves my point that all people really want is fire and danger. Fireball answer this question, quite reasonably I might add. As a side note the hitter would be allowed to hold on to the flaming bat as he rounded the bases to ward off any defenders with fiery hands of baseball mitt doom! And just for shits the bases are shooting off fireworks! Now tell me you wouldn’t watch that sport.
So next week is swear in day, one week from today I will become an official Peace Corps Volunteer instead this weak ass trainee shit and my goodness gracious am I excited. I mean it’s not a big deal or anything but word has it that we are getting sworn in by the president of the country. But I mean really it’s not a big deal, I mean I am sure you got sworn into your job by the president of some country as well (Just to clarify the Canadian prime minister most certainly does not count, cause lets face it, Canada is not a country). I am also singing America’s national anthem for this event, I am trying to think of someway to incorporate fire into this as well, seeing as fire is my theme this week. Let me know if you get any ideas.
The TIA teeter totter. Post is not for light of tummy. (08.21.10)
What is the TIA teeter totter? Well you asked. The TIA teeter totter as I like to call it where you sit down to, let see how do I put this not crassly, hmm well its where you shit down and crap your brains out, than stand up and vomit your brains out. No? To crass? OK let’s try this, its where you sit down and piss out your ass, and then stand up and lose your insides via your mouth? Better? No? Well fucking deal with it. You go up and down and do this constantly all day, its really not very fun. But two good things I learned from it are as follows. 1. Regurgitating tuna is as gross as its sounds. I mean really its fucking awful, I can think of a number of things I would rather vom up than tuna and one of those would be hot mother fucking coals. 2. There is a plant here that when you touch it, it shrivels up (think Avatar, cause its like one of the plants in that movie, except more green than blueish and glowy) well anyways I was puking on these plants and making them shrivel up and it made me feel like an alien from the movie Aliens. By that I mean it made me feel like I had acid spit and was killing these plants with awesome acid vom. God it’s a powerful feeling. It makes puking fun, seriously. Ok well not fun, but as least I get a giggle. Now you are asking yourself did he really just write an entire entry about shitting and puking. Yes and the more important question is did you really just read it? You did if you are reading this sentence, now who is gross? On the other plus side at least I made it this far without getting sick. Hooray! It had to happen eventually I suppose.
I would love to sleep tonight, but that’s not gonna happen because it is still raining here, if I were to name this season I would call it the rainy season. Anyways my roof is made of tin, so when it rains it sounds like Bo fucking Jangles is tap dancing up a god damn storm on my roof. So much so that I will occasionally ratchet up from bed in the middle of the night in a cold sweat and yell “god damn it Bo Jangles give it a fucking rest!” Then I realize it’s the rain, and I just lay there with that fucking song stuck in my head.
Other than the sickness and the no sleepy, life is great here, Africa is still beautiful, the Liberian people are still awesome and next week I move to site. Life is happening folks, it’s happening every day and it’s rather fun to participate in.
Well the clients are calling so its back out to business office (shit shack).
For centuries, nay! Eons man has debated what the greatest, most influential invention has been. They debate the greatest and not the shittiest for two reasons the way I see it 1. Who really gives a damn what the shittiest invention is, I mean honestly what good does that do us? 2. We already know what the worst invention is, it’s the fucking shamwow. ITS JUST A GOD DAMN TOWEL! And its not even a good towel and some coked out tongue biter hawks it at you. I mean it wasn’t even hawked by the great B-Mays (RIP). Anywho sorry about the Shamwow rant, I just hate that god damn thing. Anyways, many people have said obvious things like fire, or the wheel. Yea those are cool and they are useful I mean who doesn’t love being warm and cooking shit and for the wheel well I love rolling things myself. Others say the airplane, or the telephone, again great, especially for the connectivity aspect of this world and yet still others say modern medicine or the internet has claimed the greatest invention in the history of the world. And yet other hornier people will say the fleshlight, although there vote also goes to internet for obvious gross reasons so they cancel each other out. Well folks I say shenanigans and bullshit to all of those! The greatest invention ever made in this world is the shower cup! I just got one for my birthday and I gotta tell you it has redefined not only the way I shower, but the way I see the world. I mean no longer do I just have to splash water on my body. NO! I have become civilized! I am living in the fucking future, and the future is a beautiful cuppy place! All of you who have “indoor plumbing” and “hot” water, ITS garbage, shower with a cup and then get back to me. Once that first glorious bit of cuppy cold water pours over your head it’s like staring god right in the face but better. Mmm the shower cup.
As far as why people don’t chew GB, I don’t really know, you just don’t and you don’t ask questions. Just swallow. Someone should put that on a T-shirt.
It’s me and the moon and 1 million Liberians. (08.20.10)
Did you know that one of the advantages of being an asexual plant was that you just had to spread your sperm on the egg? Or for that matter that plants made eggs? Yea well they do, I just found that out today from one of my students.
Well just another day of emo and Africa. Except this time it’s Something Corporate, god I love going back to high school via music. So as I sit here watching the rain fall for the 300th day in a row I am pondering on how to improve the game of baseball. I mean its still happening right now, they are still playing a god damn season of that fucking game, that’s just too much. So here is my advice, 1. Shorten the fucking season down. 2. (My preferred solution) Introduce fireball. Fireball might be the very concept that saves not only the game of baseball but the world. So for just one pitch for either team a game you light a baseball on fire. Now I know what you are thinking, a flaming ball going 90 miles an hour is pretty cool, but it’s not enough to make me watch 4 hours of bullshit! Well my answer to that is to also dowse both the bat and the all the baseball gloves in gasoline, thus providing enough flaming objects to entertain anyone! I mean people watch hours of people going really fast in circles to see one crash, which proves my point that all people really want is fire and danger. Fireball answer this question, quite reasonably I might add. As a side note the hitter would be allowed to hold on to the flaming bat as he rounded the bases to ward off any defenders with fiery hands of baseball mitt doom! And just for shits the bases are shooting off fireworks! Now tell me you wouldn’t watch that sport.
So next week is swear in day, one week from today I will become an official Peace Corps Volunteer instead this weak ass trainee shit and my goodness gracious am I excited. I mean it’s not a big deal or anything but word has it that we are getting sworn in by the president of the country. But I mean really it’s not a big deal, I mean I am sure you got sworn into your job by the president of some country as well (Just to clarify the Canadian prime minister most certainly does not count, cause lets face it, Canada is not a country). I am also singing America’s national anthem for this event, I am trying to think of someway to incorporate fire into this as well, seeing as fire is my theme this week. Let me know if you get any ideas.
The TIA teeter totter. Post is not for light of tummy. (08.21.10)
What is the TIA teeter totter? Well you asked. The TIA teeter totter as I like to call it where you sit down to, let see how do I put this not crassly, hmm well its where you shit down and crap your brains out, than stand up and vomit your brains out. No? To crass? OK let’s try this, its where you sit down and piss out your ass, and then stand up and lose your insides via your mouth? Better? No? Well fucking deal with it. You go up and down and do this constantly all day, its really not very fun. But two good things I learned from it are as follows. 1. Regurgitating tuna is as gross as its sounds. I mean really its fucking awful, I can think of a number of things I would rather vom up than tuna and one of those would be hot mother fucking coals. 2. There is a plant here that when you touch it, it shrivels up (think Avatar, cause its like one of the plants in that movie, except more green than blueish and glowy) well anyways I was puking on these plants and making them shrivel up and it made me feel like an alien from the movie Aliens. By that I mean it made me feel like I had acid spit and was killing these plants with awesome acid vom. God it’s a powerful feeling. It makes puking fun, seriously. Ok well not fun, but as least I get a giggle. Now you are asking yourself did he really just write an entire entry about shitting and puking. Yes and the more important question is did you really just read it? You did if you are reading this sentence, now who is gross? On the other plus side at least I made it this far without getting sick. Hooray! It had to happen eventually I suppose.
I would love to sleep tonight, but that’s not gonna happen because it is still raining here, if I were to name this season I would call it the rainy season. Anyways my roof is made of tin, so when it rains it sounds like Bo fucking Jangles is tap dancing up a god damn storm on my roof. So much so that I will occasionally ratchet up from bed in the middle of the night in a cold sweat and yell “god damn it Bo Jangles give it a fucking rest!” Then I realize it’s the rain, and I just lay there with that fucking song stuck in my head.
Other than the sickness and the no sleepy, life is great here, Africa is still beautiful, the Liberian people are still awesome and next week I move to site. Life is happening folks, it’s happening every day and it’s rather fun to participate in.
Well the clients are calling so its back out to business office (shit shack).
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Sure does rain here a lot. Yep, it sure does.
The Routine (08.16.10)
A load of people have been asking me what the day to day life is here so I will make an effort to succinctly answer those questions here.
I wake up in the morning whenevs that god damn rooster crows, usually around 5:30 and role about in bed till let’s say 6:30 at which time I arise and unzip my bug hut. At this point I have an argument with approximately 30 mosquitos as to whether the blood pulsing through my veins belongs to me or to them. (Technically it would be pulsing through my arteries and only returning to my heart via my veins, but that is a long convoluted story of fact.) I usually win this argument by smashing the shit out of those little shits, I than walk outside to take my business call in the outhouse. After a successful business meeting I fill a bucket with water and proceed to throw water all over my body and cover it in soap than repeat said process of throwing water everywhere on body. People in America commonly refer to that part of my day as showering. After this I go inside and eat my egg and oatmeal (breakfast is the best mother fucking meal of my mother fucking day.) Sometimes for breakfast we fry spam, onions, and plantains which are shockingly exquisite. After breakfast I walk to sessions where a number of people yell “whiteman” at me and I respond with a “hello, how da body?” I get to sessions which now consist of teaching in the morning. I go blow some kids with some biology, or if I don’t feel like teaching I give them a quiz. A quiz is a teacher’s best friend, I have been teaching a little over a week and I already know that. After that I go eat some food which generally consists of a leaf of some sort in loads of oil over rice. After class I come home and jam to something awesome like Conor Oberst, Tom Petty, or The Beatles and lay on my mat destress, relax, and have a deep think. This week I have been thinking about the moat. Like who was the first man to think to himself “man I am building this castle, but I need to step it up a notch, I mean huge walls just are not enough anymore, but HOW!? MY GOD I GOT IT! I will dig a big canal all around this castle, I mean who the fuck is gonna wanna try to swim across that. Yea that’s it a giant body of water surrounding my castle will surely keep everyone one out.” Than I move to the next logical step in my thought process, what did the first person who ever saw a moat think, and I think it went something like this “alright guys you know the drill, we go knock down the walls to castle, we rape, we pillage, and we claim that shit for ours. Is that clear with everyone? Alright anyways get your knight shit on…o wait what the fucking fuck is that!?! Does anybody else see this!?! There is a big thing of water! Does anyone know how to swim, cause I sure as shit don’t! I mean is that even legal, who the fuck does that! Well fuck this, I mean I know how to knock down walls, but get across water, that is just not in my job description. Well lets head home.” And the moat went on to be the bane of existence for many a great conquer. After this thought process is done, I usually go eat some dinner which again consists of some sort of leaf in loads of oil over rice. After dinner I blow my families mind with some American music, usually it is the afore mentioned Conor Oberst, and Beatles. I am making them huge here mostly because my host dad is the radio station manager so I’ll be bumping them over the radio waves shortly in Liberia. After that I make sleepy and by make sleepy I mean I go lay in bed and fall asleep for 30 minutes before being woken up by some ridiculously crazy mefloquin dream. And that kinda sums up the day. So just to be clear and mostly because I am bored I will put this into clear cut headlines.
Bathroom time.
Dooking: It’s in a hole in the ground.
Showering is from a bucket.
Transportation.
It’s packed usually 7 or 8 deep in Toyota corolla on bumpy dirt roads. If your kidneys don’t hurt something fierce afterwards it’s because you were lucky enough to sit next to someone with a soft body (fattie.)
Communication.
Shockingly awesome, I have a cell phone and occasionally when the gods smile upon me I can get internet. Mail does not exist here though.
Sleepy time.
I sleep in a tent on a mat on a cement floor, it is as glamorous as I make it sound. When I wake up in the middle of the night (which again is frequently) I can turn my headlamp on and usually see about 35 mosquitos, 12 roaches and 2 mice trying to get at me. Sometimes when I wake up there all having a meeting on what is the best way to get inside and get me, that or they play poker. Needless to say I love my god damn bug hut.
Food.
If it doesn’t have rice, oil, fish and some sort of leaf in it, it aint food mother fucker.
Recreation.
Reading, writing, staring at a wall, kicking it with the totally rad locals, haggling for things in the market, looking at the amazingly beautiful scenery that is all around me, sleeping, staring at the ridiculously awesome stars, and finally training my herd of vipers so I can ride them everywhere I go.
Weather.
It is either hot as shit, or raining, those are the options.
I hope this clarifies any questions that had existed about my life in this totally awesome country. Please feel free to facebook me any follow up questions and clarifications and i will answer them. As I know this will be a question, yes it is still my lifelong goal/dream to die by fighting a bear that has tried to eat an entire orphanage of children. Did I mention this bear and I are falling into a volcano? No, I didn’t? Ok well now I did.
O.R.S. is god. (08.18.10)
O.R.S. (Oral Rehydration Salt) = Greatest thing ever! It’s like super Gatorade but salty. Last night was the birthday and what a birthday it was. This morning I was realizing there are certain days of the year that I just inherently hate. These days would be August 18th, November 1st, January 1st, March 18th, and July 5th. I mean for some odd reason that I just have not been able to put my finger on I never ever feel good on those days. I spend the whole of those days wishing I was not doing what I was doing but was rather in bed. Anywho back to birthday thing. So last night I hung out with some of my friends IN AFRICA, I don’t think I will ever get sick of saying that. We sat about and bumped Imagine and the Willy Wonka song on the stereo. I gotta tell you, if you are ever feeling blue, or just want to have a good mother fucking time bump dat Willy Wonka song tru dem speakas! My awesome birthday gifts were ketchup, mustard ( a year past expiration date), a plastic cup (this will be utilized in the bucket bath, so now rather than splashing water all willy nilly about my body I have systematic cup showering routine.) I also found and bought myself some tuna. BOOM!
Other news in the week: So the other day I was sitting on my back porch reading The History of Nearly Everything, which is a great book, anywho whilst sitting there getting my read on a woman came up to me and started to have conversation. After a few moment of pleasant and normal conversation she randomly exclaims “I want to bone a whiteman.” Well needless to say I was entirely caught off guard and a brief moment of gahbah WAH!?!? Before calmly responding with something to the effect of “well ma’am I cannot oblige you in this case.” After which I calmly closed my book, walked inside and continued to read in the safety of fortress of solitude otherwise known as my bug hut. Come to find out later she did not actually say bone but rather born, which is a pretty common term here. Anywho that was bit odd, but I mean I can understand, after all I am hottie with da body to the ten thousandeth power. Generally speaking however my conversations with Liberians do not drift this weird way and are generally quiet pleasant.
I also swallowed for the first time this week. Stop! Stop having that dirty thought this instant you sicko! I am talking about GB, a local food here that is made of pounded up cassava. You take this, roll it into small balls, roll it around in the slippery soup (yes it really is called the slippery soup) than swallow it. It’s really quiet tasty, it has joined the ranks of pepper soup and jolof rice in delicious things in Liberia. Anways people love to swallow here, and they have no problem telling you that they love to swallow, which I gotta say I don’t think I will ever be able to hear without giggling just a bit. And no I am not making this up, I could not making something this hilarious up.
There was an emo party this week on the back porch of Doe Palace, much Dashboard Confessionals was played and I seriously considered giving my self slanty bangs for brief moment. Thankfully the emo was turned off before any truly terrible decisions could be made. There is something entirely hilarious about bumping shitty white boy emo in the middle of Africa, it pleases, it pleases me greatly.
Anywho as promised these blog post will be more frequent, which means not as large of chunks will be posted, but if you still want to read my posts only in large chunks than just don’t log on to my site all the damn time. It’s really not that hard and everyone is satisfied.
Please enjoy the ability to place an order for a delicious pizza and have it delivered to your door. This is like the greatest thing ever about America. I mean you don’t have to do anything and you still get pizza! What is not to like about that, I mean you sit there and 30 to 45 minutes later there is just a pizza in your lap. God bless the laziness and ingenuity that leads to our laziness.
A load of people have been asking me what the day to day life is here so I will make an effort to succinctly answer those questions here.
I wake up in the morning whenevs that god damn rooster crows, usually around 5:30 and role about in bed till let’s say 6:30 at which time I arise and unzip my bug hut. At this point I have an argument with approximately 30 mosquitos as to whether the blood pulsing through my veins belongs to me or to them. (Technically it would be pulsing through my arteries and only returning to my heart via my veins, but that is a long convoluted story of fact.) I usually win this argument by smashing the shit out of those little shits, I than walk outside to take my business call in the outhouse. After a successful business meeting I fill a bucket with water and proceed to throw water all over my body and cover it in soap than repeat said process of throwing water everywhere on body. People in America commonly refer to that part of my day as showering. After this I go inside and eat my egg and oatmeal (breakfast is the best mother fucking meal of my mother fucking day.) Sometimes for breakfast we fry spam, onions, and plantains which are shockingly exquisite. After breakfast I walk to sessions where a number of people yell “whiteman” at me and I respond with a “hello, how da body?” I get to sessions which now consist of teaching in the morning. I go blow some kids with some biology, or if I don’t feel like teaching I give them a quiz. A quiz is a teacher’s best friend, I have been teaching a little over a week and I already know that. After that I go eat some food which generally consists of a leaf of some sort in loads of oil over rice. After class I come home and jam to something awesome like Conor Oberst, Tom Petty, or The Beatles and lay on my mat destress, relax, and have a deep think. This week I have been thinking about the moat. Like who was the first man to think to himself “man I am building this castle, but I need to step it up a notch, I mean huge walls just are not enough anymore, but HOW!? MY GOD I GOT IT! I will dig a big canal all around this castle, I mean who the fuck is gonna wanna try to swim across that. Yea that’s it a giant body of water surrounding my castle will surely keep everyone one out.” Than I move to the next logical step in my thought process, what did the first person who ever saw a moat think, and I think it went something like this “alright guys you know the drill, we go knock down the walls to castle, we rape, we pillage, and we claim that shit for ours. Is that clear with everyone? Alright anyways get your knight shit on…o wait what the fucking fuck is that!?! Does anybody else see this!?! There is a big thing of water! Does anyone know how to swim, cause I sure as shit don’t! I mean is that even legal, who the fuck does that! Well fuck this, I mean I know how to knock down walls, but get across water, that is just not in my job description. Well lets head home.” And the moat went on to be the bane of existence for many a great conquer. After this thought process is done, I usually go eat some dinner which again consists of some sort of leaf in loads of oil over rice. After dinner I blow my families mind with some American music, usually it is the afore mentioned Conor Oberst, and Beatles. I am making them huge here mostly because my host dad is the radio station manager so I’ll be bumping them over the radio waves shortly in Liberia. After that I make sleepy and by make sleepy I mean I go lay in bed and fall asleep for 30 minutes before being woken up by some ridiculously crazy mefloquin dream. And that kinda sums up the day. So just to be clear and mostly because I am bored I will put this into clear cut headlines.
Bathroom time.
Dooking: It’s in a hole in the ground.
Showering is from a bucket.
Transportation.
It’s packed usually 7 or 8 deep in Toyota corolla on bumpy dirt roads. If your kidneys don’t hurt something fierce afterwards it’s because you were lucky enough to sit next to someone with a soft body (fattie.)
Communication.
Shockingly awesome, I have a cell phone and occasionally when the gods smile upon me I can get internet. Mail does not exist here though.
Sleepy time.
I sleep in a tent on a mat on a cement floor, it is as glamorous as I make it sound. When I wake up in the middle of the night (which again is frequently) I can turn my headlamp on and usually see about 35 mosquitos, 12 roaches and 2 mice trying to get at me. Sometimes when I wake up there all having a meeting on what is the best way to get inside and get me, that or they play poker. Needless to say I love my god damn bug hut.
Food.
If it doesn’t have rice, oil, fish and some sort of leaf in it, it aint food mother fucker.
Recreation.
Reading, writing, staring at a wall, kicking it with the totally rad locals, haggling for things in the market, looking at the amazingly beautiful scenery that is all around me, sleeping, staring at the ridiculously awesome stars, and finally training my herd of vipers so I can ride them everywhere I go.
Weather.
It is either hot as shit, or raining, those are the options.
I hope this clarifies any questions that had existed about my life in this totally awesome country. Please feel free to facebook me any follow up questions and clarifications and i will answer them. As I know this will be a question, yes it is still my lifelong goal/dream to die by fighting a bear that has tried to eat an entire orphanage of children. Did I mention this bear and I are falling into a volcano? No, I didn’t? Ok well now I did.
O.R.S. is god. (08.18.10)
O.R.S. (Oral Rehydration Salt) = Greatest thing ever! It’s like super Gatorade but salty. Last night was the birthday and what a birthday it was. This morning I was realizing there are certain days of the year that I just inherently hate. These days would be August 18th, November 1st, January 1st, March 18th, and July 5th. I mean for some odd reason that I just have not been able to put my finger on I never ever feel good on those days. I spend the whole of those days wishing I was not doing what I was doing but was rather in bed. Anywho back to birthday thing. So last night I hung out with some of my friends IN AFRICA, I don’t think I will ever get sick of saying that. We sat about and bumped Imagine and the Willy Wonka song on the stereo. I gotta tell you, if you are ever feeling blue, or just want to have a good mother fucking time bump dat Willy Wonka song tru dem speakas! My awesome birthday gifts were ketchup, mustard ( a year past expiration date), a plastic cup (this will be utilized in the bucket bath, so now rather than splashing water all willy nilly about my body I have systematic cup showering routine.) I also found and bought myself some tuna. BOOM!
Other news in the week: So the other day I was sitting on my back porch reading The History of Nearly Everything, which is a great book, anywho whilst sitting there getting my read on a woman came up to me and started to have conversation. After a few moment of pleasant and normal conversation she randomly exclaims “I want to bone a whiteman.” Well needless to say I was entirely caught off guard and a brief moment of gahbah WAH!?!? Before calmly responding with something to the effect of “well ma’am I cannot oblige you in this case.” After which I calmly closed my book, walked inside and continued to read in the safety of fortress of solitude otherwise known as my bug hut. Come to find out later she did not actually say bone but rather born, which is a pretty common term here. Anywho that was bit odd, but I mean I can understand, after all I am hottie with da body to the ten thousandeth power. Generally speaking however my conversations with Liberians do not drift this weird way and are generally quiet pleasant.
I also swallowed for the first time this week. Stop! Stop having that dirty thought this instant you sicko! I am talking about GB, a local food here that is made of pounded up cassava. You take this, roll it into small balls, roll it around in the slippery soup (yes it really is called the slippery soup) than swallow it. It’s really quiet tasty, it has joined the ranks of pepper soup and jolof rice in delicious things in Liberia. Anways people love to swallow here, and they have no problem telling you that they love to swallow, which I gotta say I don’t think I will ever be able to hear without giggling just a bit. And no I am not making this up, I could not making something this hilarious up.
There was an emo party this week on the back porch of Doe Palace, much Dashboard Confessionals was played and I seriously considered giving my self slanty bangs for brief moment. Thankfully the emo was turned off before any truly terrible decisions could be made. There is something entirely hilarious about bumping shitty white boy emo in the middle of Africa, it pleases, it pleases me greatly.
Anywho as promised these blog post will be more frequent, which means not as large of chunks will be posted, but if you still want to read my posts only in large chunks than just don’t log on to my site all the damn time. It’s really not that hard and everyone is satisfied.
Please enjoy the ability to place an order for a delicious pizza and have it delivered to your door. This is like the greatest thing ever about America. I mean you don’t have to do anything and you still get pizza! What is not to like about that, I mean you sit there and 30 to 45 minutes later there is just a pizza in your lap. God bless the laziness and ingenuity that leads to our laziness.
Sunday, August 15, 2010
the second big blog post. But I bought internet so these should become more frequent.
The events of last week have been eventful. (08.04.10)
As the title gives away rather quickly the last week has been full of eventful events and the true scope of the event-i-ness of these events will likely not be conveyed in these mere words. So where to begin I suppose is the beginning, or rather the place where I last updated, which would be July 26th, Liberian Independence Day! Similar to my home country America, Independence Day was full of festivities that mostly revolve around the two main events of booze consumption, and food consumption. However, rather than shooting off pussy ass bullshit fireworks we received a much greater treat here in Liberia. Now dear reader I know you are asking yourself, what the fuck is more hard ass than fucking up mother nature in awesome loud and colorful explosions, well the answer is obvious, and no it is not sucker punching a unicorn. It is Blood Sport starring the great martial artist Jean Claude Dam. Watching this movie moved me to tears more than once as Jean Claude struggles to be the best martial artist he can be in a totally awesome selective brick exploding fashion. As a result of watching this fantastic movie I have the song Kumate stuck in my head. If you do not know what this song is first punch yourself square in the teeth for never having seen this great piece of film, than go watch the movie and download the song to your iPod.
I also found out my site last week. I will be moving to Kanwekan and went for a short visit this weekend. Kanwekan is tiny village of about 2000 near the Ivory Coast border. Just look for Fish Town. Anywho the taxi ride down was one of the best times ever, and in that I mean I thought I was going to die for 11 hours while I sat packed into an early 90’s Toyota corolla. I think we almost killed 12 babies, 18 goats, and one duck. We were rolling 7 deep in that bitch, which is actually nice because, as we were similar to sardines in our packed in-edness each time we hit a bump it did not jolt the body as bad. That being said the ride still made me feel like my skin was acting as the Yahtzee cup, and my organs were acting as the Yahtzee dice. Roads here are shockingly not paved, and even more shocking are in shitastic shape (insert sarcastic voice over here). When I finally arrived in K-town I was the color of an oompa-loompa do to the amount of red dirt that had been kicked up in my grill from the road. Upon arrival I instantly deuced my pants at how awesome the village I will be living in for the next two years is. After a quick trip to change my draws I came back outside and looked up to see the stars, which resulted in another pants deucing out of sheer awesomness. Down two pairs of underwear I decided to call it a night and head to bed. In the morning I woke up and went to the local coffee shop where I purchased an egg sandwich and coffee for less than 1 American dollar. After breakfast I went off to meet the village elders for the first time, we ate cola nut, which is the way the Grebo people to welcome you into their tribe. After that ceremony we walked around the hilly rain forest that is my village. Many things were discussed like if I was open to eating monkey (I’m not), subjects to be taught, if there were boulders to climb around (there are!), and when will people be carrying me into the bush to see said edible monkeys. After this we took a midafternoon break and I settled in on my porch to do some reading. After a few minutes I looked up from my book to realize approximately 30 children were watching me read. If I am to be honest here I am actually used to all eyes being on me, except in America it’s not children watching me, but insanely beautiful woman and I am not reading but rather lassoing a bull to the ground while stopping 8 different bank robberies and the amount of lasers that are being shot is about 1000 times greater all this is taking place in outer space. O and I almost forgot to mention that while all of that is happening Slash is playing a totally awesome guitar riff somewhere in the backround. Anywho the next morning was my official welcoming ceremony, we ate more cola nut and they named me. My new Grebo name is Gia’a (pronounced Gee-A). It means great Hunter and one who brings much joy to village. In my case they said I would be hunter of great ideas and bring much joy in that way. While that is all well and good I have decided to shock the piss out of them and go kill something huge, maybe one of the endangered pygmy hippos I have heard so much about. After the ceremony there was more walking, more reading, more shitty gin to be drank, and more sleep to be had.
The next day I started on the road back home and took a stop in Zwedru for the night to stay with some other volunteers. They took me to Florida, which might be the greatest place in the history of mankind. They have pizza, French fries, AND fried chicken AND spring rolls! Needless to say I was in a greasy ketchup paradise. I really gotta say that there is not much better than putting huge amounts of ketchup on a greasy pile of potatoes. We also had ice cream, it was an amazing night that was capped off by seeing 6 shooting stars.
The next day I packed back into a tiny car and bounced back across the bush. One of the Liberian passengers with us was named Lillian, and all I can say about Lillian is that she is the mother fucking G shit. When we would stop for various reasons (one of those being so the driver could chicken wire the exhaust back onto the car) she would beat the dust off of us with her lapa (traditional African clothing). This lady was a god damn saint. Anywho I made it back safe and sound and can’t wait to go back out to site.
A few points of interest, the library at my school has some pretty nice books, but very few of them, a lab with no equipment and ostrich that terrorizes the school children. The ostrich is only in my imagination though, but all the same it is ferocious.
My site mate also dropped out of Peace Corps which put a frown on my heart, I will miss him. This means I am the furthest out in the country and the only volunteer in Liberia who is all alone. TIA.
And just to confirm it in case anyone was having doubts: running to the outhouse several times in the night during a torrential downpour and losing half your soul to the toilet (hole in the ground) is as terrible as one would imagine.
Latest mef dream is the most realistic falling dream I have ever had. I was in jeep with my pops driving and my friend Natalie from PC in the back seat. Anyhow we were driving on the edge of a cliff swerving around inconveniently placed cinder blocks; I was voicing how I felt this was a bad idea when the car went off the cliff. The car was falling for so long I actually thought boy this is a long time to be falling I really fucking hope this is a dream, thankfully it was and I awoke just before going splatters.
God I hate that fucking rooster. (08.06.10)
God I hate that fucking rooster that lives right outside of my room. I hate its god damn crow at the break of dawn. Someday I will eat that fucking rooster and all will be right in this world.
Cheese! These mother fuckers have fucking cheese up in this bitch! (08.07.10)
I found cheese today in one the markets, well laughing cow cheese wizzy shit, but as you might have guessed from earlier posts my standards are low at best. I bought some cow meat off one of the street vendors, a thing of bread, an onion and this cheese and made an African philly cheese steak sandwich and let me tell the sheer deliciousness of that fucking sandwich was worth the 3 or 4 parasites I undoubtedly contracted from the street food. I honestly cannot express to you how happy this sandwich made me after weeks of rice and potato greens.
I started the morning quiet differently, in language class we had to do random tasks that are part of African life. Let me just make this clear now if someone would have told me 2 years ago “hey in two years you’re gonna be entirely to hungover and on top of that you will be under a blazing hot African sun drawing water from the well and sweeping the grass.” My response would have been somewhere along the lines of what the hell kinda drugs are you on. Today I would have eaten my words, as I was entirely too hung over drawing water well from a well, sweeping the front lawn all under a blazing hot African sun. Just to clarify you are not misreading I am saying that I sweep the front lawn, and when I say sweep the front yard I mean I stand in the grass with a broom and sweep the grass. To be fair it does make sense to do because there is no trash service here, trash just gets thrown wherevs. As a result people sweep there yards to get the trash out of there yard and into their neighbors yard. Another important note, you really don’t have to drink that much at all here to get hungover, due to the low quality of booze and dehydration thing you don’t even have to get drunk to get a hangover, total bummer.
I also went to a cultural fair today which was amazing. People came and talked about different tribal traditions here in Liberia and showed us traditional dances. There were also these two little kids doing crazy bendy/flippy acrobatics. At the end of the cultural fair we got into a huge circle and had a bitchin sweet African dance party, where I busted moves all over the place. It goes without saying that a large number of Liberians got “served” by me today when “I stepped it up.” BOOM! That’s two shitty dance movies referenced in one sentence!
Finally to conclude my day I bought some bug bomb and bombed the shit out of my latrine. This way when I go to office tomorrow to take my conference call I won’t have 30,000 mosquitos buzzing about my head, instead I’ll have a mere 300. Literally when I was in there before I could not hear people talking outside of the latrine because the buzz of the raging horde of mosquitos was so loud. Now the floor is black with mosquito bodies. Do to my strong victory over the insects I feel just like Doogi Howser M.D. in Starship Troopers.
I also started teaching this week at a model school. Essentially we are teaching at a summer school here and getting observed by people to get advice on how to become totally rocking awesome teachers, though I already am. Anyways it is going well, I am teaching 4 classes the largest being the 7th grade, which has about 67 kids in there. I had them for my last class of the day and all day these little shits had been troubling the teachers, mocking them and what not, well I don’t stand for that bullshit. I essentially spent the next 45 minutes yelling towards them and scaring them out of their minds. At one point a child made a smart ass comment and I responded by yelling at him, than making him stand up apologize to me, and then to his class. Well after I exampled the shit out of this little shit they knew that I, similar to the Wu Tang Clan, aint nothing to be fucked with and class went exceedingly well.
I would like to state here that while I say a lot of sarcastic shit on here I absolutely love Liberia and the Liberian people. This country and her people are amazing beautiful, warm, and welcoming, and this is the happiest I have felt in a very long time. The reason for all the sarcasm on here is because there is no fucking sarcasm in this country because people are too nice and seeing as I know Americans will read this and get sarcasm I release it here. I mean if I couldn’t get my sarcasm out somewhere I think the world would stop spinning because it would miss Tj stolz’s witty remarks entirely too much.
Well time to turn out the lantern and catch some shut eye, I gotta go to three hours of church tomorrow.
Sir Mix A lot still rules, even in Africa. (08.10.10)
Hey in a week it’s my birthday, shits gonna get real in L-country. It will also mean that I only have two more weeks of PST (pre service training), this in combination with the fact that I have been eating delightful fake cheese with cow meat has really put me on cloud number 9. It’s good. It’s good that I have been doing that. PST closing will make me both sad and totes ma gotes glad. Sad because the remaining 14 of us are so close and it feels good to speak Standard English and sarcasm. Glad because PST is starting to really drag on and when I leave here I will no longer be forced to go to three hour party blocks church.
In other news pepper jack is the greatest cheese ever, and I wont get to feel its spicy velvety touch against my tongue till I return to ‘Merica and go to my nearest Subway. Do you ever wonder why Subway has triangles of cheese and they put them tip to tip NOT side to side, I mean they are fucking robbing you of cheese. I cant really tell you how many nights this has kept me up. Somebody should write there Senator about this debacle and get that shit amended. I would but, ya know, I live in Liberia.
Model school is still going well, every student knows they will respect the iron fist of Commandant Stolz. According to my fellow PCT (Peace Corps Trainees) I sound like a German robot. I use this voice because I like the great Bruce Wayne thought about what I fear most and realized it was a German robot. I mean I already fear dying at the cold steel claw grips of a robot, but if it was also yelling in a thick German accent while crushing me, well I can’t begin to imagine the dread it would instill in me. Teaching here provides its difficulties though, like the language barrier, even though we both speak English there accent is crazy hard to understand and vice versa. The war also set a lot of students far back, so you end up with a student in the 10th or 11th grade who does not know what fractions are. They also do not know what a shooting star is! I mean really, what the fuck do you wish upon!?! I spent 10 minutes in my class today trying to tell them what a shooting star is because every fucking person should know what a god damn shooting star is.
Being as it August, it rains almost every day, and by rain I mean it torrentially downpours, and by torrential downpour I mean sheets of rain come down. It will rain so loud that it will actually wake me up in the middle of the night, than the mouse running around my room will keep me up. I hate that mouse almost as much as I hate the rooster; however I have no current plans to eat the mouse, though TIA (this is Africa) so that mouse better watch its murine back.
Well I need to get lesson planning before the sun goes down. To all my teacher friends in America I guarantee the place you are doing your lesson plans at is not nearly as cool. I sitting on my back porch watching the rain pad down on the broad leaves of the banana trees, after planning I think I will go pick some bananas off the said tree and eat them. I fucking love Africa.
As the title gives away rather quickly the last week has been full of eventful events and the true scope of the event-i-ness of these events will likely not be conveyed in these mere words. So where to begin I suppose is the beginning, or rather the place where I last updated, which would be July 26th, Liberian Independence Day! Similar to my home country America, Independence Day was full of festivities that mostly revolve around the two main events of booze consumption, and food consumption. However, rather than shooting off pussy ass bullshit fireworks we received a much greater treat here in Liberia. Now dear reader I know you are asking yourself, what the fuck is more hard ass than fucking up mother nature in awesome loud and colorful explosions, well the answer is obvious, and no it is not sucker punching a unicorn. It is Blood Sport starring the great martial artist Jean Claude Dam. Watching this movie moved me to tears more than once as Jean Claude struggles to be the best martial artist he can be in a totally awesome selective brick exploding fashion. As a result of watching this fantastic movie I have the song Kumate stuck in my head. If you do not know what this song is first punch yourself square in the teeth for never having seen this great piece of film, than go watch the movie and download the song to your iPod.
I also found out my site last week. I will be moving to Kanwekan and went for a short visit this weekend. Kanwekan is tiny village of about 2000 near the Ivory Coast border. Just look for Fish Town. Anywho the taxi ride down was one of the best times ever, and in that I mean I thought I was going to die for 11 hours while I sat packed into an early 90’s Toyota corolla. I think we almost killed 12 babies, 18 goats, and one duck. We were rolling 7 deep in that bitch, which is actually nice because, as we were similar to sardines in our packed in-edness each time we hit a bump it did not jolt the body as bad. That being said the ride still made me feel like my skin was acting as the Yahtzee cup, and my organs were acting as the Yahtzee dice. Roads here are shockingly not paved, and even more shocking are in shitastic shape (insert sarcastic voice over here). When I finally arrived in K-town I was the color of an oompa-loompa do to the amount of red dirt that had been kicked up in my grill from the road. Upon arrival I instantly deuced my pants at how awesome the village I will be living in for the next two years is. After a quick trip to change my draws I came back outside and looked up to see the stars, which resulted in another pants deucing out of sheer awesomness. Down two pairs of underwear I decided to call it a night and head to bed. In the morning I woke up and went to the local coffee shop where I purchased an egg sandwich and coffee for less than 1 American dollar. After breakfast I went off to meet the village elders for the first time, we ate cola nut, which is the way the Grebo people to welcome you into their tribe. After that ceremony we walked around the hilly rain forest that is my village. Many things were discussed like if I was open to eating monkey (I’m not), subjects to be taught, if there were boulders to climb around (there are!), and when will people be carrying me into the bush to see said edible monkeys. After this we took a midafternoon break and I settled in on my porch to do some reading. After a few minutes I looked up from my book to realize approximately 30 children were watching me read. If I am to be honest here I am actually used to all eyes being on me, except in America it’s not children watching me, but insanely beautiful woman and I am not reading but rather lassoing a bull to the ground while stopping 8 different bank robberies and the amount of lasers that are being shot is about 1000 times greater all this is taking place in outer space. O and I almost forgot to mention that while all of that is happening Slash is playing a totally awesome guitar riff somewhere in the backround. Anywho the next morning was my official welcoming ceremony, we ate more cola nut and they named me. My new Grebo name is Gia’a (pronounced Gee-A). It means great Hunter and one who brings much joy to village. In my case they said I would be hunter of great ideas and bring much joy in that way. While that is all well and good I have decided to shock the piss out of them and go kill something huge, maybe one of the endangered pygmy hippos I have heard so much about. After the ceremony there was more walking, more reading, more shitty gin to be drank, and more sleep to be had.
The next day I started on the road back home and took a stop in Zwedru for the night to stay with some other volunteers. They took me to Florida, which might be the greatest place in the history of mankind. They have pizza, French fries, AND fried chicken AND spring rolls! Needless to say I was in a greasy ketchup paradise. I really gotta say that there is not much better than putting huge amounts of ketchup on a greasy pile of potatoes. We also had ice cream, it was an amazing night that was capped off by seeing 6 shooting stars.
The next day I packed back into a tiny car and bounced back across the bush. One of the Liberian passengers with us was named Lillian, and all I can say about Lillian is that she is the mother fucking G shit. When we would stop for various reasons (one of those being so the driver could chicken wire the exhaust back onto the car) she would beat the dust off of us with her lapa (traditional African clothing). This lady was a god damn saint. Anywho I made it back safe and sound and can’t wait to go back out to site.
A few points of interest, the library at my school has some pretty nice books, but very few of them, a lab with no equipment and ostrich that terrorizes the school children. The ostrich is only in my imagination though, but all the same it is ferocious.
My site mate also dropped out of Peace Corps which put a frown on my heart, I will miss him. This means I am the furthest out in the country and the only volunteer in Liberia who is all alone. TIA.
And just to confirm it in case anyone was having doubts: running to the outhouse several times in the night during a torrential downpour and losing half your soul to the toilet (hole in the ground) is as terrible as one would imagine.
Latest mef dream is the most realistic falling dream I have ever had. I was in jeep with my pops driving and my friend Natalie from PC in the back seat. Anyhow we were driving on the edge of a cliff swerving around inconveniently placed cinder blocks; I was voicing how I felt this was a bad idea when the car went off the cliff. The car was falling for so long I actually thought boy this is a long time to be falling I really fucking hope this is a dream, thankfully it was and I awoke just before going splatters.
God I hate that fucking rooster. (08.06.10)
God I hate that fucking rooster that lives right outside of my room. I hate its god damn crow at the break of dawn. Someday I will eat that fucking rooster and all will be right in this world.
Cheese! These mother fuckers have fucking cheese up in this bitch! (08.07.10)
I found cheese today in one the markets, well laughing cow cheese wizzy shit, but as you might have guessed from earlier posts my standards are low at best. I bought some cow meat off one of the street vendors, a thing of bread, an onion and this cheese and made an African philly cheese steak sandwich and let me tell the sheer deliciousness of that fucking sandwich was worth the 3 or 4 parasites I undoubtedly contracted from the street food. I honestly cannot express to you how happy this sandwich made me after weeks of rice and potato greens.
I started the morning quiet differently, in language class we had to do random tasks that are part of African life. Let me just make this clear now if someone would have told me 2 years ago “hey in two years you’re gonna be entirely to hungover and on top of that you will be under a blazing hot African sun drawing water from the well and sweeping the grass.” My response would have been somewhere along the lines of what the hell kinda drugs are you on. Today I would have eaten my words, as I was entirely too hung over drawing water well from a well, sweeping the front lawn all under a blazing hot African sun. Just to clarify you are not misreading I am saying that I sweep the front lawn, and when I say sweep the front yard I mean I stand in the grass with a broom and sweep the grass. To be fair it does make sense to do because there is no trash service here, trash just gets thrown wherevs. As a result people sweep there yards to get the trash out of there yard and into their neighbors yard. Another important note, you really don’t have to drink that much at all here to get hungover, due to the low quality of booze and dehydration thing you don’t even have to get drunk to get a hangover, total bummer.
I also went to a cultural fair today which was amazing. People came and talked about different tribal traditions here in Liberia and showed us traditional dances. There were also these two little kids doing crazy bendy/flippy acrobatics. At the end of the cultural fair we got into a huge circle and had a bitchin sweet African dance party, where I busted moves all over the place. It goes without saying that a large number of Liberians got “served” by me today when “I stepped it up.” BOOM! That’s two shitty dance movies referenced in one sentence!
Finally to conclude my day I bought some bug bomb and bombed the shit out of my latrine. This way when I go to office tomorrow to take my conference call I won’t have 30,000 mosquitos buzzing about my head, instead I’ll have a mere 300. Literally when I was in there before I could not hear people talking outside of the latrine because the buzz of the raging horde of mosquitos was so loud. Now the floor is black with mosquito bodies. Do to my strong victory over the insects I feel just like Doogi Howser M.D. in Starship Troopers.
I also started teaching this week at a model school. Essentially we are teaching at a summer school here and getting observed by people to get advice on how to become totally rocking awesome teachers, though I already am. Anyways it is going well, I am teaching 4 classes the largest being the 7th grade, which has about 67 kids in there. I had them for my last class of the day and all day these little shits had been troubling the teachers, mocking them and what not, well I don’t stand for that bullshit. I essentially spent the next 45 minutes yelling towards them and scaring them out of their minds. At one point a child made a smart ass comment and I responded by yelling at him, than making him stand up apologize to me, and then to his class. Well after I exampled the shit out of this little shit they knew that I, similar to the Wu Tang Clan, aint nothing to be fucked with and class went exceedingly well.
I would like to state here that while I say a lot of sarcastic shit on here I absolutely love Liberia and the Liberian people. This country and her people are amazing beautiful, warm, and welcoming, and this is the happiest I have felt in a very long time. The reason for all the sarcasm on here is because there is no fucking sarcasm in this country because people are too nice and seeing as I know Americans will read this and get sarcasm I release it here. I mean if I couldn’t get my sarcasm out somewhere I think the world would stop spinning because it would miss Tj stolz’s witty remarks entirely too much.
Well time to turn out the lantern and catch some shut eye, I gotta go to three hours of church tomorrow.
Sir Mix A lot still rules, even in Africa. (08.10.10)
Hey in a week it’s my birthday, shits gonna get real in L-country. It will also mean that I only have two more weeks of PST (pre service training), this in combination with the fact that I have been eating delightful fake cheese with cow meat has really put me on cloud number 9. It’s good. It’s good that I have been doing that. PST closing will make me both sad and totes ma gotes glad. Sad because the remaining 14 of us are so close and it feels good to speak Standard English and sarcasm. Glad because PST is starting to really drag on and when I leave here I will no longer be forced to go to three hour party blocks church.
In other news pepper jack is the greatest cheese ever, and I wont get to feel its spicy velvety touch against my tongue till I return to ‘Merica and go to my nearest Subway. Do you ever wonder why Subway has triangles of cheese and they put them tip to tip NOT side to side, I mean they are fucking robbing you of cheese. I cant really tell you how many nights this has kept me up. Somebody should write there Senator about this debacle and get that shit amended. I would but, ya know, I live in Liberia.
Model school is still going well, every student knows they will respect the iron fist of Commandant Stolz. According to my fellow PCT (Peace Corps Trainees) I sound like a German robot. I use this voice because I like the great Bruce Wayne thought about what I fear most and realized it was a German robot. I mean I already fear dying at the cold steel claw grips of a robot, but if it was also yelling in a thick German accent while crushing me, well I can’t begin to imagine the dread it would instill in me. Teaching here provides its difficulties though, like the language barrier, even though we both speak English there accent is crazy hard to understand and vice versa. The war also set a lot of students far back, so you end up with a student in the 10th or 11th grade who does not know what fractions are. They also do not know what a shooting star is! I mean really, what the fuck do you wish upon!?! I spent 10 minutes in my class today trying to tell them what a shooting star is because every fucking person should know what a god damn shooting star is.
Being as it August, it rains almost every day, and by rain I mean it torrentially downpours, and by torrential downpour I mean sheets of rain come down. It will rain so loud that it will actually wake me up in the middle of the night, than the mouse running around my room will keep me up. I hate that mouse almost as much as I hate the rooster; however I have no current plans to eat the mouse, though TIA (this is Africa) so that mouse better watch its murine back.
Well I need to get lesson planning before the sun goes down. To all my teacher friends in America I guarantee the place you are doing your lesson plans at is not nearly as cool. I sitting on my back porch watching the rain pad down on the broad leaves of the banana trees, after planning I think I will go pick some bananas off the said tree and eat them. I fucking love Africa.
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