Birthday, painting and football

So we have lots of activity as we are less than 3 weeks from leaving Liberia. We are in the process of completing Blessing's paperwork and, Lord willing, will all be departing August 11th. Everyday is a new adventure when you are trying to comply with Liberian and American bureaucracy, but it looks like we at least have a good chance of making it by the 11th. To just give a brief update, today we are sending someone to Nimba County (a long drive on not so good roads) to have a judge sign a document because he is the only one who can sign the document and is in Nimba for 3 weeks for a conference...

This month Blessing celebrated her 1st birthday. We celebrated it on the 14th, although we found out today that may or may not be her actual birthday. The whole idea of birthdays and ages don't have a great deal of importance to many people in Liberia. It seems odd to us, but it's just another cultural difference. I was in the hospital this evening to visit a friend who had a baby via c-section on Wednesday and asked her the typical American question of "what did your baby weigh?". She responded that she didn't really know, but she'd check with the doctor tomorrow.

Back to Blessing's birthday. Jamie made a cake for her on the 14th and she was a little unsure.

Kobe decided he better step in and help her eat it...

More pictures of Blessing from the last couple weeks, most taken by Christopher.

Fatu's house continues to progress. I took the day off and the family went to help paint today. We were joined by the Nolta family who are visiting for a couple weeks. Here Christopher and Prince are painting Fatu's room. Lots of bright colors...
One of the neighbor ladies has been cooking lunch for our contractor so we had her cook a little extra rice for our group. Here we are eating the rice and Tobogee Liberian style, with a big bowl and a bunch of spoons.

After painting we went to watch a soccer game at SKD Stadium. Jeff Nolta called earlier in the day to say he was in town and could pick up tickets for us if we wanted to go with his family. They are having a small tournament with Liberia, Guinea and Ghana. We arrived around 5:00 for a game that was rumored to start at 4:00. We were told the game hadn't started yet, but should start soon. There was a large crowd waiting outside the stadium behind a rope monitored by police and stadium staff. Liberia, like many other countries has a history of trouble at soccer events. We waited for about an hour, crowd watching and eating questionable street fare. Finally I told Christopher to cross the road and ask a police officer when the game would start. The officer told us to go ahead and go through to the gate. We thought it was preferential treatment...until we got into the stadium and found out the game was already in the 2nd half. Apparently all the people waiting outside where those without tickets who were hoping to get in somehow. I think a lot of the confusion came from the fact you couldn't buy tickets at the game, you had to buy them from one bank that was selling them in Monrovia.

So our 30+/- minutes of the game were pretty uneventful. Liberia was up 1-0 when we arrived in the stadium and that was the final outcome. The crowd was very small compared to what we thought we'd see.

I didn't want to risk bringing my camera to the game so the pictures are with my phone. One of the more interesting scenes came after the game, when 4 police in riot gear had to escort the referee out of the stadium. Some of the Guinean players were trying to discuss some of his calls when he was whisked away.
That's all for today. A happy 26th to all our Liberian friends.