April Update

Today is April 12th, a day of significance in Liberian history.  April 12, 1980 Sargent Samuel Doe walked a half mile from his barracks up the hill in Monrovia to the president's mansion with 17 enlisted soldiers and murdered President Tolbert.  The year before in April the civil unrest started with rice riots spurred by Tolbert's attempt to coax Liberian farmers into producing more rice and being more self sufficient as a nation.  April 6, 1996 was a chaotic day of looting and low point in the 14 year Liberian civil war.  

Now here we are in April, 10 years after the end of the Liberian civil war and the nation is sitting on the edge of its collective seat, waiting to see if todays planned protests materialize.  There have been multiple stories in the newspaper every day this week.  Stories of the government paying off the organizers not to protest, organizers calling off the protest, other protesters mad they didn't receive payments and vowing to still protest, plans to breach the central prison and release all the prisoners, fears of riots, looting, even fears of a coup d'etat...

The country has enjoyed ten years of peace but that doesn't mean everyone is happy.  Many in competing political parties are not happy with the rate progress and level of continued corruption.  Many ex-fighters are not happy with the lives of poverty that they are relegated to after they once demanded respect and lived large on looted and stolen goods.  

Please pray for peace to continue in Liberia and for those who are not happy to channel their dissention through proper channels.

On a brighter note, my niece and cousin arrived last week.   My niece is here for 2 months and my cousin escorted her after my other nieces got stuck in Ghana overnight when Delta cancelled their connecting flight in December.  My cousin has headed back to the US but we got to go around and see a few sites while she was here.  Here are a couple pictures from the old Addy's Hope Orphanage we visited.

Mariah going to play Football with the kids

Jamie and my cousin Jen at the orphanage

My niece took this picture of me with one of the kids...I guess I was trying to crush him or something...

You can follow Mariah's homeschool blog while she's here.  Her post last week talked about the visit to the orphanage.  When we were leaving we told them people had donated money to Mariah so we needed ideas on what clothes or treats they wanted us to buy.  The most vocal of the boys started asking us to bring them bread and butter...what a treat.

One last story.  I went running this morning and after I finished I was walking back home through a shortcut between houses.  I heard someone calling for me.  There was a boy, maybe about 10 years old who was walking fast trying to catch up to me.  I had headphones on and thought for a minute that I would just pretend I didn't hear him and keep going.  I decided to stop though and turned around to see what he wanted.  He came up and with a smile on his face said "Do you remember me?"  I told him no, I didn't remember him.  He held up his arm and there was a scar from what was once a large sore on his elbow and he said "you treated my arm".  And with another smile he said "Thank you" and turned around and walked away.  I remembered then.  He was walking by our house a few months ago with a nasty sore on his arm.  I told him to wait and ran and grabbed some Neosporin and a couple Bandaids.  I had forgotten but I guess he hadn't. And I almost didn't give him a chance to say thank you because I was afraid it was just another request...