Bomi Lake

I took the day off today and we drove up to Bomi Lake. It is an old iron ore and diamond mine formerly operated by an American company about 2 hours from Monrovia. It almost got a lot longer when we were stopped at a checkpoint and realized we didn't have passports for Jamie and the boys. Luckily the Immigration official let us through with a warning.

The UN now runs a couple operations out of the area. A battalion of Pakistani troops is stationed in the area (Pak Bat) and fixed up an observation point and recreation area. Both are starting to fall apart now, but still provide good areas for pictures and swimming.

Here's a view from the "Pak Point"

The swimming area. The water is very clear and there are quite a few Tilapia swimming around through the rocks. There's even an old wood diving board that we were able to dive off.
The sign says "Pakistan Gazebo, const by Pak engr 7"
They even have a Pineapple orchard...or at least used to.
The boys playing in the water.
A group of Nigerian and Pakistani UN staff came by and wanted pictures with the family. You can see one of the Pakistani soldiers holding Blessing. He said he has a one year old boy back home that he's missing.
A view of nearby Tubmanburg from the Pak Point observation area.
Christopher and Colton...not sure what they were doing.
The view north into Gbarpolu County.
An old sign in Tubmanburg on an old Bomi Evangelical Church. SIM started as "Sudan Interior Mission" but later changed to "Serving In Mission".

Christopher's Bday and Blessing update

Christopher turned 14 on Sunday. He didn't want to make too big of a deal about it, so we didn't really have a party for him. We went out to lunch after church and then to Kendeja to their pool to play around. Here are the boys in the pool.

Blessing and Jamie sunning poolside.

Another picture of Blessing and Jamie before church.

Saturday night gathering at the Chapman's. Every other Saturday they have worship with other expats and Liberians. Worship is lead by the hit duo, Dr. Doctor.

The boys preparing for worship time...

vocabulary

I won't go into Liberia's history, but if you don't know how the Republic was formed you can read about it here. The freed slaves who settled here brought with them an American style government, religion, customs and of course English. The English was mixed over the years with the tribal languages (or dialects) from the 16+/- indigenous tribes to get the Liberian English that they have today.

Liberian English has a few basic differences that stem from this mixture. The first is the dropping of all hard sounds at the ends of words. A word like "Plate" would sound more like "Play". A name like "Amos" becomes "Amo". All of the local dialects had similar language patterns. A look at the names of the tribes and cities shows the tendency to end in vowels, tribes like Kpelle, Kissi, Bassa and cities like Ganta, Gbanga, and Kakata. Other typical differences are using a hard "T" sound for "TH" (Thinker's Village nearby ELWA is Tinker's Village for example). The "sk" combination comes out as "ks" typically (ask sounds like aks or ax).

There are some words that were used back in the 1800's that America has long since dropped, but Liberia still uses. You'll see a little more about that below.

Another common expression is to add an "-oh" at the end of a word for emphasis. Such as "The weather is hot-oh" or "I sorry-o". Below are a few other expressions that are common in Liberia, but a little different than the usage in America, or just seldom used in America anymore.

(note - my examples are in American English rather than trying to spell out the words as they actually sound)

embarrass - to bother - "I don't want to embarrass you, if you're busy now I can come back later"

guaranteed - better quality - "Don't buy that widget, it is not guaranteed" Note that it has nothing to do with a warranty or any vendor standing behind the product.

so so so - similar to how we'd use blah blah blah or "he said this and that".

so so - all, consistent or similar - "The Oettels and Balls have so-so girls" or "the yard is so-so sand"

so - that direction - typical when giving directions "go so" while the person talking indicates a direction.

ever since - a non specific unit of time - "That house has been that way ever since" with since always the end of the sentence...no length or timeframe is given.

small - can be used meaning a little, such as "move the board small more" or often used as an answer when someone asks how they are doing "trying small"

vexed - same real meaning as in US, it is just used often here whenever someone is angry.

reaching - leaving or going - "OK, I finished here and I'm reaching". Or if someone is reaching, you can be kind and "carry" them in your car.

finished - gone - "the fuel is finished"

dress back - move back

Current - power - "My phone has no current" (or current is finished)

Dry/reducing - skinny/losing weight

Boots - shoes, especially soccer cleats.

Slippers - flip flops

Plat - braid hair

Rogue - thief

Take time - be careful

Hold your foot - I beg you. Beg is also used plenty in Liberian English.

After living here a year I understand people...most of the time. Sometimes I still struggle and think I haven't progressed much in my learning, until we have visitors. Having my brother and sister in law and parents visit and struggle to understand things helps to realize how far my comprehension has come.

There are a series of Liberian English videos on Youtube that you can check out. If you go to the fathers advice to his son the chicken rogue you can go to other videos on the sidebar.

haircuts

As dry season fast approaches Jamie decided it was time for the boys to get haircuts on Sunday. Most Liberians will tell you October 15th is the date rainy season promptly ends and dry season begins, although I've also heard November 2nd and a couple other dates. It has been a relatively dry rainy season with around 60-70 inches of rain, although it has dumped about 7 inches in the past week here at ELWA.

In any event the days have been getting warmer and the boys needed to lose some hair. We brought with us our clippers that I think I've had since high school. They've been on the decline the last couple years, but I haven't been able to find a set of clippers that work as well as they do (we bought two pairs last year that did not work well).

I started off with Colton and halfway through...the guard fell off. It is the first time that has ever happened with these clippers, so my reaction was...a little slow. The clippers shaved about a 3" square section on the back of his head, right down to his scalp. After a little discussion we decided it would be best just to shave the rest of the sides and back of his head. Colton is not a big fan of haircuts and short hair, so as you can imagine he wasn't very pleased with the results. He thought I should compensate him for the loss of his hair.

So then it was Kobe's turn...and yep, it happened to him too. I made it all the way to the end and got a little too confident. It cut out a section down by his neck, so we decided not to shave all of his hair off and just square up the shaved portion.

Now where did Christopher go...

School

We've talked before about visiting Addy's Hope Orphanage. A group of people from the US have made a couple trips out this year to build a new Orphanage for them on the road to Marshall. The new orphanage is just a mile or two from a school that offered to take the children for free, if they could furnish their own uniforms. The money was raised for the uniforms and the children started attending last week.

One of the nannies asked if we could come out and take a picture of all the children in their uniforms. They are very excited to have uniforms and be attending school. I'm sure many, if not most, of the children have never been able to go to school.

Waiting for their picture...and school.

The Group Photo

Outside with a thumbs up.

It is right at the end of rainy season here, but it was really pouring down rain today. Here's a chicken at the orphanage trying to hide from the downpour.

So when we were finished taking pictures the nannies asked if I'd drive the kids to the couple miles to the school so they didn't get drenched. Here was the smaller load with only 12 kids in the car.

Tae Kwon Do

The boys all started taking Tae Kwon Do a couple months ago. They go two days a week to the SKD Stadium and take lessons along with a number of other MK's and Liberian children. Today was their test day for their yellow belts. Here's the view inside SKD when we arrived about 8:15 this morning. The rain had just stopped and it was actually sunny and hot by the middle of the program.


Keith, hardly able to contain his excitement. After the program he was headed out with the people of On Surfari to film a surfing show featuring Liberia and Trinity Dental Clinic.

The students of Scorpion Tae-Kwon-Do Sport Academy

Their instructor, Master Junior Pewee Russian. There's nothing Junior, Pewee or Russian about him. He placed 3rd in the heavyweight class in Africa last year. He's a phenomenal athlete and great instructor. His story should be made into a movie someday. He was separated from his parents during the war when he was only a young boy. Ended up begging for food in the port when fighting broke out and he took refuge in a Korean ship. He spent the next 3 or 4 years aboard the ship as it circled the globe moving cargo. The Korean sailors took him in and among other things, taught him Tae-Kwon-Do. Performing their Pomsee

Accepting their yellow belts from the Liberian Minister of Youth and Sports.

Eva Morgan, Assistant Justice Minister for Liberia, and a supporter and student of Master Russian, giving some remarks during the program.

After the program we came back home and Jamie castrated 4 dogs. Well technically assisted in the castration of 3 and spayed one. She said she actually had fun doing it, so lock up your pets next time she visits.

Then the Sacras had a birthday party for one of the other MKs. Here's a shot of all the kids as they listen to Debbie explain a game (and why are Heidi and Joy glaring at me?).

Heidi celebrated her 15th bday while her sister is in London after being medivaced due to a 1-2 punch of Salmonella and Malaria.

Playing the game.

That's all for today.

September

An update to let everyone know we're still here. Things have been pretty busy here. The boys are a month into their new school year now. Jamie's felt very relieved to have a couple other people (and former teachers...or is it current?) here helping out with some of the subjects. Our country director Matt Carr is teaching the boys science and neighbor Debbie Sacra is teaching writing.

The weather has been unseasonably dry. The first week of September gave us less than a tenth of an inch of rain. Someone told us they had over 100 inches last year in September. That's almost 3x the annual rainfall in Western Washington. It has picked up a little the last week, but the boys have still found time to get outside. Here's Kobe with a couple friends and an octopus they found in the rock reef.





Blessing is doing very well. She's gained a couple pounds the last 3 weeks. The boys have been very helpful. Here Colton is playing a game of Stratego with her. She's red.

Sleeping

With Kobe after her bath.

and speaking of Kobe, he gets to be the first in our family to have malaria. He had a 105 degree fever on Saturday so I took him up to the hospital. After his malaria smear came back with 1+ I told him "congratulations". The nurse looked at me a little cross and said "why are you congratulating him?" He's doing fine though and hasn't really had any problems since Saturday.

I finally took the camera with me to work today and snapped a few pictures of the guys and the finished Academy project.

Blessing Update

Blessing has been at the hospital for 9 days now. She's at the NICU so she can be fed through a NG tube. She's starting to put on a little bit of weight. She's up to about 6lbs 6oz. We have a couple special Cleft Palate bottle nipples coming in tonight with a visitor and hope that she'll be able to suck from them. If not we'll either syringe feed her or the hospital said they'll show us how to insert the NG tube and feed her with the tube. Either way the doctor said she should be able to leave the hospital by mid-week.

Here are a couple pictures from the ICU today.

Blessing

I got a call Friday morning that there was a cleft palate baby who was in dire need of foster care. She was a month old and was malnourished because her mother was not able to feed her. So we agreed to take baby "Blessing" in until she could gain some weight and hopefully have surgery to repair her birth defect. As I type this she is at a local hospital getting fed a high protein diet for a few days so she can put on some weight (she was just under 6lbs when she got here).


Of course the boys were excited to jump in and help out. Here is Kobe trying to feed her with a conventional bottle. Not very easy...

Colton was helping clean up the mess Kobe made.

Such big eyes...

Since it has been awhile since we've given an update I thought I'd throw in a couple extra pictures. Jamie and the boys helped out in July and the first two weeks of August with ELWA Academy's enrichment program. They worked with some of the students helping them to improve their reading. They found it to be challenging to teach children to read when their phonics are so different from American English. I think they enjoyed it though and may try to help out during the school year.

Our typical Saturday includes a visit to the Acres of Hope orphanage. Last Saturday we also visited the newly constructed Addy's Hope Orphanage (hopefully Kami will have some pictures up soon...). The new facility looks great, complete with solar and wind power generation. Here's Christopher with a few of the kids.

We brought some "chiclets" for the kids. So hard to keep gum in your mouth...

All for now.