Animals or BBQ?

Business has been progressing as usual. I am on duty (again) today. I prefer to be on patrol because it allows you to get out of the office and see some of the lovely Liberian landscapes. I am scheduled to go on patrol Tues-Thurs. of this week, one of which will be an aerial inserted foot patrol. Two to three of us MILOBs will load up on on of the Ukrainian MI-8's, along with a platoon of Pakistani security forces, and will be dropped off in a remote area near a small town. We will do our normal patrol with the town chief/elders and then request to be picked up. It sounds interesting and will be something different.

We have been having some serious rain the past few days and nights. I think God is giving us all the rain now to last us during the upcoming dry season. Apparently, starting in Oct/Nov, the dry season will be upon us and we will not see any rain as often as we do now. The temps will apparently get a lot hotter as well. We really do see rain at least once a day every day.... And when it rains here, it really rains. I thought it rained hard in Florida.... Of course there is no drainage or anywhere for the rain to go, so it will just sit there until the ground is able to absorb it. The back yard at the house this morning was a lake. I wanted to go for a swim, but decided that disturbing the malaria ridden mosquitos' slumber would not be a good idea. Speaking of malaria, one of the Ecuadorian MILOBs located here in Gbarnga came down with Malaria last Wednesday. He looked pretty bad and we finally convinced him to go to the Bangladeshi medical clinic to get tested. Sure enough, he was positive. They took him to Monrovia for the initial treatments and he was back to Gbarnga the next day. He has been staying at the "hospital" until he gets better. Apparently, he was not taking any meds to prevent malaria, nor was he sleeping under a mosquito net at night. Malaria is a serious problem here and can make you very sick or even kill you. Not my idea of fun.

I think I commented on the amount of animals that use the roads for socializing, sleeping, and transiting. Every patrol we have to get out of the vehicle to scare off some kind of animal that parked itself in the middle of the road. We are still looking for a goat or pig to buy so that we can BBQ it. We saw a guy walking with a live pig on his head today and stopped to ask how much he wanted to sell it for. He stated that it was already bought, and that the guy paid $25 for it. I think goats go for around $35. But there are PLENTY chickens, dogs, goats, sheep, and ducks to buy for a bbq.

Nothing else really new to report on. Everything is still going well.

This is the UN Gym here in Gbarnga. Clayton (from Brazil) and I try to go daily.

Here are some sheep using the road for transiting.

With all the recent rains, we have had to drive through a lot of water. This water came up to the cab of the vehicle, which is probably 2 ft or so.

Here is that gentlemen carrying the pig, that was still alive, on his head.

The pig was taking a ride on the head of this guy right before it takes a nice nap on the grill.