Air Patrol

Hello again. Nothing really new to share. This week went by fast, but yet so incredibly slow. I was either on patrol or on duty this entire week and the power is STILL out at the house. Ugh! I do not know what the problem is. One day they say its the cable so they replaced it. The next day they say it is a generator problem, and the next day it was out of fuel... blah blah blah. I still dont think they have a clue on what is wrong. Oh well, we have been without power now for 3 weeks, so what is a few more days. We have also been having some power issues at the office. For the past few days, we have been losing power and net. I dont know what is going on. In fact, we lost power for about 20 min while I was typing this...

I think the last message I posted stated that I was going on an aerial patrol that afternoon. It actually turned out to be pretty cool. Really, the only thing cool about it was the fact that I was in the air. The patrol consisted of 2 Mi-24 helicopters. They flew low level form along the Guinea/Liberian border. The main reason is to show presence as well and observe any illegal trafficking of drugs or people pr whatever. But it was impossible to see anything. They were going so fast, and the fact that I had no idea where I was or where they were going, it was hard to see anything but trees and an occasional town. The topography of Liberia is fairly hilly in the northeast region. The pilots must enjoyed playing around the hills because they were playing around in them for a long time. It was a good time, but pointless in regards to observing any illegal activities going on.

Here are a few pictures from the past few days. Enjoy.

Here is one of the Mi-24's that I rode in. It is designed to be an attack helicopter, just like the SH-60B, (haha) but it didnt have any weapons or anything.

This is the town I live in, viewed from the air. The name of it is Sgt. Kollie Town. I have no idea who Sgt Kollie is and neither does any of the locals, but apparently he/she was well liked to have had such a distinguished metroplois named after him/her.

Here was what the flight looked like for the entire 2 hours. I think they were just flying around to burn gas. We did get some strange looks from the locals as we flew by and we also started a lot of goat and chicken stampedes, due to the noise.

Ukrainian Mi-24; aka Crocodile

At times, we were pretty close to some of the treetops and mountains. It was all really nice scenery and a very smooth ride.

So the other morning I woke up and headed to the bathroom. It was still a little dark out and I couldn't see too great. I proceeded to urinate in the latrine and I noticed that there was something floating amongst the contents in the toilet. I figured it was just some "drift wood" floating in the toilet due to someone not fully giving it a complete Liberian flush; aka: dumping a few buckets of water in the toilet. So, it isn't uncommon that there are some remnants still lingering around... Now I didnt flush the toilet after I was through because I usually wait until im done brushing my teeth, mouthwash, and shaving, etc. Well, I continued to get ready, brushed my teeth, and since there is no sink or anything, I usually spit in the toilet as well. So, after I brushed my teeth I proceed back to the room to grab the Listerine. I gargled the Listerine for a few minutes and head back to the bathroom to spit it out in the toilet. When I spit it out, the "thing" that was floating in the water started to move. It freaked me out. I didnt know if it was a head of a snake, or a rat, or piece of floating poo that was trying to escape! I looked a bit closer but couldnt make it out, but whatever it was it was frantically moving, trying to get out. It was still a bit dark and there was a lot of urine, foam/spit, and bubbles, so I really had a hard time realizing what it was. I ran in to my room to grab my head lamp so I could further inspect. Sure enough, a mouse was peeking his head out of the liquids, swimming, trying to get air. Well, the only thing I could think of was to just try to flush it down the toilet to get rid of it. I know it is cruel, but as you can see by the picture, the bathroom and the water and what was currently in the water was not to great. I wasnt going to reach my hand in there and help him break out of this mess. So, I grabbed a bucket of water and proceeded to empty it in the toilet. He was a determined little guy... After 3-4 buckets-full of water, he refused to be flushed. I just went to the room to grab my camera and proceeded to take this picture. I figured I would let my roommate deal with it when he woke up.

Okay, last picture.. This lady was one of the wives (yes, you read that correctly) of a Town Chief of a town that we visited this week. I dont think she understood a single word what I said... and heck, I didnt understand a single word of what she said. It went something like this.... "how many people live in this town?" Her reply, "Yes." Then i asked her, "is it 25?" She said, "yes". Then I said, "are there 100 people?" She said, "Yes." It was a quick interview.