Missing home

I have now been back in Liberia for one week. Things are still going good, however, the intense heat has decided to visit. Now that the rainy season is over, it only rains about once every two weeks. And, with Liberia being only 6 degrees north of the equator, the sun is extremely intense and hot. This doesn't help while I sleep. I had to go into town and purchase a second fan for the evenings. I now have one fan blowing on my face, and the other fan is down at my feet blowing up my body. I think even if I had 15 fans, I still would wake up sweaty every night. It is just that muggy and hot. The office isnt much better. There are two A/C units in the office, but due to how hot it is outside, they are having difficulty keeping up. It is better then nothing. Really, the coolest place to be is in the cars. 3 of our 4 vehicles have good A/C's in them.

I was immediately placed back on the patrol schedule once I arrived, which is fine by me. With the rainy season upon us, the roads are now much better to drive on. They are still bad, but there is not a lot of standing water to transit across and the roads are not slick and muddy.

We made a trip out to the Guinea/Liberia border. It was a heck of a drive. Took around 4 hours to get there. Each vehicle (3 total) became stuck at least once along the route. The road was in terrible conditions. We try to get to the border a few times a month to talk to the"agents" that work there. We get the numbers of the amount of people that have crossed the border and the reason why they cross. Most legal crossers come for a few hours to visit family and sell small goods to the people on the other side. Most illegal crossers, which is the majority of the crossers, use the bush to cross. Guinea recently had some national election problems and they were anticipating Guineans to flee the country and travel to nearby Liberia. We also make these trips to the border to monitor the security situation and make sure no refugees are taking up residence in Liberia. We cant do anything about it, just get the information and send it to Monrovia.

Things at home seem to still be going good without me there. I miss being home and being there to watch Leyton grow. Apparently, she likes to smile a lot now and might be able to smile on command. The highlight of my day is when Shannon gets on skype and places the webcam on LC. I can watch her for hours move around and make her weird noises.

I think that is about it. Nothing really new. Just same old stuff in good old Liberia. Here are some pics, I know that is the real reason you guys all read this blog. Enough with my rambling :)

This pic was taken on 22 Oct 2010. This was me at the office watching Leyton make her grand entrance into the world. What a great day. I was so excited and still am.

This is at the Bangladeshi logistics camp where we eat most lunches. They had a lot of decorations up because the Force Commander was visiting that day.

A road while on patrol. Like I always say, these photos do not give it justice.

Talking to the folks from the town of Karfilee.

This is my teammate from Malaysia, Lazim.

This was on the drive up to the Guinea border. We went up there with a platoon of armed Pakistani soldiers, incase the locals became restless. As I mentioned before, the road was very bad.

Here are the Pakistani's, stuck in the mud.

This is the border of Liberia and Guinea. The man in the white shoes (immigration officer) is standing in Guinea.

This is the immigration office where they keep records of the people who cross into and out of Liberia.