Its been a while

Wow. It has been a long time since the last time I posted on this blog. My bad. The countdown is on. As of today, there are 33.3 days left until I get home for some R&R. Needless to say, those days cannot go by fast enough. I am already very excited to get back home. The teamsite has seen quite a change in the past few weeks and this week we will lose 2 more milobs. My friend Clayton will finish his mission this Friday and he will return to Brazil. Work is still going good…. staying busy patrolling and writing endless reports about how everyone has nothing. Most days it seems like im the only one doing any work around here. My teammates are starting to get increasingly lazy with the more work I do. It is quite frustrating actually. I am constantly reminding people of their jobs and that they cant spend everyday of the week surfing the internet and watching movies. Oh well.

While on patrol the other day we were talking to the town chief and he stated that he had an approximate population of 250 people. A few moments later we were talking with one of the teachers of the school and we asked him how many students there were attending that school. He stated there was about 250 students… hmm..

Liberia has plenty of critters. They have this lizard that is all black except for its head and tail, which are bright orange. One day I was talking to one of the locals and asked him, “Excuse me Sir, what are the name of those lizards that have orange heads?” With a straight face he replied, “ They are orange headed lizards…” “Okay, thanks” I said, and walked away. This is what we are deal with on a daily basis. Speaking of critters, over the past few days I have seen so many snakes. I have seen all of them on the road. On patrol on Saturday, we saw two. One of them was very large and green... the other was dark grey. We ran them over with the car but the big green one scurried away, even after two passes. I think it was a western green mamba, which happens to be one of the poisonous snakes in the world. It was nasty looking. My intentions was to run it over, kill it and bring it back to the team site. But after seeing it slither off after 2 passes, I might want to rethink that plan. I dont know what the grey colored snake was. There are plenty of those around though. On Sunday I drove into Monrovia to drop off a team member and saw 2 more of those grey snakes. Then, today, I saw one other snake on the road. Very weird. All I know is that the majority of the snakes here are very dangerous. I think the snakes are making their way to the road to warm up. We have been having unusually cool temperatures in the evenings. The past 5-6 nights, I wake up completely huddled in my sleeping bag. It has been so nice. At first I thought I was just getting adjusted to the temps, but the drives into work confirm that the temps are cooler. The locals are in their big jackets, hats and gloves. Last night when I get in from work, the security guards started a fire and were sitting around it warming up. I have really enjoyed these temps though. I can get used to this. I think the temps are into the 70's now in the evenings and still gets very warm in the day time. Some people say this is normal, and others say this is an anomaly. I dont know who to believe, I really dont care, but I like it.

This past weekend was bad for internet and electricity. We didnt have either starting on Friday evening and into Monday morning. The Milobs are the only ones that work 7 days a week, but the rest of the base here leaves for the weekend. And god forbid they come in on the weekends to provide maintenance or fix the problem. You got to love the UN!!!

The situation in Ivory Coast has yet to deescalate. Both parties are still claiming victory and people (protestors of both sides) are being killed daily. It is estimated that there are 21,000 Ivorian refugees in eastern Liberia. Leaders from the ECOWAS community have visited Gbagbo two times to try to convince him to step down and if he does not, military force will be initiated. He is still refusing to leave.

Voter registration commenced in Liberia yesterday. In Oct, Liberia will vote for their next President. Hopefully it will go okay. I wont be here to report, which is fine by me.

Clayton and I went on patrol to a gold mine. The mine is owned by an American company. We met a few brits there and we had a nice talk. They invited us into their camp, which was very nice, to have coffee and talk about "bits and pieces.." The company, AmLib is only involved in exploration at the moment. They drill down in the earth to extract core samples. They send them to the lab in Monrovia for analyzation and the determination of what the gram per ton is in each specific sample. Then they send these results to mining companies who bid on whether or not they want to come mine. Currently, there is no company operating at it. I really felt in my element there. Out of the 15 international staff, 10 of them were geologists. I met a few of them and noticed their rock hammers, their microscopes around their necks and the notebooks in the pocket. It brought me back to my glory days in field camp with Ball St. Univ. We talked to them for a while and then they told us to go check out the mine. The locals are the only ones taking gold currently, illegally. But with only 15 people on staff, and over 4,000 Liberians, it is impossible to police. Also, according to the Brit, the amount they are taking is very minimal. the plan is for a company to move in and start excavating the gold. Then the gov't of Liberia will make money off of the taxes and the Liberians will get jobs. It will also piss a lot of people off because the locals will not be able to go into the mine and sift through the rocks for gold due to liability reasons. There really are interesting dynamics happening there, as well as the rest of the country.

Here are some pics.

This is our new Team Leader, Lt Col Guillen (Paraguay). We went to the Immigration office in the Salala district to talk to the immigration officers (pictured above). They have no communication means, transportation or logistics. It is a shame because the country/gov't is counting on them to keep the borders safe.

This is the Liberian Nat'l Police (LNP) Station in Salala. Like the Immigration offices, they have nothing. When they receive a call (on their own personal mobile phone) they must pay money out of their pockets to get a ride from a motorbike or taxi to get to the scene. Most criminals, no matter how severe the crime, are released the same day because they have no where to put them or money to feed them.

This was this past weekend when we threw Clayton a BBQ for his going away. He will leave Friday for Brazil. This is Tudor (Romanian), Clayton and I, manning the grill. Chicken, rice, and plantains were on the menu.

This is the entrance to the gold mine.

Can you guess which guy is the geologist (besides myself)? They were both really nice guys. Clayton got a kick out of the british accent. Before, he said it is impossible to tell the difference between American english and british english. By the end of our visit, he was able to tell the difference.

Here are the core samples that they pull out from the drill. All the samples are archived and sent to Monrovia for evaluation. They have two whole warehouses full of core samples.

Here is it, the Dean's town Gold mine.

We were asking the Brits if we could take photos down at the mine. They said feel free, but they advised us to not take pictures of the locals. (we have heard this before that most of them dont like their photo taken). With these guys, most of them were ex-combatants and they dont want thier photos floating around. So Clayton and arrived at the mine and started to carefully snap photos of ourselves. The Locals ran up to us and begged us to take photos with them. I had to take a photo with this guy, for obvious reasons. Obama gear is VERY popular in Liberiaa. Most Liberians consider themselves Americans (early slaves were shipped to Liberia) so a lot of them call Obama "their"president. I do not go a day without seeing anyone wearing a Obama shirt, hat, umbrella, etc.

This was me interviewing the guy who informed me of the name of the orange headed lizard. thanks buddy.

And here it is folks.... the Orange Headed Lizard