A Presidential Couple of Days

This has been interesting past days. I guess, when I posted last, some of the stuff I am writing about had already taken place, but were not included as I wrote the post earlier that I actually posted it. Anyway, here we go – my presidential couple of days started on Sunday, January 8 and ended on Monday, January 16. Sounds exiting? It is  - at least it was for me.

Playing the game – Soccer Match at SKD

On Sunday the week before last week, I got kindly invited by my flatmate to join her and her boss to watch a football match at the National Stadium, called SKD. They had a tournament going on between teams of the different counties and on this day the final was supposed to take place. The stadium was a crazy place – thousands and thousands of people, trying to get the last tickety, trying to actually show their tickets and to get access, people jumping over fences and just in the middle of all the chaos, a couple of police men, who found their way through the crows by beating everyone  who would not jump out of their way severely with a bat. Not so nice to see, and clearly a problem as I think the police men were just too few in numbers and using their bat seemed to be the only valid option in their eyes.  However, we were lucky as we were actually sitting in the VIP area – just a couple of seats behind – and yes, here is the presidential linkage – the Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, her main opponent Winston Tubman and Prince Johnson who came third in the last election. Well, I did not talk to them though, but it was nice to watch them anyway. The match was good as well. I am pretty sure I have not seen so many fouls and wanna be-fouls in one single match though. In the end, Margibi won against Nimba County with 2:0 – a well-deserved victory.

A Week At Work and A Weekend At Home

The week passed pretty quickly as we had quite some stuff to do and my colleague had to stay in Europe longer than expected, so I spent many hours on project management things and trying to get a better understanding of what I am/ we are actually doing here. Work in progress though. But apart from that, I obviously had a lot of first time. First time going to the Campus, first time eating Potatoe Greens in Liberia, first time having a ride on a pen-pen (the local motorbikes – although this was actually already on Sunday), first time having a run longer than 40min, first time buying veggies on the market, etc, etc.  On Friday night we had a Farewell party for one girl who was also working for GIZ as consultant but now went back to Germany. A real loss for our office! But a good party anyway. Whoever is not familiar yet, with the most played song in Sierra Leone and Liberia (and I would bet on this one), click here and “Chop my money” will never leave you again. Saturday and Sunday turned out to be rather boring. I fell sick with a stupid cold and had to work anyway, so I some hours in the office and many at home, trying to recover while watching “How I Met Your Mother”  - exciting life, you think? Will get better soon. I promise.

Inauguration Day

Monrovia on Inauguration Day - red, blue and white all over

And as I said, my presidential couple of days ended on January 16, the day where the president officially started her second term. So if nothing goes totally wrong, this country will be ruled for the next five years by Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. Fair enough. As we did not manage to get tickets for the inauguration itself, we gathered in front of the TV at Cape Hotel (our office was closed due to various reasons, and power went off at home, so we escaped to the restaurant at Cape Hotel), and tried to follow the ceremony. Not much luck on this side, as the quality of pictures being broadcasted was horrible. So we grabbed our cells, switched on the radios and listened to the speeches instead of watching them. After some hours of work, I decided to get back home and have a walk through the city, hoping to see the president. Well, a “walk” in Liberia is not quite like as it might be in other places, but it was nice anyway. The city was surprisingly empty (most roads were blocked though for security reasons), but I found some people gathering at one corner. I asked around and found out that they were waiting for the President to pass by, so I decided to join them. However, after 30-45min I had to accept that I was indeed ready to meet the President again, but apparently she was not. Two frien

Instructions How to Vote - Left Overs from the last elections in October on a compound wall

ds came along and picked me up and we continued strolling the city which was just highly interesting. Some pictures below may give you first impressions, more to follow in th upcoming weeks. Don’t get confused by the assumingly grey weather on the pictures – we do have blue sky and it is hot, but it is Harmattan (desert wind) season right now, which brings a lot of dust in the city and makes everything looking misty and grey.

That’s it for now – more coming up soon, at some point certainly also a bit more analytical and interpretative instead of just descriptive. Time will come.
 Take good of yourself and your beloved ones and talk soon!

Westpoint, Monrovia - one of the largest slum areas in the city

Variety of Fresh Fish, caught just by standing on the bridge and using a thin string, a hook, some shiny things along the string and nothing else. Quite impressive to watch!

View from the Bridge in Monrovia

Better Now Than Never - Update from West Africa

Wow, I cannot necessarily claim, that I stood up to my promise to continuously update the blog. Sorry for that, but anyway, a new year has started with new opportunities to make it better than before.

Happy New Year to all of you – may it be a satisfying one, leaving you with a smile on your face! I hope you all had a great festive season with a lot on happy moments with friends and family. I had  - so thank you very much to everyone I was able and allowed to stay with, visit and visited by. It was so good to see you all.
Back to business now. When I posted last, I left you with some nice pictures and stories from Maputo where I attend a network meeting. Life remained busy afterwards, but to make a long story short: I got back to Freetown,

"Family Picture" (Isata, Jojo, a new little trouble maker on my lap, Momoh) in Freetown -
it was great to be back and to be remembered, even after three years

Good Bye to Sierra Leone

stayed there for another two weeks, working and preparing myself, and eventually made it over to Monrovia on November 19, moving into my  new room on November 20. We actually got the permission to travel over land (I was extremely relieved as I had 50kgs to bring along, and I really did not want to carry that stuff back to Lungi Airport, Freetown, then to Ghana and finally to Monrovia) and it was great. A colleague travelled with me, and we spent some 12 hours amusing hours in our (at least in the beginning) shiny white GIZ car, eating cookies, chatting with our drivers and enjoying the green landscape. A great part of the trip was done on red tarmac roads, so it got quite bumpy and there was no chance to even read. My personal highlight was the crossing of a river, which, as we had heard before, could be managed by using a ferry. In my naïve mind, the term ferry was associated with something like a ship with an engine, connecting the two shores by going back and forth. I was wrong. The ferry turned out to be a floating something with would fit 2 cars, 3 motorbikes and a couple of people. It was made of wood and was manually driven – meaning, it had no engine. Instead, there was quite advanced system made of iron wires and different kind of ropes, which were used to pull the ferry over. As we did not really paid for the cruise, I felt that I might should offer my support and help pulling the ropes. The guys accepted, but I am not completely sure that I was an actual help.

Osman has to show his driving skills when entering the "ferry"

Pulling the "ferry"

Heading over

Work eventually started on November 21, and it went on without a break until Dec 11, when I went back to Germany to finish some training and spent Christmas at home. These three weeks in Monrovia were just extremely busy, including very long days in the office, working on weekends and facing new challenges every other second. But eventually it was done and most likely I could not have asked for a more intense introduction into the project. Although I would have preferred to be able have some time to actually get familiar with everything, at least now I do know the project and our partners already quite well. My colleague is very nice and so is our intern, so I am sure, over time we will become quite a good team. As I did expect (at least to some extent), I got quite some responsibility, which is nice, as it creates room for change and gives you the chance to actively promote and follow-up your own ideas. So, summarizing on the job situation, I know that I will face many challenges and that it won’t be always easy, but I also know that I find it super interesting and that it was the right choice to come. 

Getting the social life started is certainly also a challenge and will take some more time. I cannot really tell how many expats (short for expatriates = Auswanderer, a term which is usually used for all the ‘white’ people who came here for work) live in Monrovia, but it seems to be a vibrant community. The first weeks are usually a lot of small-talk, trying to adjust yourself – so this is pretty much what I gonna do for the next couple of weeks: Trying to make people to like me. And obviously trying to like them... However, I have already met some quite nice people, so I am quite hopeful. Plus, I was once again extremely lucky with my flat mates - both of them are just great and I felt home from the first day on. Thanks for making the embedding so easy, ladies!
My room is really nice (see the picture) and it got even nicer when I returned from Germany, as I brought a lot of photos, a great calendar which I got as a farewell present from some wonderful friends (Jakob, Risotto recipe is up now and I even found risotto rice, so will give it a try soon), some family memories on pictures arranged by my Mom (thank you so much!), IKEA lamps, my sewing machine, the best coffee/espresso maker ever (Sophie, come on over here!!), excellent Ethiopian coffee (thanks to Cat!) and much more which will definitely help me to feel like home. And the rest of the apartment is also absolutely fine.

My very own Liberian paradise

View from our balcony - realities could not differ more

We got electricity about 13 hours a day (produced by a generator, which is off during the day, when we are at work anyway) and 24/7 during the weekend, piped and even hot running water, we have iron doors, security guards, barb wire on the compound walls, big cars in the parking lot –as you can see, we are quite well set and yes, we do live an expat life. I am also thinking about buying a car. At work, I am good because we got a driver and he would drive me wherever I would ask him for, but in my spare time, it is sometime difficult to get around as I am not supposed to walk in the dark and sunset is already around 6.30pm. The car won’t be one of these huge land rovers though. I rather go for an ordinary car, which I can use within Monrovia and also outside as long as the roads don’t go too bad. I think, as I never appeared to be an off-road racer, I should be fine with that. Plus, a smaller car does not eat up so much fuel and pollute the environment less. I only have to find a car now; this is the next thing on my Challenges-in-Liberia-list.

Waterside Market, Centre of Monrovia

Yep, that’s it. I will write more very soon, but I think, when you actually managed to read all of this stuff, you definitely deserve a break. Congratulations for making it up to here though and thank you for your interest!
Take good care of yourself and all your beloved ones!