UN tanks and soldiers at the edge of town ->

There have been alot of political problems within Monrovia over the past week. Street vendors, whose livelihood depends on what they are able to sell at their booths, became violent last week, when their booths were basically demolished by the city.
The city had asked for these booths to be moved to another location as the markets just kept spreading further into the streets and the vendors hadn't budged. They took over both bridges leading into the city and caused problems for police and politicians for several days. We have a great security council onboard and there are constant overhead announcements to tell us of violence or unrest in the city and to tell us when we can and cannot leave the ship. We got an announcement today that several kidnappings of Americans have occurred over the past few days around the city, so now we are only allowed out of the port with groups larger than 3 and with at least one male. We also had several swimmers trying to gain access to our dock this week and they actually got away with a couple of bikes and 3 empty barrels by lowering them into the water onto surfboards and swimming away.

I am preparing to go to Sierra Leone, the country to the west of Liberia this Friday for a week to do some training/teaching with the therapists there. I'll be flying there with the World Food Program, an NGO based here in Monrovia. Apparently, the flight is in a really small plane and we fly fairly low, getting a great view of both countries.


There are about 25 children onboard who attend the Mercy Ships Academy School. Several of the kids have literally grown up onboard and have never attended a regular school. Last week, they put on a production of Beauty and the Beast, which was really incredible. There are some really talented people here and its amazing what they were able to do, considering we have so little here. Almost all the kids took part in the play, which they sold tickets for and raised over $300 for the crew transition fund.