Yesterday started off with a 7:30 am overhead announcement that there was a whale in the port! How exciting to think that overnight she had come up toward shore and once the sun rose the guys on the dock saw her and called us all out to see her. We ran out to the gangway to check her out and there were a couple of guys waiting to scream "April Fools!!!" Ha Ha Ha.... should've slept in.
Sleep is very precious here and nobody gets much of it. The ship makes alot of weird noises at night and the walls are paper-thin. If a toilet flushes, you can hear the water rushing through the pipes. It rained last week one night and most days have been overcast for the last week.

Last week was pretty eventful in the town due to the announcement that Charles Taylor, the former president, was to be returned to Sierra Leone to face trial for war crimes. He then disappeared from Nigeria, was found 2 days later, and now has been transferred to a Sierra Leone prison until he is transferred and tried at The Hague. He still has some supporters here and anytime he is in the news for something to do with these charges, these supporters try to start problems again. There was a political stabbing last week and travel warnings out all over due to potential rioting. When that happens, we either aren't allowed to leave the port or have to travel by car with cell phones only if necessary.
There is a large UN presence here within Monrovia. There are 15,000 troops, more than anywhere else in the world at this point. There are also 2,000 UN international workers within the city. It seems like one out of every 10 vehicles is a UN SUV or car. The UN vehicles (as well as ours) have special lanes to travel in the busy parts of town supposedly to let us through easier.


THe sign on the left says UN Vehicles Only. The right is for all others. As you can see, most of "the others" are taxis. Very few people have vehicles here, but taxis are everywhere. Liberians can travel across town for a few cents, but they like to charge us about 3 times that amount. Still... its only about 30 cents for a 20 minute ride to church, the market, or the grocery.
Many people have asked if I feel safe here. I definitely am very cautious when here in town- we always travel with a guy and in groups of at least 3. Two of the nurses I work with went biking in a remote area right when we got here and got held up at knifepoint for money. The men stole 3 bucks from them and actually another Liberian guy came to their rescue and chased the men off. I guess that could really happen anywhere though. The ship is very safe and I feel very protected from the outside world when I'm on the port. We have 3 guards at the gate, which is about 500 yards from the ship and we have 3 gorkhas, which are members of the Nepalese army, who have a guard shack right in front of the ship. At night, they watch from a tower for swimmers who have, in the past, tried to gain access to the dock by swimming up and climbing up. They have stolen bicycles, a generator, and chairs by getting up on the dock and lowering them down to their buddy to be placed on a surfboard and then swim away. Our guards are now armed with these high powered slingshot like devices that our security leader refers to as wrist rockets. If they see a swimmer on his way to the pole they will shoot the little rocket at the water near him and scare the pants off him. Three of them got arrested last week in the middle of the day trying to get on the dock. And believe me.... no one wants to get arrested here. They basically sit and rot in jail for months to years to wait and see a judge even for initial sentencing. The jails and packed and really miserable according to the team that goes out and ministers to them.
Thanks for reading!