T.I.A. (This is Africa)

I feel like whining un poquito lol, shocking I never do that. But no seriously, I feel entitled to whine grrrrr. I woke up w/ a bunch of mosquito bites, they were biting me last night outside and then there was one mosquito in my room and I couldn’t kill him and I woke up and have like 50 bites, including like 15-20 on my face lol. I get a free “breakfast” with my room, so I woke up and grumbled my way down the stairs to the coffee shop for breakfast. Well, it’s this sketchy beans in like watered down ketchup, two sketch hotdogs, a stale piece of bread and cornflakes with hot milk. I almost gagged when I ate the flakes b/c I forget that Africans love hot milk, grosssss. I had to interview three people today and select one person to be the coordinator for the project. I don’t like having to tell people they didn’t get the job. I still have to call a pastor and let him know that he’s a great person and strong candidate, but that we can’t hire him. My first interview was really cool, she’s the person that I’m going to hire.

After the interview she took me downtown to try and retrieve my lost bag w/ my all clothes. Driving downtown was cool, I like talking to random people and so I was talking to the cab driver about politics, football and America. It’s crazy, so many of the government buildings have signs reading, “Built with U.S.A. taxpayers money.” God bless our jacked up country and our crazy politics. We get to the airline place to find my bag and they open the closet and there’s my Maryland Terrapin Luggage tag on my giant red suitcase. I was so excited, and then they’re like, open it and take a look. I open it and my bag looks a little empty and I realize, my camera bag is not there and I’m kinda freakin out and they’re like, write down what’s missing and they will replace things that aren’t electronics or cameras, ughh so I’m out my fancy camera, I shouldn’t have packed it in my checked luggage I guess. They also took my sweet green laced Africa World Cup shoes, sucks, but such is life. Lesson learned. I got to go to lunch at a restaurant downtown in the capital and have my first real Liberian meal.

They had two giant wooden giraffes at the restaurant with a Liberian flag in their mouth. I took a picture w/ my cell phone camera, sadly that’s all that I can take pictures with. It’s ok tho, I’m really not that upset about my camera. Fotos don’t really do justice to Africa anyhow, you have to smell Africa, feel the air and the dust at your feet. After my final interview, I went walking around for a few hours. I wore my Guatemala man purse bag and my Liverpool jersey lol, I always try to appear not American, doesn’t work too well tho ha. It’s fun tho, Liverpool’s themesong is actually a hymn called, “You’ll Never Walk Alone” and all day lots of people, would look up and cheer, “You’ll Never Walk Alone!” It made me cheer up a bit. I walked through town, through markets and shops and I got to one street where I could look down and saw the ocean, so I started walking. I walked through probably four soccer games in the streets with kids playing through piles of trash and potholes and beat up streets with crappy balls. I passed a fancy home that had the iron letters, “Villa Patricia” welded on top of their fence. There was even some guy randomly walking in the street with a shirt that said, “Todos somos Americanos” lol, I love random things. Most kids were really nice to me and many looked up at me and said with a grin, “Liiiverpoooool” English is the official language, but most people talk a language I can’t understand at all. Little girls giggling gathered around the water pumps, while boys played games. Everything is a toy and they are so creative. Kids playing in the back of army cargo trucks, pushing each other in makeshift wheelbarrows even tho the tire doesn’t spin, rolling tire rims down the street with sticks, laughing and having a great time.

I finally got down to the end of the road to the beach. There was an official game of soccer going on, of sorts, they were older and there was a referee there. They were playing on a beach/hill/trash dump right on the beach with the waves slowly invading their pitch. I sat and watched next to a guy sitting on a bucket. Behind the goal was a palm thatched roof abandoned bar where a bunch of kids were watching. The goal was right next to the “public bathroom” aka a giant open cement thing with dividers and no privacy lol. The sun was setting and the tide swirled around the field so that it was almost surrounded on three sides of the field by water. The waves were crashing and hardly anyone was enjoying the beach even tho it was gorgeous. I walked along the waves for a bit and spent some time thinking and reflecting and smiling about how crazy normal my unnormal life is. I love it.

On my walk home I decided I should find dinner at the least shady spot I could find. I saw a sign for a nice looking restaurant called Frenchies lol it had nice pictures of good looking food, I started following the signs and it took me down sketchy streets and it’s night, so I feel like I glow in the dark at night in Africa, but I finally get to the restaurant and get a nice meal at a table with fancy African chairs and classy fake plastic flowers lol. I got to watch one of those shady Nigerian movies that are sorta Christian but also a bit slutty, lol, I so don’t get them. I decided I deserved a beer, yeah yeah I know, but I ordered the African Guiness which I also forgot how disgusting it is, and I love beer, but this is gross. I didn’t even drink half of it, which is a crime and not part of my diet/eating lifestyle plan or whatever ha.

30 Hours

I was kinda freakin out about my flight since i hadn't heard anything from any of my people for a few days, but I get to the airport and the first thing i see is a sign advertising my hotel, so i smiled at that sign and then someone came up and asked me if i was pete and said ppl were waiting for me. I almost hugged her b/c it's like 60 km from town and at night taxis are sketch, especially for a white dude packing six G's in his pocket lol. Funny story, my bag didn't make it even tho i had a day headstart lol, i packed a little bit of extra clothes in my carryon b/c i was predicting that somehow. Lol i can deal with that. It's a nice breezy evening w/ a nice rain, but i'm not having a beer or cafe at my hotel, i'm good like that. Here's my long email/journal entry from my last 15 hours of flights lol. So glad to be off a plane and showered. I like to write lol, it's therapeutic for me, my pen is still stuck in my jacket and i assume that all the tiny dots i passed flying over the giant lake in Ghana were hippos lol, doesn't count...

Aug. 25 Brussels, Belgium to Accra, Ghana Flight Boredom= Write long email/journal about the deep nothingnesses of my life:)

So I’m flying over the Sahara desert right now lol, my outlook reminder just popped up and informed me I’m supposed to be in chapel in 15 minutes. I don’t think I will be making that appointment J It is a giant red dusty blob as far as the eye can see. Can’t see any hippos or giraffes from up here, but it is quite cloudy. I flew sorta past Barcelona headed towards the Mediterranean Sea. We flew over the island of Mallorca which for some random reason is a place I really want to go. I’ve flown over the Mediterranean almost 10 times I think and I still have never gotten to actually see it. A cruise or backpacking around Greece, France and Spain on the sea would be high on my list of travel places I want to go to. I can’t remember where that St. John’s crazy last name place is, but hopefully it’s close to the Mediterranean.

What a ginormous and yet small world we live in. It overwhelms me. Flying brings out the kid in me, I’m glad that aerospace engineering didn’t suck that passion out of me. I’m always giddy when I fly, and yet despite being so excited, I still have the best naps on planes lol. I watched an African documentary about tracking animals in the wild using computers and technology in order to the culture and language of people in the bush. Not sure what I’m going to film a documentary on, lol, maybe this will just be my scouting trip, especially since my only video camera is my jank phone haha. The rest of the movies are awful, but that’s good b/c I have been reading and sleeping. I woke up from my most recent nap while they were showing Shrek.

I’m listening to Jack Johnson, I was supposed to go to his concert tomorrow night in West Palm with my my second favorite half ecuatoriana, bummed that I am missing the show. You joke that I think all my music is deep, lol that’s not true. Jack Johnson sings songs about surfing, love, sharing & recycling (he recorded the soundtrack for Curious George, which is awesome). Some are deep, some silly and some are just chill. I respect him b/c he’s pretty confident in himself but in a very humble and self-sacrificing way. He sings like someone who knows who he is and he believes that love always wins even if it sucks for him at the time. He even says stuff like, “What is the purpose of my life if it doesn’t have to do with learning to let it go.” I’m not sure that he’s talking about Jesus, but I respect how he recognizes that we take life too serious, we cling to our own stuff too seriously and we are too selfish. This morning for my devotion I was reading this book that reminded me of Jack Johnson actually lol, but I decided that he has a good grasp on grace and that it CLEARLY frees him to live life freely and at peace with himself and others. The author of my book says, “As Christians our standard of living can never be “right or wrong,” but the Cross. The principle of the Cross is our principle of conduct. Praise God that he makes his sun to shine on the evil and the good. With him it is a question of his grace and not of right or wrong. But that is to be our standard also: “Forgiving each other even as God in Christ Jesus also forgave you.”

I think simple truths are often the best, so I really liked that and I like Jack Johnson for that reason too lol, not that I’m comparing him to Jesus at all. I love tho how God will use my circumstances, music, reading and his Scripture to converge to smack me over the head with a truth that I need to learn b/c I am very stubborn when it comes to trusting God and walking confidently in my identity as His beloved son. For me I can see how my mistakes and others has led me on a journey to understand grace and be free to accept all that comes my way, knowing that I have a merciful and gracious father who has a freakin amazing plan for my life and loves me too much not to let me experience it. I haven’t even gotten to Africa yet and God’s already been speaking to me lol, I love traveling. I’d much rather be delayed or lost with someone amazing and fun than experience amazing places by myself though. Music, writing and Papa God will have to suffice in the meantime. I love writing so instead of journaling today, I wrote to you J Hehe, if I could text faster you’d have even more books to read, I like writing b/c I can process while I’m doing it. Anyhow, I’m about to land in Ghana and then will have a two hour connection to Liberia. Not 100% positive someone’s going to be there and where exactly my hotel is lol, but that’s what makes it interesting and teaches me to trust that my Father in Heaven loves his son and has a perfect plan even when it’s way different than what I want when I treat him like Santa or something.