african_bongo_drummer's Xanga

Am i ever coming home?

Sun, 16 Dec 2007 20:01:08 GMT

Yes i am coming home.....
crazy few months.
i am coming back, i have not forgotten about home.
i was suppose to have left today, but due to some thing i decided to hold back another few days.
no word can describe these last few months.
hard but good.
i will miss acres of hope.
i will never regret working for them and spending my time here.
see you all on the wintery side soon.
i need your prayers, it may be a tough adjustment...not just to the cold.
i have plenty of pictures on facebook if you all wanna check it out.

face book has taken o\/er the world

Wed, 24 Oct 2007 20:17:55 GMT

sorry guys face book is taking all my time now, xanga is dead...nobody cares about it any more.

working more then e\/er now....melodie is now left acres of hope, and my time to end is coming up to quick too. (and for those of you who think melodie is my sister, no she is not. although we do resemble..lol Not.)

i was planing to lea\/e for europe and tra\/el there for a month first of no\/ember to gi\/e me a bit of transition before hitting home, but combined with the need for me to fill in here with all the transition in staff and the lack of funds i am now staying in africa till maybe mid Deccember.
funny it was really a hard decision to make but once i made it i knew it was the right one.
i am not ready to lea\/e my kids yet...but i am starting to prep my self for lea\/ing now. Gosh, that is going to be the hardest thing e\/er!

so mid Decemberish you will see my face in good ol freakin cold winterpeg Manitoba. yuk. snow.
December will make it one full year that i ha\/e been here. i really cant belie\/e it. it went so fast and yet the picture of home seems fogged and cloudy.
in some ways i feel like i could be here for the rest of my life, in others i NEED to go home.

once i am back home....
see if i still fit in.
get a job, being broke is not the best feeling.
take Emergency medical Responder training. woohoo i am excited about that!

thinking...three yr B.A in disaster reco\/ery and intercultural studies. THINKING...i am not ready to commit three years of my life yet.

but i do want to go in to disaster relief work.

i also ha\/e this feeling that i will end up here again some time in my life. i am addicted to Liberia. the way that nothing is e\/er the same. when you just ha\/e to shake your head and say "only in Liberia".

my day

Mon, 17 Sep 2007 22:32:18 GMT

OK this day is definitely blog worthy.

this morning got out of bed and got ready for work in my usual 15 minutes.
then dri\/ing down the dirt road, to the orphanage and man signals us to stop....the dri\/er stops thinking he knew the guy, but it ends up he is selling sea turtles.
the dri\/ers like no i dont want a turtle and starts to pull away, i yell no no wait, how much you selling for?! 30 LD says the man (50 cents) I want to buy it for my kid as a school project called "see how long you can keep the turtle ali\/e". its small about the size of an chicken egg.
the kids lo\/e it, they named it Small Princess Wolo, i was thinking more like Crush off of finding nemo, but Small Princess Wolo works too.
i am going to bring that mo\/ie to the orphanage for them all to watch as soon as we get the generator fixed.

I take one or two kids out to lunch with me e\/ery day as a reward or just because i lo\/e them.
well today i took two of the older boys and one of the nannies who was on her day off.
well it wasn't really raining when we left the orphanage to walk to the cook shop that is about 5 min walk away so i only brought one umbrella. while we are there is starts POURING! in 1 1/2 hours the path from the cook shop to the road turned in to a fast flowing ri\/er!
there was about 2 feet of gross, muddy, garbage, sewer, filled water that we had to walk through to get to the road.
we ended up forgetting about letting the rain stop before we left because it wasn't getting any better.

i still cant flip my pictures, sorry.

then in the hr and a half that we where at the cook shop my mom called me, which i was extremely excited about. i ha\/e not talked to them in about three weeks because they ha\/e been in and out of town.
i couldn't really hear a word she said because the rain was sooo loud pounding on the tin roof and the traffic out side seem louder the usual.

the world has hundreds for thousands of kids that need help, that need real parents, need lo\/e, need a future besides selling the market or becoming a prostitute at age 13, need to be adopted. my word of the day to all prospecti\/e parents: adopt

maybe i am just o\/erly supporti\/e of adoption, i dont want to ha\/e my own kids, my adoption hero is a 25 year old single woman who just adopted her first kid.
i could easily see that being me.

sigh so all that in one day, in all it was a good day.

how can you sit and do nothing?

Fri, 24 Aug 2007 20:27:05 GMT

when to west point today with katie....the slums of liberia...its enough to make me cry....you can feel the danger, the sorrow and the longing for love. i have seen extreme poverty here but this is the worst i have ever seen. hundreds and thousand of ppl in tin, wood, and newspaper shacks. we are walking down the road lined with people just sitting around, braiding hair or sitting with blank stairs into space. children with runny noses run around. it is the lowest of the lowest.
i was introduced to a mother, her husband is dead and she doesn't have a job...she cant take care of her 8 year old daughter, the girl has never been to school a day in her life...probably will never go to school, will end up selling in the market or worse. the mother wants to take her to the orphanage, i tell her how to get to the office for more information, she is extremely grateful even though she loves her daughter and knows that she will never see her again if her daughter goes in the program she is ok with that because she said that here there is nothing here for the girl and that she wants more for her daughter, she cant give her anything.
we walk father down the road passing by shacks squished together. the stench of sitting water, poop, urine, and rotting things is over whelming.
we come to a football field where many children are playing soccer....they all run up to us and shake our hand and talk to us.
we end up taking with this father, he asks us to come and sit in his house....he takes us to this house that looks like all the rest, bits and pieces of tin, sticks, and paper.
we duck in the dark door way that has a cloth for a door...inside is packed with about 10 people, adults and children, the room is about the size of a Very Small bedroom.....not to mention the faces packed in the door way to listen to what is going on.
the walls are covered with old news papers and posters.
there is dirty dishes on a table in the corner but most of the space is taken up by benches, the sand floor is covered with rice sacks sewn together.
the roof was tin, it had a ton of holes in it. it rains here like nothing you have ever seen before...for Days! they would all be drenched in a matter of hrs.
they have no mattresses....there are rats.
the ppl in the house are so happy to meet us...the father introduced us to his family and friends.
i hold a little three year old on my lap.
the two women sitting beside me are drunk almost out of their mind.
a young girl goes into the back room and brings out a wee three week old infant and hands her to me, she looks like the size of a small newborn. she was dressed in a pink dress wrapped in a lappa, she has her ears pierced, and the softest black curly hair.
katie gets every one in the house singing a african song and clapping.
everyone is happy in the midst of their circumstances.

we say good bye to our new friends and walk down to the beach where the father has a fishing canoe, some days he will get fish, some days there is nothing...on a good day he catch enough fish to get 50 LD in one day (its 60 LD to every US dollar).
also on the beach are about 10 or 15 people pooping and peeing on the beach out in the open.

we attract huge crowd of children walking around...we kick a soccer ball around with them for a little bit.
we then start walking to the main road with huge crowd of children still following us, we have fun talking and teasing with them. i was walking holding the hand of the little three year old that i met in the house, her mother was the one that was drunk, she was walking with us too.
her mother took her hand and she wiggled her hand out of her mothers to hold mine.
the mother looked at me and said you like her dont you? i said yes she is an adorable girl i will come back and visit you ok? both her and the little girl where beaming.
i am supprised
the mother didnt offer her girl to me...it happens so often.
we have to turn and tell them that the little kids cant come with us any farther because they might get lost.
we turn and wave good bye and promise we will be back.

God, i cry out to you...save these little children.

down the road

Fri, 24 Aug 2007 19:36:00 GMT

We have two orphanages, right now total 101 children.
Melodie is orphanage 2 supervisor and i am orphanage 1 supervisor...it is now offical we have id cards now!
anyway orphanage 1 and orphanage 2 about a 7 min walk apart...so walk it once if not many more times than that through out the day so because of that i have gotten to know alot of ppl who live on the road that i walk down.
one is a family from the interior who moved in to the city during or just after the war. they live in a mud house about the size of a ordinary kitchen. i have no clue how many people actually live at the house...there is a father figure, a old ma, her children and then her 16 yr old daughter and her child...and others i haven't been able to place.
rainy season started some time in april, so i was walking down the road past their house and right in front of me the whole front side of their mud house collapsed in to a heap of...mud.
they didn't have mosquito nets or a good tarp on their house...they where getting wet while they where sleeping...foam mattresses on the floor, my friend Tarrah and i bought what they needed....but it is not enough.
the father sells bread to make money when he can, the women are prostitutes for money. the 20 yr old almost died a few days ago from suspected syphilis, the father wants me to take the 12 year old girl when i go back home, the father stabbed his foot with something and it got majorally swollen, he couldn't walk on it....and cant pay to go to the hospital, he wrote a letter to me asking me to pay for him to go to the hospital to have them look at it.

there is group of about 7 boys ages 8-14 who will play football (soccer) or marbles every time i walk past...some times i will join them for a few minutes. I asked my little 13 year old friend mikey boy to teach me how to play marbles...i try but they just laugh at me. lol its awesome!
yesterday i met him in a cook shop that i was eating at down the road...i asked him if he wanted anything to eat while i was buying my food...he said no, i just want 50 LD (about 85 cents) to buy rice and pepper....i said ok how bout i give you the money to buy it tomorrow and you cook some for me too, today tell me what you want here....so we got bread, sprite and gum...the best lunch ever! lol
he's a good kid, he's like ya my friends steal all the time...but i advise them not to. because i was living with my pa, his girlfriend and this other boy and he stole small LD from the womens jean trousers, woman got vexed and left and then when the boy got back to the house it was burnt down. so it is not good to steal.
mmm...he's got a point. lol
so i was go and eat with him today but its flag day today and every one is off work and we cant seem to get a ride to the orphanage today sooo....i guess it will just have to wait till monday.

Monday, August 20, 2007

Mon, 20 Aug 2007 21:15:05 GMT

For Long.

Mon, 20 Aug 2007 19:53:20 GMT

sorry it has been a long time since i have updated.
i have been lazy.
so i have been here about 8 1/2 or so months now and am not really looking forward to leaving in three months.
i love my kids so much. i will miss them terribly.
i am really enjoying teaching school still, i have about 50 students right now ranging from ages 4 - 9.
i have to marvel how God has prepared me through the past to do what i am doing now.
three years ago i would have never dreamed i would be in africa teaching 50 students by my self.
it all started with american endeavor in 2004, when i was 16 i went to the states with our home school program for three months taking different courses like international ministry training, and child evangelism fellowship training (CEF) to name a few.
but it was the cef training that really changed me...me this shy 16 yr old, never would think of speaking in front of a crowd...even a crowd of kids.
then taking cef training forced me to go in teams and do inner city bible clubs in oklahoma city, thankfully the teams where some of the greatest friends in the world. but still i was sick to my stomach at the thought of every one looking at me and my voice being the only one in the room. i had to prepare my own lesson plans, teach memory verses, songs etc. when it was over i was extremely relieved.
but come two or so months later my friend elanna asked me to go to a cef day training that she was attending to keep her company.
so i went and the woman started out by praying for elanna and sydnee as they teach the 1st grade class.....i kinda look at elanna with a weird look, she shrugs.
later at the end of the class i get handed the materials that i will need to teach next week! i look at elanna...elanna looks at me....well i guess i am teaching on wednesday.
so from then on for two years once a week i taught a bible class to about 20 grade 1 kids in a public school during lunch hour.
i wonder if elanna secretly planed that.....
so that is what brought me to the place that i am now...across the ocean, thousands of miles from home, teaching in a orphanage in Liberia west Africa for the past 8 months.
wow ok, crazy how God works. never would have guessed.

Monday, July 09, 2007

Mon, 09 Jul 2007 14:38:04 GMT

sorry my computer is stuped and will not flip the pictures so this is what you get.

all these pictures are of my and my daughter Yannah.

me and Nowi (my favorite nannie but dont tell anyone that)

Today is my six month day!

Sat, 09 Jun 2007 18:57:31 GMT

today is the day that i left the states 6 months ago! crazy to believe. it does not seem that long on one hand and then on the other it seems like an eternity.

it all started when i was 16 and decided that i wanted to give God the first year after graduation just to Him. doing what, i didnt know. i left that totally up to Him...and look where i am today.
i can 100% say that it is only by God that i am able to be here and stay here...He has showed me that over and over again.

I am in Love!

yes you heard me right. in love.
in love with this country, in love with my kids, the people, my new friends and "family".
leaving in another six months will be probably the hardest thing i have done yet...i cant even think about it.

although i would love to see my family and give them all a hug, i do not wish to be home right now...so far i have not been home sick.

and believe it or not haven't gotten into too much trouble yet....;)

my foster baby is gone...newborns are far much more work then i thought...i love fostering, it makes me appreciate my mom so much more, and if i am ever a mom not much will scare me (as much)...i have done it all before...in fact it will be easier being a real mom rather than a foster mom.

when i first came here i thought that i would never want to live in a country other than canada full time, i wanted my canadian life, career, freedom....which is not bad, but i was closed to any other idea. so that was one releasing i had to do, that if God where to ask me to stay some where full time that i would be willing. as it stands now it is my dream to become a paramedic and possibly do disaster relief aid work....where i dont know...does it have to be away from home in a foreign country, no......if i felt that God was wanting me else where would i go...now yes.

three of the biggest thing i have been learning here.
1. full surrender...and how hard it is!
2. how selfish i am, and how i need to learn to give up things that i think are my "right", but in reality are privalages.
3. moldable is not good enough, you need to be liquid.

i am really sensing that God is really going to be challenging me in the next few months, more so than the last 6 months. i am scared but excited about what the out come will be. prayers please, that i would respond to what ever it is in the right way.

so some funny things......

i was talking to one of the guys from the office and he asked me when i was going back to canada, i said some time in december, and he was like oh to see your husband...uhhh no i am not married. oh really then to see your boyfriend (their interpretation of boyfriend is a live in basically)....no, i have never had a boyfriend.....shocked look* you mean you are the same as when you where born!!! haha i love the liberian english!

Liberians notice ever oz. that you gain so i have been told multiple times that i am now fat...i have gain 5 lb since i have been here. i have also been told about three times this month that my butt is getting bigger....woohoo!!! lol really i just have to laugh. Sydnee you are looking fat today...oh wow thank you so much! it is suppose to be a compliment went some one calls you fat. i cant help feeling a little odd every time they call me that.

i get called small girl alot....dont know why....and a number of other things ;)

i am trying to learn how to dance....the little girls at the orphanages are so good and i have a few of them teaching me....i am pretty pathetic at it.

creepy things....

i am in the van one morning on the way to work and we are stuck in traffic, i am in the front seat and this creepy old guy with rotten teeth comes up and sticks his head in the window...i am not to sure what to do because the door does not lock, so i just sit there looking strait ahead. the guy then goes on the tell me where he lives and pulls out his phone # that he had written on a piece of card board. the traffic finally clears and as we where pulling away the guy reaches in and touches my cheek....ah gross...then Jr goes on to tell me that he was a general in taylors army, and that because of that he is now crazy in the head. thanks alot Jr i really didnt need to know that.

crazy things....

i was at a hospital with a mother who was about to have a baby and me and melodie where allowed into the labor room. i was able to see 4 babies be born in 45 min! they had four beds lined up in a row all the beds where full and they had ppl waiting for the beds out side. so it was basically line em up and move em out. it was awful. the nurses where pushing on the womens bellies, pulling the babies out, and then putting their hand in a ripping the placenta out. the woman screamed more for the placenta than the baby.

living with out running water and power is a little easier that i thought it would be as long as you have a gas stove....not a coal pot. i am pro at bucket baths. but i only had to live like that for two weeks we now have running water and are hooked up to city lights. woohoo

remember.....

Sat, 09 Jun 2007 15:51:10 GMT

things are going pretty good here, havent gotten into too much trouble yet....;)

i love liberia, and althought i would love to see my family and give them all a hug, i do not wish to be home right now...so far i have not been home sick.

my foster baby is gone...newborns are far much more work then i thought...i love fostering, it makes me apprecate my mom so much more, and if i am ever a mom not much will scare me...i have done it all before...in fact it will be easier being a real mom rather than a foster mom.

when i first came here i thought that i would never want to live in a country other than canada full time, i wanted my canadian life, career, freedom....which is not bad, but i was closed to any other idea. so that was one releasing i had to do, that if God where to ask me to stay some where full time that i would be willing. as it stands now it is my dream to become a paramedic and possibly in disaster relief work....where i dont know...does it have to be away from home in a forgien country, no......if i felt that God was wanting me else where would i go...now yes.

i am really sensing that God is really going to be challenging me in the next few months, more so than the last 6 months. i am scared but excited about what the out come will be. prayers please, that i would respond to what ever it is in the right way.

so some funny things......

i was talking to one of the guys from the office and he asked me when i was going back to canada, i said some time in december, and he was like oh to see your husband...uhhh no i am not married. oh really then to see your boyfriend (their interpretation of boyfriend is a live in basicly)....no, i have never had a boyfriend.....shocked look* you mean you are the same as when you where born!!! haha i love the liberian english!

Liberians notice ever oz. that you gain so i have been told multuple times that i am now fat...i have gain 5 lb since i have been here. i have also been told about three times this month that my butt is getting bigger....woohoo!!! lol really i just have to laugh. Sydnee you are looking fat today...oh wow thank you so much! it is supoes to be a complament went some one calls you fat. i cant help feeling a little odd every time they call me that.

i get called small girl alot....dont know why....and a number of other things ;)

i am trying to learn how to dance....the little girls at the orphanages are so good and i have a few of them teaching me....i am pretty pathetic at it.

creepy things....

i am in the van one morning on the way to work and we are stuck in traffic, i am in the front seat and this creepy old guy with rotten teeth comes up and sticks his head in the window...i am not to sure what to do because the door does not lock, so i just sit there looking strait ahead. the guy then goes on the tell me where he lives and pulls out his phone # that he had written on a piece of card board. the traffic finaly clears and as we where pulling away the guy reaches in and touches my cheek....ah gross...then Jr goes on to tell me that he was a general in taylors army, and that becaues of that he is now crazy in the head. thanks alot Jr i really didnt need to know that.

crazy things....

i was at a hospital with a mother who was about to have a baby and me and melodie where alowed into the labor room. i was able to see 4 babies be born in 45 min! they had four beds lined up in a row all the beds where full and they had ppl waiting for the beds out side. so it was basicly line em up and move em out. it was awful. the nurses where pushing on the womens bellies, pulling the babies out, and then puting their hand in a riping the plasenta out. the woman screamed more for the placenta than the baby.

living with out running water and power is a little easier that i thought it would be as long as you have a gas stove....not a coal pot. i am pro at bucket baths. but i only had to live like that for two weeks we now have running water and are hooked up to city lights. woohoo