No rest for the weary. Plans changed and instead of several days in Monrovia, we left today and arrived in Ganta in the late afternoon. I got to know my host today. As I had in Sierra Leone, I asked him about his experience during the war, and it seemed cathartic for him to tell me about his survival and for me to hear these stories again to keep the stories and consciousness about the war alive. I told him my own story of our family and Ebola in Sierra Leone, and this clearly hit home with him. He later handed me an Ebola information sheet that he gives all volunteers, which was sobering. I met an outgoing volunteer O.T. who was a livestock expert originally from Zimbabwe. He’s started a distance remote international livestock school where he can teach farmers about anywhere they can get an internet connection, if I understood him correctly.
I also reconnected by email with an Alaskan who does these kind of volunteer assignments as a career now that he’s retired. I looked up an old email and he was telling me in it that he’d worked here and what a great person my host sitting across from me was. I soon learned that to be true our first day here. The road to Ganta was perfect. We stopped in Kakata and had rice and fish pepper soup. West African food is my favorite. We arrived to accommodations in Ganta that were again unexpected. Running water, AC, internet and satellite television.