Extension School Graduation (finally updating it after a month or so)

Alright, the entire delightful affair was set to start at 2pm. We showed up at 2:15 and were still over 30 minutes early. Still haven't figured out what the correct delay is to be "on time". As an honored guest (being Peace Corps Volunteers) we had to give a speech. I proudly stepped up to the plate.

The keynote speaker was a hoot! He spent about 75% of the time turning back and speaking to the director and academic dean of the institute and the remainder speaking to the graduates and Peace Corps Vols. His theme came from the book "The World is Flat", saying we have the ability to move $100,000 from Switzerland to Stockholm by Internet or phone, to purchase a home in California over the phone in Liberia. The playing field is leveled due to instant communication. Yeah, and so many people here in Liberia are wealthy enough to do those things? We still haven't a national power grid - everything is by generators! Anyways, next he looked at we two Peace Corps Volunteers and said, "Peace Corps is Jesus Christ! You go and live with the poor and work with them, just like Jesus did!" I'm sure you can all imagine how red already my sun-scorched face turned. Or create an unbalanced ego.

Then came the rally for funds for a generator and football uniforms. Imagine the coupling of riot and a monster truck rally. Pitting the men vs the women to see who could raise more money. I went to my happy place in my mind and showed my friend, the VP of the Demonstration School, my speech. He loved it.

What would a graduation be without a music selection? The vocal group slowly moved to the front, singing in the isles, and sang ... and sang ... and sang. The Energizer Bunny has nothing on these guys. After almost 10 minutes, people got up and gave them money to stop singing, which was their strategy in the first place. The battle of attrition finally over.

If you have a music selection, you must also have some sort of a drama! An excessively long skit about HIV and getting a haircut. Over here they use razor blades - the kind you'd see in a safety knife. How does the skit relate to the graduation? Well, you'll just have to figure that one out on your own. The moral was not to reuse the blades but to throw them away and use a new one. By throw away that means throw them on the ground. (Why not bleach them and use em again? And not throw them on the ground?) Yeah...

Now to the speeches from the honored guests. There were 15 honored guests. As some of you know as in Namibia, it is important to recognize everyone in the audience, even those not in attendance. The ceremony and speakers supposed to focus on the graduates. Not exactly... The trainer rep used it as a soapbox to criticize the Ministry of Education, the director used it as a chance to talk about the challenges of ZRTTI, the DEO as an opportunity to talk about school issues. All of this while the DJ played incredibly loud music - the speakers were in the front row, not being able to get the mic to work and trying to fix them as people were giving speeches and going so far as to verbally test the system while the guest speaker was up on the stage!

My inspiring speech ... at 5:40pm. The only one to focus entirely on the graduates and weaved inspirational phrases from Toto, Journey, The Princess Bride, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog and The Life and Times of Tim to form a beautiful tapestry of prose. It took only three minutes. By far the most pithy.

Yes, we ducked out just before 6pm. Almost right after my speech. Earlier in the month I missed because the trainers and administration had a four and a half hour meeting. There were only seven items on the agenda. It ended at 7:40pm. Dinner ended at 6:00pm.

The graduates respectfully sat through four hours of absurdity to finally get their recognition, but not their diplomas. They were to be handed out at a later date.

Blackout, Thanksgiving, Extension School Graduation and Christmas Break

The year is winding down over here and thoughts are turning from creating Christmas decorations to packing for a trip to Ghana with some friends. Been putting in some good runs here. I don't even need to include a specific hill workout day - my runs include from 6 to 18 hills. It really stinks because the rainy season has long past. We went from raining torrents multiple times a day to no rain for the past week. Dust, dust everywhere. Feels almost as dry as it did in Namibia. Don't need to use sunscreen when walking to town or running - you naturally have a thin layer of dirt on your skin. White is not a good clothing color at this time.

Speaking of clothing, it is getting downright cold here. The last winter did nothing for making me used to the cold. I'm sleeping with a fleece on and still a little chilled. The lows are in the frost friendly 60's. Apparently they will get much lower come January and February.

There was a bit of a scandal for a few weeks when we ran out of petrol for the generators. When you only get electricity a few hours a day, you do realize how precious those couple hours are. We ended up going without current for three out of four days and scattered outages and rumors of missing petrol, theft or dishonest pumps. The highlight of it for me was that I got to use some of my mad math skills for calculating the volume of fuel in a horizontal cylinder if you know the height of the fuel. No, it isn't as easy as you think (volume does not = pi * radius squared * height in this situation). Then converting it from cubic inches or cubic feet into gallons. Then printing off a spreadsheet for the workers to do the calculations.

Have taken to getting water for myself instead of hiring people to do it for me. Consequently am getting better at balancing things on my head. I can balance my Nalgene bottle for most of the walk up and down the hill to work. I can walk with a filled 5 gallon water container mostly balanced on my head. Talked my roommate into doing that as well. I'm not good enough yet to balance it without using my hands, but have improved enough to where I only need one hand.

On schedule to meet the book a week goal. Put down 18 books in 16 weeks, including the four Ender's Game books. Highly recommend Orson Scott Card to anyone.

For Thanksgiving the US Embassy invited all the PCVs to Monrovia for a dinner. Unfortunately we had to find our own transport, lodging and to claim the vacation days. I'm burning almost all my days for Ghana so I passed on it. Besides, it is a full day of travel on a dusty, pothole filled road. Anyways, the remaining PCVs here got together in the town and went around and did our own gorging on our favorite Liberian foods: fat cakes, sour milk (yogurt), fried plantains and picked up some supplies for the campfires in the evening. The remaining roommate and I made a bonfire, boiled some hot chocolate and cut up the pumpkin and threw it into the coals (wrapped in tinfoil + adding some sugar and cinnamon) and singing Christmas carols.

One of my sitemates needs to get on the computer to do some Skype, so I need to cut this off. Will update this tomorrow morning with the extension school graduation. It is a story in and of itself.

Take care ya'll!

some pics - will update it later