Armed Forces Day

Today the country of Liberia celebrated their Armed Forces Day. What that meant around the house was no school for the children and for LCMI particularly it also meant a couple of soccer matches between the old and new students. For the boys the new students made a good showing, but lost 2-1. I didn’t hear what the score of the girls match was. It was rather funny to see all the guys finish and change and give their uniforms to the girls so they could play. The kids had a great time with a meal that followed.

My morning started out a little quieter until I went to sit outside. I had a great time playing with many of the young kids from the community. Remember Marvelous from Sunday? Well, he was back and I still don’t know his mom. So were Praise and Praises along with Asher and Grace.

I even met a young boy who had the superhero bases covered. From Batman pants to his ninja turtle shirt he was ready for anything. He even had the captain America vibe going with his slippers. He was a little shy at first, but he warmed up fast.

I always enjoy the opportunity to play with little kids. There are plenty to go around. I even got to hold a young one named Success. When they say his name it sounds like they are saying ‘sauces’. His mom just carried him over by me and said, ‘here you go Sauces, sit with Dad Robin’. I sure didn’t mind and neither did Sauces.

I even had time to sit with the ladies and children as they were plucking the palava leaves to make the palava soup for rice. This was truly a group effort to pluck so many leaves for the soup today.

An interesting thing happened to me that began when I was still home. I wanted to get a bunch of T-shirts to wear in Liberia so I went to Walmart, picked out the cheapest ones and bought a bunch of different colors. Well, this actually started on Sunday when I dressed for church. I wanted to have a T-shirt for under my black dress shirt so I grabbed one of my new ones. I held it up and much to my horror I had grabbed a long sleeve black one. My dress shirt was long sleeved so I figured I’d just wear it. Well, it was very hot. I thought at the time I’d just cut the sleeves off, but I forgot until I went to put another T-shirt on. You guessed it. 4 of my new shirts had long sleeves. I tried to wear one today with the sleeves pulled up, but I was not going to handle it. I was speaking to Elizabeth Mulbah, I’ve known her since 2016, and she actually came over to do my laundry. I know what your thinking, how can I make someone do my laundry like that. Well, I ‘hired’ Elizabeth to do my laundry and she graciously accepted, agreeing to come over today. It is a BIG deal to have your laundry done as seen in the pictures.

Back to my T-shirt story…I asked Elizabeth if she’d be willing to cut my shirt sleeves off of the 4 shirts, but everyone just said take them to the tailor. Well, back home I wouldn’t even know where to go, except to ask Kevin’s, Sherry if she would fix them. Anyway, Elizabeth said she would go to the market and get the shirts fixed for me. This I had to see so Elizabeth and I headed off to the nearby market. We walked through the neighborhood and arrived to find a lady named ‘Shilas’ (my best understanding of her name).

Well, Shilas was more than willing to help and Elizabeth negotiated the cost. It came down to $200 for all 4 shirts. Oh, I didn’t mention that is LD (Liberian dollars). The exchange rate is around $170 LD to $1 US. It cost $1.18 US. I did pay her more than the negotiated, but after all I even got matching thread to my 4 different colors. It only took about 30 minutes and we were on our way back home.

When we arrived back to Emmanuel’s I found Abraham and Favor Youndo, our dear friends we met last year, were there and Favor was not feeling well at all. I offered to take her to a clinic tomorrow so she could get checked out. It was all set and we made plans for the morning, except Favor was in quite a bit of pain. She started to cry a little and both me and Emmanuel realized it should be tonight and not wait til morning. Abraham drove with me in the front seat and Favor sitting quietly in the backseat. Being a holiday I wasn’t sure where we were going and after trying a couple of clinics we ended up at Benson Hospital.

Favor was checked over and they determined she has an ulcer. This seems common over here. We picked up her meds and headed back to drop her off at her house to get some rest.

After the hospital visit I came home, ate some supper and then on to my blog. It’s almost 11:00 as I finish. At least the generator is on, even if LEC isn’t, so I’ll have a fan to keep me cooler. I hope everyone back home appreciates the cold. 🤪