Observations

WATER
Most everyone who does not have clean water available to them drinks it out of individual plastic bags. They just bite a hole and squeeze it into their mouth. Rich people like us, buy it in plastic bottles that pile up like crazy. There are empty plastic bags wherever you look. We wash our dishes in the sink and shower with the water that comes out of the tap, but that is about it.
SCHOOL
School supposedly is free, but from what I understand you have to enter a lottery to try and get in and even then there are costs, like books and uniforms, etc. They attend school for a half of the day, morning or afternoon. Everyone wears uniforms, so as you drive through the city, you see every color, sometimes navy with green or yellow and on and on. The uniform consists of a jumper for girls with a colored blouse and socks and the boys wear dark pants with the shirt being the school color. Everyone is always neat and clean. I don’t know how they do it as the streets they walk in are filthy. They have notebooks that they copy off the board and study from those. Most everything is written on the board with chalk and then learned by rote.
There is also a school for women on the hospital grounds that teaches tie dye, sewing (on treadle machines), soap making, cooking and baking and home decorating. We met a woman there who was taking registration for the next classes offered. Her name is Oretha and she lost both her parents in the war and has no family, but someone had directed her to the Lutheran Church and they paid for her to go to the school for two years. She now teaches some of the classes and is working on learning to read and
WORK
After the mini seminar that Tony and Dave gave to the Maintenance crew the other day, we found out that most of them make $70 a month and many of them have made close to that for the 20 – 30 years that they have worked here. It was a chance to have a grip session which I don’t think happens very often in group setting with their boss sitting among them, but with a least a 70% unemployment rate they pretty much have no choice, as real jobs are few and far between.


Our Days
Depending on our agenda, we can be up and out of the house by 7am. Other days we get up around 7, have breakfast (something made with hot water, juice, cereal, PB,etc.) and head out on our various adventures. Since our lunch is cooked at the Ministry of Health by Margaret, Ghana Boy has to drive through town to pick it up and bring it back, so it can arrive anywhere between 12 – 2. After every meal we wash the dishes (in the water we are afraid to drink) and then hang out or head out depending on our schedule. Then it is back to the house to wait for dinner to arrive, which of course can range anywhere from 6 – 7:30. After dishes, we sit and talk and try to solve the problems of St. Joseph’s or better yet Liberia. As of Sunday, we have started an UNO tournament and that has been a highlight in our evenings.