Not So Warm Monrovia Welcome
[Everyone - my apologies for my long absence. The post below was written on June 19th (Happy Birthday Len) and here it is, July 13th and I finally have internet to post. Yes the internet connection to the apartment was down for a week. When they fixed that they found out that my router was fried (as was my DVD player). As I was talking with our tech folks about alternatives or just ordering a new router (or 2) from Amazon, they told me about a big 4G rollout. Well it's finally in, I have a netspot that won't get fried during lightening storms, and that seems to do the job. Speeds are nowhere near 4G, but faster than I was getting in my apartment. And my new DVD player arrived yesterday. It's been a long transition back. I spelled out the game plan below and I'm sticking to it (kinda like Spain - THE EUROPEAN CUP CHAMPIONS!!!). You'll get the rest of Zanzibar and updates on life in Monrovia. Now let's hope I don't use more than 3G per month on my cellular data plan!]
Well, I’m back in Monrovia. It only took about 10 paces off the airplane for me to wish I was back in Tanzania. At that point it was only the sweltering humidity that made my wishes. I’d been up since 1:00 am Tanzania time (10:00 pm the night before Monrovia time) to get to the Dar Es Salaam airport in time to catch my flight to Nairobi and then to Monrovia via Accra. Face it, it was a long day and to walk into an open-tarmac steam room wasn’t my idea of a welcome home. Then I arrived home.
As background, generally my apartment gets its power from the old embassy compound. That’s generally, because when there’s an interruption in power, we’ve got a big generator that kicks on. Electricity - great idea! Well, when we pulled up after the hour-long car ride from the airport, I could hear the generator blasting away. Oh, did I forget to tell you that the generator is located not more than 20 feet from my living room window? Well, I entered my apartment and you could tell the generator had been running. Apparently running a very long time (I later found out since the previous Tuesday). So my living room stinks and there’s this constant drone and . . . both my internet and my tv are out. I’m wiped anyway so I crash almost immediately for nearly 11 hours of sleep.
Friday for lunch I ate an overly greasy Indian okra dish that my stomach decided was not the best thing for me. By Sunday, I still really didn’t feel like eating anything of substance, so after doing laundry, I went to work to catch up on e-mail. Mind you, I wasn’t really doing any e-mail, just getting rid of the junk (well, nothing from USAID is “junk” but a lot of it is non-essential). That only took me just over 2 - 1/2 hours. I guess that’s the price you pay for living it up in Tanzania. I made it back from the office just in time for the storms to start. Did I tell you it rains here? Forget cats and dogs, I’m talking elephants and hippos! And I’m convinced that Zeus has decided to locate a lightening plant somewhere around here, because it’s so plentiful and powerful it must be dirt cheap and locally made!
One thing I can say, rain helps me sleep, even if every so often I get waken up by a really big boom (none of which were confused with a car bomb boom, which is a good thing). By Monday morning the rains . . . had not stopped. (I asked the guard downstairs how long the rain would last. He replied, “Well, there are times where we have a 7-day rain, this looks only like it’s a 1-day rain, it’s not hard enough to last.”) So after getting ready for work, and looking at the downpour outside, I decided I couldn’t wait any longer before heading to the office. So I took my pants and shoes off, put them in my backpack, put on my rain pants and tevas and walked to work in a downpour. My lower half was soaked, but since it was rain gear and skin, it didn’t matter. I’d made the right choice. At work, my pants and shoes (don’t forget the socks too) were dry and comfortable.
At work I came to find out that over the past week the old embassy compound’s transformer was hit by lightening, the Cellcom internet link for the entire area was hit by lightening, and the downlink for the local area internet services had been hit by lightening - all were toasted, all on different nights.
So here it is Tuesday night, my internet is still down, I think my dvd player got fried, the living room still stinks, the generator is still droning in the background and the longer I sit out here, the worse my headache gets. Oh yeah, and my stomach still doesn’t feel any better. Nothing much has changed. I really miss Tanzania.
So on that note, the next few postings will be continuations of my trip to Tanzania. Though I can’t promise you when you’ll see them because as I’ve said, my internet is still down!