'Chop my money'...

…is Monrovia's most popular song at the moment. The list also includes 'Enter my Center', 'Money not Problem’, ‘She do Me’ among others. My new song list on I tunes kind of embodies part of my everyday life in Monrovia: in the office where Brenda (the Minister’s assistant) listens to Akon inspired ‘chop my money’ in full volume that the rickety radio allows… and when the Harvard interns bond with the Columbia SIPA interns at Big Tree, a local bar on 9^th Street, Singkor. (incidentally the incidentally has tasty grilled and slightly smoky chicken, fish and maize).

The last few weeks have been a flurry of random and hilarious moments peppered with hearing President Sirleaf speak at the installation of the Women’s Legislative Caucus in the Legislature and Laymeh Gbowee talk at the graduation of EPAG (Economic Empowerment of Adolescents and Young Girls) at Painsville City Hall. Listening to the witty ‘tough love’ speeches of both these Nobel Peace Prize winners and the feisty atmosphere in the city hall reminded me of my motivation to work with the Ministry of Gender in Liberia. Both events strangely reflected Sunday morning church where pastor (i.e. the speakers) were met with nods and grunts of loud approval and reaffirmation from the audience. Progress of the 5 year strategic plan you ask? Pretty good I would say. Over 50% response rate on the internal MoGD survey that helped us to ‘almost’ finish the capacity assessment report; while we progress on the prioritization of goals and objectives for the strategy report.  

I tried to explore more of Liberia in the last weekends. This includes Robertsport Round II, Kpatawe waterfalls in Gbarnga in Bong country (Gbarnga was Charles Taylor’s base during the civil war when other competing factions held Monrovia). Also managed to watch a couple of movies of the 12 movies-in-a-DVD collection I bought for 70 Liberty (~1USD). 

Some pictures of these varied experiences in my Picasa photo stream!