Liberia: Day 1

First of all, welcome to my blog.

Second of all, I'm in Liberia!

Today was my first full day here. I came as part of a team from Global Food & Nutrition, which is the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute's food aid consultant. ASMI is partnering with Samaritan's Purse on a canned herring food aid pilot program, which I am here to help set up, and document through writing, photos, and video. The pilot project will be introducing wild Alaskan canned herring in some of SP's programs. The State of Alaska donated an entire container of canned herring to SP. Ocean Beauty provided the facility to process and can the herring. This is truly an Alaskan public-private partnership that reaches around the globe, all the way to West Africa.

Ever wondered what 69,000 cans of herring looks like?I was shown around the compound SP inhabits, and saw it with mine own eyes (I will post photos later).They were loading some of the cans into a truck to take on a 10-15 hour drive up to Foya, which is "upcountry" from us in Monrovia, and a site of our food aid program. It was amazing to see these boxes that said, CANNED HERRING DONATED BY THE STATE OF ALASKA in huge stacks in a Liberian warehouse. I've never been herring fishing, (and sorry if this is TMI) but the story goes that I was conceived while my parents were on a herring trip in Kodiak- so in a way it feels personal to distribute this fish here.

I ate a delicious lunch at a Lebanese restaurant, swam in the sea and the pool, and then went back to the SP compound for dinner.

Some SP folks had bought a fat, shiny, yellow-fin tuna off the street that day, and were cooking it in banana leaves and hot coals on the beach. A group of about four Liberian kids gathered around the cooking area, offering tips on how to heat up the coals, and asking us questions. One kid said to us, ""Liberia is a free country! You can do anything you want! You do somethin wrong, you a sinnah, the cops no get you in trouble. You give them a dollah, you go free!" He also said to me, "Lemme tell you somethin' in yo eeyah, woman." Gets up in my ear. "I want you to give me food, because my stomach is too empty." His friend was tugging his at shirt looking sheepish, telling him to sit down. I said that I couldn't, and got kind of numb realizing how much I take my daily food for granted, how much food I have access to all the time, and basically felt awful. Sigh.

All in all, I'm loving Liberia. It is exciting, thought-provoking, emotion-provoking, and sensory. My co-workers/bosses Nina and Paul arrive tomorrow, and we will start work on Monday.