Sickish

Dearest Friends. I have been sick. Oh doctor, have I been sick. We’re talking passed out on the bathroom floor, not eating for three days, cold sweats, body aching type of sick. I watched the Brazil-France game but did so with the sound off, all the chatter was too much for my poor little mind to take. Despite my delirium it was clear to me that France won that game, fair and square. They outplayed the opponent. No question. My analysis of my sickness is, in the end, equally terse: food poisoning. After an exhaustive investigation I can conclude that there was no greasy streetfood or uncooked chicken involved but, rather, some noodles I bought from the store. Ce la vie – I now feel a lot better.

So good, in fact, that I will employ this absolutely perfect segue into answering Charles’ question in the comment section about Liberian food. I have it about twice or three times a week, usually from a little café around the corner where the hygiene standard is ok. As a general rule it comes with rice. No telling what type of rice – white, vegetable rice, vegetable and meat fried rice, etc – but it will be rice. To this there is either fish (head, skin, bone and all), chicken, fish in cassava leaves (tastes sort of like Spinach) or Palm Butter. When you ask the Liberian waiter what’s available they will, without fail, leave out the Palm Butter dish. There’s also a pumpkin and fish dish that is supposed to be incredible that I haven’t tried yet. Since you are white it is assumed that you won’t like it. I think it’s just an acquired taste but must admit that it is a pretty odd taste. Incredibly oily. I have stayed away from the street foods so far because it seems like a huge gamble to me. It comes in a number of different incarnations. Young guys roll wooden carts that have a cartoon style animal’s head painted on its side to indicate what’s in it (either goat or cow). A number of women carry huge plastic jars on their heads and set them down, give you a toothpick for 5 Liberian Dollars, let you fish out a piece of meat out of the jar, and then move on. I always meet the same guy walking to work who also solicits to passers-by. He yells out something completely unintelligible [‘baaah-loo-weeeeh’] but sells hot dog buns, which, bizarrely, smell exactly like the factory close to my old Junior High in Sweden (Korvbrödsbagaren i Lillåns industriområde). I have figured out that ‘meeee-pah, meee-pah, meee-pah’ (three quick hollers in succession) is a quick announcement that the carrier is selling meat pies, but what the bread man yells is still unclear. There’s also a number of people with coolers filled with plastic bags of water or eggs or whatever. To get there attention you yell 'cooolah' and, again, shell out 5LBD for a bag of whatever it is you need.

As an aside, it’s worth mentioning that the 5 LBD bill is actually a problem here since there are no smaller bills and no coins whatsoever. This means that nothing is cheaper than 5LBD, something that inflates prices and encourages bartering. Not bad, per se, I guess, but it complicates an urban economy where it’s not always easy to find something to barter with.

Let’s take a break here, look at two pictures and then deal with some “housekeeping” issues:

That's the buliding where I work. With some pigs in the foreground.

That's my room. If you need to know any of the effects and angles I used on this picture let me know. It took me a pretty long time to get the light right. I extended what we in Sweden call the 'slutartid' to really capture the essence of the room. Quiet proud of this one.

Housekeeping:
First, a concern. Am I alienating all my Swedish homies by all this American-talk? It’s not my intention. Please register any complaints you may have in the guestbook. I want everyone to be on board. There should be no elitism on this board.

Second, E-X-T-R-E-M-E-L-Y important information: Anyone in Europe must make their way to Club Satin, Örebro, Sweden on August 19th for the official release party of the new Skuggan av Svampen CD. I promise you, this will be one for the ages. We already have a contingent of people coming from across the Atlantic for this show (so far, Matt and MB. Lewis, I’m counting on you as well). We will have limited time to rehearse but that is of less importance. What IS important on the other hand is that we will tear the roof off that place in terms of energy and stuff. All the songs were recorded at some point during the last 4 years or so and (at times) of varying quality. There are a couple of gems in there though that I actually genuinely like. It would mean a lot to me if people could show up, get drunk and get rowdy.

Now, back to Liberia. As you can imagine, the past weekend has left me a bit disgruntled. On top of the sickness, I spent 15 hours at work on Wednesday and Thursday, which for the lawyers reading this (Rajiv, Anita…) is a walk in the park I’m sure, but for me it has been pretty torturous. We’ve been finalizing a report on Liberia’s Transition Framework. The framework was created in the aftermath of the 2003 Accra peace accord (at the Liberia Reconstruction Conference in February 2004 to be more specific) to streamline the humanitarian effort from the government perspective. The idea was that all actors in the country would align their efforts with this framework to smooth out redundancies and coordinate their work. When Ellen came to power early this year, this framework was replaced by the ‘150 Day Plan’. The most bombastic claim of the plan promised electricity to parts of the city (3%) by Liberian Independence Day, July 26th. This will not happen. The electrical posts have arrived – curiously logs were imported from Ghana, despite the fact that Liberia is extremely rich in timber – and one, at least, has been ceremonially plonked down into the ground by Ellen. The 150 Day plan will now give way to an Interim Poverty Reduction Strategy which is a World Bank-created program, which seeks to move Liberia from the humanitarian phase to the development phase. I’ve written chapter 3 in the paper, which covers the civil society consultations = local organizations, student groups, representatives from the business community, youth groups, women’s groups, etc. Interesting stuff, but also frustrating. I’ll save the details for later.

Next up is a huge treaty workshop that I’m actually looking forward to a lot. We have experts coming in from New York City to brief the legislature (parliament) on the implications of the over 100(!!!) treaty actions Liberia undertook last year. I will have to tell the background story in person as well (the internet has ears) but it is really incredible. Basically, they took all these actions in one day last year, and some of them are literally from before the League of Nations and World War 1. Now, a year later the legislature needs to know what this all will mean for national legislation, ratification and the rest. We can thank our lucky star that Liberia has finally joined the civilized group of countries who have accepted the amendments to the Agreement for the Suppression of the Circulation of Obscene Publications – signed in Paris, on 4 May 1910. Progress!

Later yo!
Yours forever,

Marcus

Last minute edit: I’ve figured out what the wheelbarrow-guy yells. “Barley Bread.”