Early June 2012

Early June 2012

I made PICKLES!!!!! And yes! I’m /that/ excited over them. You come live in the Liberian bush with no ground beef or cheese for as long as I have and you’d get excited over pickles too. I love pickles but I wasn’t a huge fan of them, but when I can’t get the burger, sesame seed bun, or cheese, I’ll take the pickle. Nora was the first to fix pickles last November. I picked her brain. Turns out all you need are: jar, vinegar, salt, and cucumbers. Extras can include: mustard, dill, garlic, and peppers. And so I have made garlic pepper pickles (hot but so yummy), garlic pickled radishes, pepper dill, garlic mustard pickles, and the triple combo garlic pepper dill pickles. I may have too much free time but it’s a delicious way to spend time. The waiting three or four weeks for them to complete the pickling process is probably the hardest part…other than the other hard part: trying not to eat them all in one day.

Who ever eats freeze dried food other than astronauts? Answer: me, the peace corps volunteer without a refrigerator. I remember saying how gross freeze dried food is. Statement retracted. I L.O.V.E. The freeze dried ice cream mom mails me, and I'm currently munching on some freeze dried peas while typing and trying to figure out how best to catch you all up on life since my last post was eons ago. (I see an opportunity to drop my mailing address so you can mail me goodies! )

Stephanie Nys
Peace Corps Volunteer
P.O. Box 707
Monrovia, Liberia
West Africa

followed by a short list of things I love: veggies, mushrooms, ice cream (all dried), chocolate, beef jerky, chocolate, sunflower seeds, hot chocolate, chips (omg Doritos), cheesy things (ie goldfish crackers), chocolate and the dog says he likes pig ears and chicken treats. I mentioned chocolate right? :)

I think it would be fun to do some kind of montage of my summer, but without uploading capabilities, that really puts a damper on that. I'll do my best to remember...at least the best parts and the very humorous parts.

We (PCVs) held a BBQ at the Doe Palace training center in May. We never actually ended up cooking (cause our fabulous cooking staff was working, and we were busy having fun) but I did make brownies! I don't recommend eating too many too fast, but I will never say that I regret it. Never. Holly also brought her favorite kitten from MoMo's first litter down from Nimba with her. A beautiful white and steal gray kitten with yellow eyes and a orange star design etched around the pupils. After a 'fun' taxi ride back with pretty kitty (who tried savagely to attack me by clawing, biting, and crying) and the little yellow Nissan that kept breaking down, I got her back to my house and swore under my breath for a long time. Forget dainty names I realized soon enough, as I watched her fly all over the house and get her grubby paws into everything, I'm calling this cat Monkey.

There was a rumor that the old market space in my town of Bong Mines would be used to build a Total Gas Station! This made me unbelievably happy. I don't really care much about the gasoline, it's the store's shop that I'm talking about. Snicker bars, M&Ms, Butterfingers, wine, cereal, beer, soy milk, oatmeal glazed cookies as far as the eye can see....so to speak. But all of these luxuries do come at a higher price. There are Totals all over Liberia now: Kakata, Ganta, Tubmanburg, ZorZor, Zwedru and of course there are many in Monrovia. Holly tells me the Kakata Total now stocks cake mix.....CAKE MIX! Ahem, anyways ...I found out the Bong Mines Total was not meant to be (at least nothing has been built in five months) but I did get all fired up about having snickers bars be less than 10 minutes from my house. :) I can still get them in Kakata and bother all my friends who read my blog and love me dearly to mail goodies too. *pokes*

The Health Club headed to the radio station to do our usual segment for Radio Bong Mine 95.5 on Tuesday night. It was a big day for us because we had two girls doing the program and it was a well written skit on Teenage Pregnancy. Precious and Anna were with Health Club Vice Pres, Sunday Matthew. It was Anna's first time ever going on the radio, so she was nervous, but I helped her practice her part and she knew it very well by Tuesday. We started the program with a introduction from Sunday and then he turned the microphone over to the girls to introduce themselves. Precious started first. “Hello radio listeners, my name is Precious Toloe, Treasurer of the Health Club. And this is--” Anna takes a big breath and yells....I mean yells...into the microphone: “MY NAME IS ANNA N. CARMUE.” Takes another deep breath. “AN ACTIVE MEMBER OF THE HEALTH CLUB.” Another breath. “WE ARE HERE TO BRING YOU THE DRAMA: TEENAGE PREGNANCY.” It didn't matter what we all told her during the short breaks in the program....she yelled her way through the whole thing. Sunday and Precious were very mature about the whole thing until we parted ways on the walk home and Anna left our walking party. I have never laughed so much then with those two students in a loong long time. Sunday kept impersonating Anna and I kept trying (not hard at all) to remind them it's better to be too loud than too quiet on the radio. We dropped Precious off to her house and Sunday and I continued on to mine. When we got home, Emmanuel was on my porch with the radio. He had been listening to our program. I said “How was the program?” He said, “It was good.” Sunday said, “Did you hear Anna?” Emmanuel smiled and said, “I think everyone in Bong Mines heard Anna.”