I participated in my first ever soccer game on sunday. It was so much fun, and we even won 2 - 0.
But back to the beginning of the story. I am in Harper at the moment, and have just come back from a yummy grilled fish dinner down at the port 'restaurant' for our new delegate's arrival, and the departure of my good friend Solange and our head of sub-delegation Jan (who will now be based in Monrovia). So a leaky roof aside (it has been pissing down all night) and a sprint back to the residence in the rain, but some good French company for dinner from our good friends from Solidarites (another water/sanitation NGO), we had a few beers and a good night.
I spent the last 2 weeks in the field in the county of Grand Kru, working with my Field OFficer, two hygiene promotion contractors, and our 4 Liberian Red Cross National Society volunteeers. I have been accompanying them and participating in their activities where they run hygiene promotion sessions with the community and meet with the water committees that manage (or are supposed to!) the pumps we build in their communities. Not always successful, but the idea is that in the long term they need to be able to manage the infrastructure themselves and not rely on ICRC when a little rubber seal breaks inside their pump, because they don't know how to fix it.
I really enjoyed my time in the field, it was great to get out in the countryside and be involved in the field activities we do. Its very depressing and unmotivating being stuck in the office in Monrovia.
Ok back to soccer now. A Liberian friend of mine, Roland, one of our security guards, has been trying to start a football club for a while now, and he approached me to be the sponsor. So, I agreed, this being a good cause - I can contribute to something beneficial for a heap of kids! As sponsor I agreed to buy them one set of uniforms for the junior team, and they have to put the money together for the senior team, both of which I would organise from Monrovia. So I went and bought the first set of blue and yellow jerseys, and sent them to Harper, only to find on my return visit that they had named themselves "Jacqui Football Club", come up with a logo, and printed it on all their jerseys, not to mention the JFC t-shirts with my name blazened across the front. Hilarious.
And so I went to watch them play their first game in uniform two sundays ago. And, perhaps buoyed by my presence (actuallly I think it was the jerseys... yes, that is definitely the reason! I think their awesome coordinated presence was a bit intimidating for the opposition!) they managed to kick ass and win 5-0.
And then I also discovered that an ICRC soccer team had been in training for the past few weeks in order to take on a challenge from the CivPol crew who also had assembled team. Not only this, but I was told on my return from the field (the day before the game) that I would be required to participate in this illustrious match, because CivPol would not play unless we had equal female representation on the field. Not withstanding the fact that I have never played soccer in my life, and don't even know all the rules, I agreed to play. I've been telling myself I should learn to play while I'm here anyway.
So we rocked up to the 'stadium' (use this word tentatively... it's a dusty field with a broken down grandstand in the middle of nowhere) to play, and about an hour after we were supposed to start the match, they turned up and we actually did start (a good illustration of 'Africa time'). None of their females turned up, and our security guard Patience and I were the only participating females, but we didn't care. We just wanted to play.
We had also had trouble finding some soccer jerseys...so Jacqui FC to the rescue! It was quite hilarious to be part of a team with my name on the front. I managed to be on the field for about 25 minutes, not bad considering we had about 2 1/2 teams worth of players. While the ball tended to be on the other wing for most of the time, I was still able to get in there and have a go. Let's just say I was crap, but had a blast, and leave it there :)
We even managed to score 2 goals, and beat the CivPol team who were spearheaded by a Yankee with the unfortunate but VERY appropriate name of Philip Schmucker (and true to his name, he was an absolute schmuck!). So sticking the boot into him was extremely satisfying, and not dampened at all by the fact that afterwards he claimed that we cheated because we had too many more local players than expats (difficult to avoid considering there are only 4 ICRC expats living permanently here, plus a couple of ring-ins like myself!). So all in all, it was a great day, not to mention a good team building exercise that has been talked about all week at the compound.
Tomorrow after work, Solange and I will be taking a canoe trip up the river here, to check out the mangroves and the general river environment. Harper is so beautiful and I am trying to see more of it. By canoe sounds even better!
I am looking forward to the weekend as Solange will be staying with me in Monrovia. Together with a couple of other expats we have lots of plans including a cocktail night, 8-ball, a little road trip to Buchanan, shopping in the market and downtown (we REALLY need to eat some salad after a diet of rice, pasta, pineapple, cucumbers, tinned tomatoes and palm oil here in Harper - our cook is trying hard but the fresh produce available here is very limited to, well, rice, pineapple, palm oil and cucumbers).
In April in Zwedru, the poor UN had a plane crash. The plane went off the edge of the runway and, as a result of its wheels becoming broken and causing the plane to become unbalanced, one of its wing tips got totally ripped off. Kinda paints an accurate picture of the difficulties of travelling in Liberia! The roads are so shite that planes are essential for our movements around the country.
Speaking of plane crashes, our RED plane had its own altercation last week, where it landed, not so spectacularly, in Zwedru (I think that place is cursed!) and the propellor hit the ground, wrenching one of the blades off which sheared the front end of the cabin (luckily no-one was hurt!). The engine got severely damaged and now we have no plane, and so are relying on the UN plane (a non-broken one) to ferry us around. I was supposed to leave for Monrovia yesterday but because of the plane situation I am waiting til Friday. Apparently we have a scary, one-engine plane coming to shuttle us around, but I don't like the sound of that. Ahhh ... life in Liberia!
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