second week

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The internet has been down at the cafe here on camp, so haven't had the chance to update my blog. It has been a very slow week, almost like a holiday! On tuesday it was one of the volunteers birthday, then he was leaving the next day which was another volunteers birthday, so there were big celebrations on tuesday night. We walked through the village around 7pm, after our peace cell meeting, and stopped off at the local store to get plenty plenty beer and this homemade spirit called apatashi. We had warned Emma, the owner of the shop to prepare for a big buy and she had everyone chilling in the fridge. The start of the party was very mellow, all the PCO staff has come to wish Eric farewell and we had formal speeches etc. Around 10pm, when they left the party got vrey westernised, in the sense that alcohol was consumed and the games begun. Overall it was a great night, I wont go into details but it was very funny and we will have video footage of our drunken antics in a month or so.
The next morning was not so fun, after a couple of hours sleep I dragged myself to the school to teach my morning class. How I survived it I dont know, but as soon as the kids left, I fell asleep on the desk until the other volunteers came to get me and we went for lunch. That afternoon, we were all back at the guesthouse recovering, as the peace cell meetings had been cancelled for the rest of the week, due to flag day on thursday.
Flag day is the celebration of the day August 24th, 1947 when Liberia invented their own flag (its nearly the same as the american flag). Its not independence day, thats july 21st, just the birth of the flag. there was a huge parade in the morning, around one of the football pitches, with all the classes and groups parading around. We then followed them through the camp, getting trampled amongst the 20,000 odd people in the crowd. We had lunch and then I headed back to the guesthouse, after much procrastination, to commence the 25 page report that is required to summarise and analyse all the peace cell meetings from July. It is agonising and endless and I very much doubt it is read properly by PCO but its formal and neccessary I am told so I have no choice.
After that I joined the others on mattresses outside and we made the most of our 3 day holiday and relaxed. I've been a bit ill lately, chest problems that im sure are nothing and it seemed to reach its worst last night, but this morning I feel better so i think im recovering. Iv ruled out malaria as the symptoms arent of that so thats all that matters really.
I am about to go to the school again this morning, hopefully with another volunteer so we have the teaching capacity to divide the class into 2 which should enable us to teach more efficiently. we have a meeting at 11am with the peace cell staff and all the zone leaders, to dicuss next months topic, a workshop we are having next week to train the zone leaders and just thoughts and opinions in general can be discussed. Tomorrow we are all going to a beach town called Kokrabite to celebrate the others last weekend, so as of next week there will just be 4 volunteers as oposed to the 12 we have had this past week, will be very strange.
if any of you have emailed and i havent replied, im having great difficulty opening the emails themselves, I can only see who has emailed and the subject, as soon as its possible, i will write back.
will write again on monday, after our big weekend!

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