photos from the guinea border

so i checked off 1/3 of an adventure list item when i popped over into guinea while i was in nimba county for a planning meeting last week. the border gaurds were like, really enthusiastic about chatting in rudimentary french and getting in photos with us, so i guess all's generally quiet on the north-western front. 

this is what i look like after two days of meetings in the world's hottest high school gymnasium

the ducor hotel

 

soooo, this is my practically obligatory-as-expat-new-to-liberia-OMFG I WENT TO THE DUCOR post. nonetheless! friends and I have been so slow at chipping away at the adventure list, that i thought it deserved commemoration. (plus, since i just turned 26, i feel like the window of time where it’s acceptable to post moody photos of abandoned buildings on my livejournal myspace blog, is quickly closing.)

so the deal with the ducor:
built in 1967, it was recognized as one of the finest hotels in west africa (you can check out some glory days photos in this slide show). when samuel doe's government fell in 1989, the ducor closed. as with the rest of the country's infrastructure, over the course of the following fourteen years of civil conflict the building was stripped impressively bare. the shell of the hotel looms over rock hill (my neighborhood) and the dwellings that have crept up the slope to the base of building. it sits at the terminus of broad street, which winds up the other side of the hill to the corrugated metal barricade. although there's a guard to prevent squatters, the people living in the area hang out there during the day; the darkened concrete slabs serve as both clothes line and playground. the guards will very conveniently look the other way, permitting a seven-flight walk up to the roof of the hotel, where you get a full 360 view of the city. it's pretty amazing. a libyan firm bought the place and was going to begin sprucing it up, until ghaddafi's government fell, which, understandably, stopped the project.

more of my photos after the jump and here (along with the national health fair).

aaaaaand we're back (with a list!)

so i've been pretty terrible about this, huh? i'd like to blame the lack of internet here (seriously, i can skype from, like, three places in the whole country), but, yeah....mostly lazy. however, on my full page, single-spaced list of new year's resolutions, "blog more" is on there. it's right between "wash feet before getting into bed" and "remember that waxing belligerent about the use of human terrain teams for an hour while swilling whiskey is not charming cocktail party conversation." i guess i thought "be less gross and socially stunted, as a human individual" lacked a certain concreteness as a resolution.

anyway! so a sub-list of new year's resolutions is my ADVENTURE LIST. i don't like the term bucket list. it's overdone and is inevitably, if irrationally, linked in my mind with a narrow-minded, middle america ethos that the elitist, nomad snob in me disdains, so i'm going with the far more grandiose ADVENTURE LIST. i came up with it, because i think it's really easy to just float in your bubble of comfort in a place like monrovia, and get in a rut. some of the stuff may not be all that interesting or even possible; a lot of these went on the list because i had heard someone mention them once and i sort of thought "yeah, sure, that seems like it's...a thing." nevertheless, hopefully the (attempted) completion of this list will spawn many blog posts that don't have to do with me making snarky criticisms of other development work or getting all existential and live journal-y. behold, the ADVENTURE LIST:

• go up to the roof of the ducor hotel
• go to all three borders (going to all 15 counties seems excessive) 
• find the best beach 
• climb mt. nimba 
• go to the national park 
• go to freetown by bus (12 fun-filled hours) 
• ride a UN chopper 
• learn to cook liberian food 
• immerse myself in nollywood (second most prolific film industry in the world, baby!) 
• master the liberian handshake 
• go fishing and eat what we catch at marlin’s corner 
• go on a tour of the club beer brewery
• Extractive Industries Mega-Tour (see a diamond mine, an iron mine, visit Firestone, pan for gold, etc) 
• finish (er, start) schwab's tribes of liberia (an old school, 600-page treatise on liberia's "tribes")
• learn to curse in at least three indigenous languages 
• learn to wrap a lapa headdress 
• go to a soccer game (i will NOT write "football match")
• CHIMP ISLAND (no joke, there is an island full of former lab chimps. you take a boat out and feed them? i don't even know. frankly, i find this terrifying.)
• as always, floss.