Thankful

I know I have a lot of entries to catch up on, but I have to write this one now.  Yesterday afternoon I came back to Monrovia after a week in Senegal. I LOVED DAKAR!!! I think I would have liked it before living in Liberia, but I was very impressed with it this trip. I was there for a Food Aid Commodities Management Workshop and flew there with a co-worker. We got to the airport in Monrovia at 7:30 a.m. on Saturday morning and arrived in Dakar on Monday morning at 2:30 a.m. …Yes, I was a little bitter it that I could have been in the States in the time it took me to arrive in a city two countries away. But, that bitterness melted away when we were picked up by the hotel shuttle and started driving to our hotel on multi-lane paved roads with street lights!!! I hadn’t seen those in months! It was about a 20 minute drive to the hotel, a four star hotel, Radisson Blu. I walked in the lobby and I was like, “oh nice.” I walked into my room, screamed a scream of happiness and dove on the bed – a king sized bed with 3 down pillows and a duvet!

The week only got better from there. Dakar is large, isn’t humid or crowded like Monrovia, has a lot of restaurants, cafes, bars, stores for shopping, grocery stores like I’m used to in the US, even a mall! You see people jogging and walking for exercise. It has gyms with aerobics, yoga and spin classes! There are toilets everywhere – stores, restaurants, random tourist places. The internet is faster. The food was delicious and I ate all kinds of things! It was so nice to have a variety of food!! Senegal is a French speaking nation and heavily French influenced, so there were all kinds of delightful French pastries, good breads and cheeses, yogurts and fruits. It’s on the coast so the fish was really tasty. I also had real ice cream, a milkshake, good coffee and gelato! A few days after the workshop was done for the day, I sat outside by the hotel pool/bar and just watched the ocean, enjoying the smell and feel of the ocean breeze.

So, you might imagine there was quite a bit of culture shock when I came back to Liberia. It was the first time since I’ve been here when I was like, “I want to go home now.” I had been in the airport in Dakar since 9:00 the night before and got into Liberia at 2:30 p.m., so I was pretty tired. The immigration officer didn’t want to let me in and then he wanted to keep my passport, but I finally talked him into letting both me and my passport in the country (without bribing him!). I was thankful to see the driver waiting outside to take me home. It takes an hour to drive from the airport to Monrovia. On the drive on the two lane road, we went through some forest, passed a lot of shacks, and there were no street lights or nice buildings. When I got to my apartment, the broken fridge which the apartment manager promised would be taken care of was still there and so were a bunch of other problems. It was at that moment when I questioned why exactly I was living in Monrovia. I wished I could go over a friend’s apartment to talk about it and feel better, but over half the friends that I’ve made here have left because they’re assignments were up. (Liberia is the kind of place that people don’t usually stay in for a long time.)  I was so discouraged I even cried a little bit.

I was drying my tears when boyfriend called me – on my cell phone which is not cheap! – just to see how I was doing and if I was safely back in Monrovia. He could tell from my voice something was wrong and he asked, “Are you doing ok?” I was like, “No! Why did I come here?!?” He then proceeded to remind me of all the things I’d told him the past few weeks about how happy and thankful I was to be here, to have a job doing what I want to do and studied in school and how I feel like I am exactly where God wants me to be. We talked a little more and I felt comforted, took a shower and went to sleep.

The next morning I was a little sad because I didn’t sleep as well in my bed as I did in the bed at the Radisson Blu. I tried to make myself some breakfast, but my stove wasn’t working L so I ate a granola bar instead and got ready for work. At work, I was greeted by a spider the size of my hand on the wall and several things that were supposed to be taken care of last week weren’t. All those things added up in my mind and I ached for the goodness of the Radisson Blu and the comforts of Dakar. I almost wanted to cry again. Instead, I posted my feelings on facebook and tried to get some work done.

This brings me to the reason I need to post today - because friends reached out to me to find out what was wrong and to encourage me. I don’t know if they’d want me to  put their names in here, so I won’t, but I really appreciate everyone who sent me an encouraging message, reminded me that this is part of working abroad, told me to hang in there, etc. Some people even shared their own “this is a story of when I felt the same way when I lived in __.”

I feel so thankful for the love, support and encouragement of my boyfriend and friends! I really feel better about everything and am once again glad to be here… though I do miss the delicious food of Senegal… and the fast internet.  Ha – but seriously, it was really special to me that people cared enough to reach out to me, even though I’m not even on the same continent.