Liberian Holidays and Bobby’s Bday

Happy belated Liberian and American Thanksgiving, plus hope you had a good William V.S. Tubman’s Birthday!

Those were the three holidays that we celebrated since we wrote you last. For Liberian Thanksgiving (first Thursday in November), we had a “normal” day playing Spikeball with Therese’s school friends, and hanging out at the local guest house. We even splurged on some pizza and swimming in the pool.

The nice guest house by our home is called Jackie’s, and the entity that owns it also runs the Nimba county power grid and local bag water company. Jackie’s has a nice pool, American food, and a mini-mart that sells ice cream—everything you need to celebrate here in Liberia.

The usually soccer oriented Liberians have really been picking up Spikeball quickly. Therese’s co-worker Mark keeps asking when we can play next.

For American Thanksgiving and Tubman’s Birthday (longest serving Liberian president), we spent our time back at the Peace Corps training center (Doe Palace) in Kakata. Peace Corps wanted to have us check in after our first three months in our new homes and combined that with a training on how to apply for grants. A nice bonus of coming back to Kakata was being able to see our host family who we lived with during our first 3 months of training.

Another fun event that occurred whilst in Kakata, was Bobby's birthday. Luckily, Doe Palace comes with hot showers (which Bobby REALLY enjoyed), volleyball, and most importantly—an oven.

A Peace Corps volunteer who just went back to the US sent all the volunteers a Christmas care package, which luckily included cake mix. Therese whipped up the cupcakes for all the volunteers to share in celebration of Bobby’s big day.

As soon as we returned back to Ganta, we had no time to rest, as Therese’s school was putting on their graduation for the class of 2024. As an added treat, the house had no water, so Bobby hauled water from the well while Therese washed all the clothes for a total of four hours.

On Therese’s first day back, she was informed that Bobby and her were invited to the party celebrating the graduating class at a local entertainment center (bar). Therese’s counterparts joined us and we were happy to see all the students who persevered through many years of education to achieve their degrees.

In addition to the class party, graduation was on Saturday and we were invited by the class 12 girls to come help prepare food. Usually the current class 12 students help put on the graduation by cooking, decorating, and serving as security and ushers.

Therese’s students were entertained by Bobby coming to cook as most men do not prepare food here in Liberia. We helped to prepare potato greens soup with rice; however, the girls really did the hard work the night before, “slashing” the greens for cooking.

Finally, the big day came for the outgoing seniors and they celebrated with baccalaureate and graduation ceremonies. During formal events, there are always “platform guests” who sit at the front, generally consisting of leaders and special invitees. We got to sit up on the platform with the other teachers, speakers, and administration. The ceremony was pretty similar to an American graduation, except that the handing out of diplomas broke out into celebratory chaos.

In other news, Bobby has been making some new friends. At one of our favorite hardware stores, a worker named David has befriended Bobby and even had him over to his house for some cabbage soup. David is a passionate artist and it was great for Bobby to spend time “lecturing” with him (chatting).

Bobby has also been getting to know his community health assistants (CHAs, or “small doctors”) better. Bobby loved seeing three of his CHAs on a motorbike together enjoying themselves as they headed home from work. We both realized that life here has really normalized for us since three to five people on a small motorbike is pretty standard. Or even better, seeing a toddler riding along on the front of a motorbike with their parent most days. Instead of worrying about the child’s safety, we just commented on how cute the toddler was the other day.

While Bobby was helping out with health trainings, Therese was busy hand-making a large periodic table for her lab. It took several hours, and she had an audience of 30 elementary school children watching her, but it came out pretty good. Don’t judge it too harshly, it was made up of flipchart paper taped together and lots of markers.

Our last tid bit is Therese finally let Bobby cut her hair. She was petrified he would mess up since we cut it on our front porch with children running all about. Also, he has never cut hair.

The kids loved playing with the hair as it fell to the ground. Overall, Therese was happy and is considering letting Bobby even cut her hair when we get back to America.

Please enjoy all the Christmas festivities that we’re missing, including, but not limited to: cookies, snow, ice skating, hot cocoa, and Christmas cocktails.

We wish you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from Liberia. Stay in touch and we’ll hear from you soon! As always, feel free to respond to these emails to say hi!

Faces covered due to privacy reasons. Any photos with faces revealed, expressed consent by person/guardian. The content of this website and blog is Therese Joffre’s and Bobby Housel’s alone and does not reflect the views of the U.S. Government, the Peace Corps, or the Liberian Government.