Spreekt u Nederlands?

And the answer to that is no, I don’t speak Dutch. However, this past Sunday I rode into Monrovia with 8 Dutchies (as they call themselves) to meet up with another Hollander and her Liberian husband at their home. My friend Daniel said I was about to get a crash course in Dutch. I spent most of the ride over hearing Dutch in the background as I talked with Machiel—learning a bit more about him (like how to say his name properly) and Holland. While we were at Mabbu and Anneke’s home (Daniel’s friends) everyone mostly spoke English. When they did lapse into Dutch, Daniel was good to translate for me. Mabbu works with water sanitization and digging wells. Together they work with some of the poorest kids in the area to help them get into schools or at least keep up with learning and doing holiday celebrations for them. When we got to their home there was a roomful of children playing games, coloring and reading books. (of course this was my favorite part getting to hang out with the kids). Mabbu cooked some seriously yummy rice and stew for us. The last few minutes of our visit, we walked down to the beach and got our feet wet as we watched the sunset. (well, I got a little more than my feet wet, eh?)

To top of the trip, I was bitten by something just as we were leaving. Similar to a fire ant bite at home so guessing a cousin or such. Except that I have 9 bites on one toe, 2 on another, 1 on my instep and 3 on the outer side of my other foot. My one toe was quite red and swollen but that is subsiding as the blisters go down.

My friend Ben gave me a bit of a treat before he left to go home a few weeks ago. They needed to switch out the rescue boats to check the work he had been doing. So I got to ride in 2 of the rescue boats. The boats are on deck 7 and let down into the water by a crane. We were on the boat as it was let down and had to use the oars to make sure we didn’t hit anything as we went down. Then it was off for what was supposed to be a short trip. Two hours later, (because of some crane work on deck 8) we switched to the other boat and ran it a few minutes and then rode the boat as the crane pulled it up. It was nice to get out on the water and to go out to the landbreak . Below are a few pics from the trip…Ben steering, me steering and Trevor holding up something we found in the water…you find the strangest things in the water here!