Happy New Year

I’m back! Our vacation trip to Sierra Leone was sooo much fun! Sierra Leone is def a really cool country. I gotta say it’s more developed than Liberia in regards to transportation, city life, places to eat, etc. The beaches are truly beautiful and serene. Aghh I want to go back to the beach! ; )

Pics from Sierra Leone

Relaxing

Durey Beach

We spent a week there because we had to cut our trip short, since the President of Liberia was stopping by to see our library. Yeah. So, we had to come back 4 days earlier than expected. You see, we’ve been fortunate enough to receive a BIG donation of books from LET (Liberian Educational Trust)which was founded by the president herself. Kristin and I have been in charge of putting the library together and it looks awesome now! Our students are enjoying the space and are happy to finally be able to do research and assignments in there. Since our arrival back home, we’ve been super busy also getting ready to receive another important guest Deborah Harding who is president of the LET program, who came all the way from the US to attend the presidents inauguration this coming Monday the 16^th and decided that while she was in Liberia, she could come and check out our library and pay us a visit.

Deborah Harding has been wonderful, because of her we were able to receive a brand new computer, scanner/printer, new generator and BOOKS! It’s been great. Then this weekend I’m getting together with a group of ladies who run Girl programs here in Liberia and was hoping to get some help from them in organizing this little project I’ve been thinking about doing with the girls club here at school. I wanna call it LappaScraps. Basically it’s just making handbags out of pieces of lappa scraps. While I was in Sierra Leone, I bought this awesome bag made out of different lappas and I was like, wow there’s nothing like this back in Liberia… maybe we can do something similar? The lappas here in Africa in general are really beautiful. They’re colorful, elaborate, detailed and fun. Liberia has a lot of tailors because all the women here wear lappa suits and usually the left over lappas are pretty much thrown away. So, how cool would it be to actually make use of them and make purses/bags and quilts out of them and sell it to the public. I haven’t seen any thing like it in Monrovia or anywhere else in Liberia, so why not start something fun with the girls while also giving them a chance to acquire a new skill. Anyways, I thought it was a fun idea, so I’m gonna go for it and see where it goes.

Monday and Tuesday I’ll be attending the Ribbon Cutting ceremony for the grand opening of the new US Embassy in Monrovia. It’s been said that Hilary Clinton will also be attending this event along with Ma Ellen (Liberia’s President). So maybe I can snap a couple of pics of them both : )

Then next week we get a visit from our Country Director along with Carrie Hessler-Radelet, Deputy Director of Peace Corps. They’ll be visiting our site, library and listening to our Peace Corps experience here in Salala.

So far its already been a busy month. I’m sure this New Year will be fun and exciting with good projects our way. There’s so much I wish I could so, but so little time. Take time, I tell myself. Things will take shape as long as I put in the positive attitude and effort.  

Below are pics of the handbags I bought In Sierra Leone, and what can be ideas for the LappaScraps project.