School Parades and Rain

So here's a picture. (More are in my Picasa album, linked to the right), though I still haven't really spent time to get any very good pictures.

I load this one mainly because it's the view from my office window. Except that there's not always a school parade going by with cheerleaders and honor court, only twice so far - averaging once per week. Behind the parade is a furniture shop where they carve out and assemble chairs and bedframes by hand.

The parades seem a big half-hearted, admittedly, although the cheerleading groups and few band members are more animated than many of the students just walking along behind with their teachers. It's hot to go walking down the open road on a sunny day, after all, and traffic doesn't stop, just merges into the other lane and goes right past the parade. (which is only another poor excuse for the quality of my other pictures).

Anyhow, I'll keep a tally of school parades, apparently every school in Monrovia has one on the anniversary of its founding. I'm also

In national news, the border crossing with Sierra Leone officially re-opened over the Mano River bridge called Bo Waterside. It's supposedly the first traffic over the principal road link between the two countries in four years.

Of course the Liberians I working with on forestry issues (from Green Advocates, Conservation International, the Forestry Development Authority) tell me, unsurprisingly, that upcountry there are plenty of border communities where clans and extended families live on either side of the River and routinely cross for football games and social gatherings with little or no sense of it as a national border. (I suppose that sense of an informal border might or might not give an interesting understanding to the accusations of cross-border traffic in arms and diamonds to support insurgency in Sierra Leone.)

Hope to get out of Monrovia myself soon and travel through some smaller communities and forest country. Since I'm quickly meeting UN staff all around town I may be able to hitch onto an excursion to Sapo National Park or elsewhere in parts of the forest country that tend to be inaccessible in the rainy season.

If no rain tomorrow, I'll hope to spend it at the beach, but heavy rain the last few days has not immediately inspired sitting outside. It does, however, cut the sun and make the temperatures must easier to bear.