Am I There Yet?

I think Liberia’s starting to depress me. I’ve embarked on a serious effort over my remaining four weeks to do the things that make me happy: yoga, sleep, read, eat healthy. Slipping on all of those fronts has definitely contributed to my general gloom. But I think what’s really precipitating it are the incessant grey skies. It rains every day here. This girl needs some sunshine.

At the same time though I’m settling in here more and more every week, particularly on the social side. Outside of my fellow interns and housemates, there are a handful of people who live here who I naturally gravitate towards:

• Robtel is a native Liberian who grew up in the US and Europe and came back two years ago as a Scott Fellow. She’s into yoga and so we practice together at her house after work on Mondays and Wednesdays. Her aunt makes amazing clothes and she’s going to make some dresses form with African fabric. Get ready for bright colors!

• Andrew: Andrew’s another intern, but based on our text volumes alone, it’s hard to argue he’s not one of my closest friends here. I know him through a classmate from Harvard; they worked together in India. He’s super into surfing (and actually brought three boards with him!) and he’s responsible for connecting me to the surfing crew here.

• Ellie and Nate: I love these two. They recently moved here from New York and are setting up an NGO here. They spend every weekend up in Robertsport surfing. Ellie also teaches yoga, so we instantly bonded. I can’t wait to head back to Robertsport this weekend with them!

• Heidi and Nicholai: Nicholai’s the guy behind the surfing documentary Sliding Liberia that I’m overdue to post about. He’s getting a PhD from Stanford in political science, and he’s here working on his dissertation on how rebel groups form. His girlfriend Heidi is working here for the Clinton Foundation and we get along great. She used to live two blocks away from Max and me in San Francisco! Hopefully she’ll come with us to Burning Man next year.

I’ll definitely miss the times with them, but being here does make me realize how happy San Francisco, makes me. It just fits.