Please forgive the lag!

Hi folks, Renita here, filling in for Bob, who is doing some work in a village called Koons Town, a few hours northeast of Monrovia.

It has not been easy getting online this week. Our goal is to post a blog entry at least once a week, and we aim for Monday, so for those of you who check in weekly, you may have wondered where we were. It turns out Monday was “Easter Monday” around here, a non official holiday where half the population plays hooky from work. The internet café we usually go to was closed. Then Tuesday the café was closed again, this time due to generator problems.

Just as a reminder, the internet situation in Liberia is that except for Monrovia, there really is no internet. In the city, one can get wireless receiver set up in home, but we live outside the wireless area. This means a three mile drive three times a week to the internet café where we send pre-composed emails, get email, and do any internet work we need to. The limited availability of the internet means are not on for more than a couple hours a week, and the kids are almost never on.

Anyway, Bob is gone today, and he’s the guy who’s in charge of the blog. So you’ll have to wait for the entry he was planning to post, but he asked me to at least write and tell you what’s going on with the lag.

I was planning on posting some before and after pictures of the playground that has recently been completed in Norm Katerberg's memory, but after going to three internet cafes and finding them all closed, and finally finding a fourth, I have tried to upload the pictures for the past 90 minutes only to have it fail again, and so I am going to stop trying. I am so thankful to Bob not only for his creativity and commitment to writing this blog every week, but also for the patience he has in working with the Internet in Liberia!