Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Go Ghana Go

Shout out to our buddy Rio, a Liberian student of Public Administration who's stuck at home studying for an Accounting test tomorrow. He may be the only person on the African continent who's not looking for a TV to watch the Ghana-Brazil match today, and that includes the President of Liberia, who made a public pronouncement that she was taking an early day to catch the game.

About half an hour ago, I witnessed a group of older guys in downtown Monrovia screaming at a kid who was dumb enough to try to sell Brazil jerseys door-to-door. Their allegiance will change if Ghana loses, but for now, this 25% of the world's population stands firmly behind their Black Stars.

5 Comments:

Blogger beckler said...

More questions for you:

So I'm reading this novel set in Liberia in the 70's and 80's (The Darling, Russell Banks, not that good) and there is a big plot point involving the chimps and a fictional chimp sanctuary that is, ahem, brought down by the war. Now I know that during war any idea of wildlife conservation goes out the window (e.g. gorillas in Rwanda), so I was wondering if you know the state of the chimp population in Liberia, and as a larger question, just the state of the environment in general. How much of the country is intact jungle? Are there any conservation groups with a presence there?

Go Ghana!

6:14 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

It was about 50/50 here in the Bay Area. A lot of us wanted to see the underdogs win.

chrisf

6:44 PM  
Blogger Josh Nice said...

the darling is a great book! stick it out.

apparently there is a primate center here, much like the one in the book, for drug research. can't confirm it. "out by the airport". someone told me there's no real primate shelter, like there are in other countries.

too bad b/c i went to the thai restaurant the other day and there was a baby chimp there, one of the most interesting and humbling things i have ever seen. (notwithstanding that it shit all over my friend's shirt.)

went to the beach the next day and a kid had some other kind of primate on a rope, much smaller, black with a long white tail. the animal was totally miserable, but at that point you can't really send them back into the wild. he was selling for $65.

today i saw a small grey monkey tied to a table in the yard of an auto shop.

LOTS of the country is intact forest. logging is (or will be again) a huge industry, but liberia is in much better shape than its neighbors, judging from satellite pics i saw.

there are lots of conservation groups with their eyes on liberia, and some local ones. local enviros had a big role in taking down Taylor, forcing timber sanctions that put an end to his funding.

10:06 PM  
Blogger beckler said...

yeah, the Darling isn't bad, but I like other R. Banks books a lot better. I don't think he can write from a woman's viewpoint very well. That's cheering news about the forests (so it's more forest than jungle?).

I was checking out the website for Liberia Environmental Watch, and I clicked on the "about us" toolbar and there's a strange sound sample. None of the other links seem to contain sound. Check it out:
http://www.liberiaenvironmentalwatch.org/aboutus.htm

10:38 PM  
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6:36 PM  

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