Monrovia

Monrovia, Liberia
December 6, 2005

I've now had two nights in Monrovia (Liberia). I haven't yet taken on my Project Coordinator responsibilities in the town of Harper - at the moment I'm shadowing a Merlin team which is demonstrating the capabilities and usefulness of Geographic Information Systems. As GIS used to be my gig I'm going to be the national focal person for GIS in the future. We're going to be here until about Monday, when we'll go to Buchanan for several days to develop a GIS demonstration. We return to Monrovia on the 17th and I'll only get to Harper on the 23rd.

This Merlin team consists of Sarah from headquarters and Lynne and Johnny from an NGO called MapAction. They flew here with me and yesterday was our first full day in Liberia. We had meetings in the morning and then had a tour of Monrovia including a visit to one of Merlin's Primary Health Care facilities.

Monrovia reminds me a bit of Freetown, Sierra Leone, although I think it's flatter.