Liberia's hydro

One of my favorite memories of our time in Liberia was the day I joined an Mercy Ships Xtreme Expedition to the remains of Liberia's hydroelectric power station, which had been damaged in the war and then looted in the years since, leaving little more than a concrete shell. 

Despite delays due to the Ebola outbreak, work is now well under way to rebuild the power station, as this photo shows. You can see the remains of the building and the old dam wall in the centre of the photo, and all around are the new roads and dams recently constructed to divert the river whilst the old dam is rebuilt. Exciting times! Olly

Great British Election 2015

My mate Rick and I are representing the Monster Raving Loony Party in our school elections. Sadly we have been disqualified at the last minute for being born before 1985...Huh. Olly

So Rock 'n' Roll!

I've wanted a tattoo for ages, but haven't got one so far because:

1. I couldn't decide on the design;

2. I don't like the permanentness of tattoos;

3. Or the price;

4. Or the pain involved...

But thanks to Anna & Libby's sparkly tattoo pens, I am now a temporarily marked man! Arm with the watch hopefully says Yahweh in Hebrew, and the other arm hopefully says Freedom in Hebrew. 

Olly

Me as a frog

My role as a school caretaker is varied. When not unblocking toilets or mending desks, I often dress up as a lady frog. Olly

#281

On the Anastasis and Africa Mercy, we could identify our (almost) identical Land Rovers by stickers on their rear and front windscreens showing the last three digits of their chassis numbers...so this weekend, with an abundance of wheelie-bin identification stickers to hand, I decided to do the same to Sally's car:

Ooh how she laughed when she saw! Olly

Swimming Libby

Just like the rest of our family, Libby is an amazing athlete. She's good at running, is trying at netball, and is a BRILLIANT swimmer. Today we went to the local Time Trials, in which she won 3 out of 4 categories in her age group, and came overall first in Butterfly, even beating kids way older than her.

Her swimming coach thinks she's got a good future ahead of her as a butterfly champion. Olly 

5 months later...

It's been over 5 months since I last wrote a blog entry. Whilst Britain is in the midst of another damp winter, West Africa continues to fight Ebola. About 8,500 people have died, and maybe up to 20,000 people have been infected. The international community has, at last, responded, and Ebola treatment centers are set up all over Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, staffed by medics from around the world including the UK, the US, and even China and Cuba. The message is finally getting through, and the number of new cases is dropping, and the treatment centers are seeing less and less new cases every day, and more and more people surviving. And as I write this, 300 experimental vaccines are arriving in Liberia, to start the long process of testing to see if the population can be vaccinated against this disease.

I'm reading a great book about the Ebola epidemic in Liberia, that an acquaintance of ours wrote:

In Harm's Way - A View from the Epicenter of Liberia's Ebola Crises, by Nancy Sheppard.

Nancy and her family are long-term missionaries to Liberia, and we were privileged to know them during our time there in 2006/2007. They have been working in Liberia, or with Liberian refuges in neighbouring countries since 1986. Awesome people. Book available on Amazon.

Olly