African shirt

Here it is the middle of the night, can't sleep, so I guess I'll blog. today, or I guess yesterday now, was a relaxing day we didn't do much. Rusty went to work and we just hung out. We went for a walk down the beach, me, D'Linda, Jamie, Colton, Kobe and Blessing. The beach here is very nice. I have been to places in Mexico and Hawaii that don't have beaches this nice. We came across some fishermen coming in with their catch. They had some crabs and fish that I saw and offered to sell us some lobster. Jamie declined, she said they have a fisherman that comes by regularly to sell them fish. Their boat was a hollowed out log canoe about 25' long. It looked quite heavy, to get it up the beach they enlisted the help of some other fishermen close by. They got three on each end and took turns pivoting each end up the beach. It looked like pretty hard work and I didn't stick around to see how they got it up the steepest part of the beach where there were about 20 other boats.
Most of the fishermen were young and in very good shape, but probably not as fit as some men Kobe and I had seen a couple of days ago when we walked the beach the other way. We were walking and came across some women carrying sacks on their heads. They were filling the sacks with sand and carrying them up to the road to sell for making concrete. Most of the concrete in Liberia is mixed by hand. Many of the homes have stacks of concrete blocks in front of them for sale. The people have forms for the blocks and mix up the concrete on the ground and make blocks. Most buildings are built out of concrete blocks, a real cottage industry (pun intended for Rich). The sacks the women were carrying weighed about 50 lbs. around the point from there we came across some men carrying sacks of sand that had to be over 100 lbs. each. I didn't have my camera with me, but I tell you those guys were probably the most fit people I have ever seen. Probably 3-4% body fat, real physical specimens, better than those guys you see on infomercials selling the latest in exercise equipment. I could get some pictures and you entrepreneurs out there could sell some old feed sacks to people wanting to get in shape. One of the young men wanted me to try to carry one, I told him I was too old, it would break me in half.
As pretty as the beach is there are some hazards. Kobe and I saw a number of Portuguese man of war jelly fish on the beach, in fact latter that day he was stung by one swimming. It is good to have a doctor living next door, he had some cream that took the sting away. However a bigger hazard on the beach are little holes in the sand. It seems every morning a lot of people come out to the beach dig a shallow hole and defecate into it. When the tide comes in it takes care of it, but until then watch your step!
One last thing, the clothes here are a real mixture of cultures. Sunday people really get dressed up for church. The women wear beautifully colored dresses and the men have either western shirts and ties or colorful African print shirts. The rest of the time anything goes. You can buy tee shirts for fifty cents that come from all over, Rusty had told me that you often see people wearing really inappropriate shirts places. Well we experienced that first hand, The social worker in charge of one of the orphanages came to deliver food, was wearing a shirt that said (if your easily offended stop here) "tits and beer, that's why I'm here" on the back it had a tavern from Fairbanks Alaska. Rusty and I had a good laugh. I was planning on bringing back a shirt from Africa, what do you think?