John and I have been here in Monrovia for seven months now, which is difficult to believe. Since people started taking the authorized departure from post in late March, the embassy has been a ghost town with most local staff told to stay home and routine consular services closed. I still have emergency appointments, and are trying to process narrowly defined mission-critical services. We have started preparing briefing materials for our new ambassador-nominee, a career Foreign Service Officer nominated by the President last month. Surprisingly, there is still a lot of work to do and we do the best we can, as safely as we can.
Yesterday I took our TDY embassy doctor around to a few grocery stores, and stopped along the road a couple of places to buy fruits. The grocery stores are good about hand-washing, mask-wearing, and temperature checking before entry, but the rest of the Liberian public largely ignores these protocols. There’s still a 6PM curfew supposedly in effect, but I don’t know how well it’s adhered to. Mostly it looks like daily life has resumed. There have been a few commercial flight in/out of the country, too.
Otherwise it was a rainy and routine week (whatever that means these days!). John and I are watching a Finnish crime drama and “Curb Your Enthusiasm” during the week. We watched the depressing but utterly lovely “A Marriage Story” yesterday – I thought it was just wonderful with amazing performances (and who doesn’t love Laura Dern?!).