Returning to Liberia, January 22 - Februrary 21, 2016

When I left Liberia at the end of May, 2014, I had questions about what would become of the projects I had started and the people left behind. These included:
-A group of mainly illiterate women, called the Wolekamah Women's Organization. who wanted to build a community center where they and their children could learn to read and also to serve as a vocational training center to help women learn ways to support their families. My main goal was to help them become an NGO so they could apply for grants.
-"Dr. Nick's", the shop I had started
-The promises I made not to forget them and their aspirations for a better life

Other questions plagued me too:
-What had become people with whom I had become friends?
-What had become of the Cuttington University students who helped with a mentoring program and the health related programs at local primary and secondary schools?

-How did people cope during the Ebola crisis?

Somehow it is easy to explain going to a place like Liberia while a Peace Corps Volunteer. You are part of a greater program with the protection and services provided to employees of the U.S. Government. But on your own, you need to rely on Liberians to help you find a place to live, feed you, get your water, and assist you if you became injured or ill. Somehow now I had more faith in Liberians than the U.S. Government to watch my back. I think there was more at stake for my well-being with people I knew and trusted.

Yes, there is the dollar costs. It isn't cheap or easy to get to Liberia, but "What the hell". Off I went.

What people said upon seeing me again was that I was bigger (I weighed more this time) and looked younger. I guess that was not all bad.

To get some idea as to how the Liberian civil war affects society, you may want to connect to this article from Al Jazeera about two Liberian brothers, called "Children of War": http://projects.aljazeera.com/2016/02/liberia-child-war/

The Weather

Liberia is not Minnesota where the weather is the most common topic of idle conversation (It's how is your family? or How did you sleep? in Liberia).

Liberia has really two seasons, dry and wet. During the dry season, approximately from November to April, with the hottest, driest months being February and March, little if no rain falls. While I was there, it was only once did I see clouds. The end of January were two sheet sleeping nights. In February, it was HOT, DRY, and DUSTY with any sheet sticking to you. Since there are no thermometers, I can only go by the fact that Liberians said it was very hot, probably high 90's. Your clothes are continually covered on dust not only from the local soil, but from the harmattan winds which blow very fine dust particles from the Sahara Desert.

The rainy season is just the reverse. Rain comes down in torrents. Just how much it rains where I was I really don't know, but in the Monrovia it is close to 12 (144 inches) feet of rain during the rainy season. Minnesota gets about 40 inches of precipitation all year.

For dress, men wear long pants and dress like most Westerners. They say to be civilized. I wore my Samoan sarong in my house because it is cooler. I guess this is still a preferred style in the more remote, "less-civilized" parts of the country.

I wore in Liberia the same lava-lava as in this earlier Samoan picture, an indispensable piece of cloth.

My Liberian House

The Wolekamah Women's Organization found me a three bedroom, 2 bath house to rent for $75/month in the village not too far from where I was before. The house did lack certain amenities which some would find unacceptable, like running water and electricity.

My rental house

Backyard view

Water well

Neighbor's House

Nearest Neighbor's House

My Dining-Living Room (Water Filter in corner)

En Suite Bedroom

Bath with water supply, scoop, bucket for shower and flushing. Actually once hit the handle out of habit.

My Cuisine

Let's start with food.
All my food was natural, organic, and paleo. Prepared fresh by hand, brought over hot to my table. Ingredients would cost a fortune at Whole Foods, no tips required. One thing about Liberian food, you better like rice and spice. Two meals a day, but each is filling.
Some of my favorites:
Breakfast:
Spaghetti with canned sardines and chilies. You can eat it with mayonnaise as a cooling condiment.
Taro (called Eddo in Liberia) in a spicy sauce with onion.
Fried dough balls
Coka Oats (Oatmeal)
Dinner:
A large quantity of rice accompanies every meal, with:
Ground up cassava leaves, spice, palm oil, dried fish, chicken feet
Ground up potato greens, spice, palm oil, and ground hog
Ground up palaver leaves, spice, palm oil, chicken drumstick with canned fish
Pepe Soup, a spicy broth with some form of animal
Supper:
Left overs, later washed down with a beer from Dr.Nick's

As strange as the food sounds, I have come to like it.

A King's Table

My Staff

When you eat like a king, you need to be taken care of like a king.

My Plumbing System, Martha

Martha with her 3 year old son, Lawrence

My landlord

My Pet

About town

There are three ways you get around in Liberia:
1) Walk
Definitely the safest, cheapest, and most common way to get around

Foot paths go everywhere, usually next to a naturally created trench for rain water

Typical road. No grading or leveling here.

 Girl on her way to school listening to music. I probably would be arrested for stalking in US

2) Motorbike (Motorcycle)

Used for intermediate trips from 10 minutes to three hours. Dangerous, forbidden to be used by Peace Corps, but all do. Cause of my new scar, and most limps in Liberia

 

Motorbikes and loud music are synonymous with Liberian Life 

Muslims in town. Their 5:30 am Call to Prayer was my alarm clock.

 3) Taxi
They only are where you are usually not. They are mostly Nissans which have been salvage from some other country's junk yard. Always a risk they will break down half way on your trip. Usually seat 4-5 in the back and 1-2 in the front besides the driver. Picking your nose is a common practice in taxis to pass the time and for entertainment.
The other vehicles in Liberia are new Land Rovers, Toyota Land Cruisers and Pickups owned by the United Nations and the country's numerous foreign NGOs.

Dr. Nick's Enterainment Center

It is hard for me to believe but the dream of a family of 10 children and three grandchildren, led by a determined single mother, Oretha Togbah, to finish a store she started to build (had no walls) but was unable to finish after her husband abandoned the family seven years ago. The store is now over twice it's original size with a little help from me and a lot of hard work and savings by the entire family. I think I called this right.

Dr. Nick's, 2014

Boys digging out side of hill, and carrying cement for the floor.

Walls are of hand-made, sun-dried clay bricks, covered with a cement veneer. Metal roof and lumber need to be purchased.

Almost finished with heavy metal security doors installed.

Open for business

 Dr. Nick's 2016 

The original plan was to build an enclosed area in front since you couldn't do business during the rainy season. This addition was to be built with store profits. Little did I expect to see what the family had done, despite the seven month Ebola quarantined period.

 

Have your private party at

Dr. Nick’s Entertainment Center

Quiet

Intimate

Reasonable

Friendly

A Great Place For:

Birthdays

Graduations

Bachelor Parties

                                       Special Occasions

Just Having Fun

Dr. Nick’s is located in Plato-ta quarter of Sinyea Town, next to Cuttington University.

For details, call: 0880510951, 0886442273

Original Dr. Nick's

Addition with a bathroom and large storeroom, curtained with strobe and Christmas lights.

Party Time at Dr. Nick's

My Going Away Party

Dr. Nick's as a place to make sour milk balls for the children to later sell.

Ebola

It is hard to imagine what it was like during the Ebola epidemic and the seven months Liberia shut itself down. Everyone treated everyone else as if they had become infected. As a result there was no school or games allowed for children who just sat in their houses, people were spaced far apart from one another during any gathering, taxis carried only a few passengers at increased fares, money was handled with rubber gloves, businesses closed, employees lost their jobs, and outside every house and business was a container of water with bleach for hand washing.

The people of Liberia went suddenly overnight from singing pop songs and making jokes about Ebola to drastically changing their lifestyles. This is probably the reason why the death toll wasn't higher. The area where I stayed was the first to experience Ebola death when an infected person was brought to the nearby hospital where he and two nurses died. They were the only ones who died of Ebola in my area. Other people I knew did die during this period from the many other causes of sudden death which affect Liberians.

On the nearby campus of Cuttington University stands a memorial to its alumni who Ebola claimed. Most were health care workers.

The U.S. presence during the Ebola crisis came in the form of Marine helicopters landing in the university's soccer field. In three days they built an isolation unit at a leper colony site and left, never to be seen again. It is hard to really get a feel as to what affect these men and machines of both war and peace had on Liberians. The initial impact is great, but the lasting results are hard to measure. The unmanned isolation camp still stands.

What is there now is a greater presence of armed UN soldiers. Six armed soldiers in a convoy in the back of two Toyota pickups patrolled the area. The frequency a UN helicopter flights also was a lot more than I remember, as they supplied the nearby UN garrison.

On the flight to Liberia I asked Americans on the plane if anyone wanted to share a taxi from the airport to Monrovia. Fortunately, I got a ride in a new SUV by a group of Americans there for a few days from a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation collecting blood samples from Ebola survivors for a few days. They got off at a beautiful ocean side resort while their driver took me to my hotel in Monrovia.

To a certain extend both the Marines and the Gates Foundation employees represent how American wealth and power are perceived by others. One wonders, as other Liberians perceive, if our "humanitarian" efforts are driven more by our own self-interests rather than a true desire to help others. When AIDS is thought of as an acronym for "Americans Interested in Discouraging Sex" and using Africans to test vaccines to protect Westerners, one wonders if there is not some truth to their beliefs.

Death of a Child

The death of a child is not suppose to happen, but of course it does. The impact is no less as tragic in a poor, disease riddled place as here in the US. During my period away, two children died from causes explained to me as "African Sun". Both died painfully with bloated stomachs and limbs which may have been some problem with their lymphatic systems. The man, Samuel was Oretha's oldest son, leaves behind a four year old daughter who now is another member of her family. The young girl in pink was a niece.

In what you might loosely call a cemetery, the dead are usually just buried in the ground with a mound of dirt over their bodies, to poor to have a marker, and whose space is later used by another as the body decomposes.

Liberia has a national holiday, Decoration Day, in March when people decorate the grave sites of ancestors and relatives.

Oretha with her best friend, Lorpu, at her son, Samuel, grave marker.

Niece in pink dress died shortly after this photo.

The Monkey and the Dog

The house next to Dr. Nick's has had a pet monkey for years who was spared during the Ebola crisis. The monkey's playmate is the family's dog.

Books for School

One of the real tragedies is the total lack of books. The only material children have to read is what they copy from the blackboard at school. This applies to all schools, universities included. It is a wonder anyone can learn to read and the thirst for books is enormous. I was able to bring some easy-to-read children's books for a nearby school and some for the women's organization. I wish I could have brought more. I did spend a lot of time with children in my house as they read the stories to me.

Principle, seated, with a teacher and donated books

Musu Valentine Mission School

A classroom

Another classroom

Donated Clothing

Along with the books I brought clothing for children and women donated by people in my zumba class and friends of my two daughters. I was able to take two huge duffle bags, just making weight on the airplane. There were a lot of happy women, girls, and boys.

Wolekamah Wowen's Organization

One of the main reasons for returning was to help the local women's organization register their organization with the government and seek NGO status. During my absence they managed to raise enough money to buy land for a community center and began to clear it. They meet once a week, collect dues, and fine members who are late or miss a meeting. My job was to write up their constitution and bylaws, then to get consensus among the members to proceed, since the process was going to cost them quite a bit of money. Due to the fact, the stamp used to approve the organization was in the capital of Monrovia and not due back until after I left, they had to proceed on their own. I am confident they will succeed.

Wolekamah Women Group Photo

A beer after the meeting keeps everyone in good spirits

President, Lorpu, showing property marker for organization's land

President with her husband Chairperson of the Board, Robert

Another Wolekamah activity is harvesting rice on a farm made available to them.

Wolekamah woman tending to her vegetable patch on part of the shared farm.