First Day of Presentations in Tim's Words

Day 4, Part 2

Highlights of Tim's recount of the day:

Day Four, Thursday, 31 March 16

All,

With today’s first half of our two-day workshop on African literacy, we made probably the most significant progress for the African Human Rights Leadership Campaign in over ten years of work. Tomorrow should continue that rise.

Today’s session was to some 70 of this nation’s top youth leaders, including the executives of the Liberian National Student Union (LINSU), Federation of Liberian Youth (FLY), University of Liberia Student Union (ULSU), Smythe Institute of Management and Technology (SIMT), United Methodist University (UMU), African Methodist Episcopal Zion University (AME Zion), and St. Clements University.   Much credit for this extraordinary gathering goes to YHRI Liberia Country Director Calvin Sanvee, also programs officer of LINSU, the leading group among the others.

The number of pictures the students wanted to take with us during the 60 minute lunch break edged on the extreme. I learned at day’s end that this was the first visit to this property for many of the students, hence the flat-out eagerness to share this experience with their Facebook networks.

It is thus virtually guaranteed that the word-of-mouth buzz on these two days of workshops is going to travel rapidly over the virtual entirety of Liberian youth with any access to the internet and beyond.

At the beginning and end of the session, Jay and I framed the workshop’s significance as strongly as possible.  This is struggling nation with its future entirely in the hands of those who were present today.  Our friend, ally and Liberian human rights and folk hero Kofi Woods is a testament to that. He was once LINSU’s leader, 30 years back.  Who knows how many “Kofis” were in the audience today,  no doubt many. These leaders all have the definite dream and determination to bring Liberia out of the darkness permanently.  However, we pointed out that dreams require professional approach and profession know-how for their attainment. 

That of course is where Study Tech comes in. With Colin taking the lead and Jay regularly complementing him with impinging communications only he is capable of when it comes to this audience,  these young leaders received the basics of learning vs. schooling, overcoming the attitude that one knows it all already,  and the physical reactions to MU’s and the remedy. We also included a few of the Agami Intelligens video vignettes to bring certain points home (first barrier to learning; misunderstood words as the most important barrier).  We also closed with TWTH introductory section for Precept 17 (Be Competent). Once again – as we found with the YHRI delivery here – video goes such a long way. 

In Their Words...A Successful First Day of Workshop

Day 4

"This is the most interesting and motivating workshop of my life. It opens my understanding and desire for learning. It helps me to know some of the barriers that hinder effective learning. I have learned so much and wish to appreciate Applied Scholastics for this great job." - M.J. Jones

"My name is Daniel Josiah Klamah, president of the Student Union Government, AME Zion University. I am impressed with the evaluation and method of teaching and I would like to say to this organization to continue the process in every sector of our country. I am going to tell the students about this workshop." 

"This program will be one of the activities in Liberia that will address and expand the ability of Liberian students on how to find out information in a specific subject. Thereby making us competitive on the global stage. It opens the minds of students on how to be careful in conducting specific research." - L. Dehkee

"Barriers to study was like finding the missing links of success. Prior to the workshop. I found studying difficult most times because of these barriers which I had not noticed. Now I am armed with the tools needed to study the best way I can and be able to apply all that I learned from studying. With the missing links found, success in studying and learning for me is sure. Applied Scholastics indeed has been able to find the solution to a problem which has affected humanity for ages. I a testimony."  - I. Moore

"I was very inspired by all the presentations provided by the leadership of this workshop, in honor of the Applied Scholastics Education Services and material based on the works of L. Ron Hubbard. I am very much thankful for the education given me as tools for me to use and guide my study. This is very important that all these activities be done in the rural parts of our country (Liberia). Thank you and have my appreciation." - E. Nagbe

"I was really inspired by the workshop today. My thoughts were changed due to the new information that I acquired. I never noticed my weakness in studying and learning until today that I got to know about the barriers to study.

"Most precisely, I understood that my major problem in studying has been escaping misunderstood word(s) during my studies. 

"Additionally, I am going with everything that I learned today to apply them in my home, community, schools, etc. to help myself and our society and make a better place of living." - M. Dobo

"First of all, I want to congratulate the founders of this workshop, the Youth for Human Rights International African Human Rights Leadership Campaign, The Applied Scholastics, and so on. 

"I really had a great time today at this workshop because I was given the opportunity to speak on the problem we face in our society when it comes to our educaiton.

"I was also able to know about misunderstood words, the barriers to studying something and the eight (8) steps of knowing the meaning of a word. 

"Thank you, I really had a great time." - M. Konneh

"I really had a good time studying or learning about everything that hinders my studies. I'm now with the conviction that I can read any book after this workshop as per the training, and absorb all its context (ideas).

"Once again, thanks so much to the organizers of this all important workshop." - G. Sohn

An Exhilarating, Exhausting Day!

Day 3

A fast-paced, rewarding, go-go-go day!

In a few sentences, the day could be officially summarized by naming the opinion leaders we met with:

• Hon. Morlah K.D. Yeakula, Assistant Minister of Labor
• Hon. Alberta Doe, Assistant Minister of State 
• Dawn Cooper Barnes, Ph D. Associate Vice President Academic Support Services, American Methodist Episcopal University
• Dr. Rosemarie Terez-Santos, Institute for Innovation, American Methodist Episcopal University 

To each, Tim spoke first, introduced everyone and then explained his decade-long work with Youth for Human Rights in Liberia and its relation to our current pilot project with Study Technology. Jay gave a citizen's perspective of the success of the Human Rights program and the need for educational reform. Xane spoke of his experiences with schoolmates arriving to Delphian School and their transformation from memorizers to competent learners. I described my experience as an educator using Study Tech as a tutor, teacher, and school head. I also gave a preview of the workshops we will be doing in the coming days. 

That simple explanation of the day makes it sound so simple and straightforward. Not even close. The adventure of going from A to B to C was the REAL story of the day. 

Meeting with the Assistant Minister of Labor turned out to be a complete joy. She was a pleasure in every way. Young, optimistic, clear-eyed, hopeful, smart, articulate. Before I detail some of the highlights of this meeting, let me try to convey the scene in which we found ourselves, specifically the building itself. 

Obviously, the building which houses the many offices of cabinet members of the executive office should be, rightfully, distinguished and stately. Certainly this building and its offices were one of the finest in the city. However, its condition makes it clear how much work is ahead for this country to dig itself out from zero. Faulty air-conditioning at best, no AC in many rooms and halls. Electricity unpredictable. In our 90-minute meeting, the building's electricity turned off twice. She rolled right through the distraction. Calmy switching her printer and portable AC to off and continuing her sentences. Exposed wiring, uneven stairs. 

Two civil wars over a fourteen year period, followed by an ebola outbreak in the first years of recovery, is a recipe for disaster for this small country. Liberians really have had to start from zero in every respect. This was made clear by Ms. Yeakula. As she pointed out, when you have to rebuild a country from scratch, choosing which part of the infrastructure to rebuild with very meager resources is a very difficult job. 

Having said all that, Ms. Yeakula held a genuine love for her country and its future. More to the point, because of young leaders like herself, the future of Liberia and a successful tomorrow is within sight. Certainly there is a lot of work ahead, but she and Jay, and the others we have come to know on this trip - a group Tim has formed alliances with and helped organize - are energetically forging ahead to lead this country. 

From her perspective, her generation is a lost cause in many ways. But it is her son's generation for which she held great hope because of the work being done today. Her attitude was both compelling and inspiring. Yet her passion doubled when we spoke of our desire to lend a hand with their nation's students and teachers. She was especially fervent in her desire to open doors of education and opportunity for the girls of Liberia. To this she made it clear, and Jay wholeheartedly concurred, as difficult it is for Liberians, it is the females who are at the bottom. 

Her optimism was supported by a number of real-life stories she told us: young Liberian entrepreneurs who have started businesses with profound effects on the country. The young woman who started an African clothing company called Mango Rags, the young man who created a line of plant-based oil products for body and cooking, the young man who created a coal-packaging company, the former Miss Liberia (who me met and who gave Xane and me African names) starting the sexylikeabook social media campaign to promote reading, the man who buys fish from the locals and freezes them and sells them, and the FaceAfrica campaign that is bringing clean water to remote regions of sub-Sahara Africa.

Like the others we met with today, she was very receptive to our project and gave us a list of other people and organizations we needed to contact. We left this meeting in love with Ms. Yeakula. And hopefully, she with us.

We left this meeting pumped. Then Jay told us he has good news and bad news. Tim said to tell us the bad first. Bad news: None of us really dressed for a high-level meeting today (Jay in jeans, Xane in shorts) and we had to go buy some now, downtown. The good news was the reason for the dress up was a just-confirmed meeting with Hon. Alberta Doe, Assistant Minister of State. 

The day's adventure went from good to unreal.

Jay now had the task of driving us into the crazy world that is downtown Liberia while speaking on his cell phone arranging with his contacts to get us clothes and printing for our workshops. 

A video is the only way to truly express the wild, turned upside-down, stock car racing world that is Liberian driving. And Jay is an absolute beast of a driver. He is the most fearless in a city full of fearless drivers. I will bring home a video or two or three to try to depict this madness. In the meantime, I will try words.

Everywhere we go Xane and I sit in the back seat and giggle, squirm and swear. The roads are packed with cars, motorcycles, three-wheeled taxis, yellow cabs (paint your car yellow, no matter its make or age, and you have a cab), construction trucks, UN vehicles, pedestrians and overloaded trucks. The cabs are PACKED full of people. They take old mini-vans, add a row or two and fill them wall to wall, arms and heads poking out of windows. The motorcyclists are cabbies too. They carry people in and out of traffic. Today we saw a motorbiker carrying a passenger who was holding a full mattress folded in half. 

The roads have no markings or sometimes lines down the middle. There are no stop signs at any intersection. Streets that are two cars wide are used by four vehicles side by side by side by side. And which directions vehicles travel on these roads are determined by the needs of the drivers. There might be three vehicles going one way down the road while a fourth one heads the other direction, in between vehicles one and two. Drivers are perfectly content to allow the tiniest fraction of an inch of space between vehicles traveling at full speed. Anarchy.

Today's sweatiest moments came in succession. First, we turned down a very narrow road on which parked cars lined both sides as far as the eye could see. A few hundred feet down the road a car was squeezing its way towards us. Jay, without hesitation, accelerated down the road straight at the oncoming car. It was a game of chicken. Jay pushed forward, the other driver pushed forward. The cars ended up face to face, Jay pulled off to the left in a narrow gap between parked cars while the other driver, reading texts on his cell phone, casually squeezed past. I was certain his handle would smash against ours. The cars cleared one another and Jay sped down the narrow passage. A sharp right turn brought us to the bottom of an unpaved, rutted, rain gullied steep hill. We couldn't go straight up as that would lead us to the deepest gullies. So we zigzagged up the hill, all the way to the left, all the way to the right, all while dodging motorcycles and cars coming down the hill. We got to the top of the hill, tilted way back, and found ourselves frozen,   facing the prospect of turning left onto a busy road. Jay deftly and aggressively poked the car's nose, then the whole vehicle, in between two cars going right, and gunned the accelerator. We were on our way. 

(Break)

I am now sitting on my bed at Jay’s house. It is 10:43:32 pm Liberia time (6:43:32 pm Florida time). We spent the last hour or so at the Kendeja planning our presentation for tomorrow. Originally tomorrow’s two-day presentation was going to take place at the Starz college. However, due to some unidentified problem, the details only of which Jay and Tim know, Starz backed out of the agreement, so now we’re hosting the workshop at the Kendeja. The Tim/Jay team is a problem-solving machine. The news of the Starz turndown and the Kendeja solution happened within an hour. One highlight of the change of venue being that the food bought ($2000) for the Starz attendees will now be given to a local charity on Saturday.

We’re expecting some 80+ attendees, students and youth leaders to the two-day event. Stay tuned.

Now back to today’s day of unreal adventure. When I last left the story I detailed our off-road adventuring on our way to downtown Monrovia. Now to the downtown part. Before getting there Jay took a backroad route to a neighborhood where the road was dirt and the houses a step below the other rough dwellings. He pulled up to a lot, a lady from afar saw him and approached. He said hello and proceeded to give her a $50 (usd) Liberian handshake. The Liberian handshake is how one secretly slips cash to a person here. We’ve seen it many times. Turns out, she was a friend who had a sick family member who needed help. We love Jay!  

Everything I’ve said about the traffic gets multiplied by a factor of five in the city. The roadways are narrower. And the streets are much more crowded with peddlers, beggars, schoolchildren, laborers, and people carrying all sorts of items on their heads or in wheelbarrows or on giant trays. There are massive overstuffed trucks hauling mounds of this and that, most often loads of bagged water. But the people of the city is what the makes the streets mayhem. They dart in and out of traffic with no care. They push their faces to your windows, they smack your car if you’re too slow or in the way or they want you to move.

Our trip took us to the very center of the city. We turned a corner and Jay told us to lock our doors. We had entered the area controlled by the 18 Gang. A neighborhood controlled by organized criminals who extort businesses for protection money and have thugs wandering the streets looking to rip open moving cars’ doors and grab whatever they can. We locked our doors before he finished the sentence.

Our first stop was the print shop. Now when I say print shop, all the readers will think Kinkos or some such. Not even close. Today’s print shop, evidently one of the best in town (country), was located deep inside a an old, dark building. Getting there was like traveling through a poorly built funhouse, with uneven stairs and dark hallways and doorways that are too short and people yelling from far corners to watch your head. Up, down, u-turn, zig, zag. And we arrived to what appeared to be the head office. Here the crazy architecture continued. It functioned as an office but if you saw it empty you wouldn’t be able to tell what the room was for. It was basically square and not that big. The floor was tri-level, meaning at one end the floor was elevated by a foot, there was a step that ran the width of the room then the final level where the desk was situated. Electrical, Internet, computer and printer cables were stretched across the wall in crazy bundles. The lighting was poor. 

Xane and I sat on a huge, white, faux-leather couch (very comfy) on the high end of the room. We looked down into the business-end of the office watching Tim on his laptop struggling to send email attachments to the man across the desk from him. Meanwhile, Jay’s friend Calvin was on the phone with a clothes-dealer. He was passing on pants and shirt sizes for Xane and Jay’s new clothes. Which brings us to...  

Next stop, clothing shop. Jay once again navigated us through more crazy streets to our next destination: new clothes. Right after leaving the car we were surrounded by all sorts of street people trying to sell us Rolexes and Luis Vuitton belts and one man who followed Jay asking him for money ( I think Jay knew him). A while later Jay had to forcefully yell at the guy to get him to back off.

Into The Choice clothing store we went. We were pleasantly surprised by the nice layout, the cool air and the decent looking clothes. It looked to be owned by Lebanese men. They were happy to see us. Unfortunately, the salesmen didn’t know anything about our phone order. Turns out we went into the wrong store. The right store was immediately adjacent to The Choice, we’ll call it the Last Choice. The Last Choice was not really a store but a covered, gated, dark, smelly alleyway with a handful of men (salesmen) standing around. There was also a lady preparing food in the back of the store next to a set of rock stairs that went up somewhere. There were men’s clothes hanging here there and everywhere.

Conference in the Last Choice.

We’ve learned that Liberian salesmen are very persistent, very observant and very willing to invade your privacy. One glance at a shirt you like results in one or two salesmen swarming in with every shirt in the store that looks anything like that shirt. They are polite and very talkative in their pidgin English way.

Our salesman

Xane's changing room

As for Xane and Jay, they were brought different pants and shirts to try on. They had to try these new garments on behind the open gate door up against the fence that separates the inside from out. Once the clothes were chosen, Jay had to haggle about the final price, complete the sale and off we went to our next destination and meeting. 

We dashed to the car, followed by more beggars, a parking attendant and a man who opened Xane’s door and wiped off the windows. He earned an American dollar from Jay. The exchange rate is $1 American to about $90 Liberian dollars. 

Off to the President’s building to meet with Ms. Alberta Doe, Assistant Minister of State. This was the most security we’ve had to pass through. The building was similar to the first I described. 

Like Ms. Yeakula, Ms. Doe was kind, gracious and very willing to share her views. Education was a very important issue to her and she too gave us contacts of others who should hear our message. It was a great meeting.

Our next meeting was at the American Methodist Episcopal University where we met with Dawn Cooper Barnes and Dr. Rosemarie Terez-Santos. Another productive affair ending with yet more contacts and a date net week for another presentation to Ms. Terez-Santos's advanced students.

Whew! 

Random things we’ve learned:

• Don’t take photos of any locals without permission, especially the armed Asian U.N. guards in front of the Presidential building. 
• It is illegal to be homosexual in Liberia.
• To be a citizen you have to be of African decent and look like it.
• Bagged water is sold everywhere for people to drink.
• Traffic laws and building codes are non-existent.
• Well water and bucket bathrooms are common.

Until tomorrow...

Meet Kollie and Nwallie

Day 2: Meet and Greets

First night at Jay's house was a success. Both Xane and I slept well, the first time in two days. My morning bucket ablution (wash) went quite well, all things considered. We then dined at the Kendeja for breakfast.

And then the day began. Our drive to start the day took us past this school, just starting its day.

Our first official stop was a meeting with Eugene Lenn Nagbe, Minister of Information, Cultural Affairs and Tourism for Liberia. However, before entering this building, as is the case with many buildings here, we had to stop at the entrance and clean our hands with chlorine water. This is part of the campaign to keep Liberia ebola free. 

A note about Xane's outift. While it may seem inappropriate given the circumstances, I would say the business professional look here is very different than what we expect in the states. He looked fine every where we went. 

Our meeting with Mr. Nagbe went very well. We were lead into his office by his assistants, we took our seats and began. Tim took the lead, presenting an overview of the program. Mr. Nagbe was very honest about the poor condition of education in the country. It was clearly an area of concern for him and the government. I gave an overview of Study Tech from an educator's view. Xane gave examples of seeing the change in students who are new to this methodology at Delphian and the transformation they go through, from very good memorizers to students who can USE the data. The gentleman on the left is another of Tim's Liberian friends, Calvin Sanvee. He was crucial in arranging this meeting.

  

Next we headed for Cathedral Catholic School, Jay's alma mater, for a meeting with Principal A. Massaray Jallah. We followed a similar pattern in this conference as the last. Here we confimed that we will be giving a presentation to their 248 12th graders next week. 

On the principal's shelf was a plaque from Tim's Youth for Human Rights group, celebrating this school's win in a 2008 human rights competition.

We got some great photos from this school...

Here's a great shot of Jay. We were waiting on the school's basketball court while Jay told us many funny stories of his time at Cathedral Catholic.

Some shots from our errands about town. Jay got a hair cut here. The barber did a great job using only a comb and razor blade.

Girls walking by the shop.

And from inside the truck.

One stunning fact we learned at last night's dinner was that the entire country of Liberia has zero libraries. None! But, more stunning, we also learned at last night's dinner that one of our dinner guests, Boerson Hinneh, the Director for Sub-Saharan Africa for Youth for Human Rights, is going to make sure Monrovia gets a large, modern library. He is starting a project to make this happen. 

Right now it is 6:58:40 pm Liberia time. I am typing this in the lobby of the Kandeja. About 30 minutes ago Jay introduced us to yet another leader in Liberia who just happened to be at the hotel. Among many things, this lovely friend of Jay's is an advocate for girls' education. Her name is Patrice. When we were introduced, the final thing she said was she was once Miss Liberia. Fantastic! She was very gracious and kind. She even gave me and Xane African names. Xane has been dubbed Nwallie from Bong country (meaning "love") and I am Kollie ("lion"), also from Bong county.  

From allafrica.com, January 19, 2016, we learn: "Former Miss Liberia, Patrice Juah, has relaunched the Miss Education Awareness Pageant Platform to help inspire young girls to strive for higher education and contribute to the development of Liberia."

Finally, here is a brief vignette from one of our stops today that I hope conveys the craziness that is Liberian business. We went to Lonestar Cell, the apparent leader in mobile phones in Liberia. Given the number of advertisements and Monrovians on cell phones, they seem to be a leader in the economy. By the way, West Africa is a no-credit region. The people don't have credit. It is a 100% cash economy. Both cell phones and electric are pre-pay services, for example.

Anyway, back to the vignette. To drive into the small parking lot of Lonestar you must pass through the guarded gate, this allows you beyond the tall cinderblock wall which surrounds the property. Those who enter on foot are stopped by the guard and scanned with a "temperature gun" to see if they have a fever, then they must wash their hands in chlorine water. Of course, just outside the wall is a group of some four to six young boys hawking Lonestar sell phones. They see you drive in and quickly flock to your windows trying to get you to buy one of their phones. Jay was not interested. 

We parked and headed not to the building entrance, but instead to an area that looked like a giant carport, to the right of the lot. We made it to the carport and stepped atop a raised concrete platform twenty or thirty feet wide. This was their version of the Genius Bar. Here we were met by a handful of young staff clad in yellow Lonestar t-shirts. They were randomly situated around an old white countertop just in front of three mobile offices. Behind them were also two non-working, four-foot tall amplifiers. These amplifiers were pointing in opposite directions and were on each side of a giant five-foot safe with a key in the lock. 

Jay walked to this group of yellow-clad sellers and began. The leader (manager?) was dressed like an American hipster teenager: slim fit purple plaid shirt, tight orange pants, matching purple socks and slick loafers. He was the leader of the staff negotiations. Over the course of the next forty-five minutes, Jay sat in the middle of the sellers, bantering back and forth with one or the other, trying to get exactly what he wanted. 

At one point, one seller who was trying to change the sim card in a phone while holding this giant wad of cash, a mixture of American and Liberian dollars, struggled to handle both the phone and money. Jay offered to help by reaching out and gently holding the wad of cash from the seller. Astonishingly, the seller obliged. For some fifteen minutes Jay held and counted this cash. None of the employees caring in the least.

By the time it was all said and done, Jay got what we needed from the orange-legged employee. Jay, just prior to leaving, left the females of the group each with $10 Liberian bill in their palms, much to the chagrin of he males.   

Until tomorrow...  

We Have Landed. Monrovia, Liberia!

Day 1: Travel & Acclimation

This, my friends, is a very long post. Such an eventful day. So many things to share.

Part 1
Monday, March 28 9:53:56 AM Accra, Ghana time (5:53:56 AM Florida time).

As I type this I am sitting in the Accra airport, gate 4 (five total gates at this airport, it seems), waiting for our flight to Monrovia. Xane to my immediate left, Tim to his left - both asleep. We met at JFK and climbed aboard a 227-passenger plane, with 2-3-2 seats.

The Accra airport experience is this: “Please come,” accompanied by finger snapping. Upon arrival to Accra, some nine hours after we departed NYC, we exited the plane, descended the rolling, covered staircase and waited for a bus to carry us to the terminal, about 200 feet away. The thick air is warmer and more humid than Florida (believe it or not).

Aboard the plane, during the flight, every passenger was handed two forms to fill out, a health form and an arrival form. “Oops!” Xane and I realized as we deboarded and approached the first check-point. We forgot our forms (incomplete) on the plane.

The first checkpoint was for health. Every passenger had to walk in front of two heat scanning cameras, the attendants watching for hot faces, fever. Unsure of what to do about our missing forms, Xane and I whispered quietly (and frantically) as Tim demonstrated his gift of “African diplomacy”. He chatted up the nice lady just doing her job at the checkpoint who wanted our forms while we resigned ourselves to return to the plane, cross the tarmac and head back up the stairs. Just as we turned to head back, the nice lady motioned for us to just pass through, past the Ebola posters, past the checkpoint. Turns out, with genuine and pleasant small talk, it is not that uncommon to find yourself on the other side of a once impassable attendant. Tim is good.

For the next hour, Roberta guided us through the entire process of transferring airlines, Delta to Kenya Air, and the many checkpoints along the way. Roberta was a young, tall, slim, smartly dressed young lady. She made it her job to route the three of us and two Liberian ladies heading home with a young son, through each step. We got past the gentleman who wrote our names and passport numbers in a giant, well-worn ledger. Past the attendant in the glass booth who checked our passports and asked where we were going. To the Kenya Air ticket counter where they found our names and circled them on a printed-out list. Outside the terminal and then back in again to go through the security and yet another giant, well-worn ledger in which our names now sit.

Every attendant along the way was very well versed in “Please come” as a general, all-encompassing command of direction. While they all speak English, and other tongues I do not recognize, their words are spoken with a thick accent which I can’t put my finger on.

All of this was done while we walked through a haze of tiredness and pushed by a rush of enthusiastic adrenalin. The tiredness a result of a nine-hour red-eye flight with occasional bouts of deep rest (no sleep), which was proceeded by a four- to five-hour night of fitful sleep on Saturday night. And the adrenaline a product of the exciting moment.

Roberta was rewarded for her diligent and relentless assistance by a dollar deftly palmed to her with a firm handshake from Tim. Tim, by the way, navigates his way through each step of this system, befriending each airport worker with a kind conversation. He is very comfortable here.

And so we sit right now, as I write this, at gate 4 waiting to board our flight to Monrovia, about two hours away.

One hundred twenty minutes later...

The flight from Accra to Monrovia was fine. The Air Kenya plane was very hot prior to takeoff. (Did I mention it is hot here?) We couldn't wait to get in the air so it would cool down. They served us a fine hot lunch for the short 1:40 flight. Best sleep I've had in two days. And at the Monrovia Airport, Roberts Field, we were the only plane there.

Monrovia airport, inside and out

Part 2
It is now 9:23:16 PM Liberia time as I write this. I am sitting on a bed in Jay's house in the middle of Monrovia. So many things to say about Liberia. Let's start with the mundane fact that I have been wearing the same shirt for 37 hours. As for the rest of the day, here we go...

I'll start at the end of the day. Right now as I type, Xane is in the bathroom next door bathing. Only, it is not bathing as you know it. The bathroom, by all appearances, looks like a standard bathroom: sink, toilet, tub, mirror, etc. What is unusual, by American standards, is the giant plastic barrel of clean water that is also in the bathroom. Xane is bathing by pouring buckets of water on himself to soap and rinse himself off. I am next. And toilet use requires the use of the same bucket of water. 

Jay's house is exceptional, especially for Liberia. Let's start with the animal-life, specifically lizards. Look how freakin cool this orange and black lizard is!

And, if you're like me, you were so amazed by the colorful lizard, that you completely missed the camouflaged one on the right. I was so wowed by the fiery one, that I didn't even see the other when I took the picture. I first saw it after I downloaded the shot and blew it up. Here's another picture of an orange lizard.

Well, I tried to get another picture of the lizard, and you can kind of see the lizard's orange head behind one of the bumps on the wall. But of course, the most obvious thing about the picture is the razor wire. Jay owns a half acre lot. Around the perimeter of the entire lot is this seven-foot high cinderblock wall topped by the razor wire. The only way into the compound is through the seven-foot tall, solid steel doors through which cars can pass. Here is a shot of the house in which I am now typing.

And here is Jay showing Jane and Tim the well from which the house water is drawn. The well is inside his compound.

By the way, Just outside Jay's compound, about 100 feet outside his gate, is a neighborhood water pump. Both times we've driven by it, it was being used by locals.

Not only does Jay have his house inside his walls, but he also has two similarly sized houses being built on his property. The bedrooms of his house each has their own air-conditioner (Thank god!). And, as an added measure of security, beside the razor-topped block wall, Jay has two locals who work as sentries on his property.

We returned from dinner about an hour ago. What a treat! We dined at a fantastic resort called the Kendeja (promo picture below), just down the road from Jay's house. We dined with six of Tim's Liberian friends. All are young, ambitious and optimistic about the future of their country. All are part of the country's Youth for Human Rights national program. Well-educated, active and energetic, they are all fine leaders. They are helping us organize our project. Also, at the dinner was a gentleman who runs a two campus, 2000-plus-student school here in the city. Our two-day presentation will be at his school. This will be for some 80 teachers and youth leaders. I will be leading the presentation. Wow! Tim made a punchy speech about what the plan was for the week. I gave them my bio and an idea of what I would be presenting at the workshop. Tomorow our first meet and greets start. First visit: Minister of Information.

The bulk of the day was spent traveling from the airport to downtown Monrovia to pick up packages from Fedex, water from the grocery and gas for the truck. This meant we got a grand tour of the city. What an experience. I spent the first hours taking it all in, trying to think of what I was going to include in the blog. There was so much to digest. I wasn't sure where to start, what to include, what to leave out.

Let me start with some photos to help set the scene. Two shots that capture the essence of what roadsides are like. Everywhere we drove the sides of the road are teeming with people. People walking, hawking, biking, talking, peeing, dancing, selling, building, eating. In the city, these same scenes were even more compact. Outside the city the red dirt dominated. The picture at the start of the blog was from today.

The buildings and structures that line the roads are just as all over the map in terms of uses and sizes and quality and colors. There were countless half-done cinder blocks skeletons. Many abandoned buildings. Relics from governments past. Ramshackle.

An advertisement for a doctor.

Finally, there's the driving here. I swore under my breath more times than I can remember. Frequent horn use is mandatory. Cutting between bikers and pedestrians and oncoming cars at full speed is expected. One more layer of paint on the side of the truck and we would've been in three accidents. Toddlers, teens, adults, elders and people on crutches and wheelchairs think nothing of darting in and out of traffic.

Until tomorrow...