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...