Why Liberia?

-17 days from departure

After I received my yellow fever vaccination yesterday I did my first true research on the disease. From Healthline.com I learned: "Yellow fever is a serious, potentially deadly flu-like disease spread by mosquitoes. Characterized by a high fever and jaundice, it is most prevalent in certain parts of Africa and South America. The disease is not curable, but is preventable with the yellow fever vaccine." Of course, it was the "not curable" part that stuck my attention. Sobering.

About a week ago I was speaking to the students in our high school about this project. It was the first time I had publicly spoken about the details of the journey. It was at this time, standing in front of this classroomful of teenagers, eyes attentive, ears perked, that the number of reasons not to go to Liberia struck me. Not only was I was talking rampant illiteracy and a failed educational system, I was highlighting fourteen years of Liberian civil wars (1989 - 2003), child soldiers, ebola outbreaks, third-world living conditions, yellow fever, and diarrhea. If you were to rank the 196 countries of the world in terms of the most popular to visit, I'm sure you'd have to scan a long ways down the list until Liberia showed up.

Here I was, excitedly detailing reason after reason of what made this adventure both high risk and uncomfortable. Yet after all the talk of precariousness, the conclusion I shared with the students, was the same one I made when I first committed to the trip: it was because of all the reasons it shouldn't be done that it needed to be done.