Here is a blog I wrote back in May.
I’m blogging live from the field, but the posts will actually go up once back in DC. Out in the field is one of the only times when my brain is fully concentrated at the task at hand. So many times I don’t find the time, mental energy or motivation to write anything, but what I’m tasked to write. But I thought I would try blogging live from the field to capture my thoughts.
Day 1
Met with team leads and coordinators to set the week’s agenda. I imagined the work here to be intense, but wasn’t expecting stakeholders to look to us for so much. Must manage these expectations. Headed to Nimba and Bong counties on Wednesday. Long drives, bad hotels, food is questionable IF we can find it, don’t count on electricity. One guy asked me, “Do you like bucket bathing?”
UN vehicles everywhere and army guys sharing the “Palm Resort” in the area of town called Congo Town with us. We can see hand water pumps on the side of the road. There are these mini gas pumps that can’t sell more than 20 gallons of gas as well. Have seen lots of furniture businesses and salons like the one called “Dis and Dat” or the one with a picture of Fu Man Chu and the warning, “This could be you.”
Liberia has some oddities that I would like to understand. I ate at a Korean restaurant managed by an Indian. I had Chinese style stir fried chicken except that it was served in tahini for $10, which I paid in US currency. My colleague had ramen complete with Korean style pickles. Aren’t we in Liberia?
Day 5
I’m out in Nimba county where I’m staying in the town of Ghanta. Ghanta is referred to as the “city that never sleeps” and is probably one of the shadiest places I’ve ever been in my life. It’s a border town and so therefore the intersection of all sorts of trade- legal and illegal. One of our out of school youth focus groups illustrates how rough life is in this place. We learned that young people spend a lot of their time in risky places. Here are some direct quotes “Clubs start as early as 13…age is not the limit money is” “Youth especially females spend a lot of time in motels for commercial sex” “Youth spend a lot of time in the ghetto with bad guys…and drugs and alcohol.” These are the types of pervasive activities around this place.
The hotel here is sufficient, but still shady. On the first night my colleague found a multi-colored braid made of hair next to her bed and a mouse was in her suitcase. One the second night we heard loud yelling as we approached the hotel. The manager reported that there was a presidential candidate staying at the hotel and a mob of people had come to demand money. They were standing outside his door yelling. Unfortunately for us, we were to be moved to the rooms adjacent to this mess; that is the so called VIP side of the hotel. After the angry group left another group starting their round of yelling. This time it was in the name of God and a group was shouting “hallelujah” late into the night.
As we were driving the beat up dirt roads that barely connect Nimba county, we saw a brigade of UNHCR vehicles carrying refugees from the temporary camps on the border to more permanent camps in town.
In addition to the various UN organizations (UNHCR, UNFPA, UNICAEF, UNDP, UNMIL) there are in fact, NGOs all around despite the small size of this country. Liberia has a population of 3.6 million people, so one can imagine the size of a town. In the baseline study that we are using, Nimba has 3,000 people. Just driving around I saw signs for CARE, Save the Children, Norwegian Refugee Council, Education Development Center, IRC, and ACDI/VOCA with Project Concern International. There are probably more, but I just didn’t see them. After 14 years of civil war, NGOs are able to begin development projects as opposed to relief work. With 5 years of peace, Liberia is still very fragile and scars of such a long war take time to heal. One scar is the depletion of human capital. Even the literacy of teachers is low no doubt due to weak education to begin with coupled with little opportunities for learning. So one can imagine the education available to Liberia’s next generation. I also noticed the physical appearance of children. Food shortages and years of living through the annual “lean or hunger time” has impeded their mental and physical development thereby causing permanent damage to their future ability to learn and stunting their growth. I don’t have any first hand evidence, but know that war leaves considerable emotional trauma. Ex-combatants must live among society and people suffered death, rape, kidnapping, killing and any number of tragedies for many years. These traumas will certainly materialize more and more as Liberia maintains its peace. With so much work and a population in such need I can see why there are so many NGOs operating in such a small space. At the same time, as much as I believe in true grassroots development work, my mind begins to wonder whether just giving people cash and building infrastructure wouldn’t be the way to go instead. In general I believe dumping donations on a population only creates dependency. But in places where people are in such poverty, perhaps donating the right resources would be of help.
I compare Nigeria and Liberia since being in Nigeria is my other experience in West Africa. I think that the poverty in Liberia is more pervasive and deeper. So it’s not surprising that in my experience Nigerians have a higher level of literacy and numeracy. However, Liberians seem to have more hope. (Not that I can generalize about an entire population after 1 month in Nigeria and 2 weeks in Liberia). I remember thinking that the poverty in Nigeria was especially depressing. Liberia is worse off, but at least Liberians have hope. They believe there is a better future and they are excited about it and willing to put in effort to get. I think this makes a huge difference in my ability to encourage and be encouraged and to motivate and be motivated.
How could a blog of mine be complete without paying tribute to food? There are a couple of popular dishes in Nimba. GB is a mildly spicy and slimy soup with fish and meat that is eaten with pounded cassava (similar to fufu). You take a small piece of the cassava and roll in it in your right hand. You then make a small indentation in cassava and dip it in the soup. You’re not supposed to chew, just swallow. We sat outside the office and shared a bowl. I found it really strange to swallow and my mind could barely stop my mouth from chewing as soon as a piece of food entered it. Plus I had to predict how much I would be able to swallow. The Liberian staff had a good laugh when they saw how big a swallow I intended to feed myself. Rice is also a major staple here. One meal includes a huge portion of rice (probably 3 cups) that is served with pepper soup. Pepper soup is a spicy soup served with veggies and chunks of odd looking beef. I say odd because I cut into one piece and it was black inside. I had some of this, but could not finish the entire portion of rice or soup. The rice was too much, and my mind was influencing my taste buds so that I felt really disgusted eating the meat. I felt bad knowing that there were literally people starving in this country and here I was sending back a half-eaten portion of food. Later, I wanted to go to the market to capture some images we could possibly use designing training materials. While there I discovered live snails that were being sold! I hate to say this about anyone’s food, but they looked disgusting- slimy, black, and crawling all over each other in a hot and dirty heap. I don’t think I’m ready for that.
The main concern for me about food here is not so much taste, but cleanliness. The dishes are sort of swished in a bucket of dirty-ish water to get clean, and everyone eats with their hands. Looking back I don’t know how I ate in the field so much in Bolivia. But after a while I didn’t mind it. In fact there were some dishes that I looked forward to eating such as llama meat that was dehydrated and then fried served with a hardboiled egg, potatoes and salty cheese in the Altiplano and fresh chicken with rice in the valley. I also like drinking soda when out in the field.
