Adoption Day!

In half an hour we're all gathering for the annual adoption ceremony, where we meet our new Liberian host families. Our time living the Doe Palace dorm life is over. Bye-bye-o to air conditioning and wireless Internet, electric current day and night, and the early binding phase of our training. Coming attractions: tales from Liberian home life, tasty recipes, and a brief picture of the city of Kakata. 

Liberian Arithmetic

This is going to be updated as I find new math to share. There will be a quiz at the end!

1. Currency (a): $1 US is exchangeable for $73-76 LD depending on how far outside a major city you are. Unless you are exchanging $1 bills, which are only worth $50 LD on a good day. Who knows why? Not me.

2. Currency (b): The cost of some goods is best expressed in terms of other goods in any economy, and Liberia has some highly entertaining equivalent goods. One baby kitten is worth 1 chicken, so of course  one healthy puppy is worth 2 chickens.

3. Time: If you said in Liberia that you will do something tomorrow, what you mean is that it will happen some time in the future, almost definitely NOT the next calendar day.

4. Space (a): You would think that the number of seat belts in a vehicle would give some indication of the expected (required?) limit on the number of passengers. And you would be wrong. Liberian taxis (a ramshackle mutt of the species unrecognizable as running automobiles by any true pure-bred taxi, held together with duct tape and prayer, frequently found broken down on the side of the road) hold 6 passengers standard, and can hold up to 8 with some regularity. Two in the front passenger seat and four in the back seat, with an extra passenger sharing the driver's seat if needed and in special cases one riding VIP, in the trunk with the goats/chickens/baggage.

5. Space (b): Most taxis in Liberia are actually motorcycle taxis (super-dangerous, not really allowed for Peace Corps volunteers). And the average capacity of a motorcycle taxi is two adult passengers plus driver. Children and any cargo (buckets, boxes, bales, etc) don't count, of course. And helmets are highly discouraged.

The Kids from Yesterday

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are. -Theodore Roosevelt

I had the great pleasure of spending the last three days with two amazing women who have been teaching and working and going about their lives in the little village of Tieni for two years. They are who I want to be as a volunteer here in Liberia, and the quiet, simple way they live is as inspiring as anything I have seen or read about service here. 

Tieni is a tiny Vai village ten minutes from the border of Sierra Leone. It boasts a single red dirt road through it, connecting to a 'coal tar' (paved) road that will take you into Duala, and then to Monrovia, in about three hours. It is predominantly Muslim, and the morning call to prayer from the mosque next door comes right in the kitchen window of the Peace Corps volunteer house. The volunteers teach math, science, and english to 8th-10th graders at the local school, which runs primary school classes in the morning and secondary school classes in the afternoon. The principal of the school is new this year, and, in a change from the previous administrator, seems to be getting things done. But there is still a lot of work to do. 

Tieni Mosque

The daily life of a volunteer in a rural village like this is as follows:

6:30 am- wake up, brush teeth with a cup of water over the cement rail of the front porch, greet various neighbors, start the coal pot (ubiquitous cooking apparatus that is exactly what it sounds like: a shallow pot or tray into which pieces of charcoal are fed, lit and fanned until they are cooking-temperature. All food is cooked in pots or pans placed directly on the coals. It is fairly simple to light on most occasions except the dark, the rain, or when one is in a hurry) and pot of water for coffee or tea, greet more neighbors who are also out on their porches, move chairs/tables out to the porch to take advantage of the morning breeze (if it exists), do any dishes left over from after dark the day before, greet the neighbors out on their porches, breathe.

"Goo mornin, how de body?"

8:00 am- relax on the porch with a cup of coffee or tea, any grading or planning required for the day (for example, final exams for the classes scheduled for the day), and a bowl of oatmeal with honey and dried fruit sent from home, greet the children walking past on their way to school and the neighbors going about their mornings, breathe some more.

10:30 am- start thinking about getting ready for afternoon classes, take a bucket bath (with rainwater from the afternoon before, refreshingly brisk), plan the day's outfit, greet some neighbors, organize materials for class, take a deep breath.

12:00pm- bring furniture back inside (anything left on the porch becomes someone else's treasure), back bag/backpack for school, say goodbye to neighbors, start walking up the dirt road to 'The Road' (where red dirt meets coal tar) to have something for lunch (usual choices: hard boiled eggs with bread and mayo and peppe, potato greens soup or cassava leaf soup served over rice, fufu on a good day), greet everyone you encounter.

12:45 pm- walk back down the dirt road to the school, greet everyone you encounter, arrive in time to catch 'devotion' (all the secondary school students, 7th-10th grade, line up and sing at the flagpole before class is supposed to start), greet the principal and whichever of the other teachers have shown up that day.

1:15 pm- since this particular day happens to be a final exam, head to the classroom assigned to the appropriate grade, appeal to the Dean of Discipline on behalf of any students who come late or in spoilt uniforms so that they can take their exams, organize the unruly groups of students milling around outside their rooms, gather them together and give the essential admonition against 'spying' on other students, pass out exam papers and write the five to ten questions of the exam on the board, patrol up and down the aisles looking for cheating or spying, toss out any perpetrators, collect papers at the end of class and make way for the next teacher.

9th and 10th graders waiting to begin their exams

Two 10th grade students outside their classroom

3:00 pm- Head back down the road toward home for a relaxing afternoon of grading, porch-sitting, and neighbor-greeting. Take another breath.

Students lingering on the edge of campus

an Oma's house on the road home from school

4:00 pm- decide what to make for dinner, light the coal pot again (going across the road to purchase more coal or beg a lit coal from the Oma if necessary), start any beans or rice cooking, cheer on the across-the-road kids in their kickball game, be available to students for last-minute exam questions, score the day's exams, greet neighbors walking past, set out buckets to catch the afternoon's rainwater, send a neighbor child for oil or tomato paste or rice as needed for dinner, make extra dinner to send over to the neighbor in thanks for their sharing the week before, have a brief conversation with Ma Fanta about the neighbor kids.

Kickball game across the road

Ma Fanta and the across-the-road neighbors

7:00 pm- light some candles and enjoy a well-cooked coal pot meal on the porch, share with neighbor kids as needed.

9:00 pm- take a bucket bath before bed and go to sleep content with a day well lived.

Liberia is beautiful and devastated, hopeful and despairing, inspiring and heartbreaking in equal measure. When I see people going about their daily lives gathering water, cooking food, doing laundry, I forget to think of the bigger picture, which is that these people have no safety net. The little kids playing ball will go to school and be taught by someone who is just in it for the paycheck and wont even come to class to teach half the time. Their mothers and fathers, if they are still alive, are struggling to survive the moment and have no time or energy to spare for the future. The government is  doing its best to rebuild a country literally razed to the ground, and the peace these people live under is as stable as it is because UNMIL is a universal presence here. There is nowhere in the world that needs teachers more. There is nowhere in the world facing the looming crisis that comes from 40% of the population being under the age of nine. There is nowhere in the world where I can sit on someone's front porch and watch the world go by and think, "This place has come so far, and we have so far yet to go." The magic of living in a foreign land is that perception and feelings are constantly changing. Today, I am in love with this fragile, beautiful, enduring country and there is nowhere else in the world I could possibly be than right here, preparing myself to become a quiet, simple part of this amazing place. I am ready to do what I can.

Trivia Night!

Tonight my glorious and illustrious collegues in LR-4 and I all got together to play trivia night at the local night spot down the (rutted, dusty) dirt road from our Doe Palace compound. The 'bar', Kem's, has its very own generator and boasts four wooden tables and a very fancy blue tile floor. They serve sodas, liquor, and the Liberia-produced Club beer, which comes in 750ml bottles for US $1.50 or LD 500. It was amazing. And now we're all waiting for our laundry to be done drying so we can pack for our various site visits to existing volunteers. I'm headed to Tieni in  Grand Cape Mount county right on the Sierra Leone Border. More coming later on the trials and tribulations of travel in Liberia, the details of the trip, and tales from the volunteers who have a puppy!

You Are Welcome to Liberia

The white cinderblock walls surrounding the Doe Palace complex are topped with wire, but that is the only evidence I've seen that this country is only 10 years out of a 'civil crisis'. Everyone we talk to loves having us here and wants to make us welcome to Liberia. The training staff are amazing, and my fellow trainees are already like a new family.

Yesterday, our group (39 Peace Corps Volunteer Trainees) was split up and sent out into the city of Kakata with a current volunteer for orientation and introduction to the crazy-weird-wonderful world of the market.

Our leader took us on a wandering tour through the maze of Kakata's market. The jumble-pile of ramshackle tin roofs housing the wooden market stalls sits at the bottom of a red dirt(mud) road down the hill from the main road into the city. The collection of buildings features dirt (mud) paths and wheelbarrows or stalls piled high with recycled american clothing, dried rice and beans, pots, shopping bags of coal,  gorgeous printed fabrics, and every other kind of sale-able good you can imagine. We visited the stall where our leader's girls' group gets the fabric they use to make amazing crafts. Some of us bought fabric, and most of us changed some small-small American money for LD or Liberian Dollars at a pretty decent rate of 75LD to the dollar. Then we were treated to a thrillingly enjoyable tour of the covered concrete slab that hosted the food sellers. The dark, cavernous space smelled exactly as wonderful as you would expect it to with little piles of fresh or dried fish and other unidentifiable pieces of meat, tiny spicy red and green peppers, baby eggplants, and sundry other equally appealing options.

Once we made our way out of the labyrinth of the market, we got a tour of the finer things along the main road: the tables where you can change money and buy scratch cards to add minutes to phones, Lebanese stores selling household goods like soap and beer, and a gas station that could be a transplant from home complete with air conditioning, a clean bathroom, and (wonder of wonders) a trash can.

Our route home took us through a residential neighborhood of nice homes, some of which will become our home-stay houses next week. Everyone greeted us with smiles, handshakes (more on those later), fist-bumps, and a general air of welcome. Two ladies were playing a dice-and-board game kind of like Sorry or Parcheesi  When I asked, they told me the rules, but I think they let me win... We also joined these kids who were playing a game called Lappa. It's like dodge ball played with a sock full of sand and a bunch of 'slippers' or rubber/plastic sandals. One person stands over a mixed-up pile of shoes and teams on either side try to hit them with the sock. While dodging or catching the sock, the middle person has to match pairs of slippers with each other. If they get hit with the ball they lose, and if they match all the shoes they win. This involves lots of sideline heckling, cheering, and backseat matching. I was, of course, terrible at it, but they all seemed to love that I tried.

The tour of Kakata was scheduled as part of our Pre-Service Training. So far, that consists of lectures on Safety and Security, Liberian English, and the Peace Corps mission. We are gearing up to head out to current volunteers' sites on Sunday to see how it's done by LR-2 and 3.

After an interlude for a delicious meal this evening, followed by an impromptu dance party (of awesomeness), the trainees of LR-4 are all gathered in the common area of our dorm doing tomorrow's reading, checking email, blogging, and having a jam session (for those who brought a guitar, banjo, mandolin, or violin. It's as noisy as that holiday dinner or family reunion but without any awkward uncles. I feel like I'm at the eye of an amazing hurricane.

I am welcome to Liberia, and I'd like to extend the same hospitality to you!

Sunny Day

Rainbow over grey skies in Philly, new friends, and a master-packer loading my bags. Do we believe in auspicious beginnings?

You Say Goodbye, I Say Hello

This weekend has been amazing, overwhelming, and so much fun. To everyone who called, stopped by, wrote a note, gave a gift, or is thinking about me before I leave, thank you so much. The support of my families makes it possible for me to leave, and for everyone staying at home to be happy about being sad to see me go.

I am now 95% packed, with only computer/phone/toothbrush left to tuck into place at early o'clock on sunday morning. I got a reminder email from the country desk, I've got all my documents photocopied and set aside, I have no more laundry to do, and I have given and received about seventy billion hugs in the last four days. For a major procrastinator, this is a big deal.

All I have left to do is savor the bubbly feeling of anticipation, and wait for sunday to get here. I can almost taste it...

T-5 days!

The Physics of Packing

Here is my packing list:

Here is a giant pile of things I am taking with me to foreign lands:



And here are the square inches of space into which I pack the giant pile:


And I am still far from done...

There will be no night-before-departure hysterics over last-minute packing (as there were in my previous adventure to Ghana) but condensing my past and present and future into three bags is an interesting experiment in space and time. As I work, I remember and imagine, with past and future and present tense all together. And of course the things I consider essential to me here will not be the things I use the most when I am there, no matter how many suggested packing lists I read. Maybe the biggest thing I pack (which is also the thing that takes up the least space), is the knowledge that I just cant bring it all, and that I will survive without whatever I leave behind. Unless I forget the dozen passport photos or my important documents...

More work to be done on this tomorrow (and all of next week), but today is almost finished, and I feel like I have won.

T-10 days...

Some Other Beginning's End

Yesterday was my official last day of work. I got my final paycheck, turned in my key (which I've had since March of 2009!), made a joke with the boss, and sat at my unofficial official table to help kids with math and SAT prep for the last time. It was surprisingly hard to let go of the key... For five years now, that place has been my refuge, my entertainment, my work and play and challenge. And it is only fitting that to start the next step in my teaching career and general life adventures I have to say goodbye to somewhere that has helped me grow into myself in uncountable ways. Thank you, students and co-workers and boss and office goddess, for being my family. You, and all the things I learned from you, come with me to my next beginning.