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.