updates

Well, it has once again been much too long since my last journal entry, but that is symptomatic of how busy I’ve been! To give an update to the bizarre labor struggle I described in my last entry: the teachers have been rehired and are all working having agreed to wait to see if Semeh can find a way to increase their pay. It almost uncanny how easily they were placated considering their initial obstinacy, and I’m still not really sure how Semeh did this. I think the brief firing may have made them more aware of how precious any job on camp really is. But I think it was also a matter of having a calm and rational meeting after a serious of increasingly heated pride-wounding exchanges; a meeting in which Semeh could better explain his budget constraints. In any event, the kids and teachers are back in school.

I’ve been so busy because every day requires a series of responses to new crises. My job puts me in the middle of a lot of “factions” (the CBW administration, the local volunteers, the international volunteers, and the international organization that sends people here…) who often don’t understand each other due to cultural differences and miscommunication. So, I spend a fair amount of time speaking to someone on someone else’s behalf or trying to broker some kind of compromise.

So, other than crisis management, what exactly, does my new job entail? Officially I am the GVN (Global Volunteers Network) representative on camp, but I prefer the title the kids gave me: “leader of the white people.” First and foremost my job is to assimilate new volunteers, running orientation and making sure they are busy, comfortable and relatively happy. This is potentially incredibly challenging given the number of volunteers and their diversity of experiences and expectations. But, in actuality, almost everyone who comes here is incredibly flexible, open-minded and easy to live with. Plus, this position lets me see the camp through their fresh eyes and experiencing anew those things that have started to melt into the backdrop of my life here. That said, this is a physically and emotionally difficult place to live, and there is not a day that goes by that I don’t take someone to the clinic – about half of the volunteers have caught malaria – or provide an ear for venting.

I also work very closely with the CBW administration, attending staff meetings and helping to write proposals for additional funding. This gives me a new appreciation for how hard it is to run such a large and multifaceted non-profit charged with a nearly impossible task. The director has to make sure that 70 local volunteers and 16 international volunteers relatively happy, ensure that 600 children have a worthwhile education and that the 21 drains on camp are cleaned and the 36 trash bins are emptied daily while at the same time ensuring that HIV/AIDs outreach is being run effectively and the recreation department has sufficient equipment. And I’m leaving a lot out. In addition to looking within the organization he spends much of his time looking outward for more funding, identifying additional needs in the community, and now to potentially returning to Liberia. In the midst of all this, because he runs one of the more visible NGOs on camp, every day he is interrupted from his administrative duties to listen to pleas for money or employment. What would quickly overwhelm me, he handles with incredible good humor and energy.

In addition, GVN sends volunteers to another organization PCO (People Caring Organization) that does conflict resolution outreach and education on camp. So, I work with their administration and their volunteers as well. This adds a fair bit of work and is complicated by the fact that CBW and PCO have their own tensions and turf battles because the director of PCO broke away from CBW and left some hurt feelings and resentment in his wake. So, there is yet more internal politics to step around. Well, at least it keeps things interesting!

labor dispute

So, I am finding myself straddling both sides of a labor dispute. Of all the predicaments I pictured myself landing in while working in a refugee camp; unwitting mediator of a labor conflict was not among them. It’s an almost surreal situation, and don’t even know where to begin.

I spent my first 3 months here working as a teacher in the 3rd grade. This was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done and it gave me a new respect for the local teachers who do this work every day nearly year round. These teachers make 150,000 cedis (around $15) each month. It’s not enough to live on and it is about half as much as other teachers on camp earn. All 70 CBW local volunteers earn the same stipend, whether they are teaching, cleaning drains, or doing HIV outreach. But the teachers work longer hours and have a more demanding job. They are understandably disgruntled, and I sympathize with their cause. While working as a teacher I sat in meetings with them and strategized ways to appeal for more money. I encouraged them to work hard at making a case for why they should earn more money than other volunteers because the administration would argue that if the teachers received an increase, all of the other volunteers would ask for one. Unfortunately, they did not take this tack and the discussion ended up about an across the board increase, which would be harder to achieve. Much of the x-mas break was spent in heated 5 hour meetings that ended in impasses.

Now, I am no longer working as a teacher, but am part of the administration. I attend senior staff meetings and help make decisions that concern the entire organization. I guess that makes me “the man.” But the teachers still trust me and appeal to me to argue on their behalf. However, now I see the other side’s perspective as well. CBW started because Semeh (the director) saw the need for street kids to be educated. He had no budget and relied solely on volunteers, teaching classes out of his house. He now has a budget (from international volunteer program fees), a school building, and has slowly begun to pay his volunteers. And this pay has been increasing each year. Other schools on camp charge school fees up to $30 per term. His school reaches the poorest kids charging only $1.50 per term and half of these 600 kids are on scholarship, paying almost nothing. This is why he cannot pay his teachers what they deserve. (What school system in the world really pays teachers what they deserve?) To him, he is providing the income he can to the teachers on a camp where the unemployment rate is above 90% and people are desperate for any kind of work, and he is reaching the kids who are least likely to otherwise receive an education. Even so, when the teachers went to him to ask for more money, he asked them to be patient while CBW reviewed their finances to see if there was room for an across the board increase. In addition, he started requesting funds from UNHCR, which has money available to promote education on camp. But this process has been to slow. The teachers feel as though the administration is stalling, and the administration feels as though the teachers are impatient and ungrateful.

Needless to say, negotiations did not go very smoothly. One five hour meeting ended when an exasperated Semeh told the teachers that if they didn’t like the pay they could just quit. By the time I heard this, that comment was a thorn in their side about as big as the pay issue. So, tensions were high at the start of the second term.

When I met with the teachers and asked them if they would strike, they laughed at the idea, telling me, “we will not resort to violence.” I started to think that maybe this was a strategy only empowered workers with a sense of rights living in a place with reasonably low unemployment rates could employ and even felt foolish for making such a culturally inappropriate remark. But early this week, I received a letter from almost all of the teachers saying that they would “lay down their chalk” until the matter was resolved.

So, when I showed up for the first day of class with a fresh batch of international volunteers to help teach, I was met by teachers refusing to enter the classrooms! The kids, dressed in their uniforms were waiting in the classrooms to be taught, but the teachers refused to enter. The prior week, the international volunteers went to class every day, but the kids did not show up. Because there is no effective way disseminate information on camp, rumors prevail. And the rumor (untrue) was that school would not start until the following week. So, the new volunteers were eager to teach all these kids who had finally showed up but needed the aid of the local teachers, who now decided not to teach. The first week the teachers came, but the kids did not. Now the kids were here, but the teachers were not. They international volunteers felt divided loyalties. Some did not want to be considered “scabs” (something I’m sure they forgot to worry about when they were packing their bags) or show disloyalty to the teachers they would be working beside for the rest of the time here, but they also felt that they were here for the children first and foremost.

So, I’m smack dab in the middle of this rift. Having taught, I sympathize with the teachers. In my position as the international volunteer coordinator, I am concerned that the new volunteers are not being permitted to do what they came here to do. As part of the administration of CBW, I am frustrated that the school is falling apart (the school supervisor resigned amidst the controversy). But most of all I’m looking at the kids in their new uniforms and just feeling sad that no one is teaching them. So, that day, everyone from other departments, including myself, filled in the gaps and taught while Semeh met with the teachers.

That meeting went about as well as the ones prior. Semeh begged the teachers to wait until the following Wednesday when he could find out if there was enough money for an increase and get it approved by the board of director. But they refused to enter the classrooms unless he could provide them each with a 20 pound bag of rice. This proved impossible to procure by the following school day, so they were at an impasse. Since he was faced with need to open school the following day, Semeh dismissed the teachers so that he could find replacements by the next day. And by dismissed, I mean fired!

This was heartbreaking. The teachers came by and thanked us for working with them and said goodbye. But for some reason it did not feel final. I know my co-teacher did not want to leave the kids and was certainly unprepared to lose his job. I spoke to Semeh in private later and he said that if any of the teachers came back to him that night they could have their jobs back. I spread this word, and some of them did. The next day some taught and some were replaced for that day. But the remaining teachers (now divided and confused) were still trying to negotiate. Semeh, who never wanted to fire them in the first place, was open to accepting all of them back. So, after more discussion almost all of the teachers are back and holding their breath for a pay increase. So, I’m spending the weekend with the board reviewing the finances and writing UNHCR for funding.

It’s a really interesting kind of labor struggle. In a community where everyone hustles to make ends meet and steady employment is the exception, it is really an employers market. I suppose you could view low pay as exploitative of the situation. But it’s a refugee settlement and the fact that people are entrepreneurial enough to put together an organization that provides any kind of income for others is impressive. Commonly people are simply thankful for whatever work they can get. The other dynamic at play is that CBW is moving from an all volunteer organization to paying employees. Those who were willing to work for free have different motives, expectation and work ethics than those who were hired as payed employees. This would be a great case study for an organizational theory or labor relations class. But I’m sure I’ll be able to look at this with detached fascination once I’m out of the thick of the crisis. Hopefully soon!

school pictures

Here's a collection of pictures of my little students. I wish I could convey how special each one of them is to you because I know they would touch you all and warm your heart. Hopefully you get some of that from this pictures.

how to make black magic work for you

It can get a bit stressed here, so every once and a while the volunteers will unwind with a drink and (believe it or not) a game of pool at the local watering hole. Last night, I put my bag down to play a game and somewhere between embarrassing myself at pool and dancing with many children we inevitably attract, my bag disappeared. I was immediately concerned, because I am (believe it or not) dumb enough to put all essential irreplaceable items in one place and carry it around with me. So, my credit cards, my passport, all my cash and my keys were gone. At home I would have really panicked, but something about living in a community like this gave me hope that I would get these things back.

About a month back, someone else had a digital camera stolen. CBW, the NGO we work with simply rounded everybody up told them that whoever took the camera would have to return it the next day or someone would die. At first I thought this was a rather extreme physical threat, but really it was more of a curse. Apparently, there is enough of a belief in the power of witchdoctors that the thought of supernatural intervention was enough to bring the contraband back to its rightful owner.

In my case, I called the CBW squad and they immediately starting questioning everyone at the bar and looking everywhere for the bag. The fact that CBW is so well known and respected in the community and that its top people were now creating a stir at the bar made it the topic of the evening for all of zone 10 in the camp. All who were awake and out at the time were either on the case or talking animatedly about “the white girl whose bag gone missing.” People were genuinely sorry and embarrassed. Plus, petty theft is just thrilling enough to break the monotony of camp life and provide a little excitement for the night. Even back in my room when I was getting ready for bed I overheard people outside talking about “the bag” and “the wicked people” who “can steal things.” People kept urging me to pray for its return and to make an announcement over the load speakers for the people to return the documents (passport). They all assured me that I would get the bag back. I was a bit incredulous - why the hell would anyone who just hit pay dirt, want to jeopardize their booty by bringing back some stranger’s passport???

Black magic. That’s why. You see, zealous commitment to Christianity aside, there is a deeply ingrained, almost universal and unwavering belief in the power of witches and curses. People talk about these things as if you are a fool to doubt it. Some Liberians know that us foreigners are pretty dubious when it comes to witchcraft, but they will simply state before telling a story about the supernatural, "you see, things are different here in Africa." Not that people believe in witches, but that witches exist and exercise power here.

I recently learned that a friend of mine lost his brother who was living in Liberia, leaving behind 4 small children. When I asked how it happened, I learned that the death was due to "witchcraft." When I probed deeper and asked for the specific "cause" I was told... "Jealousy." I still don't know the medical reason, and it didn't seem that anyone, other than myself, was unsatisfied with this response. I heard another story (relayed to me by a University educated and relatively Western-thinking man) about a family who stole a goat and ate it. The goat-owners consulted a witchdoctor, and within a week, the thieving family had all died. And this threat, I believe, is what brought my bag and (eventually) all of its contents back to its rightful owner.

So, after I called off the search party for the night and tried to go to sleep, there was a knock at my bedroom window.
“Who is it?”
(nervously) “I am looking for the director (of CBW)”
“He’s not here. His house is next door. And I’m sure you know that”
“I need to talk to him.”
“Who are you? Why are you talking to me? (silence) Hey! Do you have my bag?”
(silence) “Yes.”
“OK. Hold on I’ll be right out there.”

So, I called the strongest looking and closest of my Liberian coworkers and we met this guy. He was small, young and nervous, but claimed to have found and did return my bag to me (passport credit and credit cards, but no cash), so I was prepared to like the guy. Tony was not so sure. He questioned him (I thought) harshly about the location of the remaining contents and how he had come to find the bag, whispering to me, “This guy took your bag.” The next day, nervous guy came back with my keys, a lot of other little items in my bag and about half of the cash, making his “I just found the bag” story a little less believable. So, I sat with him in a booth of “vigilantes” (volunteer night watchman/ security guard/ detectives who maintain order and meet out justice on camp) questioning him and generally intimidating and embarrassing him into a confession. It was quite impressive. Our criminal justice system should operate as smoothly and effectively. They got him to confess the correct amount of cash in the bag, itemized what he did with it and agree to return the rest of the money the following day by confiscating his phone as collateral and threatening to take him to jail should he fail.

So, today I sit in the internet cafe with my bag and all of its contents. The only fallout is that I am now have strangers coming up to me wherever I go telling me (oh, they know me) to be more careful with my bag. But I suppose it is the inability to hide your transgressions this tight knit community (along with the threat of some black magic) that brought my bag back home in the first place.

Veronica's story

Veronica’s father was a general in the Doe government – the one that was deposed by Charles Taylor in the early 1990s. Her family lived in the capitol city, Monrovia, but Veronica was sent to an uncle who lived in the interior because “he had no girl children” and had always had a special fondness for Veronica. The African sense of family is very fluid and inclusive, so it is not uncommon for children to be sent to live with relatives for all kinds of reasons. Most often these decisions are related to economic opportunity, but it’s not uncommon for unruly children to be sent to live with a particularly strict aunt in order to straighten up. In any event, it did not seem unusual to Veronica to live with this uncle and aunt and she enjoyed a good life in the village being doted on by a loving man who she described as more of a father to her than her own. When the war came to her village, Veronica was out fetching water with other kids from the village. As she returned from the well, she saw that rebel soldiers had already entered her house and were violently beating her beloved uncle demanding to know the whereabouts of his whole family. Her aunt was screaming, terrified. The next thing she saw was rebel soldier put the butt of a pistol in her aunt’s mouth and shoot. Veronica told me that seeing this made her 8 year old mind “go crazy.” She said she wanted to scream out but fortunately a woman, who had also been watching the scene, came up from behind her and put her hand over Veronica’s mouth.

With these brutal images in her mind and not knowing what happened to her uncle or her family back in Monrovia, Veronica fled to the bush. The next morning she returned to find that her worst fears had been realized and her uncle had been killed – a slit to the throat. She had no remaining relatives in the village, but a local woman took Veronica along with her as they fled overland to Cote D’Ivoire. Due to this one day, a woman of no previously relation to her, become Veronica’s mother for the next 5 years. In Cote D’Ivoire, Veronica went to school and learned French and tried to lead a normal life. But her past haunted her enough that she changed her name in efforts to protect herself. After several years, the woman died leaving Veronica once again alone. Shortly after this, a man with a very small child approached her calling her by her childhood name. She was amazed to see, Peter, a boy she played with in her uncle’s village, all grown up and with a child of his own. Their courtship was brief and partly based on his need to find a mother for his child and her need for some kind of family, but there was genuine affection for one another and the comfort of common roots. She took in the little boy as though he were her own and in fact, to this day little Mathew believes that Veronica is his birthmother.

However, as is the unfortunate case for so many Liberian refugees, soon enough Veronica’s host country, Cote D’Ivoire, became embroiled with a civil crisis of its own and Veronica again was forced to adapt to a new country and a new refugee camp, this time in Ghana. She was also beginning to fear that too many people were discovering her true origins and felt the need again to flee so that those who had once threatened to kill her entire family would not accomplish that goal. So, she left her Ivorian refugee camp, not for asylum in a wealthy country or for repatriation to a now stable Liberia, but for yet another camp. Despite continued rootlessness in Ghana, a sense of normalcy once again returned. She began to volunteer working with children and Peter started a small business selling pictures. They had a baby of their own. Then one day a woman who nobody seemed to know came seeking Veronica, calling her by her childhood name. She was with a small girl and seemed exhausted and irritated. She informed Veronica that Ellen was her sister’s child and she could no longer care for her, because Ellen’s family name was threatening to put her life in danger. Veronica did not know whether to believe this claim, and the woman offered no proof other than the girl’s mother’s name, which was the same as Veronica’s sister’s. But the thought of a piece of her family returning excited her. She has not heard whether any of her sibling or her parents have survived the war, but holds on to hope. Because of this, she agreed to let the girl stay the night and discuss the issue further in the morning. The next day the woman was gone. So that is how Ellen has come to live with Veronica and Peter. She is a sweet girl with an easy smile and eager to please. Veronica is not sure if she is her niece, but that doesn’t seem important. She is caring now for a lost little girl just like the woman from the village once cared for her.

Veronica has lived through more upheaval and abandonment than I would have thought a person capable of coping with. But I do not know her as a broken woman. I know her as a woman who is always sharply dressed; who wears a generous smile; who is often unsure of herself but so quick to laugh and throw her arm around you that you can’t help but feel good in her presence. I know her as a woman who everyone goes to for gossip and cookies and dresses up her baby girl like a doll.

It’s impossible to think that almost all the adults on camp have a similarly horrifying story, but sometimes it’s even more unthinkable that they all carry on, loving their kids and taking pleasure in material comforts, that they continue to find laughter so easily and find ways to so generously care for relatives and even strangers. Many women on this camp are caring for war orphans simply because someone has to, and because of that there are few if any orphanages. While the camp is filled with thousands of testaments to the cruelty and thoughtless we are capable of, it is at the same time it is witness to the remarkable resiliency and generosity of the human spirit.

(names have been changed)

compassion fatigue

Here’s a typical morning. Over breakfast, bored children gather outside our windows asking for paper to color or to ask for a band aid for a small cut or to just say; “sis Kim, please come” “what?” “I have to ask you something?” “just tell me what it is?” “no, please come to the window” This is my clue that it is a private request for something on behalf of themselves or their parents. Food, a job, money for school fees. It happens every morning without fail. Yesterday during breakfast, someone came to the door with an injury from a morning football game. Back home we would have probably given him stitches, but myself and someone else with only slightly more medical training (more than none) cleaned his wounds, dressed it with a gauze pad and gave him some pain killers. Football injuries have been arriving at our doorstep with increasing regularity lately. In the midst of this, often somebody else comes to the door to sit down for a visit. These are almost never social calls. Often they will sit down sheepishly with very little to say and offer almost nothing in the way of small talk. After some awkwardness, they will ask to talk to someone in private and ask for money for some kind of illness or to pay for continued schooling or some other financial obligation. Sometimes they never get around to asking outright, but just mention that how they have no money to wash their clothes or make an offering at church that Sunday. One day I came out of the shower and there were 3 people waiting to talk to me. This is all before 8 AM.

I feel a constant internal pull between doing the generous and compassionate thing and avoiding being taken advantage of. I try to remind myself that it is not easy to have to come to ask for money and given the fact that most cannot find work or farm land for food, asking us for help is one of the only options they have. I know that given the same circumstances I would probably do the same, and I know that in this culture everybody shares what they have.

But being such obvious outsiders from the wealthy world, we can also so easily be taken advantage of. Often a volunteer will give money to someone for medicine and then find out that another volunteer gave money to the same person for the same drugs. So many volunteers come with very little money and have depleted their reserves or had to raise money to get over here in the first place. But the locals see us come and go and almost always give donations while we are here. It makes sense that they would try us out. But I have seen some of the most energetic and charitable people give until they are physically, emotionally and financially drained. The need on their part and the wariness on our part taints almost all interactions with Liberians. It’s the subtext off nearly all our conversations. And it is exhausting. I remember thinking how harsh some of the older volunteers treated the kids and people coming to awkwardly request help. Now I find myself acting the same way sometimes and I wonder how newcomers see my behavior. There a word for all this in the fundraising world. It’s called “compassion fatigue.” It’s how the outrage over a human tragedy becomes muted over time and it becomes more difficult to raise money for things like tsunami relief after the public has habituated to the terrible images on the evening news. I guess that comforts me a bit. To know that it’s only human to deplete your reserves of empathy every once in a while.