HIV/AIDS Outreach

CBW has instituted an HIV/AIDS outreach program, which many of you, having read about the astronomical HIV rates in Africa, may think is totally fitting endeavor. And it is a needed program. However, you may be surprised to learn that West Africa, for whatever reason, has been able to contain the rates of HIV infection. While areas of Botswana (in East Africa) have infection rates of over 40%, Ghana has a rate hovering around 3%. And even this rate has dropped slightly in recent years. In fact, my home city, Washington D.C., has even higher rates than Ghana!

That said, I am living in “little Liberia”, not Ghana, so the infection rates could be higher here in this insulated community where sex is an easy cure for the pervasive boredom. The thing is, nobody knows. There are simply no good statistics because people are afraid to get tested – understandably since there’s no cure and plenty of stigma. But in the few months since I first arrived, my close circle of acquaintances has suffered at least 2 deaths to AIDS. And a local doctor told me that about 1 or 2 in every 10 people who submit to testing have positive results. That high rate could be the result of a selection bias (only those who already suspect they may have contracted the virus get tested), but we just don’t know. The rates could be high and the stigma is certainly there, so the local and international volunteers feel more than justified going out daily to educate the community about the virus.

So, that’s what they do. The HIV team sets out donned in red smocks that announce “HIV/AIDS team” and approach just about anyone they can find to have an unsolicited discussion about the disease. The community is surprisingly receptive to their overtures and they listen patiently and attentively to the presentation.

Those of us in the West who are inundated with information campaigns easily accessed through omnipresent media sources can tend to forget how little some people know about the disease. But in a community where information is passed largely through word of mouth, rumor and misinformation can spread and amplify to the point where people believe that AIDS is spread by kissing and cured by witchdoctors.

But the upshot is that Liberians are surprisingly frank when it comes to talking about sex. The outreach demonstration is pretty graphic and at some point after a rather clinical discussion about the way in which the virus affects the immune system, the presenters incongruously whip out a large dildo and proceed not only to demonstrate how to correctly dress it with a condom, but also thrust the thing forward simulating rough sex (as it may diminish condom effectiveness). This inevitably elicits embarrassed and juvenile laughter from the international volunteers, whereas the Liberians (even the teenagers) just kind of nod knowingly and maturely. Sex here is … what’s the opposite of taboo? It’s just a part of people’s lives and something everyone accepts with a kind of frankness that that would make some of the more libertine hippies at home blush.

That’s not to say that people here are more promiscuous, but just that there is not all the religious and moral baggage that we usually tote around with sex. Maybe this frankness is out of necessity. I mean, people share very close sleeping quarters and are inevitably exposed to other people’s sexual activity. I guess it doesn’t really matter why, but it does make these outreach discussions more lively and honest. By comparison, I can’t begin to image how difficult it would be to have these candid discussions in a Muslim country.

So the outreach has been productive in generating discussion at least. But it’s hard to say how much effect these teams are having. A band of strangers, included among them some young white faces, may not carry the same force of legitimacy as a trusted friend or pastor, and it’s not easy to determine if these discussions are actually changing anyone’s behavior. And the presentations do leave a little to be desired. They spend an inordinate amount of time discussing how to properly store a condom (not in your back pocket or in the ceiling rafters) and how to open it (not with your teeth and always along the perforation) and absolutely no time talking about how to convince your partner to put the thing on in the first place.

International volunteers, especially those with the advantage of a health background, generally want to enhance these presentations, but the language and cultural barrier often hamper these efforts, and the foreign do-gooders are left feeling frustrated or simply superfluous working with the outreach team. At least that was the case until a few weeks ago.

Unbeknownst to us, one of the Liberian volunteers has been doing a lot more than spreading the gospel of HIV prevention. Victoria has been spending several hours a day visiting those people who had already contracted the disease. This was all done clandestinely to prevent any possibility of revealing the identity of AIDS sufferers. Vic would come by their homes to simply check in or provide a shoulder to lean on and even some food and medicine when she could. She had been making a silent but immeasurable impact on people’s lives. We would have known nothing about this if she hadn’t invited Mark (one of the international volunteers) to join her on one of her visits.

Mark went to visit a man called Taller (due to his height) and his 4-year old son we all affectionately came to call “Small Taller.” Taller, already in exile from Liberia, had been thrown out of the community due to his HIV positive status and was living in the bush outside camp completely cut off from his support network (a refugee from a refugee camp). He did at one time have a wife and neighbors and friends, but all of that was gone along with any means to support him and his tiny son.

His shelter, though you could hardly call it that as it lacking the very defining characteristic of shelter - a roof, was falling apart and he had virtually no personal possessions. On top of this reversal of fortunate and this indignity, Taller was sick and his son had probably contracted the disease as well – though Taller refused to get him tested because the any negative news would have devastated him to the point of taking his own life and leaving Small Taller an orphan.

So, Victoria thought that maybe a visit from the outside world might help Taller and encouraged Mark, an international volunteer from Ireland, to pay him a visit. Mark was shaken and moved, touched and outraged by what he saw. He quickly moved to raise funds so that Taller could build a roof and provide better care for his son. He has even begun a fund to bring anti-retroviral therapy to some of Victoria’s clients.

Conditions on the camp are hardly stellar, but the strength of the community seems to overpower and at times even help alleviate any material deprivation. Taller was stripped of all of that and forced to live in isolation with no means to support himself. As volunteer coordinator, I worried that visits from a short term international visitor would do more harm than good when that support was once again yanked away from Taller, but I was wrong. At Mark’s leaving ceremony – each group of departing volunteers is thanked in a public ceremony full of speeches and gifts – Victoria read aloud a letter from Taller that went something like this:

“Mark, you and Victoria have saved my life. I had started to lose my faith in God. It seemed he had abandoned me and there was no hope for myself or my son. But then you came to visit me and showed me that people do care about each other and that god acts through you. You have given me hope back and let me live again.”

Of course, it was much more beautifully rendered than that, and many people were moved to tears. These leaving ceremonies can be full of embellished and ceremonial gratitude, but this was the one moment that seemed to crystallize the positive aspect of our presence here. Sometimes it’s just important to let people know that there are people from the outside who care enough based on some shared sense of humanity. Victoria, Mark and Taller all helped to remind me of that.

peace cells

The organization I work for, Global Volunteers Network (GVN), sends volunteers to another NGO on camp called PCO (People Caring Organization) which, despite the fact that it sounds like a group that goes around randomly hugging people, actually focuses primarily on “peace and reconciliation” and “conflict resolution” activities. But what does that all mean? These are really big issues. Like, how do you forgive your enemy enough to co-exist again as neighbors back in Liberia when they may have committed unspeakable acts of violence against you or people you love? Should you? How does the cycle of violence end? What form of justice will work to heal the nation? How can you prepare in exile to return to Liberia?

These seem like pretty impossible questions, but tackling them is precisely what PCO has set out to do. As a part of this, PCO conducts outreach they call "peace cell meetings" around camp. These meetings are held outside in different zones each day and are open to anyone. When I heard about this, I had my doubts that people would actually turn up to talk, vent or discuss what could be potentially deeply rooted traumatic issues. But I was wrong.

The last meeting I went to was held in zone 4 in an area between a cluster of houses, and it drew such a crowd that people spilled out between the houses out of view. I don’t know if it was really the opportunity to talk through issues or if it was the free drinks (that’s usually a big draw) and the chance to break the monotony of daily routine, and I guess it doesn’t much matter. Many people came, and they were not shy about adding their opinions in typically long-winded, metaphor-filled African fashion.

The topic that week was "how to prepare to return to Liberia" now that they have a democratically elected president and relative stability. Quite bizarrely, I thought, the discussion started off with a focus on technicalities - should you fly or take a boat, and how much luggage does each allow you? But while those questions seem to avoid the most important issues, they are also safe areas to approach the subject and everyone can somewhat detachedly discuss the pros and cons of these logistical options. And the discussion inevitably found its way to meatier issues.

Someone summed up what most people seemed to have been thinking saying a bit angrily, "It doesn’t matter how I get there, I cannot go back there. There is nothing left for me. I have no family left, no land and I’ve been here for 15 years. Me, I will not go back to Liberia!" This was reiterated by several refugees, most of whom concluded that their only hope was to be resettled, hopefully in America, or continue to eke out an existence on the refugee camp. But the hope of being granted resettlement diminishes through the years, and it is increasingly difficult to make ends meet on camp as the UN provides less and less handouts. So, people are left feeling truly stateless and hopeless. This rather pessimistic conclusion led to a discussion of the refugees neglect by the international community who seem to have forgotten about them. There was a lot of venting about the lack of concern and support from the outside world, which the facilitators tried in vain to turn around into a discussion of how to become more self-empowered. There were lofty speeches by PCO volunteers about how 1 + 1 = 11 because of the power in unity, and how if stick together and form groups we can have the strength and resources needed to rebuild Liberia. It’s was all very well put and inspiring to an outsider, but I’m not sure how many people were swayed by this rhetoric.

At one point others noted that despite the difficulties of camp living, standards of living are higher here than in Liberia, so there is no real pull to go back to a place whose capital city still does not have electricity and roads are so impassible that goods cannot get to many places in the interior. Not to mention the indeterminate likelihood of a return to violence. Why should they leave a camp that has increasingly reliable electricity, easy physical access to education and medical care (albeit expensive) and even internet access for a place with decrepit infrastructure and the chance of war? It’s a hard sell to say the least. The UN “sweetens” the deal by giving each refugee a whopping $5.00 to help in this transition, something the participants found at least as laughable as it was depressing. If all this were not enough dissuasion, many refugees noted that once they return to Liberia, they forgo their refugee status and forfeit their right to be resettled in a wealthy country. They also lose the ability to appeal to relatives in wealthy countries for help based on their status as refugees.

Most of the group conveyed a message of “our only hope is being resettled in the West, and in America specifically.” This is something I’ve noticed all over camp. It’s the dream of most to win a spot on a resettlement program to America. It’s what people pray for at church, and many of my interactions with Liberians have the subtext of “how can you help me get to your country?” As an outsider it seems like this drain of talent to America can only hinder the rebuilding of Liberia, but I also know that each individual makes the best decisions for themselves and their family. And why should they be different from the millions of other refugees and economic migrants who flock to wealthy countries in the hopes of having a more secure future? My public policy professors would call this brain drain a classic collective action problem. I don’t know how to solve it.

But towards the end of the peace cell meeting, a young woman, probably no older than 18, got up to speak. She said, “Why is it that all of you want to go to America? America wasn’t always so powerful and rich. People made it that way. We can all go back to Liberia, make it strong together and pretty soon people will want to go from America to Liberia.” This was put a lot more powerfully by the young woman, and it kind of stunned the group to silence. I’m not sure what they were thinking. It was easy to admire her aplomb and her eloquence, but the group may have been silently dismissing her message as naïvely idealistic. But maybe that’s what Liberia needs – a little naïve idealism in the face of so many dark realities.

Microloan mamas

Many of you may be familiar with microloans because they are the development strategy of the moment. For the uninitiated - microloans are small business loans generally granted to women (because they are more likely than men to spend profits on the family’s basic needs and also have a more difficult time accessing capital in the first placed - sorry guys, that’s what the research shows) and often disbursed to a group of women who are jointly responsible for repayment and thus apt to police each other. Grameen bank was the first to do this on a large scale for poor rural women in Bangladesh, and they have seen an enviable repayment rate of over 95%.

The logic behind microloans is that one of the biggest impediments to climbing out of poverty is the lack of access to capital due partly to the false assumption that poor or illiterate people will not reliably pay back loans that were too small for any banking institution to award in the first place. It’s not that people don’t have bright entrepreneurial ideas or the ability to work hard and see them to fruition; it’s just that setbacks like illness and large webs of extended family obligations mean that hey cannot get enough money together to ever get started. Also, the lack of collateral and credit history make them poor loan candidates - if there were banking institutions even available.

Unlike traditional aid disbursement, encouraging the upstart of small ultimately self-sustaining businesses reduces long-term dependency and empowers families to take control of their futures. And it only takes a very small amount of money to make a huge difference. Fifty dollars is enough for a woman here to start a business selling cookies or kerosene. For all of these reasons, so many students and practitioners of international development have become really excited about microloans. And that is why Children Better Way set up a microloan program for 14 women on camp.

The loans (ranging from $40 to $80) were disbursed to these women based on business plans, interviews and recommendation from the head of the program, Amelia. The women have 20 months to make repayments. They are visited by the microloan committee twice a month and required to attend meetings once a month to collectively discuss problems they face and share strategies. Because it is a revolving fund, if the women make timely payments and regularly attend meetings, they are eligible to receive additional loans. Sounds good, huh?

The problem is that providing loans on a camp in which people depend heavily on and are accustomed to receiving remittances from relatives abroad or UNHCR handouts (both technically grants, not loans) means that sometimes the women resent having to make payments. It’s a lot easier to ask someone abroad to send money than to work all day, barely see a profit and then have to use some of it to pay back a loan. A few of them view it as such a great burden that they have some regrets about having taken the loan in the first place. Maybe access to capital is difficult here, but when people do get some it is usually a gift with no repayment attached.

But in actuality the microloan program has been more successful than this context would have predicted. The repayment rate is not exactly the stellar, but they women are trying. Most are up to date with their payments and some have actuality paid several months in advance. But considering the culture of surviving on handouts and our inability to send a repo man to confiscate goods or threaten them with a poor credit report, it is amazing that the women make the payments they do.

So, what keeps the women making their payments at all? A lot has to do with social pressure and pride. We visit the women every two weeks to inquire about their business and nag them about late payments. We hold monthly workshops to discuss issues like “how to save for emergencies” and “how to attract more business”. So, they form relationships with their creditors making it more difficult to avoid or cheat them. But a key component is Amelia. Amelia is the local head of the program and she is widely respected by the women. She is a naturally gifted leader and has admirable ability to inspire and encourage the women who seem to seek her approval. They respect her, she has vouched for them and they don’t want to let her down.

This week I attended my very last monthly workshop, and I left feeling such a genuine admiration for these women who are struggling to make something against so many odds, and doing it with such good humor, raw intelligence and grace. The workshops have not always been this inspiring. When I first arrived they were more like little classes where we would lecture them on savings and profit margins. But this was generally done by outsiders and had no real relevance to their lives and it seemed, while not exactly patronizing, not empowering either. So, we changed the format to a group discussion where answers to problems like how to save for emergencies and what to do when their businesses are failing came from the women themselves. These women may not know terms like "profit margin" and "market demand" and some of them cannot even read or write, but in our discussions it was clear that they, perhaps out of necessity, know business. Their advice to one another seemed plucked straight out of an MBA course - logical stuff but ideas that conveyed a keen business savvy. The women suggested anticipating seasonal market trends, increasing advertising, diversifying the product base, increasing exposure by walking around camp instead of staying in one place, and providing a discount if a customer is likely to bring in more business.

This week we talked about how and when to say "no" when your neighbor or family relation comes to ask for money. In this culture it is incredibly hard to refuse these requests (i.e. someone needs money for kerosene or medicine or rice) especially, as the women told us, when everyone sees that you have a business and thus assumes you have the means to help them. This tension between extensive and expensive social obligations and the need to accumulate the wealth required to grow a business is apparently something economists will cite as a real impediment to development around the world. And it is something that is played out as a very real struggle in these women’s lives. There are no easy answers. They cannot refuse to help anyone because they are still poor enough to need to reserve the right to call in a favor of their own in the future and because in a small community the appearance of selfishness can seriously damage one’s standing in the community. But they have to be able to refuse sometimes because otherwise they will never save enough to pay back their loan, provide a cushion for emergencies or better their lives. In our workshop, the women again offered astute suggestions to handle this dilemma, such as setting out guidelines on ‘when to give’ for yourself that you agree not to violate and putting away money that you consider inaccessible to anyone including yourself. This way when a neighbor comes around asking for money for their daughter’s wedding you can say you have none, knowing what you do have is already in a kind of unreachable savings account for your future. They also offered advice for tactful ways to refuse requests without appearing selfish or injuring relations.

None of these are easy issues. And the women struggle with them everyday to scrape by enough money to sustain their families. Amma Cooper has 7 kids and her husband was killed in the war. She has no help from relatives abroad. Sometimes she has to watch her kids go hungry and when they fall sick, medical expenses quickly eat away all her savings. But she is poised and articulate and diligent and proud in the face of all this, and watching her provide well-reasoned and caring business advice to her microloan sisters is simply inspiring. I doubt I’d ever have the strength of any of these women.

Some of my favorite little people...

Here are a few shots of my favorite little people.

I do

One of the things a person most anticipates when spending the better part of a year living in another culture is being included in traditional rights of passage. Well this past weekend, I got just that opportunity with an invitation to a Liberian wedding. But please erase any images of intricate of dowry exchanges overseen by village elders or elaborate bridal attire sewn by a bevy of wizened matrons. Like I’ve mentioned, the unyielding belief in witchdoctors aside, this is a very modern Liberian settlement and people pride themselves on outward displays of modernity and all things American.

The invitation announced that the ceremony would begin at “11:00 AM prompt” which in African time is about 12:30 PM. But being hopelessly western, we arrived at the church around 11:15 and waited around with the groomsmen and bridal party for the service to begin. The church slowly filled up with attendants, who were dressed in the most flamboyantly colorful attire I’ve seen yet. Some of the women were wearing the most outrageous headdresses - think gigantic shinny wrapping paper crumpled into a ball, placed on the head and then let to expand.

I think the best way to describe the service is to say it was like a Southern Baptist revival with an African theme. The Jesus music started as the guests filed in, and when the spirit caught anyone they would simply saunter up to the front of the house and join in the singing or more often dance in an utterly unself-conscious way. It was mainly the women, of all ages and sizes, who boogied up to the front together and you couldn’t help but smile at sense of freedom and sisterhood. If they were particularly impressed with the singer the guests would dance up to the front and stuff some money into her clothes; something I’ve seen done in blues bars on the South side of Chicago but which I know has African roots. The music went on for at least an hour and it was hard to keep still, but we kept ourselves to fanning our sweat to the rhythm. Other than the African dress, we could have easily been in a gospel church in rural Lousiana. At least until the Krahn (a Liberian ethnic group) women’s choir began to sing. They performed a traditional song that sounded almost ethereal in comparison to the gospel, and made me wish my voice recorded hadn’t been stolen a few weeks ago.

All of this chruchy stuff made us wonder if the wedding would ever take place. Then came the processional. And it made us wish that the church service would come back. The 4 bridesmaids literally took 20 minutes to walk 30 feet to the front of the room. It was a lazy kind of step-together-step choreography that took so long we kept exchanging glances of disbelief. Just when you felt their slow promenade was covering any distance, they would do a little shuffle in the opposite direction. I know all of this makes me sound very impatient, but trust me – when you’ve already sat through an hour long church service in 90 degree heat, a person only has so much tolerance for this stuff, no matter how romantic you are. Well, they finally made their way to the front and took their seats, men on one side and women on the other. After this the preacher came in with a sermon for the young couple that reminded me I was in modern Africa.

This guy was totally southern Baptist style, punctuating his points through repetition, loud impassioned growling into the microphone and stomping of the feet. As if all of these flourishes were not enough to drive home the point, after the preacher had made a particularly important insight (like Jesus died for your sins) a drummer would beat out a rhythm to emphasize his words. If the preacher was going for a more somber mood, the organist filled the background with a soft melody to cue us in on the mood change. The crowd played their part, by screaming out “preach on” or “he’s telling the truth” if a particular point rang true. I even heard a “wrap it up preacher” when it was getting a bit long (I love that last one).

So, the meat of the sermon (“ingredients for a successful marriage”) was just about as classic as his style. The first point was - keep Jesus central to your marriage. I won’t say I agree with that one, but it’s a fair enough argument. The second was to marry for true love, not for money, or beauty, or… “resettlement love”. (I.e. don’t marry someone because you think they may be about to be resettled in a wealthy country) I guess it’s a common enough occurrence to have a name attached to it, but it still raised a few eyebrows in our crowd. For the third point he addressed the men. “Talk to them preacher!” He gave a surprisingly feminist diatribe against treating your wife like a slave (don’t ask her to bring you water after she’s been cooking for you all day or wake her at night with “honey, ….”). But this argument was totally undone by his fourth point (“now I’m going to deal with the ladies” “deal with them preacher!”) – advising the women to “not be so lazy, and cook for your husbands like you should. And for god sake don’t make the rice too salty.” The fifth point was advising against dipping in “someone else’s well” no matter how tempting. Even if your wife’s boobs turn to “slipper boobs” (yup. He said that right there in the church) and you long to touch young “iron boobs” (oh, and he emphasized this point by grabbing imaginary breast) you should pray to Jesus to make the slippers feel like iron and should remember that it was you who turned them into slipper titties in the first place. The women erupted at this point with “halleluyah”s, “he right”s and laughter, and at that point I think he officially won them back. We were all too stunned to know what to think.

The last highlight of the ceremony, in keeping with the excruciating slow theme, was when after the exchange of vows Abraham finally lifted the veil from his new bride’s face. He took his time (probably for dramatic effect) rolling up her lace veil neatly in an upward motion with all the attention and care of a tobacco aficionado rolling a cigarette. It was totally comical. It took him about 5 minutes to lift the small veil half way up. Then, the veil slipped from his hands and he had to start the whole process again. But the kiss signaled the end of the ceremony, so we were all relieved.

After the ceremony, we headed to the reception. About 300 people showed up at the camp basketball court for food and speeches and dancing. However, the speakers blew part way into the first speech and so the guests, having eaten and gotten in enough revelry at the ceremony, promptly left. So, we ended up having a 4 hour ceremony and 40 minute reception – in an exact reversal of wedding celebrations at home. While I'm wouldn't have missed this for the world, I think I prefer it our way.

s-p-e-l-l-i-n-g

Today I went to a spelling bee. Or is it “spelling b”? Or “spelling be”? I guess I wouldn’t have qualified for it. Anway, it was about one of the most chaotic events and certainly the most chaotic “bee” I’ve ever attended. We crammed 8 schools and their cheering sections into a hall where the chatter bounced off the concrete walls and was amplified by the tin roof. The noise was such that it was impossible to hear anything happening on stage despite the loud speakers, which crackled and hummed often enough to entirely conceal anything that was said. When the speakers blew midway through the contest, it was actually a relief. We used the scoreboard (a man furiously writing in chalk and erasing as the contestants got answers right or wrong) as our only real cue for what was happening. The noise was almost intolerable, but the heat was literally intolerable. We sat their fanning ourselves in vain and dripping with so much sweat, that at one point we ran out of it. It was so hot in there that my friend Adam actually noticed his palms start wrinkling. That’s hot! But we suffer for the children.

But there was plenty redeeming (at least journal worthy) about the bee. There were 2 teams on stage at a time each with 4 contestants and 2 alternates, all dressed in their brightly colored school uniforms full of nerves and excitement and embarrassed pride. And the teachers took the contest at least as seriously as the students. The moderator showed the children no sympathy, and when the kids answered incorrectly, he would either say “no way” or shake his head with a cocky smirk saying “I can’t accept that”. At one point a kid was part way through butchering the spelling of “Sierra Leone” and he just cut her off, saying “save your breath.” Wow! This is kind of shocking coming from the land where (I’ve been told) that in is now verboten to correct papers in red pen - because red is too stigmatizing. Kids here have to have resilient egos, and many of them really do.

Every contest started with each team introducing themselves. They had clearly memorized these little speeches of introduction, and some of them said things like, “My name is Princess Johnson, but for the convenience of the audience you can call me Academic Queen.” The kids also took this opportunity to taunt the other team saying in practiced unison, “we will destroy, defeat and demobilize you.” Yes. They said “demobilize”. Oh, and half way through each match the competitors stood up from their seats and switched sides of the room. I asked the teacher next to me why they were doing that, and he told me (as if it weren’t totally obvious) “because it is half time” That shut me up.

Our school participated in the last of the 4 contests, and I have to admit it was worth the wait. The first 3 matches were blow-outs with the winning schools taking it by 50 point margins, so I didn’t have high hopes for our match. But ours had all the components of a great contest. We are kind of the rag tag school of kids who can least afford an education, so we had the appeal of the underdog going for us. We opened with a 40 point lead, due mostly to our superstar speller who had all the charisma and confidence of a true champion. He was easily the most fun of all the kids to watch because, whereas most of the kids spoke slowly and apprehensively, he darted out of his seat and pluckily spelled each word so quickly that even the judges raised their eyebrows. But the other school had some contenders too and the lead quickly narrowed to 10 points and remained there for the rest of the contest. At the end the score was 180 to 180 and the last turn was ours, so we all primed ourselves for some serious cheering. But two of our contestants stood to answer at the same time, and before we knew what was happening the judges docked us 5 points and gave the opposing team an opportunity to spell the word. They did so correctly and the audience (the wrong side) erupted in unexpected glee. Our teachers all rushed the stage waving the rule books and crying “unfair.” Our champion was downright despondent and we were all stunned.

It wasn’t exactly the Rumble in the Jungle, but this may very well go down as the Great Bee Upset of ’06. And I can say, I was there.

I will beat you-o

Before coming here I primed myself to be open-minded about the inevitable cultural differences. For instance, I knew from prior travel that in a lot places in the world considered knees to be scandalously sexy; but breasts were simply functional protrusions devoid of ability to arouse the interest in the baser sex. Like a good anthropology student, I was ready to keep my judgments at bay and see the beauty in our differences, knowing that our way of mentally and socially organizing the world is not the only or best way of doing so. All this multiculturalism is fine in theory, but in practice it is another thing.

The hardest thing I’ve had to come to terms with is the level of what in the Western world would call “domestic abuse”. The other night I came back to my house to hear my little 6 year old neighbor, Bakayoko (the tree climber from previous posts) wailing in a kind of agony that I’ve never heard before from such a little person. He was literally writhing on the ground pounding his tiny fists on the dirt outside his house, screaming and shaking, and no one was coming to his aid. When we approached him we saw that he could not open his eyes. Everytime he tried to, he would start convulsing in pain. As we attempted to rinse his eyes out in the dark with a bag of water and flashlight, we’d ask him to hold still; but each time he’d attempt to open his eyes the pain was so much that he would twist his little body uncontrollably and start to wail again. It took some time, but we flushed out the irritant and he just sat there on our stoop hunched over and exhausted from the pain. I asked his brother what had happened, and he told us that their mother had put hot pepper in his eyes. She did this because Bakayoko, in a defiant 6 year old tantrum, had thrown some dirt in the dinner his mother was cooking. Some of the kids were sympathetic telling him that they were sorry and other kids just laughed.

We were outraged, confused and at a loss as to what to do. I asked the other neighborhood kids if this was common, and they each told me story of a time it happened to them. Sandra told me that she stayed out too late once and her step mother waited until she was asleep and then rubbed pepper in her eyes in the middle of the night forcing Sandra to go screaming out into the night alone in search of water. I asked some of the adults if this was considered acceptable, and perhaps they were embarrassed because they said it was wrong and was not what educated or modern Africans do. But almost every child I asked said it happened to them.

But what’s the point? If it’s culturally acceptable does that mean it is beyond criticism? When do we stop caring about cultural sensitivity and start caring about individual lives and human rights?

But who are we to tell someone else how to raise their kids or initiate their youth into their society? Isn’t that just cultural imperialism?

But maybe all of that is bullshit. When someone is writhing in agony or being regularly beaten for minor infractions, maybe there’s no cultural dictate strong enough to morally excuse it. I also know that not everyone beats their kids as severely, and I’m sure there is a point at which even a culture that sanctions regularly hitting children draws a line.

Our school is the only school on camp to officially prohibit corporal punishment. And that is only because the international volunteers would not work beside teachers who cane their students. But this is policy that was imposed from the outside and the local teachers are not really behind it. They still beat the kids, just often not within our sight. When we try and talk to the teachers about alternative strategies like positive reinforcement and taking away privileges, they just smirk and remind us that these are “African children” we are dealing with. One of the volunteers from Denmark, where even spanking your own child is legally prohibited, had reached her wits end working alongside a teacher who had on several occasions taken the child out to beat them. She was torn between being a respectful guest in another culture and coming to a screaming child’s aid. Intervening did not seem appropriate, but neither did doing nothing. She was paralyzed to inaction, but left feeling like she had let the children down. Most of us have the same struggle. I was spanked as a child and I don’t know that I won’t do the same to my own children, judiciously. But for those volunteers who vow never to spank their own children, this kind of punishments is bordering on outrageous. Each person responds to it differently, and no one feels entirely like they’ve done the right thing in the end.

But the tides may be turning. The other day I saw a very small girl being chased by her mother with a switch. The little girl ran behind her neighbor, who yelled to the switch-wielder that he would call the “domestic abuse authorities” if she kept beating her daughter so severely. Another time we had to bail one of the local volunteers out of a Ghanaian-run jail on camp for allegedly beating his wife. This may not seem like an example of something positive, but for years, beating ones wife was a right or even duty, not a jailable offence. It’s still legal in Liberia. We see signs around camp about domestic abuse awareness, and peace and reconciliation groups are teaching ways to non-violently solve problems. But I guess the key is that change has to come from within to be sustainable. An outsider can’t carry the message with the same kind of impact. Being an outsider I guess that lets me off the hook, but just like my decisions on to whom and how much and in what way I should give people help here I still never fully feel like I’m doing the right thing.

Ewww!!

So, I’ve really been enjoying the “no shoe” policy I’ve instituted in my room. I just deposit my flip flops at the door (African style) and walk around barefoot on the cool plastic sheet that covers the concrete of my floor. I sweep out the dirt daily and have a relatively clean surface to do yoga or dance around when no one is peering in the windows. So, today I was innocently cleaning up some clothes, and as I was hanging my dress on a hook, I felt something a bit … unfamiliar under my bare foot. I thought to myself, “That’s strange, I don’t think I left any furry clothes right there..” (you see where this is going) I looked down and saw that I was standing, for more time than is ever necessary, directly on a squished dead mouse; and if this is not disgusting enough of a picture for some of you, I should add that a little more blood had just squirted out of its’ furry body from my weight. Now, I can only assume it was already dead because I did not feel it struggling against me and I had just put out rat poison several days prior, but it is still possible that I was more directly responsible for this death. Well, I may seem to be calm about this whole little incident right now, but you should know that I let out the most primal scream after noticing what I was standing on, that my neighbors may have reasonably assumed I was being stabbed.

There is actually a little background to my cohabitation with the mice that you should hear about. A few weeks ago, I woke up in the middle of the night to someone biting my fingertip. You heard me right. Some little creature was nibbling on my middle finger and my very justified “freak out” scared the little bastard away, squeaking as he went. That incident thereby ended my “no mosquito net” policy, which was instituted because of my “need to get some sleep” in the tropical heat policy. I know that sounds brazenly cavalier since I’ve caught malaria twice already, but damn it’s hot at night and malaria can be treated. Mouse bites, however, are intolerably disgusting! So, the mosquito net came down and the rat poison was laid.

So, I guess the score to date is Kim– one fatality, Mice - two casualty incidents (the bite and the trauma of stepping on the dead body. Hey, that counts. Believe me) I’m not sure who is winning at this point. I’ll just file the whole thing under “things I won’t miss about living here.”

Let the children play

So, the first picture is of the kids in our neighborhood who, taking inspiration from CBW's well digging activities, decided to take it upon themselves to build their own little well. So, they dug a small hole, put in plastic cups and even made a "CBW" sign to put on their little well. Well, how dern cute is that? Surprisingly, their well has yet to produce any water, but then again, neither do some of CBW's. The next picture captures an afternoon of impressive yoga displays, that make me feel soft and uncoordinated in comparison.

It's astounding how creative kids can get when they don't have a room full of toys to distract them. The other day, one of my favorites, Bakayoko, proudly showed me his stash of little treasures (bottle caps, jars and boxes) that he stashes in a tree and visits regularly. I'm going to miss that a lot.

Liberia in Ghana

Every time we enter camp after picking up new volunteers, the Liberian driver proclaims to the shell shocked new-comers, "welcome to Liberian in Ghana." And it is like entering a different country. Of course, the "shell-shocked newcomers" haven't been here long enough to fully appreciate this distinction. But there it is.

Liberian culture is quite distinct from Ghana and from the rest of West Africa in general. This is apparent every time we leave camp and travel around the country. For starters, Liberian English is nearly incomprehensible to the uninitiated. This is the English spoken by the freed slaves who founded Liberia over 150 years ago; an English that has evolved through the years and mixed with local dialects. Ghanaians sometimes overhear Liberian English and assume it is another African dialect. In comparison, Ghanaians, living in a former British colony, speak the Queen's English. Ghanaians dress as you'd expect Africans to dress - in colorful African prints tailored in the traditional way or in western clothes a few decades out of date and second hand t-shirts that advertise things like "Waukegan Crabfest 1992." Liberians do the same, but because of their strong affinity for all things American, they add some seriously fashion-forward hip hop gear into the mix. You see the same "gangstah" attire you would in Compton or Harlem (I'm guessing, I'm a white suburbanite) on the men, and the women wear such tight provocative get up that I feel downright "churchy" in comparison. Add to this the near continual blaring of rap music and I feel like I'm back in West Philadelphia. Going from the interior of Ghana to the camp is like going from the set of "Out of Africa" to the set of an albeit rustic hip hop video.

When Liberians first arrived here they were warmly welcomed as fellow Africans who were fleeing a conflict not of their making. That was 15 years ago, and let's just say the welcome has cooled through the years. Ghanaians have told me that Liberians are all thieves and prostitutes, and Liberians constantly complain about being discriminated against (they are) by Ghanaians. I was once refused a ride on a tro tro (even after I offered the driver double fare) because "all Liberians are crooks and saboteurs" Well, he didn't say "saboteurs" (it's the Queen's English, but come on...), but he explained to me that Liberians put nails on the road to cause accidents. Whenever someone is found butchered (these things happen - sometimes even to provide fodder for rituals) the two communities blame one another. Ghanaian parents warn their kids about Liberian strangers and Liberians do the same of Ghanaians.

Some of this seems to have it's roots in a clash of culture. Liberians, for whatever reason, have the reputation of not saving any money - spending what little they have on present-day indulgences, dressing flashy and then worrying about school fees and clinic expenses later. I've read that this is because Liberia was for so long ruled by an elite (the descendents of freed slaves, Americo-Liberians) that distinguished themselves through outward displays of wealth, and that to gain access to power or patronage Liberians had to do the same. It could just be one of those hallmarks of people trapped by generations of poverty who prefer to enjoy any small windfall because tomorrow is so uncertain. It could be that in imitating all things American, they are mimicking our obsession with conspicuous consumption. I don't know exactly why, but that's the reputation and it's not wholly undeserved. Ghanaians, by comparison, are apparently much more conservative and frugal and disdain such ostentation.

But some of the mutual animosity might be rooted in jealousy and misunderstanding as well. Liberians were also inundated with aid when they arrived in Ghana so that their standard of living was lifted higher than the neighboring community. This was actually so much of a common problem in Africa that now the UNHCR has some kind of official policy about not creating too much of a disparity in wealth between the refugee settlement and the surrounding community even if it means providing aid to the local population. Also, many Liberians receive enough remittances from relatives abroad to live fairly comfortably on camp. But there is also an element of truth to the fact that Liberians do engage in illegal activities in Ghana. They have to. They cannot work here and the UN no longer provides them with reliable food distribution, housing or medical care. Those who do not have help from abroad truly have to hustle to survive. So, some become sex workers and some may engage in other illicit activities.

OK. But there are obviously more similarities than differences and it's no surprise that the host community has grown weary of having 40,000 refugees living on their land in a kind of economic limbo. And despite the tension between the two communities, there is no prospect of Ghanaian authorities sending the refugees back, even when the lease on the land runs out. They are co-existing and tolerating one another probably as much as possible given the circumstances. The truth is that all over Africa, countries that are struggling with their own conflicts and economic hardships generously accept large numbers of refugees from neighboring countries. Something like a fraction of a percent of refugees are ever resettled into wealthy Western countries. The others are hosted by their African neighbors. Maybe it is because the borders have been arbitrarily imposed by colonial powers or maybe because they have little choice or capacity to turn refugees away. I think a part of it is in this very African sense of community and interconnectedness that requires neighbors to help each other in times of crisis.

free press

By West African standards, Ghana has a relatively free press – and by free, I guess I mean free to be, ala the National Enquirer, a bit absurd. One of my favorite all time front page stories was printed by The Mirror ("Ghana’s most popular weekly since 1953") and proclaimed in enormous typeset "CRIPPLES ON RAMPAGE". This was accompanied by a full page picture of a man on crutches staring menacingly out at the reader. It turns out that the "cripples" really were on a bit of a "rampage," reacting to a perceived cut in benefits from a local social service agency. The summary read: "the manager of the Cripples Home of the Ghana Society for the Socially Disadvantaged has clashed with the physically challenged trainees (why are we so PC all of the sudden?) of the centre attracting military intervention, police arrests and detention of some of the trainees." Another story promised by the front page was entitled "Why Do You Want to Rape Your Wife?" What?!?! Page 12 told us that this headline was really a critique of otherwise liberal-minded male political commentators who were refraining from supporting a Domestic Violence Bill that would make it a crime to rape ones wife. Fair enough reporting, so maybe it’s just the headlines that leave you scratching your head or bugging out your eyes. Some of the headlines, like those I just mentioned, are clearly designed to shock or provoke interest, others are shockingly mundane ("New Equipment for Radiology Department") and others simply baffling, such as "My Swollen Feet Persist", "What are We Doing?" and "This is Your Captain Speaking"

Another weekly, P & P (People and Places: We Report Nothing but the Truth) leads with story "Witch Donates Blood to Rich Brother" with an inset promising next week’s inside story: "Be Careful, That Fanta Pineapple May Have More Than You Can Drink" accompanied by a too large photo of a bottle of soda. Looking forward to that one. A quick turn of the page reveals the P & P to be of a slightly sleazier variety than The Mirror – "Pregnant Woman Strips Lover Naked" "Boy, 17, Attacks Old Woman For Sex?" (they printed the question mark) and "Driver Strapped by Love". These stories are not jokes as the titles might have you believe. The pregnant woman actually did strip her lover naked after an argument in the market; the public nature of the act making it newsworthy, I suppose. While the local stories are not parodies, the page of "Foreign News and Tit Bits" (yes, it reads "tit bits") is actually culled from the Weekly World News (a joke tabloid) and so unknowingly has a page full of made up stories! I suppose the editors reasoned that anything entitled the "Weekly World News" would have just that – breaking news items from around the world. So, the paper that "reports nothing but the truth" unwittingly contains spoof articles of the kind you’d read in The Onion. One is entitled "Man files for ‘moral bankruptcy’" and another story centers around the newly discovered secret writings of Jesus, which include bar mitzvah thank you cards to his Aunt Muskah for the carpentry set.

To be fair, there are some seriously legitimate periodicals, which have thorough reporting and insightful commentary and provdie a good glimpse into what is important to Ghanaians and how they view the world. There is a lot of emphasis on politics, which makes sense in a part of the world that has had some serious political upheavals in recent memory and future stability is not a foregone conclusion. But I think the biggest insight I've gained through my not so scientific perusal of Ghanaian periodicals is that sex, violence and the oddball or touching human interest story will pretty much universally help sell papers in a free economy. And the headlines keep the tiny demographic of foreigners buying papers for the unintentional comedic value.

V day

So, many of you may not realize this but Valentine's day is something of a national holiday here in "Liberia in Ghana". I'm not kidding. The kids stay home from school and everybody parties like it's July 4th. The Ghanaian Education Board has decided that what with all the Christian and Muslim holidays and days like UN day during for which school is suspended, students only attend like 3 or 4 days of school a year. So, they are "cracking down" on lover's day making all schools hold classes that day. We had a teachers meeting to discuss this and there was practically another mutiny. The teachers pretty much refused to teach saying that none of the kids would show up because they are not used to this change and there is no good way to get out the information. That's all true. One teacher made some argument about the importance of Valentine's day having to do with universal or religious love. The other teachers just kind of rolled their eyes. It's just an expected day off. I have no earthly idea how Valentine's day got elevated to a national holiday here, but I too am glad to have another excuse to celebrate.

OK. So here's a copy of a little Valentine one of my students made for me:

He addressed it:
"Sweare is sen it to sis kim
PO Box 46 State House
Accra Ghana
for mo information
contact Sweare Jo Torjlair"

"Happy Valentine to you sis Kim. Made God Bless you and wish many many mo years. What is Valentine? Valentine is all about John 3:16 Valentine is all about Share to one and another Person THank you."

He then drew me a Valentine's apple with an arrow through it. Yes, I said apple. No idea how that became a romantic icon here, but there it is. A friend of mine received an apple and a poem from a Liberian who has been pursuing her, so we all now tease her that in accepting the fruit she has agreed to all kinds of... lets just sayy... romantic acts.

OK. So, happy Valentine's day from the land of apples and no school.

how nature's perfect food got even better

Last weekend a number of us, being the good liberals that we are, took an educational sojourn to a fair trade banana farm. One of the volunteers is a rather active fair trade campaigner in Australia and her inquiries led her to contact Hub, Ghana’s first fair trade banana farmer, who agreed to give us a tour of his operation. Hub is every bit your image of the intrepid farmer. His face is leathery and tan from days in the sun, his manner is unassuming yet straight-shooting and one of his digits (middle finger, left hand) is missing, likely taken in some industrial farming accident. He generously took around his 500 acres in his rustic blue pickup explaining the ins and outs of the fair trade business and the finer points of banana farmer, talking (in a thick Dutch accent) about the “verkersh harveshting dee bananas.”

Hub had begun his tropical farming career in the Ivory Coast in what he described as pretty primitive conditions. After that, nearly 13years ago, having fallen in love with a Ghanaian woman, he moved here to try his luck at farming the land in the Volta region. Hub was not drawn to the fair trade game due to any kind of outrage over multinational exploitation of disempowered native workers, but because without fair trade he would not have been able to overcome the trade barriers that were keeping him from exporting his produce.

A complicated set of European trade restrictions that gave former colonies preferential treatment in exporting produce was phased out when the EU was established, technically permitting a flood of cheap produce from many parts of the earth to all over Europe. But to take advantage of this new rule producers had to be already exporting to Europe before the EU was established. Because no one had seen it profitable to export bananas from Ghana before this rule, no one could take advantage of this newly lifted trade barrier. OK. I think I have this part of the story correct so far, but trade regulations are by design complicated partly (to be cynical) so that those with the slickest lawyers get the best deal. Not being a slick lawyer I may have screwed up one of the finer details. Anyway, point is Hub was priced out of the banana game, and a part of the world that could grow bananas most efficiently was prevented from selling to the part of the world that would pay the most for them (the opposite of what free trade enthusiasts advocate). But with a fair trade label stuck to his produce, Hub could circumvent some of these trade restrictions and command enough of a premium in European markets to make a profit.

Many of us are familiar with the term “fair trade”, but we know it as a tiny niche market for select goods (like chocolate, coffee and handicrafts) frequented mainly by us liberal yoga-practicing organic oat-eating do-gooders. However, in Europe, there are entire aisles of produce dedicated to fair trade products for the social conscious salad eater. The fair trade consumer can rest assured that the far off producer of their produce is getting a fair wage, the right to unionize, health and pension benefits, and paid overtime (conditions that, to make an obvious comparison, would make the average Walmart employee envious). The FLO (the Fair Trade Labeling Organization) visits the operation, or more often collective of small farmers, to ensure that these labor standards are adhered to, and awards them the official fair trade label which confers with it a premium at the selling point.

Hub’s banana fields flank the great Volta River and are nestled between rolling green hills. Monday through Wednesday his 500 workers tend to the fields for a 5 hour day while Thursday and Friday (the “harveshting” days) they put in a longer 10 hours. If they work on the weekends they get paid overtime. They are unionized and have a health policy and even, we were surprised to learn, maternity leave. Hub's farm puts $60,000 into the local economy each month, which of course helps generate and support other small businesses as well as the estimated 5 dependents per each of his workers. When profits from their fair trade premium were twice as much as expected last year, the workers had a say in determining where this extra $120,000 went. They voted on buying a bicycle for each worker so that their commute (otherwise potentially hours on foot) would become easier, and now blue “fair trade” bikes dot the region.

Last year Dole (maybe you’ve heard of this company) moved into the neighborhood after things got too unstable in the Ivory Coast next door, setting up a banana plantation ten times larger than Hub’s operation. Dole’s workers are paid daily with no contract (probably made it a lot easier to get out of the Ivory Coast when the going got rough) and paid five times less than Hub’s. These lower labor costs and the benefits of economies of scale from such a huge operation mean that without fair trade, Dole’s farm would have run Hub out of business last year.

One of the main arguments for free trade is that, while it is easy to paint multinationals as nefarious parasites, they are providing much needed employment to workers whose alternatives are much worse. But the problem is that they can pull out of a country at any time when greener pastures emerge or when things get too prickly, leaving the situation worse than where they found it. But this is business and not social work, and it’s not surprising that there is no real loyalty to betterment of the country or to the workers and their families. But that’s precisely why our government has regulations to protect workers – because the competitive environment in which businesses operate does not select for expensive decisions that nurture workers or create a healthy society outside the company gates. Because there are no real global worker protections, mobile multinationals can game the system to their advantage. OK. That’s probably a sophomoric oversimplification of things, but that should give the uninitiated a bit of background. Back to Hub…

After the tour, Hub invited us to his house to relax and chat a bit more. Let’s just say, fair trade has been good to Hub. His house was unpretentious but beautiful; the pickup and farm tools in the garage clashed a bit with his leather sofa and high-tech sound system inside. Pictures of his farm and family and an impressive collection of Africana dotted his walls. It all seemed to fit what we knew of Hub so far. We convened in his backyard and relaxed in the gazebo overlooking the Volta drinking beer in the early mid-day. Life has not always been so comfortable. Farmers can experience a reversal of fortunes any year making it a risky investment. A few years ago, a disease in his fields wiped out his harvest and he nearly lost everything. He had to lay off almost all of his workers. But considering that they negotiated a 5 months severance package, Hub told us that most of his workers were asking to be fired. (The contracts required he pay even more which would have permanently shut him down, so the workers union agreed to the 5 months) He was able to start over, however, and has seen some very profitable years lately.

All of this was very heartening - one of those instances where everybody wins. And it is all due to the market of socially conscious consumers that are willing to pay a bit more to know that the workers who pick the fruit half a world away are being treated as they would want to be treated. I don’t know if it will be enough of a market to truly change the way global business is done, but it is a start.

noise pollution

As I mentioned, one of the hardest things about living on camp is noise. I'm not just referring to the children constantly screaming in the windows or the continual din of chatter. The real problem is the decibel (painful) and time of day (all hours) people insist on blaring music and the like over loud speakers. This ranges from rather enjoyable Ghanaian high life music to the down right offensive Celine Dion ballad or evangelic ranting. Whatever it is, it is played so loud that you have to scream over it in your own house and frustrated attempts to shut out the noise with ear plugs or mental concentration only make your blood boil. I've spent some time trying to work out why no one (other than every international volunteer) seems to mind the noise. Seriously, this kind of noise at home would elicit at least a "shut the f--k up!" screamed out a window and more likely a call to the police, but here people just go about their business, sing along or break out into a little dance. I have a few theories brewing about this apparent tolerance for such extreme noise pollution, but none of them seem entirely satisfying.

1) This acceptance could be a manifestation of an African sense of communalism and a fuzzier sense of where the individual ends and the community begins. So much here seems to implicitly belong to everyone, and that includes everything from a person's income to their private space, which is (by necessity or culture) virtually non-existent. I have had strangers literally sit on my lap on a tro tro and children grab every part of my body without exception. A person’s fortunes or tragedies are never their own to enjoy or endure. A family member that makes good is expected (not hoped) to share their gains with the rest, but when someone is sick or everyone they know comes to aid with money and emotional support. There are so many manifestations of this communalism and sense that we are all tied to one another. Maybe this tolerance for another person's noisemaking is just another. The air belongs to everyone so no one person can stake prevent another from pouring a sound into it.

2) Maybe it's not all that deep. Maybe, in the same way those who grow up eating spicy food can tolerate it better than those of who grew up eating blander food, Africans’ sense of what is too loud or annoying has become muted through habituation. That seemed like a satisfying explanation, but I have spoken to some Liberians who are in fact irritated by their neighbor blasting music in the wee hours of the morning. So, it could be that…

3) There is no civil authority to create and enforce any noise pollution regulations. Maybe everyone is stewing with rage and frustration in their homes but they have no police to call and are afraid to confront someone who is bold enough to blare 50 Cent at deafening decibels. That could be true, but doesn’t seem to explain everything as most people still seem unfazed by noises levels that make it impossible to think, but maybe that’s the whole point.

4) It *is* hard to think when Ghanaian high life or American rap music is playing so loudly that furniture is rattled. But, considering what so many adults have had to live through in the war and afterwards, maybe silence is a worse offender. If quiet provides an opening for past horrors to visit your mind, loud music could be the antidote. So, maybe loud music works as kind of an easy and convenient palliative strategy when otherwise you’d be left to cope with some serious trauma.

I could still be wrong, but finding an explanation for this helps me from pulling my own hair out in frustration when a hokey musak version of Amazing Grace wakes me at 4 AM from much needed slumber. It keeps me from falling apart as I pull my pillow over my head and try not to loose my own grip on reality.

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.