so here are a few things i have learned in Africa,
1. you can eat fish bones with out dying ( a myth my parents instilled in me when i was little, they still don't taste good though)
2. its best to leave the key in your lock when you go to bed so you can find it in the pitch dark after you cant find your flashlight and need to get out of your room in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom all the while doing the "i have to go to the bathroom" shuffle.
3. don't lose your flash light at night or you might pee your pants while trying to find it.
4. I am way more blessed than i ever knew
5. it really is easier to see Africans at night if they are smiling.
6. I am way too dependent on electricity and my stupid computer and internet
7. Roads are amazing, so very very amazing
8. Life doesn't have to be as complicated as we make it.
9. Life is better when there are smiling people near by
10. Slow internet connections make me want to punch things, making me realize i need to be more patient and less reliant on the net.
11. Mangoes are undeniable proof that God exists
12. one man's nice cool evening is another persons freezing all night in their thatch roofed house.
13. Shakira is truly the universal modicum of communication. (her hips don't lie in Liberia either)
14. Liberia is where all those free fundraising t-shirts go when they die. (yesterday my boss came in wearing a t-shirt from some sort of cancer support event in Mt. Vernon, Iowa of all places)
15. I should have payed more attention in French class in high school
16. There are not lions and snakes every 10 feet in Africa
17. There are enough good people in this world to make it a better place
18. It really is true, the last shall be first and the first shall be last
So these are a few of my lessons I have learned so far. I will let you in on more as they are unfolded to me
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
lots of rice...
So I am on to week number two now, I arrived here in Gbarnga (for those of you that are like me and don't speak any Pele, the local language other than English, the town is pronounced Ban-ga) a week ago tonight, about this time actually. I didn't know what year it was let alone where I was at... I guess I am doing slightly better now, so let me tell you what I have been up to.
So on Sunday i got to go to these amazing waterfalls a couple hours drive away. it is only accessible down an old road that was used before the war for a huge rice farm that the chinese ran and a big rubber plantation. The road is now in disrepair and looks like it took a few mortar shots itself. Lets just say that my old Geo Prizm would not have made it there... in fact i think my Ge0 Prizm would have sunk up past the roof in some of those holes we were in. They doubled as local swimming holes for the kids. The waterfalls were great though and ridiculously beautiful. If i ever figure out how to post pictures on here I will do that as well but for now you will have to look at them on facebook those of you that have face book.
So on the way back we stopped and picked up three little kids that were from about 11-8 years old. They were walking from their village to the town about 10-15 miles away where they study. They were leaving on Sunday to get there and spend the night so that they could stay there all week for school and then come back home ont he weekend... wow did i feel like an Ass when i remembered my mom having to come to the school and personally talk to each one of my teachers to make sure i turned in my assignments and how much I whined to get out of school. these kids are barely accountable and they are walking miles to go to school. I am a loser. oh well... Matt is humbled by the developing world yet again, what else is new. Still though, there has to be an easier way. There has to be something that can be done so that these kids dont have to do this.
I was thinking the other day on the world and how much wealth there is in it. How do we in the states come home to two car garages and vacation homes and think that we in anyway earned that by our hard work? We think they are blessings from God and maybe they are but does God really want the wealth of the world to be so poorly distributed. That some of us because we were born into one country get ridiculous wealth and other people because they had the misfortune of being born on the other side of an arbitrary line written in the sand will be stuck with dire poverty their whole lives. I don't think thats G0d's will at all. God made us stewards over this earth and we have done a horrible horrible job with it.
Anyway, so i essentially literally cornered the guy that is in charge of the Conflict Resolution program here ( he is about a third of my size hence the "literally cornered him", he had no where to run from the white bear, which reminds me... I told them the story about how the Indian chief in Colombia gave me the name White Bear and they love it and use it now) and am now anxiously engaged in the good cause of helping the Mandingo and the Lorma to stop hating each other. I will tell you all more about this later, but i have spent a good portion of the last three days reading up on the conflict and the sides of the narrative and what not. Its really quite fascinating but oh so very deep and complex and the list of grievances on both sides is about as long as my arm. Ill be going to help run a workshop between a few communities in about a week which should be fun. I will be gone for a week but will be sure to have plenty to tell you when i get back. It has just started to rain like crazy which means that this post will not get up tonight so i am going to hope that the rain stops soon and maybe i can post it... oh well...
So today i went for a walk after work. I got about a mile or so away from the compound and I turn around and there are two boys that live at the compound that are chasing after me to make sure that I am ok. I had to laugh. Here come these two scrawny little kids running after me, giant huge Matt to make sure that I am ok and to make sure that nothing happens to me. the entire walk people came running to the road to meet me. Little kids screamed from there houses "white man" "white man" and I of course yelled back the only culturally appropriate thing I could think of "black kids" "black kids." The people here are so kind hearted and giving, it is remarkable. I mean I thought that the Latinos had it down to a science but I think that the Liberians may just have them beat. It is truly remarkable to see people living in the most dire of circumstances and just how happy they can be. I mean I know that they have their problems and what not and maybe happy isnt the word maybe its momentary cheerfulness but I walked down a road of a million smiles today and waved so much that I thought my arm might fall off. Every new house we had to stop and meet more people who i am sure will remember me the next time i pass by, I just wish I could keepthem all straight.
Most of them left Liberia during the war but there are a lot of people here in Gbarnga that were still here for the fighting and many more that participated in the fighting which brings me to another thought I have been mulling over... how the hell did they decend to that? these are truly the most kind and wonderful people I know but this country has seen the most brutal violence I could ever imagine. How did that happen and if it happened here with them then how much faster could it happen any other place with lesser people. I mean i know that if you want to get philisophical you could go aristotilian on it and talk about the "Ring of Gyges" or you could look at "lord of the flies" or "heart of darkness" but when i think of what happened on the road that I walked down tonight just a few years ago it is unfathomable...
So yeah those are my thoughts for now, hopefully you found something in there worth while. If not, whooooops... ill try harder next time to be your dancing monkey.
So on Sunday i got to go to these amazing waterfalls a couple hours drive away. it is only accessible down an old road that was used before the war for a huge rice farm that the chinese ran and a big rubber plantation. The road is now in disrepair and looks like it took a few mortar shots itself. Lets just say that my old Geo Prizm would not have made it there... in fact i think my Ge0 Prizm would have sunk up past the roof in some of those holes we were in. They doubled as local swimming holes for the kids. The waterfalls were great though and ridiculously beautiful. If i ever figure out how to post pictures on here I will do that as well but for now you will have to look at them on facebook those of you that have face book.
So on the way back we stopped and picked up three little kids that were from about 11-8 years old. They were walking from their village to the town about 10-15 miles away where they study. They were leaving on Sunday to get there and spend the night so that they could stay there all week for school and then come back home ont he weekend... wow did i feel like an Ass when i remembered my mom having to come to the school and personally talk to each one of my teachers to make sure i turned in my assignments and how much I whined to get out of school. these kids are barely accountable and they are walking miles to go to school. I am a loser. oh well... Matt is humbled by the developing world yet again, what else is new. Still though, there has to be an easier way. There has to be something that can be done so that these kids dont have to do this.
I was thinking the other day on the world and how much wealth there is in it. How do we in the states come home to two car garages and vacation homes and think that we in anyway earned that by our hard work? We think they are blessings from God and maybe they are but does God really want the wealth of the world to be so poorly distributed. That some of us because we were born into one country get ridiculous wealth and other people because they had the misfortune of being born on the other side of an arbitrary line written in the sand will be stuck with dire poverty their whole lives. I don't think thats G0d's will at all. God made us stewards over this earth and we have done a horrible horrible job with it.
Anyway, so i essentially literally cornered the guy that is in charge of the Conflict Resolution program here ( he is about a third of my size hence the "literally cornered him", he had no where to run from the white bear, which reminds me... I told them the story about how the Indian chief in Colombia gave me the name White Bear and they love it and use it now) and am now anxiously engaged in the good cause of helping the Mandingo and the Lorma to stop hating each other. I will tell you all more about this later, but i have spent a good portion of the last three days reading up on the conflict and the sides of the narrative and what not. Its really quite fascinating but oh so very deep and complex and the list of grievances on both sides is about as long as my arm. Ill be going to help run a workshop between a few communities in about a week which should be fun. I will be gone for a week but will be sure to have plenty to tell you when i get back. It has just started to rain like crazy which means that this post will not get up tonight so i am going to hope that the rain stops soon and maybe i can post it... oh well...
So today i went for a walk after work. I got about a mile or so away from the compound and I turn around and there are two boys that live at the compound that are chasing after me to make sure that I am ok. I had to laugh. Here come these two scrawny little kids running after me, giant huge Matt to make sure that I am ok and to make sure that nothing happens to me. the entire walk people came running to the road to meet me. Little kids screamed from there houses "white man" "white man" and I of course yelled back the only culturally appropriate thing I could think of "black kids" "black kids." The people here are so kind hearted and giving, it is remarkable. I mean I thought that the Latinos had it down to a science but I think that the Liberians may just have them beat. It is truly remarkable to see people living in the most dire of circumstances and just how happy they can be. I mean I know that they have their problems and what not and maybe happy isnt the word maybe its momentary cheerfulness but I walked down a road of a million smiles today and waved so much that I thought my arm might fall off. Every new house we had to stop and meet more people who i am sure will remember me the next time i pass by, I just wish I could keepthem all straight.
Most of them left Liberia during the war but there are a lot of people here in Gbarnga that were still here for the fighting and many more that participated in the fighting which brings me to another thought I have been mulling over... how the hell did they decend to that? these are truly the most kind and wonderful people I know but this country has seen the most brutal violence I could ever imagine. How did that happen and if it happened here with them then how much faster could it happen any other place with lesser people. I mean i know that if you want to get philisophical you could go aristotilian on it and talk about the "Ring of Gyges" or you could look at "lord of the flies" or "heart of darkness" but when i think of what happened on the road that I walked down tonight just a few years ago it is unfathomable...
So yeah those are my thoughts for now, hopefully you found something in there worth while. If not, whooooops... ill try harder next time to be your dancing monkey.
Saturday, May 24, 2008
So this is Africa... hmm...
So I am here, I am in one piece and I am sweating like a pig. One of those three things is a lie, can you tell which it is? well at the moment I happen to not be sweating like a pig per se, its much more of a light sheen of sweat. Anyone else enjoy that I started my first blog entry ever with a description of sweat? I figure that will probably set the tone for the depth of these entries. oh well....
So I got to Liberia on Wednesday although my body was so mixed up and twisted around I would have believed that it was Monday or Friday or 1945 whatever... but I think I am now all acclimated to the time difference, a mere four hours from DC but then again I had just got accustomed to Seattle time so lets make that like 7 hours instead... or 80 hours your call really. I got into the country alright, I only got a visa stamp for thirty days so I am going to have to go back down to Monrovia and deal with the beureaucracy there for a while at the immigration services. JoeJoe the director of DEN-L picked me up from the airport and drove me straight out to Gbarnga so I have still not even seen the capital yet. First impression of Liberia... well lets do this anicdotally...
The national airport is in the middle of a huge (when i say huge I mean 1 million + acres) Firestone rubber plantation. To leave the airport you must pass through several Firestone checkpoints. The Firestone company leases the land from the government for about 2 cents a year per acre. In contrast they make about $1,200 for a ton of sap from the rubber trees. Each acre produces somewhere between 2-3 tons of sap a month, not a year a month... so lets give the conservative estimate of $3,000 a month per acre for which they pay 2 cents a year... can we say exploitation? That is pretty much the history of Liberia, exploitation and more exploitation.
I was shown to my room where I would be staying once we got to the DEN-L compound, which by the way doesn't the word compound bring images of cults to your mind? I just think i will stay away from the koolaid for the time being. So the compound has quite a few amenities I was not expecting... actually I don't really know what I was expecting. But I have my own room and bathroom which have electricity from 8AM-10:30PM thanks to a generator the size of a midsize car. The water is nice and cold which i have forgotten how refreshing a cold shower can be after waking up in a pool of sweat.
The rest of the compound consists of a few other buildings where people sleep when they come for trainings, a big conference room, a kitchen, a mess hall and an office. Turns out I get all of my meals prepared for me by three of the nicest people you have ever met. They are great but the food, I can tell already, will be monotonous. So far for the three days I have been here we have had fish and rice for three meals and then there was fish and potatoes for another one of the meals.
It rained last night, I am told I am getting here right in the middle of the rainy season, and eventually started to hail. All of the Liberians ran out into the rain to pick up the hail and eat it. I can imagine that for many of them that is the only ice that they see in their lives. Everything I see here has been reminding me of just how priveledged I am. Even here in Liberia I am living a priveledged life as I type on my laptop that cost more money than the people living around me will see in 10 years of work, as i sleep in my bed in my own room the size of the average person here's house. I eat three times a day from meals that are prepared for me, I have nothing to complain about. I am blessed and need to figure out why I am in this position to be so blessed. to steal a line from my favorite hymn... "because I have been given much I too must give." what is the best way for me to do that. I saw parents pushing their children out the door into the rain yesterday with bars of soap in their hands... they didn't really have to push too hard I would imagine as the kids seemed to be loving it. It was an interesting contrast to see the little naked black bodies covered in a thick white lather, and all of this dancing in the pouring rain.
DEN-L had a training yesterday on Gender Policy, trying to come up with a cohesive gender policy for the organiztion. It was an interesting discussion. The issue of Gender equality is sort of a buzz word these days in Liberia as is Child's Rights. It is causing a bit of a commotion which I guess is good in certain way but its bringing it's own set of problems as one might expect. You have to remember that 5 years ago a woman couldn't speak in a room with men in it in any sort of formal setting in many parts of the country, now they have a woman as president. 3 years ago children were carrying AK-47's and involved in some of the worst human rights atrocities you could ever fathom and now they are supposed to go to school. Things are changing here at break nake speed... too fast I wonder? Yesterday at the discussion many of the men in the room said that they needed to take things slowly and only do things at a pace they could feel comfortable at. I was reminded of Martin Luther King's writings from the Birmingham jail when we talked of white preachers that cautioned not to go too fast... MLK pointed out that it was easy for them in their position of priledge to suggest taking things slowly but for the people that were living in oppression they were sick and tired and wanted equality now. I shared my observations and thoughts with the group after which many of the men that had spoken previously quickly agreed with me. Like I said, things are changing quickly in this country, is there such a thing as too fast and too much? or is that just mean thinking from my place of priveldge? Ill think about it some more and let you know, as for me the power goes out in 20 minutes for the day and I need to send out some e-mails. I'll write more later... no lie, I promise.
So I got to Liberia on Wednesday although my body was so mixed up and twisted around I would have believed that it was Monday or Friday or 1945 whatever... but I think I am now all acclimated to the time difference, a mere four hours from DC but then again I had just got accustomed to Seattle time so lets make that like 7 hours instead... or 80 hours your call really. I got into the country alright, I only got a visa stamp for thirty days so I am going to have to go back down to Monrovia and deal with the beureaucracy there for a while at the immigration services. JoeJoe the director of DEN-L picked me up from the airport and drove me straight out to Gbarnga so I have still not even seen the capital yet. First impression of Liberia... well lets do this anicdotally...
The national airport is in the middle of a huge (when i say huge I mean 1 million + acres) Firestone rubber plantation. To leave the airport you must pass through several Firestone checkpoints. The Firestone company leases the land from the government for about 2 cents a year per acre. In contrast they make about $1,200 for a ton of sap from the rubber trees. Each acre produces somewhere between 2-3 tons of sap a month, not a year a month... so lets give the conservative estimate of $3,000 a month per acre for which they pay 2 cents a year... can we say exploitation? That is pretty much the history of Liberia, exploitation and more exploitation.
I was shown to my room where I would be staying once we got to the DEN-L compound, which by the way doesn't the word compound bring images of cults to your mind? I just think i will stay away from the koolaid for the time being. So the compound has quite a few amenities I was not expecting... actually I don't really know what I was expecting. But I have my own room and bathroom which have electricity from 8AM-10:30PM thanks to a generator the size of a midsize car. The water is nice and cold which i have forgotten how refreshing a cold shower can be after waking up in a pool of sweat.
The rest of the compound consists of a few other buildings where people sleep when they come for trainings, a big conference room, a kitchen, a mess hall and an office. Turns out I get all of my meals prepared for me by three of the nicest people you have ever met. They are great but the food, I can tell already, will be monotonous. So far for the three days I have been here we have had fish and rice for three meals and then there was fish and potatoes for another one of the meals.
It rained last night, I am told I am getting here right in the middle of the rainy season, and eventually started to hail. All of the Liberians ran out into the rain to pick up the hail and eat it. I can imagine that for many of them that is the only ice that they see in their lives. Everything I see here has been reminding me of just how priveledged I am. Even here in Liberia I am living a priveledged life as I type on my laptop that cost more money than the people living around me will see in 10 years of work, as i sleep in my bed in my own room the size of the average person here's house. I eat three times a day from meals that are prepared for me, I have nothing to complain about. I am blessed and need to figure out why I am in this position to be so blessed. to steal a line from my favorite hymn... "because I have been given much I too must give." what is the best way for me to do that. I saw parents pushing their children out the door into the rain yesterday with bars of soap in their hands... they didn't really have to push too hard I would imagine as the kids seemed to be loving it. It was an interesting contrast to see the little naked black bodies covered in a thick white lather, and all of this dancing in the pouring rain.
DEN-L had a training yesterday on Gender Policy, trying to come up with a cohesive gender policy for the organiztion. It was an interesting discussion. The issue of Gender equality is sort of a buzz word these days in Liberia as is Child's Rights. It is causing a bit of a commotion which I guess is good in certain way but its bringing it's own set of problems as one might expect. You have to remember that 5 years ago a woman couldn't speak in a room with men in it in any sort of formal setting in many parts of the country, now they have a woman as president. 3 years ago children were carrying AK-47's and involved in some of the worst human rights atrocities you could ever fathom and now they are supposed to go to school. Things are changing here at break nake speed... too fast I wonder? Yesterday at the discussion many of the men in the room said that they needed to take things slowly and only do things at a pace they could feel comfortable at. I was reminded of Martin Luther King's writings from the Birmingham jail when we talked of white preachers that cautioned not to go too fast... MLK pointed out that it was easy for them in their position of priledge to suggest taking things slowly but for the people that were living in oppression they were sick and tired and wanted equality now. I shared my observations and thoughts with the group after which many of the men that had spoken previously quickly agreed with me. Like I said, things are changing quickly in this country, is there such a thing as too fast and too much? or is that just mean thinking from my place of priveldge? Ill think about it some more and let you know, as for me the power goes out in 20 minutes for the day and I need to send out some e-mails. I'll write more later... no lie, I promise.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
