Monrovia – the Las Vegas of West Africa… Except not quite

So let me see where did I leave things off? Who really remembers, and who really cares? I guess we will just pick up where I can think I left off and tell you all what has been happening. So last week we had this training on Liberian Land Laws… it very well might be that there could have been a more boring meeting but I don’t really know how. For example we spent about fifteen minutes naming all things that were property.
Moderator: Can anyone name something that can be property?
Group: (very quite and everyone looking at their feet)
Moderator: Anyone? (I was hoping he would say something along the lines of Bueller, Bueller, Bueller, but it didn’t happen)
Group: a house is property
Someone else in the group: Not if you rent it.
First person again: well its still someone’s property even if you yourself is renting.
Someone else: what if its public land?
Another person: Pots are property
Yet another person: corn is property…
The conversation continued on in this sort of vein for, and I kid you not, well over half an hour before we then moved on to discussing the differences between physical property and intellectual property where a very similar conversation ensued. Anyway… I just thought I would share with you my misery. On the Brightside though the group that came to give the workshop catered lunch so we got a small piece of beef to go with our cassava leafs and rice so that was nice.
So I went to Monrovia this weekend to go to church. I planned to stay with this guy named Liam whom I met here at DEN-L the first couple days I was here. He works for a Irish Catholic development agency and they fund DEN-L so he is up here from time to time and had offered the invitation to take his spare bed room if I ever made it down to Monrovia. His place was, now looking back in hindsight, your standard bachelor pad. However, after only a month out here in Gbarnga with trips to the bush and what not on a frequent basis, his placed looked like a mansion at first. His agency foots the bill for his apartment in a gated community with a swimming pool and electric generator that goes for 24 hours a day. He has air conditioning and hot water (although the pipes appear to be rusting cause it came out orange). He has a refrigerator and the most blessed of all modern inventions a washing machine and a dryer. I nearly cried at the sight of something so beautiful.
Monrovia for its part is a city that has seen better days. All around are signs of its once better past and its current state of shambles. There are telephone poles with no wires anymore to carry electricity since most o f the city is still without power. There are manholes to mark where the sewer system lies dormant long since inoperable. There are street lights all throughout downtown but without power they are just another place for the birds to perch before they go and pick at any one of the many piles of trash laying about the place. The buildings are run down and shattered still. I guess 3 years is not quite enough time to rebuild a city after 13 years of civil war. I really don’t understand it all but there it is. The city is a madhouse with development workers and the what not. I often wonder how much good we are all actually doing. So much of the economy of Liberia now depends solely on the nearly infinite waves of human rights workers, agriculture specialists, financial advisors and what not that are flown into the city and then shuttled around by the swarm of white SUVs with different acronyms painted on their sides. I wonder if everyone in the UN really needs their own private Toyota Land Cruiser.
I think the most interesting thing was going into the western restaurants. A large part of me was all too happy to sit in the air conditioned bliss and let the western world flow over me. A cold Dr. Pepper, a large plate of Kung Pao Chicken, a cup of hot chocolate, well why not. A swim in the pool… ok sounds good to me. Every time I would try to indulge myself though I would look over and see our waiter or waitress and think how they would be spending the ten dollars I was spending for my dish, for food for their family for a week and I felt ashamed. I would take a dip in the pool and then stick my head out of the water and see the guards going about their business and think how they never in their lives would be able to afford to live in a complex like that. Everything seemed like an extravagance and seemed so wasteful. I spent the weekend living in the top 10% for a change and it felt wrong, just wrong. How could it feel right with all those around me that had nothing and that were just hoping for some crumbs to fall from my table for them to fight over. That’s not what God had it mind when he sent us down here. That’s why the scriptures talk about all the perfect societies having all things in common and there being no poor among them. Those societies were happy, they were prosperous and they were healthy. Those societies are my model and I know that I will never get the world to be like that but the Lord never really expected us to be perfect now did he? He just told us to try to be, I guess I wont stop trying.
However, even when I go back to Gbarnga where I am now and living a life much like everyone else I work with I am still different. For me this is three months of sacrifice to experience the “developing world.” For all my friends here though this is not an experience, this is their life. They can’t take a weekend off to go drink hot chocolate and lay around in air conditioning. If the country decends into civil war again no helicopter will be sent for them because they happen to have a little blue passport. I am still just a glorified tourist, a google eyed sightseer staring at zoo exhibits knowing that at the end of the day I get to leave the zoo and leave everything else there. I guess it’s a good thing I worked so hard to be born in the right country (please read this last sentence with the thickest sarcasm you can possibly imagine). Is this what they mean when they say liberal white guilt? Or is this just having a conscious? And is there a difference? From where I am sitting right now it just seems like common sense. Perhaps I will look back on this in twenty-thirty years and laugh at how naïve and idealist I was, I know that a few years perspective seems to change everything and have figured out that those older than me do know things I don’t, but then again whats wrong with a little bit of idealism?
So I want to rant about another important topic but I will save that for the next time, let’s just give you the teaser that I am quite sure that Barack Obama could become president of Liberia with no problem if the republicans pull more of their dirty “swift boat” crap against him. Anyway… I think I should end this on a happy note.
So while in Liberia I met tons of people who were curious as to why a white person was walking in the street and not riding by in one of the white SUVs that make up the fleet of the NGO community there. Anyway I told them that I worked for an NGO in Bong County and that I did conflict resolution work up in Lofa county with the Lorma and Mandingo tribes. A lot of the people were from Lofa and were displaced to the city or they had come looking for work and every time I met someone from up there they thanked me profusely telling me how glad they were that someone was working on that issue. People opened up and told me of their own prejudices and their recognition that hating the other tribe had been a waste of time and only brought them down. It was good to be appreciated and see that my work was having a real effect on the lives of real people with real issues. I don’t know that many people get to feel like their work is making people’s lives better, but I got to hear over and over again this weekend how, even the possibility and thought of my work, made people happy.
So this is it, this is all I have. I am done for now. Feel free to leave comments. My lifestyle is validated when you all leave comments telling me what you think and arguing with me or pointing out a perspective that I had not thought of. But like I said, I’m done for now. But I have a bit to write later as well so check back soon and tell me what you think.