So this is good bye,

So I go home tomorrow... I know I know, time has flown by for all three of you my avid readers, thanks Mom, Jo, David and Jen. Ok so that is four not three but anyway, you know numbers arent my thing.

So I have learned a lot of things here in Liberia for example:

- If women have sex with a man with a large penis they will, not can, but will, get cancer.
- Eating too many peanuts will cause you to create too much sperm and your testicles might explode (this conversation was a whole lot of fun with my still patchy understanding of Liberian English, I was positive that I was hearing incorrectly... nope.)
- I learned that anyone that can walk can dance and a nice sunrise is reason enough to dance.
- I learned just how lucky and blessed I am and that because I have been given much in this world, much is expected of me and I too must give.
- I learned that some people would kill to have been able to sit through my, what i thought was boring, math and sciences classes in high school.
- I learned that meat is meat and worrying about pesky details like if it was bat or beef really didnt make much of a difference.
- I learned that I really do love this field that I am in and I can do it for a long long while and feel fulfilled, challenged, and happy.
- I learned that long distance relationships are rough and that I am much more broken than I ever thought I would be.
- I learned that there are a lot of good people out there trying to make the world the way they wish it could be but that its a lot easier to ruin everything then it is to try to fix it.
- I learned that simple unsexy things like roads can make all the difference for a country.
- I learned Malaria usually wont kill you, that is of course, unless you are already weakened by silly things like chronic poverty.
- I learned I really need to learn how to drive a stick shift. That will be my goal at christmas time to learn from zach.
- I learned that I don't need nearly as many physical possessions to make myself happy and that I am far too dependent on the ones that I have right now.

Well these are some of my thoughts right now, I think they are about to cut off the power so I need to go, I like this blog thing though and I am going to keep posting stuff along the way, although I dont know if my insights will be nearly as profound or interesting when I am no longer in such a profound and moving place.

Thank you all for your support.

Matt 1 Banana Snake 0

So it is Sunday. Here at DEN-L in Gbarnga Liberia that means that there is not a whole lot going on. That actually might be a bit of an over statement. There is nothing happening here at all. No one comes in other than a couple of the kitchen staff, there is no electricty which means no computer for movies or anything like that. Everything is closed in town. So I had developed a routine while here.

Usually I wake up, have my own little church service here at the compound (I get weird looks while singing hymns to me myself and I but whatever), then i read a while (today is Audacity of Hope, GO OBAMA!!!!) then I eat lunch and spend the rest of the afternoon sitting on the porch of my building making rings for different people out of coconut shell.

So today I was sitting there carving away at my coconut shell creation working on my masterpiece and Terese came out to talk with me (the intern from Ivory Coast). We were talking a bit when all of a sudden she started shrieking at the top of her lungs. Almost simultaneously, one of the kids that works here, Amos, starts smacking the ground with a mop handle. all this is of course happening behind my back so i dont know what he is doing. I jump up screaming something amazingly eloquent like "what the hell?!?!?" to see a three foot long green banana snake writhing on the ground about a foot or so from where my leg had just been.

I look for a second at the snake who is now hissing at anything and everything and quickly stomp on its head with my heart now pumping like crazy. First thing out of my mouth is "Amos you are my hero." second thing is "was that thing poisonous?" answer "yes, its a very bad snake. It kills many people." good to know right?

Thats my drama for now. So if you are the praying type, make sure to thank God for Amos for me tonight cause without him around I don't know that I would be typing this story now.

just one more week???

how did this happen? my time has come and is nearly gone and what do i have to show for it. well thankfully I think I have gotten a lot out of this trip. I read Jeffery Sachs' "The End of Poverty" this week and he was talking about the different levels of poverty. He mentioned the idea of relative poverty which is what we mostly have in the United States. I mean yeah there are poor people in America but the vast majority of them do not live in dirt floored mud huts and dont have enough caloric intake to sustain life at all, so relatively speaking they are poor compared to the rest of the affluence running around the US. Then there is poverty which is the people in the world that barely have enough to scrape by but they either make enough food that there is some sort of progress or they have some sort of financial income that allows them to at least be stable. This is primarily what I have dealt with before in Asia and in Latin America. Yes there are people in those countries that live in more destitute life shattering poverty but the vast majority are not in any threat of dying from hunger any time soon. Then it comes to extreme dire, one small injury from death poverty which is the vast majority of Africa.

I had realized when I got to Liberia that I had never seen poverty like this before but I didn't really know any of the numbers behind it. I had no idea that I was looking at a whole other ball game. So I have come to think that the lack of development and therefore crippling poverty in Africa comes from a few different things. first, the infrastructure is horrible. there is no running water, no electricity, no roads, one barely functioning airport, no telecommunications no nothing. This last week I was in Lofa. It is now the rainy season and the roads that before were bad bumpy roads are now giant mud pits that you go from one to the next pushing yourself out of. You can not move crops on the roads (85% of Liberians are farmers), you cant get to a hosptial ( as previously explained they are far far away from most of the people), you cant even get to a family members funeral before they have to burry the person because there is no such thing as a morgue or a freezer to hold the body in. You are basically grounded to your village or anything within walking distance. The lack of electricity cuts down of efficiency in other places as well. kids cant study at night or do anything else because there is no light to do it with so that means as of 7:00 pm you are done for the night and the sun doesnt come up again till about 6:30 the next day and you are close to the equator so that pretty much doesnt change all day long. No running water so you spend huge parts of your time looking for water to bathe, clean, wash clothes, cook food etc. and then there is no gas or electricity to cook on so you have to get fire wood which, depending on how long people have lived in your area and how thorouhgly everything is picked through means you are walking quite a distance to find some wood to cook on for the day. basically all your time is spent providing for the basics of life meaning you have no time at all to invest in your future by going to school, growing extra food anything like that.

the next thing I blame is the horrible governance of this country. It can be argued that Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (Liberia's president) is doing a fairly decent job provided with what she is up against but then again most people would argue the opposite. I just know that Liberia has had like 5-6% growth for the last three years which is almost unheard of post protracted conflict. But between the war and malicious rulers this country has been lead astray continually and this probably explains for why more of the wealth doesnt go into doing things like building the infratructure and investing in health care and eduction. This is one point i disagree with Sachs on. He lets off the leadership pretty blame free saying that its mostly the fault of health reasons and lack of infrastructure but I would argue that the reason there hasnt been money to invest in these areas is because its all going into the American bank accounts of Liberia's elite Americo-Liberian ethnic group.

Then there is health concerns. In liberia that means Malaria and AIDS. everyone gets Malaria all the time. by that I mean Sachs provides statistics that pretty much everyone gets it at least once a year. I thought that was excessive till I started asking everyone about it and they said that that was right on. everyone I have asked as had it at least once in the last year most of them have had it at least two times. Now, Malaria is not nearly as bad as we think of it when we hear it in the states. I mean yeah its bad, it will floor you but unless you are really young or really old its not going to be lethal. that being said it does kill millions every year of the young and the old and those that are already weakened by other things...for example aids, or starvation or any number of other maladies found in abundance here. So when i started thinking about what that means that everyone gets Malaria at least once a year. that means that thats about a week that you are out of commision (Malaria is like having a really really bad flu). So thats one week a year that everyone is out of school, not working on their farm, not able to take care of their kids. one week guaranteed, thats a lot of man hours. not to mention that if Malaria is not treated fast enough it can leave lasting side effects that will dibilitate for life.

So I dont know what that was all about but it was on my mind recently. Basically that I was blindsided that I thought I had seen dire poverty and knew what it was but now realize that i didnt have a clue what i was talking about and if i had a clue i didnt really have any sort of understanding what that clue was alluding to. And still, just because I have seen it close up doesn't mean i really understand. I mean I stop in the villages stay for a few days and then get in my giant toyota land cruiser (by the way, i have a testimony of the amazingness of that machine and what it can do, holy crap is it a powerful powerful beast!) and drive back here to the compound and take a shower, hop on the internet and get a cold drink... what do I know? I'm forced to admit that I know nothing.

BLESSED!!!!

So let me share with you how blessed I have been, besides my run in with the rebel lion volley ball team as mentioned in the previous post of oh so long ago as yesterday, I have been getting hooked up. So first off I am in Liberia having this amazing experience and loving it over here. I get to do wonderful interesting things like lead workshops, take ferry rides (read as: ferry = some logs lashed together with vines) across hippo and crocodile infested waters, talk with people whose lives have been forever changed by conflict, etc etc.

In addition to this, while I have been here I have managed to score an apartment a mere block or so from the metro and in a new ward at church so that I wont have to go back to that horrible one I was in last year. The best part about the apartment,??? its within walking distance of the kabob palace!!! oh yeah! score! The only extra cost that the apartment had was that I had to admit to Jen that she was right about sending a shout out on the Colonial List Serve... you were right Jen.

Then the latest news is yesterday I had a follow up interview for a position at the United States Institute of Peace, who even knew the US had one of those? I thought we only new how to make war but turns out we do indeed have a congress funded Institute of Peace. Well I nailed the interview, I had the lady interviewing me laughing the whole time. She tried dropping some names on me and I knew each and everyone of them and could tell her all about their theories and what they had done and all that jazz. When i finished the interview I hung up the phone and yelled "I nailed it!!!" The African Interns that were sitting across from me were like, wait that was your interview? but you were laughing and joking the whole time. You didn't seem stressed at all. And quite honestly it really was a very pleasant stress free conversation. So yeah, I am working at the United States Institute of Peace as a Research Assistant doing work on the Economics of Violence and Peace. I will get paid less money than I got payed working at Taco Bell as a high school student but oh well. Good thing I have two bachelors degrees and half way through a masters degree right? anyway, got a job and its a foot in the door.

So the way I figured it, I will be coming home to school already to go with a huge amount of my research for my final thesis already done, I will be coming home to a beautiful amazing girl friend who somehow still hasn't figured out that she is way too good for me, I will have an apartment to move into straight off the plane, and two days after I get back I will start work at my new job in exactly the field I want to be working in. Wow has heavenly father hooked me up.

Horror of horrors!!!!!!

So I have broken my foot, well not really but my ankle sure hurts like hell. I have thus been restricted to doing only office work which I will be honest and admit is not my ideal work place but it does give me time to sit down and write out another blog post. Before you start to worry, I am fine. I wish I could say that I sprained my ankle in a more worthy cause like defending a group of nuns and school children from being attacked by rebels or lions or even better,… rebel lions but alas I cannot. I hurt it playing volley ball yesterday after executing a perfect smash (well, actually, I don’t really remember what the play was but for the sake of my ego and posterity I will say that it was actually while executing the most perfect of volley ball moves.) . However, coincidently, we were playing the game against rebel lions so that has to count for something right?

To remedy my vicious sprain my co workers have been trying to persuade me to let them pull it. From what I gather they think that they need to pull and push my swollen softball size ankle all over the place and in so doing they will push it back in line or something like that. I have tried to explain to them that it is not broken or dislocated or anything like that that I just need to keep it elevated and ice on it (by the way, there is no such thing as ice in Liberia) and I will be fine in a couple of days. Since I have been reluctant to allow them to yank on my foot till I want to punch all of them in the nose and I also passed on having the local “herbalist” (read what the western world would call a witch doctor) so instead everyone (I am currently looking at four tubes sitting on my desk) has brought me different creams and ointments. The writing on them is not English, nor any other language I speak, and as best as I can tell from a close study of the writing on the various tubes the medicine comes from Mars. That or Cambodia but I figure either one is going to be hit or miss. So they have all insisted on putting the stuff on my ankle themselves so I currently have four different creams working on my foot. I half expected there to be some sort of chemical reaction and for my foot to spontaneously combust. So far all it has produced is a pleasant cool sensation which I am hoping is not in actuality just my nerve endings being melted by the various chemicals that they are being bombarded with.

Oh well… anyway, all you need to know is that my foot is fine and I will survive… unless the rebel lions come back to finish me off.

one more week in the books...

so a week and a half ago or so i went down to the airport because there was a new intern coming in and because the airport was the closest place I could go to get strategic American things like deodorant, root beer and ground beef for important fourth of july reasons. Anyway so after I purchased my booty we had to wait at the airport for a few hours as the girls plane was delayed. I had two feelings while sitting there waiting around and seeing a couple planes land and then take off again (as you might imagine the Liberia intl. airport is not the busiest place in the world). So first thought was man, if I got on one of those planes right now i could be home by this time tomorrow enjoying a burrito and sleeping in a nice air conditioned room and seeing my friends. The thought that I actually had it in my power to make that happen was a slightly freightening, I mean really I had my passport in my pocket and I had my credit card with more than enough of a limit to whisk me away without another thought had I wanted/needed to. It really would be just that easy, no one would stop me I have it in my means to just pick up and leave whenever i decide that I have gotten too tired of being here or just don't want to play developing world anymore.

And then that made me think of all my friends here in Liberia that did not have that option. When things got bad there, like lets say a 14 year civil war that killed 300,000 people in a population of 3 million, my friends can not just go to the airport and take the next flight out while rockets explode around their houses. When things get bad there, like perhaps when the man that I met a month before in the small rural village of Goyala had a small cut on his foot that got infected because he lived in destitute poverty and could not afford to go to the doctor, when I met him it was the size of a football and he was in immense pain, I talked with people from his village yesterday, they said he had is leg amputated when he finally got to a doctor, his fault for being born in a poor country i guess, foolish man. why didnt he just use his amazing blue passport and his three by five inch piece of plastic to jet himself off to some better place where he could get all his vitamins every day and have access to clean drinking water? Thats what he gets for commiting the egregious sin of being born on the wrong side of the water and on the wrong side of a few arbitrary lands drawn through the middle of the jungle.

I sat watching the kids walking around selling corn or dvds or knock off watches and thought how they can not escape Liberia, Liberia is their future and they will never even see the inside of one of those giant metal birds they saw land and take off every day. I realized how un-commited I was to the plight of not just them but of all the poor in the world. How can I pretend to say that I care when in actuality if a war were to break out I would leave this country. I would get on the helicopter that my embassy sent for me, I would take that to the airport and i would get on the plane and I would leave the country and all my friends behind not knowing what would happen to them. I sure I am glad that I made sure to be born in the right country. I'm sure glad that my country was able to achieve its status by exploiting my friends and their status.

oh well, in case you cant tell my "I love America" day is over and I am back to wishing that we would just live up to the ideals that we preach so much. Alright I am done for now, I'll make the next post happier I promise.

4th of JULY!!!!!!

GO AMERICA!!! This is the one day of the year I allow myself to forget about the horrible bad wrotten hypocritical things that America has done/ is doing now and am unabashedly jingoistic. AMERICA #1!!!!

I was roused from my room this morning by a bunch of co-workers waving hand made American flags (with 52 stars and 12 and 10 stripes on them because they werent sure how many there actually were) and cheers of "YAY America." it is going to be a great day, unless of course it rains like crazy like it looks like it wants to do.

I reflect today and realize all the great things that America has brought to the world and the future of all things it still has to offer. The diversity, the ingenuity, the discovery, the constant looking forward at things to come, that is what makes America so great and keeps it as epitome of how things could be for the rest of the world. I am indeed very proud to be an American, especially today.

So thats how you do it in Liberia???

So first off I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to all those that I have made suffer to read my blog whilst I was committing the egregious sin of now double spacing between paragraphs. It has come to my attention that certain of the would be readers are morally offended and utterly intimidated by the dearth there of. I did not mean to in any way upset your delicate grammar sensibilities, I can only blame it on the fact that I went to public schools as a child and that I am new to the blog thing... also I may or may not have eaten paint chips as a child, they are still trying to figure that one out. So I will make sure in the future to aid you in your attempts to read my random blathering to always put two lines in between paragraphs... Again I am sincerely sorry and may God have mercy on my soul... or something like that.
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So I have been helping plan a workshop that we had the last week where we brought in a bunch of community level advocates from the surrounding county to teach them about their basic human rights as guaranteed to them by the Universal Declaration Human Rights (which many of you know I carry a copy on me almost anywhere I go as essentially another book of scripture) and then I also read through the Liberian Constitution and came out with all of the Fundamental Rights guaranteed to them through their country. So the problem we ran into was that we basically had two separate groups at this week long workshop. We had about 2/3 of the people that were humble people from small little villages and towns that did not have much education if any (several were illiterate) and they had real issues that they wanted to know how to address. Like wealthy people coming in and tricking them into selling them half their land ( when you are illiterate you really don't recognize and extra zero when you are signing papers you can not read), and general rich taking advantage of the poor types of things. And then we had the kids from Bong County Student Union who were in my opinion for the most part a bunch of punks. I say this knowing full well that I basically saw a lot of my same attributes in them and fully admitting that I am also a punk, but whatever. These kids hi-jacked the discussion every time. No one else could get a word in as they would go off on tangent after tangent... it was so frustrating. But we were able to get a lot done and the different community groups were able to leave with a good plan to address real problems that were facing them in their communities and we will be checking in on them in the next couple weeks to see how those plans went.
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So anyway... Quick story about today. So Sundays are normally super boring, I do my little church service here and then i sit around all day making things from coconut shells and slicing the hell out of my hand or I read all day and then go to bed at like 8 because they don't turn on the power on Sunday. But today was graduation day at the local University so there are a bunch of parties going on all over. So I made my boss, Dayugar not JoeJoe, come and pick me up and take me around... First sign that this was going to be different is when Dayugar comes to pick me up and he walks from the car to my building with a beer in his hand. We first went to his cousin's graduation party which was much more decadent than I was expecting. they had cut down every palm bow on the block that they could reach to make this palm thatch awning thing that covered the whole front yard and dayugar had borrowed a bunch of chairs from DEN-L as well as some of the sound equipment so that there were huge speakers up front where people were giving formal speeches to the graduate who was nearly absconded by a giant stack of presents that rivals that of my family at Christmas. Anyway... soon enough the speeches ended and then came the alcohol, case after case of alcohol. I met a bunch of different people and talked for a while and then dayugar taps me on the shoulder with another beer in his hand, it was apparent that he had one or two more since we got there, that we were going to a different party. I asked if he was ok to drive and he said that he wasn't driving cause he was too drunk, I was relieved. Until I got in the car and saw that the driver had two beers he was working at the same time, while driving a stick shift on Liberian roads. I would have said something but 1 I was very impressed with his skill and 2 the roads were so bad that we went maybe 15-20 mph tops the whole way there and i figured the worst we would do is run over a chicken or hit a tree and stop.
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We go to the next place where they each get another beer. I start to figure out how to walk home from there. We make it to the next two parties where the people that are throwing them are not so well off so they do not have drinks for everyone but one has a live band and so i danced with a bunch of older ladies who thought it was hilarious to dance with a white man, i like to think they were laughing with me and not at me, and I got my picture taken with a lot of random strangers.
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we went back to Dayugar's cousin's party where he started to bump and grind with her... I'm just saying it seemed a little too close of a friendly relationship for me but hey, who am I to judge. After we had been there for a bit longer and as the alcohol was fully taking its course a fight broke out outside and everyone raced to go watch. I for one know how bad the demobilization process has been in this country and how many small arms are still... well... everywhere so I decided to move away from the fighting instead. It soon ended and I was about to ask someone to take me home when the goat soup came out, and it would have been offensive to pass on goat soup. It was probably the best goat soup I have ever had to be quite honest but i think i still prefer Campbell's new England clam chowder.
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So that was my Sunday, that was my day. Very interesting if you ask me. I got to do a lot of people watching a little bit of dancing, made a lot of new friends who I will never remember their names and if I see them in two days will not remember that I knew them but I am going to mark this one down as a successful night out in Liberia.

So this is what adulthood feels like?

So I still have a year to go before I graduate from my masters degree, however a year has never seemed so short. I am used to time seeming so fast when I look back but now I am thinking of all that I need to do before that year is up, scratch that, make that 10 ½ months and I start to get a tightness in my chest and I wonder what the hell I am going to do.
The future and responsibilities and all that jazz has always seemed far away… After high school I got to hide on a mission for two years and not worry about everything, after my mission there was college, after college there were still two more years of grad school. Now I have been on this earth for over a quarter century, I guess its about time for me to start participating.
So my check list includes the normal end of school kinds of conundrums I guess although I would like to think that my stress and pressure is somehow greater than anyone else’s. This, of course, is a fallacy. Still as I make initial probes looking at the job market, realize that my student loans that have sky rocketed with the onset of grad school with no scholarships at all (thanks a whole freaking lot AU!!! Jerks!!) and that the economy is indeed in recession, whether my incompetent president likes to admit it or not, and think about any other possibilities that come with adulthood and their fun times responsibilities (do I have to buy life insurance now, do I have to stop traveling all the time and “settle down”? what exactly is a 401-K plan and why does it sound like a breakfast cereal?) I cannot help but feel like I have one year till a giant bomb goes off right in the middle of my sheltered protected and privileged life.
Have I prepared enough? Can you prepare enough? Am I going to have to work at McDonalds because there are no other jobs and if so will they accept my previous experience pushing tacos as an acceptable predecessor to their fast past burger world? I gotta tell you sometimes disappearing in Latin America and saying good bye to everything seems rather tempting.
For all the heart seizing panic that comes with the concept of finally becoming a full fledged adult, there is also a sense of excitement. I am about to embark on a great journey, diving head first into the concrete swimming pool that is orthodontist appointments, stock portfolios and weekends spent doing house repairs (which I am more than positive would be positively correlated with phone calls to my dad just to check in and oh by the way… how the hell do I sweat pipes?) Yeah… definitely kind of exciting. I still have a long way to go though, still have many an obstacle to overcome and I am sure I will have quite a few miniature mental breakdowns while trying to figure out what to do.
Anyway, just some thoughts of what’s on my mind. As far as Liberia, well I am facilitating a human rights workshop for local community advocates. It has made me realize how much of a role my mom’s work as a parent teacher advocate when I was a kid has had on me. Now that I look back I can see a direct line from the work she did fight with Marquette Area Public Schools to make sure that my brother or any other mentally or physically handicapped student in the district got each and every right that was accorded to them by the laws and my own work to speak up for those that don’t have a voice and try to steer the world towards the higher road. So it’s all your fault mom, are you happy? Alright I am ignoring this quality movie that was bootlegged onto a vhs tape about 15 years ago when it was shown on TV and then it was burned to DVD. Now the picture looks like you are looking at it through a glass of water and listening to it through a pillow. But if I concentrate really hard I can almost tell what’s going on and I think it’s a pretty good movie.

Election 2008 from the Liberian Perspective...

So where do I begin with this. Well as you all probably know I have been all about Obama from the very beginning so I am putting that personal bias out there from the beginning so you can take this with a grain of salt if you so desire for all those that are of the more conservative mindset, or you can listen and think about it your call. But anyway...

So since the election started I have been in three countries for extended periods of time. I watched the Iowa results come in from a hotel room in Putamayo Colombia and listened to human rights workers there talk about how their country would get better with Obama in office because he would be less likely to fund their corrupt government that has them in the crossfire (Bush's strongest ally in this hemisphere is President Uribe of Colombia and continues to funnel them billions of dollars for their military which as proven links to para-military groups who are responsible for some of the most gruesome human rights violations you can imagine... good thing we are paying for it all, makes me proud to be an American). I talked with displaced people there that asked me the oddest question, or to me it was the oddest question, "will they let Obama win?" Not, "can obama win?" or "will obama win?" but "will they let him win?" The thought of whether or not the powers at be with their "swift boat" esq maneuvers had never crossed my mind, was I naive or were they overly cynical? Probably a little bit of both.

So in March I found myself walking around dusty side streets in the highlands of Peru as state after state voted and it looked more and more like he was going to run away with the whole deal. I walked around and saw handmade Obama posters put up in peoples windows and once finding out I was American the first topic of conversation was again "will they let obama win?" Was I missing something here that every one else knew that I didn't? Were they all privy to some sort of bit of information that had been withheld from me? Granted both Colombia and Peru both have horrible records of elections being stolen but the US's record is only slightly better with the supreme court deciding one election and then another being high jacked by swift boat BS and the unbearable thought of two consenting adults making their own decisions and living with the consequences.

Now I am in Liberia and it is Obama mania. Recently I was walking around the streets of Monrovia the capital, with my Barack Obama pin proudly placed on my bag for all to see and wow did everyone see it. Sometimes I couldn't walk more than 15 steps before another group of people would remark on my button and usually call me over to talk about Obama. Thankfully I just got done reading his books so I could tell them all about his story and what not. Again came that pesky question though "will they let him win?" So here is what I gathered from these talks of mine. Liberians like Barack Obama because:

- He is black and they are black and they think it would be amazing to have a black man as president of the United States of America.

- His dad was from Kenya, that was just one generation ago. Because of the war here many of them have family that have become refugees in the United States and it gives them hope that maybe their sister or brothers son that was born in America could become the president.

- It makes people believe in the Utopian image that is the United States of America. So many people want to come to America because it is the land of opportunity, the American dream and all that jazz. The defender of justice and the all around good guys. However the last 8 years with a war in Iraq that everyone except a few holdouts in the states recognizes was based on a lie, our making torture an official part of US foreign policy, our ignoring of international law and regulation, our down turn in economy, our negligence about the environment etc etc have all darkened that image. However with this one move the US has shown the world that underneath the dirt, filth and lies of the last 8 years we are still that shiny beacon pulling ourselves out from the mess we have made.

People around the world are in awe of the American experiment and what we are again accomplishing. In any other country no member of a minority group would ever get that far. Would a Turk ever become president of Germany, hell no. How about a Copt the president or leader of Egypt, I wouldn't hold your breath. Maybe a Shiite becomes the leader of Saudi Arabia or a black man becomes president of any of the countries in South America? yeah right. Only in America could this happen and it gives the world hope. Not just Americans are tired of the lies and the bully tactics the world is pretty sick of it as well.

Think of it this way, the election of the next US president will deeply effect the lives of every single human being on this earth nearly without exception and how many people actually get to vote in that election? of the 7 billion plus people only .3 billion actually get a say in this. So if you don't think your vote matters it matters a heck of a lot more than the poor guy sitting in his shack in Liberia that kissed the cover of "dreams of my fathers" when he saw a picture of Obama for the first time.

So I guess I will leave it like this, who will make our country more safe? A person that inspires the world over and reminds the world why America is so special and unique, or the guy that wants us to stay in Iraq for another 100 years. I know my answer better figure out yours...

preaching over for the day. To anyone that this post offended... I would say I'm sorry but I am not. Feel free to leave comments or e-mail me to talk about it though.

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.

read this or the terrorists win...

So I don't really remember what else happened in Lofa ( that is code for me not wanting to go back and read the last entry and then piece back my memmories to figure out where I left off), so I am just going to go from where I can remember.

First off this internship is turning out to being amazing. The Liberians really respect education, almost to a fault. Here a college degrees = smarter, more capable, better, etc. a masters degree = walking on water. They dont seem to have realized that some of the biggest idiots I know have college degrees and some of the smartest people I know need a college education like they need another hole in their head. Anyway... so when I got back from Lofa the director and assistant director wanted me to tell them all about what I thought and what critiques I had and all this kind of stuff. I keep trying to remind people that I am here to learn from them but they dont seem to listen to that. That being said, I have found a few of the articles that I read for classes last year online and have sent them around to everyone. they inhale them over night, coming back the next day with a laundry list of questions and ideas. It is really quite interesting. I mean i don't really feel like I am sharing that much knowledge but I guess I am able to point them in the right direction.

So I am really excited about some of the programs I want to work on. I was basically told that I could do anything I want so I am going to try a couple of different things. Firstly I am writing up a proposal for opening up a third track diplomacy option between the villages. So basically what that means is in addition to our work with the official hierarchy of the communities (which seems to have hit a slight wall because the Mandingo leaders are not cooperating as much as we would like... ok so they are dodging all our efforts for the most part) we will work with common every day people and get them together. so take like 3 people from each village bring them here to DEN-L and have a three or four day retreat with each other. get them focused on what they share in common and not what they have different and let them make friends and what not. then they go home and they tell their friends that hey these lorma or these mandingo are so bad and its sort of a ripple effect and we just keep bringing people here. like i said i am writing up the proposal hopefully i make it sound convincing enough cause i really think it could help.

the other idea I had was to use theatre or some sort of acting to help get our message across. so one of the branches of DEN-L is a group that does just that, they use music and theatre and what not to get messages across... so i was thinking that we could re write romeo and juliet and re work it so it was about the lorma and the mandingo instead. I think it will be a huge hit but i need to bounce it off people as always.

alright those are my thoughts for now. its late they should turn off the generator soon.

screw 7 years in Tibet, try a week in Lofa

So I got to go into the field this last week and do some follow up on a workshop between the Mandingo and Loma People in Northern Lofa county on the border with Guinea. These guys had been at each other for a long time, mostly just a lot of distrust and bad stereotypes not many wars but the ones that they did have were quite brutal. The war came and exacerbated things as they split primarily along ethnic lines as to who they supported. The Loma were seen to have supported Charles Taylor and the Mandingo were huge supporters of LURD that over threw Taylor. On top of this there is the issue of religion as the Mandingo are almost all Muslim and the Loma are pretty much all Christian. So after trading off back and forth during the war, a massacre at a masque here, a retaliatory slaughter of the village elders there... (i wont go into details but lets just say ... HOLY CRAP!!!) the war ended and they now find themselves living next to each other again and things are tense. Their villages are still pretty much completely segregated especially after the war. However their villages are so close that their kids all attend the same schools and their appears to be a lot less tension in the 20 and under crowd and we are starting to see a lot of mixed marriages and what not which is always a good sign.

So it was needless to say quite an interesting week with many eye opening experiences. Hearing about atrocities from the war committed on both sides was humbling especially to be sitting in the same room with someone listening to him tell me the horrible things that he had done, sometimes the person was repentant other times not so much... I'm glad I am not the one that has to sort all this out in the end, I'm glad God is perfect and just cause I don't have a clue where to start.

there were a bunch of fun memories though... so in this one village we stayed at, i was sitting outside after the sun had gone down so it was completely dark out except for the stars, which reminds me... holy crap the stars are amazing. anyway... so I was talking to the person whose hut i would be staying in that night and all these little kids came up around me to listen to the white man talk, i would say there was about 10-20 of them... anyway... so i ask the kids if they like to sing and if they will sing me a song... they tell me to sing a song first. So tell them to start clapping with me. we start clapping and then i sang "lake of fire" (its a meat puppets' song that nirvana covered on their unplugged album) and everyone cheers and laughs, then i make them sing a song, then i sing another song and then them... we go back and forth like this for a while and the crowd has by this point surged to like 70 people standing around singing and laughing and clapping and dancing. soon some body pulls out this guitar looking thing and they are all like "we want to see you dance" I told them they had to sing a song i could dance to... they start clapping and singing and the guitar guy plays his guitar so i jumped up and did some weird little funky white boy dance in this circle of laughing screaming Liberians. the only thing i could really see clearly was their white smiles in the darkness... it was awesome... i laughed hysterically... so very much fun. Soon everyone was dancing and it was just so very much fun. I finally went to bed at like 11:00 way after the sun had gone down and after i had sung every song i could think of. I woke up the next day at 5:30 ish with the sun and the cursed roosters that I swear were right next to my ear.

I had quite an interesting diet while out and about as well. In Liberia they don't really make a distinction when it comes to meat, meat is just meat. whether it be fish, snail, cow, monkey whatever it is meat. So one of the members of our group went to the market to try to find us something to eat that night she came back dejected not being able to find any meat. we take off for the day and are driving down the long and bumpy road and we see a couple guys riding their bikes with their shotguns across their backs... from our moving car she yells at them if they have any meat. When they answer in the affirmative the drivers slams on the breaks sending everyone in the land rover flying. we reverse to talk to these two guys. One proceeds to pull out of his bag this small little dear looking animal that he had shot earlier that day. it was fully grown and came up to about my knee, it had been shot which broke its leg and then they cut its throat. there on the side of the road we bought the thing whole and unceremoniously threw it on top of the roof next to the spare tire and gasoline. awesome... that scene was repeated several times over the week with monkey, snails, you name it. whatever we could find, meat was meat. a much more simple kind of life. So for those of you that are wondering... monkey tastes alright but it has a nasty smell that stays on your hands all day long... oh and the people i was with made sure to buy extra monkey to bring back to Gbarnga with us because, and I quote "you can't get good monkey in Gbarnga these days."

So they are about to turn the power off on me, so I will write more about this last week probably tomorrow night is when the power will come back on. till then my friends and family till then.

Things I have learned in Liberia...

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

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 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.