So while I was in Monrovia I spent some time writing about my day to day experiences. I emailed all this to Michelle and she felt like I should put it on the blog… it includes some more detailed stories and challenges. Enjoy!
I sat down on the airport before takeoff and realized I didn’t have my passport. I got my bags down and looked through them… nothing. I started to freak out… looking on the floor, crawling around the plane. Finally, I told the air hostess and some of the other passengers. All these guys were looking around for me. They told me to go out of the plane to the boarding gate and ask there, nothing… sweat dripping from my forehead. In my brain I’m trying to decide if I’m going to get off the plane or not. I’m 90% sure my passport is on the plane but if it’s not I’m going to be in Addis without a passport! Then some Italian or South American guy comes running down the aisle with my flight center packet! “Hey Rasta, here it is.”
“Where was it?”
“That lady pulled it out from under her, she was sitting on it.”
An Ethiopian woman in her 70s had been sitting on my passport the whole time. Crazy!
In the process of figuring out the visa and the hotel I met Welleh, a Liberian man who had representing Liberia for the Street Children World Cup in South Africa. He runs a non-profit of some sort here. I may try to connect with him again some time. He was very helpful and cool. The Ghanaians who were being delayed were going crazy at the airport. Yelling and singing at the Ethiopian Airlines people. It was crazy, and the cops just watched them, didn’t do anything.
Addis is not as overwhelming as Yaoundé, and I would say it is slightly more developed. The architecture is very similar but the people are very different of course. It was great to see a few people running on the streets in the early morning. It seems likes everybody is a hustler though, everyone wants to “help” you on the street. I did manage to find some injera at a restaurant for lunch. I paid about $3 and I couldn’t even eat half of it so I gave it to some shoe cleaning kids on the street.
You get a lot of attention in Addis; people were totally intrigued with me. Of course most people called me Rasta, but I did get “David Villa” as well, because of my soul patch! Yes!
I tried a Cappuccino in the hotel bar while going over my notes for the training and it wasn’t good at all, so I left the hotel again and found a great coffee shop where people were just chilling drinking macchiato and Fanta. They were just relaxed and happy, the shop sold very little food while I was there, it was all about the coffee. I have to say it was one of the most sophisticated coffee shop experiences in Africa. I started reading “A Thousand Splendid Suns” and listened to the Amharic around me. Cappuccinos were about $0.40 so I ended up drinking 4 of them through the afternoon.
Then I went back to the hotel, and went down to watch the soccer. There was also a cool couple from Cape Town doing some traveling in Ethiopia. They were going to watch the final on the big screen in Addis the next day with a concert beforehand. I said I would probably try to go with them if I was still stuck there. I thought I might be there the whole next day as well but my phone rang at 3:30am to say that the bus was leaving for the airport in 25 minutes.
I finally got to Liberia and used someone’s phone to call Trokon. They picked me up with a guy from the church who has a car and took me to Patrick’s house where there was a room set up for me. We made some plans for the next day then went to the church to watch the World Cup final. About 150 people came to watch on a small tv. They were very loud and I was super tired. I fell asleep on my chair but caught a second wind for the rest of the match. Then walked back to Patrick’s place to sleep. I was definitely in “new adventure euphoria” at that stage. Everything was just very unique and cool.
This place is very undeveloped, probably the craziest place I’ve stayed, but it’s awesome. I go back and forth from feeling “man this place is tough” to “this is paradise.” There is no sewerage system, no electricity network, no middle class. It’s just very poor, everything is unfinished, unpainted. But the beach is a couple minutes walk from the church. You can hear the waves when we stand outside the church. That makes it very cool.
We spent the day shopping for all the food and getting mattresses from a warehouse downtown, run by a Lebanese guy. And Trokon was right, he does speak very clearly compared to most Liberians. Understanding people is a real challenge. But all in all, I’m loving it. I get so stoked every morning I wake up here, even though I’ve been chewed alive by mosquitoes, and my sheets are drenched with sweat. I really feel like this is significant ministry! And being able to encourage Trokon and continue moulding him, Hannah and Patrick for this ministry is so cool. They are really what this country needs! I’m very determined to see that J-Life Liberia is a success.
I gotta hit the sack, I have my mosquito net up now, so hopefully I will get some more sleep tonight. It’s time to turn off the generator as well.
We are well into training. Yesterday I went to the room to read at 5pm and I suddenly felt super tired. It was like the adrenaline suddenly wore off and the stress of the new place, new culture, and daily training finally hit me!
The food today was little rough: Foofoo with palm oil (with fish, crab, and pork fat) for lunch and then plantain soup for dinner. They also made a tea with lemongrass and some “maringu” leaves from a tree here and condensed milk. It was weird. Everything tastes about the same… something like shrimp. I’ve actually enjoyed the food up until today. There is a lady nearby who bakes great banana bread that we’ve had in the mornings a couple of times.
I would say the training is going pretty well. I think I work pretty well with Trokon. He has done quite a bit of lecturing already and he is doing a really good job. Although he’s quite an introvert, he really does a good job in building the community as well. Hannah is great and so is Trokon’s ministry partner, Patrick. The trainees can be a bit dull in lectures but things do happen that make me think they take the training seriously. For one, they constantly tell me things they are learning, and today (after teaching the Vision section about how leaders are readers) everybody has been reading tons of books that we got from the church.
There was super hectic rain today and it actually got a bit cold. I didn’t swim the ocean today for the first time since Sunday because of the cold. The beaches are nicer than I expected and the water feels great after a long day of lectures.
You can really see how the war has affected people here. Some of the guys on training are semi-literate, but at least they speak English so I am able to help them. We are starting Strategy in the morning. I really hope its not too intense for these guys and that they are able to catch the basic principles and not be overwhelmed by the detail. But seriously, the rain here is crazy, so intense
It’s Saturday night now, a full day of teaching Strategy. It was intense getting around the new material and I was exhausted by the end of it, so glad for a day off tomorrow, you have no idea. I’ve also been really encouraged to hear a lot of guys saying how impactful the training has been so far. A couple guys went into the community today and came back with gifts for me (mangos and biscuits)… so cool.
I suggested that we go and have some worship on the beach. Wow… so cool. Liberian worship is a lot like the Ugandan music. A lot of the guys said they had never been on the beach at night. It’s like 24 degrees but a lot of them were complaining about the cold! Rocking the winter coats! The moment the breeze picks up, they call that cold.
War Stories
It’s Monday night, week 2 of training. I’ve been getting little bits of information about the war. They don’t say much about it here but when we did testimonies everyone’s story had a section that started with “When the war started” and then continued “My father passed away” or “my family was separated” or “we moved to Ivory Coast.”
Pastor Matthew also told me some stories about the war on our walk. He was talking about how there was a food shortage: “You would just find people eating grass or wading through these swamps looking for something to eat. It was so pathetic.” He also told his near death experience: “Soldiers broke into the house and were collecting things. I was walking in the hallway and I froze. The leader of the group ordered one of the men to shoot me. He pointed the gun at me and then he slowly lowered it and then they left. I can only say that God protected me because those men were not merciful.”
We talking today about hanging out with youth you are mentoring and Patrick said that he could take one of the youth to the zoo. “You have a zoo here?” – It just doesn’t strike me as a city that would have a zoo. “Oh yes,” says Patrick, “there is a zoo. But there’s no animals.” Then someone else chimes in: “They ate them all during the war.” Super.
I learned something interesting yesterday. Hannah was telling me how the guys are not going to want to go home because of all the food they have been eating. “Are they eating better here than they would at home?”
“Oh yes, in Liberia we only eat one meal a day.”
So that’s how I figured out why they eat so much at lunch, because it is typically their only meal. So we are going to probably have to work a plan to cut down on the food a little bit to save money. I’m working with Trokon for that. The other problem is that because guys eat so much at lunch (together with the heat in the afternoon) it’s a struggle for guys to stay awake. So I think we might do something like a snack at 11am and then the big meal after lectures at 3, then odd jobs and sports at 5.
It’s Thursday afternoon. It’s sticky and hot today. I spent the whole morning going to town with Hannah because she needed to buy some extra food stuff. So it was another trip to “THE ATM” of Liberia. Seriously, there is one ATM in this country. Hannah left me with her mom who sells purses and backpacks while she did the shopping. I did a little exploring and bought some gunpowder tea from a Malian’s shop. When I was standing there with it this guy obviously figured I could speak French since I had gunpowder tea. He was from Ivory Coast and couldn’t speak English. So I fumbled through a 20 minute conversation with him in French. That was my highlight of the day so far.
Last night I chatted to Trokon and started asking about his goals for the next months and year. That was really encouraging to hear his passion for this and how much he wants to move forward. We decided today that Trokon would help them more with the implementation which he is doing right now. He’s doing a mini “programming to Strategy” and I think its really helping.
Today I tried to explain a task a few times and the guys were not getting me. Finally they asked Trokon to come and explain it in “Liberian English” – I love it!
Posted by miah at 11:26 AM. Filed under:
(0) Comments