Gettin' Down in Vayetown

This post is from a blog I wrote in 2010 while working on a project with vocational training centers in Liberia.

Monrovia, Liberia
 

The project is going well. Which is surprising me because I really wasn't confident in it when we left New York despite our months of planning. I’d had so many questions and doubts, most of which centered on whether we were capable of adding any value to the programs here in Liberia. What do we know about vocational training? About vocational training in West Africa? In Liberia in particular? What do we know about market assessments and even about training people here? There were so many unknowns and yet so much trust and so many resources had been put into this project already.  The temp video was a rinky-dink production using borrowed cameras, poor lighting, no external mics, our team-members as actors, scripts written by us, and editing in a single 10-hour day by me and Nora. I was tempted to tell the rest of the group that we hadn’t been able to produce the video after all to avoid the embarrassment of showing it here.

But to my surprise the training and the video and our written short guide have been a wildly popular activity here. And participants told us our hands-on activities were “fun”, “useful” and that they’d use them again in the future with the youth. I’m still skeptical of the larger impact we can have but the thing I’ve realized is how dedicated the staff here are to their vocational training programs. And how committed the students are to learning vocations and to succeeding. And this means they want to learn. We’re welcomed more warmly that we could ever expect and everyone listens attentively, waiting patiently for us to finish a section to tell us that we’ve spoken waaaay too fast and they haven’t understood a word!

Today, Charles, who is around 14 or 15 years old, adeptly went through the steps of a practice interview in our role-play activity. He introduced himself to the staff member pretending to be a “Restaurant Manager” and took care to thank him at the end, shaking his hand. He's so motivated to succeed and listened to every word today, synthesizing the information perfectly in the focus group later. Charles has a large scar, close to five inches on his neck and I can’t help but wonder about his past. What was his life like during the war? Is the scar an accident… or a wound inflicted by another human being? What does Charles dream about at night?
On the drives each day to vocational training centers, we pass by ruins of houses again and again, with no roofs and half-walls. Many of them have families squatting in them or they’ve been converted into corner stores. We drive by billboards with text: “Grow the food you eat. Eat the food you grow,” “Stop Rape” (with drawings of a man on top of a protesting woman and a large X through it) or “Use treated malaria nets.”

If can't tell, there's a lot of laughter in this picture.

Today was a special day. Vayetown is a small remote village about 45 minutes drive on a pothole-riddled dirt road from Tubmanburg. The vocational training center there has mostly older students and I’ve leaped to the conclusion that this town was heavily hit in the war, which would also account for why so many young adults here have not attended school. (Only those not in the school system are eligible for the VT programs. This is an attempt to address the problem of the thousands of young people who missed years of schooling while living in refugee camps during the war.) We had a great training session, despite some small setbacks—the generator went out and we had to suspend our video showing and jump to a different section of the training until a new generator could be found. It had also taken us an hour longer to arrive than we’d anticipated due to the poor condition of the roads. But the staff and students were receptive and I feel I can safely say we’ve left them with motivation to do a market assessment for their area and improve on their programs. At the end of our training, the director told us the students wanted to welcome us in their special way by performing traditional Liberian dance. While the 140 students from the entire center piled into their large classroom, drummers set up and the dancing began--first, a group of four young women around 14 years old and later three young men of the same age. After the dance (which was amazing) we thanked everyone, exchanged contact information and took some photos. As we started to enter the car, with the music still running through my head, I unconsciously did a few steps of a two-second version of their dance and a few of the girls noticed and started laughing. Nora quickly joined in, and within seconds we had a large crowd and drummers materialized. We did our thang for a few minutes and judging by the faces of our onlookers in the photos, we’ve provided some laughable memories for the students for at least the next few months. My conclusion: My lack of shame was clearly a winning quality today.

Only stray dogs pepe here

This post is from a blog I wrote in 2010 while working on a project with vocational training centers in Liberia.
Monrovia, Liberia

What am I doing here?

As part of my capstone project for my Master’s Degree (International Affairs) along with a group of other students, I’m working for the Women’s Refugee Commission who in turn partners with the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) in Liberia. We’re working to make the “Market Assessment Toolkit for Vocational Training Providers and Youth” more user friendly. The Toolkit is a 130+ page manual for how to link vocational training (VT) programs with market assessment, thereby ensuring that the youth trained in various vocations actually exit the program are able to actually use the skills learned. For example, if a VT program trains all their youth to be carpenters and tailors and floods the market, not all those young people will earn a living in this way. But a market assessment might highlight the need for mechanics and opening up a new training program in mechanics could ensure that young people can get jobs. Our task is to make this Toolkit easier to use, through a training we’re developing that can be replicated by VT program staff, a shortened version of the Toolkit and instructional videos. We’ll be visiting four VT programs coordinated by the NRC in our time here and piloting our preliminary training tools, including some very amateur videos we’ve filmed and edited back in New York as stand-ins until we could film on location at the centers in Liberia. That’s pretty much the deal. 

Initial thoughts:
The streets are lined with people pretty much everywhere. Markets look like the pictures I’ve been downloading online for our videos. Next to the government ministries, people are hanging around, selling gum and fruit. I’m so used to traveling and working in other countries where most people don’t speak English or if they do, it’s only to me, not to each other, so sometimes I forget that the language they’re speaking is English. It’s also sometimes hard to understand because, as McNeil told us, “We drop letters. We speak quickly and don’t say the whole words.” McNeil is from Monrovia and has a permanent smile. He works for the NRC.  When I asked McNeil if people danced a lot in Liberia (basically trying to get us an invitation to go dancing somewhere) he said “What?! What?! Hahahahaa”. He then launched into a monologue about how you can’t ask questions to Liberians, because they’ll only answer with a question. McNeil giggled for the next half hour and we joined in. It’s impossible not to smile when around McNeil.

Outside of the NRC compound, there are words painted on a wall. Nora looked at it and said, “What does that say? ‘Only stray dogs…’ Oh!” Someone had written in blue paint, “Only stray dogs pepe here.” We all laughed, along with Fred, our NRC supervisor. Fred is from Uganda but has been living and working in Liberia for the past four years and he is a wealth of experience and knowledge. Nora had seen this phrase written on a few different walls. I guess it’s a reminder for people not to pee on the wall? I’m thinking of adopting it as a new phrase that can mean anything from “That bar? I’m not going. Only stray dogs pepe there” to “My house is a mess. Only stray dogs pepe there.” An all-purpose phrase that can be adapted to any occasion.

The NRC compound seems lavish in comparison to the houses nearby. There is a pool in the middle and air conditioned buildings. But paint is cracking in a way that reminds one of the remains of luxury in Cuba… or the UNRWA buildings in Palestine. The NRC is settled amidst a herd of UN and NGO headquarters. The road there is an adventure in alphabet soup: UNICEF, UNFPA, IRC, NRC…

Our apartment building, which houses only expats, most of whom work at the NRC, contains large apartments with air conditioning and keeps us sealed off from the malaria-carrying mosquitoes. We even have a TV, and off-again-on-again wireless internet. The tall wall around our apartment building has barbed wire and sharp glass at it’s top, preventing intruders and there is a 24-hour guard. Across the street, people mill during the day and after dark outside a broken-down building, reminiscent of Detroit, selling water we’ve been warned against drinking and candy. There is a building curfew of midnight on weekdays and 2am on Saturdays. We’ve been told never to walk around after dark. From the 2nd floor of our building we can see the ocean but have also been warned against the beaches, both because of “crazy people” and an intense undertow which can pull you down even if you only wade up to your knees.

Lebanese business owners appear to run this town, or at least control it financially. I opened up google on my computer and was confused then it came up in Arabic, wondering if it was detecting some setting from when I’d been working on my Arabic homework a week before, even though this didn’t really make sense. I clicked on the button to switch it to google English and saw that I’d been directed to www.google.com.lb, “Google Lebanon”. Fred told us that Lebanese families are the privileged class in Liberia and they own a lot of property in Monrovia, many apartment buildings, restaurants and hotels, a challenging power dynamic to say the least. We passed by Leela Café and Salaam Store.  I wonder if I’ll end up practicing my Arabic while in Liberia, quite unexpectedly.

On our ride from the airport to Monrovia last night with Sharif, who also works for the NRC, the radio announced that Charles Taylor’s wife had given birth to a baby girl that day. The commentator asked the informant, “So Charles Taylor has time to see his wife?” “Oh yes, he has all the freedoms of a regular person.” The commentator went on to ask more questions insinuating conjugal visits at which point all of us in the car started laughing, Sharif laughing the loudest. The informant assured the commentator that he would share with the Liberian people the name and birth weight of the child as soon as he found out more details. For some reason the commentator was intent on extracting this particular information. Sharif told us many people are happy that Taylor is in the Hague, but many others are not, because they enjoyed kickbacks during his regime and now, without these privileges they have a harder life and must find work. Others believe Taylor should be tried in court but are not happy he’s been taken to Europe for the trial.
It’s interesting to finally experience the type of market we’ve been talking about “observing” as part of the Toolkit. We marveled at the live giant snails being sold and the fish, dried and with their mouths locked in a bite onto their tails and sold in rings. We bought a mélange of fruits and vegetables to make a pasta sauce and will be trying some white half-tomato-half-potato-like vegetable tomorrow. One of my favorite things to do when in new places is try new foods, though I'll admit its led me to some "mistakes" at times (I'm referring to the cockroach I ate in Thailand). I’d brought along the video camera to shoot some footage for our market observation video and little kids and teenage boys came flocking to me, all willing to be in the video. Older women held their hands in front of their face, saying, no, not me. I felt like a tourist and wanted to call out “No, it’s for an actual project, I’m not just a tourist.”

My first thoughts: Liberia is very hot, and very green and people wear colorful clothing with great style. And you can buy "Chucky", "Bride of Chucky", "Scary Movie" and "Scary Movie II" all on one DVD for $5.