Last Day in Liberia

It is my last day here in Liberia. My flight leaves tonight for Brussels, and from there I'll go to DC for the weekend. Nina and Paul left on Monday, and for the past couple days SP logistics coordinator Ben and I visited two more Early Childhood Development centers to collect data about the young kids and mothers who will be receiving the herring. While the children at the first ECD generally seemed to like us and be fascinated by us, some of the kids at the other ECDs were afraid of us (can't blame 'em really).

Tomorrow, the center we visited yesterday will be moving to a brand new building, and President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf will be coming to cut the ribbon and celebrate the opening. I'm working on a post with more background about her and the 17 year civil war that ended in '03.

I have only been here for about 13 days, and have seen a very, very small portion of Monrovia and Liberian life. That said, my experience here has been incredibly rich, and every day I have been amazed, fascinated, moved, puzzled, or otherwise had my mind and heart opened. I feel like I am leaving just as I am beginning to get a grasp of this place, and the lives of Liberians.
As I left the house I was staying in to walk to the SP office, where we will leave for the airport from, the sky began to dump rain. The air had felt pregnant all day, and seconds after I stepped outside the heavens gave birth to heavy, thick droplets that sent people running for cover. The rainy season is just beginning here, and this is the only rain I have seen during my trip. I let it fall on me, cooling my sunburnt back and shoulders. There's nothing like dense, tropical rain. It is loud, immediately drenching, and I think it makes plants looks greener. It is an entirely different genus and species from rain of the Pacific Northwest or Alaska. It cleanses and assures, reminding me with certitude of the power of nature, and ushering me out of Liberia into the next phase of life. 

Gobatown

April 21, 2012: Early Childhood Development Center in Gobatown

On this fine Liberian day, we visited an Early Childhood Development Center just outside of the city of Monrovia, in Gobatown. We drove up into the countryside up a copper-colored, bumpy dirt road. The warm, dusty redness cut a stark path upon lush, forested hills.  We passed families doing laundry in roadside ponds. We passed rice paddies and bitterball crops. Bitterballs are a small variety of eggplant, I’m told. We also passed one of Firestone’s rubber plantations; apparently the best hospital is on Firestone’s property. The Liberian countryside, or at least what we saw of it, is beautiful.
The ECD in Gobatown had a much more rural feel than other sites we’ve visited. The building overlooks a green little valley, and there were goats and chickens running around amongst the children. This particular center had about fifty children on the day we visited, all five years old or younger. They. Were. So. Cute. It was somewhat hectic trying to collect their anthropometric measurements, since while we measured some kids, the other 45 were playing and screaming and doing what kids five and under do.
The kids loved my camera. When I started snapping photos they would swarm around me, saying “Whah womah tehk ma pitchah!!” (White woman, take my picture!) And when the flash went off they just screamed with delight.  At one point I had fifteen little kids gathered around me, gripping my fingers and pinching my skin, fascinated by my whiteness. I found it pretty hilarious actually...they were so uninhibited about their fascination that it was endearing and funny.  
After all of the measurements were done, the kids were served their lunch outside.  The cook, Vivian, had added herring to the usual stew and rice, and the kids ate it like they would have eaten any other meal. Again, herring seems to integrate into Liberian food extremely easily.

In the evening, back at the hotel, Nina and I went for a walk on the beach at sunset (yeah, we’re not exactly roughing it here). We noticed that fishermen were pulling their boats on shore for the day, and I couldn’t resist gawking at their boats and nets, and trying to get a look at their catch. The boats are long dugout canoes, and look very large and heavy. They are painted colorfully, and some have religiously-inspired names. The process of getting one boat out of the surf and up the steep beach looked very labor-intensive, and required at least six men to heave it up the slope. The nets are bright blue and fine mesh, and the cork-lines are made of scrounged up floating materials, like chunks of old flip-flops. The fishermen showed us their catch from the day, which included mackerel, needle-nosed fish, and a mahi-mahi. There were a couple of strange-looking fish I didn’t recognize, like a brown flat fish with both eyes on top like a halibut.
They were definitely disappointed that we didn’t buy anything from them, and I wish I could have taken some fish home for dinner but we don’t have our own kitchen. Next time!!!

Tidbits from the last few days

More Liberian names:

Surprise

Princess

T. Boy

Remember Mama Davis

Bestman Diggs

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Swimming in the sea at sunset, water is the perfect temperature.

A little Liberian girl who was crying when we were at her pre-school because she was afraid of white people. :(

Driving through a busy intersection called redlight, I mean absolutely thronged with people and cars and motorcycles and vendors. We are in a truck on our way to the ECD. A rusty old metal cart hits us from behind, the owners of the cart angrily start yelling at us. Loud argument in the street ensues between cart people and our driver. Cop gets involved, sides with people whose cart hit US omg.

April 20, 2012: SAFE/JTC

I have officially been in Liberia one week. And what a week it has been! Today we visited another site of the herring donation, the SAFE/JTC (Juvenile Transit Center) home which is a home and community center for vulnerable youth. Nina and Paul collected heights and weights of the kids, while I bonded with some precocious children who loved my camera. One of the caretakers of the site, Vivian, was there with her four young girls. She told us matter-of-factly, “I was abused by a Nigerian man. So, my children are Nigerian.” Like the women of the THINK home yesterday, Vivian comes from a very difficult background and has been treated very badly in the past. She is warm and energetic, with a raspy voice and a quick smile. Her children are adorable. One of the girls’ names is Peace, and she clung to me all day, totally winning my heart. (That reminds me: a lot of the Liberians we’ve met have these great names, like Love (a guy), Comfort (a woman), Peace, Honest, Grace, etc.)
The SAFE home also cares for four severely disabled young children who have been abandoned by their parents. One young child, who by size and appearance looked to me to be two or three, was actually five years old. Paul measured her MUAC (mid-upper arm circumference, a way of seeing how well-nourished children under 5 are), and learned that she might be malnourished, and recommended referring her to a clinic. It was surprising to me learn that this child was five years old. I don’t know how else to say it, it just shocked me because she was so small for her age. Who knows what happened to these children early in their lives to impair their health? On the plus side, the SAFE/JTC center seems like a very nurturing and safe place for these vulnerable kids. All four of their last names are Think, after the THINK home, which is where they were left by their mothers.
While Paul and the local staff measured heights and weights, Vivian brought out a wooden case of beaded jewelry she makes herself, and sells. Nina and I bought a few sets of necklaces and bracelets, and Vivian and the young girls sat on the ground making more jewelry. Before we left, they gave Nina and me three bracelets each, made of red wooden beads.
I loved visiting the SAFE home. I seriously didn’t want to leave. The kids were so sweet, and I wish I could have gotten to know them and their amazing caretakers better. We snapped a group photo, and Vivian got all the kids together to sing us a goodbye song. Her youngest, Mary, started bawling when we left (we tried to tell her we were just going to get some gas and come back, but she didn’t buy it). Again, it is a good feeling to contribute to these programs, and a privilege to see the amazing things they are accomplishing.

SAFE home and JTC (Juvenile Transit Center)

SAFE home and JTC (Juvenile Transit Center)

THINK home

Visiting the THINK home

April 19, 2012

Today we went to a very special place: the THINK home. This program (Touching Humanity in Need of Kindness) serves as a home, ministry, school and community support center for women who have experienced violence or abuse, including rape and commercial sex trade. There are 35 women at the THINK home currently, and many have small children who live and are cared for on-site. While the mothers are in school, counseling, and skills training, a caregiver watches over all of the children, most of whom are toddlers, in a little bedroom. As she said to me, “It is not easy!”

We were welcomed into the THINK home through song. The women and girls sat as a group at their school desks and sang to us, each saying their name and hometown one at a time, with the others singing ‘hallelujah’ between individual introductions. It was a warm and beautiful welcome into their home.

We were served another delicious Liberian lunch with Alaska herring, cooked in a spicy pepper sauce over rice. We were given spoons, but the women and their small children ate with their hands.

One aspect of the THINK home I really found amazing was the maternal community. The women and their children live and eat communally at the THINK home, and children are cared for by all of the women in the community. THINK provides counseling and skills training for the women who live there, and the women are taught to sew clothing, to bake pastries, and to dress hair. These skills will empower them after they leave the home. The women are nearing the end of their nine-month stay, and we were happy to see that they and their children are well-nourished and healthy.

Nina and Paul trained the THINK staff in anthropometry, and the staff measured the heights and weights of all of the women. They also took a MUAC (mid-upper arm circumference) of the young children and babies, and weighed them. The staff was happy to be able to keep the scale and the height rod, a gift from Alaska, because they are now better able to monitor the progress of their residents’ health, even after the herring project ends.

The THINK home was really a beautiful and inspiring place to visit. The women who live there come from extremely difficult backgrounds, and it is wonderful to see them thrive, learn, and heal as a community. The mothers are so young, some of them under fifteen years old, and their children are very small. Having the herring distributed here is a wonderful thing, and we are honored to contribute to the healing of these resilient women and their children.

Rosie Schaack, founder of the THINK home, will be receiving an award this summer in Washington, DC for her humanitarian work here in Monrovia.

Cooking and Eating!

April 17, 2012: Recipe Development

We spent our day at the Samaritan’s Purse building, working with some of the staff from the programs that will be distributing the herring. The sites, in Monrovia and Foya, do some incredible and much-needed work with orphans, vulnerable children, women, and people living with HIV. Our group consisted of thirteen exceptional women: some are cooks, others are program managers or directors. They all know their way around a Liberian kitchen.

Dee lent us her kitchen for the afternoon and set it up with all the ingredients we bought yesterday at Paynesville City Market. The kitchen consists of a small room with a sink and some shelves where she stores the dishes , a fridge and a sink. This opens onto an open air space separated from the outside by a chest-high wall. It has a simple two burner, charcoal fueled grill on which Dee cooks enough to feed the entire staff of about 100 every day at lunch.

Nina facilitated the cooking session and divided the participants into three groups which cooked “Herring with Sauce,” “Herring with Pumpkin,” and “Herring with Potato Greens.” All variations on local Liberian recipes. They sliced the onions thin. They chopped the pumpkin. They washed “piles” of potato greens, carefully put them in hand-sized bunches and one of the women shaved them super fine with a large flat blade knife, holding them right in her hand! Another put the hot peppers in a wooden mortar and pounded them with a long wooden stick. We asked if we could help pound the peppers, but they said it would hurt our eyes. Dee doesn't put as many hot peppers in her food every day because she says white peoples' stomachs can't handle it like the Liberians’ can...they like their food spicy!

The preparation went something like this: pour palm oil in a big pot, then add chopped pumpkin or finely shredded potato greens, mashed peppers and onions, then water. Simmer for a while to soften the vegetables and meld the flavors . Then gently fold in a whole bunch of herring.

Herring goes really well with Liberian cuisine, since they already cook with sardines and local fish sometimes. They say that fish can be expensive though, so it is good to have this donated herring for their beneficiaries. Spending my afternoon in a kitchen filled with Liberian women was just incredible. They sliced, diced and stirred, and chatted boisterously, in a steamy, hot, colorful, crowded kitchen. The final outcome was three delicious dishes which included the herring and all of the local ingredients.

When the cooks were done, Dee prepared a long table restaurant style as she called it - with big bowls of rice and the three Herring dishes for all the cooks to to eat. They had made enough for the whole group and some of the SP workers who had been toiling to fix a broken drain pipe on the other side of the kitchen wall. They had been watching and smelling the aromas wafting from the kitchen all afternoon. We had an impromptu focus group and rave reviews from all who shared the meal. Once again, my most memorable experiences here are marked by food!

Shopping at Paynesville City Market

Monday April 16, 2012: Shopping at Paynesville City Market

Nina and Paul arrived from the States yesterday, and today we began planning our herring distribution with Samaritan’s Purse.

After meeting with the country director of SP and meeting many of the office staff, we had the great privilege to work with SP’s Liberian cook, Dee. Dee is at least six feet tall, towering over the rest of us, and she is bursting with personality, laughter, and style. She is letting us use her kitchen for our herring recipe development, and so we decided to crack open a can (literally, with a knife. Who needs can openers?).

We were curious to see what a Liberian cook would think of the herring. She put the fish on a plate, threw in some sliced raw onion and chicken broth, and called it done. Simple, appetizing, and fresh. She asked one of the SP staff to taste it, and we asked him in anticipation, “Do you like it?” He paused, then exclaimed, “I more than like it!” Phew! Most of the office staff had a similar response, which was absolutely wonderful to see.

After the tasting, Dee took us to a local food market to shop for ingredients for the recipe development tomorrow with some of the cooks who will be working with the herring. The market was a complete sensory explosion. It was in an open-air warehouse space, with vendors and their tables crammed in creating narrow paths for shoppers. It was hot, crowded, and smelled like everything. Fish. Vegetables. Babies. Earth. Most of the vendors were women, which meant that there were also a lot of children running around, babies in cloth slings on their backs, and toddlers playing on tables. Many sold vibrant red and green peppers, which are small, but very spicy. Some were the size of grapes or even jelly beans. Some women also sold fish, some dried, some fresh. People here love seafood and are used to it, since Monrovia is a port city.

Among all of the produce and dried goods, I noticed a table with a couple piles of several-inch-long, black, conical things, with ridges. They reminded me of pinecones, and I thought they were some sort of large seed or fruit. Upon closer inspection however, I noticed that some of them were languorously moving. Liberians call them “iron meat”, and they are a type of shellfish. I’m a pretty adventurous eater, but I’ll take herring over the iron meat, trust me.

We bought some potato leaf greens, onions, tomatoes, Maggi broth cubes, cooking oil, and squash. Liberians call squash "pumpkin", and pronounce it “pwahn keeyahn” in Liberian English. Onion is "owahn yahn." Tomorrow the staff and cooks will work their magic with these ingredients and the herring to see how the fish will fit into local cuisine.

So far I've spent most of my time in our hotel and at the ELWA (Everlasting Love Winning Africa) compound where SP is, which are pretty Westernized places. Going to the market with Dee (who knew how to negotiate far better than we could) felt like we were getting to see more of the real Liberia. People were working here, trying to make enough money to feed themselves and their children. There was a sense of movement and energy, a hustle and bustle of daily life and labor, and a feeling that if you didn’t keep up, you might get left behind.

Meeting 13 SP program managers, some amazing women who will be helping distribute the herring. Spent the afternoon in the kitchen with them while they prepared some delicious recipes with the herring!

Today we had the privilege to work with a lovely Liberian cook, who took us to a local market to buy ingredients for our cooking demos with the herring, which will take place tomorrow. We opened a can of herring to try it out too, and she put a little onion in it, a little bit of chicken broth, and passed it around. People loved it!

Cooking tuna...and setting the grass on fire a little bit.

The stacks of herring cans. 6oz each, 24 to a box. 69,000 boxes total.

Liberia: Day 1

First of all, welcome to my blog.

Second of all, I'm in Liberia!

Today was my first full day here. I came as part of a team from Global Food & Nutrition, which is the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute's food aid consultant. ASMI is partnering with Samaritan's Purse on a canned herring food aid pilot program, which I am here to help set up, and document through writing, photos, and video. The pilot project will be introducing wild Alaskan canned herring in some of SP's programs. The State of Alaska donated an entire container of canned herring to SP. Ocean Beauty provided the facility to process and can the herring. This is truly an Alaskan public-private partnership that reaches around the globe, all the way to West Africa.

Ever wondered what 69,000 cans of herring looks like?I was shown around the compound SP inhabits, and saw it with mine own eyes (I will post photos later).They were loading some of the cans into a truck to take on a 10-15 hour drive up to Foya, which is "upcountry" from us in Monrovia, and a site of our food aid program. It was amazing to see these boxes that said, CANNED HERRING DONATED BY THE STATE OF ALASKA in huge stacks in a Liberian warehouse. I've never been herring fishing, (and sorry if this is TMI) but the story goes that I was conceived while my parents were on a herring trip in Kodiak- so in a way it feels personal to distribute this fish here.

I ate a delicious lunch at a Lebanese restaurant, swam in the sea and the pool, and then went back to the SP compound for dinner.

Some SP folks had bought a fat, shiny, yellow-fin tuna off the street that day, and were cooking it in banana leaves and hot coals on the beach. A group of about four Liberian kids gathered around the cooking area, offering tips on how to heat up the coals, and asking us questions. One kid said to us, ""Liberia is a free country! You can do anything you want! You do somethin wrong, you a sinnah, the cops no get you in trouble. You give them a dollah, you go free!" He also said to me, "Lemme tell you somethin' in yo eeyah, woman." Gets up in my ear. "I want you to give me food, because my stomach is too empty." His friend was tugging his at shirt looking sheepish, telling him to sit down. I said that I couldn't, and got kind of numb realizing how much I take my daily food for granted, how much food I have access to all the time, and basically felt awful. Sigh.

All in all, I'm loving Liberia. It is exciting, thought-provoking, emotion-provoking, and sensory. My co-workers/bosses Nina and Paul arrive tomorrow, and we will start work on Monday.