In which she goes to Africa

Half Way Done (and Only Just Begun)

2011-02-22T02:16:00.002Z

It’s 1:30 in the morning as I start this, so I’ll just note that any incoherence should likely be attributed to that. I woke up about an hour ago to a great thunderstorm. It doesn’t seem to be nearly as wet as a good rainy season storm, but the sound and fury of the thunder and lightning are making up for it.

It’s been a quiet few weeks on the blog front, but not so much on the life front. I quit my job at the Ministry at the end of January, finally pulling the plug on an experience that had been making me dreadfully unhappy for a long time. I had a few things in the works when I quit, but nothing actually confirmed. Leaving without a definite next step was not at all like me, though I did quite enjoy the feeling of bravado it seemed to lend me for a few days. I quickly rocketed from relief to nervousness and back again, but it was all relatively short lived in the end.

A week after quitting, I got offered a chance to do exactly what I’d wanted to do all year – substantive work on social protection issues, with real responsibility and institutional support to get things done. I’m now interning for a large multilateral organization with a focus on youth (yes, your first guess is probably right).

Though I was originally slated to do mostly technical work on economic strengthening programs, I got drawn into legislative shenanigans on my third day. I’ve spent the last few weeks reliving my advocacy years – writing fact sheets, building coalitions, and wandering the halls of the Capitol. It’s been amazingly fun and the ease with which campaign planning still comes to me has given me a new appreciation for just how much I learned during all that time in Sacramento.

Somewhere in the midst of all this, I crossed the halfway point for Liberia, Take II. I spent most of November and December feeling like my time here was interminable, but now that I’m down to just about four months, it doesn’t feel like nearly enough time. A lot of that has to do with switching to work I’m really enjoying. The work part has also helped ease my general-life-unhappiness – it turns out that when you don’t have several hours a day to reflect on how miserable you are, you end up being a lot less miserable. Shocking, I know.

Now seems like a good time to reiterate my thanks to everyone who has graciously put up with the poorly timed phone calls, navel-gazing emails and occasional blubbering knocks at the door over the past six months. Your ears, words and hugs are very much appreciated. This being Liberia, I’m sure the rest of the road will still have some serious potholes, but I’m hoping there won’t be any more washouts between here and June.

The Limits of Community Driven Development

2011-01-30T12:40:00.000Z

People in development love to talk about the importance of community involvement with and government buy-in to development plans. The idea is that international donors shouldn’t just wing into a country and demand a certain development agenda according to a cookie cutter formula. It’s largely a good sentiment, and a very necessary response to disastrous international plans like structural adjustment. At its best, community-driven development ensures that local priorities are realized, previously disenfranchised voices are heard and indigenous customs preserved. What happens though, when the community gets it wrong (or at least, doesn’t get it all right)?

Let me start with an example. A few years ago, Liberia adopted a Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS), which was a three year plan to guide government and donor priorities for development investments. It included things like professionalizing the military, rebuilding schools and constructing roads. The process of developing the PRS included extensive public consultations, with a road show into the counties to get input from rural populations and traditional leaders. The PRS is complemented at the local level by the County Development Agendas, which prioritize local projects within the national framework (which schools, which roads, etc.). The whole process has been widely lauded for its inclusiveness and focus on community needs.

While the process was good, the content leaves some relatively glaring omissions. Specifically, the national plan and every county in the country chose to ignore Liberia’s most vulnerable populations. In 16 total plans, there is no mention of social protection, welfare or safety nets for the vulnerable who can’t fend for themselves. This isn’t a small oversight: though the data are a few years old now, the last estimate was that Liberia has at least 50,000 households living in extreme poverty without a single adult available for work. With an average household size of just over 5 people, this translates into roughly 250,000 Liberians, or about 7% of the population.

Part of this is obviously a problem of voice, as extremely poor, work constrained households are unlikely to have the opportunity or means to participate in community dialogues, no matter how beneficial that participation might ultimately be. Assume though, that we can somehow solve the problem of voice. What happens when 7% of every community in the country shows up and asks for social safety nets and is turned down in favor of roads and power grids? Liberia and many similarly situated countries have to make difficult decisions about resource allocation all the time. Is it right to put those decisions to a majoritarian test?

This problem certainly isn’t unique to development contexts. They happen in government budget fights all across the world and even the best intentioned forms of participation can lead to distorted outcomes. I’m thinking now of a case study from Oregon that I read years ago in a policy class. The details are a bit foggy now, but I believe the gist of it was this: Oregon didn’t have enough money to fund all the Medicaid services it wanted to provide, so it established community fora to allow citizens to prioritize the services to be covered. Participants eventually settled on some sort of wellbeing-for-the-buck formula, and things like tooth capping (relatively cheap) ended up rated more highly than simple but more expensive life-saving treatments like appendectomies. The priorities were eventually tweaked, and the courts stepped in to assure that some basic minimum services were guaranteed.

This brings me back to Liberia and the question of who has the right to tweak development priorities. In the Oregon case, the federal government and courts were able to step in because most of the program funding was coming from Washington. For the foreseeable future, a huge chunk of Liberia’s development funding will come from outside sources, but the governments and multi-lateral organizations providing that funding are committed to nationally-directed development, and are none-too-keen to delve in to rewrite local priorities.

In a positive-rights-protective democracy, there should be two easy checks for this problem. First, positive rights to things like a safety net would be enshrined in an enforceable legal code, with viable means of redress for violations thereof. Second, in a representative (as opposed to direct) democracy, elected officials would enact policies with an eye toward the protection of minority rights, in this case, an economic minority. The delegated democratic authority vested in the legislature could provide justification for altering the plans while still claiming broad representativeness.

Liberia is painfully far from realizing either of these two solutions, which brings us back again to the democratic appropriateness of external meddling in development priorities. There isn’t a neat answer to this question, but my substantive-over-procedural democracy bias inclines me toward saying that outside intervention is both necessary and appropriate. Without assuring a minimal baseline for living standards, promises of substantive democratic participation are relatively meaningless. I’m thinking of it along the lines of a political version of Maslow’s hierarchy – without accounting for base needs, higher order values like democratic participation are unattainable.

All this leads me to the conclusion that, while increasing country ownership is an important improvement in development policy, there are some pretty serious limits to allowing communities too-free a hand in setting policy prerogatives. Donors should certainly seek coordination with governments, but should be prepared to fill the gaps that majoritarian policymaking will inevitably leave.*

* This also provides two other benefits which I’ll just mention briefly here, though perhaps write about in more detail later. Pragmatically, donors have the benefit of experience with successes and failures around the world, and throwing this experience out the door for the sake of country ownership is, at the very least, counterproductive. Ownership doesn’t have to mean reinventing the wheel in every developing country. Politically, a higher level of donor participation in decision-making addresses the other side of the democracy question – the extent to which citizens of donor nations deserve a voice in the allocation of their tax dollars. While the concept of democratic voice is stretched awfully thin by the time that it gets to USAID funding decisions in West Africa, it’s not entirely unreasonable to say that unrestricted grants for aid represent a diminution of what little voice citizens once had.

Not loving Love

2011-01-23T09:51:00.000Z

Now that I’ve started this book review thing, I feel somewhat compelled to continue with it, at least as long as the whole book-every-few-weeks streak continues (and in so announcing, I’m sure I’ve just ended it). I’ve got another post in mind though, so I’ll make this one short.

I finished Love by Toni Morrison this week. I suppose it’s somewhat inevitable if you start with an author’s most famous and well-received work, but it seems that each Toni Morrison book I read is worse than the last. Granted, this is only #3 (following Beloved and Paradise), but they’re also in chronological order of publication, so it seems I might want to dig further back in the archives if I come back for more Morrison.

Love is supposedly a gripping novel about an intergenerational family struggle to wrest control of the affections and memory of a complicated patriarch. It felt like an unnecessarily meandering novella, part inartful Lolita, part cheap romance novel, part silly suspense story. In what I think was an attempt to make the story transportable, Morrison never really sets it in any location, which has the effect of making it rootless and untethered rather than universal. This was particularly strange when contrasted with the obsessive and confusing use of specific dates in the story line. So, the book ends up anchored in time and flitting about in space, without any characters interesting enough to drive the plot forward.

I didn't actively hate it the way I have other books, but that was largely because I couldn't be bothered to care that much. If it had been more than 200 pages, I doubt I would have made the effort to finish the book. It makes me want to read Beloved again just to reinstill my faith in her as an author and in the Nobel Prize as an institution.

On a side note, I’m having trouble getting Blogger to upload a photo header in the right size and proportions. It doesn’t let me actually choose the pixel dimensions of my image, so I can’t just resize my photo to fit. If anyone has fought with this overly-simplistic template problem before and knows how to help, please let me know. The page will be prettier for your efforts.

Two little numbers, not little enough

2011-01-20T16:17:00.000Z

You’d think that with the copious amount of free time I seem to be amassing these days, I’d have plenty of time to write long, interesting posts about fascinating things happening here. It turns out that this isn’t really the case. I suppose I do have the time, but I’ve been struggling for things to write about that would be interesting to read if you don’t care about the internecine struggles of Monrovia’s expat community or the antics of the zany cast of characters where I work. Honestly, the latter might be interesting, but in my half-hearted attempt to maintain some level of professionalism, I’ve tried to avoid specific details about what goes in my place of employ. You’ll have to wait for my memoirs for those particular juicy bits.

In the meantime, here’s a slightly wonkier post with some depressing numbers I’ve been pondering for a while:

Liberia has grand plans for its growth over the next twenty years. I would like little more than to see the realization of those plans. That strong desire notwithstanding, there are some pretty daunting challenges to be faced along the way. Among the most substantial will be changing these two numbers:

- $0.40/ton-km

- $0.50/kWh

These are the prices, respectively, of moving a ton of goods one kilometer in most of Liberia (it can be twice as high in the rainy season) and of generating one kilowatt hour of energy here. In isolation, they mean relatively little, but these are the numbers that may impede progress here for decades. To give you a sense of perspective, transportation in Southern Africa costs about $0.05/ton-km and energy in most manufacturing economies is $0.05-$0.10/kWh.

Without dramatically reducing these costs, Liberia simply won’t be able to compete with its neighbors on West Africa or with other developing countries with similar natural resources. These obviously aren’t the only challenges facing the economy, but they may just be the linchpin that holds up progress on nearly every other front. I won’t bore you with the whole network of connections between energy/infrastructure and other development priorities,* but let’s just say that all the stuff I care about depends on lowering those numbers. Now we just have to figure out how to do it.

Here’s hoping it’s just a Herculean, rather than a Sisyphean, task.

*If you’re really interested, I’ll email you the report I wrote last year on cross-sectoral advantages of prioritizing specific development interventions. Doesn’t that just sound thrilling?

Read, Run, Repeat

2011-01-12T13:42:00.000Z

I really didn’t intend this as a book review blog, and I’m sure the frenzied pace of reading will abate at some point in the near future, but I read another book over the weekend and thought I might as well not recommend it to you all. During my prowl through the Cezky Krumlov bookstore on New Year’s Eve, I decided to take a relatively big gamble on Dave Eggers, giving him two of five closely contested spots in my return flight stack-o-books. Honestly, I didn’t think it was such a gamble. I loved What is the What and everything else I knew about Eggers politically and personally. The man lives in Berkeley, wrote about Sudan before it was trendy, and started McSweeneys and a whole slew of storefront shops (including the pirate store!) to support kids’ writing endeavors. What’s not to love? Apparently, the answer is You Shall Know Our Velocity.

The hook for the book was good: two guys have a life-changing event and decide to go around the world and give away a substantial amount of money. The actual book was two guys going around the world doing incomprehensibly stupid things that made me alternate between cringing and raging. As an added bonus, it had pretty serious errors in both technical and substantive editing.

In trying to pin down why I disliked this book so much, I was tempted to think that I just don’t enjoy books with characters to whom I can’t relate or whose basic character traits I dislike. The more I think about that conclusion though, the less convinced I am. I adored Lolita, couldn’t get enough of Gatsby, and count a large number of dictator-driven plots among my favorites. I think that the book maybe just isn’t that good. Dave’s got another chance to come back with A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (which I’m told is much better), but I’m implementing a two-strikes policy on authors, so he’d better make it up to me.

In non-book news, there really isn’t that much news to report. I’ve been told that the key to making it through the boredom and frustrations of a place like this is to develop routines. For a bunch of reasons both good and bad, mine got upended toward the end of November and I’m now trying to re-establish them. I’ve been running most evenings at sunset, a nice little 5k course through Capitol Hill that takes me past all three branches of government. Tides, the local ex-pat bar/rooftop lounge, has started movie nights on Tuesdays, offering the closest thing Monrovia has to a movie theater. Even though the same pirated US movies are available – remarkably quickly – on bootlegs all over town, there’s something nice about watching a movie outdoors with a group of somewhat-similarly situated people.

If I manage to keep a Ministry car for the weekends, I try to make it to the beach on Sundays when everything in town is closed. If not, I’ve been using my wily charms to get into one of the pools at the fancier compounds in town. For better or for worse, I’m now keenly aware of my need for Vitamin D and whatever else it is that sunshine offers, and without any public parks in town, pools and the beach are the best options for getting my fill of sun. Sunday nights have a pretty regular poker game which is a great way to stave off the gloom of impending Mondays. Somewhere in the middle of all that, I walk to work and back (staying there for roughly 8 hours in between), cook a good deal, listen to a ridiculous amount of BBC World Service, and make my way through old TV series I missed the first time through. Despite many offers of friendship from random people on the street while I run (“Hello, please be my friend.” “Hello, can I know you?” “Marry me baby”), it’s a pretty lonely existence, but one to which I’m slowly becoming accustomed.

And when all else fails, there is more lapa to be procured and there are more dresses to be designed. Here’s one of the newest efforts (and the last picture taken on my camera before it was stolen last week):

Book Report

2011-01-05T15:37:00.005Z

I’ve got several half-written, more substantive blog updates, but can’t seem to finish them off for posting. I’ve decided to shelve those for now and go with slightly lighter, less Liberian fare in order to actually get something up here for the first time in weeks.

I spent the holidays in central Europe with my mom, who very kindly showed up at the Vienna airport with a whole bag of warm things, on loan from my recently-spent-a-month-in-Kazakhstan sister. Austria, Hungary, Germany and the Czech Republic all delivered on the implied promise of snow and general wintriness. The trip was great and the cold only made me cry once – outside a castle in Prague, where I was pretty sure I’d leave half my fingers behind.


Bundestag! (Currently closed to the public, but exciting nonetheless)

Winter sporting, not yet available in Monrovia.

I have many questions for the Catholic Church, but will never question its ability to create beautiful things

New Year's Eve, Czech Republic

I may post more photos and trip insights later, but today is time for a little book report on what I read on my winter vacation. I ended up making my way through (almost) three books, all of which I’d recommend. I realized only this morning that all three rely on alternating narrators in each chapter, an apparently trendy device, but each to very different effect. Without further ado, may I humbly recommend to you:

Little Bee (or, if you’re outside the US, The Other Hand, which I think is the much better title) by Chris Cleave. I got this book as a gift just before I left the US and had been saving it for a special break where I could really enjoy it. I foolishly thought that it would last me the whole trip. A flight and train ride later, it was done. Since I read nothing but The Economist that quickly, this should tell you something about how great it was. I’m not quite sure how to tell you what this book is about without telling you too much – even the dust jacket struggles with this – so I’ll just say that it’s about two women whose lives get mixed up together for better and for worse. I think my love for this book was about much more than the life-timing of it (though that was pretty remarkable as well), and will now faithfully read anything suggested by the brilliant friend who gifted it.

The Help, by Kathryn Stockett. I’d never heard of this book before stumbling across it in a very well-stocked English section in a Vienna bookstore, but then proceeded to see it all over Europe. I now know why it was everywhere. This may be the most straight-up addicting book I’ve read in years. I couldn’t wait for train rides or darkness to set in to curl back up with the book and its incredibly personable characters. The book is about black maids in Jackson, Mississippi in the early 1960’s, but it’s also about a whole lot more. It’s the kind of book where you can see plot elements coming from a hundred pages away, but you don’t really care. Just read it. Trust me.

The Feast of the Goat, by Mario Vargas Llosa. Since finishing the entire Garcia Marquez canon several years ago, I’ve picked up random books by other Latin American authors and nearly always put them down again, disappointed they weren’t more Garcia Marquez. Vargas Llosa was included on that list of close-but-no-cigar authors for a while, but I decided that the whole winning the Nobel Prize thing should maybe merit another look, or at least a different book. Plus, there weren’t that many English books in whatever bookstore I was visiting, so I decided to give this one a go. While I’ll still defend Garcia Marquez as the greatest Latin American author ever, this book has brought me around on Vargas Llosa. It’s not magical realism, but once you’re about quarter of the way in, there is a remarkable sense of time and place that’s pretty engrossing. Plot wise, it’s somewhere between Chronicle of a Death Foretold and The General in His Labyrinth. If you’re into the genre, you’ll like it. If you’re not yet, read A Hundred Years of Solitude instead.

I don’t know how many years it’s been since I’ve read so much fiction in a row, but in the hopes of sustaining this little fiction renaissance in my life, I grabbed several more books on my way home. Dave Eggers, Jonathan Franzen, Jonathan Safran Foer and Achmat Dangor are all along for the ride for the next few months. Updates as I make my way through them.

Endless Summer

2010-12-02T11:49:00.000Z

Apparently, it is now December. I am not at all convinced.

I didn’t grow up in a particularly wintry place, but there was always enough of a cold snap to freeze the top few inches in the water troughs and to worry the whole valley about frozen citrus crops. I didn’t have to live with the daily hassle of snow, but could easily find some within an hour whenever the urge hit. It appears that even that moderate amount of winter was enough to tie me to the time and weather patterns of the global north. My brain seems to be completely unable to process December near the equator.

This week’s forecast for Monrovia is in the high 80’s with occasional thunderstorms. I wear skirts and short dresses nearly every day, socks only when I go running. My cute little corduroy jacket and comfy hoodie haven’t made it out of the closet in two months. I’m basically living in eternal summer. Don’t get me wrong: I quite like this arrangement, and would happily abandon socks for the rest of my life if I could only find the right running shoes.

It does, however, confound my sense of the calendar. I had a nice Thanksgiving dinner last week that didn’t feel the least bit like Thanksgiving. The nice part is that, since it doesn’t seem like the holidays, I don’t really feel like I’m missing them at home with friends and family. The less than stellar part is that it doesn’t really feel like time is passing. Though there are lots of points when that sort of Tuck Everlasting sense would be fantastic, it isn’t that comforting when I already feel like life is stuck in neutral.

I guess the not-so-profound conclusion I’m reaching is that seasons matter for more than crops and clothiers. They are useful reminders of the march of time and the progress of life. Now I just need to get used to the idea of rainy and dry as seasons on par with winter and fall.

And if I miss your birthday, please don’t take it personally. It’s probably just because I think it’s still August.

Old dog, new tricks.

2010-11-29T15:05:00.000Z

I’m racking up a pretty sizable list of life lessons this year. They cover a broad range of topics, but one of the simplest and most easily glossed-over is the importance of cutting myself some slack. This lesson isn’t new or particularly revelatory. I’m pretty sure my parents started down this line with me about 20 years ago. Well-intentioned friends, mentors, bosses and even an adversary or two have repeated the refrain in the years since. As a certain sage family member has been reminding me recently though, you won’t hear even good advice until you’re ready to. It seems like two decades might be the maturity date on this particular lesson.

This was all intended as a prelude to my explanation about the recent lack of blogging and trying not to pressure (or pressurize, as everyone seems to say here) myself into having some complex and well-honed plan for each entry before sitting down to write. The short story is that I’m struggling between my desire to put something vaguely interesting together, maintain the right balance of what I want to be public and private, and find enough time when I’m in the right headspace to write. The result has been, well, nothing. Sorry about that.

In my attempt to follow through on the aforementioned life lesson though, I’m trying not to pile more pressure onto myself about this. I’m going to write when I can and try to cut myself a little slack when I can’t. I’ll let you know how things go on that front. In the meantime, here are some odds and ends I’ve had on the brain but haven’t managed to meld into some comprehensible narrative:

- Things feel like they’re getting better in Monrovia in some actually visible ways. I’ve often scoffed at the broken-windows theory of urban revitalization, but I’m now wondering if there might just be something to it. Watching cleaning crews attack trash-filled thickets with cutlasses and seeing clean new buses (gifts of the Indian government) pick up passengers along Tubman Boulevard provide a sense of progress. These are small and reversible steps to be sure – weeds grow back and a vehicle in this country is only as good as the maintenance budget allocated to it – but they are also signs of some wheels of government turning in tandem. That makes me happy and hopeful.

- I made a pretty fabulous new dish the other night that involved sautéed pumpkin and onions over bouillon-infused couscous. I need to try it a few more times before I’m ready to write down a recipe, but the leftovers this morning were even better that I expected, so the exit polls look pretty good.

- I’m going to Europe for a few weeks in December. I thought I wanted to go the whole year without any winter, but it turns out that I kind of miss wearing sweaters and coats. Two weeks sound just about right. My mom and I will be eating our way through Austria, Germany, the Czech Republic and possibly Hungary, just for good measure.

- It seems like every week I’m really happy about a different thing I brought with me from home. I didn’t actually bring that much stuff, but I’m feeling remarkably good about some of the choices. This week’s winner is definitely my iPod dock. Between morning radio, evening cooking/dancing music and nighttime jazz, I’m well accompanied in my otherwise eerily-quiet apartment.

- After ages of slogging through Middlemarch (which I’m actually enjoying, though can’t handle that much fiction in a row) I set it down a few weeks ago to read a book by Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild. I had high hopes for the book (Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy) but was somewhat disappointed. Most of this was really a problem of inappropriate expectations. I was quite excited about reading the book because I really like both Ehrenreich and Hochschild and couldn’t believe I’d somehow missed a book they had co-written. I also thought it was a new book (explaining how I’d missed it). In my haste to get the book before I left the States, I didn’t bother to check either of these assumptions. It turns out it was a decade-old collection of essays the two had edited together. Though its statistics and aggressive use of the term third-world were dated, most of the essays (save the last, which was pretty awful) were still interesting. There was even a piece on IHSS workers in California, just for good measure. It was fine overall, but not particularly illuminating. Now back to Middlemarch, with possible time out for Little Bee while I’m traveling.

I’ll leave it there for now. I’m off to enjoy the rest of President Tubman’s Birthday…

One alley, two lives

2010-11-07T10:54:00.000Z

Yesterday morning I drove across town to pick up a friend. There are two ways to get to her house and, being earlyish on Saturday morning, I decided to take the more direct route, assuming that the normal weekday traffic wouldn’t be an issue. Cruising past a mostly empty University of Liberia campus, I felt pretty good about my routing decision. A few blocks later, I felt a lot less good about it. While I had correctly remembered that it was Saturday, I had failed to calculate that it was the first Saturday of the month – cleaning day in Monrovia. As the rules were explained to me this summer, cleaning day means that you’re either meant to be off the streets or out cleaning until eleven. I have no idea whether these terms apply to drivers as well, but as I came around the curve on the backside of Capitol Hill, I got stuck in a massive traffic jam.

There were scads of people wearing Monrovia City Corporation cleaning campaign t-shirts wandering somewhat aimlessly through the streets with brooms in hand. Cars were stopped cold and there wasn’t much to do but wait. After fiddling with the radio a bit and acknowledging that from Monrovia I could not, in fact, solve the BBC News labor unrest to bring the regular correspondents back to work with new content, I began to look around. Despite the clean-or-stay-home edict I’d heard, there were plenty of Monrovians milling about, neither cleaning nor staying home.

For some reason, my eye was caught by a small group of people standing near the mouth of a narrow alley. There were a few steps leading down from the sidewalk into the passage. Some people were gathered at the bottom of the steps, some standing at the top; all were watching the traffic and cleaners. Suddenly, there was movement and yelling. A girl, maybe eight or nine years old, was getting walloped on the backside of her head by a woman, presumably her mother. As the girl ran away, the woman lashed out again, this time kicking her down the two or three stairs into the alley. The girl kept running and the woman moved on.

Not five seconds later, there was a bit more motion in this same spot. Another girl, just the same size and probably the same age as the first, came bounding up to the top of the alley. She catapulted herself over the steps and into the arms of an older man who was waiting there. She wrapped her legs around him and hugged him with great gusto. He returned the hug with a grin nearly as big as hers.

A moment later, traffic began moving again and I moved on into the heart of the city, totally bewildered by coincidence of the contrasts I’d just witnessed.

Despite my best efforts

2010-11-04T20:51:00.001Z

[Before I start, I should note here that despite the hard time I’m having on a lot of fronts right now, I’m incredibly grateful for the support and valuable advice of many friends old and new, near and far. I’ve been deeply touched by the amount of time and effort people have invested in making sure that I’m doing alright. Notwithstanding that effort, this is bound to still be difficult, and I’m doing my best to honestly communicate how things are going, even when it doesn’t make for particularly uplifting reading. So please bear with me (or don’t, that’s fine too), and know that I realize how blessed I am in so many ways.]

I had a grand plan yesterday to write a new blog post. It was going to be called something like “Anatomy of a Better Day.” Having crashed somewhat early the night before, I woke up early enough to go for a decent run. I set out at 6:50, headed into the still-rising sun. I ran the mile and change to JFK, the biggest public hospital in the country, just as the the first round of morning commuters began pouring into taxis. By the time I turned back, Tubman Boulevard was its normal weekday morning self, filled with school kids, workers and vendors.

I’d listened to the BBC broadcast the whole run, so already knew the gist of the disappointing though unsurprising elections results by the time I was home. As I turned on the shower, I switched over to the house radio, catching the tail end of the general news broadcast and then Network Africa, my usual shower-time program. Running a few minutes ahead of schedule, I decided to splurge a bit of time and make oatmeal and tea in place of my standard cold cereal and banana breakfast. Warm breakfast on the table, I settled in front of the computer to dig through the more detailed elections returns. As expected, it was mostly good news from California (though I remain remarkably out of sync with even theoretically progressive California on initiatives), mostly bad news from everywhere else. I even got some up-to-the-minute updates on numbers from a California political friend who was still awake and on Facebook.

By 8:40, I was out the door and walking to to Ministry. Despite the heat, I’ve come to really enjoy walking to work, in roughly equal parts because it gives me some time outside, it means I don’t have to cobble together a ride on someone else’s schedule every day, and it gives me more time to listen to the radio and get a little thinking done. Yesterday’s thinking was about committing myself to a better attitude about life and work, to having a better day and then coming home to write about it.

As I was about to cross the street in front of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (where, with a few waves a day, I’m trying to build a rapport with the small group of female Bangladeshi peacekeepers who guard the President), a co-worker pulled up to the curb and offered me a ride for the second half of the trip. I got in the car, grateful to skip the only part of the pedestrian commute I dislike – slipsliding down a road that’s become more of a rocky hillside to get from the main road to the Ministry.

After about three minutes after settling in at work, someone from the administrative side of the Ministry came to ask for my passport, with a vague explanation about dealing with my visa and residence permit. As I’m not in the habit of carrying my passport around these days, I then had to roust up a car and driver to take me back home, pick up the passport and get it back so it could be taken to the Bureau of Immigration. Half an hour later, I returned to the rowdy conference room I call an office these days, and things started to go south.

I won’t go into all the details here, but the day ended without my passport and with me canceling my holiday plans for today (Liberian Thanksgiving, a national holiday) and required to show up for a meeting from 3-6 on said holiday. Somewhere in the middle there were many emotions, none of which were the uplifting, happy sort I’d aimed for at the beginning of the day.

After my grand start to the morning, the only other highlight was getting to drive a Ministry a car again, this time a massive Landcruiser. Even with traffic tangled in inconceivable knots and driving what handled like an empty milk truck, I felt somewhat liberated again, moving on my own schedule even if not my own pace. I managed at least half an hour of stop and go traffic and hills without stalling once. I suppose that was yesterday’s bit of life progress, though it definitely came at the expense of an already worn clutch.

Yeah, I drove that. No, I'm not responsible for the bumper.

So, my plan to force myself into having a better day didn’t turn out quite as imagined. Back to the drawing board to try again tomorrow…

The Princess Diaries

2010-10-24T19:19:00.001Z

Earlier this week I went back to Bomi County to check in on some of the social protection and health care programs being implemented there. Unlike the last time I was there, this visit involved a twenty-vehicle caravan, two vanloads of journalists and a European princess. I have a longer post half-written about some deeper thoughts I had on this trip, but am not ready to finish it quite yet. In the meantime, I thought I'd share a random assortment of pictures from the day:


American photographer captures European journalists watching Nigerian peacekeeper hold Liberian civilians at bay

Sign from a wall in the government hospital in Bomi (cold water is Liberian slang for a bribe). Would that American hospitals had reminders that services were free...

Local dancers after performing for the princess

Just a low-key royal visit to a small village in Bomi

The one kid in town who was still afraid of me by the time I left. By that point, he was smiling at me from a distance, but still shrieked when I got within two feet of him. Maybe next time...

(not sure why my photos are all showing up as landscape, but really don't have the energy or bandwidth to deal with it right now, so apologies if you have to look at some sideways)

Small town, Sunday afternoon

2010-10-17T19:47:00.000Z

My plans to go to Firestone today fell through, so this morning I faced another Sunday with nothing to do and nowhere to go. After making and consuming my first post-return batch of guacamole, I ventured out for a long walk across town. In case you were for some reason contemplating such a plan, I should note that 3:30 in the afternoon during dry season isn’t exactly the ideal time for a long walk in Monrovia, but I had time to kill and needed to get out of the house.

Starting out of my building, I decided that I might as well run the first bit, as it was ground I covered several times a week and the exercise would be good for me. The street had an entirely different feel today – the void of Sunday afternoon, when most people had gone home from church and were spending the rest of the day with family and friends. There was no rush hour bustle with throngs of people waiting for share-taxis, many fewer boys with wheelbarrows full of odds and ends to sell. In my neighborhood, the sidewalk was mostly empty, making my run a bit less of an obstacle course than usual. I dodged only broken chunks of sidewalk and cars sticking into the road rather than the ususal retinue of vendors, schoolkids, and scratch card sales guys. By Capitol Hill, I was virtually alone, with only BBC football news on my headphones and the constant stream of cars driving by with their alphabet soup of acronyms – UNMIL, UNDP, UNPOL, MOS, MLME, TOJ, EQUIP. I crossed to the shady side of the street in front of the Executive Mansion and headed down the hill past the Ministry of Tourism to the Ministry of Lands, Mines and Energy. I slowed to a walk and turned left past the gas station, taking in the city once again.

All the shop doors were shut for the day, bright metal doors hiding the contents inside but offering block-letter hints about the nature of businesses to be resumed Monday morning – furniture shops, construction supplies, tailors. By the Ministry of Defense I was running again, passing its high fence and thinking about the terrors that had gone on behind its imposing walls. Further down the street I ticked off the Ministries of Labour and of Public Works. I eventually made the turn past the Ministry of Gender, debated my course and opted for the road better known, turning toward Randall Street and the nice grocery store in town. I let myself think about the welcome relief it might offer with a few minutes of air conditioning and a bottle of water. Too late, I remembered that it was closed Sundays, so I continued past, annoyed that I’d let myself think about water. A few blocks later, the tenor of the street changed, so I decided to turn back around and head for home.

Finally letting myself off the running hook, I tried hard to get out of my own head and to really see things around me as I walked back. I passed three women that I’d seen on the way out, all dressed in their Sunday best and all looking just as perplexed by me as they had before. An old man with thick dreds and a gap toothed grin said hi, making me realize how few people here have dreds. Half a dozen women and girls having their hair yanked into various plaits made me wince in empathy. A few small groups of boys broke out laughing when they saw me and yelled something that sounded like “Jambo!”, but this isn’t the right part of the world for that greeting, so I’m not sure what they were saying.

A few blocks on, an impromptu football game took over an empty parking lot, reminding me that Monrovia has virtually no green space and painfully few publicly spaces at all. Despite the intense afternoon heat, I passed a young baby thorougly swaddled and apparently content in a bright fuschia fleece blanket. Making my way back up Capitol Hill, I aimed for the shady side of the street again, only to be very politely directed away from the Executive Mansion by a Special Security Service officer. Initially skeptical of a random guy approaching me on the street, I was actually quite happy to be treated like everyone else, even if it meant more time in the sun. Crossing the nightmarish intersection near the University of Liberia, I realized how much I missed the LNP officer who directs traffic there duing the week.

Plodding the last few blocks home past the UNMIL compound and into my building, I was greeted enthusiastically by BoBo, an older Liberian man who tidies things up in our building and generally hangs around to greet people and help when he can. BoBo lives in a small shack on the roof of the building right behind my deck and always looks out for me, even if he’s confounded by my running and marginal parking skills. We try hard to communicate, but he’s mute and my diminishing knowledge of American Sign Language is pretty useless here. We’ve settled for muddling through with pantomime, which today consisted of him making huffing and puffing gestures and then exhaling exaggeratedly, apparently a commentary on my exercise regimen. Gertrude, the evening guard, smiled good-humoredly at me as she usually does, and gave me an approving nod when I told her how far I’d gone today. Leaving them both, I half-bounded up the stairs to my apartment, closing the door and finding myself alone again, no company but the thoughts in my head. I’d filled less than an hour and a half of my day.

A little from column A, a little from column B

2010-10-16T15:09:00.000Z

To counteract a bit of the gloom from my last post, I was going to write this whole entry about things that have made me happy this week. While I know it’s important to realize that things aren’t all good or all bad, I think it’s just as ill-advised to swing my focus one direction as the other, so I’m not going to write the chipper force-myself-out-of-the-doldrums blather I’d had in mind. It’s been another hard week, though with some bright spots here and there.

Despite the good company of a few great people from work, it’s still painfully lonely here. I can’t tell how much is the new life-status, how much is the being in a new place generally, and how much is being here specifically. Thanks to the wonders of a friend’s good internet connection, I’ve been able to have some longish chats with people online this week. It’s nice to get stuff off my chest and I appreciate feeling connected and the energy that other people are willing to put into me even when they’re struggling with stuff themselves. Thanks everyone…

I’ve been trying to fill my free time in vaguely productive ways, this week with two yoga classes and three running sessions. Trying to squeeze the running in before work or before sunset makes the trips pretty short, but at this point I think it’s the principle of the thing rather than the actual cardio impact. I’ve decided to judge my progress based on which ministries I run past – yesterday I made it to Foreign Affairs before it got too dark; this morning I made it past the Capitol and the Temple of Justice to the Ministry of Lands, Mines and Energy. I’ll be really impressed if I can make it to the Ministry of Gender in a few weeks.

The other (temporary) highlight of the week was driving. A co-worker was out of the country so I got to use her Ministry car, giving me an unbelievably relieving sense of freedom as I managed to ply the very busy, very poorly maintained streets of Monrovia. Driving here is somewhat challenging in general, but when combined with the fact that I’ve never driven standard on my own, it was a whole new kind of adventure. I had the most trouble trying to drive in stop and go rush hour traffic (remarkably easy to stall in those circumstances), but have more or less got the hang of it now. Sadly, I have to hand the key back over on Monday and I’ll be back to bumming rides and calling taxis, clipping my wings once again.

Other things I’m grateful for this week:

· * BBC World Service – my constant morning companion and the only connection to the outside world in my internet-less apartment. If David Cameron takes aim at their budget with his new cuts, I may have to take serious action.

· * The random phone I bought from Amazon before I left – I bought it for its dual-SIM capacity, I love it for the fact that it has an amazing radio tuner and even lets me schedule a time to record a radio program. I can now listen to BBC all around town, a nice bonus while running and while waiting for people to show up or meetings to start.

· * Comfort – the wonderful woman who cleans my house and generally looks after me. I didn’t actually even see her this week since she came while I was working, but it’s awfully nice to get home and know that someone has been there trying to make my life a little easier.

I've had better weeks

2010-10-13T17:29:00.000Z

So, less than two weeks into work and there’s now a lot of talk about pushing the project I’ve been hired to work on back by about a year. I’m not yet sure this will happen or what it would mean for me, but combined with other upended expectations, it’s not made for the most stable week of my life. I hesitate in writing this here in part because I don’t want this to be a detailed personal diary (though I am trying to keep one of those this year), and in part because I don’t want to worry the good folks at home. In striving for a real chronicle of my time here though, I suppose I’m somewhat obliged to not gloss over the harder bits as they come. It does, however, feel surreal and somewhat inappropriate to refer to anything that’s happening to me here as hard.

As have so many development people before me, I’ve been mulling this question (can you really complain about relatively posh conditions in a desperately poor place?) for a while. As I sit in an upscale hotel restaurant listening to Mozart on iTunes and tapping away on my none-too-cheap laptop, I can’t help but feel the urge to censor any form of complaint. Perhaps I’m just lumping too many potential areas of complaint together. It’s reasonable to be frustrated that I may not be able to do the work I came here to do. It’s reasonable to be aggravated by not having the tools I need to get things done. It’s not reasonable to complain about my living conditions, even when they involve pests or a distinct lack of functional plumbing at work. I don’t yet know whether it’s reasonable to be sad about my loneliness and isolation when I brought so much (though not all) of it upon myself. With that I continue to struggle…

This set of questions also invokes a mirror-image set about the appropriateness of taking advantage of luxury in the face of depravation. I know this question isn’t limited to developing country contexts (see, for example, the Hilton in the middle of the Tenderloin in San Francisco), but for obvious reasons, it feels more poignant here. Case in point – I’ve been talking with some friends at work about getting out of the city this weekend and – yes, I fully understand the ridiculousness of this – playing golf at the Firestone Plantation. [I realize now that I may not have actually written about Firestone here before. The short story is that the American tire company runs the world’s largest unbroken rubber plantation here, maybe 90 minutes from Monrovia. The good folks at the United Steelworkers in the US have done a lot of amazing solidarity work to improve conditions for rubber tappers working on the plantation, but as you can imagine, they’re not exactly taking advantage of the on-premises golf course.]

So how wrong is it to go take advantage of this crazy resource? Does the context matter? What if it’s not that expensive, but still kind of frivolous? What if it’s actually good for my mental health? I know this isn’t some new or revelatory set of questions and I’ve wrestled with issues of privilege for a long time, never really coming to reasonable conclusions. In thinking about how to have a sustainable career doing development work though, I feel like I need to reach some more comfortable resolution that allows me to do the work I want, maintain my sanity and not perpetuate the problems I’m trying to solve. All suggestions welcome…

Yeah, I really shouldn't complain: view from my bedroom at sunset

Turbulence

2010-10-06T16:52:00.000Z

So, as I think anyone still checking this blog knows, I’ve made some pretty substantial life changes in the past few months. Some of those changes I won’t be talking about here (email me directly if you want more details), but some I will – most notably, the fact that I’ve decided to come back to Liberia for another nine months.

Sunrise over Abidjan, Ivory Coast on my flight into Accra

I’ll be working in the same Ministry where I spent the summer, though on a different project. My new work will involve helping put together part of the new 20 year growth plan for Liberia. I started back here on Friday, so still don’t quite have my feet under me yet. More to come on the work part as it sorts itself out.

In my newly single incarnation, I’ve got a one-bedroom apartment and will be living alone for the first time. My place is in Sinkor, an expat heavy neighborhood with a lot of great restaurants and adjacent to the Capitol Hill area where the Ministry is located. I was ready to sign on when I saw the faux-wood flooring (I’m actually serious about this. I think most tile is depressing and way too Florida, and this is the only building I’ve seen without tile flooring everywhere.), but the sunlight and views really sold me. The place is about half a block from the Indian restaurant in town and two doors down from a great fruit/veg stand and small grocery store. Below are a few before pictures - once I get myself some new lapa and decorating inspiration I'll put up some after pictures.

The living room and kitchen (door to the balcony is to the right of the loveseat)

Kitchen/dining room

Bedroom, which is actually quite large, though covered well by the world's largest bed

View from my balcony. The building in the background is main compound for UNMIL, the UN Mission in Liberia. My ministry is just behind that. The University of Liberia is to the right of the UNMIL building.

Blogger is now forbidding further photo uploads for this post, so this will have to do for now. After the first photo took forever to load, I started experimenting with compressed photo files to speed things up. Please let me know if they're too grainy or difficult to load for some reason.

Mama Liberia

2010-07-17T09:03:00.001Z

I've been meaning to write this post for a good ten days now, but for some reason my grand hopes for it keep overshadowing my mental stamina to write it. I'd planned to craft a grand biography of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Liberia's president (or just Ellen, as she's known by many here). For some reason, it's just not coming. So I will instead commend her book - This Child Will Be Great - to you, as it's a pretty easy read and a fascinating bit of campaign literature if nothing else.

This is all prelude to me noting that I met the President last week, and actually attended events with her on three successive days. All three events were very different (4th of July party, signing of the Millennium Challenge Corporation threshold agreement, and a cabinet meeting of sorts) and revealed an impressive variety of political and policy skills. Like any good head of state, she could readily move in a diverse crowd and make small talk with a room full of people. Unlike many leaders, she also had an unbelievable level of detailed knowledge about the smallest kernels of domestic policy, down to the level of which bridges are currently impassable in the far eastern edge of the country.

Of course, governing a country the size of Virginia with 10% of the population of California makes some of this easier, but no matter how small, Liberia is still a nation and the president doesn't just deal with the issues confronting a medium size city. She has to deal with foreign debt and international borders, macroeconomic policy and human rights treaties. Adding to the challenge, the highly centralized governmental structure here means that she's largely responsible for governance at all levels, so has to deal with the nitty-gritty details of local politics as well. She's doing it all in a country that went through 14 years of civil war and whose peace is maintained by a UN mission that's preparing to leave within the next two years.

Throughout the last meeting, I was routinely impressed by how readily she could shift back and forth from policy minutiae to big picture vision for the country with a clear understanding of the connections between the two. I'm not sure I've ever seen anyone quite like her. Part of this may come from great staffing, and I know that part comes from hard work. In fact, anyone in Monrovia can easily see how long her hours are each night (and most weekends). Since the Executive Mansion was destroyed by power-surge induced fire during her inauguration, she's been working from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Her presidential escort and UN bodyguards wait outside the Ministry all day and into the night while she's there working. When she's in the country, she's there until at least 8 or 9 every night, and has been rumored to shoot off emails throughout the night as well.

This has turned into random facts about Ellen now, so I think I'll stop and show a few pictures (I did take one with her, but on someone else's camera and I need to get a copy still) but not before sharing a few more tidbits:
- She's Africa's first (and to date, only) elected female head of state
- She's almost 72, and planning to run for reelection to another five year term next year
- She was married at 17 and had four kids by the time she was 23. She left them all here with her family when she went to the US to get a college degree. She eventually left her abusive husband, got her Master's at Harvard, worked in banking, became a high level official in the UN, and held various government posts here on and off before the war began.

Lest you think vuvuzelas are just for South Africa or the World Cup, rest assured that this guy long predates the current madness. He has been the personal trumpeter of the Liberian president since the mid-60's, blowing his wooden vuvuzela-like horn as the president enter or leaves the room and at somewhat random intervals in between. I think this also makes him one of the longest-serving civil servants in government.

Ellen with the US Congressional delegation and some Monrovia schoolgirls after the signing of the MCC agreement. She regularly credits Liberia's women with ending the civil war and helping her win the presidency, and has focused an incredible amount of attention on issues impacting women and girls.

A bit of the spread from the post-MCC signing reception, including some ginormous plantains. In case I haven't mentioned it recently enough, I'm obsessed with Liberian plantains.

Words from around town

2010-07-10T23:57:00.000Z

A few snapshots of interesting words around town - (you may have to click on some of these images to read the full text. They should open in a larger version in a new screen).

This is another from the awesome tax sensitization campaign series. It's pretty faded by this point, but still one of my favorites. If you look carefully at the bottom, you can see that the Ministry of Finance has nicely noted that this is part of the tax sensitization campaign.

The official seal of Liberia, as displayed in the joint chamber of the Legislature. The national motto, emblazoned across the top, is "The love of liberty brought us here".

A bit of background: Liberia was settled in the early 1800's by freed American slaves who came to the area and treated the indigenous population pretty horrendously for a good century, and then only moderately better for another 40 years. The tension between wealthy Americo-Liberians and native Liberians was at the heart of the 1980 coup led by Samuel Doe. These days, Americo-Liberians make up less than 5% of the population, so a seal and motto that focus on their arrival is somewhat controversial. Changing these symbols is a frequent topic of conversation and probably a pretty important step toward long term national reconciliation.

A sign in my building for an inter-ministerial league competition. MOPEA is the ministry where I'm working, and LISGIS is another governmental organization that's housed in our building (apparently in a somewhat maternal arrangement).

The most amazing description ever of Season 5 of Friends. Trust me, it's worth clicking the larger image to read it. We highly recommend reading it out loud in a somewhat dramatic fashion. Not that we've done that half a dozen times already or anything...

Odds and Ends

2010-07-04T13:17:00.000Z

- I’ve been trying to get a picture of these guys for weeks, and finally managed to a few days ago. These are the rock guys, two men who bring in rocks to areas with particularly bad potholes, break them and try to make the road more passable. They’re usually a few blocks away from our house, on the main road I take to work in the mornings. Since the road never looks that much improved, we had secretly suspected that they carried the same broken rocks from spot to spot, hoping for more sympathy in different areas.

I talked to my driver about it yesterday, and he said they actually did break new rocks each day and it does help the smaller cars trying to muscle through the muck. These two guys were among 150 deported from the US last year, and they’ve been plying their trade around town since then, living off the tips drivers occasionally offer. They always wear the bright construction coats and usually have helmets, doing a little dance as the bigger 4x4’s pass by and smiling broadly at a thumbs up from drivers and passengers. They come across as about the cheeriest people in town, but I can’t get a sense at all about how much is for show.

-I finally left Monrovia last weekend to take a quick trip to Thinkers Beach (pronounced Tinkers), just a few miles outside the city. We spent most of the afternoon under a thatched cabana, just watching the ocean and enjoying the time outside, which is way too rare here. I ventured into the water a bit and was quickly overwhelmed by the strength of the undertow. We’d been warned about it, and it turns out people are not kidding around. Even standing at the edge of the water to get my feet wet, the tide pulled back forcefully enough to completely erode the ground beneath me faster than I’ve ever seen in the Pacific. A few wipeouts and facefuls of salt water were enough for me, and I quickly retreated to the shade.

The beach area was filled mostly with expats and there were just a handful of Liberians. This mix made us a pretty obvious target for local vendors. We were barraged with opportunities to buy masks, carved statues and scads and scads of jewelry. I was apparently a great mystery to the guys because I didn’t go for the broken shell necklaces and earrings. Each one of them tried to point a similar necklace out to me, all without success. I guess I don’t conform to stereotype here either.

-Lapa shopping went brilliantly last weekend, with one of my co-workers taking Amy and me to her favorite shop, which was fantastic.

(photo courtesy of Amy’s foresight in bringing a camera)

We had an impossible time making up our minds, so ended up splitting several pieces and each leaving with a solid armful of cloth. We then set out for the tailor, apparently one of the snazzier shops in town. I had most of my little pencil sketches prepared for the fabric we had bought on previous trips, but had to do some quick thinking on the new pieces we bought this week. Fortunately, the tailor is way more talented at sketching than I am and was able to whip up drawings for what I explained. Amy and Chara also co-designed a dress on the fly, and that might be the winner of the whole batch. I promise photos when we get the clothes back, apparently in a week or two. In the mean time, we’re waiting with baited breath and scheming a whole new round of plans for this weekend.

Field Trip, Part II

2010-06-30T22:19:00.001Z

It turns out that the morning’s delayed session was due to a power outage in the building (I had just assumed they weren’t powering the part I was in so early in the day). The Capitol and Temple of Justice both run on the public power grid and are susceptible to its vagaries, as I’ve discovered in visits to both. At least it gives decisionmakers a sense of urgency about fixing the dismal state of electrification in the country.

After waiting until about 10:15, I decided to head back to the Ministry to get a bit of work done. Around noon I caught a ride back up the hill again, hoping to catch some of the afternoon session. I arrived to discover that both houses were in closed session (secret session according to some). Though the doors were closed, prying ears could pretty clearly have picked out the gist of the conversation, since most of it was yelled. Unfortunately, the Senate went straight from closed session to adjournment for the day, so I pinned my hopes on the House.

Walking back through the room I sat in earlier in the morning (apparently the joint chamber, not that of either house), I came across a group of what I assume were UofL students, all yelling in another heated argument. And when I say yelling, I really do mean yelling. From our joint internship experiences here, we’ve all discovered that this is an incredibly common phenomenon, whether in government summits, NGO meetings or budget planning sessions. Disagreements on all sorts of issues quickly escalate to yelling matches, eventually subside, and every one walks away fine, though resolution to the problem is almost never reached. It’s totally perplexing, though perhaps preferable to superficial comity followed by backstabbing and trickery. [It turns out, upon further investigation, that the group was actually the Capitol press corps, not college students. Needless to say, the press corps here is quite young].

The House ended up going straight from closed session to adjournment, so there was no session for me. Blargh, but at least I didn’t drive all the way to Sacramento just to have a hearing cancelled. I was, however, asked twice whether I’m with NDI (once by a local intern and once by the deputy chief clerk), which gives a pretty good impression about their presence here, or at least gives me an idea about the paucity of other groups working the legislative side of things. Oh that I were with NDI.

Field Trip, Emily Style

2010-06-29T19:00:00.000Z

Lots of staff are traveling this week, making it a little quieter than usual at the Ministry. So I took it upon myself to arrange a little field trip across Tubman Blvd to check out the Legislature. Tubman is the main street that runs through town (named after the former Liberian president, not she of Underground Railroad fame) and it bisects most of central Monrovia, including the Capitol Hill Area. The south side is referred to as the beach side, and it’s home to the Executive Mansion and a whole bundle of ministries including mine. The north side of Tubman is called the swamp side, and it includes the University of Liberia, the Capitol, and the Temple of Justice in quick succession.

So I got dropped off here this morning before heading into the office. Session was supposed to start at 9, and there are a lot of contentious issues in store, so I was encouraged to show up at 8:30 to make sure I got a seat in the small gallery. I wandered in past the plaque noting that “the people’s house” had been restored by the US government into an empty circular atrium with beautiful dark wood carvings covering about 60 degrees of the circle.

The rest of the room was worn indoor-outdoor carpeting and a very dated chandelier, creating a strange mix of stately grandeur and dated convention center hotel. I proceeded to wander through the almost entirely vacant building, getting a few looks and nary a word as I snapped a few pictures and looked generally out of place. Here, as in too many places, being a well dressed white woman tends to bypass a whole set of questions that would unfairly apply to others.

I’ve managed to find my way through the building to what appears to be one set of chambers, festooned in old fashioned red white and blue bunting. And here I wait.

And now it turns out that session won’t start until ten (oh commonalities of legislatures everywhere). So now I have an hour to explain what I know about the legislature and the issues it’s currently confronting. Like many things here, the legislature is based on the American system, with a bicameral structure. Senators are equally apportioned among the 15 counties, which are very unevenly populated. Montserrado County, of which Monrovia is the seat, accounts for about 1/3 of the national population. The House is divided by population, and is constitutionally allowed to have up to 100 members.

This is the current cause of much debate and acrimony in the country. Before the 2011 elections, the legislature must pass the threshold bill which will designate the population sizes for House districts. Some in the legislature want to greatly increase the number of representatives in the House, while small counties generally oppose it and are demanding more representation than they would otherwise be entitled to based on their population. One enlargement bill passed already, which the President vetoed, arguing that the government couldn’t afford to pay for the additional lawmakers, staff and district expenses. The issue is also being duked out in the Supreme Court, which is considering constitutional challenges based on equal representation claims. The whole issue is a mess and has been making headlines in the remarkably sensationalist newspapers for weeks.

However messy, it has to have a quick resolution. Until the issue is settled, the National Elections Commission (NEC) can’t set the new boundaries based on the census, and it can’t otherwise prepare for the upcoming elections. This election is going to be a huge test for the NEC already, as it will be the first national election for which Liberia (rather than international partners) bears primary responsibility. Waiting to begin preparations could spell disaster. For more on this fascinating topic, I refer you to my final paper for Development Policy in Africa, available by email for a low low fee.

The legislature also has two other big issues to deal with very soon. The first is the budget which, from what I’ve gathered, might be even more contentious than in California. For Liberia’s sake, I hope it’s not. The second is the issue of residency requirements for contesting the presidential election. The Constitution requires that presidential aspirants live in the country for the ten years preceding the election. Since so many prominent Liberians were forced to flee during the Taylor reign, this provision was suspended in the 2005 elections. It’s only been seven years since Taylor stepped down, so the rule would still impact many candidates, including President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and her main opponent, George Weah (Liberia’s most famous former footballer). Fortunately, since both of the major parties have the same stake in this issue, it’s more likely to be resolved successfully.

The legislature also has some interesting characters in it, most notably Prince Johnson. Johnson was the leader of one of the rebel groups (Taylor led the other group) that marched on Monrovia in an attempt to overthrow Samuel Doe in a bloody coup. Doe himself had come to power in a military coup in 1980, and Johnson was one of his soldiers at the time. Most Liberians know Johnson from horrific video footage of him torturing and murdering Doe after capturing him in 1990. Though Taylor was eventually called to account for his crimes against neighboring Sierra Leone, neither he nor Johnson were ever charged in connection with their crimes here. Johnson is a free man and now a senator. Chalk one up for impossible post-conflict peacemaking conundrums.

Name games, and oh, I met the Chief Justice

2010-06-25T16:09:00.000Z

- -- Maybe this is just something I haven’t noticed in the US, but there seems to be a very strong emphasis on calling everyone by name here. Anyone who has spent any reasonable amount of time with me should be able to predict the challenges this might cause me in everyday American circumstances, let alone one with unfamiliar syllabic clusters and accents I’m struggling to master. I’ve got a bunch of names down, but there are so many people in the building that I just couldn’t get them all in the first few days. Now there’s the standard dilemma of it being too late to ask some people. I’m struggling for the diplomatic response to this in the absence of Storey, my usually helpful sidekick in this regard (“Oh, good to see you, this is my husband Storey,” expectantly waiting for self-introduction from the forgotten-named one).

This does not seem to be a reciprocal problem. Tons of people have learned my name and use it frequently and energetically. There seem to be two standard variations on it, both decidedly duo-syllabic. I’m either Em-LEE or Em-LAY, but with conviction, none of that mumbled American nonsense. It feels a little like Cheers when I walk in some places, though I suspect Norm actually knew Diane’s name, so I feel kind of bad about it.

-- In reading through the reports I’ve been analyzing, I’ve had the great fortune of coming across some interesting new words and even more interestingly named things. I’m increasingly intrigued by a crop called bitter balls, which googling hasn’t really been much help on. When I asked a colleague about it this morning, she said simply “yummy”. If I can find some not covered in meat sauce, I might have to try it. I also learned about piglings (quasi-shovel/spades), and was somewhat sad they weren’t a special variation on piglets.

The most amazing one that keeps popping up though is the term for some of the larger prisons in the rural areas – the Palace of Corrections. As you might have suspected, this is a pretty remarkable misnomer. The reports I’ve been reading about said palaces include lack of electricity, lack of running water and extremely limited food for prisoners (some of whom have been held without charges for more than two years). In one of the smaller jails, prisoners are released to go find their own water each day. To the government’s credit, this is all being reported by the folks working to rectify it, but it’s still a pretty dire situation. Part of the work I’m doing this summer is intended to improve the ways that local officials let the ministries in Monrovia know about problems like this.

-- My work isn’t all report reading though. Yesterday I went to a meeting at the Temple of Justice – the home of Liberia’s Supreme Court. We met with the honorable Chief Justice about whom I’d heard a variety of interesting stories, most of which were barely above the level of rumors in a small town. He’s probably in his 70’s, and I would guess is the oldest person I’ve seen since I got here. He’s also one of the tallest, probably 6’3”, incredibly slender and ramrod straight but for a slight hump in his shoulders. I’d imagine this is what Paul Kagame will look like if he wakes up with a kink in his neck in thirty years.

The Temple of Justice, unlike the Executive Mansion and parts of the Capitol, has benefitted handsomely from donor projects. It’s one of the nicest buildings in town and is almost done with its renovations. Parts of the open-air corridors in the design reminded me immediately of the Fresno County Courthouse, though to its credit, the Temple was clearly not at the height of its glory.

The Temple of Justice (picture from a few weeks ago)

The meeting itself wasn’t great, in ways I could have predicted before it actually started. Other participants weren’t prepared to answer questions that would pretty obviously come up, and the Chief Justice was unimpressed, though only vaguely impatient. I got the feeling this wasn’t an uncommon experience.

In all the work and reading I’ve been doing on issues of capacity gaps this summer, I’ve spent a lot of time trying to pinpoint where and when I picked up certain skills. Where did I figure out how to anticipate questions and to prepare adequately for a meeting? When did I learn to write things down so I’d remember everything I needed to do? How did I learn the right way to handle the egos of people in positions of authority? Sure, I’ve relied on all these skills in past jobs and even had a bit of formal training on them, but even during the trainings, it felt like something I already knew. I don’t think this is because I was a born lobbyist (far from it – see above re: name retention) or that I’m a brilliantly gifted list maker (have you met my sisters?). I’m sure these skills were learned somewhere, but until I can figure out the acquisition process, I’m struggling to find the best way to make sure other people get them.

Lap belts, Lebanese and Lapas

2010-06-21T21:19:00.000Z

-- Yesterday, for the first time after more than three weeks in the country, I saw a Liberian smoking. I’ve seen plenty of expats smoking everywhere, but shockingly few (well, none until yesterday) Liberians. It seems this is one vice Liberia hasn’t picked up from the US.

I’ve also been quite surprised by the frequency of seat belt usage here. While people don’t think twice about cramming insane numbers of people into the back seats of cars, nearly every driver and front seat passenger wears a seat belt. We asked our taxi driver about it this weekend, and he said that the police are pretty vigorous about enforcing the seatbelt laws. Given the reports I’ve been reading about the challenges of the Liberian National Police enforcing most laws, this was really surprising to me. Similarly, while the overall rate is much lower, there are a reasonable number of helmets on the motorbike drivers, apparently for the same reason.

-- I still haven’t managed to eat a real Liberian meal since I got here. There’s a pretty limited set of restaurants that are clean enough for foreign stomachs to handle, and most of these are owned by Liberia’s substantial Lebanese community. As a result, most meals that we eat out of the house are some combination of hummus, pita, falafel or foul (pronounced fool, a garlicky bean paste that’s quite tasty). In a way, I guess the Lebanese influence is pervasive and long-standing enough to make it part of the Liberian culinary landscape, but it’s still not the same.

The whole question of how Liberian the Lebanese immigrants are is one that’s being hotly contested in some quarters right now. While many Lebanese families have been here for multiple generations, they are not considered Liberian citizens. Constitutionally, citizenship is reserved for those who are “Negro or of Negro descent”. Not coincidentally, land ownership is reserved for citizens. As a result, many outsiders with a potential interest in investing here are turned off by the lack of property security and end up looking elsewhere. Some are willing to gamble on long term leases, but it’s clearly an impediment to a lot of folks. It’s been argued that this provision of the constitution violates international law and there are certainly a lot of reasons to reject it, but the economic reasons seem to be holding the most sway right now.

-- Lapa madness has officially set in at our house. Lapa is the generic term for the fabric that’s used for just about every purpose here. Depending on the day, a lapa might hold babies, be wrapped into a makeshift skirt or actually sewn into clothes. The fabric patterns range from the very elaborate (of the gold brocade) to the political (we’ve seen some Obama print stuff, but can’t get our hands on it), to the just funny (some patterns involve cell phones, others lipstick cases, others rooster heads). We’re more or less obsessed. While a single lapa is usually 2 yards of fabric, most places sell three lapas worth of fabric at a time, so as we’ve been shopping, we’ve picked up half a dozen yards of fabric of each pattern we fall in love with. We’ve got grand plans for duvets, table cloths, curtains and aprons. If anyone is considering a welcome home present for me, a sewing machine might be a good idea.

We’re also going to get some clothes made this weekend, which I couldn’t be much more excited about. I decided a while ago that my backup profession (if I ever give up on saving the world) would be costume designer for period pieces. I love the idea of having a dress form, a sketch pad and a room of magic fabrics to make beautiful things. There are however, many problems with this scenario. First, I haven’t given up on saving the world (this isn’t really a problem so much as an impediment). Second, I have no drawing ability. Third, my sewing ability is only slightly more advanced than my knitting and drawing, which means that I’m probably a long way off from my IATSE card. The current offer, however, may solve many of these dilemmas for me. I get to go to places chock full of fabric, buy the beautiful stuff, and then explain to someone exactly what I want made with it – all while supporting the Liberian economy! So much anticipatory joy.

Listen carefully, I'm only going to say this once.

2010-06-17T21:51:00.002Z

A two-fer today - a little commentary and a few pictures I've managed to sneak in during various drives this week.

So, it’s not often that I say this, but there are some days I’m really glad I grew up in such an agriculturally focused area. Sure, there was the unparalleled access to some of the best produce in the world and the occasional feeling like I was living in a modern day Steinbeck novel, but I’ve lodged my fair share of complaints against the Central Valley (at least half of them deserved, mind you).

Sometimes though – for example, when reading through agricultural development plans or considering the challenges of animal husbandry in a nation without a single veterinarian – it’s pretty useful. It turns out that somewhere along the way, I picked up some knowledge about tree fruits and drip irrigation systems and deworming animals. More important than the specific knowledge though, is how comfortable I am thinking in agricultural terms and how easily I can fall into the language and the lifestyle. I’ve always appreciated the animal side of my childhood, I just rarely think about its usefulness. I’ve certainly never really processed how rare it is for Americans to have that sort of connection to land and food. So there you go mom and dad, a little vindication.

And now some pictures:

This is my Ministry, as you can see, right on the beach. Trust me when I tell you the beach isn’t that appealing, but the idea is really nice, and the sounds of the ocean are hard to beat. Strangely though, it doesn’t smell salty like the Pacific.

A pretty common sight around town, in a city that gets 200 inches of rain a year.

Look carefully for the Liberian scaffolding.

Some things are just like home.

Some things, less so.

And I’ve finally found an electronic version of the graph that I think says so much about Liberia.

Out and about

2010-06-13T21:22:00.000Z

It’s not that easy to take photos around town without being super conspicuous, so I don’t have that many yet. I’m hoping to get more if I head up country later this week but enjoy these (snapped from moving vehicles on drives across town) for now…

Mamba Point in the afternoon – the place on the left with the flags is the biggest grocery store in town, where we buy most of our food. On Saturdays there are throngs of guys selling DVDs (including Alex, our self-anointed guy who this weekend exchanged a non-functional disc for us) and a small handful of fruit vendors out front.

As part of the Ministry of Finance’s tax collection campaign, they’ve put up a series of tax sensitization messages around town. We’re trying hard to get pictures of all of them – some are pretty cool, some are really funny. Above is the best from the first round of moving vehicle attempts.

I can’t tell exactly, but I think this is from Jallah Town, a neighborhood just north of Capitol Hill and the University of Liberia.

Dinnertime preparations in Sinkor, our neighborhood.

Oh, and today’s happiness/dinner at our house: guacamole and homemade pita chips.

This weekend was good, and the first that I’ve felt settled. Saturday included the now-standard multi-store food roundup, a walk through town to a leisurely lunch and World Cup game, our first lapa buys (I knew we wouldn’t hold out long), swimming, another World Cup game, and then some time at what may be one of the two most pleasant bars I’ve even been to. Amazing what an open deck overlooking the ocean will do to improve upon a scene I otherwise quite dislike. Today was lots more food and soccer. We’ve also become completely obsessed with the K’Naan World Cup song and I’m determined to learn all the lyrics by the end of the month. FIFA, you picked so wrong with that Shakira song.

The Sound and the Fury

2010-06-10T20:11:00.000Z

In the rush to parse all the newness around me when visiting a different place, I often focus too heavily on the visual, so for the past few days I’ve been thinking about the soundscape of Liberia:

-- As I mentioned before, the Ministry is right on the ocean, so once the air conditioners calm down or the power cuts out, I can hear the sound of the Atlantic at my back all day. It’s pretty amazing, though as someone who has really only vacationed to the sounds of changing tides, the surf/work combo takes some getting used to. Fortunately, the rather nasty safety and sanitation reputation of Monrovia beaches has minimized their recreational appeal. The really strange thing for me is the way most Monrovians seem to completely ignore the ocean. As I mentioned before, every window (and some quasi-windows) seems to have oppressively heavy drapery which is never opened, even when it’s obscuring an amazing view.

-- There is a surprising lack of dogs here, which is closely correlated with the lack of barking dogs. I’ve heard that most were killed for various reasons during the war, and it seems that seven years on they still haven’t recovered to the same numbers I’d expect to see in a place like this. I guess I’ll have to go back to California to get the full barking dog extravaganza.

-- Oh, the language. That’s totally different. English is the official language of Liberia and everyone I’ve met so far speaks it, but it’s sometimes barely recognizable as English. I frequently have trouble distinguishing between conversations in Liberian English and those in one of the local dialects. It’s kind of a creole, with lots of dropped syllables and some differently ordered slang phrases thrown in. Most of the folks I work with directly have been to school in the US for at least a few years, so their accents tend to be lighter and they’re pretty patient with my poor hearing. As confounding as it is for me, I can’t imagine the challenges of trying to communicate as a non-native English speaker (as many UNMIL and NGO staff are) or as a Liberian trying to decipher the innumerable other English accents that are all running around.

-- Radio is the main form of media here and the political news is remarkably good. I can only wish that US radio carried such detailed accounts of political happenings (the real kind, not the Mark Sanford kind). There are also a fair share of incendiary talk radio hosts, some of whom are currently trying to stir up trouble over a rumor that one of the main presidential candidates was arrested during a raid in the US.

-- There also seems to be a great love of schmaltzy American power ballads here. Notably, admiration for the genre crosses gender boundaries. The Minister I’m working with turned up a Celine Dion song on the radio the other day and belted it out with some real feeling. Last week, one of Amy’s co-workers played something similar on repeat – all day long.

-- One noise that’s continually unnerving is the fun crackling of power outlets every time I plug in my computer. Everything here is a surging 220v and though my adapter swears it can handle that, I can’t quite get used to the snap, crackle and pop. Most ex-pat focused places in town are running on their own generators, but from what I can tell, the Ministry runs on the nascent public power grid, so it tends to have the scariest of the noises.

-- There isn’t really a landline phone service (I’ve literally seen one regular phone) in Liberia, so everyone has cell phones. No one seems very concerned that they go off in nearly every meeting and most folks feel free to answer on the spot. As far as I can tell no one has voicemail, so this makes slightly more sense than in the US. There is the expected range of custom ringtones (I heard the Inspector Gadget theme song yesterday and was overjoyed) but I’m continually surprised by who is attached to which ringtone.

-- Reserving the right to change my mind once rainy season starts in full, I’m pretty well in love with the sounds of the storms here. It has stormed nearly every night since we arrived. Amplified by the poor insulation and lots of metallic roofing, the storms are thunderous (though not necessarily with actual thunder), torrential affairs that make me feel I’m about to get swept away in an epic flood. After actually watching this morning’s rain, it seems that the bark is louder than the bite, but it’s still great fun to hear, even when it wakes me up. I’ve been told rainy season should arrive on precisely the 15^th of this month, though in another blow from global warming, the weather patterns here have apparently changed pretty significantly in the recently, so the rainy season schedule may be less precise than it used to be.

--Finally, there’s the snap. Liberian handshakes are hearty, and as you draw your hand back, they end with a snap of index and middle fingers against each other. It’s a pretty cool sound and the snap doesn’t work with a limp hand, so I’m developing a much more substantial handshake. I’m still pretty bad at it, but the Ministers are patient teachers and since everyone here shakes hands all the time, I get plenty of practice.

Planes, trains, and automobiles (by which I really mean taxis, motorbikes and walking)

2010-06-07T22:45:00.000Z

I’m still not convinced about the right format for posts, but for the time being I think I’ll try to mix in some interesting stuff that I’m learning about the country with some random things I’ve been doing or thinking.

- Despite the very low percentage of Monrovians that actually own cars, there is a remarkable amount of traffic here in the morning. This is partly due to the huge influx of UN and other international staff, partly to the horrible city roads that make everything take longer, and partly to the complete lack of public transit which has led to an interesting mix of private transit options.

Most non-Liberians in town (myself included) take private cars everywhere, usually for safety reasons though in the rainy season I suspect there’s a lot of personal comfort at stake as well. Those without a full time car or driver rely on a small network of reliable taxi drivers that are willing to take only one passenger at a time. On my first ride, my taxi driver laughed when I told him my name, and dubbed me Emily #4, indicating either that Emilys are just inclined to good work or that the taxi network is pretty tight.

While I’ve heard that a few buses were recently donated to the government (and I might have seen them a few days ago), the main mode of transport for most Liberians consists of street taxis and motorbikes. The street taxis run up and down the main street in town, on what essentially amounts to a regular bus route. They keep taking more and more passengers until the car is (over)full. There are usually 7ish people per small car (the most popular model appears to be the Nissan Sunny, which is like a 2/3size Subaru Outback). Once you get to the general part of town you want, there are tons of young guys on motorbikes for hire to drive through the side streets to wherever you actually want to go. Amy tells me that when they did a gun buy-back program here after the war, the price for a weapon was roughly the cost of a motorbike, so a lot young men made that trade, and now many of the bike drivers are former combatants (officially, war affected youth).

Also, there are no stop lights in Monrovia. Or stop signs. Or any other traffic coordination efforts at all, save a few brave Liberian National Police officers assigned to police the insanity of Capitol Hill in the morning. Traffic operates on a strictly self-serving basis, with no particular regard for lanes, pedestrians or fairness to others. The one upside of the massive potholes is that they make everyone drive slowly enough to make this system somewhat workable.

- - Had my first Liberian donut today. It was pretty awesome, halfway between a regular donut and a funnel cake. Dunkin’ Donuts wishes it could make a donut like this. Really, they wish they could make donuts at all.

- - Amy, Erica and I went out for our first long walk on Saturday, through the Mamba Point neighborhood (Erica’s hood). We managed to restrain ourselves from buying lapas (Liberian sarongs) on the first day, but I’m not sure how long we’ll be able to hold out. We’ve been told it’s best to go back several weeks in a row so that people know we’re not casual tourists, and we’ll be able to get better deals. We did manage to procure an avocado, which brought us faux-guacamole and real joy. In the non-people category, Mexican food may be what I miss most, and that avocado was a sweet sweet taste of home. The avocado lady is in for some good business next weekend if we find her again. Other important acquisitions included a map of Monrovia and some new TV show DVDs. Perhaps we won’t learn as much about soccer as we’d planned.

I've got nothing clever for this post title

2010-06-02T22:33:00.000Z

When I was growing up, every first day of school my mom would line us up and take a picture of each kid and then the whole group standing by the front door. By the time we'd finished high school, it made quite a funny display. I suspect that if I'd ever been gainfully employed while living there, the same thing would have happened on my first day of work. So to carry on the tradition, here is the obligatory front-of-the-house-on-the-first-day shot:

And a few from the office today, this one of the view right outside my ministry. Ignore the grimy window on the close up version:

And finally, a look at the morning's reading:

Work, Day 1

2010-06-02T10:47:00.001Z

So, I finally got to my first day of the internship yesterday. Don’t really know where to start as my thoughts don’t make for a logical narrative of any sort, so please excuse the bullet points. To protect the innocent, I’m going to try and keep this somewhat vague about where specifically I’m working, but if you are actually interested, let me know and I’ll email you directly.

-- The Ministry where I’m working is right off the main road in town, on a winding and treacherous path toward the beach. The good news is you can see the ocean from half the windows in the building. The bad news is that I was pretty convinced the cab that dropped me off might not make it back up the hill, as the road down was basically broken concrete strewn over dirt. I don’t think it was ever intended as a road, much less repaired as one.

The building itself is a study in contrasts. While the toilets don’t really work in most bathrooms and there isn’t toilet paper, each of the private offices has very elaborate curtains (think heavy bedroom drapery circa Dallas in 1987). There is sporadic air conditioning in some places though all the corridors are sweltering. Oh, and there’s a big staircase with no railing at all, and I’m terrified I’m going to take a header down it at some point. Amazing how one little broken nose can make you all cautious.

-- At one of my first meetings, the Deputy Minister explained a key challenge of civil service reform in a post-conflict setting: while many government workers from the previous regime were put on the payroll for purely political reasons, the new government can’t simply clean house and start over without upending the delicate political balance. So, as I was able to see in less than half an hour, the Ministry is a hodge-podge of incredibly diligent workers and others who literally sit around all day chatting. I think the old guard is slowly being turned out, but in the mean time, it feels like one leg is holding a very heavy table (and mine is supposedly one of the best functioning Ministries).

-- Liberia has a pretty vibrant free press, with about half a dozen tabloid-format daily papers in Monrovia. After yesterday, I suspect that I know how the city can support that many papers despite its astronomical levels of illiteracy: waiting. I’ve heard all the cracks about working on African time, but got to experience it for the first time yesterday. People seemed to be late for just about everything, and everyone just sat calmly reading newspapers. I made it through most of the good stuff in three papers over the course of the day. So many reasons to love the media.

-- Got my first ride in a UN vehicle yesterday. Given my now decades-long obsession with the UN, it was pretty awesome. I also spent a bunch of time at the UNDP office and got a good briefing from a staff person there who’s doing a lot of work at my Ministry. For those of you that have worked at UN offices long term, do you ever get tired of all the blue? I loved it when I was in NY, and find if strangely comforting when I see it around town, but am willing to chalk that up to my natural affinity for blue and the aforementioned UN-philia.

-- Yesterday also included a planning meeting on a big national summit that’s coming up in three weeks. Just one part of the meeting provided a whole cascade of the daily challenges of working in a country with no infrastructure: the plan was to get invitations out as soon as possible (shooting for two weeks before the summit, to give you a sense of the future-planning scale), but with sporadic email access for many and without a reliable postal system, there was a debate about the best way to distribute the 90-odd envelopes.

The UN was willing to have its drivers deliver some, but given its limits and wanting to push Ministry ownership of the project, couldn’t do them all. So the discussion fell back to having Ministry staff deliver the remaining invitations. There was general consensus that getting the administrative staff here to do it would be a huge lift, and would require taking away a previously assigned delivery for another event. (Things like this, it should be noted, are the actual job of the administrative side of the Ministry.) It was finally settled that some of the Ministry drivers would drop the rest, though they wouldn’t be able to do it without additional gas rations. So after quickly tallying gas prices and adjusting line items to add in the additional expense, a plan for getting the invitations out was finally at hand. And that was all before the plan to make sure people actually opened the letters and responded…

I lay this all out in detail not to criticize the people who were in the meeting – I’ve certainly been in more protracted and unnecessarily detailed planning meetings – but to give a little more texture to the challenges of the work people are trying to do here. Glib development advice would say to demand accountability from the staff, to force the right people to do their jobs and get rid of them if they didn’t. As real people in a room trying to put on an event (to build cross sectoral buy-in to a new capacity plan, another important development goal), everyone struggled with balancing micro versus macro capacity improvements. I certainly don’t have all the answers, but am now appreciating their inevitable complexity more.

Our house, and wow! groceries are pricey

2010-05-29T13:26:00.000Z

Here are a few pictures of the house that I didn't have time to upload last night.

The living room:

The dining room:

Our first visitor:

Today's grocery shopping was quite an adventure. It seems that Shop Rite has cornered the market here, and their house-brand stuff is everywhere. It's also insanely expensive. Really, everything is insanely expensive. We expected prices for brand name American stuff to be pretty high, but had figured that there would be cheap local alternatives. Not so much - while we didn't buy the $22 package of Charmin (seriously, $22) or the $14 Cheerios, we still managed to spend a ridiculous amount. I predict a lot of peanut butter sandwiches this summer.

Monrovia!

2010-05-28T23:55:00.000Z

After about 24 hours in transit, we made it to Monrovia very early this morning.

Our adventure started at JFK on Wednesday evening (picture courtesy of Storey):

The flight to Casablanca was uneventful, though it was really difficult to sleep, so we were completely wiped out by the time we got there. Thankfully, Royal Maroc Air (our new favorite airline) graciously put us up in a pretty swank hotel for our twelve hour layover. Though we’d planned a grand adventure in Casablanca for the day, we ended up sleeping and sticking our feet in the beautiful pool instead. We’ve got six hours on the way to Cairo at the end of the summer and we have promised to make the most of Morocco then.

After a little misunderstanding about exactly which timezone we had landed in, we rushed back to the airport thinking we were about to miss our flight. Thankfully, we’d also misunderstood when we were leaving, so we ended up having plenty of time to make our flight. On the flight, I got to see my first African sunset:

Near the end, we saw the amazing outline of Bamako (in flight picture attempt was a massive failure). Once we dropped below the cloud cover on our approach into Monrovia, it was pitch black and then the Liberia coastline suddenly appeared in a really spectacular view. Stepping off the plane, we were hit with a wall of sticky heat, and it’s been unrelenting since.

On the way from the airport, Amy and I marveled at the incredible road (newly paved by the Chinese government, we’ve been told), which was better than Highway 99 by a long shot. We got to our apartment after one, and made a slapdash and sweaty attempt at putting up our bug nets. Not pretty, but they worked(ish). Once Molly arrives we’ll have her show us the right way to do it.

All our stuff arrived in more or less fine shape, save a few toiletry mishaps. Let’s just say, if you have extra Ziploc bags, you should double up. Or maybe triple up. Intercontinental travel is not the time to scrimp on such things.

Our apartment is great and much cushier than I’d imagined. We’ve got TV and air conditioning, neither of which we have in Princeton. Given our limited channel selection and the fact that most topics I like to discuss are somewhat off the table here, Amy and I have decided that we will use our newfound ESPN access to learn everything there is to learn about the World Cup. Consider yourself warned – we will be soccer geniuses by the end of the summer.

Tomorrow's adventure: grocery shopping. We've been told the prices will make us cry (I got the impression that they will not be tears of joy).

Fun with photos

2010-05-25T19:39:00.001Z

Nothing to report yet, but wanted to make sure I could post photos of an appropriate size and quality before I left my IT support on a different continent. Let me know if this is taking an inordinately long time to load or is otherwise funky. Also, I can't believe I'm leaving Storey behind for the first 10 weeks. This is going to be rough.

And now for more photos, this time of the packing madness:

And one of the cat, adorable, but decidedly un-psyched about the packing that is taking over the entire apartment.

Obligatory "Yay I just set up my blog" post

2010-05-18T14:32:00.000Z

Welcome to my summer blog...
I'll start with the warning that I'm not sure how frequently I'll be able to update. Between my general failure at blog maintenance and the questionable reliability of Monrovia's power and internet services, this may be a very sporadic enterprise.

But that's boring. Let me set the stage a bit better. I'm moving to Monrovia, Liberia for the summer. I'll be working as an intern with the federal government of Liberia, specifically focused on the reconstruction of local government capacity. I'll be there with three of my classmates from Princeton, and will be living with two of them in Sinkor, Monrovia.

On 26 May (have I mentioned that one thing about international work which makes me super happy is the ability to switch back to correctly ordered dates?), my friend Amy and I are flying from JFK to Monrovia. We've got a 12 hour layover in Casablanca, Morocco and are planning to make the most of it with a quick tour around the city. We'll arrive in Monrovia first thing on the morning of 28 May, and we'll see where things go from there...