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Catching up: Here's the lowdown on our Surf Competition.

2010-01-12T08:21:00.001-08:00

The competitors and judges of the First Annual Surf Liberia Contest pose along with a representative of Liberia's Ministry of Youth and Sports. (All photos courtesy of Myles Estey.)

In late November of 2009 Robertsport Community Works was delighted to host the first surf contest in Liberian history. Seven young men from Liberia and five expatriates participated in the men's division, which consisted of four preliminary three man heats, two head-to-head semi-final heats and a two man final. Though good waves can be scarce in late November, we were fortunate enough to have consistent shoulder to head high waves, peeling for a clean 100 meters throughout the contest.

(Peter Swen floats his way to a fourth place finish. You can read about his experiences on his blog The Liberian Surfer.)

A correspondent from Reuters captured footage from the contest for an upcoming television spot. Local community members were glad for the opportunity to explain their views of surfing, tourism and development.

(Nana's Lodge helped to pay these young men to keep the beaches clean during the weekend-long sporting festival. Events like this can often leave beaches in total disarray.)

(Contestants and local spectators in the foreground, judges and cameraman in the background.)

(Benjamin McCrumada cuts back on his way to a third place finish. He was eliminated in the semi-finals by close friend, Alfred Lomax.)

(Here, Alfred Lomax makes the most of a medium sized set, on his way to winning the event.)

We are grateful to Liberian Travel and Life Magazine who generously donated $350 so that top placing competitors could walk away with some cash. Here's Alfred Lomax celebrating his first place $200 finish with runner-up, Keith Chapman--Director of the Trinity Dental Clinic.

Keith Chapman also finished first place in the body boarding division--a four man event that ran just prior to the finals of the men's division. We look forward to additional competitors and more excellent waves when we organize our second contest in the first half of this year.

A final thanks to the surfers from BHP Liberia, who donated several rash guards for top placing competitors. And thanks to all of the people who helped with the banners, the transport, the judging and with keeping the atmosphere so congenial. It was a great time.

No Land for You!

2009-11-24T08:29:00.000-08:00

Only Liberians are allowed to own land in Liberia--them and NGOs that can prove that they are actively using the land for their NGO purposes. Foreigners and foreign companies are not allowed to own land--not even Lebanese businesspeople who are born and raised in Liberia can own land. Expats in the private sector (and Lebanese businesspeople) grumble about this stipulation and suggest that it is a tremendous retardant to national development and economic growth.

It should go without saying that they are measuring development and growth in the traditional, simplistic, short-sighted way that has already just about ruined the world: more spending and more money moving around is good, regardless of who accumulates the money, what they produce and how it impacts anything other than ledgers.

This land ownership rule means that you can't come into Liberia and make a quick buck by snatching up post-conflict real estate from deeply impoverished and uneducated land holders with the intention of sitting on it until the country begins to attract tourists or investment. Actually, it means that I can't do that, and, frankly, it would have been a seriously tempting prospect. Why not spend something like ten thousand dollars to possess a mile or two of craggy, sparsely populated tropical coastline with enormous potential for high quality waves? Americans have bought up huge portions of the Central and South American coast to gain possession of their own private waves--generating, in the process, no small amount of resentment.

The Liberian law forces you to work with Liberians for what you want and to include them as the beneficiaries of your plans and it ensures that whatever you do will end up back in the hands of Liberians, sooner or later--rather than passed on through some sort of medieval inheritance system. This is inconvenient; it is risky; but it is fair. It forces people to partner with Liberians and to benefit them. I think it is one of the reasons that so much of the country is intact and that so many of its little outposts of economic development seem reasonably integrated into the surrounding communities.

Of course, the problem is still that Americo-Liberians (themselves just a slightly older version of land hungry foreign nationals) can buy up everything for themselves without any mandate to consider the indigenous Liberians who they uproot. As long as there is no way of ensuring that poor people can hold onto their tiny patches of land through difficult times, countries like Liberia and so many others are likely to continue tearing themselves up by the roots.

Update

2009-11-21T04:00:00.000-08:00

It shakes my confidence in several things that I was diagnosed with typhoid less than 36 hours after finishing a seven day course of Cipro. Firstly, it shakes my confidence in the pharmacy where I was prescribed this Cipro (the in-house pharmacy at the clinic that inexplicably prescribed me with cipro in the first case) and secondly, it further shakes my confidence in everything having to do with that clinic. Either I was on totally bogus cipro (which I now have to hope is true) or I was on good cipro and a new disjunction presents itself: either I have contracted a previously unknown strain of cipro-resistant typhoid (boo! vote against this option!) or I had almost eliminated some typhoid I didn't know I had, which rebounded with remarkable speed to become strong typhoid. In either case, I feel like I haven't surfed since 1993, like all food is gross and filling and like everything makes me tired.

Elie has typhoid *and* malaria. It requires tremendous effort to keep her from working, even on Saturday morning. I have considered slipping valium into her tea. Thanks to the handful of people who have checked in on us to see how we are doing and to see what we need--and the Robertsport community for their persistent well-wishing and for being ever more dependable at running projects with management from a distance.

Other news: The Ministry of Youth and Sports wants to work with Robertsport Community Works to establish an Association of Liberian Surfers and there was talk about the Olympic committee and sponsored boards. The First Annual Liberian Surf Competition (organized by RCW) will be taking place next weekend, wherein I will be surfing, on a stretcher, in the invalid division. And, I am going to try to locating some sort of dodgy weight-gain, protein-shake type of substance so as to avoid becoming scrawny.

Malaria, Once Again

2009-11-17T08:44:00.000-08:00

Why is there still such disagreement about what constitutes the best and most effective course of treatment against malaria? Since the shoddy, low-budget laboratory on which I usually depend for diagnosis failed to notice my parasites and gave me a false bill of health, I let my malaria develop more than usual. As a result, once I began to feel seriously ill, I went to an expensive clinic for diagnosis and treatment ($70) on the assumption that this was a more responsible act than self-medicating ($6).

The clinic decided that I needed a 2ml injection of artesunate (in my upper ass) and a 100ml drip of cipro. Its rooms were full of people receiving these shots and drips. On my second day the treatment was repeated (injection in other side of upper ass, drip in other hand). After that, I was put on a full treatment of artesunate pills and cipro pills. When I asked the doctor about the feasability of taking Clotromoxozol as a malaria prophylaxis, he said this would not be effective. Bear with me: I will not linger on details much longer.

The point is that everything that this man prescribed to me was pointedly rejected by one of the country's ranking malaria experts just two days ago: the only reason to take an injection is if you are unconscious, cipro has nothing to do with malaria (which I knew) and it will soon be illegal to use Artesunate as a monotreatment because it builds resistance to what is currently the best drug in the world's antimalarial arsenal. What else? Widespread disagreement about whether or not clotromoxozol is an adequate prophylaxis; rumors that amodiaquine is being abandoned as the second part of combination therapy; belief that it is nearly impossible to avoid counterfeit pills and mixed opinion about the effectiviness of prophylaxis' that are being taken after their first course of use.

As long as I've lived in malarial belts, I've sat through hours of debate about what drugs are necessary and what drugs are harmful or ineffective. Why so little harmony and accord? How hard would it be to develop a coherent national policy and messaging system?

And why am I starting to feel sick again? Is it because I didn't take combination therapy? Is artesunate no longer enough? Boo.

Interlopers

2009-11-16T10:07:00.001-08:00

Quite often in Monrovia you meet someone in his or her mid-twenties who is essentially running a local ministry. These are typically Americans or Europeans in the process of earning an advanced degree. They arrive on prestigious well-paid fellowships to enjoy unprecedented insight into and influence over what is still, in many ways, a transitional government.

Over beers and amongst their peers, I have often heard these fellows express their incredulity (sometimes boastfully) at the magnitude of the responsibilities that they are given--or the responsibilities that they take, depending on their style. They write strategic documents, advise on the formation of all sorts of national policy and even exercise authority over who is hired to senior positions in the ministries with which they work.

Of course, these are tremendous opportunities for the motivated and well-educated northerners who are already firmly within the pipeline to positions of greater and greater power. What gets me is how young Liberians are totally cut out of the equation. The minister who may benefit from the assistance and hard work of these fellows is invariably much older and quite often a presidential appointee, someone at the top of his or her career, and therefore, arguably, someone harder to influence or mentor. That makes this a dodgy exercise in capacity-building and something much more suited to knowledge-acquisition and, I would guess, subtle acts of ideological bullying.

Perhaps if these fellows were required to have young Liberian assistants for the duration of their fellowships and perhaps if they were required to provide as much mentoring and experience for these Liberians as possible, the programs would have a greater long-term impact. This would at least be training the next generation of leaders and ensuring a relatively high amount of transparency and accountability with regards to the work of these fellows. Or, perhaps those young Liberians would be totally scandalized to find inexperienced and immature young foreigners tinkering with the formation of their state.

Of course, I've found many of these fellows to be extremely capable, respectful, fair, intelligent, well-intentioned and even grateful. I don't mean to imply that that they are doing great harm or that they are the instrument of some malevolent force. I do, however, think that while they are a gift to the elder statesmen in whose wakes they follow, they may be a curse to young aspiring Liberian politicians who may be edged out of their government system by people who will only spend six months to a year in a tiny country that they rarely knew anything about before stepping off their planes at Robertsfield International Airport.

Lastly, in its historical context, the legacy left behind by young Western economists and advisers in the developing world, gives cause for deep cynicism about this model of "aid," its motives and its real impact.

Pedestrian Friendly Cities

2009-11-09T05:10:00.000-08:00

I have a strong bias against any part of the world that is not pedestrian-friendly. This bias extends to Amman, a city designed for the automobile (designed, more specifically, for about half as many automobiles as it currently hosts). The bias also extends to any place where walking around in shorts and flip flops is turned into a life-threatening endeavor by hostile weather.

On Friday, after several days of walking to the same tiny stretch of cafes and fast food restaurants for my daily escape from the hotel, I decided to walk in a different direction in order to see how long it would take for me to find somewhere agreeable to eat. This was a stubborn attempt at turning Amman into the pedestrian-friendly city that it is not. Despite being assisted by what I must acknowledge was stunning, sunny, breezy and ideal weather (making insufficent amends for four days of chilly drizzling), my stroll through Amman failed to end pleasurably, on balance, because of how stressful it is to run across highways full of speeding luxury cars, how desolate it is to walk down barren streets of shuttered rent-a-car outlets, how lonely it is to see no other pedestrians in such a populous city and how far I walked in an outward bound trajectory (2-3 miles?), following my well-honed city navigating instincts towards precisely nothing.

At one high point of interactivity, shortly after jumping a fence between two sides of a highway to reach what looked like a promising stretch of commercial businesses, a car pulled to the side of the road not far ahead of me and expelled its driver. The man, dark sun glasses, late forties, somewhat seedy looking, rushed up to me and shook my hand, welcoming me to his country and saying he had seen me from the road. He asked how long I would be in Jordan. As it turned out, I was leaving that evening. He knew my flight number. He asked me to get in his car. He said he worked for (Royal) Jordanian airways and jumped into his car, popping open the passenger side door and gesturing me in. He had been chain smoking in his ashtray, the windows were thickly tinted. I insisted on my love of walking in Amman (which must strain credibility). He insisted that I get into his car and that we could have some food together. I continued to love walking in Amman entirely too much to join him. I thanked him, shook his hand, and forged onwards towards the failure of my walk. I wondered: are all the deeply ingrained alarm bells associated with getting into a stranger's car teaming up with my media-fueled over-willingness to be on guard against politically motivated kidnappings so close to Iraq to prevent me from accepting a kindly and hospitable offer from a Jordanian who knows what a crappy thing it is to be walking around Amman on a Friday afternoon? Well. That's not exactly what I wondered because that is exactly what was happening. What I wonder, is if I would've dined in sociable comfort somewhere other than "Shrimpys" if I had not opted for the path less sketchy.

Outbound

2009-10-30T06:46:00.000-07:00

I'll be headed back to Jordan and Palestine tomorrow for a quick week of consultations related to the potential launch of a Connecting Classrooms initiative in the Middle East. Hopefully, there will soon be at least three independent versions of this program providing us with invaluable comparative data about the effectiveness of different program models and coordination protocols.

It's tough to keep people motivated to participate in something that is extra-curricular, technically complicated and thematically challenging; so I'm excited to have a few different program configurations and priorities in the mix.

This last month or so has been full of strategizing around various medium and long-term goals. Unfortunately, for this blog, I can't get into detail about any of the impending projects until some paperwork is in order and everything's locked down. It will be nice to have the freedom to talk about my day-to-day in another couple weeks.

Mamba Point, a while ago

2009-10-23T04:05:00.000-07:00

Two photos of me taken by blogger, Myles Estey, for an article he wrote about surfing in Liberia for the Global Post. These shots give a sense of the notoriously filthy point break that is, perhaps, half a mile away. Feels like it hasn't broken in ages.

Back to Robertsport tomorrow, after an uncharachteristically long absence. Should be fun to reconnect with the surfers, the sewing cooperative, the campsite and the community.

How to get your employers lemongrass in ten minutes . . .

2009-10-21T08:28:00.001-07:00

"Just google image it." Of course, how else can we explain to our assistant what Lemon Grass is? "I know it! We call it tea leaf." Liberian's have a very straightforward way of naming things; but I didn't think you could get more descriptive than "Lemon Grass." You can though, if you name it for its use.

That's also how you can return to the house, ten minutes after you left, bearing an uprooted tuft of lemongrass: plead for medicine to combat your malaria. I had no idea that our shy and scrupulous assistant had so much guile. He was beaming with pride as he reported telling his cousin something like, "I'm feeling too bad. The malaria is troubling me. I need this tea leaf fast."

The tea leaf is now replanted in a small hand-made clay pot. If our assistant actually does contract Malaria (for the umpteenth time this calendar year), we'll make sure that he takes something with a better track record than lemongrass tea.

Local Considerations

2009-10-19T08:28:00.001-07:00

1) I have never before given myself a painful and comprehensive upperbody sunburn by sitting in the shade. Somehow, yesterday, the shade under my poolside umbrella was just cooking with UV rays and I feel like I just stepped off the plane. Even now when I walked onto the balcony to procrastinate, I realized how businesslike the sun has become without the rainy season humidity to buffer its impact.

2) Every Liberian high school student who I know--which is all of the good surfers in this country and my personal assistant--paints a dismal picture of the education available to low-rollers. Yes, of course, this is to be expected; but what surprises me is how little school one's school fees actually purchase. At least once a week school seems to be out of session for some lazy reason or other. Teachers are writing tests. Students are reviewing for tests. It is the first week of school. It is raining very hard. Your backpack is the wrong color. You are not wearing the new school badge, which will not be available for a week. Your teacher says so.

Even when school does take place it is typically for four and a half hours. So, if you are 25 and in eleventh grade, instead of finding that your country will help you to use your maturity and age to get through perhaps two grades at once, you end up taking about 40% of a standard school year.

It's hard to push a "Stay at School" agenda in these circumstances--even though this has been a large part of the philosophy underpinning my recent online work. I'm getting very near the point of offering legitimate service industry jobs to high school students because I believe that they'll learn more and benefit more by accepting them--in place of their "studies."

Water shots

2009-10-14T04:33:00.000-07:00

Water shots are pretty exciting. I have to admit that I nearly shot my board into the videographer's face on a wave that I completely misread. Of course, they duck under water and probably, usually, escape that sort of contact; but it can be intimidating to dodge these tiny smiling heads and their metal boxes.

For pretty much seven days of two different swells, I kept chasing this little barrel and its cousin on the inside. For this effort I was punished. There is so much more to learn.

Thanks again to Sean Brody for all the photographs. Fun to see a cameraman so stoked about his job!

My First Beach Cleanup

2009-10-13T01:46:00.000-07:00

Somehow, I reached the overcooked age of thirty without ever having cleaned a beach--unless, at some point, in grade school on a compulsory school trip I was prodded along the sand by a fascist, which is possible. But, I don't think that happened. I think, at the precise moment that I turned thirty, it could be said that I had left more trash on beaches, however accidentally (things blow away so quickly!), than I had removed from them.

In one painfully sunny stretch of mid afternoon--captured for posterity by a film crew and a photographer--I completely reversed this statistic and discovered that cleaning beaches is not a burdensome, back-pain inducing chore that robs one of the opportunity to surf empty waves (see photo below of RCW sponsored surfers suffering the distracting spectacle of shipwrecks reeling by unmolested). Instead, on every walk back from a surf session since the beach cleanup, I have gathered as much as I can carry and "chunked it"--to use the Liberian English term.

It's incredible and worrying how quickly trash re-accumulates. The bag I am holding below probably weighs fifty or sixty pounds. In the three weeks between the last cleanup and the one depicted here, well over fifteen bags of this garbage washed up on a stretch of beach that is less than a kilometer long. If we had been patient enough to pick through all the shredded, soft plastic that results from the pinches of oil, kerosene, salt, and everything else that are sold to inhabitants of the poverty line for a few pennies, we could have filled another fifteen--and if we rounded the corner towards town and the armada of fishing boats, ugh, I can't even estimate.

Even the day after the cleanup, a bag or more worth of new large filth pieces was on our small stretch of stewarded beach. Thinking about those giant swirling masses of ocean waste is super depressing. How many bags would that be and then where would we put them?

All photographs courtesy of Sean Brody.

Return of the Image:

2009-10-12T06:22:00.001-07:00

Here are a few shots of me surfing Cotton Trees two weeks ago. All photographs are courtesy of Sean Brody.

Aside from its impact on my blogging . . .

2009-10-07T10:04:00.000-07:00

The last two weeks were an excellent experiment in combining most of the things that I need and enjoy into an optimized, customized lifestyle and it turns out that I can easily accomplish my computer-based work while surfing great waves for several hours a day and advancing the projects of Robertsport Community Works. Granted, living in a large, stilted, well-furnished safari tent, perched with a commanding view of Liberia's marquis point break will probably not be a constant option; but, it may be a possibility for a few more months--especially since Elie has been making herself so welcome in the hotel's kitchen.

We'd love for this arrangement to continue; but there are management issues and politics to negotiate and everyone at the table has strong feelings; so it's a bit of a longshot. Regardless, it's now apparent that we should be living in Roberstport, that living in Robertsport doesn't detract from my professional life and that we have a lot to offer the tourist industry there.

Whenever there are legitimate photographers around, I don't take photographs. So, my camera has been bagged for a couple of weeks; but, supposedly, I'll soon be in possession of hundreds of high quality, professionally shot images of Roberstport, which I hope to share, if I'm given permission.

Turtle Egg in a Tuna Can

2009-09-28T09:50:00.000-07:00

That's what's cooking in the kitchen at Robertsport. The recipe is not endorsed by Robertsport Community Works. Indeed, it was hard enough for Robertsport Community Works to restrain its most famous sponsored surfer from raiding a sea turtle nest during the beach cleanup.

Liberia hosts a majority of the endangered turtle species. Liberians display their hospitality by eating their eggs and carting their bodies around Monrovia in wheelbarrows. I spot sea-turtles in the water from time to time and am always glad that they run away. Others spotted a few near shore whales yesterday morning, which was a surprise to me--especially in such warm water.

This week is an experiment in living full time in Robertsport--it began with a prolonged internet blackout, courtesy of your friendly Israeli cellular network. But, now that their upgrades have gone through, I've got a relatively quick connection from the wooden platform of the executive tent at Nana's lodge, which has a gorgeous view that I'll post later this week.

Not Traveling

2009-09-12T02:12:00.000-07:00

At least, it doesn't feel like traveling to be confined by my own better judgment and the UN's safety recommendations to the hotel in which I have been staying for more than a week. And, frankly, it didn't feel like traveling before that. The restraints of finding a hotel with fast wireless internet, a hotel that you can exit and enter in nice clothing without exposing your property to risk, are homogenizing ones.

Violence continues in central Kampala as a result of . . . wait for it . . . tribal politics and the egotism and self-interest of a few powerful men. The last I heard, the king of the Baganda people, after two days of rioting and shooting that caused as many as ten senseless, bystander fatalities, attempted to calm things by postponing his inflammatory visit and making a sort of "be calm" proclamation. My guess is, this just didn't sound sincere to the followers that his radio stations had already whipped into a fury. Or, violence and the opportunities that it can offer to looters and grudge-holders, is just too hard for some people to resist at the moment--not because Ugandans are less rationale than other people; but because rapid, highly visible economic progress that is concentrated in the hands of people who aren't sharing and may even seem to be members of exclusive groups breeds its own instability and fuels this sort of outburst with the provocation of its daily existence. (Cough! Excuse me.)

The worst rumors involve roving groups of Ugandans stopping other Ugandans on the street to ask about their ethnic heritage: Why are you so light skinned? Why are you wearing pants if you are a woman? Nice. Rather than take a bunch of cheap shots at how deeply retarded this is, I suppose, to be even-handed, it must be said that while the king in charge of these exemplars of human behavior is one of the biggest land owners in his country, some of his followers may feel excluded from the alleged nepotism of Musevini, the Ugandan president who comes from a minority ethnic group with a vested interest in undermining the larger kingships.

Both he and Mutebi (the king in question) almost certainly have enough comfort at their disposal to spread the tranquilizing influence of food and employment a little more equitably and farther afield; but, that's true of a lot of people. Hell, it's true of me, which is why I didn't run out of my hotel yesterday and try to smash my way into an electronics store for that new Macintosh computer I've been so craving.

Don't worry. By all accounts this is not a general run-for-cover type scenario, though I'm looking forward to my flight out of here on Monday morning. (Which is sad, because this country is rightly beloved of almost anyone who visits.)

I apologize if any of the information in this post turns out to be less than totally accurate, or if my populist assumptions are in fact out of place. Prove it to me and I'll modify the post.

Traveling

2009-09-02T04:33:00.000-07:00

I travel to Nairobi this afternoon, where I will spend a couple of days training schools from the Millennium Villages to join the ongoing Connecting Classrooms program. On Sunday, I'll fly from Nairobi to Kampala and divide a week between similar trainings and consulting on a nationwide (for Uganda) scale-up of Connecting Classrooms.

I'll try to blog while I'm moving around; but it promises to be fairly hectic.

Electrician

2009-09-01T08:35:00.000-07:00

Behind Surf Tourism

2009-08-21T06:04:00.000-07:00

Now and then Robertsport Community Works is approached by international journalists who seek a better understanding of our mission and our projects. In a recent interchange with a journalist who has considerable experience with surf publications and sub-Saharan travel, we were asked a question that gets to the heart of surf tourism:

"How much are you interested in increasing surf tourism in the area, and how much are you interested in just seeing to it that whatever comes is positive, clean and beneficial to the locals?"

Waves can only handle a certain number of surfers before they get crowded and become an unrelaxing hassle. All of the expatriate locals in Liberia enjoy waves that are shockingly uncrowded; they can be hesitant to embrace programs that provide Liberians with more surfboards or initiatives that attract more foreign surfers.

This journalist's question probably splits surf communities apart more often than it knits them together. My original thinking was definitely protectionist. I wanted to "see to it that whatever comes is positive, clean and beneficial to the locals" and I looked forward to enjoying the uncrowded waves with a few good friends. But against my own better interests as a surfer, we're focusing more and more on "increasing surf tourism in the area."

Why work to clutter up something that sometimes feels special because it is so isolated? The answer can be found in a raft of analytical documents about Liberia's current vulnerability. Youth unemployment is estimated at around 50% (at the absolute lowest) and opportunities for education and employment border on non-existent. This is the most destabilizing fact about this country--and it is a fact that is making many investors (private and governmental) too worried to inject real cash into the Liberian economy. Tourism can add to the nation's stability by providing lots of low-skill jobs and by providing a clear incentive to control violence and the country's public image.

I'd rather see more surfers in the water if it brings more jobs and if they help to jump start the tourism industry of Liberia. Sitting at the inaugural meetings of the Tourism Association of Liberia--to which Robertsport Community Works is offering support--makes it clear how much work must go into rebranding a country that is still widely associated with terrible things. Surfers are often some of the most adventurous travelers, some of the people who are most willing to give image-challenged nations a second chance--and then to brag about it to everyone they know.

Liberia doesn't need a closely guarded secret; Liberia needs help.

Environmentalism vs. Unemployment (and other false dichotomies)

2009-08-19T03:18:00.000-07:00

I'd wager a basket of blood diamonds that the logging industry is sponsoring the editorials that bluster with false populism on a regular basis, decrying how the environmental standards of the international community are forcing poverty and unemployment on the poor forest-dwelling citizens, who timber companies are so committed to helping.

After devoting several hundred words to the allegation that Global Witness, an international, environmental organization is only interested in enriching itself via bribery and double-dealing (with the vast leverage that protecting forests must bring them) an allegation that "the Concerned Citizen" seeks to strengthen by pointing out that the honorable government of Cambodia expelled Global Witness (at the end of what must have been a fair and well-considered process)--readers of the "Liberia Journal" are treated to a beautiful and prophetic recommendation: "Finally, 'beware of the eyes of March' and remember always that the forestry sector is vital to our economic recovery program. I am sure that the sooner you put aside all of political differences, close ranks and look at the financial capabilities of the bidders, with the view that the 'future of Liberia is in your hands' the better it would be for scores of your fellow compatriots most of whom are unemployed and depend on a vibrant forestry sector to regain employment and rebuild their shattered lives after many years of war." That's right, regulations be damned, now is the time to cut down more trees in a country without adequate forestry oversight.

Papers that are sympathetic to Global Witness print GW's allegations of corporate non-compliance that discredit potential bidders for the exploitation of Liberia's ecological richness.

The issue is a bizarre inverse echo of the "Progress vs. the Informal Sector" standard that is the rallying cry of wealthy Liberians who support bulldozing small businesses that put food on the table of her poorest citizens. In this case, unemployment is apparently not a factor, nor is the future wellbeing of the families who are displaced by the demolitions and property-seizing: more pressing is the appearance of the street near the business or residence of the newest big wig to start throwing money around.

Sometimes, it's hard to watch the people and corporations at work who see this vulnerable country as a fairly obstacle-free playing field for their profit-making schemes. You'd think there would be some general hesitance to breed the sort of resentment and anger that exacerbates the same ethnic and class divisions that helped fuel Liberia's civil war.

Simon Says . . .

2009-08-17T03:41:00.000-07:00

Aaron, our most dependable campsite security guard watches us interact with the women's sewing cooperative and the campsite contractors. He hears us discussing, at least once a weekend, what projects to focus on next. A little over a month ago, we asked him about his own needs and professional goals and learned about "The Promoters of Good Health"--a group of farmers in a community of fishermen who are working their hardest to pull sustenance and livelihood from the jungle around them.

We told Aaron that we'd be interested in learning more about the Promoters of Good Health and woke up the following morning to discover that five of them had been sitting around our campsite since daybreak. Their bank account has been steadily growing since they make themselves available for post-rainy-season brush work and they seem to have most of the tools that they need for their small scale farming. Beyond that, they have about two acres of land and a desire to hear good advice about how to use it.

Since that point, we've been trying to coordinate a meeting between the Promoters of Good Health and Simon, the German Agriculture Specialist who we lived with during our first two months in Liberia. Simon has spent almost three years traveling all over Liberia training rural communities to make the most of their resources.

He arrived with his young German assistant on Saturday afternoon in the midst of a day-long, relentless downpour. The rain kept a large number of the Promoters of Good Health from turning up to benefit from Simon's experience; but nearly a dozen of us huddled together in the unused structure of a nearby hotel's restaurant, watching Simon kneel in the sand, sculpting it into topographical maps, outlines of tubers and diagrams of composting systems.

I had assumed that the Promoters of Good Health was a male only organization and I felt a bit awkward during the beginning stages of the meeting when a pair of women from the sewing cooperative monopolized conversation and Simon's attention while the men slouched and whispered on the periphery. But when we stopped for proper introductions, it turned out that they are also members of the Promoters of Good Health and that the organization has nearly fifteen female members.

For the next three or four hours, Simon's willingness to turn the sand floor into his own personal etch-a-sketch and his enthusiasm for the usefulness of human feces kept everyone in thrall. He was met with intelligent and consistent questioning, laughter and excitement. The recurring theme was definitely the strategic use of human waste products--something that Simon circled around until he was able to equate a bowel movement with a bowl of rice or twenty Liberian dollars.

At the meeting's conclusion the Promoters of Good Health repeated a clear request for written materials and explanatory pamphlets that I hope we'll be able to meet--seeing as nobody was taking notes and some of the concepts (especially regarding crop rotation and different chemical nutrients) might require study to fully absorb. Though the day was not the least bit relaxing in a conventional way--as it was split between quality control on lapa beach bags and talking about farming with poop--it was still rewarding.

Things Arriving in Liberia:

2009-08-13T02:41:00.000-07:00

In the last two days, Liberia's legion of tiny newspapers has been trumpeting the arrival of many things, including "Hilary Clinton." Here are three quintessential front page spreads:

So newsworthy. So awe-inspiring.

I love the tired sounding, matter-of-fact headline. What else is there to say?

It may be in poor taste, but I've got to point out that these children look overjoyed to be welcoming polio back to Liberia.

I've actually never lived in a country with so many distinct and independent newspapers; there are more than a dozen selling on a near daily basis all over the capital and their editorials are widely divergent. Cynics are quick to note that many of these papers are only four pages long, devoting all of their interior real estate to employment ads for NGOs that are willing to pay a cool $350 per half page--every day of the week--in order to meet their legal obligation to post advertisements in at least three local papers.

Now my New Yorkers can Visit

2009-08-11T04:57:00.000-07:00

Thanks to staggering, unanticipated developments in transportation systems, anyone with a metrocard can now disembark in greater Monrovia at this spanking new bus stop. Give me a head's up so you don't stand around in the rain too long.

But while you are waiting, feel free to visit the most appropriately named structure that I have ever seen:

Vote of no confidence in Macintosh Computers

2009-08-10T18:44:00.001-07:00

I returned from Robertsport on Sunday evening to discover that my Macbook wouldn't start--at all. It didn't even make noises to indicate that it intended for me to believe that it was making an effort to start. The only signs of life came from the power cord and the battery, both of which are fine, even blameless. When I shut the computer down on Friday evening, it was fine. When I left it, locked in my bedroom, on a nice pile of clothing, it was fine. Sunday evening it was so broken it couldn't even muster up signs of brokenness.

I thought perhaps that a DVD stuck in the disc drive might be the problem--because the efficient design wizards at Macintosh somehow haven't considered including an overriding manual eject option in case of troublesome discs. I used all the advice on the internet to wage ineffectual warfare against the paperweight until I willed myself to sleep out of pure stressfulness (this upcoming work week is a monster).

In the morning, the lump continued and my queries of the local human network of computer users resulted in the dreary news that the two people in the country who might be able to fix the problem have left for one month vacations.

I tried disassembling the pile in order to extract its evil drive and ran into a tangle of wires that intimidated me--also, I couldn't figure out how to disconnect the mouse cable without breaking it. So, I bought a pc around 2pm (which isn't something, at any time of day, that anyone with shallow pockets is dying to do in West Africa) and got back on my work week before most of my colleagues were done with their coffee. Thanks to the traders at Sharp Showroom for stocking quality lap tops, for being so helpful and for hooking me up with good software. That softened the blow, for sure.

But it is now 2am. Downloading appropriate browsers, add-ons, virus protection, spyware tools, etc. can only be done at an hour when most Liberians have turned their computers off.

There was a moment this evening, when I thought I might have been a bit rash--that moment came when my technically inclined roommate pushed macintosh dissassembly further than I would dare and managed to physically extract the DVD I had been holding responsible. After sweating and fumbling through the process of screwing everything back together (which was so much more fun after my screw driver and tweezers developed opposite magnetic charges), the p.o.s. still couldn't manage a whirr, a flashing light or even a death rattle.

Such spectacular, unprompted and irremediable failure is what I will forever associate with the little vanity box that only managed to impress me with its easy-to-use partial screenshot feature.

Lots of things, of course, are on the hard drive of that machine. But, let's not get into that.

Hooch, Part II

2009-08-07T04:24:00.000-07:00

A half dozen friends willingly forewent their Heinekens (and risked sacrificing their taste buds) to help us further explore the Ritco beverage portfolio. African Bitter was the almighty stinker of the batch, triggering gag reflexes and disgust faces in all parties. Remaining bottles will be given to neighborhood drunks or building security personnel.

Country Ginger--featuring the lovely turd-swaddled wine glass--was more syrupy than most, with a gingeriness that was far too artificial for a place with so much fresh giner lying around. Deep Love continued to receive adequate reviews; but isn't worth the trouble.

One of our guests let us know that Ritco only had three or four different products before Liberia's civil war. By the time peace rolled around, Ritco sported more than two dozen different beverages. Since importing foreign alcohol and managing the large brewery turned out to be difficult and expensive during the violence, Ritco thrived, ensuring that sorrows could be affordably drowned by large portions of the populace. It's interesting that these beverages are totally unavailable in most reputable bars--you have to go to some raucous neighborhood spots to find these dodgy bottles.

The real motivation for drinking more of this swill, was to conduct further experimentation on Night Train Express, which neither truly impressed nor dissappointed the assembly. The two people who drank at least 12oz of Night Train both acknowledged a clear stimulant effect and at least one of them noticed that it was still discernible the following morning. Small amounts of the beverage did not produce noteworthy effects and were fortunate to be considered drinkable.

I was delighted that Night Train did not cause me serious kidney discomfort, since I was concerned that it might have been the culprit when I last felt those symptoms.

Monrovia: Looking Good

2009-08-03T10:14:00.000-07:00

On Sunday, after a second day of skunky waves (for the second weekend in a row), we packed up early in order to get a jump on Monday's workload. On the way back, in a stubborn insistence that Sunday be restful or fun, we decided to visit the "Africa Hotel," which, according to rumor, is now a property of random property collector, Muammar Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi (supreme leader of the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya).

All I knew was that it sits on an unsurfable beach, overlooking a giant pool shaped like Africa. For some reason, I also thought that Mr. Qaddafi had made it fully operational. But it is as shelled out and useless as every other building over four stories tall--having once hosted a mess of gunfighters. The pool is full of wiring, scrap metal and brackish water; but it is bad ass. The hot tub sits right where Saudi would be and Madagascar, along with all other African islands, are not included.

Along this stretch of beach there are a few modest tourist establishments or day-trip beach resorts. They seem popular with the UN, well kept and expensive. The most surprising thing was the view of Monrovia from the other side of the bay.

I did not think it could look so well-apportioned and almost Brazilian. But there it is. Mamba Point--the longest break that anyone talks about in Liberia, starts peeling around the headland to the far right of the image, out into the open (filthy) bay. Starting tomorrow morning, it should be mushy and massive--it's the only spot in the country that responds best to a longboard when it's firing.

"They ate my dogs, 2005"

2009-08-03T04:20:00.000-07:00

Benjamin McCroumada contracts for Robertsport Community Works, helping to improve our campsite and to build traditional structures when they are necessary. I met Benjamin because he is an avid surfer, one of Robertsport's best, and a close friend of Alfred Lomax, who tends to receive the bulk of media attention.

While Benjamin is already regarded as a capable fisherman (he is responsible for dispensing the enormous dragnet from the back of a dugout canoe that is paddled in a large semi circle around the wave called "Inner Cotton Trees"), most of his fellow watermen hold his forestry skills in high regard. People say that Benjamin knows the forest "too much" and that he is a skillful hunter. But that was before 2005.

When conflict came to Robertsport, six-year old Benjamin fled to his grandfather's village, out of site in the country's forested interior. There he learned how to farm rice, cassava, banana, potato and pineapple; mastered building with "so so bush materials" (like "rusting plum" and "wismu") and developed his skills as a hunter. This latter ability was cultivated in defense of his agricultural projects. He would only go hunting two or three times a year: on a mission to catch and destroy the animals menacing his family's crops.

At "Camp Four" (the oddly named village), Benjamin had four hunting dogs that he would encourage to hunt by dripping the water from a certain leaf onto their noses. He said it made them excited to hunt, that they would smell keenly and within thirty minutes almost always track down a bush squirrel, a monkey, small deer or other pests. Benjamin supported the dogs with a spear and cutlass.

He returned to Robertsport around the age of fifteen in 1999 and cultivated his skills and reputation as a hunter in a community of fisherpeople. He was in third grade. He loves the forest around Robertsport and is eager to show visitors "certain certain rocks and creeks in the valley" and "different different trees."

But Benjamin no longer hunts. Somtime in 2005, other residents of Robertsport ate his hunting dogs. After losing his dogs, Benjamin turned to the ocean, working his way up the hierarchy of fisherman. He also grew enthusiastic about surfing, to the point that his older brother crafted him a bodyboard out of cork--complete with homemade leash.

When Magnus (a well respected ecologist and aid worker in Liberia who initiated the process of setting up what is now the RCW campsite) saw Benjamin charging on a cork bodyboard back in 2006, he lent him a surfboard. Benjamin says, "I would pray that Magnus would come for the weekends" and was overjoyed when Magnus left behind a massive longboard before leaving the country.

Now, Benjamin's favorite thing in Roberstport is "spinning waves at Cotton Point," where he loves "some glass barrels." His boy is currently scared of the water; but Benjamin puts him beneath an umbrella on the beach "to watch me, so he may then be brave." He wants other surfers and potential visitors to know that local surfers are developing and may become professional; he feels that they deserve support in their efforts.

Surfers from nynjsurf.com donated a surfboard to Benjamin last May; and though it is a little bit the worse for ware, Benjamin can still be seen paddling into massive waves on any of the days when it is too rough to fish.

Swell Forecasts

2009-07-31T03:37:00.000-07:00

A lackluster fortnight of wind-ruined wavelessness had my friends and I bodysurfing and paddling for scraps. But things are looking up (see yellow lines approaching Robertsport). While well known surf spots are saturated with web cams and accurate metereological information, the west coast of Africa is relatively understudied. Many of the premier surf forecasting websites (subscription based, data-rich predictive tools) provide no information on Liberia. Surfline (the most expensive and notorious of the bunch) reduces the entire continent of Africa to three countries, none of them on the black African mainland. And a few other major sites have decided, confusingly, to report on Ghana, where the surf is lousy, or Ivory Coast, where I hope to surf soon.

Those few sites that even pretend to forecast for Liberia do so on the basis of "virtual buoys," which use data from hundreds of miles away and then predict what that data will look like nearer to shore. This doesn't take into account any of the coastal wind patterns that, especially in a stormy season, can pulverize something that looked beautiful on the charts.

Since people often wonder how surfers know when to wake up early and hit the water, I thought I'd share these two different (and encouraging) overviews of the waves that are coming to town this week.

Liberian Tourism

2009-07-27T12:54:00.000-07:00

Though an unlikely combination of words for the last couple of decades, "Liberian Tourism" is making strides towards viability. On the occasion of Liberia's "Independence," Elie and I gave "Wow Liberia" the opportunity to diversify our Monrovia<->Robertsport circuit. Along with fifteen or so other people--mostly embassy workers and NGO staff in their twenties and thirties--we embarked on a five hour drive towards Gbarnga, the capital of Bong County (stay-tuned for the t-shirt).

A series of jungle-shrouded waterfalls subside near a grove of massive, ancient cotton trees (featured above the tents in the first photograph). These behemoths, sporting orchids on their high altitude branches, cast a spell on their surroundings everywhere that I have seen them--however otherwise cluttered--and the waterfalls aren't too shabby either.

The local community have taken custody of the copse by the lower pool, surrounded it with bamboo fencing and declared it an ecotourism site. They are, however, not shy about throwing a rocking, all-night, generator-fed and beer-fueled, fully-catered dance party--for fifteen perfect strangers. We look forward to working with Wow Liberia on their Robertsport activities and to supporting their efforts to spread responsible tourism around the region.

The Law Won!

2009-07-23T06:55:00.000-07:00

We have spent the better part of two months trying to figure out how best to approach the process of drawing Robertsport Community Works to the attention of all the relevant ministries and official bodies of Liberia, whose protocols will determine what paperwork we must prepare and at what cost. We visited law offices, spoke with employees at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, talked with recently-registered small-scale NGOs and emerged, from all this reconnaissance, with a somewhat muddled notion of what we had to do and the mounting conviction that we might as well just do it ourselves, at least to get started.

Thankfully, we refrained, at the last minute, from submitting our Articles of Incorporation for informal re-editing by a ministry official and instead, enjoyed the most inspiring, re-affirming and useful meeting of the organization's existence.

As, I sat across from Alfred Brownell, lead attorney of the Green Advocates (Liberia's only law firm devoted to the support and preservation of the country's ecology), explaining the aspirations of Robertsport Community Works, Mr. Brownell fixed me with a more and more disconcerting smile.

"Nobody told you where I'm from?" Elie and I shook our heads. "I'm from Robertsport, from the same community you are talking about!"

The conversation only improved from this unlikely revelation. Mr Brownell traces his roots to the small community of "uptown," the hillside community on the outskirts of Robertsport, nearest to most picturesque beaches and the highest quality surfing. He speaks passionately about natural features and resources of his hometown and affectionately about the families we are already working with.

We now have a partner in our venture, someone deeply respected and admired within the uptown community and someone with all of the experience and qualifications to help us through our incorporation. Not too far into our conversation, Mr. Brownell volunteered to register our NGO. He took the draft of our Articles and said that he would personally ensure that we were registered properly with no fee for his legal services--a valuable and timely contribution.

We look forward to meeting with his friends and family in Robertsport, to collaborating with him in the coming years and to doing what we can to support the aims of the Green Advocates.

Best business meeting ever!

Hooch

2009-07-22T09:02:00.000-07:00

As long as I can be reasonably certain that I am not dealing with (legendary, mythic?) blindness-inducing, wood-based moonshine, I am open-minded about alcohols produced for drinkers below the poverty line.

Sometimes this means drinking fermented liquids that occur naturally and are served fresh (variations of palm wine); sometimes it means semi-flat, room-temperature cousins of beer derived from unlikely grains (millet, for example); sometimes it means wines improvised from fruit and sugar; and sometimes it is distilled spirits of a bitingly chemical nature (such as "Godfather").

In many parts of West Africa there is also a booming business in "wines" "tonics" and "bitters" (14-28%). These are, bar none, the cheapest means of obtaining drunkenness--you could buy three 12oz bottles for $2. To further seduce their target, these products often boast all sorts of favorable side effects, much like the potions and elixirs legislated away from the world's wealthy drinkers by organizations like the FDA.

"Waist and Powers" is a regional classic, blushed at in some countries as an intimate resource for (older) men and marketed, elsewhere as a middle of the road, energy wine. It is the closest thing that I have seen to a regionally recognized brand--throw a muscle man on the bottle call it "Waist and Powers" and you're done. Sometimes it is opaque, swimming with the pulverized herbs and essences that underlay its quasi-medicinal claims--in these instances, it often tastes bitter, complex and gag-inducing, though, somehow, Dr. Pepper-ish when combined with Coca-Cola. Other times, as with this bottle, it's a totally drinkable relative of a cheap vodka cherry coke cocktail long after the ice has melted, complete with lemon wedge.

Dark Chocolate wine, though it combines two things that I deeply respect, was inspired by a moment of dubious thinking.

Deep Love, I have not yet tried.

And this thing:

I don't understand this thing at all. It contains something that is either illegal and poisinous or magical and destined for global fame. There is a slim possibility that it is physically addictive. There is also a possibility that (owing to the complete non-existence of quality control for these tipples) the bottle I sampled was an aberration, accidentally or intentionally dosed with something that subsequent bottles will not possess. It warrants some at-the-distillery research, some interviews of its Liberian fans and perhaps some sort of double blind clinical trials.

Four Considerations

2009-07-20T05:26:00.000-07:00

Consideration One: Given round one of me vs. Liberian malaria, how do I wish to position myself vis a vis Liberian malaria from this point forward. It is normal for expatriates in malarial reasons to swap information about their strategies for dealing with the threat or the experience of malaria. These conversations never really get old because each person's unique budgetary, risk and health calculations are often quite revealing. I considered myself an old hand at malaria, having caught it at least four times and having been dealt progressively milder and more predictable iterations. But they changed up the meds and while I caught this last batch of plasmodium earlier than ever before, the course of treatment rendered me inert and dysfunctional for three days, with a buffer of weakness and sudden exhaustion swelling the impact to nearly a week. My calculation was always that malaria was easy to spot, cheap to treat and quick to get over. But that is not true any longer and so now I am considering going back on constant drugs, which is an option that I dislike for many reasons. Since the best, designer anti-malarial option is hundreds of dollars a year and since the cheapest version can make you psychotic, I may just be on time sensitive broad spectrum antibiotics for a pile of months. I do not wish to submit to the amodiaquine lethargy again.

Consideration Two: Is it advisable to foster tiny instances of industrial revolution? As Elie and I spec out a community sewing project that seems more and more likely to merit and receive funding and support, the inclusion of a sewing machine (or sewing machines) must be considered. If there are no sewing machines, many women can work (laboriously) on an individual, hassle-free basis to produce various goods, which means a small amount of extra money spread broadly across the community. If there is a sewing machine, it must be housed, protected, paid for and equitably used. This is an interesting logistical puzzle: do we incentivize use of the sewing machine? What is a fair way to determine who uses the sewing machine and when? Since the machine would likely be purchased with a micro-finance loan, how would we determine whose efforts contribute what percentage to the paying back the financiers? Etc. The miniature industrial revolution of this machine seems likely to concentrate power in the hands of a few women and to sew dissent across the land. Pun intended, of course.

Consideration Three: How do we set up a positive sustainable model of sponsoring Liberian surfers? In most places, surfing has the reputation of distracting young people from school and academic pursuits. Here, we are in the unique position of having talented surfers asking for help with their school fees. Once we figure out how to raise the money, our first tactic, will be to show that talented surfers in Liberia can be sponsored students, receiving help towards their learning expenses and potentially receiving bonuses for good grades rather than contest performances. When the quality of talent rises to a contest level, which it will, we'll start diversifying this model. But for now, I think it's a good place to start.

Consideration Four: When do I carve time out of the upcoming week to surf? The fabled onshores of rainy season have finally switched on and begun to mow down our consistent swell with dependable heartlessness. More early mornings. Malaria and other bad winds have kept me out of the water for the longest amount of time since deplaning at Robertsfield airport and I can't wait to get wet.

Downtown

2009-07-16T07:55:00.000-07:00

Since today was uncharacteristically bright and clear and since my malaria has ebbed enough for me to climb unnecessary stairs, I jogged up to our roof and cataloged the view. This enclave of Monrovia is evidently more tree-filled than most, though it would be easy for a pedestrian on the wrong side of the twelve foot walls to miss this fact. High ground, greenery and sea views predictably attract money and Mamba Point is no exception. Most of the UN buildings are in this area, along with several other sturdy NGOs. Much of the remaining real estate is given over to costly apartment buildings that hold a solid percentage of the 15,000 foreigners working in Liberia's NGO community.

Pleasantly, however, there are still a few lots held down by local communities who have been reluctant to cash out on their land investment. Just next to our building is this collection of makeshift, low-lying homes--all of which are emphasizing the exceptional nature of today's sunshine by airing most of the laundry they possess. The amount of noise generated by this tiny square of humanity is often staggering.

Facing south east gives a view of the most cluttered and trafficked part of town--all of the commerce along Broad and Randall. The taller buildings in the far background are not in service.

Neither is the commanding Hotel Ducor, which occupies the best real estate in town, crumbling at the high point of Monrovia, surrounded by the thickest and tallest trees of the capital. I'm still enjoying the convenience of being so close to everything (grocery stores); but it's a shame that the only ocean I see is from hundreds of yards away--impossible, now, to look out the window and know exactly what the waves are doing. It'll be a few more days before I've gotten my energy reserves back in shape to surf anyways.

Various

2009-07-14T01:55:00.000-07:00

Town: living near the summit of Monrovia's tallest hill with easy access to a fifth floor roof, makes the city feel a bit more pocket-sized. So does realizing that roads I thought were crawling off in different directions turn a corner and join ends. Fortunately, it's easy to maneuver Monrovia on foot without feeling threatened, being followed or even being too aggressively whistled, hissed or kissed at. It's been raining and gray for a week; whenever that lets up, I hope to get some rooftop shots.

Malaria: I don't think I've ever caught malaria so far in advance of its own thriving. Everyone I've spoken with gauges with different indicators. I have about 3-5% too much energy, around my whole system that doesn't come from exercise, caffeine or enthusiasm and that I do not control. If it holds steady for more than four hours or if it ratchets up a little bit; I'll go to a lab. So, yesterday, in a lab smaller than our bedroom, I got my unremarkable diagnosis. The only difference this time, is that I'm doing the responsible thing, public health wise. Whereas I'm accustomed to taking Fansidar or Artesunate--easy, painless, no-fuss treatments for Malaria, which also contribute to drug-resistant malaria--I'm now taking the combined treatment which includes Amodiaquine, a drug with a reputation for draining and unpleasant side-effects. So far so good.

Kanye, West Africa

2009-07-08T08:56:00.000-07:00

While looking for lunch in our new neighborhood, Elie and I stopped by Cici's bar and restaurant, where an "opening soon" sign looked too permanent to trust. A scruffy but clear spoken, middle aged man with an American accent told us that we could call ahead for food any evening that we liked, stressing the quality of their grilled meat. Later that day, in a brief interlude between downpours, we placed an order for some meat plates and then walked four hundred meters to our new local. An attentive and well trained staff served us their inaugural meal as an intensifying downpour pushed us from a nice outdoor table to progressively more sheltered seats.

We ended up at a table next to the proprietress and her friends and though the roof was leaking in a few places, everyone was drinking beer with growing patience for the deluge. The man who had convinced us to come to the restaurant in the first place proved to be an excellent conversationalist. After discussing various business ventures along with his aspiration to have an actual paid position on the staff of Cici's bar, he drew attention to his right leg, on which he had been limping. I hadn't noticed that it had been amputated above the knee; he was moving around on a quality prosthesis.

Kanye fled Liberia in 1979 to be with family in Rhode Island and eventually started a two-child family of his own with an American woman who he did not marry. When he had "family trouble," the mother of his children apparently drew him to the attention of American Immigration law enforcement, the result of which was his precipitous and permanent return to Liberia, where he lives with a cousin who does not appreciate his appearance or the fact that he is vying for the same financial resources of their extended family. Somehow, shortly after returning to Liberia, Kanye got a bump on his foot that became more and more problematic. Misdiagnosis and perhaps negligent personal care enabled a fungal infection to become gangrenous and so Kanye, in his mid thirties, lost his leg after losing his family and his job, which gave him, suddenly, lots in common with many of his countrymen, mostly ex-combatants.

A few years ago, an influential Monrovia politician suggested that Kanye consider advocating for Liberians with disabilities. Kanye declined the opportunity, in a move that he now thinks was "stupid." But his thought-process was revealing and valid. He told me that many of the disabled young men around downtown Monrovia (the wheelchair-bound, crutch-using beggars who offer themselves as parking assistants and vehicle security officers) are former rebels. He says that you can distinguish them by their aggressive way of offering their services and their more aggressive way of asking for payments. For Kanye, it was unthinkable to make "common cause" with people who had "held a gun to their neighbors' heads." He made it clear that he doesn't think disabilities are ever the "fault" of people who have them; but he isn't comfortable laboring to make life easier for people who he still thinks of as killers.

Anyone advocating for the disabled in Liberia will have to make peace with the fact that their constituency contains as many murderers as it does Polio victims. Kanye would rather do odd jobs around a bar. Disabled people are such a common site across Africa wherever wealthy people park their cars, that I hadn't stopped to think of the, perhaps obvious, backstory of the ones around Liberia.

Waves for the Weekend

2009-07-06T11:20:00.000-07:00

Though the whole purpose of remaining in Monrovia on Friday and Saturday nights was to engage socially with the urban crowd, our social intentions were corrupted by sudden and prolonged work-related tasks that turned Saturday into a stress festival. When 9pm rolled around and we were finally willing to disconnect from the internet, it seemed preferable to watch a pirated version of Terminator 4 than to drive into town and manage conversations.

Waking up at 6am on Sunday morning in order to arrive in Robertsport in time for the morning surf session (a hurry necessitated by the regular appearance of unfavorable afternoon winds), was so exhausting and unpleasant that the whole weekend seemed likely to offer a total and complete refusal of restfulness . . . until we saw the water.

The outer points (those most exposed to the incoming swell) were looming up and bombing in a wonderful and intimidating way and the premier wave of Robertsport was firing on all cylinders. There was more than enough to share between the uncommonly large crowd of seven--and when Monday morning rolled around (after eleven hours of sleep), it was even sweeter to share cleaner, bigger waves with just two of the Robertsport locals.

Though we're moving into town tomorrow, I can't wait to figure out a way to relocate to Robertsport. It is nearly impossible to retain stress and illwill anywhere within the visible radius of the ancient cotton trees that charge that piece of earth with so much magnetism.

Many thanks to Elie for taking some pictures of me in the water.

Nobody Speaks Up

2009-07-06T10:49:00.000-07:00

The rooster is not pleased with you and though, beneath its feathers, it was but the size of a pigeon, it was roasted and delicious, generous even towards the potatoes with which it was cooked, even unto the last minute. The ghost of the rooster has bedeviled this image file, which has been rotated right numerous times, only to appear crooked in the flesh. The rooster is dead. Long live the rooster!

I confess, that I have always wanted to kill and consume every non-human animal that wakes me up. This sort of wish-fulfillment is very satisfying. Dog meat, in Liberia is called "Ishew."

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury

2009-07-03T09:09:00.000-07:00

Our security guard recently testified that this rooster no longer impacts the laying capacity of our nine-strong hen collection, which he (the rooster, not the security guard, thank heavens) has ravished at his whim since our arrival. As he (the rooster) no longer serves a purpose to our poultry community or to our premises in general, I submit to you that he (the rooster) should be executed in celebration of American Independence. In support of this death sentence, I advance his (the rooster's) adherence to the intolerable code of global roosters: constantly waking people up before the sun has risen by incessant, top volume, discordant and grating vocalizations that the perpetrator unleashes periodically throughout the morning and afternoon hours to ensure that nobody can depend upon deep or restorative sleep. The amnesty he has enjoyed as a hen fertilizing mechanism has now expired.

Whereas our security guard has suggested that the rooster might be slain in celebration of Liberia's "independence" (from America) on July 26th, I propose that one of our (admittedly harmless) ducks be used for that purpose and that the rooster die in celebration of an earlier and clearer independence celebration.

Is there anyone who cares to speak on behalf of this cock?

Movie Economics

2009-07-03T03:25:00.000-07:00

In advance of moving to Liberia, I spent days and days of time copying DVDs from Netflix and storing them in giant binder--the trashy entertainment equivalent of canned food in a fallout shelter. But the scale and sophistication of the movie pirating industry has exceded itself in the last four years. When I was last in West Africa, my taste for Hollywood garbage was sustained by one or two Indian hardware stores that dealt in poor quality DVDs from East Asia that lagged behind movie release dates by at least four months and contained, at most, five movies--one or two of which were regularly unwatchable.

Now, for less than $5, I can purchase something like "Movies of the Year III (70 in 1)." On the cover of this cardboard folder is the promise: "Broadcasting Time is up to 3000 Minutes." This disc includes everything from "The Orphanage" and "Meet the Spartans" to "American Pie 7" and "Bring it on 4." Plenty of movies are mislabled, some of them have subtitles in unfortunate languages; but most of them are of watchable quality.

These discs are arranged according to logic that is sometimes crystal clear and sometimes baffling. How "Senior Skip Day" and "Why did I get Married?" come to be on a disc called "Movies of the Year" is difficult to understand; whereas the archive on "Large Collection of Classic Disaster" makes perfect sense.

The filler movies can often be the real joy of these discs. Of course "The Large Collection of Classic Disaster" includes "The Perfect Storm," "The Day After Tomorrow" and "Twister." But it also contains "Disaster Zone: Volcano in New York" and "The Swarm." One in five of the collections of I've seen contains "Star Ship Troopers 4."

An additional joy of these purchases is the mish-mash cover art--though it can be a real disappointment when the films on the front don't make it onto the disc (for instance: Will Ferrel, pictured below, does not feature in any film available on "US Top-Most Movies"). Nor is there any movie in which Tom Hanks is attacked by Transformers, something that I would definitely pay money to see.

Why "Don Movie" thought that two trumpet blowing babies in overalls surrounded by cupcake jellyfish would be a good branding move, escapes me completely.

So here are some economics that I find interesting. If you were to purchase all of the DVDs, legally, that each of these $5 collections has assembled, you would be paying on average, at least $400. If you were to rent them from blockbuster, you would be paying at least $100. If you were to try ordering them from netflix on a 5-a-day monthly plan, it would take you nearly two months and more than $40. And if you were to buy the pirated movies widely available in NYC (on the A-train for example), it would still set you back at least $70--though you'd never find half of these ridiculous titles. However the pirated discs in New York are more very likely to be unwatchable, which I find confusing--why do the pirated DVDs available in Liberia boast such ample offerings and such higher quality than the pirated discs in NYC?

But, even if you can get your visual Hollywood fix in Liberia, the money is still in the concessions that you crave: a large bag of Tostitos (if you are lucky enough to find it) will cost you a cool $10--and salsa's gonna set you back another $7-10.

So, the last relevant calculation: $20 on chips and salsa; $5 on all-night movie marathon; $10 on beer and you've got the monthly earnings of your average Liberian down the hatch in one brain dead evening!

Robertsport Community Works

2009-06-30T12:14:00.000-07:00

Robertsport Community Works has taken a few significant steps towards existing in the last couple of days. News of its formation and evolution can be found at the organization's blog, which will hopefully feature posts and entries from a wide variety of stakeholders.

In the next few days, we'll design the first batch of t-shirts, which will identify the community members who participate in the first beach cleanup. We'll post some before and after shots of this event. An alarming amount of medical waste has been washing up in recent weeks, so this cleaning is as much of a health and safety issue as it is cosmetic and tourist-friendly.

A visiting Californian surfer provided us with an amusing summary of our intentions for Robertsport Community Works: “You’re just like funneling all of the best ideas related to development that anyone has had in the last five years into this one spot.” Hopefully, that turns out to be correct.

I'll try to limit the spill-over of NGO stuff into this blog, but the fact that it is poised to supplant most of my other hobbies and pastimes, means it will be visible in the background of many posts.

A few images

2009-06-29T08:50:00.000-07:00

Before this wonderful road, our weekly pilgrimage to Robertsport would not have been possible. Now and then, along the way, a few acres are burnt to the ground: evidence of charcoal harvesting--the biggest visible threat to Liberia's remaining rainforests. But, by and large, one passes very few cars along this broad and well-surfaced express route towards Sierra Leone.

Topping the hill just before town affords a view of lake Piso, separated from the ocean by a narrow sand bar. The town of Robertsport wraps around a small corner of this glassy lake shore, with a few houses, at most on either side of the rutted muddy throughway. Lake Piso, from what I've heard, is never more than four or five feet deep--which leads to the comical sight of fishermen, in the distance, standing chest deep beside their dugout canoes.

Immediately to the side of our current residence is a small stream that quintupled in size after a recent two day downpour. In the background, you can see that small plots of corn are submerged. The ocean, combined with this water outlet, were seriously threatening the perimeter wall of this house, until the entire rubble-ized remnants of someone's concrete house were dumped just in front of our gate and then bulldozed into an additional several meters of earthen reinforcement.

Three Lives

2009-06-25T03:26:00.000-07:00

Life one: plugged into a computer for ten or twelve hours a day, interrupted by a handful of long phone calls and an uncomfortably spicy fish and oil based meal. Sometimes these productivity streaks are postponed or cut short by a two or three hour mission into downtown Monrovia for shopping and paperwork.

Life two: no computer, no phone—those things, if I have them with me at all, are hidden in a locked car—going to bed early, sleeping on the ground, impromptu meetings with all and sundry from the Robertsport community and enough surfing (at least five hours a day) to prepare my body for the desk routine.

The tight hand off between these existences is marked by a beautiful three hour commute from greater Monrovia to awesomer Roberstport: a drive that becomes smoother and smoother as more and more of the law enforcement at the eight or so checkpoints become familiar with us and our car.

Life three should include reading, writing, creative time, keeping up with friends, and relaxation; but that hasn’t happened yet. I haven’t gone this long without finishing a book in years. If I preserve a couple of hours during the course of an average day in life two, I vegetate in front of a dvd or practice yoga. Life one doesn’t have spare hours: everything is activity, the procurement of food and establishing relationships.

While my description of life two and small gripe about potential life three might sound dissatisfied, that is not my intention. The balance between my personal and professional focuses fits me really well at the moment and I enjoy the marathon sessions at the computer. Of course, I enjoy other marathon sessions more. But this mix is working for me just fine and it helps me to appreciate all of its component parts.

For the waveheads: a few images. The pulled back shots of the best Robertsport point feature a surfer who is, I’d guess, somewhere in his fifties and still charging a speedy, sometimes rocky, overhead left. The only pic of me surfing so far features my goofball rashguard and a wave that doesn’t look so big.

Full Plate

2009-06-17T14:14:00.000-07:00

By way of context and on request, here is some of the background on the professional circumstances that enable this experiment in West African living and an introduction to the projects that keep me out of the water.

Several organizations run projects that they call “Connecting Classrooms.” I’ve been working on UNICEF’s version of this initiative for several years. This work involves as much coordination and email juggling as it does curriculum and instructional design. Occasionally, it creates huge and pressing obligations related to the creation of training materials or monitoring and evaluation reports.

The most active community involves junior and secondary school students in Ghana, Ethiopia, Uganda, Senegal, South Africa, Madagascar, Mauritius and Egypt—this is just getting under way with a focus on food and agriculture related subjects. Technical modifications affect this website, often in significant ways, every several weeks.

In the works is the drastic (and, in part, temporary) expansion of this community to include hundreds of schools from Connecting Classrooms projects that are run by other organizations in other countries. This will focus on climate change and environmental themes and requires much more delicate and thorough coordination. Though it hasn’t yet begun, it’s already consuming as much, if not more, time than the currently active iteration.

Simultaneously, I am offering rolling assistance to Palestine, where the country office is making efforts to launch an Arabic version of Connecting Classrooms for students in the West Bank. This effort is intended to scale, rapidly, towards the inclusion of students from the Iraqi diaspora in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. The themes for this project are not yet determined as the technical process of translating and flipping (left to right) of the user interface is time consuming.

Meanwhile, I’ll need to do a partial rewrite of the entire icouldbe.org curriculum in advance of the 2009-2010 academic year, while leading a very different re-write of our curriculum for E-mentoring Africa who hope to implement an icouldbe.org style online mentoring program in Kenya. I’ve been working closely with this hard working team of non-profit educators to formulate a working business plan for online mentoring in the considerably different circumstances of sub-Saharan Africa. I’ll probably end up traveling to Kenya for trainings related to this project. The U.S. based version of icouldbe.org also requires regular consulting on branding, marketing, school outreach and instructional design.

UNIDO is sponsoring a youth platform to serve Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Cote d’Ivoire. This happens to be run on the exact same developing internet technology that I am using for the Connecting Classrooms project. The Liberians in charge of generating local uptake of this resource are impressively motivated and switched-on. Elie and I are interested to figure out how we can support their efforts and are leaning towards increasing the democracy building capabilities of the program—especially since a few government ministries have already joined scores of youth organizations in creating accounts.

Finally, I’m Co-founding, co-planning and co-directing “Robertsport Community Works,” a not-yet legally extant NGO dedicated to making sure that tourism benefits the impoverished community that lives on the exceptional point breaks of Robertsport. This involves networking, planning, self-marketing, paperwork, lots of bubble charts and documents along with cash and physical labor—since we’re starting early with beach clean-ups and the establishment of a community-run campground beneath the iconic cotton tree.

Finally, my efforts are ongoing to coordinate with research scientists at Drexel towards the creation of optimal monitoring and evaluation practices for all of these initiatives.

I pulled the first work-related all-nighter that has ever been necessitated in my life. I felt like I was in college. Once, I’m able to switch a few of these projects into auto-pilot, I look forward to using my consultancy corporation to delegate some of these incessant tasks to the capable people in my network.

Oh, we’ve almost acquired all of our car documents (check the license plate); we’ve got our 60 day visa extension and we’re still looking for a place to live—though, increasingly, it seems like it might be smarter to base ourselves in Robertsport in order to help coordinate the efforts of what seem to be a rather large number of people interested in helping that particular portion of the country.

You may notice the shadow of the license plate this once was. Yes, "PP 9460" was pressed, somewhat flat and then hand-painted to provide us with our own vanity plate. True recycling.

Surfing: Last weekend was overhead and glassy at Robertsport, where, for almost every session, there wasn’t a soul in the water. My leash broke, causing my standard midrange thruster to break its nose on one of the smooth black rocks by the shore; this board joins three others in the queue for board repair, a queue that is not currently moving for an absence of sandpaper and time.

Almost every night it rains so hard that from two feet away, I can’t hear the music, blasting at full volume, from the speakers of my laptop.

World Famous

2009-06-12T04:39:00.000-07:00

Check the BBC Slide Show at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/8092112.stm

These pictures were taken last weekend at Robertsport. In the first shot, I'm in the weird hooded rashguard and the crowd includes the small fries I mentioned in an earlier post--one of whom is also going left on a later slide on the leashless funboard. The surfer busting air on the closed out wave is not Alfred Lomax. That is Peter Swen, our Liberian English teacher and Monrovia's local talent. The good panorama of the giant cotton tree includes our surfboards, leaning on a much smaller tree on the right and the last picture includes a double butt shot of Nate "Calhous" and partner. World famous.

Paperwork

2009-06-11T06:04:00.000-07:00

Since Elie and I are not actively spoken for by any large and influential international organizations, we are managing our paperwork with our own resources. Since we are also not totally without financial resources, we have retained a well-connected Liberian operator to put up with all of the bureaucrats, delays and tedium of processing our documents. Of course it takes longer and costs more than first estimates would suggest and of course it is a much griped about nuisance. But, having the assistance that we do takes, at least for me, all of the stress and impatience from the process.

I've even been given reason to look forward to certain processes. Since Elie and I will have to register an NGO (unless it seems more prudent to open a Liberian chapter of Surfrider--opinions anyone?), we will apparently have the opportunity to see what happens when paper-pushers within the Ministry of (I think) Commerce, exercise their linguistic skills and abilities while venting their opinions about the supplicant nature of foreigners.

We had a chance to look over the paperwork of an unusual and recently formed NGO. The original introductory clause of this organization, as drafted by its European architect, included standard legalese and some charitable sentiments. This paragraph was replaced with a paragraph that includes what is now one of my favorite phrases in the English language:

"Wheras, I the founder of the above named Organization having experienced several and sudden helpless instances of financial needs and assistance of the Liberian people and in regard to our responsibilities as partners to our respective countries, do hereby organized ourselves under this organization for the purpose of solving such problems and providing other incentives to the Liberian people hereby I, the founder by these presents do hereby agreed to organize the said Organization." (All spelling and grammar errors have been left uncorrected.)

"Several and sudden helpless instances" would make a phenomenal title of a novel's tragic section, a great album name or a good epigram. By way of context, the founder of this document asseverates that he has not, in fact, suffered several and sudden helpless instances; but has instead been bled of small sums of money at numerous points by people who he has begun to regard with prejudice and distaste.

So, what I anticipate with some glee, is the bowdlerization of whatever organizational preamble is intended to define the intentions of our Robertsport Community Organization. Perhaps it will say "whereas we, the founders of the above named organization having been discovered stranded at sea in a sinking rubber dinghy by the valiant fishermen of Cape Mount County and in regard to our responsibilities do hereby intend to solve the financial problems of anyone nearby." I'll keep you posted.

Hey, Google, Pay Attention to Africa!

2009-06-11T04:37:00.000-07:00

To any Google representatives or robots:

1) Liberian IP addresses do not originate from an Arabic speaking country. Despite choosing "lb" as their country suffix--a suffix I'm sure that Lebanon or Libya engaged much earlier--Liberia continues to be an English speaking country. Making Google and its affiliates load, automatically, into Arabic effectively prevents Google products from reaching this increasingly technologically capable country.

It might be worth doing a quick check of other African country suffixes to see if this same issue is happening in any other unlikely places. It is a small but crippling obstacle to accessing Google products.

2) Why not make an obvious way to escape a presumptuously translated UI? A simple array of flags to indicate other language options would be way easier than assuming that your average users have figured out what "language" looks like in Arabic, Amharic, Kiswahili, etc.

3) Googledocs is too heavy to load on slow connections (even if they are fast enough to host gchat). Is there a basic html toggle option to help your dedicated googledocs users access their materials when they are in the developing world?

If anyone knows how to more effectively bring these issues to the attention of Google's powerful strata, please let me know. These issues are affecting millions of switched on computer users.

Swamp?

2009-06-09T04:55:00.000-07:00

Liberia has a branding problem, both externally and internally. For instance, the body of water surrounding the backside of Monrovia is called "the swamp."

In the foreground of this photograph (taken from a perpetually crowded bridge between the "Free" port and the downtown area) sits a curious medical building--on which is written, in gigantic letters, "Abide by the Geneva Convention." This building's island rests in the "swamp."

This cheerful pedestrian is strolling across the perpetually crowded bridge about to pass by the tiny island (a shrubbery of which can be seen in the lower right hand corner) that is situated in the "swamp." Does it seem to anybody that the glassy, reed-free water in these photographs deserves to be called a "swamp?" Might it not be more healthy for the reputation of Monrovia if it were known to be situated between the Atlantic Ocean and . . . a lagoon? As a point of information, the "swamp" does not smell bad--at least not from the bridge. I'm sure that its periphery enjoys the spontaneous latrine status of all water bodies here and smells unlike fresh daisies. But in the murky, foul, sinking, stinking sense, Monrovia is not surrounded by a swamp.

On the other side of the stripe of buildings present in the background of both photographs is an incline leading down towards the Atlantic Ocean. Monrovia is a skinny capital city on a narrow, hilly strip of land, crowded with commerce on the lower two floors and sidewalks of most streets. The handful of buildings over five stories tall do not seem to be in current use. Many of the more elaborate structures that I have seen (in Robertsport or in Monrovia) are in waiting--surrounded by various theories (some of them no doubt grounded in fact) about who has purchased the rights to return them to glory.

Surf: this weekend's surf at Robertsport was the most mediocre that I have encountered yet: a roughed up head high smaller period (11 seconds) fading groundswell that didn't have the points firing on all cylinders. However, the less toothy aspect of the swell brought out the local groms (I'd guess they were around 12 years old) who were charing what were, for them, well overhead waves--one of them on Sussanah's old 6'2" lost thruster and the other, leashless, on a fun board that he kept ditching. Along with the other more mature surfers in the water, I enjoyed lecturing them about their deplorable surf etiquette and then hooting for their gutsiness. Elie also started charging.

And on an unrelated cultural note: while digging through some of my gathered but unexplored itunes library, I discovered that a band called "Holy F*ck" (excuse me) make some excellent music for getting work done. Along the lines of the Octopus Project--no singer, no fuss.

Conference Call

2009-06-05T09:02:00.000-07:00

Cellular and wireless technology is so under-utilized in a traditional office environment. Working remotely is the most motivating activity that I have so far undertaken. It is even more effective here than it was in New York because my connection speeds are low enough in Liberia that I have to carefully select what pages I choose to load--none of them can contain audio or video clips. In combination with the constant sound and appearance of waves to my immediate left (see next photo), I feel medicated against the scattered attention and obsessive information gathering/web activity that shredded my New York working hours.

An uncharacteristicly small and disorganized close-out breaks onto the urchin-populated rock reef on the other side of the home office's barred door. Though the constant titillation of audible waves can be maddening and cause me to get incredibly antsy and hyper, I think that, on balance, it has a calming and focusing effect--especially since I know that surf is not in scarce supply. The immediate disappearance of East Coast waves seems capable of generating especially addictive and compulsive attitudes for local surfers. I'm glad to be relaxing in a bountiful place.

This weekend, we'll start engaging with the community in Robertsport to see what ambitions they have for local NGO activity. The only pressure I hope to apply pertains to beach clean-up and recycling. Beyond that, this could turn into a meeting about digging wells just as easily as it could discuss chicken farming or mentoring programs.

Our anticipated seven foot swell has dropped off a bit more rapidly than expected--I can't seem to do better than virtual buoys and surf reports for the Ivory Coast when trying to predict our own conditions, which, naturally, causes some inaccurate forecasts. Our mechanic's custody of the new vehicle has kept me dry for the last two days, in the face of tempting waters.

Liberia Stage One

2009-06-03T12:14:00.000-07:00

Many of the expatriates here express surprise when they learn that Elie and I moved to Liberia voluntarily. However, several of them have seen our move as a positive reflection on the forward momentum of this country--some of them suggesting that it would not have been possible for us to do this even six or seven months ago. The internet and telecommunications plans and devices that we depend upon for work have only been affordable and reliable for a short time. And, supposedly, options for food and diversion are increasing on a monthly basis.

I've been a bit surprised by the youth, sociability and professionalism of the development community. Because of the rougher nature of Liberia, it is not yet the playground of volunteers (though there are missionaries everywhere) and it seems to attract, instead, a fairly ambitious and career-oriented crowd. There are more NGOs and fellowship programs here than I have ever heard of. It's an interesting laboratory for ideas about reconstruction and development. I am eager to put some of my own thoughts into action for the small community around Robertsport, whose beautiful location is already being absolutely trashed by oblivious weekend visitors.

Most of our social activity here, so far, has derived from connections that we've made in the water--where total arbitrariness reigns with regards to what sort of people have chosen to surf in the active waters of Liberia. I've resolved, incidentally, to relegate surfing to the last two sentences of any given post; this would seem to balance the disinterest that most people feel towards my recreational activities and the total indignation that my surfer friends would feel if I didn't mention it at all.

Those two sentences: The waves have not been below shoulder high since we arrived two weeks ago. To my delight, they have usually been overhead and glassy for at least six hours a day--a trend set to continue for the next week at least.

Surfacing

2009-05-29T11:46:00.000-07:00

A handful of impressions on the last couple of months to close out the portion of this blog that pertained to my life as someone who did not live in Liberia:

Nicaragua:
A two week working holiday in Nicaragua offered me the first opportunity to compare a developing world country outside of Africa with all of the ones I have seen here. Nicaragua, to my eyes, was remarkably clean, electronic and user-friendly. Especially on those nights that I sat, contentedly exhausted from a full day of quality surf, with a pina colada, ruining my appetite for roast pork by eating fresh ceviche, it seemed like few things could be easier than living there. Many of the people in the water and along the beach had clearly acted on moments like the ones that filled my time in Central America--land prices near good surfing beaches have multiplied themselves by ten in the last decade, despite wobbles of instability and scares about nationalizing property of foreigners.

I remained pleasantly removed from the parts of the coast that are reputed to be overrun by surfers from the north and experienced my first surf-geared, low-key eco-lodge in a couple of years. When run well, these places combine so many helpful ideas in such a pleasant fashion that they can seem far more utopian than ordinary hotels. It’s difficult not to envy the people who take a few years out of their lives in order to run them. In the background of my tech-centered work, it could be something that I genuinely enjoy.

A couple of weeks in Africa:
A breakneck training schedule blitzed me through three African countries in about ten days. The itinerary and my constant need for connectivity, finally helped me to understand the mindset of business travelers (from any sector), who opt for the comforts of more expensive airplane seats, nicer hotels and fine meals. Touring and experiencing culture were driven from my mind by twelve to fourteen hour workdays split in half between training young African students how to use a group networking website and then meeting the expectations of all of my colleagues who came online at about the time I was ready to relax.

Ghana still seems to be in good shape: a strong, wonderful country. Ethiopia, the only country new for me on this trip, also made an impression. If it had a coastline (not that it hasn’t tried), I could imagine living there. Aside from the succulent food and superior music, there was a great deal of national pride and a strong work ethic. I’m confident that the students from Ethiopia will perform notably in our online programs. And in South Africa, I was cheered by the enthusiasm that locals showed for their recent election—glad that they boasted about the lack of violence and glad that they believed racial tensions to be waning along with security concerns. I discussed my standing prediction of embarrassing and problematic violent crime marring the World Cup in 2010 with several South Africans, three of whom completely disagreed with my risk assessment and one of whom was positive that I am correct.

Perhaps I’ll have something to say about leaving the United States in my next post; more likely I’ll just get down to the business of talking through the fact of being in Liberia.

Settlements--Photographic Supplement

2009-03-06T09:35:00.000-08:00

While driving from East Jerusalem through Ramallah and then along exclusive Israeli roads towards the border with Jordan, I saw dozens of settlements. Some of these were decades old, many more were established within the last few years--all of them were well secured. I did not have the luxury to photograph them from up close or in a conspicuous way. Instead, these are all shot from a moving car window. I share them here to illustrate the steps in the formation of a settlement, along with their typical placement and appearance. Enjoy.

This is the most up close image I captured of a newly created settlement. In the background are the preliminary dwellings, low to the ground beneath their budding infrastructure. In the foreground are structures that served as storage for military vehicles. In front of this proto-settlement, I saw approximately 15 identical military troop moving trucks, parked in their garages. There were storage facilities for five times that amount of equipment.

On this distant hilltop, you can see the outline and communications towers of a second recent settlement--a little further along than the first. Perhaps forty squat living containers are congregated here--waiting to be demolished and replaced by more comfortable and imposing dwellings. Apparently, during this unglamorous stage of development, people take shifts occupying the hilltop.

A medium sized settlement, in the snow near Ramallah. Characteristic walls around the perimeter along with communication and water towers.

This large, completed settlement, at the top of a very steep incline has a series of walls along the perimeter.

Just in case you thought the walls of the settlements appeared quaint in a run-down Medieval sort of way--here is a good example of a more no-nonsense perimeter.

Up close, these walls tower above vehicles and pedestrians alike, concealing the settlements from view and sending a neighborly message. This is not the wall around the West Bank--that wall is often higher and routinely adorned with various unfriendly wires--this is just the access point to an established hilltop settlement (which term, at this point, should be sounding redundant).

And in case you might be tempted to believe that these settlements are just the isolated and curmudgeonly fortresses of people who are minding their own business. Here is a tiny sliver of the destroyed olive plantation on the outskirts of one settlement. Deemed a security risk, hundreds of carefully cultivated, Palestinian olive trees were chopped down and burnt several hundred yards from the current boundary of this younger outpost. Nothing quite so threatening as olive trees--or Palestinians making a living.

Lastly, by way of contrast, here is an early morning view of Ramallah in the snow. Notice we are looking down on an unwalled area. As building and renovation becomes more difficult and costly, expect Palestinian enclaves to lose their polished and relatively modern look.

What am I doing?

2009-03-04T13:39:00.000-08:00

The internet (and I will not capitalize that word unless it comes at the beginning of a sentence) pesters me to connect more frequently and with more people than I want. The expectations created of me as a web citizen also compel me to spend hideous amounts of time in front of my computer, which I resent and consider unhealthy. Some people around me seem compulsively driven to manage a complete and parallel existence online, whereas, I have been scaling back my own use of the internet for personal and professional connections over the last three years. Oddly, those three years correlate exactly to the years that I have worked in online education--specifically on initiatives to increase the "fruitful," "productive," and "high impact" use of the internet by young people.

My work often finds me playing advocate (salesman, really) for the educational and transformative power of the internet, or, more broadly, of connectivity. This is a bit awkward, since I dislike salesmanship about as much as I dislike the way that technology has crept into my life and the lives of those around me. At least for the reasons above, I have to revisit my motivations and ambitions for remaining involved in e-work.

Online mentoring is a concept with promise because it taps into a vast, global reservoir of lazy volunteerism (a cynic might note that it does so with unusual success because it appeals to the narcissism of frequent web users or to the need for validation that is felt by isolated people). In harnessing this social capital, it also has the potential to create and sustain communities around centers of learning that will inevitably make them stronger and help their students. I've watched too many tedious power point presentations about online learning initiatives that failed "for lack of local support." And I've heard from numerous web literate (and aspiring web literate) adults that they wish they could be more involved in the learning of the less fortunate young people with whom they identify. Also, statistically, at least in the U.S., one of the most common justifications that students advance for dropping out of the educational system is that they feel like there were not any individual adults who made the effort to understand and help them in particular. So, educational projects need support of the local community, adults want to help young people in safe and easy ways and young people are more likely to remain engaged in education when at least one adult takes a particular interest in them. That's a fairly idiot-proof little triangle. One of the things that prevents me from cashing out of this e-cage is that I want to see more intelligent and sustainable projects inspired by those three self-solving facts.

The other major trend in my efforts is bringing scattered classrooms together with different web tools. Since the schools involved in these projects are typically quite disadvantaged--comprised of students whose starting point is borderline web illiteracy--it is likely that the real benefit for participating students is the carefully prepared introduction to online existence rather than the opportunity to share rudimentary web pages with other children far away. This coached transition into web citizenship offers the possibility of teaching valuable lessons about being a good human to people who are just coming to understand all of the intricacies that constitute the online social contract that guides the behavior and self-presentation of web citizens around the world. Helping networks to form between people who have no other way of connecting is also a useful action--though there is still a lot of thinking to do about how to build online communities of practice that are worth the digital space they occupy.

Over the course of this year, I'll develop a much better understanding of how useful it is to connect scattered students to one another and how powerful it can be for groups to network together in an autonomous and self-directed way. If these tools turn out to be as powerful as their proponents suggest, I may have to continue this hobbling proximity to my computer and related devices.

This post has become a sort of introduction to the thinking behind the different initiatives that may get a bit more attention in coming months, or, it may be the only background that I offer into the professional currents that will impact my location, my travels and my thinking. In any case, if I venture into these issues again, it will only be because some specific events have actually changed my thinking on the way that young people can be better served by connective technologies. It will not be to further disrespect the internet nor will it be to communicate about online learning initiatives simply because they occupy so much of my time.

Settlements are Brilliant

2009-02-28T11:46:00.000-08:00

Settlements are a brilliant, shrewdly branded strategy. The term “settlements” is so diminutive and disarming. I never bothered to obtain a clear understanding of what they are because my attention was deflected by the connotations of the word “settler.” I figured they were small encampments of families, living off the land and somehow interested in being off the grid, or out amidst nature. After all, prior to settlers, land is unsettled, somehow up for grabs, right?

Had they been called “gated communities”—the softest possible semi-accurate name, more people might have questioned their acceptability or the impact that they might have on a peace process and reconciliation. If they were called “networked, militarized, communal fortresses”, there might at least be more interesting photos taken of the imposing unapproachability that they broadcast.

These are just remarks about vocabulary, its tremendous power and the visual impression that settlements inevitably make when viewed from outside, which is below. This is one of the first things that you notice about settlements: they originate on hilltops, and when they expand, which is their purpose, they expand along ridges that connect hilltops. I’m fairly certain that there is not a single settlement from which anything could be thrown from a Palestinian residence. The reverse is far from true.

Palestinians, I was told by several West Bankers, have historically opted to live in valleys where warmth and water collect. When you are neither attacking nor defending your community, arid hilltops are a poor choice of habitation. However, when you can deliver all modern conveniences to your hilltop estates quickly and easily, the initial inhospitability of the hilltop becomes a non-factor, which raises the all important subject of roads.

I had no idea (and it is not much discussed in the international media) that settlements have their own new, private highways connecting them to one another and to places outside the West Bank. (And for clarification, I am talking exclusively about settlements in the West Bank—the humanitarian disaster of the boxed in people of Gaza is a different issue that I have not experienced first hand.) This private, top-of-the-line transportation grid is not a small or incidental creation. The roads crisscross the West Bank and when they glance the periphery of a Palestinian community, Israel has piled giant rock barriers preventing access to the road and erected squat bunker/watchtower outposts that facilitate checkpoints.

Since the vast majority of Palestinians are denied any access to these roads and since—I’m pretty sure—there are not going to be any tunnels under them or bridges over them, these roads constitute a second, far more damaging wall. So what if children can dash across without always being shot, if a community cannot bring its goods across a concrete barrier, that thing is a wall. This growing network of roads and settlements is creating a new level of isolation for a people who are already exceptionally isolated behind an enormous, better known and more photogenic wall. Now towns within the West Bank are functionally cut off from each other. If there used to be a ten minute driving separating two towns or villages, now it might be an hour and ten minutes. Freedom of

movement becomes nominal when it becomes expensive and time-consuming to move.

This isolation is further increased by a weak Palestinian telecommunications network. Finding reception in the West Bank can be very difficult. Well, Palestinian Telecom could just build towers on a few hilltops . . . oh wait, hilltops are increasingly covered with Israeli settlements, which you can bet have no enthusiasm about helping Palestinians to communicate.

I referred to settlements as a brilliant strategy. Looking at them is like watching a skillful player arrange a battlefield (in Risk, in Go) so artfully that his opponent is ruined before open conflict begins. The roads and the hilltops are a constrictive force. Isolation becomes unlivability, the strangulation of communities. This process seems to be taking place with the same speed that the wall was constructed. I saw several fetal settlements—inhabitable, ugly, secure containers, surrounded by defensive fencing at the end of a nice road, terminating on a hilltop. Settlers take turns manning their encampments as they transform into brand new, attractive, self-contained towns. At least where I went (Bethlehem, Ramallah, Hebron), Palestinians could generally point to one nascent barbed wire enclosure and say, "In two years, that will look like the settlement just around the corner." Many times one settlement can be seen from another.

For what it is worth, I am just describing what I’ve seen and offering a potential interpretation of the likely effects of the continued expansion of the settler network. I call it a strategy because I do not think that the benefits of building a fully functioning, members only state on top of a weakened Palestinian territory have escaped the people who organize this militaristic expansion.

I have not gone into detail about the worrying grievances that I have heard from West Bankers who work for the UN or the Ministry of Education, grown, well educated people who tell that the settlers throw garbage and sometimes rocks at Palestinian children who must pass by the settlement walls on their way to school or the stories about settlers who allow (and encourage) their dogs to attack Palestinians who are passing nearby, the settlers who have shot at UNICEF vehicles and who shoot at and destroy Palestinian water collection containers in random retribution for events elsewhere in Palestine. I didn’t see any of that happen; nor have I witnessed a settler shooting at civilians from his hilltop. The fact that so many people so far removed from fundamentalism and so well connected to my professional existence are full of grievances like this, can just stand on its own, shedding light on the sort of relationship that these settlements seem to be fostering.

What I see here is clear evidence of a brilliant strategy—already far along in its execution—to make life in the West Bank undesirable and unlivable for Palestinians, who, thanks to the walls built around them, do not have anywhere else to go. I shudder to think of the real endgame towards which this is leading.

An afterthought on resistance:

I asked a colleague from the UN why Palestinians did not organize to erect basic dwellings on their remaining hilltops as an investment towards the possibility of saving their way of life. She referenced a law governing new construction above a certain altitude or within a certain distance of a hilltop. So, there may already be a legally enshrined assurance that Palestinians will have to watch their country disappear, which would mean there is really nothing they can do about it—at least without considerable and prompt assistance.

By the way, please don't worry. I don't often to travel to the Middle East and I'm unlikely to be in Palestine again soon, so if you don't enjoy these subjects, don't expect to be bombarded with them in future posts. I've just found the experience of crossing through the wall and seeing what's happening in the West Bank to be more affecting than I anticipated.

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2009-02-27T03:12:00.000-08:00

My work now requires that I travel more regularly, often to places where large populations are struggling with their environments, the world's economic structure, their neighbors, their own governments and the way they are portrayed in the media. The projects I am working on are currently under the auspices of some large international aid and development agencies--most of which are prisoners to protocol, moderation and politics. The observations and recommendations that I am retained to make for these entities are highly focused on project outcomes. All of this travel and collaboration results in a considerable surplus of peripheral experience and critical thought that is not necessarily appropriate in my professional circles.

So, this blog will be an opportunity to share what I think is most important, outrageous, beautiful and strange. It will also include some posts of a potentially more mundane variety: updates on the process of moving from a stable, salaried existence in New York City to a less predictable life in Liberia on the western coast of Africa.

But, I have meant to start writing for a couple of years now and it would be remiss not to acknowledge the person who gave me the final push towards getting started again. My grandmother is graciously allowing herself to be treated for Alzheimer's, which involves more time apart from her husband and her family than she has ever spent. She has never asked me to do anything for her; but, after hearing about some work that I am doing in Palestine, she requested that I start blogging. That seems reasonable to me and her timing is perfect.