Santa at the Orphanage

We had the opportunity to join one of our Marines, disguised as Santa, at a local orphanage this week. On Saturday several of us gathered at the Marine house and wrapped all the gifts that staff at the embassy had donated. Everything from toys, to clothes, to games, to soccer balls was given for the kids.   It was great to get out and enjoy giving to the kids. We've been living in a bubble, trying to find ways to connect with and give to the community, but the organizations here are rather closed to help. This was a good open door for us to make some connections and meet some kids. Although it was hot and Santa was melting quickly, he had a blast with the kids as well as in the car with the window down, waving to all the people on the street. We look forward to our next visit with these kids.

Fishing Boat

I'm taking a bit of time off of work this Christmas to enjoy time with the kids while they're visiting. These lazy days allow me time to just sit and observe life here in Monrovia. Maddie and I were sitting  at the front window one morning, enjoying our breakfast while gazing out on the ocean. I noticed a white ring of something floating in the water. Was it foam churned up in the current? I shifted in my chair and leaned in closer to get a better look around the palm trees swaying in the light breeze. A colorful boat bobbed off shore circled by a ring of buoys.

Brightly painted fishing boats float past our house several times each day. Often several pass my window in a short period of time headed out to fish or back into port with their catch. The boats we see go in and out of West Point, a peninsula located in the north east area of Monrovia which is the most densely populated slum area here.

There are two types of boats that pass by, dug out canoes paddled by one or two people which sometimes have a white, square sail and these larger boats powered by a motor. My understanding is that these colorful boats have come from Ghana. I don't know why these fishermen decided to resettle here in Liberia, but they fill every port. The boats often have a Bible verse reference painted on the side. The Liberian flag as well as laundry strung down the middle, flutters in the breeze and a white cross was mounted front and center in this boat.

Colorful fishing boats passing our window

Fishing boats in Marshall, Liberia 

Up to this point I'd only seen the boats coming or going, so I was excited to watch the men gather their net. We stood along the edge of our compound for an hour or so, watching the circle slowly constrict with each pull of the net into the boat. The sun burned down on our shoulders and sweat tricked down our backs. I can't imagine how hot it must be in the thick of day out on the boats yet a small breeze was coming off the sea.

We stayed until the net was fully collected into the boat. I was curious to see how many fish they pulled in. Watching through my telephoto lens, I was surprised to see only a few fish. It was disappointing, I was hoping to see the men straining to empty their net into the boat and head home with a full load.

The boat we watched this morning.

A Country Always in Crisis

"Ebola Hero Da Our Choice"

Beginning in 1989, the first civil war divided the country killing 250,000 people. Some key players in the war were Charles Taylor and Prince Johnson, each leading rebel groups. Charles Taylor was part of the Doe government, but left when he was accused of embezzlement. He went to the Ivory Coast where he trained groups of rebel soldiers who felt they were oppressed under Doe. Johnson won control of Monrovia but there were still several years of fighting and instability. In 1997 elections were held and Charles Taylor became the president. 

Peace didn't last long and in 1999 rebels once again emerged with fighting, looting and taking over Monrovia. The second civil war ended in 2003.

Remember the movie Blood Diamonds with Leonardo DiCaprio? This story took place in neighboring Sierra Leone under Charles Taylor's rule to fund his war. Did you read the book A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier? This is the accounting of children who were captured, given drugs and forced into killing in - you guessed it - the same conflict with Charles Taylor leading it all. I had seen the movie and read the book years ago. I never connected it all with Liberia as the center of the conflict. Of course I barley knew what Liberia was back then. But if you're acquainted with either of these pieces, then you have a small understanding of what happened in Liberia. 

The wars have been over for 15 years, but the effects remain. The city of Monrovia is littered with the carcasses of blown-out buildings that have never been repaired or torn down. They have become part of the city scape. There is a generation of people now in their prime years with an education gap which is having a large effect on the ability of the country to move forward. Infrastructure is non-existent so there is no road to connect the east to the west side of Liberia making moving goods, such as crops, impossible.

The country was trying to piece itself back together when Ebola struck in 2014-2016. Over 4,800 people died in Liberia. Again, this drained the country of any resources they had and another education gap occurred.

But all of this is in the past, right? Sadly, working in the embassy, these two events are referred to over and over again. They seem to be a road block that has stopped all movement forward in the country. Day by day, life goes on for the people but there is little to no improvement for society. The people are lacking decent roads, electricity, sewage systems and water - the essentials to life.

In addition to the difficult of the past, there seems to be other constant crisis distracting progress. I've been here for three months now and in that time there seems to be a crisis each month. 

In September $104 million newly printed Liberian Dollars went missing. That's $60 million USD. Seems like a lot of cash to loose. It was newly printed money that was being imported through the port and airport and it's all gone - or is it? No one seems to know. It's chaos and they want America to fix this problem. There was some hubbub and news, but then it's sort of fizzled up and gone away with no-one knowing where this money is.

In October the government felt that it was having a difficult time collecting taxes from its people so they had a brilliant idea to raise taxes on gas. Gas is something that everyone needs. So with the new taxes the gas companies decided that they were not able to sell their product at the new high price that the government was demanding so they limited their supply. They had the gas already imported but were not releasing it for sale to the public. It was sort of a face down to see who would win. So what was the impact? Gas stations seemed to dole out their limited supply in the morning and evening during rush hours. Long lines of cars waiting to get gas blocked up the roads while people were commuting to and from work. This caused the citizens additional hours in commute times. Gas stations also stopped allowing people to fill 1 liter bottles at the pump. This caused a crisis in a business where individuals go places where there aren't gas stations nearby and re-sell the gas at a bit of a mark-up. So boom, all those people who are barely surviving anyway were out of work. This was another crisis that was in the news for a few weeks but then society sort of shifted around the dysfunction and life goes on. 

That's how it is here in Liberia. Things are corrupt and broken but there is no power for change. It all feels rather dire. I don't sense hope in the people, rather just acceptance. As an outsider I look in, wondering what I could do that would help. It's all so overwhelming. Even the people who try to help seem to run into the problems with the corruption. More Than Me, a charity run group of schools for young girls, came into the news in October when a leader in the organization was accused of raping many of the girls. It's sad because it's a great organization that is changing the lives of some girls here in Liberia. Yet now there is suspicion and doubt of the help of foreigners. It's one more thing crippling this country.

A friend in Taiwan said to me "Liberia is one of those countries that I'm always rooting for but they just can't seem to get it together." It's hard to have hope when the outsiders around you don't have any. These are just my own thoughts and opinions on what I've seen around me these past few months. I don't understand all the politics and I really don't understand the root of all the problems. I just thought I'd share a few of the things I've pick-up on along the way.

Slums of Monrovia (but truly the majority of the city looks like this)

Lappa Shopping

Clothing here in West Africa is vibrant and colorful in stark contrast to the orange earth tones of the street and buildings. Both men and women have their clothes made out of these colorful fabrics. Blouses, skirts, dresses and even head wraps adorn the women and the men wear shirts and sometimes matching pants out of lappa. I've noticed that you don't mix lappas, you pick one pattern and create an outfit with ruffles and frills all out of the same busy pattern. And it works. It's beautiful and fun. On a given day, driving or walking down the street, I would say about 50% of the people are wearing traditional cloth. 

Lappa is not the name of the fabric, rather it's the name of the measurement. One lappa is 2 meters of the colorful cloth. It's typically sold as 3 lappas for $10 USD. Needless to say, you can see that shopping for lappa is going to be an addiction for me! Shops tend to sell only lappa - no thread or other sewing supplies. I've already had a skirt made and sewed curtains for my kitchen. On one window shopping trip I bought a lappa that I hadn't seen before and really liked. Of course at church on Sunday a little boy was wearing a full shorts outfit out of that exact same fabric!

The patterns on the fabric are interesting as well. Everything from flowers, bird, geometric patterns and swirls to cell phones, usb adapters and cameras are used. I've even seen a fertility pattern with embryos and eggs. I might just have to get some of that one for memories sake!

Lappa will definitely be my excuse to go wander the market on a Sat. morning.

Shelves Full of American Goodness

Old mother Hubbard went to the cupboard to fetch her poor dog a bone.

But when she got there, 

the cupboard was bare...

Well not in the Faber household! Due to limited food choices and high food costs here in Liberia, we are allowed a consumables shipment consisting of 2,500# of stuff. It sounds wonderful and like a little bit of Heaven, but the reality of putting together a consumables shipment was an exhausting challenge.

I began the process on Jan. 1 with sticky notes all over the house. Every time someone changed a roll of toilet paper they put a slash. New bag of flour? Slash. New container of laundry soap? Slash. Do you know how much stuff you go through in two years? I certainly don't and it added a bit of a challenge going from a five person household to just the two of us in a few short years. That change turned all my shopping and cooking expertise upside down. By May I was able to get some scientific estimates on what we used and how much we would need for the two years.

I began my shopping in Taipei. I checked on the weight of our household shipment when we arrived three years earlier, factored in the pieces we had bought and deduced that I had about 1,500# of extra weight that I could use. I made several trips to Costco in Taipei and bought all the toilet paper, laundry soap and other non-food items that I could. My household goods shipment was underweight by 50#. I patted myself on the back for this extreme success. :)

Back home I tried to find a balance between shopping and enjoying the home leave time with my friends and family. Not an easy thing to do when your running to a different store with an extensive list between every visit because you're on the right side of town or only 5 minutes out of the way. Our focus was liquids because we can't have them mailed to us. Some amazing friends let us continually drop loads of food off in their garage for a month. We all watched the pile grow and made bets on what the weight was the day the movers came to pack it all up. Just before we left America our food was loaded on a truck to be shipped to Monrovia.

Our consumables shipment arrived about 6 weeks after I arrived in Africa. Until it came I had moments of complete melt-down where the only solution was to once again go get an overpriced pizza at the hotel down the street. Cooking was a challenge. I won't go into the miserable details, because well, after all, we didn't starve to death. Life is happier now that I can make our comfort foods or at least foods that are familiar to us and that we enjoy!

Plants, Boundaries, and Squatters

I'm trying to wrap my mind around some of the mindsets here in Liberia. Life is looked at differently and what may seem completely non-understandable and outrageous makes perfect sense to people here. One of those issues is boundaries. For example, this morning I was sitting on the back porch at 6:30 a.m. eating breakfast and reading my Bible. I was really enjoying the quiet as the sun was coming up. The dog was wandering around the walled in backyard. I heard a rattle and suddenly some strange man was standing there. There I was, thinking I was in my private space and a random man was there. I was shocked speechless. He started talking about how the plants looked watered and good. I had wondered where those plants had come from and now I knew. I heard there was a gardener who had a side business helping people with plants for their houses. I had made it clear that we didn't want help with the plants because the yard is all torn-up right now for construction, but here he was wandering around my backyard in the early morning. I really don't think that to him there was any boundary he crossed when he opened the gate and walked in without permission. Living seems to be much more community oriented here.

Let me give you a little glimpse about where I live. We're on the Old Embassy Compound which basically means that this is a little American Community with housing and some recreational spaces. There's a big wall around the compound with barbed wire on top. To enter the compound you have to come in through one of the gates where you must show your badge to prove you are an embassy employee. So people can't wander in off the street onto the compound. It's a busy place during the day because there are several major construction projects going on as well as the normal maintenance, so there's always some local staff around.

But this next story is one I still haven't been able to rationalize or wrap my mind around. Because I'm at work all day, I'm not really aware of the business going on at the compound. We get in our 40 hours of work by 1:00 on Friday so we have the afternoon free. I had noticed a lot of people wandering around the side of our house on Friday afternoons, then I was home one day to take care of a few things and was really contentious of all the people lingering around my yard. On my way back to work, I noticed the door to the crawl space under our house was ajar. I cautiously took a peek inside and couldn't believe what I saw. A full break room had been set up, complete with a water cooler and microwave wired into the house's electrical. I was flabbergasted. There's no way to really explain the mental battle of how to grasp and feel comfortable with people hanging out under my living space. That night I noticed lights on under the house. Because I'm an absolute 'fraidy cat, I got a friend to check things out for me the next day. She claimed that there were no squatters living in there. I hope not! A few conversations with the right people at work got the situation quickly under control. By Monday afternoon the crawl space was completely empty and swept out. I've noticed that a table has crept back in but right now I'm turning a blind eye to the squatters. I'll give it a bit of time then we can check it out again.

The entrance to the crawl space

A water cooler for breaks. 

Some chairs to hangout in and look, a microwave that they wired into our house wiring.

An outlet - what a convenient place to charge a cell phone while working.

And why not dry out the clothes overnight?

A Wallet Full of Cash

Every time we move to a new country we have to get used to new money and new exchange rates. It's a bit of a challenge at first, but after awhile you sort of know that something priced 30NT in Taiwan is only $1.00. Liberia has simplified things and made them more complicated all at once.

Where to begin... One US dollar is equal to about 150 Liberian dollars. That's a crazy big multiplication problem every time I want to buy something! I exchanged a $20 bill and got the wad of cash above. I tried to shove it in my purse and not make a display out of counting the money. I then stopped at a table to buy a head of garlic and had to rummage through my money to find a 10. It was a lot to manage!

Here's where things get sort of crazy. Liberia uses two currencies: The US Dollar and the Liberian Dollar. I'm starting to get the hang of where I use what. If I go to an actual grocery store the prices will be in US dollars and I pay in US dollars. If I go to the street market the prices will be in Liberian dollars and I pay in Liberian dollars. But they don't use any coins here so if I go to the grocery store and my bill comes to $50.75 and I give them $60 US dollars then they will give me $8.00 US and 38 Taiwan dollars in change.

This brought up the question of where do the US dollars come from? Does Liberia buy them from the US Treasury? I asked around a bit and from what I gather from the people who should know is that they   rely on money being brought into the country. I came off the plane with a suitcase full of dollars so now they have come into circulation here. From the looks of the money, none ever get taken out of circulation. There's no way they could do that because there's nothing backing that money. So I use my overly worn, dirty, floppy dollars here that would never be used back home. I might begin looking at dates on the money and see what the oldest one I can find is.