Life in Liberia

Lots has been happening over the past few weeks, though I can't say any of it has led to much excitement in my life. Liberia held an International Women's Colloquium two weekends ago (March 6-8). All sorts of important women (and a few men) came to town to talk about women, development, and many more issues. It seemed very interesting and many people I know were involved in planning or presenting at the Colloquium, but it was also kind of strange. Some of the people who came brought in more people and security than one could imagine. One person even had motorcycles shipped down for his/her motorcade. Let's talk about how expensive it is to ship to Liberia. If you're visiting for a colloquium encouraging women's empowerment and their development, especially in third world countries, why not bring that money and flush it into their economies? Anyway, the colloquium was open to the public at the beginning of the week, but as I have to work on weekdays, I could not attend. The planning was also sub-par from what I heard. The government of Liberia and all the ministries had been planning the event for over a year. They were planning to send the programs to be printed in Ghana, but did not have them finished in time so they had to be printed in Liberia...the night before the colloquium began. This was a huge event with many important people including heads-of-state and women who have been part of the global economy for years and they did not have the security badges completed as of the night before the event. Some of the badges did not have people's names on them, so really anyone could have used them to get in to the event. It was held at the stadium here, with booths set up around the outside and conferences, etc., being held inside. Even though planning wasn't a smooth as hoped for (I don't want to say they didn't plan, because they did, it just seems not everything was taken care of as well as it should have been), everyone seems to think the colloquium went well and was a success. I will admit, however, that I wish it was more geared toward locals. It seemed so tuned in for women from foreign countries, but the local women there were generally rich or high class Liberians with a bit of power and than local women who came with NGOs showing off their projects. I suppose any publicity is good, but still…what about the everyday woman who’s working hard and not receiving support from NGOs or the government (ha!)? That’s just my opinion. Like I said, I wasn’t involved in it at all, so perhaps this aim did exist and I just don’t know about it. Any little thing helps, right?

The colloquium (along with a few other things) did bring an added perk for me, though. We had Friday, March 6, off from school unexpectedly. As Monrovia doesn't have too many roads, there was a fear that the traffic from everyone arriving for the colloquium would make the drive to and from school too difficult for many of our students' families. On top of that, Intercon, the company who does the security for the school, was in a dispute with the employees and the employees were on strike. From what I understand, someone leaked Intercon's contract with the UN. The employees then found out how much the UN was paying for security and how much of that money was actually getting to them. Needless to say, it wasn’t nearly as much money as was going into the company. Because of that, the workers went on strike for better pay. While some of our security was still showing up, some arrived without uniforms and some didn't seem to arrive at all. I can't say I really blame them as I'm sure the discrepancy between the two amounts of money was quite large. LNP (Liberian National Police) were pulling double duty for us at the school in terms of security. With the colloquium, though, LNP was needed in full force on Friday, so we may not have had our normal security standards either. These two things combined made for an impromptu no school day. Hey, who needs snow days when you can have security strike/colloquium traffic days? Only in Liberia perhaps...but enjoyed nonetheless.

After the three day weekend, Wednesday the 11th was a Liberian holiday so we had that day off as well. It was Decoration Day, a day when Liberians go to the graves of their loved ones who have passed on and they decorate the headstones--they re-paint them, lay wreaths... Here, graves are generally above ground and large concrete boxes. I was talking to a Liberian who said they are still 6 feet deep, but that they rise a few feet out of the ground as well and that the caskets are just lowered into them. I'm not exactly sure why they bury their dead in stone vaults rather than just lowering the casket into the ground and having a headstone, but this is the way it's done. Decoration day is an important holiday to Liberians. I think it must be nice to set a day aside to remember people who were important to our lives and take a bit of time to respect their memory. I think we’re so caught up in the rest of life that half of us can’t even remember the anniversaries of our loved ones deaths, so I fully support this holiday.

Okay, I’m off for now as I’ve been trying to post this for days now and just want to get something up. Stayed tuned for tanks that sound like trains and a rice harvesting spring break!