Every morning here at the office begins with 'devotion': all participants stand in a
circle, they clap and sing to God. God is huge here, and I can
understand that. The government is corrupt, employers are hard to
find, the school system leaves lot to be desired. You have to be able
to rely on something.
In the West it is
sometimes easy to think everything is malleable, but here I realize
every day that the circumstances in which you find yourself and the
opportunities you get, are far outside the sphere of human influence.
I noticed this when I
helped Kids Club volunteer Augustine with his application to an
American scholarship for African youth. His greatest professional
achievement? That he finished high school. Nobody could pay for his
schooling, but by working as a security guard when his young age
actually made it illegal, he could earn the money himself. So much
perseverance and strength, and what is there to show for it on your
resumé? High school diploma. [In the West] we consider it, so to
speak, a failure if you have only held one board membership function
during your dual bachelor. How much we take for granted.
That does not mean
people are not responsible for the opportunities they seize, or the
opportunities they exploit. And that too is a problem in Liberia, as
I wrote earlier. Many young people do not go to school, rather
choosing to spend each day scraping together enough to buy their own
meals.
That does not apply to
everyone, of course. Jonathan, Bukky's live-in friend, proudly showed
me his certificates and commendations from high school, which he
keeps between the pages of a book. He was born in a village in Bong
County, where witchcraft was practised and where he saw devils
dancing until they were as big as houses. Now he lives in Monrovia
and is trying to establish an NGO with a friend.
He loves Liberia
because it's free, he says. You can go wherever you want. When I
point out that Bukky makes me keep a firm grip on my bag as
we drive through some parts of Monrovia with the doors locked, he
admits that there is a lot of crime. According to him, it is often
the people who fought in the war. As a child they had a gun pressed
into their hands, and they could get everything they desired. Now
they know of no other way to get money.
Jonathan really wants
to build a good life for himself. He makes sure that he does not hang
out with people of his age who just roam the streets. That attitude
is contagious, he says, much like smoking. Yet, he's nice to
everyone. 'Cause what if I need them in the future, I don't want
them to think badly of me." Ideally, if he could get the money,
he would go abroad to study, and return to Liberia with a good degree
to get a job.
Not everyone shares
that dream. The motivation of the pastry students sometimes leaves
something to be desired. Last Monday, exams were supposed to start,
but they had only practiced bread and pastry, no catering - rice
dishes, meat and salads, which just about make up half of the
curriculum. Because these products cannot be sold after production,
the students have to pay for the purchase of materials for these
practice sessions. They failed to do so. Bukky repeatedly pointed
this out to them. In vain.
When the students
arrive on Monday expecting to take the banana bread exam, what they
get instead is a sermon from Bukky. We pay for your training, and you
take it for granted. The next two days put your money together and
practice, if necessary, until late at night. If not, you can leave
now.
The students are very
impressed, and a few hours later, everyone is cutting into purchased
onions, cooking rice and marinating chicken. A very brave student
dares ask if they really can't have the day off on Thursday (a
public holiday, Thanksgiving) but Bukky holds firm. The result is
that the office starts to smell delicious and by 5 pm the red Jollof
Rice, Fried Rice and Fried Chicken are ready.
The soap students have
been motivated from the start, and bring their own materials for the individual tests.
Some travel far beyond Monrovia on weekends to sell the products they
made.
The past week I spent a lot of time photographing and filming
the soap making process at the request of Tonia, and I noticed that
they encounter other issues. The locally manufactured stamping
machine that puts "MF Soap” on the soap blocks, forces the
still-soft, rectangular-cut blocks out of shape. In addition, they
don't have good packaging materials. With a clean, straight cut and
attractive packaging, they could significantly increase the price of
their products. Now, you don't even pay fifty cents for a
block of soap or bag of washing powder, as I noticed when I too
decided to purchase some.
Luckily, it was easy to
motivate students from both vocational courses to attend the Women's
Club that meets once a month to discuss "women's issues".
This time the discussion centered around health. Stella Subah, a
midwife, talks about diabetes, high blood pressure and uterine cysts.
Around 25 women listen interestedly while Mrs. Subah tries, in as
simple terms as possible, to explain the diseases, how to prevent
them and how, if you have it, to live with it.
At question time, I
understand how important these meetings are. Everyone incessantly
asks questions, sometimes about things we can't imagine ever asking
questions about. If diabetes is transmitted sexually, for example, or
if it is possible for several women in one family to have cysts.
Afterwards Bukky encourages them to put that which they've learned into
practice. "That's the difference between the West and us: there,
if they learn something, they do something with it."
Inviting people to the
launch of Mineke Foundation Liberia is going well. We get positive
responses, and the resident representative of the United Nations
Population Fund (UNFPA) has helped us a lot, giving us many names and
contact information. He wants the best for Mineke Foundation; I
suspect this is partly thanks to Bukky. She makes a good impression
on people. Bukky is persistent; if she has to travel to a person's
office three times before she can speak to him or her, she does
that. She knows exactly who is out of the country and when is the
best time to call or email. So yes, people remember her.
Still, the launch on
December 8 remains exciting. I have seen the location, it's very
light and big enough for 150 people, but you never know who
ultimately really will be present. For example, we understood from
the UNFPA representative that the Minister of Gender, who had
promised to be a speaker, might be out of the country on December 8.
But it's not all work.
We spent the weekend at the beach, at Kendeja Beach Resort. It was
very nice but also very strange: neatly raked, no dirt or mud, and
there were more white people than I've seen together in recent weeks,
except perhaps in the expensive supermarket in Mamba Point. I took a
forbidden swim in the ocean, even though it really is much too wild
for that. I could not resist, but I remained in the surf and made
sure every wave pushed me towards the coast. I have never felt the
Atlantic Ocean this warm before.
A visit to the
hairdresser for Bukky's new fake hair was an adventure in itself -
almost no woman wears her hair natural, and the wildest creations are
glued, sewn and woven onto heads here.
Bukky and Ayo also took
me to visit a friend who lives in Dabwe Town. While enjoying a beer,
we talked about the crappy driver they had all employed for a month,
about General Butt Naked, one of the warlords who murdered people
during the war while naked, and who now tours the country as a
priest, and about Liberia. One of those in our company, Moses,
listens with interest to our story about Mineke Foundation, and then
offers his opinions.
Liberians are African
nor American. They do not know where they come from, and they do not
know where they are going. There is no direction, no purpose. There
is no Liberian identity. Therefore, our
vocational training can only be successful if attention is also paid
to the future, Moses stresses. Okay, you can make soap, you can bake
bread. But then what? The mindset has to change too, people need to
learn to invest in their future.
I partly recognize his
story, but also find him quite stern. Although this process is one of
trial and error, there really are people who want to work. And even
if there are only a few, if, thanks to MF they find the means to
realize their dreams, as far as I am concerned, we will have
succeeded.
Let's not forget what
Liberia has been through. As Mary puts it: "People here were
traumatized by the war, and then Ebola came on top of that." She
tells me how the whole team went from door to door to encourage
people to wash their hands and watch what they ate, but it was
difficult. "How do you tell a poor person who has just managed
to get some food, that he should not eat the meat on his plate?"
Bukky tells of how
afraid she sometimes was for Daniel, who is very social and gets
picked up and hugged by everyone. She tells me about how Dabwe Wiah
had to walk from Waterside Market to Dabwe Town because he was
sweating and no taxi dared take him because they were afraid he might
be infected. And about a message that appeared on Facebook as a joke,
that you could cure Ebola by eating a cup of salt every night at 1
am. It was taken very seriously, and several people died from a salt
surplus. They were Nigerians who had not even been near Ebola
patients.
The fear of Ebola has
not completely dissipated, as you'll notice when you walk into a
business or organization. You always have to wash your hands, and
often your temperature is taken by a guard. Mine too. Because, as one
of them once muttered, "It's the white people that are fixing
it."
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