Monrovia, Tuesday night, April 9, 2013
After 30 or so hours in the air and in airports I made it to Liberia and to my hotel and sort of collapsed into bed. Fighting a nagging cough and too much sitting I was happy to recline onto a bed and get some sleep. The hotel has A/C so sleeping was quite pleasant, and it even has a decent shower. Not sure what happened to the shower door but since it came off its trolley in the midst of my shower, the management felt I should move to another room in the morning. All hotel rooms have flat screen TVs, and it is quite interesting to watch English Aljazeera news and the other channels that show US TV programs/movies with Arabic subtitles and commercials in Arabic.
All my connections went well with a wonderful surprise on the last leg of the flight from Brussels to Liberia. Sitting in front of me was a former student of mine from St Mary’s High School in Sanniquellie. I kept looking at her thinking how familiar she looked so I finally asked her where she was from in Liberia, and she said Nimba, and I asked her where she attended school only to find out that she was one of the few girls in her class. For those of you who are “old” Sanniquellie friends her name is Elena and she is 60 years old! She remembers many of us old PCVs.
Driving in from the airport takes about an hour and half and what a surprise to see a few stoplights now on Tubman Blvd! They are solar run and have arrows for straight ahead or for a much-needed left turn. Tubman Blvd is always full of cars now and is especially bad in the morning coming into town and in the late afternoon going out. This congestion rivals any big city commuter time. But according to the taxi driver the lights are helping. As progressive as these traffic lights sound there seems to be a lack of planning for a turn lane and the length of the yellow light. Not sure how observed motorcyclist observe the red light though as these drivers seem to drive on anyway. For those of you who never lived in Liberia there was only one stoplight in the country and that stopped working years and years ago and so the area where “the” one red light was is called Redlight (not the same connotation that one might think). At this juncture there is nearly always a huge logjam of vehicles because it has turned into a huge unorganized market. People are selling every kind of thing everywhere, near the road. Drivers crawl through this area to travel up country. This is the road to travel upcountry so everyone gets to experience this area…
However a bigger risk I believe around cars is just being a passenger in a vehicle. This is probably the scariest thing one does here so anything to improve driving conditions should be welcome. The driver who drove for us in 2011 I have hired to help me out a couple days. When he arrived he told me that he does not have a car now, but his brother does and so they both came to drive me about on my errands. It was an old vehicle that started up by rubbing two wires together while the trunk bounced up and down when we were off the coal tar (pavement). Sort of sounded like drums beating… There are still way too many small motorcycles with 2, 3 or 4 persons sitting behind the driver skirting about and driving in and out of lanes, down the center of the main roads and most of the drivers without helmets. Accidents on these vehicles happen all the time and the ER in hospitals take motorcycle accidents last if there is a choice of patients. The drivers don’t seem to follow any of the rules that do exist nor do they have to pass a driving test.
Monrovia continues to expand and rise. There are many new buildings in various stages of construction throughout the city and a tremendous number of people walking about, selling things and going places. It is a noisy, congested city and expanding out towards the airport and north to Paynesville. While in the outskirts of Monrovia I had the opportunity to visit a school run by a group of 7 Liberians who had emigrated home to Liberia from the US. The school is now K-11 grades with visions of expansion. I had a tour of the school and was pleased to see small class sizes and appropriate furniture in the Kindergarten classroom (see photo). This is a private school so class size is not typical of what the teachers I usually work with face every day. It is hopeful that some schools understand class size is important!
Wednesday I will meet to prepare with 4 of the 6 teachers we have trained and who are coming to the conference. Two of them will actually participate with me with the presentation/workshop scheduled for Friday afternoon. Evidently the buzz around the Ministry of Education is that this conference is the place to be this week. Is it to miss work, get a free lunch or support early childhood education? Do hope ECE gets some good press and attention that it deserves and that we are on a path to assist and get trained teachers in all schools!!
It has been fun to connect and share meals with some old friends. The passion of the cell phone is alive and active here and many even have two that they carry around. This sure makes get a hold of people and meeting so much easier and so does staying at this comfortable hotel (Bella Casa) in Monrovia with A/C…more soon.