Chapter 4: Save the Children and AME Day 2

Thursday and Friday
July 4 & 5, 2019

Chapter 4: Save the Children and AME Day 2

As I write this I am sitting in “my” desk at the Save the Children, Liberia chapter offices. Jay was kind enough to set me up in little side office adjacent to his office. I have become such a fixture around these halls that about an hour ago a guest wandered into office for a meeting, saw me, walked over, and let know she was here for her meeting. I understand. At a glance, given the way my little glass-walled office is situated near his “Country Manger”-marked door, I look like his secretary.

I have a good day and a half to cover, so let’s get started. This chapter begins yesterday morning, Thursday, at the RLJ. Unlike Wednesday’s very early start, I got the chance to sleep in a bit. Jay would not pick me up until the early afternoon. Again, I slept well. I’ve mastered the fan an A/C controls in my room so the room sleep-temperature is now to my liking. The water in the room is running (yay!), the WiFi not so much (boo!). The morning weather was breezy, light rain, clouds coming in. Quite pleasant, actually. Thus, much of my morning was spent outside, beginning with a swim in the pool. Or, I should say, pools. There are two pools running down the middle of the hotel grounds. They lie right next to one another, end to end. They are lined with black tile and feature white tile striping down the middle, running the length of the pool. The water smells and tastes fresh. No chlorine, no salt. Seeing that there was no lighting accompanying the rain, I had no qualms taking a few laps.

Back in my room, dried off, I dressed and prepared for the day. Much of the work to be done was creating the presentation for our class’s study tech presentation over the next few weeks. I wrote an outline then tailor made a presentation to match. I used bits of the presentation from previous visits to fill in spots and I made liberal use of the Heron Study Book to get precise definitions and concepts. That said, I didn’t get as much of the presentation done as I hoped because of the intermittent Wifi. Google Drive does work offline (great feature), but I couldn’t add illustrations or images from the web.

A touch frustrated by the uncooperative technology, I decided to take a walk in the drizzly rain. By the time I made my way to the pavilion next to the pools, my phone came to life with numerous pings, letting me know that many messages had arrived. I was reconnected! After catching up on texts and WhatsApp messages I retrieved my laptop and set up shop on one of the tables under the thatch roof, near the pool. For the next hour or so I got more of the presentation done on the slow but working WiFi. During those same sixty minutes I had to move closer to the middle of the building to get away from rain that was being driven under the pavilion by gusts of wind. Knowing Jay would arrive soon, I closed up my laptop and ordered a steak sub for lunch. I also ordered my last Coke from the RLJ. Three dollars per can was the motivation for this decision. The next decision was to put on my to-do list a stop at a market to buy some water, drinks, juice.

For much of the afternoon, I busily worked on the presentation in my “office” at Save the Children. Perhaps “busily” is an overstatement. The WiFi was not much better in the office so it’d be better to say I worked in spurts of productivity and lags. During one of the periods of speedy connectivity I received and sent out messages from my phone. One message of interest was from the President of ABLE, Rubina, with the intriguing come on, “I was thinking of sending you to Ghana…. :)” My reply: “Let’s talk!” Her prompt response of wanting to talk to me in an hour, gave me the distinct impression that she was thinking “Now!” when I was thinking “Some day...” We haven’t spoken yet so I have no idea what she is needing help with. Stay tuned. Ghana is two small countries east of Liberia.

In the evening, as the sun was setting, Jay and I left the office and headed for dinner. We stopped for gas along the way. The best part of this pit stop was watching a wild chicken chase a bug (or lizard?) around the parking lot. Once again we dined at The Hub. Upon arrival I discovered Xaveria was there waiting to dine with us. Except for the smell of hookahs, this was another pleasant dining experience at The Hub. There were no hookah smokers present, but there was a large number of hookahs on a nearby counter lined up and ready to go. I don’t remember the name of my meal but it was tasty: cheesy kabob flatbread, topped with tomatoes, and mayo. Conveniently, connected to The Hub is the ERA market. After I was done eating I set off alone to shop at the market.

My goal was to buy bottles of spring water. Like with every other Liberian experience, my American shopping experience didn’t fully prepare me for this excursion. This is not to say it was drastically different. I shopped at a similar store last time I was here, not alone however. What I enjoyed the most was checking out all the items on the shelves, reading their labels, seeing countries of origin, deciphering different languages on packages. A few times I came across a familiar item in a familiar package — Bic razors — and I felt a tiny thrill of recognition. But pretty much every other package was in unfamiliar colors, with a peculiar brand name, holding unexpected items. My happiest find was the juice section where I got to pick from a variety of 100% juice blends. Of course, I found spring water and got a bunch. I also picked up two cans of Royal Club Bitter Lemon drinks. (LouElla and Tim will very fondly remember this fizzy, lemony delight.) Checkout and payment was standard with the exception of the overbearing Asian woman and man (Husband? Store owners?) constantly prowling and scanning the registers and the employees running them. I assume they were on the prowl for theft or employees pocketing cash or...

The service that came with the purchasing experience was complete. One young man was there to guide me to a register and empty the contents of my cart on the belt. Of course there was the register operator herself. Another was there to bag my items and carry everything out of the store. And, to add to the personal touch, the parking lot is sprinkled with men assigned to security detail. These guys, stand by vehicles, walk you to your doors, help you load things, and help you back out of your spot and drive off safely. All told there were five different employees who made sure my trip from register to car was complete. Compare this to Walmart where you get one indifferent, careless check out person if you’re lucky. Or if you’re feeling particularly impersonal, you can go through Walmart’s self check-out and not speak to a single soul your entire trip. Liberia’s ERA market does it right.

Back at RLJ for the night, I found to my delight the Wifi in the room up and running at a pretty good speed. This gave me the chance to complete the creation of the fifty-seven slide presentation for the next day’s class at AME. Once that was done, it was time to turn in and prepare for an early Friday morning start. 6:30 a.m. pick up!

Friday! Slept pretty well. Showered. The highlight of my morning preparation was my first drink of the day. I hit the jackpot with the 100% juice fruit punch from ERA market. A full glass was a great way to power my way out the door and into Jay’s truck at 6:40 a.m. sharp.
Prior to our arrival at AME we stopped at Kaldi’s Koffee for tea. Didn’t spill it this time! All of this drive time and tea time has given me a chance to further appreciate Jay’s gift as a raconteur and rhetorician. (I used a thesaurus to get the second adjective just right.) Whether he’s talking about human rights, women in West Africa, the bible, or religion, he does so with well-crafted commentary backed by facts, figures, and source citations. And always does so with passion.

We arrived to AME classroom number 056 with minutes to spare. The students were assembled, clad in their orange AME Mongoose Kingdom Vacation Bridge shirts. We collected their completed homework assignments, the question they were to answer: Is life fair? (Turns out, the results are about 50/50. With half of the students making the case that life is fair, while

the other half said no. I read, commented on, and wrote a follow up question on every essay. Some were quite profound. A few were written in the most beautiful penmanship. All were worth reading.) While I set up the laptop and projector, Jay warmed up the class with a game. Once they were settled in, Jay spoke to them. Meanwhile, I was beginning to experience a presenter’s worst nightmare, the projector not connecting to the laptop! The cord linking the two was faulty. It was well worn, but since it was already attached to the projector I assumed it would work just fine. No luck.

Jay did a great job keeping the class moving forward. We passed out a survey to the students which they filled out. I created the survey to find out more about who they were and what their purpose for college was. (Sample questions: Why is education important to you? How do you want to improve Liberia and the world?) Then Jay jumped into a lecture on responsibility based on a quote by Einstein. Meanwhile, our trusty friend Calvin, who I’ve been friends with since my 2016 trip, was there on the phone trying to round up a new HDMI

cable. About an hour in, someone showed up with a newer HDMI cable, and after a few minutes of fiddling and adjusting, the presentation hit the white board and it was my turn to roll. Jay exited, I entered.

I went over the definitions of “study” and “student”, the purpose of study and learning, what “applied” and “scholastics” mean, the correct and incorrect attitude of a student, what a barrier is and what a study barrier is, that there are only three barriers to study, and the first barrier is… This was where the class ended. 11:00 a.m. Cliffhanger! We’re back next Monday morning at 9:00 a.m. sharp. Monday was to be a national holiday for elections, but this was postponed due to inadequate funding (Africa!). So come Monday, class is in session.

Calvin drove me back to Jay’s office where I have been for the rest of the afternoon. It is now 5:33 p.m. Liberia time. We will probably stay at the office until 6:30 when the power gets turned off. Until then I will get this posted to the diary and add some pictures.

Until next time...