Chapter 2: A Day in Monrovia, A Day with Jay

Tuesday
July 2, 2019

A Day in Monrovia, A Day with Jay

Slept very well. Adjusted nicely to West African time, slept from midnight to 7:00ish. Room 402 at the RLJ was good — except the water pressure got less and less as time went by. By the time I left for the day it had stopped running altogether. And there seemed to be a tiny mosquito or two flitting about my room. Mosquitos here are quite small and leave very minor

itches. They also are the carriers of yellow fever, so shouldn’t be trifled with. These flying annoyances reminded me I needed to take my daily dose of my anti-malarial medicine doxycycline. But I used the last of my bottled water to brush my teeth. This brought me to the conundrum that to swallow the doxycycline and avoid yellow fever I would need to use the last trickle of water from the sink. But tap water is not to be drunk here for it gives westerners diarrhea. So I had to decide, did I want yellow fever or diarrhea?

After I woke up, I finished off my diary entry, sent it out, and prepared for the day, which started with Jay picking me up around 11:00 and off we went.

Jay has a very different life compared to when I last was here in May of 2018. He was recently named the country manager for Liberia for the Save the Children foundation, a hundred-year old, global non-profit that operates out of London. He is in charge of a multi-million dollar budget that pays hundreds of staff to carry out dozens of humanitarian projects scattered around Liberia. Currently their mission is feeding the country’s schoolchildren. This massive non-profit carries out projects like these all over the world. The Liberian office is headquartered in a four story office building with the most Liberian of addresses: “Opposite Fish Market, Tubman Boulevard, Sinkor”.

Jay’s office is quite nice: big desk, air-conditioning, service staff, nice views of the street below and the Atlantic Ocean about half-mile in the distance. Sitting on his highest bookshelf are my two favorite photos. The first, he and Tim in tuxedos smiling proudly, Tim just having won his Freedom Award medal. The second, the Delphian graduating class of 2017, all thirty-one students in cap and gown (my son Xane included), and there sits Jay the commencement speaker right in the middle of them all, Africa shirt stands out brightly. Jay decorated the walls of his office with colorful, abstract paintings that depict African women at work. They were painted by a local artist. Beautiful.

I learned all about his office and the foundation because it was where we spent a good chunk of the day today. Jay worked away at his desk and computer as I familiarized myself with the camera I brought for the trip. Appropriately, Jay’s office may now be the most photographed in all of Monrovia. (And I now have a complete collection of selfies, with all sorts of different effects and poses — and no duckfaces.)

We dined for lunch at a place called The Hub, which I must say was a great restaurant. Modern look and feel, full menu, good staff, nice location. We drank Jay’s favorite drink, minty lemonade and ate tasty dishes. Jay had a fish platter, I had a quinoa and avocado salad. The food was good, the drink was EXCELLENT. It was a lunch as good as I’ve ever had

anywhere. The bill came to $63.03 American or $12,227.82 Liberian. A lovely lady named Paula met us there; it was a lunch meeting for Jay. She works at the airport and Jay is trying to hire her for Save the Children. Our waitress was a young-looking lady, so young that Jay asked her age. She looked 16ish but she was in her young 20s. We found out she works four days a week from 6:00 - 3:00 and earns $60 American per month.

Later in the afternoon, we took an excursion to meet with Jay’s good friend and mentor, the international human rights lawyer Kofi Woods. For much of this meeting, I perused articles and reports on the top human rights issues of West Africa while the two of them spoke. Even if I wanted to track with their conversations I couldn’t have done so for very long because they spoke in the ever-familiar but hard to discern Liberian dialect of English which sometimes sounds like English but most of time flies right by me without registering.

At the end of Jay’s work day, but before we left his office, Jay pulled up music videos of classic American singers of all types - Kenny Rogers, Stevie Wonder, Dionne Warwick — and sat there in his office and sang along out loud with every song word for word. It was fun!

Jay’s fiance Xaviera joined us for the drive from work to home. The trip included a stop at the bank and the ATM so they could get cash. But this is not your typical bank or your typical ATM. This is a Liberian bank and with it comes a story. When we arrived there were three guards outside of the entrance to the foyer in which the ATM sat. They motioned to Jay that the ATM had no money and was closed. Xaviera, who happens to work at the bank, stepped out of the truck and into the bank’s office to see what she could do. Not much later Xaviera reappeared with a finely dressed man and two of the security guards. In

the finely-dressed man’s hands was a rolled up plastic shopping bag. Jay said this gentleman was the chairman of the board of the bank and the bag he was carrying was full of cash. This group of four walked out of the office door and into the ATM foyer door. The door shut behind them and a few minutes later Xaviera emerged with cash in hand. She was followed a minute later by the chairman of board, who had his own handful of cash in hand. Jay then made his way in to get his.

My day ended back at the RLJ. Before settling in for the night I walked to the beach for some stylized photos. This was a quick trip as I wanted to avoid having to talk to the wandering

jewelry salesman who roams the beach looking for tourists to sell his wares to. The hotel seems to discourage such sellers so they lie in wait a distance down the beach, keeping an eye out for customers. When I reached the beach I saw him about 100 feet north. He saw me, jumped to his feet and headed my way, piles of necklaces and bracelets wrapped around his shoulders and arms. I knew from previous experience that to express any interest in their goods meant they would aggressively try to sell me. So the race was on. Could I get enough photos taken of the pounding surf at sundown before he made it to me? Let’s just say it was a close call.

I also took a quick swim in the hotel pool. Refreshing, especially after a day with no water in my room. I didn’t want to spend too long in the pool as the sun was quickly falling and the dark night was near. And, again based on past experience, I didn’t want to have to possibly deal with the infamous lady of the night who roams the hotel grounds at night. It was here, poolside one night in 2016, that my son Xane was approached by such a woman as he spoke to his girlfriend on the phone. That was the last time either of us spent time around the pool at night.

I made it back to my room, ordered chicken wings, and sat down to write day two of my diary only to find the internet not working. But the water was on! I guess I traded working water for nonworking internet. Tomorrow, July 3, we begin our delivery at AME University. We leave for the city at 6:15 am.

More photos from today...