I woke up sometime in the middle of the night to some loud alarming noise. I cast about in my head, trying to place it, until it started becoming more and more steady: it was African rain beating down on African zinc (tin) roofing. Once I identified it, I settled back to sleep more content than before; you can’t beat the sound of the ocean waves crashing here, but rain on the roof is a very close second.
Meeting with Robin and Suliman
On the recommendation of the Ministry of Agriculture, we met with some folks from another NGO doing work similar to what we might be interested in. Their work sounds just amazing; their whole goal is to build sustainability. They have facilitated farmer cooperatives forming; and those in turn creating relationships with banks for microfinancing and exporters for trading. If they were taken out of the equation tomorrow, those structures would still be in place – there would simply be the loss of further training. Good stuff.
Lunch with Mr. Sulunteh
Mr. Sulunteh is the superintendent of agriculture for Bong County, where we plan to visit on Friday. We had a lovely lunch at Gladys’ favorite restaurant, the MonaLiza, and had a great talk with him. We learned a bit more about the county, and he said our meeting will help him prepare for our visit – as long as his Chinese-made (which they really seem to detest here) Nissan is finished in the repair shop by then.
Meeting with Fellow
After lunch, we met with a guy named Fellow who’s setting up a vegetable farm. It was actually great to run across a program we were less-than-enthusiastic about as a means of contrasting our experience with the other great ones we’ve been running across. They plan to start up a farm, hire villagers to work on it, and pay them back from the profits! Modern feudalism, anyone? All of the other projects we’ve been discussing have been all about equipping farmers to run their own businesses, and maximize their own market and crop knowledge, and – ultimately – profitability. Far more betterer!
The highlight of that part of the day was coming back to the car that had been nicely roasting in the Liberian sunshine, to Abee fast asleep IN HIS SUIT COAT. That guy would never survive Wisconsin. Here's a picture of the car...
Meeting at the Bank
Mustafa asked Gladys if it would be possible to meet with someone from the banking system to discuss the topic. She (of course – she’s Gladys, after all!) “knows a guy”. Well, in this case a woman in the Risk Department who set up a meeting for this afternoon with a branch manager. So we found ourselves in the midst of a crazy market street, walking into a tall, marble building that would be indistinguishable from a US bank except that it was packed with lines and lines of people. We waited a while and were ushered into an upstairs board room where the branch managers and a couple of other dudes in suits discussed microfinance and other topics with us. Mustafa was blown away by the sophistication of the banking system compared to other post-conflict countries Shelter works in – definitely a good sign for future development work!
On the way out of the bank, Mustafa decided to get his shoes shined. As the guy was working away Mustafa asked if he could blacken mine too. (I was wearing strappy shoes). The guy bought into the joke right away and was like “no, I don’t have enough polish for that!”.
LOIC
Next stop: the Liberian OIC. It’s an NGO that Shelter will be partnering with for my project, and possibly for future ones. George (the one that was found) is the guy who runs it, and today we met up with him to visit their building. There’s a chance Shelter’s office space will be set up within the OIC grounds; it’d be nice to be in close proximity to them, and we may get a cheaper/more secure setup by doing this rather than setting up separate office space. LOIC does tons of job skills training - in the picture you can see the chairs the students have been working on.
Internet café stop
We wanted to get on the internet before our evening meeting. We stopped by the Y just as they were closing, so on the recommendation of a guy there, we found this great little place not far away. The internet was SLOW, and it was HOT, so we got a great sense of accomplishment out of that deal!
Meeting with Richelieu-Mitchell
We ended the evening at the Royal Hotel (woo hoo) meeting one of the assistant ministers that had been at the earlier meeting at the Department of Agriculture. He was amazingly gracious and spent probably three hours with us, telling us about his life, and discussing agriculture. It was such a privilege to hear stories of his experience with the war, and taking on everything else life has dealt him.
Oh – and there was a DEER there! Liberian deer are funny looking, aren’t they? This one must have been tamed…
And on another note: this continues to be crazy. Mustafa tried in vain to set up even one of these meetings ahead of time and nothing was a go. Having things work out to the extent that they have has certainly been unexpected – wait till you hear about tomorrow!!