Logistical Adventures

Thursday was the final day of delivering books to the six schools.  Anne, our logistics director, did a fabulous job with getting all the books to the six books.  Here's her report for the first day of delivery (Tuesday).

Liberia Now sent plywood on the container to be cut into planks for the shelving for the libraries.  We had hoped the plywood would be cut by today (Tuesday), but that had not happened.   When I asked about it again this morning I was told, “no problem, it only takes five minutes.”  I am learning everything is five minutes here.  That was at 8:00 am this morning.  They were still cutting wood at 3:00 pm.

First we had to get the generator and the saw from the community center over to the storage area (2 hours).  Then we had to find the person who knew how to use the saw (1/2 hour).  Now to figure out where to cut it because there really was not enough room in the storage area.  Liberians are extremely resourceful at getting things done – they pulled a desk out of somewhere, stuck it in the mud and laid the plywood sheets on top of it (1/2 hour).   Then there was a problem with the generator and everyone walking by had to offer to help (another hour).    For a while someone had to hold some button on the generator while the guy sawed.   I did finally figure out the five minutes part – that would be how long it took to cut one plank. …..   We had 80 planks to cut.

Finally we loaded up books for the first school and headed out from the storage area.  We could not drive all the way to the school.  But no problem – as soon as we pulled up as far as we could go, we were swarmed with at least 40 very excited children all in their nicely pressed school uniforms.  They started grabbing boxes, put them on their heads, and marched off down the path.  I followed.  We got all the boxes stacked in the room where the library would be.