The MISSION begins

About Liberia, West Africa, my experience: There is no way to show words or pictures what the 14 year Civil War did to this country. There is no way to explain the poverty, the filth, the utter devastation left on the people and yet, also to explain the almost tangible hope they seem to have. That being said, of course I am going to attempt: For one, there is no trash service. Trash lines the road, floods from the house and, due to the rainy season, literally moves across the street in rivers of iron- colored goo. The smell while driving is of pure petrol and putrid air and cycles in and out through our windows as we drive over the giant pot holes and through the seas of people walking to and fro with bundles on their heads. The smell of people permeates the markets and lines the food with an almost tastable BO. It is like everything is crowded into one space, lining the streets with raw food and dirty umbrellas, people and their merchandise and at the same time, there is nothing really worth much, nothing Yet, there is something that is so alive and wonderful about the whole scenario. Commerce is alive, the people are beautiful and the hope for a better future lives in their minds, I feels as if there is so much to do and it all needs to be done now. When I think about what is meant for me in my life, having a cause like this, wherein I know I can make a difference even though small, is important. The ladies I am working with are amazing people. I know they feel the same way.

We spent the first day visiting the schools of Lower, Virginia, Liberia. I am always reminded that our students in the US, who we consider at poverty level are guaranteed the right to go to school. They all get free lunch, and they all are provided electricity in their schools, services for special needs, and supplies. It is such a farce to say that our children are in extreme poverty. Poverty yes, extreme, no. Here, there is real, definable, poverty: Hope and song, and povery. But, I digress So, the schools: We saw 6 schools (the 7th will occur later in the trip) wherein the teachers who will spend 2 weeks at a workshop learning about service learning, KWLA, and other best practices, lesson planning and assessment, particularly ongoing assessment, they are very good at assessing with TESTS (capital TEST), will originate from. We, Kristy, JooYoung and I have met many times with Kathy to work through our plans. Even now, before we have actually started, I know there will be revisions to our ideas and curriculums. Simple things such as, while Liberians speak English, they are difficult to understand being that they drop the final sounds and of course have an accent. That being said, they sound as if they speak so fast! So, if that is true for them, it most certainly is true of our American accent, it will be problematic. My Texas drawl and fast speech will be hard for them. But, we will struggle together and learn a lot. I love language! And so far, these people as well! Their schools are all similar concrete buildings with tin roofs, humid, no electricity, large classes in a room the size of my living room and one teacher, one blackboard and chalk. There is a well close by where kids or others pump the water when needed. There are no bathrooms, although there is a room that has a toliet basin where they go and then wash it out with a bucket. God forbid if you have the classroom with an adjoining wall. The chalkboard is a black board that doesnt really erase and a box of very humid, crumbly chalk for the year. The desks are made of wood, most are rickety and scary for someone my size to sit on. A couple of the schools have benches. It is all very "Little House on the Prairie" without any of the charm. There are no posters, no tablet paper, little supplies and nothing to make a teacher's job easy. I do so hope our strategies, planned with little supplies needed, will be usable for them! When we arrived at Brefo, one of the schools, there were teachers there (one walking with a cane in hand in case punishment was needed?) and children.

"Gather the little children" kept running through my head as plentiful kiddies were around and within minutes I was surrounded, showing them my cell phone camera and laughing at my dog videos along side their white smiles and interested faces. That would be my learning today: Children gather to listen and learn, no matter where in the world they are. They long for affection, time,value and literacy. They will gather in His name and be glorified. Today, I sat among angels in dirty clothes with runny noses and little in their tummies and yet, felt hopeful. There is work for me here. I can feel it. We all feel it, I think.

Books or Training

The age-old question, “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” comes to mind when planning this trip to Liberia.  My question, however, is “What is more important, books or training?” On my first trip back to Liberia in 2009 I visited several schools in the Lower Virginia area.  What struck me first and most was the lack of books.  There were no books in the schools.  I asked and the response was always that there were very few books in the country.  Even at the college level, it was difficult to get a textbook for any course.  No wonder literacy rates were so low.

How can students learn how to read if they have nothing to read?  So I had a book drive and collected 3,000 books for a library.  The school district I work at donated thousands of reading and literature textbooks.  In 2010 we set up two school libraries and gave basic training in library science and reading instruction.  In 2011 we set up another 5 school libraries and gave even more in depth training.  This year we are sending more books and setting up one more library.

With each trip, however, I realize that the real need is for teacher training.  If you have never had books in your life – not in school or at home – and you have never had a book to use to teach your students, then the concept of using books is a very foreign concept indeed.  Liberian teachers’ lives are full.  They don’t have time set aside for reading.  They are used to teaching a certain way and to add more instruction to their full day is difficult.  A mindset shift needs to occur.  A shift from teacher centered instruction to learner centered instruction needs to occur in order for the books to be used and literacy rates to improve.  Just training reading teachers is not going to bring about this change.  The change needs to happen from the top all the way through the faculty at each school. 

This is our goal this year.  The schools have the books.  Now they need training.  This year we have a team of eight educators going to Liberia to teach the Liberian educators how to turn their schools around and become reading communities.  We have sessions on Professionalism, Ethics, Administration Teaming, Wetlands and Service Projects, Guided Reading and Critical Thinking.  Which is more important? Books or training?  They are both equally important. Without books a person cannot become fully literate, but without training the books just sit on shelves and never get used.

New Year New Travels

Spending a year in Liberia as a teenager changed my outlook on life.  In 2009 I returned to Liberia to find a country decimated by a 14 year civil war.  Being an educator, I wanted to visit schools to see what the needs were.  The classrooms had nothing but walls and old dusty blackboards.  There were no books or other learning materials.

I began by asking schools in the U.S. to hold book drives.  In 2010 we returned to set up two school libraries.  In 2011 we set up another five school libraries and one community library.  Although we conducted teacher and librarian training, we realized that books weren’t the only need these schools had.  Fourteen years of civil war had left the pool of teachers undereducated and in great need of teacher training. 

This year we hope to return with a larger group of U.S. teachers to hold a four day educator conference with sessions in ethics, critical thinking, reading, literature, science, leadership and library science.  The cost for one person to travel to Liberia from the U.S. is about $3500. We have teachers willing to give of their time and expertise, but the price is too steep for someone on a teacher’s salary.  When people donate to a worthy cause, the want to see tangible results, like libraries, but without training, a person who has never read a book will not know the first thing about running a library.  Without training, a teacher will not know how to teach reading to her students using books.  The results of quality education are only tangible in indirect ways, like a student’s understanding of difficult concepts or a productive, employable adult 10 years in the future.  Liberia is slowly building their nation up, but without quality education their efforts will have minimal results.

A donation to Liberia Now Education will bring much needed training to teachers who are hungry for content and teaching strategies.  Liberian teachers care deeply about their students and their community, but struggle with a small knowledge base due to a lack of training resources.  It will help cover the costs of travel and lodging for U.S. teachers who cannot afford the entire cost of the trip.  If you would like to donate to make a difference in an entire community, please visit the Liberia Now website and donate online or send a check to the address below.  Please specifically note that your donation is for the education team.

Liberia Now

P.O. Box 781767
San Antonio, Texas, 78278

Liberia Now is a 501 (3)c organization and all donations are tax deductible.

Melanie and Kathy can speak to any group.

Last Two Days in Liberia

We spent Friday and Saturday in meetings and doing some sightseeing.  Here are some pictures of the sights.

The new bridge will be finished in November.  This will help clear up some of the traffic on the old bridge.  It takes about 45 minutes to travel about 11 miles because the traffic is so congested.

Trash is a problem, although it gets better each time we come.  We saw some goats eating the biodegradable parts of the roadside trash.

 The economy is up but mostly on a small scale.  There are lots of small vendors in the market places with everyone buying and selling.

 Centerpoint is a library in downtown Monrovia.  We shipped some books over on our container in April.  Minner (in the center) is their librarian.  She came to our training on Monday and Tuesday to learn about cataoguing books.

                                                                                                                            Of course we had to visit the beach and it was beautiful.

  We leave on Sunday for our long flight.  Liberia will be missed but we are excited to get back home.

Adult Literacy Celebration

This evening the adult literacy classes held a celebration for their progress this year.   Only 60% of the adult population in Liberia is literate.  This past year Liberia Now started an adult literacy program hiring two teachers who held classes three times a week.  These classes were one of our most successful programs. Linda and Jerry surpassed all expections and did a wonderful job of teaching adults to read.  All of the students who finished the program were reading by the end of this year.  One student, Marie, didn't even know the alphabet at last September.  Tonight she read a speech that she wrote.  All of the students are amazing as they all worked very hard to learn while also working and taking care of their families. 



Marie reading the speech she wrote.

Final Visits to the Libraries

Today we had the final visit to the libraries to deliver the rest of the supplies and to see if the librarian had any questions before we left.  Each library has a sponsor school in the U.S. that donated most of their books.  We visited Pamela Kay High School yesterday and they are temporarily using boxes of notebooks to hold the shelves up before they build more permanent shelves.  Today we first visited Tegeste School and they were ready with their shelves.  Then we moved to Saytumah and they were also ready.  After that we went to see the new school that Liberia Now is helping to build.  The foundation is laid and the walls are up. After that we went to Massaquoi village school and helped them organize their library.  We visited their classroom and saw their community garden project.  We traveled back to Bushrod Island and went to Mark S. Richards High School and Brefo School.   Both of these schools are in the slums of the city.  It is really humbling to see how such poverty exists in the world today at the same time that many people live in a world of wealth.

Pamela Kay High School - The Wonder Lair Library

Tegeste School - The Reading Castle

Massaquoi Village School

Saytumah School - The Reading Den

 

Richards High School - The Reading and Beyond Library

Brefo Academy - The Reading Tree

Liberia Now Librarian Association

Today we finished up librarian training.  We taught them the Dewey Decimal System and how to have a check out system.  Liberia has very few libraries and most of those are not really libraries but rather reading rooms.  The people think that books are too valuable, so they won't let the books be checked out and taken home.  Our program requires that a school has a check out system, but training them to think differently about books is very difficult because of this mindset.  Many of our new librarians have never read an entire book on their own.  We also taught them how to scan documents and send reports on a computer.  Only three of the five the librarians had ever used a computer.  They are all very excited about their new job and have decided to start a librarian association and have named it the Liberia Now Librarian Association and will meet four times during the next school year.  They also decided that they would all help each other set up their new libraries next week.

Adult Literacy Classes

One of Liberia Now's projects is adult literacy classes.  We went to watch the class on Monday night.  The students are 12 women from ages 22 to 48.  They have children and go to market to sell everyday and then three evenings out of the week they travel to go to reading class.  Half of them did not even know their ABC's when they started the class last September.  They can all read now!  They all had their latest assignment to read to me.  They are my heroes!

Linda (the teacher) and Anne

Readers Marie and Helena

Church in Liberia

On Sunday we went to an African church.  It was too much fun.  They sang and danced and sang and danced.  Melanie got into the action and danced around with everyone.

Missing Chart Tablets!

Friday we trained the kindergarten teachers in literacy activities using big books, small readers, and shared writing.  All the books had been delivered, but we were missing the abc charts and the large writing tablets for shared writing.  Oh no! Where were they delivered?  Of course only 2 people on our entire team have cell phones and Melanie and I are not one of those two.  At lunch we found out that it was probably delivered by mistake the day before to either Pamela Kay High School or to Rev. Koffa School.  Melanie went back to teaching and working hard, while I began a journey to the two schools in search of writing tablets.  First I went to Pamela Kay School, which was close to where we were, but no luck.  Then we went through thick and heavy traffic and Duala Market to Koffa.  Success!  We drove back with only 30 minutes to spare and the teachers learned how to write a class story.

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.

African Kindergarten and Lunar Eclipse

Astronomy Night was an absolute success! The San Antonio Astronomy Association donated 10 telescopes. We invited the science teachers from the schools we are working with and trained them on how to use the telescopes. Then we waited for it to get dark. It's the rainy season in Liberia, but it was mostly clear...except for where the full moon was. There was an enormous cloud right in front of the moon. We knew it was going to be a full moon and everyone waited with great anticipation. While waiting all the teachers were busy finding stars. Finally the moon rose above the clouds and it was a full lunar eclipse! Imagine looking at the moon through a telescope for the first time in your life and seeing a rare central lunar eclipse. Everyone was excited and did not want to end the event.

Today Melanie taught an hour of kindergarten.  We were observing a kinder class and the teacher asked her to teach a little.  Melanie sang songs, told stories and had a phonics lesson. She had a great time and the kids had fun too.  I taught a writing lesson to 46 high school students.  It was quite an experience and at times it felt more like crowd control.  The teachers observing the lesson had many questions and are wanting to form a cohort to share their lessons and strategies.

Getting to Work

Today we started training with the principals of the six schools.  Little did we know that there would be welcoming celebration for us.  This included singing, prayer and a wealth of gratitude testimonies from teachers and principals of the schools that have already received a library and the ones that are receiving one this week. We were overwhelmed and thrilled with this reception but it put us behind with our training schedule.  We did get going, and the principals were very receptive to our new ideas. 

Following the training we proceeded to the storage temporarily holding the books.  Much to our chagrin, the books were there but needed sorting. We had a real sweatfest organizing the 23,000 books into 8 stacks...one for each school.  We did have help from Mark, Samuel and John. 

On a side note...the books were being stored in a retread tire warehouse.  It made Melanie feel right at home.




Tomorrow Anne begins to deliver the books, while Melanie and Kathy train the teachers.  Check back with us tomorrow for more adventures.

We Have Arrived!

Melanie, Anne and I arrived safely this afternoon on a long and uneventful 26 hour travel day.  Our airbus 330 chased the sun halfway around the world and we were greeted by morning about 5 hours earlier.  We were greeted at the airport by all our friends, Pastor Gyamfi, Ruth, Samuel, and Rufus.
Tomorrow the six libraries will be named and the training will commnece.  Tune in tomorrow for all the news.

The Books Are Free!

The container cleared the port yesterday and was unloaded today! Whew! Just in time.  The books and other supplies were unloaded at 1:00 p.m. Liberia time this afternoon.  Shipping to Liberia is always a stressful event.  Last summer the books didn't arrive until the end of the week when most of the team was leaving.  We are very fortunate this year that the books will ready for us when we arrive. We all leave tomorrow and arrive on Sunday afternoon in Monrovia, Liberia.  Anne will start sorting and delivering books on Monday. Melanie and I will start teacher training with the principals of the schools. And I know that these guys will be really happy.

Container Still in Port!

The container is still waiting at the port in Monrovia.  Only days to go and the books are still locked in the container. Shipping to a third world country is a nail biting experience.  The regulations and controls that help make commerce smooth here in the U.S. are not in place in Liberia.  The books have been waiting in port for about 4 weeks now.  But the word is that they will make it out of port and over to our central storage on Friday.   Will the books make it out safe and sound?  Will Anne have work to do? Will the children of Lower Virginia have books to read?  Stay tuned and find out what happens next.

Will all the books make it out of port?

Suitcase Adventure

Today I was thinking that I should start packing.  Then I remembered that my suitcases are in the storage...way in the back corner...and the storage is full...of books!  That's right, we already have about 13,000 books for next year.  Since I'm not Spider-Man and can't just swing from webs to the back of the storage, I figure I will either have to move lots of boxes in 99 degree weather or squeeze and climb over mountains of books.  I opted for the mountain climbing. It was like scaling Mount Everest, but I was victorious!  Now for the packing.

13,000 new books for next year

June 2011 Trip

This Saturday we'll be taking off on our latest adventure to open six new libraries in Liberia.  Several schools in San Antonio have had book drives this past year collecting thousands of books for this project.  In April Liberia Now shipped over 23,000 library, reading, and literature textbooks to Liberia.  The books arrived in Liberia in May but they are currently at the port. Once they have been released, they will be temporarily stored at a central location.  Next week our team will swing into action delivering the books to the new campuses and training the teachers and new librarians on the use of the books.



Loading the Container in April 2011