Karnplay, Liberia  I said that I would be making a special effort to reach out to Liberian youth on this trip.  Most have grown up in a war or fleeing from it.  They know little besides conflict and the processes involved with recovery.  Inheriting a new place than that which their parents lived in presents them with new opportunities, yes, but also new challenges. 

Put simply, they have a lot to do—and a lot to teach us.

Today I visited one of the six schools in Karnplay that the IRC supports:  Karnplay High School.  It sits at the end of a lovely, tree-lined lane and is surrounded by thatched huts and simple mud brick houses. 

Some of the houses are etched with the cell phone numbers of the inhabitants who live there. (Blog moderator’s note: We blurred out some of the numerals in the photo for privacy’s sake.)

I arrived at Karnplay High School—or Karn High—around lunchtime.  Three Liberian women were ladling out bowls of rice and cassava stew.  Between shifts of students, they chatted and knit beautiful table cloths. 

Waiting for afternoon classes to begin, I visited Karn High’s enormous auditorium.  Students gather here for assemblies and to perform cultural dances.  Later, I’d later get roped into one…  Next, I toured Karn High’s new library.  It was stocked with world maps, a set of encyclopedias, and African and Western classics including Things Fall Apart, Twelfth Night, and The Pony Express.  Students come here to read and write their research papers.  Soon, a card catalog system will be implemented so they can take the books home. 

Finally, it was time for classes to begin.  The seniors, who were preparing for national exams, weren’t around, so I visited several classes of younger students.  Some were learning to write their capital letters and compute fractions; others, Biology and English.  In one classroom, “Remember 9/11” posters were tacked to the walls.  That was strange to see 4,500 miles away from New York City, where I live.  It also reminded me conflict isn’t confined to countries like Liberia. 

That afternoon, right up the hill from Karn High, I visited the Karnplay community radio station.  I met 25 children who attend IRC-supported schools and, as an extracurricular activity, volunteer as student radio announcers.  One, named Chris, 15, is on the air many mornings and afternoons and is responsible for reading the list of guests who will appear that day, broadcasting news announcements, and managing the children’s phone-in program. 

What’s that you ask? 

“A show where local children call in to sing songs, say their ABC’s, and quote Bible verses,” he told me.  “Are all of them good singers, Chris?” I asked.  “No,” he laughed.  When I asked him about the development going on in Karnplay, Chris reported:  “You can see that the IRC people are building a clinic and the IRC women’s group is doing some projects.  And we are building a cinema.” 

Blessing, 15, another youth radio announcer, reads health messages on the air after school.  Most are supplied by staff who work at the IRC-supported clinic.  Blessing describes them as, “messages about the importance of being clean and taking care of the environment and our surroundings.”  This segues perfectly with Blessing’s professional goal:  studying science and one day becoming a nurse.

Finally, I said I’d be asking the kids about Liberian food.  The 25 I met reported their favorite things to eat were rice and “g.b.” (which is made from cassava), plantains, potatoes, pineapple, mangoes, coconut, oranges, and bananas.  Local dishes they enjoy include eddoes (something like cassava), bitter balls (fruit), and palava sauce (a spicy sauce which, translated directly, means “confusion”).  Other favorites?  Caterpillars and grasshoppers, which the kids called “special caterpillars and grasshoppers.”  While it’s unclear whether they’re in season, Blessing tells me she’s confident I’ll like them.  Think I’m up for the challenge?

Karnplay, Liberia A midwife greeted me at the door of the Karnplay clinic.  She had been busy sweeping the steps and put down her broom to perform a welcoming dance.

A clinic is the simple, first-line of basic healthcare the IRC supports in Liberia.  Villagers come to the clinic for prophylactics, medicines for diseases like malaria, and to identify the signs of diseases like TB.  Family planning is done here.  Women who have been raped often come to the clinic first.  An ambulance helps transport at-risk and emergency patients to a more sophisticated health center or hospital.  Otherwise, Liberians would (and will) walk for miles.  The longest distance traveled from an outlying village to this clinic?  A staggering 3-and-a-half hours.

The day I visited, there were several patients being treated:  one man had malaria and another had suffered an accident.  Moaning in a nearby room was a girl being treated for cerebral malaria.  Her cries were harrowing to hear.  The clinic manger assured me that she would recover.The clinic keeps drugs cold in a room with a tiny window that can be opened to let the breeze in or shut to prevent the sun’s sharp rays.  As the clinic does not have the ability to feed patients, family members must travel with and cook for them, too.

There’s a huge outreach component to the Karnplay clinic and other IRC-supported health facilities.  Clinic staff venture into the town and outlying villages to spread messages about the importance of hand-washing, boiling water, and using condoms, and why sexual violence is wrong. 

Painted signs in villages and along the roadside help reinforce these important messages.  Some are serious:  “Real strength is in the mind, not the fist.”  Or, “You cannot get HIV/AIDS from mosquito bites or bathing together.”   Others contain a bit of humor:  “Don’t sleep in the same room as the chickens.”

That afternoon, we changed gears to visit some of the small farms that the IRC is supporting.  Remember how difficult it was to shimmy up the rope in high-school gym class?  Well, you’d never make it on a Liberian palm farm!  I saw men scale palm trees that were easily three stories high in a matter of minutes.  They hacked off huge palm fronds that fell gracefully to the earth. 

How did they do this?  The men used a circular belt to hoist themselves up the trunk, but it was sheer muscle that was powering them.  I asked one young man if I could try on the belt.  He laughed and said yes.  Next, I showed him my bicep and asked if I could cut it as a palm farmer?  He was polite but blunt!

Nearby, the multi-step process of de-seeding, boiling, crushing, sifting, re-boiling and finally extracting palm oil from the palm heads was in full-swing.  Children who go to school during the week were spending their weekends picking palm seeds out with their bare hands.  That’s difficult to see.  These same children spend the majority of the time they’re not in school working hard to help their parents.  I think of the great emphasis we put on childhood—and recreation—in America.  It’s very different in a place like Karnplay, where daily life is about survival.

We wrapped up the day at a local market.  There, I saw the fruits of the palm farmers’ labor on display.  Red oil, extracted from the palm tree and aptly name for its brilliant color, was on sale in reused water bottles and jerry cans.  It’s used to cook just about everything in Liberia.  As to what constitutes Liberian cooking?  I have a rambunctious group of school children who are going to tell me all about that tomorrow…

See more photos in Emily’s Flickr set.

“This is where the war began,” was my introduction to Nimba County. It’s here, an International Rescue Committee staff member reminded me, that ex-Liberian dictator Charles Taylor staged his Christmas Eve incursion in 1989.

Last night, I slept in a house that Charles Taylor once inhabited. Can you believe it? It’s startling until you learn that 70% of the population of Nimba County took part in Liberia’s civil war.Many who took part were children—child soldiers conscripted from their families, given weapons and drugs, and turned into fighters.

Thankfully, the war is past and most child soldiers have been demobilized. That long process began with the United Nations. In exchange for turning in their weapons, former child soldiers were given money: a sum for their guns and another when they returned to their counties.

The system was imperfect: some former combatants were registered in different counties than those where they actually lived. And often, sadly, the former child soldiers’ commanders would continue to manipulate them. Commanders would pretend to be the children’s parents, then take their money and run.

The IRC was one of several organizations that assisted the U.N. in the demobilization process. We created safe spaces for child soldiers—young men and women—once they had been demobilized. We counseled them, worked to get them caught up on the education they had missed, and also established skills training programs for them: teaching them carpentry, auto mechanics, and other trades. Our rationale was that by giving these former fighters a way to make a living honestly, we would help them realize the benefits of peace for Liberia…and prevent a return to violence.

The IRC continues to reach out to, train, and mentor ex-combatants. Today, however, people are encouraged not to differentiate between former child soldiers and other Liberians made vulnerable by the war. Considering the mystique that’s developed around child soldiers, it’s sometimes difficult.

In closing, I saw a sign on the road today. “War is Over,” it read in colorful, block script. It depicted men and women—happy at last—and a child soldier relinquishing his gun. What an arresting and inspiring sight that was. What a long way Liberia has come.

I first visited Liberia in July, 2006.  The World Cup soccer tournament was underway. Driving into Monrovia from the airport on my first night in the country, I saw small clusters of people watching the match on generator-powered TV sets. Otherwise, the city was completely dark. President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Liberia’s newly elected president had promised to restore electricity to parts of the chronically power deprived capital city.  For now, the lights were still off.

My journey though Liberia however, was eye-opening and energizing.  I interviewed former child soldiers who had only recently put down their weapons.  The IRC was teaching them skills such as carpentry and auto mechanics that would help reintegrate them into civilian life.  Many of them hoped to open their own shops someday and were eager to play a part in building a new Liberia.

I met young children who only a short time earlier were selling sand, firewood, and plastic bags of water on the street for a pittance. Now, thanks to the IRC, they were in school and dreaming big dreams. One twelve-year-old girl wanted to grow up to be the second woman president of Liberia.  A thirteen-year-old boy declared he would be the first Liberian to walk on the moon.

In rural Lofa County, a remote region of Liberia about a day’s drive from Monrovia, I watched a youth group perform a skit they had written to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS.  Women’s and men’s groups, called “action groups,” and sponsored by the IRC, performed plays and songs about women’s rights.  Their message: rape and domestic violence, major problems in post-war Liberia, would not be tolerated. 

I also visited many IRC-supported small businesses. My favorite was a shop that taught women to tie-die fabric in fabulous colors and designs and then helped the women sell the fabric at markets or in their own shops. 

On this, my second trip to Liberia, I’ll be traveling to Nimba County, in the north of the country.  Nimba County is where former dictator Charles Taylor, who is now on trial for war crimes at The Hague, forced  many children to join his army and abducted women and girls to become sex slaves. There, I’ll be exploring and writing about the IRC’s efforts to assist Liberians who were displaced during the fifteen-year long civil war.  I’ll visit a clinic, a school, a radio station, and an agricultural project, among other IRC initiatives.  Whether it is treating patients, educating children, or helping small businesses get on their feet, the IRC is working with Liberians to create a better future for their families and their country.

I’m also going to Liberia with a special mission in mind: to meet and listen to Liberian teenagers who have been through so much and then to bring their stories back to teenagers in America. In this ever smaller world, being able to share our different experiences and cultures is more important than ever.

Thanks for reading, and I look forward to taking this exciting journey with you.

Read all of Emily’s posts from Liberia here.

This was by far the most moving day of the trip for me.  Back in ’98, conversations like those happening at this gacaca court were a distant dream.  Now, citizens were talking about what and why the genocide had happened and why it couldn’t again.  I had seen not just the physical but the real emotional aftermath of genocide:  the horror show Rwandans had either carried out or survived but all lived with … the getting past and getting on. 

This is the last installment of a 5-part series.