Wednesday, Oct 28 2009
Our VisionTrust Director, Robert, dropped Don and I off at Kathleen and James' new library at 8:45 AM. Then he drove Tim back to the school where Tim was to spend the day at Prime System School installing old-fashioned pencil sharpeners and talking with folks in the community (escorted by Principal John). Don and I visited with James and Kathleen because they are missionary friends we've made since we started working in Liberia (thanks to Jill C.). After catching up for about 30 minutes, we found ourselves in a heavy discussion for the next hour about how to leverage land for farming, training, to generate funding, etc. James and Kathleen have worked in Liberia for many years - James a native and Kathleen from Canada. They have extensive knowledge of "how to" and "how not to" run ministry programs in this country. After much debate and discussion, I concluded that this is such a broad and challenging topic that if they can't tell me, "Oh, just do this, then that, and you're done!" then perhaps no one can.
Kathleen drove Don and I back to the VisionTrust Liberia office where we met my next appointment, Pastor Vaye and his wife Rose. Pastor Vaye is a visionary and has worked super hard to plant Baptist churches throughout many parts of Liberia. I met him over 2 years ago when he and his wife shared with me their burden for the orphan and marginalized. Every time I come to Liberia, I meet with him and his wife to discuss their ideas for how to help orphans through the church and leverage the VisionTrust program. So this trip is the culmination of many talks.
We rented an old Toyota 4Runner for this trip up country to Todee District in the Northwest area. Robert, Don, Pastor Vaye, Rose, the driver and I got into the truck. Sounds easy right? Well Vaye, Don, Robert and I were all in the back seat. When we stopped to get the Mayonnaise Jars filled with gas to fuel up, I quickly volunteered to get into the far back cargo area with the cooler and bags. The trip would include a series of roads where each was would be in worse shape than the last. After 2.5 hours we got stuck in the mud. We got out and some men were offering to help push us out. Ironically, where we got stuck was the end of the road for us, we were at the village of Jawajeh.
Pastor Vaye walked us about 100 feet into the village and we sat in the front porch area of the local pastor's house that Vaye is working with. I sat on a bench along with Don and Robert…and waited for "instruction" on what to do next. About 40 people crowed in to participate. Vaye let us sit for a little while, somewhat in an awkward silence. When he was ready, he spoke up and quickly introduced us and our purpose. Then he looked at me and said like, "Ready?" The conversation got going slowly. For example, I asked how many people are in the village. The acting village chief (the pastor is the acting because the real chief is out on business in another village) said that the population is 64 people. Then others chimed in: no make that 130, no…make that 90… Well, I'm not real sure. We counted 15 huts and estimated an average of 7 people per hut so I am going with 105 people for now.
I proceeded to collect facts about health, schooling, economy, social structures, tribal information, religious beliefs, diet, water and sanitation. Then I asked Pastor Vaye to share with me what their plan was, what did they want our help with. He said the community is building a church on 25 acres of land that the village donated and wants to build a school, like a traditional mission school compound. As I looked around the outdoor meeting space, I noticed that about 15 children were wearing a school uniform. So I asked Pastor Vaye and the other villagers how many of these children DON'T go to school. Only 2 kids out of about nearly 25 that were there with us don't go to school. They told me that they go to Nye #2 Primary. After much discussion, I learned that the school was opened just 2 years ago. So this was the first school that these children have ever attended. This started a discussion about why start another school. My observation was that the village had enough resources to send their children to school without the help of an outsider - they definitely didn't need their own school. The village pastor told me that children from the surrounding village won't go to the public school. I asked why and one of the widows answered. She said that the "harman" will take her children and poke out their eyes for rituals and do other bad things. This needs a little explanation. Jawajeh is one of 8 villages in the surrounding area that has a remote location and is steeped in traditional beliefs like the Heartless Man, or the "harman" in Liberian English. Robert said to her that is not real, those are stories of old. Wow, did the discussion just get more alive at that point. Robert broke out in Kpelle tongue (his native language that these spoke too) and soon the conversation settled back down.
The conversation continued a bit more. For example, I asked, "What does your diet consist of?" They said, "Rice." I said, "Is that it?" The reply came, "Yes." Then I asked again, "What do you eat?" Then they said, "Oh, cassava and cassava leaves." Then I asked, "What will you eat tonight for dinner?" They replied, "Maybe a little fish from the stream where we get our drinking water." They eat more than rice as you can see. This is one of the challenges in working cross-culturally.
After we finished learning about each other, about half of the crowd walked with us about 15 minutes to the donated 25 acres. This is when I realized that Pastor Vaye wanted to build the traditional mission complex out here. I was thinking that what these people needed was training on how to grow better crops and teach them to work hard, planning and market information. It didn't seem that they needed "free" schooling in a traditional mission school. I could be wrong however. One thing I know for sure is that Pastor Vaye and his wife are super people and have a servants heart.
My initial reaction to this project? The VisionTrust concepts of simple and low-cost, empowering way of helping children didn't match his more traditional way of buildings and starting new organizations. While this was disappointing, it was good to come to a conclusion after 2 years.
The drive back was long and a bit grueling on me…I was in the very back again. By the time we made it back to our guesthouse, I had a super bad headache. After dinner, I showered and laid down and tried to relax for a couple hours, then read for an hour…and finally tried to sleep. It wasn't a fun evening.
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