A little more insight

We had dinner tonight with a woman who has worked for various NGOs for 35 years.  She currently works for on whose primary focus is food security but whose focus was forced to shift to Ebola when the current outbreak happened.  She had worked in other parts of Africa when there were Ebola outbreaks but never, of course, one of this magnitude.  She has been in Liberia for about a year and a half so has see this outbreak from the beginning.  She told of the early days, you know a couple months ago, when the official response was to give families a home kit of gloves and bleach and a little education.  Epic fail.  Then isolation centers were set up.  They included food, shelter, and latrines.  There was no testing so it was impossible to tell which of these sick, crammed together folks had Ebola and which did not.  The epidemic continued.  One county was way ahead of the game and closed its borders.  One could not enter without a chlorine wash and a temperature taken.  It has been 54 days since they've had a case- easily longest In the country.

We learned of a neighborhood called Watertown which is much more remarkable than the neighborhoods we have been seeing on our walks.  She said literally you cannot walk through the neighborhood without walking through people's living rooms.  I couldn't believe it so I asked if she was being truly accurate, no exaggeration.  She swore it to be true.  That neighborhood was quarantined off for a brief time because of the close proximity of the residents.  The quarantine was short lived and ended after some rioting of the essentially caged people.

She also shared with us some of the problems in Liberia.  They should be a able to grow lots of fruits and vegetables and we have seen some but their farming methods are inefficient which is just as well.  If they grew a ton of produce there would be no way to get it to market.  There are few roads and those that exist are in terrible shape as we have witnessed personally.  There is no industry in Liberia.  Any facility that has electricity is run off generators.  There is no community power source.  Without the industry the job possibilities are few and far between.

Liberians value education but the last war took a toll on the education system.  Now kids teach kids instead of teachers teaching kids.  It will be at least another generation before the PTSD is down to a normal level.  The trauma of war and then the Ebola tragedy has played havoc with the country's mental health.  

That's enough.  Liberians are a cheerful, friendly, tough as nails people.  According to this woman they are transparent.  Government is transparent.  There is corruption but it is blatantly open, so at least everyone knows what's going on.  I guess that's something.  The world led by the U.S. is crucial to Liberia.  It seems everything here is globally funded.   Not sure what the future holds for this country.

On a lighter note I touched the Atlantic Ocean today.  It is way warmer here than in Maine.  Imagine that!

Here are some pics of Monrovia from atop the hotel where we ate tonight.

One road to the beach.

All those round things are water cisterns for the buildings water system.  There are wells, too, but many buildings have a network of these tanks.