Overview of the Villages

Before I go any further in documenting my time in the rural hinterlands of Liberia, I thought it would be helpful to give a quick tour of the villages, Boi Town (pronounced "Boy") and Kpellemue (pronounced "Belly-moo"), which are nearest to Gbanga city in Bong County. I did this walkthrough at the end of my stay, and planned it so that it was midday when people would be working and I wouldn't be ransacked by each and every villager eager to say hi.

From village to village it's about a 15 minute walk, but I've condensed it (and added music) for your sanity. Along the way I point out a few key people and places, some of which I'll refer to in subsequent posts. You'll also notice me repeating the same several phrases - I had the greetings down pretty well, as well as commonly used items for me like "cutlass" and "country axe", but beyond that I pathetically defected to English. Needless to say it led to some interesting, if frustrating, conversations.

Living Their Life: Entering 2 Weeks of Immersion and Uncertainty

I was probably scared, early on in my trip. Since I set off I’d wanted to live in a village, but I've balked. I’ve lived in South African slums for several days, had a few nights’ stay in Bangladeshi villages, and trampled around countless times for hours on end through ghettos and rural communities in the world’s poorest countries. But I wasn’t living their life. I was observing, interviewing, walking around, going to social events – and my Western preoccupations were never really checked at the door. I was always planning, producing, multi-tasking.

Finally in Liberia everything came together: a harvesting season (where labor is needed and I could be used), an English speaking country, and a connection to a villager. So, a friend of a friend of a friend said sure, his father would put me to work. Not knowing any of these people, as usual, I just took their word and snagged a free ride one Saturday morning, heading several hours over crumbling roads into the war-ravaged interior of the country.

Arriving in the small town of Gbarnga, I met my friend of a friend, Johnny, at his Carter Center office. An impressive individual, Johnny served as my contact in case anything went wrong. He introduced me to Cooper, the son of the old man I’d be working for. I hopped in the back of truck with Cooper and his friend, and we drove through a light rain shower off to the village. I was nervous. Two weeks, alone in the bush, as an outsider to a bunch of people with whom I have nothing in common. What would we talk about? How awkward would it be living with the old man? What if I got sick? (I brought no medicines, no water purification, nothing) And perhaps my biggest concern: what if I was just bored all the time?

When we arrived, some half hour later (not far, but far enough to see no trace of modern civilization), we were in solid bush. The village was Boi Town. I hopped out of the back, and met Togbah, a short, scruffy old man with graying hair, a strained face, and condemning eyes that were initially hidden behind a big grin and welcoming attitude (pictured in orange shirt). He insisted I call him his Papa (pronounced “Pap – A”), as he was known in the village as the Papa. My things were dropped off at his house, which was quite impressive, and then we walked to his farmhouse, five minutes away. His daughters were pounding rice and his wife was busy at the fire. From his farmhouse we made stops at every home and person, introducing me. Finally we came to the village “restaurant” that serves breakfast and lunch, run by the wife, Framadah, of Togbah’s younger brother Amos.

“Do you want to bath?”, asked Amos. “What?” I asked, bewildered. In hindsight, it was really dumb for me to assume I’d bath at the house, since the village has no running water. Next thing I knew, I found myself stripping down by a murky puddle next to an old guy I’d met 30 minutes prior so that we could cup water from the puddle and splash ourselves clean. So much for small talk.

That night dinner was delivered to me and Togbah at his house. Everyone else claimed they had eaten, so his wife Gamay (pronounced “Ga – may”), his 18-year-old daughter Esther, Ma-Mary the 2-year-old toddler, and others including James (in red hat) and Goma (pronounced “Go – ma”, pictured in orange shirt helping to find a creative way to hang my mosquito net) who were somehow related to Togbah, sat around watching Togbah and I eat this large portion of rice, greens, and fish. It was very awkward – almost like the white man and alpha male got all the food and everyone got what was left over. Had they really eaten?, I wondered. After dinner we sat around, in the dark, passing a bottle of hard liquor between Togbah, James and me while everyone watched. Two sips later I was already feeling the buzz. Looking back, that first bottle was a warning sign of things to come from Togbah.

Punk'd: Liberia Style

What works for development? One of the main problems with development is that in many cases, we simply don’t know. Failed approaches get tried over and over again by different organizations or even the same ones – in Ghana, an organization with which I worked was planning a community grain storage scheme in the same manner that had previously failed. When I got assigned to the task, I started asking questions, doing interviews, and digging deep for data – at least in the handful of organizations with which I worked, there wasn’t any organized manner for looking at past results (partly due to digitization only since the late ‘90s). And there certainly isn’t any database between organizations to document past experiences. So, most of the records are either buried deep in the archives, found in some long chain of emails, or recalled only from the memories of development workers who may or may not still be with the organization.

Compounding this problem is that even when you do find the records, it’s almost always a self-evaluation. What a breeze Vanderbilt would’ve been had I been able to grade myself! I was actually brought on with TechnoServe in Mozambique to gauge the impact of its poultry project. I tried to be objective as possible, but when the organization that you’re evaluating is paying your bills and giving you all the contacts, there will be some bias. And there’s pressure to paint a positive picture, because that improves your chances of getting a gig at another project, as it did for me in Ghana. Most NGOs are guilty of this.

Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) is trying to change this. Based out of Yale, the NGO and its sister organization J-PAL at MIT are conducting randomized controlled experiments to test and improve the effectiveness of poverty alleviation interventions. So, they will generally go to an NGO that has or will have a program soon starting, take a baseline survey of random villages both included and excluded from the intervention, and after the intervention administer the same survey to the same villages.

IPA interested me because of its unique role as an NGO that supplies the implementing NGOs with the information they need (though IPA has recently started doing implementation itself). To get to know the organization better, I volunteered just for a week and a half helping design a very small part of a survey that was to determine whether peace education was worthwhile (peace education is big in post-war Liberia). The UN and Liberian government had implemented a huge program to train communities in conflict resolution.

For my part, the setup was that after the team had finished administering the survey to the entire village and right before they were to leave, several enumerators were to get into a staged fight in the presence of the village chief. How would the chief respond? Had the training improved his “conflict resolution”? I was tasked with designing the skit and training the enumerators to act it out. Not the budding Shakespeare everyone believes me to be, I asked for the help of some locals in writing it. Training them was hilarious – when they practiced it out in the church (above), several unknowing pedestrians came by to try to mediate the fake fight. Liberians (and I tend to believe Africans in general) are amazing performers, at least when it comes to getting in fights – I think because they often do get in real fights themselves.

It really got fun when we went to local villages to practice on unsuspecting village leaders. We first asked permission to act it out, but this didn’t work since they knew what was coming. I did a quick 180 and in the next village we did a fake mini survey as a pretext for being there. I excused myself to go to the bathroom so that I – as the survey team leader – could not be assumed by the chief to take action when the fight broke out. I took a video, which was previously posted but had to be taken down in response to IPA's human subjects liabilities. The chief comes out saying, “We don’t fight here! I will fine you!”, and the village chair soon after runs out too. From there we go to the palava hut, and evenutually reveal the skit as a fake. There’s a moment of disbelief and then everyone just starts laughing hysterically. Invariably this was the response of the villagers. Everyone was a good sport, and the chiefs were especially interested to know how they performed.

(Ivory Coast Update: On Thursday the election results were announced with opposition candidate Ouattara winning in a 54% to 45% margin. On Thursday night, incumbent president Gbagbo's ally in the Constitutional Council called the results announced by the Independent Electoral Commission null and void. Gbagbo has instituted a curfew, closed borders, and threatened to kick out the UN envoy. Gbagbo's henchmen are patrolling the streets of Abidjan, and on Thursday night they opened fire at point blank range, killing 8, at the opposition party headquarters in Youpougon, the exact compound I spent time interviewing opposition supporters. Riots have broken out across the country. As I write this, both candidates are being sworn in as president, and the country is on the brink of civil war. International community supports Ouattara, and the African Union is holding an emergency summit to decide a course of action. The news is coming out by the hour. For a good article and stunning pictures, go here.)

Effects of War

Civil wars are not created equal. When you hear about different African countries recovering from civil wars, the degree of healing varies. Liberia makes Cote d’Ivoire look like a Sunday warm-up. Nearly everyone you talk to here has been affected by the war, usually directly and severely. Joseph (on the left), who I had lunch with one day, had just two weeks ago returned from a refugee camp in Ghana after being there for seven years. In his room, I saw his few personal items still half unpacked. He recalled back to 2003 when, with the war closing in on him and his family, they spent their last $200 to pay for a motor canoe to flee the country. After a less than fun week of vomiting, eating and drinking almost nothing, and relieving oneself in front of everyone (50 people packed onto a small canoe), they landed in Ghana. Seven years of living in a refugee camp and he was forced to come back when the school at which he was working in Ghana was cutting staff and he couldn’t get a ticket to the U.S. It’s hard not to run into someone who doesn’t have a similar story.

His brother Emmanuel (to the right of me in the picture) was currently in university getting his B.A. He is 30 years old. On average most people I met were years behind their grade level, due to the schools shutting down in most areas during the war – 12 year-olds in 1^st grade, 20 year-olds in 5^th grade, etc. I had the chance to visit the University of Liberia for the day, arguably the country’s best university. The teaching was, in my opinion, pretty subpar, though the professors may not have been at fault. It seemed like they were reading a lot of definitions for the students to copy down, something they should have covered in their preparation. But then I found out that books were too expensive for the majority of students to purchase. One of the interesting things I saw was that they were covering indifferent curves in their economics classes; granted it was something I learned in my first year at Vanderbilt while they were just getting to it as juniors, but they were covering it nonetheless. Now that schools are back open, the classes are heaving. The classes I saw were spilling out into the pathways, and students searched for anywhere to sit, while those less lucky had to stand for the lectures. Large populations of students are pressed into a limited number of schools – roughly 70% of schools were damaged or destroyed during the war, and 35%, of the whole population has never attended school, according to the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper. Until education improves, it’s unlikely that many of the top jobs in these big MNC’s like BHP Billiton will be able to go to Liberians.

Liberia: The Other Lone Star State

After an epic two-day overland trip involving motorcycles through the bush, creaking minibuses aboard which I garnered the name “Obama”, sleeping in a village at the border, and over 20 police checkpoints (and 4 forced bribes on the Cote d’Ivoire side), I found myself in Monrovia. If the capital city sounds vaguely presidential, it’s because Liberia is one of only two African countries with American ties (the other being Ethiopia).

Liberia had been on my hit list for a while because of its US connections, but more due to its being a reconstruction economy. Ranked 162 of 169 countries on the UN’s Human Development Index, Liberia is a country starting from scratch. Two brutal civil wars in 1989 and 1999 (to be detailed in a following post), which basically spanned from 1989 until 2004, left over 200,000 dead and the country’s infrastructure in shambles (the Guinness brewery, which I toured, was left alone, unsurprisingly!). When I told a US Foreign Service Officer that I was interested in development and wanted to meet USAID officials, he asked what part of development, and explained, “Liberia is rebuilding literally everything. Everything is in development.”

He was right. But it’s not just thephysical guts of the country, but the human capital. Over 1 million people fled from a country that only has 3 million to begin with, and as of 2005 half of those remained to be repatriated. Many are educated Liberians. On a flight, I happened to sit next to one, who had left before the war and only been back three times to see his grandparents. He said something interesting about Red Light, an area in Monrovia with which I was familiar, and which was notorious for muggings. It’s one of the trashiest places in the city – the side of the road seems like a soggy landfill. Being in Africa for nearly a year, I dismissed this as just another African street, but he explained in 1980, when he left, it was never like this. Liberia, he said, was like “the United States of Africa”. It was one of the shining stars of Africa, years ahead of now prominent countries like Ghana.

So Liberia has gone from African standout to devastated failure. What to do? The country made history in 2005 by electing the first, and still only, female president in Africa – and a sharp one at that. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (pic above, credit: myhero.com) is a Harvard-trained economist and former director at the UN and Citibank, among other institutions. She has a stellar resume and Western connections and support rarely privileged to African leaders. The US Ambassador to Liberia, in a fascinating NY Times article I suggest you read, explained, ”We see her as one of us.” Much more than other African politicians, she takes a fiery, no-nonsense approach. Fed up with corruption that was proving difficult to stem, just two weeks ago she dissolved her entire cabinet except one minister.

Mama Ellen, as she’s affectionately called, is known for being a tireless worker, even at age 72. I had the opportunity to have dinner with one of the directors of Liberia’s Philanthropy Secretariat. The unique unit resides in the Office of the President and is tasked with helping attract and channel philanthropy money from private donors (like Gates Foundation, not USAID) to on-the-ground projects. The employee I talked to explained that there is almost never a night when he leaves and Sirleaf’s office light is off, and he works late hours.

Her hard work seems to be paying off, at least internationally. She has attracted big MNCs like ArcelorMittal and BHP Biliton, two of the world’s largest steel companies, and has renewed contracts with Firestone, there for the country’s rubber trees. Her biggest accomplishment has been convincing the World Bank and IMF to cancel the country’s $4.6 billion debt (the country’s GDP is $876 million). Most Liberians I talked to felt she was doing a pretty good job and some even spoke overwhelming positive about her – they couldn’t come up with much negative, except for her work on the domestic front, which they say has taken a backseat to her focus on international relations.

What is most clear, though, is that these people have hope. They believe things are getting, and will continue to get, better. This was quite the opposite of what I saw in Mozambique and Zimbabwe. I suppose this shouldn’t be a surprise when you’ve hit rock bottom.

(Note: 3rd picture is cassava leaf and rice, which I ate a lot of.)

Amidst the Mob at Alassane Ouattara’s Election Kickoff Rally

Apologies for the two-week hiatus. I was away in rural Liberia for an amazing experience that will be documented shortly. But before that I need to wrap up my experience in Cote d’Ivoire. During my stay in Yopougon neighborhood and interviews in the same area, I befriended some of the leaders of the local headquarters of the Rally of the Republicans (RDR) party, who asked if I wanted to meet the presidential candidate Alassane Ouattara. Unfortunately one opportunity was missed when I went north, but I was invited to the kickoff rally on the first official day of campaigning.

When I arrived with Cisse to the muddy, open area the size of two football fields, the crowd was already buzzing with energy. A crowd of youths ran through the streets chanting “Ado is the way!” (Alassane Dramane Ouattara takes the nickname “Ado”). We were able to maneuver our way into the VIP/journalist area quite easily with our connection and my skin color (Indeed, I never saw another non-black the entire day), and found some standing room within about 30 feet of the stage.

There were people on top of people. As far as the eye could see, there were people – on top and inside of buses, hanging on to old billboards, finding space on distant unfinished construction projects. I was wearing many people’s sweat. We arrived around 2:00 p.m. and Ouattara didn’t appear until after 6:00, during which time the crowd became increasingly crazy with anticipation like a little kid waiting for Christmas. As each of the prominent party members came on stage, I could feel people closing in on me. The fence behind me separating the masses from the VIP/journalist area bulged and looked like it could give way at any minute. People were forcing themselves over the fence, despite the efforts of security. (The amazing thing is that by all accounts, no one was drinking, which is interesting in that 1) this was raw enthusiasm and 2) I’d be afraid what might happen if there had been alcohol involved.)

My experience at election rallies is very limited, but the atmosphere, when Ouattara finally arrived, was pure electricity. Not a citizen of the country, even I had chills running down my back. You could sense this was a country ready to move on, enthused about what’s next. Some journalists insisted that I get up close to the presidential candidate for pictures, like they wanted me to show the world that Cote d’Ivoire is ready for change. Ami, one of the party staff I knew, texted me and told me to come sit in a section neighboring Ouattara’s platform. With all the commotion, I wasn’t to get any personal time with him, but when he did make his way for the main stage, I had the opportunity to shake his hand and wish him the best. Having played his part on stage, Ado retreated and left the stage to a band for an all-night concert. Cisse and I, likewise, moved to the outskirts of the rally area, before heading to a nearby bar for drinks to reflect.

All this comes back to my unanswered question: Does democracy promote growth in ethnically diverse countries? Research has shown good governance to have a positive, significant effect on growth. But as far as I can tell with a cursory view of the literature, whether “good governance” is a proxy for democracy is still open for debate. In some cases, some research found that political institutions such as dictatorships or democracies were not important, but rather political stability was.

(Note: The elections went off peacefully, with a voter turnout of 83%, one of the highest ever recorded for a multiparty election in Africa. Incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo received 38% of the votes and Alassane Ouattara received 32%. The runoff is slated for November 28.)

Fed Up, Yet Hungry at the Same Time

"I think that today, it is the population, the citizens, who will impose peace to [the] politicians [and elections]…People will kill each other never again."
--Acouba Outtarra, Bouke city school teacher

Anticipation. If I had to describe the atmosphere of the country right now in one word, that would be it. Ivoirians are nervous about the potential for violence, but excitement to exercise their right to vote outweighs any hesitation. A very watchful international community, including the large UN and French contingencies on the ground, is keen on seeing this election happen peacefully.

The excitement is pervasive. Everywhere you could hear people talking about the election, and go by almost any school and you’d see snaking mob lines of people waiting for their identity and voting cards, which the election commission is furiously trying to get distributed in time (I say "furiously" half laughingly, because of the African context). I went with Cisse, my translator, to talk to some of the waiting citizens (see pics 1 and 2). One woman had waited in line for four days, each day being turned away. This was par for the course. And people arrive early. Cisse’s sister was sent at 4:00 a.m. to wait, and was replaced by Cisse’s 70+ year-old mother, Salimata Bakayoko, when Cisse’s sister had to go to school. For four days Salimata waited in the heat, finally getting the cards. I am expecting a very high voter turnout.

At the root of the country’s excitement to vote is that they are simply fed up with instability. It’s impossible for a country to plan when the administration in power doesn’t know if there will or will not be a presidential election in one year's time, and the effects are compounded when this happens every year, for five years. And it shows in the country's infrastructure and business activity. No foreign business, or local business for that matter, is willing to make any investments until the elections happen, and happen peacefully.

This became very clear when I took a trip to Yamoussoukro, the official capital. There I stayed with Regis, a

really cool Ivoirian working in a bank. He made me feel right at home at his place, organized group dinners with his Ivoirian friends (who could also speak English!), and connected me to Kinda to serve as my translator. Kinda had been an English teacher at a local university, and introduced me to the director, a very traveled, educated, and impressive guy. He explained that he went ahead and began funding the school himself because no investor was willing to put in their chips until the election. As for Kinda, we quickly became good friends, and I could certainly write an entire post just about him. Abandoned at birth and adopted by American nuns, he has been in and out of jail five times for being an outspoken supporter of foreigners’ right. Two years ago he walked for eight months from Cote d’Ivoire to Mali to raise awareness for a proposed UN commission to support foreigners’ rights. Immensely fascinating guy. As a side note, I even had time to see the basilica, which is the largest Christian place of worship in the world (bigger than the Sistine Chapel).

From Yakro, as they call it, I hired Kinda and went to Bouke, the stronghold city of the rebels in their once northern-controlled area and one of the most affected from the wars (last pic: weeds and brush now growing in the abandoned structure of one of the city's most prominent hotels). Most people advised me not to go, which is exactly what drew me to the area. Plus, I generally think hospitality wins out over hostility. During my time there I heard incredible stories about schools closing for years and people scrapping by during the war, and now how excited they are to vote.

But the most interesting thing about Bouke might have been the large security presence, which is most evident at the city’s entrance. Arriving into the city, I was confronted with the biggest security checkpoint I’d ever seen. Fifty or so armed soldiers patrolled the area. Kinda and I were told to get out of the gbaka and funnel through a large hut, almost like we were at a border to another country. There we met an officer. He demanded a "toll" for us to get through, much higher than ordinary

Ivoirians because of my status. "Why?" I heard Kinda ask in French. He responded, "Here you don’t talk much. You give or you don’t pass." When we were leaving the city, an officer, wearing a ragged, badge-less but official uniform, begged me for some money. These soldiers are mostly former rebel soldiers who failed to make the cut (e.g. they were illiterate) to be absorbed into the national forces. The government’s employment project for them didn’t pan out as planned, and so many are forced to take tolls at the city gates to survive, or in some cases, beg.

From Bouke, we headed back to Yakro in a horrendous gbaka ride (a story in its own right) just before I jetted off to Abidjan for an amazing opportunity to be part of the election activities.

(Note: I have been behind in posting because of my travel, and am no longer in Cote d'Ivoire. The election takes place tomorrow, and of course I am excited to see the outcome.)