Liberia update - Thursday June 16

This posting is in rough draft form, my apologies but I don't have a lot of time for a polished post. I'm planning to make daily posts as internet access allows. I'll post them here for you to read and me to edit later.

Thursday, June 16, 2011 – 10:25pm

Wednesday provided a safe arrival at the airfield in Monrovia. I’d taken out of Dulles on Wednesday at 2:30, flown to Atlanta. The next leg of the journey was an overnight flight of eleven hours or so to Accra, the capital of Ghana. I had no visa for Ghana so I waited on the plane for almost two hours. In some way that was the worst part of the trip, stuck on the runway and unable to get out of the plane. Finally, we took off at 12:30pm local time and landed in Monrovia at 2:45pm local time. Total travel time was just over 20 hours.

Clearing customs was not difficult at all, I had already done the proper paperwork at the Liberian embassy in Washington the week prior. Toby Gbeh and “Brooks” the Dean of Academic Affairs were there to meet me. It was a 45 minute drive to the seminary, where we stopped briefly before heading on to the Dorothy Pryor Baptist Campground, closer in to Monrovia and about a 20 minute drive. Both the campground and the seminary were built by Southern Baptists over the years. The campground is also the residence of the seminary president, Arnold Hill. On the campus are numerous buildings. One is like a hotel, others are smaller, containing two to four apartments.

Both the seminary and the campground are compounds surrounded by tall fences and closed in with metal gates. The gates are tended by watchmen twenty four hours a day, one of the many tangible signals that the country of Liberia is not very far removed from its civil war. The tops of the walls have shards of glass on top for additional security, an additional reminder of the need to keep someone on the outside from getting on the inside.

Conversations with members of the seminary community and the staff at the campground have been enjoyable and informative. On Wednesday afternoon I explored the campground alone, catching beautiful views of the Atlantic Ocean down below me. On the walk I encountered several folk, and was engaged in conversations along the way. Some things I learned:

• There is little infrastructure in the country and electricity is only available for purchase near the downtown government district. Even then it is prohibitively expensive. I was told that electricity for one month for a family of four in a small home was about $700.00 and about double that if they chose to run air conditioners. That’s about three times the monthly salary of that same average family. The net result is that most people rely on generators or have no electricity at all.
• There has never been a hurricane, tornado, has a population of 3.5 MM people that speak 16 different dialects plus English.
• According to at least two staff members, Southern Baptists built the campground and the seminary on land that was donated to them for that purpose. When they decided to pull out, both properties were put up for sale and the local Baptists had to buy them to avoid it being sold to developers. I’m hopeful there’s another side to this story, and I’ll look into when I back in the states.
• Electricity on both the seminary campus and the campground is provided by generators. Due to high cost of fuel, the generators run only in the day time at the seminary and only in the evening hours on the campground.
• The rainy season is just beginning here, and based on the two storms I’ve experienced so far, I can’t imagine what the middle of the rainy season is like.

Thursday began with a huge and delicious breakfast at the home of President Hill. Pancakes, meat sandwiches, oatmeal, and coffee got me fueled well for the day. Preaching in the chapel service was my first task of the day. It was the last chapel session of the semester, so there were lots of recognitions for academic achievement. The students are in the middle of final exams, so there is all that end of a semester weariness married to the excitement over graduation for some, and a study break for others.

The writing workshop I’m teaching began today. We had nearly 50 participants and after a day on the basics of curriculum writing, we walked through how to format teaching plans for Sunday School teachers. We divided into four groups and each team assigned a set of Bible texts over which they’ll be writing lessons for the rest of the workshop.

The work day ended with serendipitous chance to talk to my family on the phone. We’d not planned on talking because calls on AT&T to my phone are about $3.50 per minute. We’ve limited ourselves to a few text messages a day, but even those are $.50 each. However, I learned today that the seminary has a cell phone that only costs about $.05 per minute, so I used some down time this afternoon to call home.

Late dinner and conversation at Arnold’s house, and then a return to my quarters. Time to hit the bed, long day tomorrow!