Pulling on a string

Hi Wonderful Friends - the days here have been full! And my old self is having trouble sleeping - usually I am a champ at sleeping, so that has been a bummer. Even my tried and true Ibuprofen PM is not knocking me out. Perhaps, just perhaps, my mind and body are overwhelmed with new information, and rather than being exhausted from that, it's keeping me wired.

Boy, are there alot of new things. A clear story line is not coming to me, so I'm gonna just share a few of these new things:

• I hired my first (and maybe my last) motorbike! I left on foot from my apartment on Sunday morning to go meet Steph, the CEO of Rising Academies, at the Royal Hotel. I looked it up on the map - yay! I had driven by it on Saturday, so had a hunch where it was - yay! And I walked out the door at a brisk pace. When I checked the map again, I was further away from the destination rather than closer to it. Awesome. I asked directions (twice), and this isn't very easy. In this English-speaking country, I mostly have a really hard time understanding folks. But I got squared away (thank you Google maps, and thank you, thank you for cellular service), and realized I was going to be close to an hour late. By this time, I had figured out that the motorbikes were mini-taxis, and when I found a gaggle of them, I hired one. I even haggled! I was desperately proud of myself. After I told a couple co-workers who have lived in Liberia and Sierra Leone for years about this, they both said: "Oh, we don't do motor bikes!" So it might be a great line for me to draw as well - but that one ride was pretty great, and it made me feel like a hero.

• On Sunday, we went to Redemption Beach and Unity Park, a nice park and development along the shore, created by George Weah, immediate past president...and retired footballer who is the only African FIFA World Player of the Year. (A bit like if Tom Brady became Pres of the US.) Beautiful walk near the ocean with lots of people out on a Sunday stroll. Teenagers checking each other out and taking photos much like my daughter and her friends take. Pose, hair flip, side eye, smile. The park doesn't include green space; it is a paved walk, a couple sand soccer fields, an area with those stationery metal workout machines, and gravel areas for cars to park. Importantly, there is a monument dedicated to government officials who were executed at that site in 1980. The civil war didn't start until a decade later, but some of the same people were involved. This is the first (and I think only) monument in the country to name these atrocities. (A Little bit of history here: https://kukatononnews.com/liberia-redeeming-a-bloody-history-the-story-of-php-community-unity-park/). Windy, beautiful, so nice to be outside. The thing that was disorienting for me was that there were heaps of trash on the beach. Tons and tons and tons of plastic bottles. Before I leave, I might be the old crazy white lady who picks up trash on the beach.

• Today, we did school visits. Rising Academies runs 95 public schools across the country. They are reliant on the government for the buildings and the teachers, but Rising provides teacher coaches, curriculum, professional development, and collects lots of data. The schools we visited do not have running water or electricity. The students were spit-polished with perfect braids (girls) and tidy short hair (boys). They are extraordinarily well-behaved. We visited one pre-K class that had about 40 children with one teacher. I don't know how she did this, but she had them in the palm of her hand. These kiddos are gorgeous little humans. The schools serve grades K-6 and serve 150-200-ish children each. I saw two little girls in one class, who I think were sisters based on hair and dress, trade a pencil back and forth. I feel quite sure they only had 1 between them. I don't have the words yet to describe the contrast I felt in those schools. To have my phone in my hand - which can access almost any information with an internet connection - and to see these kids 100% reliant on the words their teachers wrote in chalk on the board for their information was mind blowing. Most likely, these children's parents do not read or write, and many of the teachers are high school graduates at best.

• It's the rainy season. Our ride to see schools was over bumpy, dirt roads in a 4-wheel drive Landrover that had a pipe up the side of the car and along the windshield to shoot water out of the top if the undercarriage got flooded. The water was so high on the road at times, I'm actually really surprised water didn't come into the floor boards of the car. I mean it was RAINING. On one long dirt road, while I was looking out the window, I saw chickens carefully standing under the eaves of a building so they wouldn't be in the rain. They were looking at the rain, just like we all were.

• Food! The food here is tasty. Very flavorful and pretty spicy. My favorite thing so far is sweet potato leaves; they use these leaves a little like we use spinach or collard greens. I tried fufu tonight - Liberian fufu is very distinct from Ghanian fufu for you fufu aficionados out there. I also had this great plantain dish called kelle welle. (A recipe for you here, though I can't vouch for it - but the ingredients will give you the vibe of alot of food here: https://thestoriedrecipe.com/kelewele-recipe/). We drove by a large market today, and you could have bought fish, ginger, chicken feet, flip flops, and probably a million other things. Fish and chicken feet were in particularly huge supply.

The blog title (Pulling on a string) is where my mind is in terms of understanding what I am seeing and thinking about where and how to impact schools. The images in my mind are very Gordian knottish right now. And I'm gonna think, pray, brainstorm, meditate, and ask for help from you all to look for a string to pull. Who knows, the idea might come when I am picking up plastic bottles on the beach.

I'll get going on photos. Hugs and love to you all.