Liberia Stories (Part 6)

The Economy-The most staggering figure for the Liberian economy is the unemployment. 80% to 85%. Imagining that there are 10 people reading this. (Conservative estimate) Only two of you have steady work. The rest of you are either looking for work, occasionally working, or diddling your days away. How's that make you feel? Now lets assume that you are one of the two who does have work, you only make $1 American a day. You have anywhere from 4-7 children, and adequate food for each child costs $1 a day. You are extremely dependent on help from aid workers, schools, friends, and any other possible means of making money.  Most of the nation's industry is based off of outside involvement, though sometimes indirectly. Much of the economy is little inter-connected circles, people selling food, the food sellers buying gas, the people selling gas get paid, and they buy food. The outside involvement comes in the form of the gas step. When it comes to something requiring large amounts of investment, without immediate promise of return, either a international investor, or a wealthy Liberian. I count wealthy Liberians as international, because the gap between regular Liberian and wealthy Liberian is of international proportions

One of the best possibilities for gainful employment, construction,  is not a widely available job. Not because there isn't a lot of construction going on, but because the jobs are already filled. Confused?  It gets better. A majority of construction is being done by various Chinese companies. And Chinese workers. I can understand the Chinese companies, in fact, China is doing some of the best things in Africa, not under the "foreign aid" heading, but under "investment" or "business opportunity". Shipping over Chinese workers doesn't make as much sense to me, considering that there is a huge pool of workers on-site. The surface reason for this choice is two-fold. Less training, hire people that have construction experience, and no language gap. The counter-reasons are far more compelling in my opinion. Liberian workers would be more familiar with the culture, economy, resources and obstacles. Housing would not have to constructed, special provisions for food and water would not have to be made, and assuming that part of the purpose of the construction is to help revitalize the nation, hiring Liberians would help stimulate the economy. 

One of the most interesting features of Liberia was the huge amounts of large compounds. Compounds are pieces of property, owned by either rich people, or rich organizations. The buildings are surrounded by large concrete walls between 7 and 12 feet high, topped with barbed wire. There is typically some kind of metal gate, and perhaps an additional pedestrian door. If you recall, this is almost exactly like where we stayed. The guesthouse had no barbed wire though. What was striking to me about this compound complex that so many NGO's seem to suffer from was the fact that the purpose of these NGO's is to help the citizens of Liberia. The compound fosters a cycle of leaving the compound, "helping", and then returning to the compound. This makes helping people just a task, just a part of a day. This mindset seems to be patronizing, because the compound gives an air of superiority. BTW, almost all of this is just my opinion. Feel free to have an open discussion with me if you disagree. Again, another African dilemma. How much safety and comfort should be sacrificed in order to be more connected with the general population? Going towards the beach, a lot of the compounds are abandoned, and looted. According to Chipi, those compounds belong to more of the wealthy Liberians, and less of the NGO's.  In almost every abandoned building. at least one family is living. Somewhere in the huge amount of pictures that I will be uploading will be a picture of a guy sleeping on a motorcycle, inside one of the hotels we visited. "Cheapest security around".

Going back to the little interconnected circles I mentioned earlier. There are tons of little places that are owned and operated by only a couple people. The best way I can describe it is as lemonade stands for adults, but with much, much higher stakes. Most of these places have personal sounding names, religious names, or crazily business-savvy names. These places are the same ones I described earlier, the ones that are getting knocked down. I just love the personal feeling of these little stands. Sure, the products are the same, and probably at exactly the same price. But you are directly supporting a person. If we stopped shopping at one store, and started shopping at a competitor, the employees wouldn't be personally effected, any loss of customers is a major decrease in standard of living. Such a personal economy. Let's imagine 10 people, and how they interact with each other. See next post for an idea of how this would work.

One more thing I wanted to hit on. The existing infrasturcture is fundamentally flawed, so public electricity is  unheard of, all power comes from generators, with the exception of main roads the norm is dirt, and water can only be obtained from wells. I actually got to pump some water from a well, which was great fun. There is a picture of me pumping the water, which will be among the multiplicity of forthcoming pictures. The wells are almost always busy, and are quite the gathering place, there will upwards of 100 people gathered there, waiting for their turn, and in the meantime, being a genuine part of community, and really being present in an unstructured way.

That's all for this one!
Next post is about things at the VBS, and things that our team saw God doing in Liberia, and in us.
Thanks for reading!