Sunny Monday Morning

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We tried to get into a more regular schedule today beginning with Morning devotion in the guest house chapel. It was a beautifully simple way to start out the day. At Devotion, we met an older woman from Flint Michigan who was in the PeaceCorp in Liberia in 1973, fell in love with the country, and has been here ever since. Moses actually drove with her to Ghana (or it may have been from Ghana back to Monrovia) when he was a refugee. She was supervisor of the school system at one point but now works as a consultant for Lutheran Education Services. It was inspiring to hear her talk, and it was interesting to get an "American" viewpoint of Liberia pre, mid and post war. After a quick breakfast of homemade banana bread we headed to The HIV Outreach Center and The Lutheran Development Office.

The Lutheran Development Office is working with resettlement and redbuilding infrastructure in Liberia post war. They help rebuild schools, provide training for teachers, have helped dig wells and have taught local communities about agriculture (sustainable methods of farming, alternative food sources that communities can utilize and other similar things. They have been one of the primary NGO's in the redevelopment process in Liberia.

The HIV/Aids Resource Center is the largest program in the country. They have satellite centers (The main one being the one we visited) in 10 of the 15 counties of Liberia. They do voluntary counseling, support groups, pre counseling (prior to testing), free testing, provide scholarships to support orphans of aids victims,and educate in a variety of ways. They actually have an HIV/Aids curriculum that they teach in schools (at least the Lutheran School System) which is pretty neat. As for statistics about 1.5% of Liberia is infected with AIDS (this is clearly a statistic based solely on those that have been tested, etc) this is about 52,500 people. 65-75% of the Aids Victims being reported are women which was startling.


All in all fascinating. We intended to go to the hospital today but it fell through, we are hoping that they reschedule.

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