From Joy to Sorrow

I have thought a lot at times about the focus of my blog. Is it meant to be an update for family and friends back home? Is it like my journal of my life in Liberia? Is it to discuss and bring to light relevant issues related to my work? I suppose I have never really settled on anything in particular, but rather use it for a variety of reasons. You've probably seen that in the variation of my entries. Today, I need to use my blog as a way to process events that have been going on here. I don't mean to exploit anyones life for the purposes of my blog but rather need to use this space as a tool to just let it all out.

Today, I experienced joy in a weird form. It came in the form of teaching someone how to add two digit numbers. I know it's the sounds too funny to even mention, but it was a very touching. Watching this lady's face though as she realized how to do this basic mathematical equation was something else. For those of you out there who have ever taught anyone a skill you know that look in someone's eyes, on their face as they have suddenly caught on to something. It's a very fantastic feeling to be able to experience with someone else.

I no sooner returned to my desk to explain this experience to my bossman, when he followed this up with news that one of our workers wife had just been beaten to death. She was beaten over the money she had acquired through selling cooking oil in the local community.

My heart is hurting a lot for this family. I sat in silence as I drove home contemplating the event that had occurred and the events that have been occurring as of recent in Monrovia. Some time back I wrote about myself being robbed, and the incidents around our housing area, but things are progressively getting worse. The UN is quick to deny that security is becoming more unstable, as they recently announced that they are downsizing because of the proficiency of the local police force, but it's not true. Just a week ago, a expatriate man was eating at a local restaurant and was chopped twice in the neck with a cutlass by thieves and needed to be evacuated. Groups of men are forming into mob groups and storming compounds. Things are not improving as of late.

This event today became even more personal. I struggle with the emotions of it all. I hardly know this man and never met his wife, and yet there is something deeply affecting me. I have strange questions, like how much money was her life worth? How can desperation of this kind leads to the murder of another individual? I wonder how these events affect our national staff after years of devastation, hundreds of thousands of country men being killed, and still the needless death is not ending?

I don't mean to leave it on this note, but I am going to for now.