LEAD trainings, Liberian fashion and a Magician

On Thursday and Friday of last week, LEAD conducted one of its 2-day Providence Empowerment Initiative (PEI) trainings. All of our clients participate in one of LEAD’s two trainings before they receive their loans. PEI is the shorter training for micro-businesses, who will receive loans ranging from $50 to $300 USD (4% interest, 6 month repayment plan, savings deposit collateral of $16).

James Hillary, the Education Coordinator for Monrovia, led the training with help from Andrew Davis, our Loan Officer. James is an excellent teacher and I was unsurprised to learn that he used to teach Junior High. I missed most of his punch lines, as my Liberian English is still on a sharp learning curve, but I was definitely the only one missing them.

[I still have my moments with Liberian English along the lines of: “Pardon me, but did you just drop all your consonants?” And my American English, I have learned for the nth time, is dominated by the letter R, among other harsh consonant sounds. Kemah finds this riotously funny and tries to mimic me. Bobby however thinks the defining characteristic of my speech is its high pitch and when he lets me in and out of the gate, and I thank him, he says ^{“HELLO… HELLO… How RRR you?”} in his highest falsetto. All chirpy and birdlike.]

At any rate… the PEI training went well, and we had about 40 small- and micro-business owners attending. Including two babies, one of them a month old. About 2/3 of the attendees will proceed with the loan process – part two of their savings deposit is due this week. Next week they will receive their loan, after they have self-organized themselves into groups of 5, which will back each other for the loan.

LEAD's repayment rate from PEI clients is very high - usually well over 95%. And most of our clients come back for a 2nd and 3rd loan (which is how long it takes, research suggests, for the effects of a loan to be reflected in profit and growth of micro-businesses.)

The liveliest dialog during the two days came around the following topics:

• Pricing If you are spending $125 LD/Liberian dollars one day for a bag of coal (which most everyone uses for cooking... much debate on exactly how much one pays for a bag of coal), sell it for $225, but pay $75 on expenses (much debate on exactly what are the fixed costs of a day selling coal) then: How’s your business going to grow, much less meet your family needs for the day? (Much discussion)
• Marketing Liberian marketplace style Product, Price, Place, Promotion: Don’t sell the same old palm oil, bitterballs, and cassava at the local market that everybody else and their cousin and their aunt and their neighbors’ in-laws are selling it. Find a niche product, or market your product in a special way, or give a promotional discount, or etc etc etc. (Much discussion.)
• Boundaries Don’t use your loan money to pay for the next family emergency. Even if your family thinks you are mean. And they probably will think you’re mean. (So much discussion that half an afternoon has been blocked off in advance for it.)

“Boundaries” is LEAD's on-going favorite class. Because of such a strong cultural tradition of sharing your resources with family and community, it is a great challenge for many Liberians to separate their immediate, personal and family needs from their business assets. Many of the micro-businesses we work with are still small because their business assets get eaten up so quickly by medical bills, weddings, funerals, school fees, and basic needs. As soon as James opened the topic, the class was off on an hour long round-the-room storytime about having and not having good boundaries and the impact on their businesses. ...Much agreement that separating yourself from your business, counter-cultural and very challenging for most Liberians.

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On another subject entirely... last Friday as Lazo and I were commuting into the city, he commented on my black skirt and top: “You look very nice!” Two minutes later he asked, “So… are you going to a funeral today?” So much for any New Yorker fashion sense I thought I had.

Liberian women – oh they know how to dress. And that is my understatement and generalization of the month, which I'm not taking back. The colors, the head wraps, the patterns, the styles, the ruffles, the ribbons, the embroidery… its a celebration, all the time. On weekdays, there are gorgeous women everywhere, dressed up for the office, and that doesn't even touch the fashion parade on Sunday mornings, everybody off to church. Even the simplest lapa-wearing rural women wear fabulous, loud prints. Of course there are countless Liberian women in Western clothing too, but they don't beg the same sort of fashion rhapsody. My own clothes are suddenly looking so conservative, muted, and generic.

I heard on UNMIL radio this morning that the first Liberian Fashion Week is coming in December. To Golden Beach, this lovely expat/UNMIL, bar/restaurant/venue here in Sinkor, on the beach next to UNMIL. I'm planning to go with Arwen, though it occurs to me that I never got excited about fashion week in New York (???). Arwen and her colleagues from Journalists for Human Rights (JHR) are friends I met at the expat election party. JHR places media teams alongside in-country radio, tv and newspaper companies in order to promote and train local journalists in techniques and best practices for covering human rights stories (and thereby promoting awareness and political pressure on those issues).

Arwen is from the Pacific Northwest... Vancouver Island to be exact. Grant is from Austin, TX and lived in Park Slope, Brooklyn for a year. Rebecca lived off the Graham stop on the L train (one past my old apt) in Williamsburg, Brooklyn for a decade. Miles is the recently-arrived final member of their quartet, and I have chatted with him less. But if he turns out to be from Michigan – the only region where I have a concentration of loved ones and no JHR connection – I will know the mystic forces that be are at work.

Also at the expat party (where I met Arwen and company) was Magicians Without Borders. No I am not kidding you. Click on the link, I dare you. This is the love-project of a passionate, visionary, magician. After my incredulity finally wore off – well into his half-hour show – he completely won me over, as he did all of us. Mr. Tom Verner and his partner Janet Fredericks bring magic shows into refugee camps (in Sierra Leone, Liberia & Cote d’Ivoire, among many other regions), to make children laugh, and as a form of therapy. A silk scarf disappears, and it turns into a discussion about how sometimes the things in our lives disappear. Another trick leads into What makes you feel afraid? and a discussion on how it’s okay to feel afraid sometimes.

At the end of the show, Tom tears a piece of white paper into little bits, talking about how our lives can sometimes be taken away from us, piece by piece. Then he says that these little pieces are like the bread that we eat, and when we eat the "bread of our suffering" - at which point he puts the paper in his mouth, piece by piece - we become stronger and stronger. "But then someday, when the pieces of our lives finally come back to us, our souls are more beautiful than before." Tom made everyone whisper their wishes into the air, and then he pulled a long scarf from his mouth, first it was white, like the paper, like the "bread of our suffering"... then it was longer, and had all the colors of the rainbow.