When Menelik-Llord Aidoo, one of the writers I worked with in Liberia, wrote a piece about a comic book he’d read as a child, about George Washington and his love of nature, I was glad I’d brought Love Every Leaf with me, to plant the idea with Liberian writers that they might like to consider writing biographies, too. Llord was enchanted by the book - about landscape architect, Cornelia Hahn Oberlander, and the love of nature that she has for many years brought to her profession.

A young student of architecture, Sherrin (I don’t know her last name) is keen to read it when Llord is finished, and I’m delighted that awareness of this remarkable, inspiring Canadian is growing – as far away as Liberia!

I’m also delighted that shortly after I came home from Liberia, I received an invitation to speak this summer at the 75th anniversary conference of the CSLA (Canadian Society of Landscape Architects). As it happens, Cornelia will be delivering their keynote. My late father-in-law, Humphrey Carver, delivered the keynote at the 50th anniversary CSLA conference. What a privilege (and what fun!) it will be to speak to this group of people, many of whom will know Cornelia well, and if they didn’t know Humphrey will know of him, as he was a founding member of the organization. My mind has already started turning over with thoughts…

But right now, I have a bag to go finish packing!

Even as I anticipate heading off with Peter, imminently, on the first winter holiday either of has taken to a warm place, and returning to a basement much transformed during our time away, I feel the need to return once more to moments from my time in Liberia – for my own pleasure in reliving them, and for the pleasure of the many people who have expressed interest in what I was doing there. First apologies to my sister. I think I may have stolen the subject line for this entry from my sister’s blog.

The ride from the airport into Monrovia, music blasting from radio, the honking of the horn every time our driver passed another vehicle on the pitch black narrow road, with people walking along the shoulders, sometimes alone, sometimes in crowds, with no apparent concern for the speeding, swerving vehicles.

My first point of connection with the Liberian people: I grew up in Canada at a time before a body of children’s literature was established here, so I appreciate the importance of what the Reading Liberia program has set out to accomplish.

So much evidence of wartime damage and poverty in the downtown streets, yet what’s quickly apparent are signs of progress in the reclamation of the city. Cleaning up of the beach, no longer being used as a latrine, repaving of pot-holed streets, billboards proclaiming, “Never Again Liberia Let’s Reconcile and Live Together in Peace and Unity”.

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