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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Come visit my “Reading Liberia” photo album!

We did so much during the workshop hours, and yet there’s so much more that we didn’t do. I read a few responses to writing exercises while there, and more on the plane coming home - ”neighbourhood” and “personal hero” pieces, and moving accounts of experiences participants had when they were five, ten, and fifteen years old - but their writing raises many questions and I want to be able sit down with each person I met with last week and find out more – about each of them individually, about their country, about all they have been through, and all they hope for now.

Having heard what a few of them came up with in a one-minute quick write on “Everything is different now”, I want to give them longer and to hear more of those stories.

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Well, it’s hard to believe that a week ago tonight I had not yet set foot in Africa, and already my bag is packed, ready for my trip back to Canada, my heart crowded with people I had not even laid eyes on a week ago.

So intense has been my involvement with Liberian writers and their writing since my last posting – and with planning how best to use our limited time together – that there’s been no chance to update things here. (Okay, I did go to the beach a couple of times and for a walk up to the American Embassy once; the streets feel quite safe here and the locals assure us that this feeling is correct).

Ingrid Ermanovics, Program Director for Reading Liberia, has kindly been sharing her computer with me this week, but internet access is often painfully slow, so that’s been a factor in my limited blog presence, too. I’ll try to catch you up when I get home, but in the meantime, you might like to check out Ingrid’s blog at the CODE website.

On Monday I visited three schools in Monrovia, along with Wendy Saul, a professor from Missouri who has been working with teachers here, and Florence (I don’t know her last name), one of the teacher-leaders. Our purpose was to assess how well the classroom teachers we visited were applying what they’d learned about teaching reading, and we saw a range.

One school to visit had been built as a residence. The rooms were small, crowded with more children than there were places to sit, and the teachers spent a lot of time having the child recite all together words printed on the chalk board or copying them into their copy-books. There might be only one book in the classroom.

Another school had a teacher who was involving his students in actively <thinking> about the story they were all reading. Here, there were more books and classes were smaller, but still, four students were sharing a book among them.

At another school, we met with a teacher who spoke enthusiastically about how his relationship with his students had changed as a result of the new strategies he’d learned at two previous Reading Liberia workshops, in part because the students were sufficiently involved in lessons that he no longer had to use a cane to motivate them to pay attention.

It was clear to both teams visiting schools that day that there is much work to be done educating teachers about how to use books effectively in their classrooms, and that a system for getting books from the We-Care library needs to be worked out, but there’s no question that the Reading Liberia project is making a difference.

Of course there are many children in Monrovia who cannot go to school because there is no money to buy the uniform. But that’s another story. And I have manuscripts to read – manuscripts that may one day become Liberian books for Liberian children to read in their classrooms…

How do I capture in a brief blog entry some essence of my time in Liberia so far? Already I know it will be hard to say goodbye to the people I am getting to know here – the We-Care Library staff, the writers, the teachers, and the other people CODE has sent over from N.A.

On Saturday I attended three meetings, at which I felt quite at sea. Between the noise from the street below and my ear being unaccustomed to the Liberian accents, I wondered at moments if there would be any point to my being here at all. One was a meeting of teacher-leaders, teachers who have been identified by We-Care staff as being qualified to work with other teachers to improve skills at teaching reading. Another was a meeting of LAW (the Liberian Association of Writers) and the last a meeting of just five people, including me, to determine in general terms the composition of the committee that will determine which of the 50 or so manuscripts submitted will be sent on to the next stage of development for ultimate publication. It was at this meeting that I started to feel that perhaps I did have something to contribute here, in part because of experience on various juries and boards of directors in Canada.

Tomorrow – visits to schools.

Hard to believe that a week from now I will be meeting with writers in Monrovia!

Sponsored by CODE, “Reading Liberia” is a program through which books written by Liberian authors for Liberian children will be produced, and teachers trained how to use them in their classrooms. Thanks to IBBY-Canada who put my name forward to CODE, I have the privilege of being part of the program which – since many classrooms in the country may currently have just one book to be shared by everyone (and it might not even be a children’s book) – promises to make a wonderful difference in the lives of the children (and their teachers) in this country rebuilding after many years of civil strife.

If I understand correctly – and there has been so much to absorb in the less than two months since I learned I was going so I might not have this quite right - the publication of the books will be sponsored by the We-Care Foundation, set up by Mike and Yvonne Weah. Mike and Yvonne have also set up the We-Care Library in Monrovia.

If anyone has wondered why I haven’t been posting much here lately – about how I’m doing with my new approach to email (fine!), with my novel (great, it’s going to my writing group this week), or about the release of a 25th anniversary edition of Big or Little? - it’s because I’ve been busy getting ready for Liberia!

How? By reading many many emails with multiple attachments about the program and what’s been happening so far, reading books and web sites about the country, viewing a dvd about the country’s remarkable president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, attending planning meetings (by phone) with people at CODE and the two people who will be working with the teachers while I’m working with the writers, getting immunized, planning for the sessions I’ll be leading, gathering advice from people I know with experience traveling to Africa, and of course reading the manuscripts that the writers have submitted. And you know, I think come Thursday, I will actually be ready to get on that plane!