Liberia: an experience in post-conflict recovery

July 11,

When you work in “development” you eventually reach a point when you become quite skeptical of the whole system. After three weeks – I have reached that wall of skepticism.

Imagine Monrovia, a city of a million people, dilapidated buildings, insufficient school systems, abject poverty, no sewage or water system, and no electricity. These challenges in the city are only dwarfed by the more depressed circumstances in rural areas. While the challenges seem endless – so do the available resources. As I move through the city I am amazed at the number of international agency SUVs that are on the road. There are hundreds. Then you enter “Mamba Point” the unofficially designated international agency neighborhood. There is every agency there from the ARC (American Refugee Committee) to UNICEF. Each agency has several departments, each department has a budget and a number of personnel assigned to that designated task. I can’t help but wonder how it is that with the amount of US dollars, and international expertise that has descended upon Liberia in this post-conflict period, how it is that things are not moving forward more efficiently.

Moving beyond the larger question of effective management and implementation of multi-faceted resources, is the less straightforward question: How can Liberians become fully integrated participants and managers of their own recovery? Granted, asking this question is not to say that Liberians are not at the helm – in fact they are, particularly in the public sector. But I wonder to what extent the international contributors are able to integrate Liberians as full participants, and to what extent the geo-political power-dynamic between Developed and Developing Nations plays out on the ground between imported expert practitioners and local workers. This is something that I hope to learn more about as the time moves on.

Recognizing myself as an imported practitioner, I am often not sure how to feel about the privilege I am lent simply because of my nationality and Harvard status. Because of my status, I have access to the international community and their lifestyle: After-work dinners at local restaurants; weekend beach trips; pool-side dinners/parties; air-conditioned cars, offices and bedrooms; running water; and enough disposable income to only drink bottled water. While I appreciate these comforts – they are a constant reminder of my privileged existence, something that I am not always comfortable with or quite sure how to handle well. Will my efforts from my air-conditioned bubble truly “trickle” out and change the lives of the young men with missing limbs who beg at my car window. Will my work with SMEs truly enable market women to become profitable businesswomen who can take care of themselves and employ others?

I have no misconceptions about what can be done in 2 months, and I am fully aware of the limitations of my work. I guess I wonder to what extent my limitations are systemic, meaning that the hundreds of other imported practitioners like me, who come for a time and spin their wheels, to what extent is our work limited. How do we effectively bridge the gap between the official meetings and typed reports and the reality of those who we work on behalf of? How do we get to a tipping point where Liberia moves forward aggressively, surpassing the imposed limitations of lists and lists of challenges? Am I simply suffering from impatience, or is it that in the world of development we have become complacent, accepting the lack of efficiency and celebrating marginal improvements as success when we know that much more is necessary and possible?

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 13th, 2006 at 4:14 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.