Adversity

Hello all!

I've been here at Cuttington for about 6 weeks now and while I still love it, I'm beginning to see more of the obstacles faced by this institution. Upon arriving I was very impressed with the progress that had been made toward rebuilding the physical campus. Many of the buildings have been rehabilitated and some (our house, for example) are quite nice. They have made an effort to beautify the area with ornamental plantings, and in general the campus is an aesthetically pleasing place. So initially I was struck by the sense that "hey, this is not nearly as bad as I was expecting." But now that classes have started and I am more involved in the life of the nursing department I am beginning to see how many obstacles there really are to providing the students with the education they deserve. The faculty are drastically overworked and underpaid (I know that's true everywhere, but here they truly are taken advantage of), so they are here at great personal sacrifice, out of a sense of mission. As my dean told me the other day, this generation of students was bounced around from one refugee camp to another for 14 years, someimes in school, sometimes not. Therefore they are really not at the level a college student should be. But, he says, we cannot just throw them away or give up on them. We have to do our best to educate them so that they can take care of their generation as well as others. The students, meanwhile, are trying to bridge the gap between the level of education they've received thus far and the level at which they are expected to perform here at Cuttington. Admittedly, the university has had to lower its expectations substantially. This place used to be the Harvard of West Africa and now more than half of the incoming students have to do some kind of remedial work. There are not enough chairs for every classroom so students are often late to class because they are running around from one building to another trying to find a chair to carry to their classroom. There are only about 3 printers on campus so the faculty are very hard-pressed to print out a syllabus,let alone a test for their students. Until yesterday the only photocopy machine on campus was broken. There are virtually no text books. Students listen to lecture, receive an assignment, and then go to the library to sort through whatever odds and ends may be available in hopes of finding the answers to the questions. There is no assigned reading because even if there were enough books for everyone in the class, they would all be different books. That seems to me to be the largest obstacle of all. Even the faculty have few or no resources at their disposal when planning a lecture so much of what is taught is whatever the instructor can pull off the top of his/her head. Many of the students are quite frustrated because they know they deserve a top-notch education and they're not getting it. The nursing lab has two dummies for students to practice procedures. That is a big deal because they're very expensive. The only problem is that they have no supplies to practice with (foley catheters, NG tubes, IVs, etc.). So the dummies just lie there, virtually untouched. That is so typical of things here. Phebe Hospital, down the road has an X-ray machine that is sitting in crates because there is no one who can assemble it. It seems that for every solution there are 10 more problems.

And yet, through all this adversity people keep plugging along. They are determined to rebuild their society, and they don't sit around feeling sorry for themselves all day. They are aware that their situation is more difficult than it should be, and they are eager to "vent" about it but at the end of the day they thank God for what they do have and get ready to start again tomorrow. People in the States could learn a lot from Liberians.

Well, this has been long and maybe not the most interesting of my posts but it's my musing for the day. I hope all is well with everyone and you remain in my thoughts and prayers.