Some of the children show off their flip-flops. The money the little girl in the middle of the frame is holding is a Liberian 20-dollar bill, which in U.S. dollars is worth about 28 cents.

He also brought flip-flops for some of the children of Twarbo Region. Sixty-three pairs were donated by the congregation of West Berlin Presbyterian Church in Delaware, Ohio. Dr. Scott McGraw, an Ohio State University anthropology professor who is on the Dougbe River project’s board, has done a lot of research in west Africa and was instrumental in Isaac’s immigration to the United States, is a member at West Berlin.

Having something on your feet can be important in Africa, where infections from worms are a significant health issue.

The walls of the classroom building are going up, as you can see. Contractor Eric Waylee reports that planks for the roof are being produced, as well.

Bridges are still a problem. And Eric's email today (June 8 ) says that overall, "the road is a serious problem that we all underestimated in this project."

Some photos from the “Sidewalk Challenge” fund-raiser at Roxboro Elementary School that I mentioned in the previous post.

Prize winners in the T-shirt design contest at Roxboro.

Ruby Kauffman with Isaac Monah and her winning T-shirt design.

The Dougbe River project has received another big boost from the children of Roxboro Elementary School in Cleveland Heights. On Saturday, April 30, Roxboro held a “Sidewalk Challenge” fund-raising event. Several dozen students participated in games and a one-mile walk around the Roxboro neighborhood, and they raised $780. Many thanks to the students, the adult volunteers (many associated with Roxboro or Noble Road Presbyterian Church) and the event’s organizers — Roxboro principal Tara Grove and Parma-South Presbyterian Church elder Susan Rhee. Tara and Susan are both members of the Dougbe River board.

Some of the money came from advance sales of a T-shirt designed by Roxboro student Ruby Kauffman, whose art was selected from many entries.  We’re selling the shirts for $10; orders are being accepted at john@drpsl.org.

We’ve been waiting for this for a long time — photos of construction of the classroom building. Our contractor and volunteers have been hard at work on the foundation of the classroom building and have made a lot of bricks, as you can see. Click on any photo to blow it up nice and big.

Some images of the epic repair effort by volunteers who shored up bridges between Zieh Town and the school site, allowing the truck with the building supplies to safely reach its destination. Plus one random photo of a monkey. Thanks to Philip Collins for getting these to us via e-mail. You can make the images much larger by clicking on them.

Construction of the classroom building for the Dougbe River Presbyterian School was delayed by the condition of some of the bridges in Konobo District. Our contractor, Eric Waylee, e-mailed us Jan. 13 to say that he had a truck full of cement and steel rods and serious concerns about the bridges he needed to drive over.

A crew of volunteers was assembled and worked to put down new planks on the bridges. The General Board sent money from the United States to Liberia to feed the volunteers and fuel the school chain saw.

Three bridges were repaired and reinforced, the building materials were delivered to the school site that is split between the villages of Sayuo and Buway, and work has begun on the foundation of the building. When complete, it will have eight classrooms and a library. There will also be a separate structure with latrines.

Now it’s a race to complete the building before the rainy season begins in May. If we succeed in that, we plan to hire teachers (probably four, including a principal) and begin in 2011 to teach students from Sayuo, Buway and Whybo, the three villages within walking distance of the school site. Expansion to serve nine other Twarbo Region villages will happen after we’ve raised the money to build dormitories.

Isaac and Francis did an interview with Front Page Africa during their recent trip, and the article based on that interview has now been published.

If you click on the image, you can see the entire article. If your monitor is large or your vision is good, you might be able to read it.

Here is the video:

Today was spent mostly in downtown Monrovia. We visited with a friend of Isaac’s from his high school days at Obrachire in Ghana. Jeffery’s apartment building was just a few blocks from the ocean and afforded a nice street-level view.

We had to leave Jeffery for an interview appointment with one of the area newspapers. After heading to the incorrect newspaper building on our first try, we made our way to the FrontPage office. We had a nice interview there and were promised space on their website (frontpageafrica.com) and in the hard copies distributed around Monrovia. It is very exciting that two media outlets have picked us up (recall our radio interview with UN Radio in Zwedru). We’ll see how these spread the word about our efforts!

From there it was time to do a little shopping and so we headed downtown to the Waterside Market. Before the war it must have been a beautiful setting. It runs down a hill toward what looks like a bay. There were large cargo ships docked out in distance. The area looked old and worn, and trash pickup didn’t appear to be a high priority. However, the shopkeepers were kind–even in the midst of negotiating prices with Isaac.

By this point in the day we were tired and hungry, so we headed back towards our home base. One of the things I’ve really wanted to do while in Monrovia was to visit a beach. So, one of our hosts, Philip, walked me down to a lovely setting called ELWA Beach.  ELWA stands for Eternal Love Winning Africa and is a missionary base that holds a hospital, academy, and a radio station.  (You can read more at elwaministries.org)  For our purposes it was a hospitable setting for me to have a chance to exercises one of my spiritual disciplines: swimming in the ocean!  The swim was very cleansing and healing on many fronts, and I am very grateful for the time spent there.

As have I been grateful for my time in Liberia.  And now it is time to return home.  Again, we extend great gratitude to everyone who has supported our journey this time: whether in the US or in West Africa.  We look forward to moving forward and opening the school in 2011.

Blessings and may we all experience Godspeed in our upcoming endeavors.