October 8, 2016 - The Love of Liberty Brought Us Here

It's been awhile, no?

So, if you might be able to gather from the above, we left the high, dry southern African plateau for the sweltering rain-soaked Grain Coast, as Liberia was once called. It was not a direct move; my girlfriend had to leave Zambia on the 2nd of September, 2015; after a six-month interlude until my contract with Concern Worldwide ended, we sorted the last distribution of inputs using vouchers for the Conservation Agriculture (CA) project I ran in Western Province. In the intervening days or isolated weeks where I was back in Lusaka, a fellow American from Alabama and myself became somewhat proficient at distilling whiskey (moonshine, mountain dew, white lightening, poteen, swish, white dog, steam, kachasu, lutuku, etc., etc.). We didn't do it because of particularly wanting a drink (there is no lack in either quantity or diversity of drinkable beverages in Lusaka); it was more like why I suppose people climb mountains, e.g., to see if they can do it.

Anyway, it was a dry rainy season and by the time I was wrapping up and headed home in February, it was apparent maize yields would be poor in the south and west of the country. I flew home on the coldest weekend of the year, packing my bags and filling up the back of my old pickup in near-record time; I then looped through the Midwest, seeing some friends in northern Wisconsin, giving a talk to some relatively wide-eyed Soil Science graduate students, catching up with former classmates, seeing my sister and her family in South Bend, IN. I then drove to Washington, D.C. to move into our new apartment with my girlfriend and to begin what I thought would be a relatively easy job search in the D.C. Metro area. Of course I can get a job! I have years of development experience! Hire me before someone else does!

To zip through that in a hurry ... it doesn't work like that. To summarize:

1. Had to figure out Obamacare ... wow, no wonder people are upset. It's neither clear nor cheap, and I had a number of odd health issues, none of which I had in Zambia, but fell on me in the States. To put it mildly, not having great insurance and no job still means you get crummy health care and weird bills that you're obliged to pay for.
2. Full-time jobs in D.C. are available, but the competition is stiff and for the most part, online. Having not had to apply for a job in a number of years, I was more than a bit rusty, particularly with the online bits. I shaped up my LinkedIn profile, worked on my resume, had a number of first interviews, screwed up quite a lot, etc. Overall, I got back into fighting shape, but the job market in international development when your 39 in 2016 is far different from the job market in computer programming when your 22 in 1999. The intervening years are not kind; the market likes the young up-and-comers, and ofttimes we'd get home aching and footsore from job fairs asking ourselves what the point had been. It was almost sheer luck my girlfriend found the current job I've started with Fauna-Flora International (FFI from here out, folks), and thank God, was the timing right. We had both reached the bottom of our respective wells of patience after six months and nearly 200 applications between us, and had I not pulled through on FFI ... well, you don't think about what may or may not have happened, but again, thank God. 
3. In the meantime, D.C. is not a cheap place to live. We were lucky to have one job that though part-time, had bonus pay in the form of groceries. We both temp'ed, something which is, though not quite as bad as substitute teaching (which I did 13 years ago), was really hard on my pride. You fill printers, sort office supply closets, work as a receptionist, answer phones, smile hard (though not crazy) at everyone in the hopes they will hire you back, because at minimum wage in D.C. ($11/hr) you need a solid 20 days of work just to cover rent. In the meantime, we did whatever else we could; I refurbished cast iron cookware and resold it both on the Internet and at neighborhood flea markets over the weekend (something that was facilitated by Paypal Here, as urban America is increasingly a cashless society); I did lawn maintenance for generous friends part-time; I helped an old man in Silver Spring, MD prep his garden, etc. Getting part-time work other than temp'ing often seemed even more ephemeral than full-time work; who wants a 39-year old bartender with a heavily-salted beard and graying temples facing the customers?

Please don't take me wrong; there was a lot of good in the District (many of the old expressions the old farmer used wore off on me, such as his reference to WSHDC as "the District"). Again, we had very solid friends, everything is literally right at hand (though devastatingly expensive), we had family nearby, etc. As a recent lover of gardens and growing things, and as an old lover of American history, the District is a treasure trove. Our neighborhood of Takoma Park, was a few short blocks from Fort Stevens, a shockingly close shave of a Confederate campaign to take D.C. in 1864. Lovely place all-in-all, but just not the right place for us at the present time.

At this point, too, it serves to note that for me personally, America has grown a bit strange in the long period since I was fully ensconced in the place (my two years at Madison aside, particularly as I was so heavily invested in the study of Southern Africa in general and Zambia in particular. The ongoing national election which is front and center at all times and all newsfeeds has been in a word, shocking; the abyssal depths of crudity and mean-spirits to which one of the candidates (He-who-will-not-be-named) continues to plumb is disgusting; however, what's worse for me is the torrent of hate which his excavations have revealed. My fellow Americans have, from my relatively distant view, have developed a worrying tolerance for, and acceptance of, fear and hatred. Worse still is the absolute loss of dialogue and reasoning in a country that most of the rest of the world that I've experienced aspires towards as a better model. What happens when that model rolls in the gutter and covers itself with excreta in a near jubilant fashion? I love my country and my home deeply, but my heart aches and worries for her in this strange view from abroad. 

So ... Liberia. The Love of Liberty Brought Us Here. Well, that's a topic for a bit later.

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This post and it's content are the thoughts and opinions of the author alone, and are not condoned or endorsed in any way by his employer, Fauna and Flora International.