Above is last picture taken from my trip to Monrovia. Despite my saying it was not necessary, Spencer, Thomas, Daniel, and Mulbah insisted on "carrying me" to the airport in the middle of the night. It was great spending my last few hours there with them.

Looking Back on an Incredible Week

It was an incredible week in Monrovia! In my first post of the trip, I listed three goals for the trip:

1. First and foremost we need to determine whether we can move ahead with the plan to build an ICT school. We have meetings planned today and tomorrow with the the Pastor of the local church that has the land for the school and with community leaders to ascertain their support for the project.
2. Complete the next phase of planning for Jetro Web Development's capacity building. Figure out who will be learning what over the next period of time so that the coop as a whole can develop the skills it needs as soon as possible.
3. Deploy a website for Jetro Web Development and complete other business tasks the coop needs to finish before it can move forward.

Goals 2 and 3 on this list were completely met. The Jetro Web Development website is now live. Reflecting back on what the co-op members did this week - building the website, purchasing the domain, and configuring it to point to the right place - all without asking for any assistance, exceeds what I had thought they were ready for. They will be ready for client projects much sooner than I had previously thought.

I wrote about the capacity building plans in my second post of the trip. The only thing I need to add to that is an unexpected opportunity Spencer and I discovered. We were talking about the goal of having Jetro Web begin connecting with the Python community, and I did a web search for PyCon's in Africa. Low and behold I found that PyCon Africa 2024 is taking place in nearby Ghana on September 24 to 28. Spencer said he would like to go, and we agreed Jetro Web is now developed enough that it makes good sense to send him.

The 24th Street Community Really Wants a School, But...

Regarding the stated goal of the trip, determining whether or not we can move ahead with the project to build a social justice computing school, we are still a long way from figuring that out.

The meetings we held with the church that has vacant land in the neighborhood were completely non-starters. It was clear they had no interest in turning over the land to a community non-profit, and we had neither the interest nor the mandate from the Kamal Foundation to move ahead with a school project on church property.

With the church land not an option, the block chairman of the 24th Street community said they had "community land" that could be used for the school.

In our discussions with the community leaders it was apparent that we all understood and shared the goal of the school project to develop the capacity of students to use information technology to directly improve the lives of the common people of Liberia.

While all of us were enthusiastic about this project, the problem is that "the community" is not a legal entity and it is not clear who holds deed to the land that the community leaders were telling us is available for the school. Jetro Web will work with the community leaders to figure this out, but unless we get a breakthrough on the land question, we will not be able to move forward with this project.

It's Not All Work and No Play

Just so I don't leave the impression that it was all work and no play for us during my stay, we all agreed to go out on the town on Thursday night to celebrate. We settled on the nearby Oporto Grill.

I was happy that my friend James Cooper was able to join us. James and I met during my Summer here in 2022. He had a vehicle repair business directly across the street from my apartment on 9th Street, Sinkor, and we met in the morning while I was on my way to work. We ended up spending Friday evenings going to the pub together, and James introduced me young Monrovians he knew who were aspiring ICT professionals. You can see James sitting across from me in the first picture below.

I think I can safely say the evening was a fun time for all. I'll just let the pictures speak for themselves.