The Golden Coal Pot of Doe Palace

Pre-service Training is not all work.  While we spend a good deal of time in the lecture hall learning about culture, safety, and language, and we have some time to ourselves, we also have some structured social/fun activities.  I decided to try and help organize some of them (of course, I think I really did it to try to take my mind off things, and give myself something to look forward to and prevent myself from wanting to leave.  Needless to say, that plan didn't work).  The first week we had trivia night.  Normally I enjoy trivia (I was on a quiz bowl team in high school that placed second in state), but this was less my style.  It was pub trivia, at the guest house and bar that was located just outside our training compound, so everyone was drinking copious amounts of beer (well, not EVERYONE, I just had a Sprite- as it turns out, Coke, Sprite, and Fanta are reasonably accessible in the larger towns of Liberia- good to know if you occasionally need a soda fix.)  The four trivia categories were Liberian culture, pop culture, music, and sports- anyone who knows me will not be surprised that this was not my best trivia night.

The second week's social activity was to be a volleyball tournament (initially it was going to be a talent show, but we switched them so that people had more time to get to know each other and plan and rehearse acts.)  Anyway, another trainee, Alex, and I decided it would be cool to make a trophy to award the winners of the volleyball tournament.  We decided to use a coal pot, which is essentially a small charcoal grill that is the most common cooking appartus in Liberia, and is vaguely trophy-shaped, and then decorate it with paint.  We weren't sure how to go about aquiring a coal pot in the town market, though, so we asked some of the Liberian training staff- the Volunteer Leader told us to ask a man named Sackey.  As we were new to Liberian English, and still not quite sure how to overcome cultural barriers, Sackey initially misunderstood our request to accompany us into town so that we could purchase a coal pot to paint into a trophy, and later that afternoon he returned with a small plastic trophy that a friend of his was trying to sell.  We thanked him, but explained that we wanted to make one ourselves.  We got then got Prince, our Liberian Safety and Security Officer, to drive us into Kakata to purchase the coal pot.  We had walked through the town the day before, and Alex and I both thought it felt a bit surreal to be driving through- as if we were not a part of the scene we saw out the windows.  Prince occasionally stopped the car to greet a friend, and eventually we found someone who knew someone else who was selling a coal pot.  His friend told another man who owned a motorcycle to guide us to the house that was selling.  We followed the motorcycle through the market, and up a hill past a number of houses, before the motorcyclist stopped and went down to a house.  Soon, he returned with the seller, who was carrying the coal pot.  It was a bit rusty, and the paint was very chipped, but since we were going to repaint it anyway, we happily bought it for $150 Liberian dollars (which is about $2 US).

Here it is, before we started working on it.

We then returned to the main market street, off one of the few paved roads in Liberia that runs through the center of Kakata all the way to Monrovia.  Most of the shops along this road were set up in concrete buildings and sold larger items like mattresses.  A few even had frozen meat.  If you turned down the dirt road, that would bring you to the more stall-like shops selling more things like beans, vegetables, and lappa fabric.  Along the paved road, however, were a few hardware stores.  We found a wire brush with which to scrape off the old paint, but no sandpaper to clean the rust, and no paint.  However, there was another hardware store which was closed that day, so Alex resolved to check that place the next day.  We returned to Doe Palace and scraped some of the chipping paint, then stashed our prize in the office, so that we could keep it a secret from most of the other trainees.

Alex did managed to track down some sandpaper and gold spray paint the next day, so we scraped off the rest of the rust and painted it before heading off to site exposure.  Rebecca, one of the currently serving volunteers who was helping with training, agreed to bring us some other paints back from her site.  Unfortunately, the day we got back from site exposure was the day I told our Country Director that I was not going to stay in Peace Corps.  However, Alex agreed that we should get the trophy finished before I left, so that evening, we borrowed Rebecca's paints and tracked down a Sharpie marker to decorate.  We left some space for the winning team to write their names, and we hope to leave it at Doe Palace to be used in future PST's volleyball tournaments.  Not much of a legacy to leave, I suppose, compared to the good I could have done had I taught in the schools for two years, but a fun experience in Liberian shopping nonetheless, and a relaxing way to spend my final night in Kakata.

The finished product, sans winning team names inside the cup.