Andy Carvin's Waste of Bandwidth: Life in a Liberian Refugee Camp

A very well written account of a Westerner's visit to a Liberian Refugee Camp. This captures many of the same sort of experiences I had in West Africa. Recommended reading...

Andy Carvin's Waste of Bandwidth: Life in a Liberian Refugee Camp: "'What I'm saying is that we want literacy skills around to empower them, to do their own thing,' Jeremiah said. 'Self businesses. Give them skills. And of course they can help themselves. Liberians are not really looking out for handouts. No - that's one thing I can tell everybody. They don't want handouts - they only want a push.'

'So they want to be self-sufficient,' I added.

'Self-sufficient,' Jeremiah repeated, gesturing to some of the buildings around us. 'Extremely self-sufficient. And that's why you can see from these structures that these are people who are not just beggars. They're not just beggars. They want to do a lot of things. Everything you see - they did it on their own. Nobody helped them; they did it own their own.'

'And they're not prepared to beg,' Jeremiah reiterated, emotion building in his voice. 'They're not prepared to beg, not at all.... Not prepared to beg....'"