March 17, 2005 | Read Time: 1 minute
Blue Clay People: Seasons on Africa’s Fragile Edge
by William Powers
Soon after graduating from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, William Powers took a job working in Liberia for Catholic Relief Services. His goal was to put his academic coursework into practice. But shortly after his arrival in 1999, he found that his mission “to fight poverty while saving the rainforest” was less a job description than a “riddle” he had to struggle daily to solve.
In this memoir, Mr. Powers, who now works for the relief group’s Bolivia affiliate, depicts the poverty and environmental destruction that afflict Liberia after years of civil war. He describes the kidnappings and violence that aid workers face, and the difficulties of reconnecting with friends and family in the West.
His book also underscores some of the long-term dilemmas facing aid groups in development work. Mr. Powers notes the characterizations in the news media of aid workers as missionaries, and the sentiments among some of his colleagues that they are simply modern-day colonialists. He questions whether doling out thousands of pounds of wheat each week is at odds with efforts to build self-sufficiency.
“The food is beautiful,” he writes. “But there is a darker side to these stacks of food. It says, ‘Here’s your weekend’ rather than teaching somebody to make his own weekend.” Catholic Relief Services and other aid groups, Mr. Powers says, are helping to postpone the day when Liberia develops ways to feed itself.
His account offers a personal side to the work done by international relief charities, and to Liberia, known more for its violence than the vitality and kindness that Mr. Powers so often encounters.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010; http://www.bloomsburyusa.com; 292 pages; $24.95; ISBN 1-58234-532-5.
