Blue Clay People

Liberia is the place where Pandora's Box was opened and all the plagues of the world spilled out to harass an already harassed people. At least that is how William Powers came to see it in his book "Blue Clay People." Powers set off to manage the Liberia program for Catholic Relief Services in 1997, in what turned out to be the middle of Liberia's civil war. William Powers now works at the World Policy Institute, focusing on humanitarian interventions following war, famine or other crisis.
Arriving for his new assignment, Powers has to cross a mountain of trash and human waste in the middle of Monrovia to get to his compound. Inside the walls of Carolina Farm are battalions of white shirted black men, swinging machetes to cut the grass to golf course. Outside the compound, war, disease and horrific poverty. Inside, a legion of fed and employed servants, waiting on the UN and other NGO personnel hand and foot. In that antebellum reality, he finds the rigid roots of a caste system that has kept Liberia one of the poorest countries in the world.
The Blue Clay People come from a West African creation story. God wanted to add a little spice to his human shaped clay forms before he gave them life, but he sneezed and a cloud of pepper coated the entire figures. As the storyteller, Momo, tells Powers over a beer at a Liberian nightclub, this accident "let loose a fire in their blood, making people destroy each other and all of nature."
Powers sees that fire burning across Liberia until the peace accords of 2003, leaving a slight glimmer of hope as he departs.

Now there is a new president and a peace maintained by UN forces. Many NGO's are still there and millions of dollars in aid have come into the country to rebuild. Powers meets many brave souls trying to do the impossible in Liberia. We will be looking for some progress amid the fires.