Inside Ellen’s Birthday Cake

From the Analyst. HT Megan of the Niapele Project.

President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, like any natal-day celebrant, clearly must be in exhilaratingly festive mood as she nets exactly 71today–an apparently zigzag and winding life journey on troubled Planet Earth.

Greenville, the remote Southeastern Port town, is reportedly afire with tumultuous celebrations amongst smarms of citizens who have been inundating the historic city and hauling eulogies on their kinswoman, the President, who is believed to draw her maternal genealogical link from that part of the country.

While the President and supporters within and without of Sinoe County are submerged in the frenzy of birthday ululation, The Analyst Staff Writer has been critically reflecting on the smiles as well as frowns which the chief celebrant’s birth has ignited amongst her people. Read More… (Really, it’s worth it.)

From the atrium interior of an otherwise uninteresting government building in Monrovia.

Last month I went back to Uganda, almost a year after I’d moved away. I took photos for the International Trade Center and Good African Coffee.  And every morning in Liberia when I pour myself a cup of good African coffee, I’m glad I went.

Seydou Keïta, via African Media

The best flag ever, from the Benin Empire, via Ryan C. Briggs

Finbarr O’Rielly’s photos are on display in France.

I am African, via African Digital Arts.

Three young women in Nimba County, Liberia, on their way to participate in the Sande School – a bush initiation ceremony that usually ends with female genital mutilation.

I’ve got a slideshow of images from last week’s upcountry Liberia trip on the Pulitzer Center website. Please check it out if you have a minute! Also, Jina writes a bit about a softly-softly on her blog. More on the softly-softly in this space soon.

I’ve seen this photo posted and reposted on many blogs and websites, but never with attribution – though always with a “from the Liberian civil war” kind of caption. I’ve spent a lot of time looking at bodies of photographic work created in Liberia by a handful of amazing and intrepid individuals, and I’ve never seen this one among those collections. If anyone knows about this perhaps apocryphal image, please leave me a comment or send me an email.

UPDATE: Thanks to Deanna Dent who suggested I try TinEye, a reverse image search. I’d known about TinEye but hadn’t thought to try it in this case. I found a few very interesting places where the image had been re-posted, and, then an MSNBC story that used the photo with a byline. The photographer is now known: Nic Bothma.  And his work is great — here’s another Nic Bothma image, respectfully reposted:

Text by Louis Vigneault. Read more on UNICEF’s website.

Salomie Kieah is one of many six-year-old children starting school this month in Liberia. After a final adjustment to fit her new uniform and a stop at the stationery shop to buy supplies, she is ready for her first day in primary school.

Salomie was born in 2003, a few weeks after her country restored peace following 14 years of conflict that killed, wounded and displaced hundreds of thousands of people. She is among the first class of first-graders to be born in peace here in many years.

But Salomie’s aunt, now 18, had to flee with her family during the war and missed three years of school. She is currently trying to catch up with her education. It’s the same story for many Liberian young people. Only one in three schoolchildren is studying at the traditional grade level for his or her age.

Even in the lower grades, the age gap is present. Most of Salomie’s classmates will be older than her, because children must be able to read and write when they start first grade – and very few parents can afford to send their children to preparatory school.

Salomie’s mother lives in the United States and sends money to pay for her education at a private school. At $50 per year, this option remains out of reach for most families in a country where 84 per cent of the population lives below the poverty line.

Liberia is now enforcing free and compulsory primary education in all public schools. With limited government resources to build new schools, however, the public school system is overwhelmed by new enrolment.

According to Ganta District Education Officer David N. Kehzie, 8,700 primary school students were enrolled in the district last year. More are expected this year. He says four new schools are needed to accommodate new students.

UNICEF and its partners are building a new school in Ganta as part of ‘Learning Along Borders for Living Across Boundaries’ initiative, which uses strategic education interventions to help advance development in post-conflict Liberia, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea and Sierra Leone.

The child-friendly public school in Ganta will be able to offer free primary education to about 270 new students in a few weeks. But classrooms for many more children will have to be built.

Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf recently called for more international support and investment in primary education.

“Young children today feel that they can have a future that they can be safe” she said at a press event in Monrovia. “This is the first time that six-year-olds will go to school not knowing war, not having to run, not having to hide. Those children see life in Liberia as normal. We must continue on this path, so they can become adults in a normal environment.”

I spend a good portion of every week struggling with slow internet connections while I wait for my photos to upload. Until Winston the data-carrying-pigeon stops in West Africa or the universe decides to smile on the West African web needing community, I’m likely to continue with that struggle.

Here’s a few things that I do to keep myself from poking my eyes out and injuring everyone around me in a hair pulling out screaming fit of internet hating rage.

(Okay, that still happens *sometimes*.)

FIRST – make a copy of the file, then resize it

Unless you’re trying to send a photo to print on a billboard, chances are your camera has more megapixels then you need. So, first create a new copy of the file (just in case you want to print a billboard later on), and resize it. For internet use – blogs, Facebook, emails to friends and family – your photo doesn’t need to be much more than 400 – 600 pixels across.  The photos I post on this blog are 600 pixels, and this is bigger than standard blogspot size. So, if you’re uploading a 4,000 pixel photo to blogspot, it will be resized to about three hundred pixels and all the waiting for an upload is for naught.

On a Mac, go to Preview –> Tools –> Adjust Size. On a PC, it’s a similar process if you use the default windows application.

Changing this photo from 4,000 some pixels to 600 reduces the size from 3.4 mb to 87 kb. Makes it much, much, much easier to upload.

SECOND – for files form 1mb to 5mb

Attaching a file to an email means you’re waiting for your email client to utilize your bandwidth to upload the file, while the interface of your email client is taking up part of said precious bandwidth. If you use an online file  drop like SendSpace.com or YouSendIt.com, the interface takes up less bandwidth than a typical email client. So, it will go faster and be less likely to error-out. On the front page of sendspace.com, just enter your email address and your recepient’s email address, and choose the file. You and the receiver will get an email confirming that the file is ready, and follow the link and download. Most of the links expire after seven days, so make sure the receiver downloads it right away.

As you can see from this screen shot, I’m FLYING at 1.56 kb/ps!

THIRD – for big-ass files

If I’m sending photos out to a magazine or for other forms of print, I have to send very, very large files. I generally send about 50 mb per assignment, so I end up sending out several hundred megs per month. Hence the hair pulling and eye poking.

There’s really not any way to send big files on slooooow ‘net without using an FTP. That stands for file transfer protocol, which is a fancy way for saying sending a file directly to someone’s computer. They look more complicated then they are, and while it takes a bit of time to get used to them, after awhile you’ll want to send everything via FTP because really, it’s the best way to prevent self-inflicted injury.

I use FileZilla.