I’m Glenna Gordon, an American photographer and journalist, presently commuting between West Africa and Brooklyn. Previously, I lived in Liberia. And before that, I lived in Uganda. I’ve traveled and worked in over a dozen countries in Africa.
This blog is named after a found object — a plastic lion that was in a crate of discarded items a friend and a few other artists had gathered. I sat on their roof in Nakasero, Kampala back in 2006, sorting through the crate. On that day, I was looking for something. “You are lost!” Ugandas say. But, on that day, I’d found this discarded kid’s toy, made in China on the cheap, that somehow ended up in East Africa. Something about the hollowed out, paint-chipped figurine appealed to my understanding of this place: I’d never seen a real lion, after all.
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Taylor T. says:
Hey Glenna! I’ve really enjoyed looking through your blog! What did you fine to be the biggest differences between daily life in Liberia in comparison to the U.S.? What was the education system like? Did the children attend school, were they able to read and write? Was education valued in Liberia?
Were you ever surprised by the poverty they lived in? I hear that people are always surprised by how happy they are even with such poor living conditions, did you find this to be true?
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— February 12, 2013 @ 6:46 am