Beth Holtam Remembers Salayea – In 1958, Our Board Advisor Emerita, Beth Holtam, and her husband Jordan, visited the town where our next project will take place. Fifty-five years later, Salayea is still a remote town, a six- or seven-hour drive from the capital in the best weather. The Lutheran Training Institute burned down in the civil war. Today, it is a vocational day school.SALAYEA: A TRIP UPCOUNTRY!It was 1958, and Jordan […]
By Beth Holtam Photo by Willie A. Whitten / Indiana University Liberian Collection Jordan’s mother came to Liberia to visit us three times; first, with Gran-Gran, his dad, at Christmas of 1959. She was called by the children “Greene- mama”; Greene was her maiden name. Next, she came soon after Raleigh was born in January of 1962, when the family had moved into the house next door to the Cuttington Chapel. And […]
My story comes from Bolahun, Liberia days, when I was needed to teach a 9th grade class. The class was mostly boys, who teased the few girls every time they tried to get a word into the class discussion. I worked on that from the start, but it had been the way of the culture. The boys were smart, mischievous, and ebullient. In American English, the students would have been called “bright”, […]