Liberia: Emerging from the Shadows

By Wayne Schoenfeld

Liberia’s love/hate relationship with the United States has been expressed in a variety of ways over the past two centuries. Tribalism, racism, a staggering divide between rich and poor, institutionalized corruption, poor education—all contributed to a revolution resulting in complete anarchy. After fourteen years of unthinkable brutality, the complete destruction of the nation's infrastructure and foreign confidence, and the horrific public torture and assassination of the country’s president, a cease fire was signed.

For the last ten years it has been held together by as many as 16,000 UN peacekeepers. Whether or not the issues that gave rise to the civil war were resolved is unclear. The war lords that ran a campaign of terror across the country are still powerful. A generation of child soldiers are still wounded in heart and soul. The gap between poor and rich is one of the highest in the world. Liberians acknowledge that, in spite of efforts to improve education and universal schooling, corruption and poverty continue to hold back the nation's greatest natural resource: its children.

This is the story of a humanitarian medical mission in which twenty-one physicians, nurses and support volunteers from the United States, the Netherlands and Canada traveled to Monrovia Liberia. Arriving in mid-September, 2013, they traveled under the auspices of Rotaplast International, under the medical leadership of the organization’s co-founder and medical director, Angelo Capozzi, MD. Early mornings running into late nights the team worked tirelessly on burn patients, victims of violence and tragic accidents.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wayne Schoenfeld
• Release date: Jan 9, 2014
• ISBN: 9780991390212

Wayne Schoenfeld

Documentary Books and Films: Schoenfeld’s documentary photo books include Brittle Glory: The Face of Change (Turkey and Cuba), Almost Perfect (Vietnam) Awarded Best Book of 2004 by an Independent Publisher, Mission to India written by award winning veteran journalist Rex Weiner, Through This World But Once (Ethiopia), Footprints in the Sand with a foreword by Rev. Mpho Tutu and Everyday Heroes series honoring volunteer doctors from around the world. www.greatcirclebooks.com www.aandi.com/books In 2008 Schoenfeld produced and directed the international film festival favorite, The Memory Box. Filmed entirely in Ethiopia. The landscape and the people of this exotic land are seen through the eyes of a Chaplinesque jester from Clowns Without Bodrers. The film challenges the cynical predictability of the tragedy of Africa. In 2010 Schoenfeld’s television series “Everyday Heroes” was honored with two episodes, “Everyday is a Gift’ – filmed in South Africa and “In the Shadow of Shangri-La” – filmed in Nepal recognized as Outstanding TV Series Segments at the My Hero International Film Festival in Los Angeles. www.newdemocracyproductions.com Art “Schoenfeld takes pictures rather than photographs, his carefully orchestrated images appear, at a glance, like classic paintings”. International Herald Tribune, New York Times. Schoenfeld is best know for his tableau vivants, including The Rape of the Sabine Women and Icons/Iconoclasts which have appeared in many publications including Harpers Bazarr and American Photo Magazine and.exhibited in galleries and museums in the United States, Canada, throughout Europe and Asia. Schoenfeld’s images are in the permanent collections of the National Museum of Contemporary Art (Seoul), Cirque du Soleil (Montreal), National Museum -Complesso del Vittoriano (Rome), County Arts Commission (Santa Barbara). Schoenfeld's "Icons/Iconoclasts" Suite begins a European Tour in Paris January 2010. Schoenfeld’s figurative work has gained increasing recognition since his first published book of nudes in 2004 Surface Tension. International art critic, Peter Frank said Schoenfeld’s nude images are "Challenging photos... Images that treat the body simultaneously as sentient organism and as sculpture - voluptuously charged... These photos conjure Canova, Stieglitz, Dega and Modigliani –heroic.” Recent monograph books by Schoenfeld include: (French and English) Masques et Mystères (2009 Great Circle Books) and Masques et Mystères: Revisité (2010 Great Circle Books) A Very Broad Background Commenting that his background spans many fields of endeavor, Schoenfeld remembers once hearing it said that people should change careers every ten years. After ten years you're the best at what you do and should seek new challenges or if your not... all the more reason to seek new challenges. Schoenfeld notes, however, in photography I've found a passion that, everyday, presents new challenges. Schoenfeld is a licensed Commercial Airline Pilot, a licensed psychotherapist, a certified sex therapist and a certified scuba diver. Trained as a psychologist, in 1973, Schoenfeld was the co-founder and Director of the Los Angeles Guidance and Counseling Service; by 1978 the tax-exempt non-profit LAGCS was one of the largest providers of outpatient mental health services in the state of California. 1979-1995 CEO and Chairman of Air L.A. Inc., the first airline in the United States to fly under an international code sharing partnership. In 1994 the airline expanded after a successful NASDAQ public offering. 1996-2002 - CEO and Chairman of Real Image Digital, a motion picture technology partnership with the Sarnoff Research Center. In 2002 RID was sold to Technicolor. 2003- Current - Chairman of the Board of Directors, Great Circle Books. GCB was organized to publish works of social and humanitarian consequence. The funds raised through the sale of books are designated to support a number of charities and humanitarian projects. 2009 - Current - Director, New Democracy Productions, producer of award documentary films and television series. www.newdemocracyproductions.com Schoenfeld is a member of the Circumnavigators Club. He is on the Photographic Arts Council of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Santa Barbara County Museum of Art.

Book preview

I Grew Up in War

I grew up in war. I've seen blood, I've seen everything. I've seen people killed before my eyes, but I'm still not used to it. In 2011 I had a death in my family, the death of my child, a young baby. I saw the baby suffer. So since then it's just been so difficult for me to even go close to children in hospitals. But yesterday I put up that courage and said to myself, there are things that I would do. I want to see this Rotaplast's work, I want to experience this. I said to myself, I wouldn't cry. I wouldn't think about my deceased baby.

There was one of the doctors, the surgeon, he had literally taken a child's mouth apart, deconstructed and reconstructed the entire mouth. I saw it when it was deconstructed and I saw it when it was reconstructed and I said to myself, wow, what a transformation for this child, what a difference it would make in his life.

For me, personally, it was a moment of recognizing how much we are lacking in Liberia in our healthcare sector, the kind of trained specialists, the equipment. We're lacking so much and can provide so little to the future generations of this country. And that was the thought that I left with." Deddeh Howard, Social Investment Media, Chevron-Liberia, October, 2013

Introduction

By Wayne Schoenfeld

This is the story of a humanitarian medical mission in which twenty-one physicians, nurses and support volunteers from the United States, the Netherlands and Canada traveled to Monrovia Liberia. Arriving in mid-September, 2013, they traveled under the auspices of Rotaplast International (Rotaplast), under the medical leadership of the organization’s co-founder and medical director, Angelo Capozzi, MD. This mission was sponsored by the generous donations and support of the members of Rotary 5300 from Las Vegas, Rotary of Monrovia, the Rotary of Sinkor and Chevron-Liberia as part of their social responsibility program in Liberia.

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For twenty years, Rotaplast International has provided surgical interventions, free of charge, to over 16,000 children in twenty-four of the poorest nations in the world. They've treated, burns and a variety of disfiguring birth defects, but overwhelmingly their goal was to treat unrepaired cleft palates and lips. Rotaplast has said that its goal was to end untreated clefts by 2025. To a large extent, the publicity generated by Rotaplast and other organizations such as Operation

Smile and Smile Train, has catapulted Rotaplast far ahead of its goal. On missions where, in the past, there was a continuing and significant need for cleft repair, Rotaplast has found in recent years an increasing need for burn treatment, sometimes even eclipsing cleft treatment.

It is a testament to Rotaplast's success that the number of untreated clefts in many parts of the developing world is measurably decreasing. twenty years of experience bringing surgical volunteer teams all over the world, Rotaplast is uniquely positioned to expand its mission to the treatment of burn victims. The medical model for burn treatment is different and the financial model needs re-calibration. But the results make a difference—not just cosmetic results but the reinstatement of function in parts of the body often fused together by the unstoppable constriction of scar tissue. Hands fused together into mitts had fingers separated, forearms welded to upper arms were freed, movement restored.

On this trip we encountered one little boy could not use his mouth properly and no longer even had a lower lip. As a result of a terrible burn from scalding water, his head had progressively frozen into place, his parents helplessly witnessing the scarring’s inevitable shrinkage. Three surgeons worked five hours on this child, removing all of the scar tissue, covering the open wound with skin grafts. The results were stunning. After a five-week follow-up required for quality-control of the burn treatments, complete movement of the head was restored. The child was able to use his mouth, to eat and to speak, without restriction.

This book is also about the context in which this Rotaplast Mission was staged. Financial support came from Chevon-Liberia. Foreign businesses are required by the Liberian government to contribute to the rebuilding of the country. Ellen Johnon Sirleaf, now in her second term, is the first woman president in Africa, leading the nation’s very slow and frequently stumbling recovery from fourteen years of savage civil war. The investments of companies like Chevron are designed to help Liberia’s mending process. But nothing in Liberia, or all of Africa for that matter, is that simple.

Liberia’s love/hate relationship with the United States has been expressed in a variety of ways over the past two centuries. Tribalism, racism, a staggering divide between rich and poor, institutionalized corruption, poor education—all contributed to a revolution resulting in complete anarchy. After fourteen years of unthinkable brutality, the complete destruction of the nation's infrastructure and foreign confidence, and the horrific public torture and assassination of the country’s president, a cease fire was signed.

For the last ten years it has been held together by as many