Wednesday, December 02, 2015

Curious sequence of jobs

The Liberia Marine Training Institute intended to train people to serve as sailors, but after about a year or so the school closed for Christmas 2013 and never reopened. Goodbye school fees, goodbye personal possessions left behind. 4 cadets had drowned the previous year--I couldn't find any clear explanation of how (the school said they weren't supposed to be in the water yet). The erstwhile students have been complaining and writing letters to their representatives (and getting blown off, sounds like).

The training seemed like a reasonable idea--lots of ships fly the Liberian flag but few have any Liberian sailors. But according to Rev. Dr. Lincoln Brownell "a test was given to the cadets, saying it was an international assessment team that came on maritime education that was responsible for the test and not the LMA. Dr. Brownell said the cadets took the test and none of them passed the test, something that prompted the international team to move to Stella Maris."

This was pre-ebola, but the claim that everybody failed is quite plausible. Of course the counter-claim, that the LMTI only wanted commissions, is also plausible.

The Rev. Dr. Lincoln Brownell was once president of the Liberian Baptist Theological Seminary, and was ejected from his post for reasons never clear to outsiders. He sued for back pay, and eventually got a judgement that closed the school for three weeks. In the mean time, he apparently worked as a bodyguard for the Maritime Commissioner. Now he's Director of the Liberia Maritime Institute, though it isn't obvious to me that it functions. And he's leader of Go Ye Ministries(*) Liberia. When we were there one of his hats seemed to be "hotel manager." (We were grateful.) Hmm. From bodyguard to director... Executive factotum?


(*)Looking for the parent organization turns up several different groups with that name.

1 comment:

Assistant Village Idiot said...

If anything that explains this to you shows up I would be curious.