SITESOFLIBERIA

A LOSS SO GREAT!

It’s been happening for thousands of years – death – the loss of a loved one: a father, a mother, a brother, a sister or some other relative. Yet we as humans have not come to grasp with the loss of a relative. It is quite a traumatic event.

That is how I have been feeling these past months since I lost my Dear Darling Mother Evelyn Korlu Cooper in Death on July 10, 2012. Each day it seems to me that it has been a dream. Even when I look at the pictures taken during the funeral, I still feel like doubting it; that she is dead – resting in death. I miss her so much just as much as my other eight brothers and sisters miss her. The grief came over her forty grand children, forty nine great grand children and three great, great grand children, her only surviving Sister and surviving brother and a host of other relatives and friends.

My Late Mother in my office

It is because of the feelings that I have been experiencing that it has taken me this long to publish this event. I hope that when I publish it this will make it real to me and allow me to accept it as one of the events that happens in the lives of us humans.

My Late Mother and me together in my office

Don’t get me wrong. I am not a person without hope. No. I do have the hope of the Bible firmly impressed in my mind. This hope is expressed in various passages of the Holy Bible as follows:

(John 5:28-29) 28 Do not marvel at this, because the hour is coming in which all those in the memorial tombs will hear his voice 29 and come out, those who did good things to a resurrection of life, those who practiced vile things to a resurrection of judgment.

(Acts 24:15) 15 and I have hope toward God, which hope these [men] themselves also entertain, that there is going to be a resurrection of both the righteous and the unrighteous. . .

(Acts 17:31) 31 Because he has set a day in which he purposes to judge the inhabited earth in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and he has furnished a guarantee to all men in that he has resurrected him from the dead.”

These scriptures are sources of strength to me, but I still feel the loss. So I share my loss with you all and hope that the scriptures above and others in the Holy Bible will also strengthen you if you ever come to experience such a loss.

My Older Sister mourns the death of our Late Mother.

The Headstone we made for our Late Mother giving meaning to her life.

My Sisters in the front row at the Funeral Home for the removal of the body

The Memorial Tomb of our Late Mother. May she rest in peace until the resurrection.

September 28, 2012 Posted by Dogba K Norris Sr | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

ACCESSBANK LIBERIA LTD BIDS FAREWELL TO FIRST CEO

On Friday, July 30, 2010 beginning at 7:00 p.m. at the Rose Garden Plaza in Monrovia, the Management, staff and friends of AccessBank Liberia Limited held a dinner to bid farewell to Ms. Mary Clare Odong, the Bank’s First CEO.

Mary, on July 31, 2010 ends a period of nearly two years of working with AccessBank Liberia Limited. From her first visit to Liberia in September 2007 to begin a review of situations that prompted the indicators in the first feasibility study for a microfinance bank in Liberia to the actualization of the studies into a full-fledged microfinance bank, Ms. Odong had exerted herself every step of the way and savored the praises lavished upon her last night.

THE BEGINNING

After Mary’s first visit in September, 2007, she began work on the preparatory stage for the establishment of Bank. In early 2008 she returned to Liberia and set up an office for the organization of the Bank. Mary had been seconded to this project by LFS Financial System GMBH of Berlin, Germany, a consultancy firm engaged by the shareholders of the proposed AccessBank Liberia Limited. After establishing an office and recruiting locally some operational staffs, she was later joined in April 2008 by others such as Peter Konopka, Alida Ismayilova, Nadja Zaggren and another expat staff who left in December 2008.

Together and under her astute leadership, the began carried on the final works on the establishment of the first branch of AccessBank Liberia Limited. In that process, they obtained the provisional license from the Central Bank of Liberia. In December 2008, the recruited and trained staffs for the Retail and Credit Departments as well as the Administrative staffs of the Head Office moved into the newly refurbished building at the corner of Ashmun and Johnson Streets.

On January 20, 2009, the Central Bank of Liberia issued the Banking License to AccessBank Liberia Limited.

In Juanary 2009, the bank, under the leadership and drive of Mary Clare Odong made a groundbreaking achievement when from the 20th to the 31st it disbursed 25 microloans valued at US$35,500.00. This was remarkable achievement because at no time had a bank in Liberia disbursed any loan in its first month of operations.