It was a $7.50 indulgence. Not too bad by Monrovia standards but downright ridiculous by Bong County standards. I can usually cook an entire meal for three people on about $2. Of course that meal is variations of the same thing…rice, beans, and curry powder…some kind of leafy green if potato or water greens are around. Sometimes okra or cabbage. So like I said, $7.50 is ridiculous.
But I’m in a mood -all the more because my holiday plans have been altered. So when I ventured into the grocery store…again…today I picked up a small loaf of French bread (they don’t sell that at starbucks let me tell you) and some rondele’ herbed cheese. That was it.
Well, I bought some other things, spent actually quite a bit more than the $7.50 but the other stuff has method to the madness. The other stuff will sustain me back at site over the holidays when everyone is doing the family thing and the holiday thing and I’m doing the same old same old thing.
But the cheese and bread thing…that was just plain old feeding my petulant child. In south Africa at times like now I’d go to the score (the local supermarket) in my township and buy a pint of ice cold milk and a bag of M&Ms and I’d sit on the steps and eat and drink slowly like it was steak and caviar or something.
Today it was all about milk in a different form.
And it is a ridiculous amount of cheese to eat in a sitting (actually about two sittings, I’ll eat the rest with fresh pineapple for breakfast) but it was my comfort food. In the absence of my mother’s mac and cheese or my father’s chilli, in the absence of dinner at some new and amazing spot with Stephanie or thai pancakes with birdie…in that absence I sat myself down and indulged in a very simple pleasure…tomorrow it is back to Bong and beans and rocks in my rice…I’ll try to remember what the cheese tastes like as we bump and swerve our way home.
“where can I find doughnut grease?“
I smiled at the women in the covered market that I’ve passed every time I’ve been to Monrovia. Today, having walked back from meetings at the Ministry of Health I decided to take a look around. Not just browsing, I was searching for doughnut grease.
Doughnut grease was in the adjacent building and so followed their pointing, found another woman and asked her. “over there in the Nigerian section” she pointed and smiled. So I walked on, past the bright colored buckets you find everywhere and the onions and soap you find everywhere.
Finally, a woman with dark decorative lines cut into her face smiled and pointed out the two types of donut grease. I bought 50LD worth (less than a dollar) and then asked a few questions about some other things on her table.
Success.
Only it might have been a much different encounter if I hadn’t learned on the way down to the capital that shea butter is called doughnut grease. Learning the language of a country isn’t just about speech. Learning the language is about the way people interact and hand gestures, idioms and euphemisms. I’m just starting to pick up on those.
My father always said marriage was the toughest job you’ll ever love. Yeah he borrowed that line from peace corps but that doesn’t make it any less true. The idea that two people – fully formed – come together to make a single life is intense. the marriage itself is fired in work but the desire to do so is formed in love.
If you aren’t from a culture or family that believes in arranged marriages, romantic love is the tie that binds. People always say love is the easy part…but they forget how much work it takes, not the falling in love, but finding it. All the missteps and mistakes we make fumbling through the dark.
When I was in college I had my first encounter with love…in retrospect, it wasn’t love in the reciprocal fashion…I simply learned how to love. Learned it was possible to think of someone before myself. To want to give all of myself. I called it, he called, we called it love…but in truth I think there should be another word for the unrequited . I think love is a circuit and the other person has to participate for it be complete.
After him came my first true love. A man who approved of me flaws and all…a human fallible blue kind of love that still resonates with me.
Then there came the heartbreak. The kind of love that is cruel at times. That hurts your feelings because being vulnerable is hard and scary. Because the way isn’t clearly mapped. Sometimes loving teaches us to retreat. To not trust. To surface skim instead of deep dive into someone because you might run out of breath or see something frightening or…we don’t know the other ors so we stay in the shallow end after the heartbreak. After we learn that love can hurt.
My last love was all grown up. Aware of the potential pitfalls we held our noses and dove in. running out of breath, we held on tighter and swam deeper and discovered pockets of air that let us breathe. Saw scary things that turned out to be beautiful. And it was easy. Like everyone says, it was easy. But love isn’t the whole story. So in this incarnation I learned that sometimes love is letting go…slow and painful…saying goodbye because goodbye is best.
Part of me wonders if there are finite loves in the world. One or four or maybe 30 out of six billion for each of us. Put in that context it seems ridiculous but who knows. I hope I haven’t used mine up, like some genie’s wishes, all exhausted on the front end of my life. Gazing at all the married and coupled friends I have, I hope I haven‘t.
I hope my next round teaches me that final love lesson. The complete circuit without cruelty that dives to the deepest depths and never says goodbye. Yeah, I’m still hoping against four in six billion for that one.
Despite being nestled amid lush greenery that slowly inches its way closer…to the house, the walking path, the garbage burn pit…my job is actually encased in cement. Cement walls and floors and an imposing enclosure engulfing it all; a dingy wall – with once-bright pictures depicting safer sex and mosquito nets to prevent malaria. It is the Ministry of Health.
I’ve actually only been once. Although my work is with them I seldom interact with the ministry, and when I do – to date – it has not been in that building
My work so far is a kind of no woman’s land so far. The job description described my role as a monitoring and evaluating coordinator for a national training for clinicians. hundreds of them, with varying degrees of medical knowledge and skill because during the war – the crisis – it was hard to study, hard to keep track, but the need for clinician s never slacked.
Unable to recall everyone, to test and certify those already practicing, the Ministry -instead- pulled together the basic package of knowledge that is essential for everyone to know. From rural clinic to referral hospital, from trained midwife to doctor.
The process is taking longer than expected, however, and the training modules are still being approved. The volunteer before me undertook that job with a focus and dedication that I marvel at. In the absence of trainings to monitor right now, BushDiva and I are attempting to help plan the national trainings rollout with an eye to the future for the monitoring and evaluation that will follow them.
That roll out planning involves thinking about every aspect of the training, from resources to transportation, gas to projectors, distance in terms of time and time in terms of absence from work. After all…how can you train ALL clinicians in the country? How do you pull out the only two medical professionals from a rural clinic…leaving no one to treat patients for two weeks?
It has to be done.
There are no easy solutions. Simply the long term need for training weighed against the immediate need for care. Today’s sacrifice for tomorrow’s good.
As it stands, the training should probably be a month. But time and budget prevent that from being a reality. Instead, we are planning for two solid weeks. Trainings staggered in five regional sites all over the country over the next year and a half.
So we are creating checklists and agendas, FAQs and pre/post tests…and to insure the trainings are successful, we are creating evaluation questions and indicators that will assess what is learned and how it was taught.
One thousand five hundred and six clinicians will be trained. The entire medical force of the country…the next four months should be interesting.
She greeted me, her hand reaching back to touch my arm as she walked by. The younger one, lagging just a little behind her, hands occupied with bucket and basin for water, greeted me with a mumble I couldn’t quite understand.
“what?” I stopped and looked back at her.
“my mom died,” she smiled at me. “I need something to eat.” she pantomimed eating and giggled as she stared at me.
For my part, I faltered for a second. “I’m sorry,” I said flatly. “I’m sorry.”
And I continued on my way, looking back once to see her staring and giggling after me. Talking inaudibly to the girl who had reached out to touch me.
And I forsake a little bit of my humanity every time I do nothing. Like the aid worker who turned the woman away to be raped and murdered in the midst of the war, I turn and walk away from a little girl’s smiling need. I could buy her some rice, or give her 50LD. I could find out where she lives and make sure she is enrolled in school. She, one of hundreds, one of thousands.
And I cannot do for thousands and so I do not do for one.
And it kills a little piece of me, how quickly I turn away from her. From the little girl a few weeks ago who – without greeting me or smile -asked me for $5USD, or the man who sweeps at the hospital who greeted me one morning with, “I cannot pay the children’s school fees.”
And there is an insecurity. A hardening. Despite knowing need beyond my intimate and experiential comprehension, there is a hardening in my attitude. A walling off. A distrust of kindness or affection. The question nags…what is expected of me? What is this kindness in exchange for?
Talking to a friend at the embassy, he shared his own…paranoia isn’t right…his own…reluctance to be open and trusting. For him it is the constant bombardment of women who want to be “friends.” but the friendship they are looking for has hooks, snares, outstretched hands, and no safe place to catch his breath. So he keeps to himself. Friendly enough but without kinship and sharing. Friendly without trust.
And friendship takes on a different tone for me here. Power dynamics inherent in any interaction between those who have and those who don’t. those who can and those who can’t – shift and morph and skew what should be simple.
An exchange of pleasantries. Laughter at regular intervals. But someone interjects, “take me to America” with an earnest expectation or drawls “where my Christmas?” in anticipation of gifts or money I don’t have, and the illusion of buddy or companion is dismantled. Kicked out at the knees.
And I have to be careful not to let those interactions overshadow the friendships I have made. The random acts of selfless beauty and kindness bestowed upon me every day…the “thank you for helping Liberia” from strangers, the dark walk home that is illuminated by a new companion, the invitation to dinner, the lift…The people who have carved out space in their worlds and affections to make tine for me…to make room for me, me with a million questions. My foreigner self in search of a friend; ceaselessly asking in my own greedy way.
Tags: friends, liberia, socialcommentary, travel, volunteer
Despite being nestled amid lush greenery that slowly inches its way closer…to the house, the walking path, the garbage burn pit…my job is actually encased in cement. Cement walls and floors and an imposing enclosure engulfing it all; a dingy wall – with once-bright pictures depicting safer sex and mosquito nets to prevent malaria. It is the Ministry of Health.
I’ve actually only been once. Although my work is with them I seldom interact with the ministry, and when I do – to date – it has not been in that building
My work so far is a kind of no woman’s land so far. The job description described my role as a monitoring and evaluating coordinator for a national training for clinicians. hundreds of them, with varying degrees of medical knowledge and skill because during the war – the crisis – it was hard to study, hard to keep track, but the need for clinician s never slacked.
Unable to recall everyone, to test and certify those already practicing, the Ministry -instead- pulled together the basic package of knowledge that is essential
The white bag lay flat on the ground. It was noticeable only in its whiteness. The beginning of the dry season and the harmatton (the winds from the northern part of the continent) scatter dust in fine particles into piles, against skin. So the white, absent of the brown tint of everything else, stood out. But I could have easily missed it. Seen and not seen it as I do a thousand things every day. That unseeing allowing the same walks and drives to be new each time I experience them.
But Benin pointed it out.
Rather, she pointed to the space a man, a body, had occupied earlier in the day.
She’d walked by him, lying on the ground and slowed her pace, thinking he was sleeping but scrutinizing to make sure. She asked the man in front of her if he was sleeping and he answered, “dead since this morning.” a nearby vendor concurred.
As Benin stood there, the UN police pulled up and began doing official looking things. Taking photos and writing down details. Benin walked on.
She was telling me all of this as we approached the bag. Her voice faltered a little in disbelief. “that can’t be him. That can’t be him in that bag. They wouldn’t have left him here.” as disbelief was pummeled by reality her tone changed, “why would they leave him here? Why?”
And I wanted to provide her with an answer…something more substantial than, “I don’t know.”
Only I suspected; and what I suspected was far worse.
“Because they don’t care.”
And that is unfair. I don’t know any UN police. Have never had a conversation or a passing word. And yet I wonder what else could bring someone to take photos, bag, and then leave a once living, breathing body on the side of the road beside the piles of trash to be burned later, amid stray dogs scavenging for food and the children searching out space to play.
It is probably less humanly-sinister. Probably some technicality in the protocol. “bodies may not be removed without verification from a family member or legal guardian” or something equally legal and banal. Something that makes perfect sense on paper but is ridiculous in its implementation. Ridiculous and cruel in its command to leave a man enveloped in white, on the side of the road, amid the living, against the heat.
It reminds me of a story someone told me early in my time here – about a woman pleading with an NGO worker during the crisis to let her in. “I will be raped and murdered. As a woman, please let me in.”
She was turned away and was raped and murdered. The NGO worker, when confronted with her fate broke down. Rules and regulations guard against malpractice, not against our humanity.
But she didn’t leave her outside the fence, beyond refuge out of cruelty. My guess, again, is it was dictated by some arbitrary rule – or even a perfectly reasonable one. Reasonable, like most things, is relative. Relative to chances of dying. Relatively reasonable until the rules come up against the very humanity they are meant to protect. Then, they sometimes force the most inhuman of acts for the most human of reasons.
I walked by a dead body on the side of a road this weekend, traffic and people and life going about their way as the night air – cool against my skin – ruffled the grass around a stark white bag.
I wonder if it still there…
Tags: liberia, socialcommentary, travel
“Are you afraid to walk?”
Her expression betrayed a little amusement. Not quite mocking, it was friendlier than that.
“We walked before,” I countered, “but we were told that we shouldn’t.”
She spoke quickly to a man sitting on a ledge at the Cape Hotel, where we’d spent the evening eating and using the internet, and he got up and began walking down the hill towards the street. “He’ll take you,” she said, still smiling as she walked toward the reception area. Then, as if she’d thought better of it, she turned and invited, “or you could wait and walk with me, I live near there.”
“That would be wonderful,” I beamed back at her.
Another quick exchange with the first man and he returned to what he had been doing before, while I waited for her to return.
As we walked to the convent through the poorly lit street, people stopped to greet Sis Marta and she stopped to exchange pleasantries as she passed. And between greetings she shared some a little about herself.
Her name is Marta, Sis Marta, and she works at the hotel. Dressed from head to foot in white, I couldn’t gauge her age at first. She could have been my peer. But she was older, she buried a 26-year-old daughter in early October. Her third and final daughter laid to rest in addition to one son. This weekend marked three months since her daughter’s passing – the reason for her white clothes. She is left with only three sons now, one far away in America.
We were quiet for a few meters. Sis Marta gently pulling me toward her as UN trucks barreled through the darkness with no regard for other cars or pedestrians. Motorcycles whined as they passed us intermittently. We walked, at a moderate pace, falling in and out of small circles light as we passed under the few streetlights.
It seemed lighter somehow. And shorter. The walk, in general, was just different than our previous furtive trek home. Last time, screaming foreign in the speed of our gait, our day packs slung over our shoulders, our skin and hair, last time we knew we were conspicuous, potential targets. Our “otherness” screamed NGO, yells money, hints opportunity.
But Sis Marta was home. And with her, we were privy to belonging; invited into the bubble of protection that ex pat status or money can’t buy.
Sis Marta left us at the convent gate with her phone number and instructions on how to find her home a block or so away. “Everyone on this street knows me,” she said, “just ask for me and they can show you my house.” And then she walked on, the light and life of the street trailing in her wake.
“… I think that college friends are more like family than friends; They were there when you were becoming yourself. It is like you were in a store, shopping for yourself. And they stood there, helping you try on things that fit, were too tight, too loose; They watched as you found the perfect fit for you. And you don’t forget those people. You can’t.
Now life is much more dynamic and not as easily shared. There are tons of things competing for a piece of you, but when all is quiet and you need help remembering you- the perfect-fit-you, then your heart reopens to those friends who stood there with you … And the lifetime ones, cause some aren’t lifetime, are always going to be there when you open the next dressing room door, helping you choose the perfect fit.”
Niambi Brown
I searched out Niambi because she was there…she stood by me as I was “trying myself on” and she helped me get it right…so I searched her out the other day when trying to figure out why some people are able to touch me so intimately so many years after our lives forked and took different paths.
And as I read it I had to smile because it so fits. And it doesn’t matter how much I’ve grown or changed over the years…my most important pieces remain constant and those folks who knew me then can recognize me through any superficial changes of time or experience because the heart of who I am is the same.
And some people abuse that space. Walk recklessly through touching everything simply because they can or maybe because they don‘t know any better. Others understand the sanctity of inhabiting that space…the gift of knowing someone’s heart and that you have a home there.
And I am thankful for the latter…for those who can help me make sense of the world, those who can apologize for hurts so long ago. I can even appreciate those who thoughtlessly touch everything because they remind me to be ever vigilant of those I invite into my interiors.
Tags: friends, me-ness, observations, quotes
liberian from liberia
I crossed the Montserrado river for the first time. Halfway across, we could see the destroyed bridge to the left – so iconic during the war. It remains in disrepair, like so many gutted buildings and abandoned building projects. Heading out of town that way, we passed the port, sparking for me, a reminder that the port was part of the final push in the war. The port cut off the city, no food or supplies could leave…or more importantly…enter Monrovia.
My tongue reacting before my brain could, I made a passing comment about the significance of the port in the war. And as the words left my lips I wondered if that was something better left unsaid.
This is new ground for me. Post conflict. Still so fresh in the history of the country, I’m not sure what I should say or not…what I should ask or not. Even things I would generally consider benign have potential to be divisive. My genuine interest could inadvertently slight…and that troubles me.
The dominant language of my area is Kpelle. Because this is such a short assignment we didn’t do any language training (the national language of Liberia is, after all, English) but language can go a long way and so I try to learn greetings and “thank you”, things that let people know I am interested to learn – to know. But the many different groups and the less rigid boundaries of ethnic groups and languages since the war makes that difficult.
Add to that the complexities behind the war. I’m still reading, still learning, but alongside the “haves” and “have nots” and the indigenous and americo-Liberians, there were also conflicts between ethnic groups. It makes me cautious about asking people what tribe they are a part of even for benign reasons.
The other day, sitting with a bunch of nursing students, and other folks assembled, I asked one of the more vocal guys where he was from. It is the way I have tweaked “what language do you speak?” or “what ethnic group do you identify with?” into something that feels less acrimonious.
He looked at me and said, “I’m a Liberian. From Liberia.”
He went on to talk about the war. To talk about the division that ethnicity had played in it. How he, and other young people, were tired of it and wanted on to be kinsmen. Liberians. Without the tribal demarcation.
I understand the sentiment…moving from “tribalism” to “nationalism.“ At least wars fought for nation are less likely to be your family, your neighbors.
I don’t think nationalism yields much better results though. The territories and populations get bigger…but so do the wars. Afghanistan moved from internal turmoil to successive external combat…Russia and now the US. War is still war.
It isn’t a victimless transition either. In the wake of national solidarity, language and customs are pruned to make way for a more homogenous country-view. I remember a colleague in South Africa telling me that South Africa should discard the local languages and adopt English as the only official language. “they are holding us back,” he said. And he is right that speaking Zulu or Venda will not help you beyond the borders of South Africa the way English might…but there is more to language then the global market.
And it is a luxury of speaking English and being simply american that I can philosophize about the importance of language and kinship, culture and identity. A luxury because my little blue book, the passport that grants me entrance and exits from countries worldwide, has a definitive language and identity tied to it. And even though my brown face and kinky hair aren’t what first comes to mind when many people think american, I am still granted the protections of that book. A luxury because the rivalries between states – hippy dippy California vs. rude New York – doesn’t result in armed conflict.
I hope I’m wrong. I hope that what might be lost in movement toward a unified and more uniform Liberia will be less than what is gained. Hell, I hope a unified Liberia is possible…that vision of a young Liberian who is ready for peace to take root and grow in the years to come. I hope Liberians everywhere are able to sit in the shade of that tree. And for the sake of that hope and the shade of that tree, I’ll rethink the questions I ask.
Tags: liberia, socialcommentary, travel, volunteer