I’ve hit a rough patch. Hell, we’ve hit a rough patch. Well, maybe not Wry-ly who seems beyond it all, but BushDiva and I have resorted to a kind of quiet desperation around food. I’d like to blame Wry-ly’s composure on the reality that she’ll be heading home in about three weeks – but the truth is that she is just that composed and even. A wry and delightful sense of humor but not easily ruffled that I can see.
At any rate, proof of our unraveling came on Sunday night when, gathered in the back of the house desperate for a breeze- excited that the power was on – and waiting for dinner, Wry-ly let us know that Santa (aka the Patron Saint of Peace Corps Volunteers: a neighboring missionary) had bestowed another set of his semi-regular food gifts upon us. A bag of individually wrapped snickers, box macaroni and cheese, and …wait for it…wait for it…real live cupcakes.
BD was quick to unwrap hers – unable to wait for the completion of dinner. And mouth watering, tin foil wrapping rustling, she offered to buy either of the remaining two. Wry-ly, volunteered and a deal was struck (BD’s share of the snickers for Wry-ly’s cupcake).
Meanwhile, I sat in the hard wicker chair happily munching contentedly on a snickers (something I rarely, if ever, eat at home) when, mid bite – I burst into laugher that erupted in tears. Not real tears. Not sadness. More tears of laugher at the absurdity of it To my left BD was excitedly licking the foil free of any remaining chocolate frosting (despite her usual disdain for chocolate) and I was savoring the last crumbs of my candy.
It was just so…so…so…ridiculous.
Earlier this weekend we found ourselves all clustered around a coal pot stove watching Gutz fry French fries and plantains before we watched a Tyler Perry flick (don’t judge, I was out-voted…and it was a most pleasant evening!) . And on Friday I was finally privy to the breakfast fish lady – who for 70 LD (right now, a little over a dollar) you can get a heaping bowl full of rice with tomato gravy and a grilled fish.
Food is more my everything now than even back home.
Supposedly headed to Monrovia at some point this week, my dreams are filled with falafel and naan possibilities (Lebanese food abounds and there is a Bangladeshi spot reported to be good and cheap!). In some ways I know the anticipation of such things makes it worse…but I’m craving meat like I haven’t craved it in years.
No matter, tonight we actually aren’t having beans – instead, pasta. A welcome, non-flatulence inducing change of pace.
4am greeted me. Guinea fowl and roosters screaming close by. 4am greeted me and wouldn’t let me sleep. Instead I laid in the darkness, picking out familiar sounds, fixating on unfamiliar ones outside my windows.
But the darkness and my closed lids were an exercise in futility and by 5 I’d turned on the lights and read beneath my mosquito netting. By 6:30 I emerged, heated water for oatmeal, and sat down to sulk.
Uncomfortable in our unyielding wooden chair, my gaze trailed out of the window to the low hanging mist thick, like smoke, in every direction. The morning was damp and cool. The sunlight filtered and gray. And I sat watching it.
Too early for the students that file past our house and disappear in the school behind us, few people milled around. There was the child clanking noisily at the pump, and the boy -heavy coat clad -walking down the tawny dirt road.
By 8 my eyelids were heavy. Beckoned by my bed I returned to the place, that only hours earlier, had rejected my sleepy advances. I crawled inside and lost myself to the soft sounds of morning and mef-perverse dreams.
Tags: liberia
The moon was full and for a time, hung low in the sky against pink wispy clouds, just out of reach of tall tree standing tall and lonely against the shorter green backdrop that surrounded it. But the moon is seldom still, and it rose in minutes, as if racing the darkness. And it hung there, hazy as the day had been hazy, watching over the remainder of Tubman’s birthday.
Tubman was elected president of Liberia in 1943, and from what I can tell, his birthday is celebrated a lot like Lincoln’s…in that it is a day off from work and possibly an excuse to barbeque. For our part we were invited to Gutz’s – which of course includes Baileys, Amarula (newly christened), and Mo.
Of course the first part of my day (Monday) dragged on brutally – a kind of cruel timeless extension of my eventless weekend. But by 1:30 I was ready to head over and hang out. And I wasn’t disappointed. There was food – jallof rice that was divine- and drink (BushDiva and I contributed some Amarula) – and of course music. And so we perched in the shade of Gutz’s big trees, caught in the almost constant breeze that seems to inhabit his corner of the compound, and ate and danced ad laughed and laughed and laughed.
Baileys and Amarula seem to have warmed up to us now and so there is a lot more talking and stories and jokes I don’t always get but I’m happy to hear none the less. And so the day sprawled out before us. No place to be but where we were – nothing to do but we did. And it was a good time (despite mosquitoes feasting on me as if I were delicious jallof rice…but then, I guess for them, I am).
I woke up tired. It was still gray outside, early morning cloudy, so I rolled over and slept on. But when sleep would bed me no longer I found myself facing a Saturday with nothing inside it. No plans for the day, no excursion with friends. Instead I curled up with a book (actually three), listened to BushDiva belting out song after unknown song through our adjacent wall, and read.
But my clothes, soaking since the night before, beckoned me and so I rose and began washing just as our fickle water stopped running, which lead me to empty a huge portion of our stored washing water. It is amazing how much water it takes to wash and rinse a small load of clothes…and today I didn’t even do a great job.
But watching my clothes dry slowly in the heavy overcast heat I can’t help but wonder how people managed.
I know part of what makes my days long, the tasks difficult, is that this is a new routine for me. Unlike the little girls I see bent over large buckets scrubbing away at age 8 maybe 12, I am just learning. I still haven’t mastered the best posture to avoid a sore back. And while I can carry the water from the pump to the house on my head, I still haven’t quite figured out what is too little in the bucket and leaves one water filter half empty – vs. too full that lets water splash down my neck as I ascend the steps.
Everything has a system, a way to make the tasks manageable. I remember my first attempt at a bucket bath 10 years ago. I made a ridiculous mess with water everywhere and wasn’t particularly clean. But now, I am methodical. Cold water splashed on my feet to acclimate myself to the chill. A wet and soapy towel. Methodically scrubbing each part of my body. Rinsing. Another hard scrub to the most important parts. And a final rinse. But that has been cultivated. As a result I use a bare amount of water (one bucket) and contain the mess.
And with dishes, we have two plastic tubs, one to wash, one with bleach for rinsing (no hot water and an abundance of multi-legged friends makes bleach necessary). There is method.
Part of the time consuming nature in the necessary duties of the day, the seeming difficulty, is that this is as new to me as cassava leaf and palm butter.
But still…washing clothes takes time, and pumping water, and burning garbage, and cooking by coal pot…and I wonder how people did it during the war, do it now in the shadow of malaria, TB, employment, unemployment. How did/do people manage to get done all the daily needs of a family while avoiding soldiers and mortar fire, high fever, shakes, and trips to the clinic?
I imagine some things fall away…but others can’t be neglected. Water has to be fetched…eventually.
And I don’t know. And it isn’t the type of thing you can just ask. I can guess the answer.
“I do it.”
Because of course it has to be done. It is survival.
Thinking of it in those terms, I am humbled to complain less when my hands tire from wringing out my towel and it sours a little because I didn’t do a good job. Peace holding fast, I won’t know war; mefloquin holding strong, I won’t know malaria. Housework is the most of my worries…not the least…and I am thankful for that.
Tags: liberia, socialcommentary, travel
There were four dead.
The branches in the middle of the road told us there was an accident ahead. The number of branches and the distance they spanned before we could actually see the accident told us it was bad. As we inched forward, we noticed a wall of cars in the other lane parked and deserted. And to our right, a throng of people around what could only be the crash site.
And there it was, a car crumpled, the front end seemingly split in two as it collided with the metal barrier separating road from burned out banana field. I found myself staring until I caught sight of the woman in the front seat, slumped and with no one attending her. I knew her repose was one of death.
We drove on. In the pseudo safety of the NGO vehicle we’d snagged a ride in.
The thing is, navigating the ex-pat world is complex. It affords certain opportunities denied most people from the country you are a guest in. things like shared American-ness that makes a perfect stranger agree to pick you up at 7am and carry you at least as far as he is going. It makes it possible to have a driver that isn’t sleepy, or drinking, or distracted by the 8 passengers he is carrying in a dilapidated five-seater, while navigating pot holes the size of Buicks and other drivers with similar distractions.
Being American meant I wasn’t in that taxi today.
It also meant that instead of just being dropped off at CARI (Central Agricultural Research Institute) a few miles from home, we were instead invited to observe the World Food Day celebration. To watch a program of speakers, including Vice President Boakai, just meters away.
It was while waiting for the Vice President that we learned that five were dead. En route to the event, he stopped to offer condolences.
But after condolences there were speeches. And booths filled with cocoa plants, praying mantis, cassava demonstrations, and a horticulturist delights. And there too, I was assaulted by the complexity of being an American ex-pat. The Bangladeshi UNMIL soldiers were intent on taking my photo. Not simply, one. Not just of me. But each one standing beside me, sometimes alone, sometimes in groups- never touching, always a respectful distance away. Surprised, I initially acquiesced. But later, a lone and persistent soldier asked and then followed me about even after I told him no. and my otherness doesn’t save me from that – it is the reason for it.
They brought the bodies, and the lone survivor, to the hospital. I gazed at the people milling about, some holding their heads, others looking down or at the car that carried the bodies away from the crash site. Nurses and doctors fought to save the remaining woman – she was coherent and able to give her sister’s name and phone number, cognizant enough to request her husband, to receive blood…to die on the operating table because the damage was too severe. And I spoke to my friend, the nurse whose arms that woman died in, and she just kept saying, “I gave her blood”.
Six died in that taxi on the side of the road on the way from Monrovia. And my American-ness, while not a shield against any horror, is an extra protection, pair of hands, final resort, ride in an SUV with new tires and a driver who isn’t racing a clock or scrambling for the extra money that “one more trip” might provide.
Tags: liberia, socialcommentary, travel, volunteer
She laughed. Not ha ha laughing, but the laughter of levity – of realizing that crying does no good. Or maybe I just projected that onto her because I can understand how a tired smile and a laugh at the absurdity that six weeks or six months…hell six years…can repair what took thousands of people years to destroy.
She, was Sweden, a doctor finishing a six week rotation at the local hospital. She is a doctor who admitted to learning so much, most of which will be useless to her in her other life – her real life away from malaria and untreatable liver failure.
As we sat around our dinner table, bugs of varying sizes dive bombing the light bulb and then falling dazed into our hair and laps, conversation began with food…what would she eat when she returned home. We spoke of things we miss, trips we’ve taken, experiences we’ve had. And it was here that our conversation turned serious.
Sweden’s face contorted into a wry smile and she began to speak about her work here.
She spoke about women giving birth in the OBGYN ward, giving birth and bleeding…so much blood. And the nurses are tasked with massaging the uterus to coax it into expelling excess blood and returning to its normal size. But it is painful and the women cry out because they don’t understand what is going on. But instead of explaining the procedure the nurses turn away and answer Sweden, when asked why it hasn’t been done, “The mother is uncooperative”.
Sweden admitted to massaging a lot of uteruses back to size, confiding that with some explanation the women acquiesce- understanding, ultimately, that bleeding is not good for them. And it isn’t just the birthing process.
Just this week there was a woman who gave birth and the baby tested positive for malaria. Knowing the mother must also be infected she prescribed treatment for the mother and went in search of quinine for the newborn. Three days later, after passing the mother in the hall, she heard screaming. The mother’s temperature had skyrocketed to 42 degrees Celsius (through the roof in Fahrenheit and not unusual in unchecked malaria) and she was wrapping herself in blankets to fight her chills. Sweden checked the woman’s charts and sees that she had never received her meds. Incensed, she ordered the initial treatment again – this time through injection – and stood watch as it was delivered. Two days later, checking up on the mother after being out of town, she realizes her second dose was never delivered – the reason: medicine unavailable. A quick trip to the pharmacy, however, proves that to be untrue.
And what do you do with that? Someone denied treatment not for lack of treatment but…what…oversight? Laziness?
The stories are endless…a pregnant woman enters the hospital and it is determined that her large belly is not from her pregnancy (although she is in her second trimester) but is instead filled with fluid. The most likely culprit – liver failure. Sure enough, the woman has hepatitis. Sweden can offer no treatment and so sends her home to her family – to die.
“Will she live long enough to deliver the baby?” we ask.
Probably not.
The problems are complex and intertwined. Some of it has to do with training and education- both interrupted for 15 years during the war. Some of it has to do with funding, both the institutions where people work and the people themselves. It isn’t unusual for government workers to not be paid on time or given their entire paycheck. Then there is organization. Who does what and reports to whom. Fatigue. Foreigners are constantly coming in and out, staying for a few weeks and then moving on. Getting people briefed on what is going on is time consuming and exhausting.
And there is lack of accountability. Who is in charge? Who has the authority to make decisions and to deal with the consequences, good or bad, for those decisions?
And Sweden doesn’t seem to judge. In her quite voice she acknowledged that while she can’t imagine working any other way than what she does now, she doesn’t know how she could do it day after day –forever. She understands the exhaustion and weariness. How do you make yourself do all that you should when chaos is all around you?
It is all so big.
But all things aren’t dire. Sweden talked about her first few weeks at the hospital and the amazing nurses she worked with. How they gelled as a team and challenged each other on diagnoses and treatment. She spoke of being disregarded, initially, by older male nurses who now respect her as a doctor and the perspective she brings. She will take those experiences home with her as well.
It isn’t all blood and death.
But the death part looms heavy because here, as in all medical realities, mistakes translate into sickness and lost life. And while Sweden conveyed her thread of hopefulness…that she has gained perspective and is able to respect her Liberian colleagues despite their imperfections and in turn is learning to forgive her own…she understands the gravity of the work she and her Liberian colleagues have been doing.
Still, it settles. The heaviness of watching people come in for care she can’t provide or from illness she can’t prevent. And in the shadow of that, a soft and distant laughter escaping an almost sad smile feels the most fitting of responses.
Tags: health, liberia, socialcommentary
“I want to touch the earth, I want to beak it in my hands, I want to grow something wild and unruly…”
My voice bounced off the water-warped tile and yellowing tub. Slightly off key but beautiful to me because I was singing for no reason. Scrubbing each arm, my stomach, eventually my feet, and the song changed…“You can never tell what’s in a man’s mind. And if he’s from Harlem, ain’t no use in even trying…”
It’s been ages since I was in this good a mood. For no reason. Just because.
And I almost don’t dare to say it out loud – to type it in space. But today was a good day. A simple, uneventful, good day.
After crashing at Emme’s house because it was too late to get back, BushDiva and I made it to M’s 8am class. He’d talked about it the day before – about how lively the discussions and intense the debates. After our other, less encouraging encounters with the university we were eager to see another side. And he delivered.
At first it seemed like it would only be M dictating definitions and random notes. But after providing the information that would normally be supplied by a book he launched into a discussion. The topic: domestic violence.
As the class bandied about scenarios and questions, M threw brought up the new (relatively) marital rape laws and asked the class about that. Later, introducing the short and long term effects of abuse, he challenged his students to think. “Women may make poor decisions about sex in the future is one of the effects, do you think women in Liberia have the power to make decisions about sex in relationships?”
The class exploded into comments about culture and history, European values and rural vs. urban trends. And it was 8am. When the time expired it was M, not his students that noticed. I was exhilarated.
After class M walked us to the library, fielding our questions about local/West African norms on life, courtship, and family. And when satisfied – for the moment anyway – we bid goodbye and wandered into the library.
More impressive than we originally thought (we discovered there is a downstairs) BD and I wandered the stacks picking up random books and itemizing resources for future reference.
I wandered home and ate a cold can of chili mac (don’t judge I was starving and we have no current during the day) and began outlining questions and considerations for the work we’re doing with the Ministry of Health. There is something about being useful. About doing work that has potential to really impact change that makes me smile and inspires me to do more (there is also a novelty of not being tormented by large dogs but that is another story and another lifetime).
We took to Dimples immediately. Something about the broad smile that staked claim to his entire face and the deep dimples standing guard beside it. Yeah, the big smile and the generous laugh that followed almost anything we said or he did, laid a foundation for our budding friendship.
Dimples is Liberian born and bred – the son of a Liberian father and American mother, he spent most of childhood growing up here. After the start of the 2003 war, however, he moved to America where he finished high school and college. But he always knew he’d be back.
And back he is, reconciling his hybrid life in a drastically different Liberia than what he grew up in. At once familiar and strange, he has ensconced himself in work and is still figuring out his place here – his home. Despite being busy, he was eager to demonstrate Liberian hospitality and made himself available to show us a bit of his Monrovia.
It truly was hospitality when you consider that prior to walking through the door of his building and being directed to his office, all I knew of him was what his cousin shared (“he told me to tell you that Peace Corps people always look like they are camping, don’t dress like you are going camping”) we and what he had gleamed from my FaceBook page after we were cyberly connected. So his time and kindness were bestowed on veritable strangers.
For his part, Dimples said he was glad to meet us. Despite the age difference (he’s about 10 years younger) we have a lot in common…not the least of which is an understanding of the world he left back in the States and a kinetic/growing understanding about life in reconstruction Liberia.
We did a lot of laughing-friendly ribbing as if we’d all known each other for years. Apparently BushDiva and I remind him of his older sisters, so maybe we offered up a little piece of his other home. He drove us through some of the rougher parts of Monrovia, showed us where he grew up, and told us about his family. We even met his father. A tall man with an easy smile, he welcomed us to Liberia and urged us to come back to Monrovia to visit.
Our work is actually centered in Monrovia despite or location elsewhere – so we’ll be back and probably often. Dimples already has plans for us to hit the beach (apparently that is only a Sunday endeavor), some live music, and some good food. I know along the way we’ll get a glimpse into his Liberia and how he envisions its/his future.
Upon closer inspection I realize that Monrovia isn’t dirty. At least not in the way I had it etched in my mind. There is dirt. The rainy season is ending and dirt – the dried remnants of rivers of mud – lines the street and abuts curbs. But this morning, I noticed that people had swept, were sweeping, the previous days trash into little piles. The garbage was – well – tidy. Little mountains of plastic bags and orange shavings ushered neatly together; joined by other small piles.
The end result…streets that whisper order into the face of chaos. And Monrovia does have its share of chaos.
Taxis vie with UN and INGO trucks for space on the road, swerving to miss potholes and each other. People wander into the street in a game of crosswalk chicken. Pedestrians dare cars to hit them as they scurry- or amble depending on ability and inclination- across a four lane street that is transformed into 5 or 6 lanes as old and rusting vehicles bob and weave for space and distance.
On the sidewalks- between men holding up any number of once living objects: chickens, bush rat, shrimp the length of a bar of soap- people signal with their hands where they want to go…finger in the air or hand outstretched in a kind of chopping gesture. As taxis slow to let someone out, a crowd gathers at the door gently pushing for space. Four people shove into the back and the taxi winds its way toward town. Silly me, I thought it would take us where we requested; instead it dropped us in the general vicinity, more bus than taxi. No bother, the ocean is a great landmark.
Monrovia isn’t that different from other cities I’ve been in. it could be Kandy (Sri Lanka) only there are more blighted buildings and fewer green handrails here. It could be Maputo or Nairobi. But it isn’t.
And when the sun set and the stores closed for the night the city took on a completely different flavor. There are only a few street lights to cast yellowish-orange rings of focused light on patches of sidewalk that spill – barely- into the street. Where shops had shuttered and bolted their doors, market women, their wares balanced in big bags or colorful buckets on their heads, laid out piles of used underwear and shirts for sale. Popcorn, fish, and coconut vendors sat placidly waiting for hunger to strike. Street kids darted between cars.
Despite being various shades of brown, BushDiva and I stood out as foreign – me with my light skin and fast walk; her with her dreadlocks and socked feet in Tevas. We looked like an easy mark but posed more of a challenge as we changed course frequently, left side right side, road sidewalk.
Back toward the convent, the bustle of city nightlife mostly behind us, the darkness reached for us. Shadows from the brick wall enclosing the compound threw shadows carelessly across our path making the last block seem like the longest. Finally we reached the gate where we greeted the guards posted just inside and made our way to our room thankful for a different perspective on the city and for the sanctuary of leaving it behind.
My pe kin
“My pe kin.”
Gutz is always calling into the distance, “My pe kin,” as he fishes in his pocket for money or finishes a meal that requires the plate be taken in. My pe kin (I very well may be spelling that wrong) and the female equivilant, “small girl“, are bestowed “generously” on any child within eye or earshot.
For the life of me I don’t know why they don’t hide from him- or every other adult for that matter. But they don’t. and so on any given day some child in the middle of playing, or eating, or whatever, rushes over and is sent to buy fish or beer.
It was the same in South Africa. Lunch for teachers or loose draws (single cigarettes) for someone else, they scurry along and hurry back. Mo confirmed it is the same in Sierra Leone. Task complete, they return to whatever they were doing before. No compensation save, maybe, a thank you.
It kind of explains why the kids try, and sometimes do, pump for me when I go for water. I thought maybe it was because I’m foreign but Gutz pointed out that I rarely see adults at the pump. The kids do it. And he’s right.
I think sometimes it is the errands are ridiculous, but really it isn’t that much different than how children are run back home. Changing channels – or more aptly now – finding the remote, getting drinks, washing dishes- are our variations.
Random errands aside, the concept of children doing chores for adults is sometimes expanded into odd jobs for payment. Some of the other volunteers live farther away from a pump. They hired local kids to haul water on their behalf. And here begins the trouble.
While not a bizarre or excessive concept in my South African frame of reference, stepping back it is not impossible to comprehend how someone else, removed from context, might see foreignness in a child fetching large quantities of water… Another American who lives in the area apparently did and took umbrage.
Child abuse.
She said it was child labor and that the volunteers should be ashamed. Local norms be damned…we are not Liberians and should not participate.
I scoffed at first. Thinking back to the myriad of errands kids in my village were subjected to. Thinking back to Shaka, who had his water hauled, to another volunteer whose sisters insisted they haul for her after she showcased her inability to maneuver a wheelbarrow and spilled 25 liters of water on the way home.
But just because it is local custom doesn’t make it ok. There are always customs or habits I adopt happily, others resignedly, and those that I refuse outright. It isn’t unheard of.
Truth be told, I don’t know where the line of acceptability is in “child labor”. Chores need to be done and sometimes money needs to be made. The kids aren’t taken from school and Gutz commented that some folks wouldn’t pay…just commandeer, “my pekin, fetch me some water.” ANd they would fetch water because that is what children do.
When I was in middle and high school I babysat. Not the occasional event, I had business cards and flyers and did a steady stream of business that kept me in a fair amount of cash for someone so young. I don’t recall anyone ever accusing my parents or those that employed me, of exploitation or child labor. To my recollection, no one thought it was cruel – rather they viewed it as instilling a sound work ethic and a healthy respect for money.
Is hauling water the same thing?
Forced to consider hauling water from a different vantage point, I am no longer as sure footed on my answer. But, “when in Rome…”
Only I’m not sure when that stops being a tenet for adaptation and morphs into an excuse for questionable behavior. Still, on American farms (hell, farms and family businesses all over the world) children are responsible for any number of tasks that both build character and work ethic and help the family/business.
But maybe milking cows and watching tv while a 7-year-old sleeps soundly isn‘t the same as filling containers with water and then balancing them on your head or in a wheelbarrow and heading home. Of course, most homes have pipes with clean water flowing through them back home, so maybe we’ve just forgotten hauling water was a reasonable chore.
Tags: liberia, socialcommentary, volunteer