Regain a Kind of Paradise

We weren't trying to sneak out, never mind that it's hard to be anything resembling stealthy in a convoy of SUVs and vans with hazard lights flashing. But from the group of cars carrying us to the airport at 2am it felt a little like we were sneaking out in the dead of night, through a ghostly Kakata empty of anyone living, haunted by memories of a war barely over and staring another lengthy, terrifying struggle in the face. So many people here are terrified. And they don't have the option of leaving.

It's good that Peace Corps is pulling their volunteers back from Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia. I am sure it's the correct choice, even if I wouldn't have been able to make it on my own - I'm leaving too many important people behind. After we did a final check of our house, our neighbor Maryline asked if all the neighbor women could say a prayer with us. So they held Devotion, putting into God's hands the job of carrying me safely to my family in America, though Peace Corps leaving Liberia has deeply frightening significance for them. I stood in the circle with eyes closed as hymns and prayers rose around me and tears fell down my cheeks, Ma Fata's and Lydia's hands grasped too tightly in mine because that is how it works here: people hold on to each other. Even when they are looking for the strength to let go.

This last week has been one of the most physically and emotionally draining times I can remember in my life. I'm totally exhausted from shock, too-short goodbyes, the hurry-up-and-wait logistics of transporting a large group of people, and the battle to find a balance between looking forward and looking back, a way to hold within myself the conflicting emotions of excitement at seeing my American family and the shame, grief, and devastation I feel at leaving my Liberian family and fellow volunteers. I'm numb from travel and from feelings-overload. I haven't slept in three days. I don't know which way is up. This feels like a dream even while I'm living it. And then I read articles from news sources back home reporting on the facts of the situation, but they sound so strange to me,  foreign and distant.

Ebola has been everywhere in the news since American missionaries tested positive for the virus. There has been a lot of coverage this week discussing the numbers of this outbreak - the "unprecedented" death toll and catastrophic consequences, cost-benefit analysis of international aid, 90% fatality of patients, how many Americans have become infected, the chances of Ebola spreading beyond the borders of a few tiny, destitute West African nations. It's said that numbers don't lie, but they can tell an incomplete story. Here are my numbers, some of the things I've seen in this outbreak: There has been Ebola in Liberia for over five months, and the very catchy and informative smash hit single "Ebola in Town (Don't Touch Your Friends)" has been making radio waves for almost as long (no, seriously, it's a great song, go check it out!). Truly selfless and miraculous aid workers have been on the ground running isolation wards and distributing supplies since the very beginning of the outbreak.
In the last week I've seen signs posted, hand-washing stations introduced, and huge efforts to educate and protect the public, which gives me hope that the Peace Corps pull-back really will be temporary. Also in the last week, several incidents have precipitated huge international awareness of the situation and put pressure on the government. Many NGO's and other aid groups are pulling their foreign staff out. People are sick and dying. They are terrified to be dropped back into a crisis when most of them still vividly remember the last war their country fought. The last time there was an announcement on UNMIL radio that Peace Corps was sending their volunteers home was 1990. It took 20 years of fighting and rebuilding to bring us back.

My experience of this outbreak (the email the tears in Sonnie's voice as she told me hell was coming again now that the angels were going back, the way I couldn't speak to say goodbye to my principal because neither of us could believe I was going, the ghost-town of the Kakata market when they closed it on Friday to spray it with bleach and disinfectant) is not the only true story. I watched an amazing TED talk in which Chimamanda Adichie, a Nigerian novelist, discussed how damaging it can be to have a single narrative or perspective shape the story of an event, a group, or an individual. It robs them of their agency and dignity and severely limits everyone else's perception of them. So this is my truth, my story about Ebola. It is only one of many stories. All of them are worth telling. All of them are vitally important. Adichie says that the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. Allowing only one story to be the truth about anything robs people of the power to be more than one thing, to feel more than one thing, to express the complex and dynamic nature of their own identity and experience. And having that story be told by people who aren't even participants in it is even more harmful and demeaning. It's only by sharing many perspectives on an event that some of that power and dignity are returned, that we can "regain a kind of paradise."

My experience of this outbreak has a different setting and characters than anyone else's, has a heartbreaking climax that I couldn't have anticipated, and hasn't ended yet. And just like other experiences, it needs to be shared. I want an ending where I get to meet Lydia's baby soon enough that it won't be scared of me, where I can teach Fatu to bake pineapple upside-down cake, where my students learn how to graph a line. I want to go home and continue the important work I have yet to finish. I want to regain my paradise.

A glooming peace this morning with it brings

The sun for sorrow will not show it's head

Pomp & Circumstance

Fun fact about Liberia: graduations are almost a bigger deal than birthdays (does it make more sense to commemorate milestones achieved by more than just not dying? Yes and no in a country where daily life can pose no small threat to life and limb...). And summer is graduation season. Hair is plated, lappa suits are sewn, giant speaker sets are rented, and goats are slaughtered for all-night parties celebrating completion of twelfth grade on down to pre-k. Thanks to the speakers, even those neighbors within a two-mile radius who do not receive invitations get to enjoy second-hand sonic bombardment. It's like two months of non-stop block party for all of Kakata.

In the spirit of the season, then, it seems only fitting that I examine the last year of not-dying I have accomplished. So here, in no particular order, are some of my highest highs and lowest lows for the year, and some future hopes and dreams thrown in for good measure:

1. I am ridiculously proud of my first full year of teaching in my own classroom. I only cried in fromt of students twice, I learned more than I taught, and I am humbled and inspired by the efforts of my students, who work harder in a day than I do in a month. I will hopefully get to carry them to eleventh grade next year and puck up right where I left off but with 100% more after-school tutoring and learning all their names before the end of the year.

2. I love this place so much, but it is REALLY hard to live in a country where basic systems barely function on their best days. Where to make plans is to guarantee that they will fall through. Where your support system is your neighbors and for all that I love mine we are often on totally different wavelengths, sometimes at the worst times. 

3. I love the person I have become here, the people I am surrounded by, the family I've made here and the sense of peace and purpose I have every day. I want to keep living in the moment for as long as it lasts. And I'm grateful every day for my amazing, inspiring roommate.

4. Cinnamon rolls got baked on a coal pot. 'Nuff said. (Actually, I love food and cooking here in general. So satisfying in so many vital, fundamental ways)

5. We were cool enough to play this awesome board game, Pandemic, even in the midst of an Ebola outbreak. Because if you laugh at things they are less scary, and it's an AWESOME game.

6. I sewed a lappa quilt. By hand. 

7. I am part of our post newsletter, "No Bad News," and I'm rediscovering how fun and exhausting journalism is.

8. I walked back into the classroom after yelling and crying in front of my students. And had a miraculous teaching day.

9. This year's PST is gonna rock, and I had the incredible opportunity to be part of making that happen.

10. I'm going to miss some people who are leaving, but I just got 50 new friends delivered to my door. I hope I can be to LR-5 what LR-3 has been to me. Big shoes to fill...

I can only hope that the coming year is half so rich and strange. Let the good times roll!

Only Hate the Road When You're Missing Home

Lofa-ventures, Part the Second

Most towns in Liberia, even if they are little and very remote, tend to have a Monrovia parking, where passengers can get a seat in a car going all the way to town. Most of these parkings are run by the Liberian Rural Transit Union, which monitors taxis and drivers, sets and collects fares, and even issues receipts when passengers pay in advance. This last is particularly helpful if your car breaks down and you have to get another car- the Transit Union can send a replacement car, and your receipt means you don’t need to re-pay the fare. On the day I was leaving Foya, I showed up to the Monrovia parking at 7:30am, paid my fare, and was overjoyed to hear that I was the third seat filled in the car- only three more to go before we could be on our way. I was looking forward to the ride, and to being back home after almost a week away. And surely my outstanding travel luck would hold for eight more hours, and see me home safe. Of course, the travel gods despise hubris above all things. 

one of the alternatives to bush taxis

There is an informal rule of travel here that I call the “rule of three’: if three things go wrong or get in the way of a trip, call it off and try again tomorrow because the universe is trying to politely suggest that things are about to go horribly awry. I forgot (purposely discounted) this rule, because I really wanted to get home. My birthday was two days away, I had guests coming to visit, I missed my cat, and I had promised my school administration that I would be on campus to help with the last two days of semester exams since I am the chairperson of the Testing Administration Committee. I had very compelling reasons to be patient (willfully blind) in the face of the expected delays (universe’s warnings) to travel in a remote part of the country. 

[Maybe now is a good time to state for the record that I did in fact arrive home, safe and sound and only slightly the worse for wear. I hate to spoil the ending, but for the sake of my loved ones I jumped ahead small-small.]

securing the load, including a live goat in a sack

Warning sign number one was the fact that it took five and a half hours to fill the car, and three passengers on three separate occasions paid their fee and then changed their mind about traveling that day. A young woman came to reserve a spot, left to get her money and load, and never came back. Another woman was heading to Monrovia to go to school found out that it was still semester vacation and decided to wait a week. The driver got into a strong debate with a gentleman taking his son to some doctor, the gentleman got vexed at the tone and diction of the driver’s comments, and he stormed off, taking his fare and his ailing offspring with him. I ignored this sign and paid for a second seat so that we could finally depart. This meant I had the entire front passenger seat to myself, a fantastic situation since the other passengers were all large, causing a larger than average amount of squishing and squeezing and associated discomfort in the back seat. 

Warning sign number two came thirty minutes into our journey, at the immigration checkpoint for in Kolahun. Within the fifteen counties of Liberia are numerous districts, and at the border of each district is a checkpoint- usually a cement hut on one side of the road and a knotted and frayed rope extending across to the other side, lowered by one of the LIberian National Police staffing the site once a vehicle has passed ‘inspection’. At most checkpoints people are curious about my nationality, destination, and sometimes marital status, but I never have to do anything more than show my id card and chat with the guard. On the way to Foya, I’d had to get out of the car and walk through the checkpoint, and the inspector had asked for my passport (safely hidden in my house in Kakata) and generally given me a hard time. So I was already apprehensive approaching the checkpoint coming back from Foya. The car was stopped, the driver got out to do the usual song and dance, and the inspector requested that everyone get out and walk through. But the car didn’t follow us- it had ‘spoiled’ and refused to start until the driver spent some time wheedling and pleading and working some magic with wires. Thirty minutes later we were back on the road again. The driver promised to stop in Voinjama to have an electrician look at the problem so that it didn’t crop up later at a less-opportune time, but when we got to Voinjama he declared the problem ‘fixed’ and we kept going.

Warning sign number three was the driver having to fight the clutch for every up- and down-shift over the hills above Zorzor, while we sailed along behind two giant UN convoy trucks blowing up an impenetrable fog of red dust. In the rainy season most roads in the country become rivers of mud, since there are few coal-tar roads. In the dry season (November to March), they are re-surfaced to remove ruts and holes, and are actually quite pleasant to travel on, aside from the dust. It’s usually not too much of a problem, since there arent too many cars traveling one right behind the other. But when you are in a taxi stuck behind huge and slow-moving cargo transport vehicles it’s a different story. We found ourselves in the catch-22 of having to stay far enough behind the truck to have any visibility at all, but needing to get close enough to pass, all without hitting any unseen oncoming traffic, baby goats, or small children. The whole time our driver was playing chicken with the trucks, he was grunting and fighting the gear shift and pumping the clutch far too much for my personal comfort. 

We stopped in Zorzor again to eat and refuel, and I got to watch the sun set through the trees of Salayea District. About an hour south of Zorzor is the border between Lofa and Bong Counties and yet another checkpoint. We stopped and the driver and guards did their thing while the back seat passengers urged them to “go quickly, go quickly, we beg! One big truck coming, we must get in front the truck, driver let’s go!” The rope was lowered and we pulled out onto the road in front of yet another UN truck, and the car spoiled again. In the middle of the road. In front of the truck. As the sun was sinking behind the mountains. With no cell reception. Still at least four hours from Kakata, and two hours from the volunteers in Gbarnga, who would let me spend the night on their couch in a heartbeat if I could call them. 

After poking around under the hood and fiddling around with a frayed looking bit of rubber he pulled out of a plastic bag, the driver determined that the issue was the fan belt, and that the replacement he had was the wrong size. One of the security guards wandered over to make helpful comments (“Your car it spoil-o” and “Wicked car have so-so problems”) and mentioned that there was a mechanic in that very village, which made us all excited until he clarified his use of the preposition to mean that he resided in the village but was currently ‘in the bush.’ Dead end. 

At this point I took stock: 1) this happens all the time to Liberians, and one of the ladies from the back seat had spread her lappa out on the dirt road behind the car and started napping, so it was not a big deal; 2) I had half a bottle of water and half a package of ginger biscuits left over from our stop in Zorzor, so I wouldn’t starve/die of thirst before I got home; 3) we would probably be on the side of the road for a while (see above re: unavaiable mechanics and napping passengers) so I should put my headphones in and try to find my ‘so-so car problems’ zen. 

Two hours later I was awoken from my fugue state by the arrival of the driver, accompanied by a mechanic and a cadre of mini-mechanic minions. They poked and banged and messed around with the engine for a while by flashlight, improvising car tools from rocks and sticks and plastic bags, and a little after 10pm they got the car running again. The ol-ma woke up from behind the car, the male passenger, James, left off yelling at the driver to take his seat, and we all got ready to go. The driver reached down below the steering wheel to fiddle with the fuse box again because the repairs had voided whatever magic he had worked at the Kolahun checkpoint to fix the electrical system, and whatever he did made the engine shudder to a halt. 

James started yelling again, the mini-mechanic minions turned the flashlight back on, and the driver popped the hood. The mechanic suggested disabling the electrical all together and running a wire directly from the battery to whatever needed power under the hood, but the driver insisted that he needed his lights on to run at night. They found a compromise, got the car started, and we pulled onto the road. We made it across the county line about 200 yards down the road. and the car spoiled yet again. 

I was pretty much done with the whole trip at that point. It was late, I was tired and hungry and had no idea where I was, I had no cell reception, and I came to terms with the fact that I wasn’t getting home. So I asked myself what Prince, our safety and security officer, would do. I figured he would have the male passenger walk him back up the road to the security checkpoint which was well-lit and well-staffed, then he would borrow a phone from someone who had service, and he would call Prince to make sure someone knew where I was and get some advice. So that’s what I did. I told James that he was going to carry me back up the road (“I will carry you now?” “You will carry me now.”) and he handed me over to the head security cop with the air of entrusting a sacred burden (“This is one Peace Corps, she trying reach Kakata. You can find her seat in car?”).

I was ready to sit there all night if necessary, and at least I had nothing to fear from snakes in a well-lit cement hut, but apparently I had been punished enough, because the Travel Gods saw fit to grant me maybe the greatest blessing of my life. The guard called over a young woman from the village who had been charging her phone with their generator and informed her that she would carry the white woman to her house to sleep. So I was led through the dusty night by the beam of a tiny flashlight to a mud and thatch building. 

She showed me into a sweet-smelling, dimly-lit haven decorated with photographs of her family and brightly-colored paper flowers. A net-draped bed in the corner was covered with fresh sheets. After the day I’d had, it was heaven on earth. I put my bag down, and my host asked (rather pointedly) if I’d like to wash the dust of travel from my feet and collected soap and a bucket of water. I was a little shaky trying to stand on one foot, so she knelt down outside her front door and washed my feet for me. She let me choose the inside or the outside of the bed to sleep on. She let me use the only pillow. She heated water for my bath the next morning. No one in my life has shown me greater kindness, and I realized as we walked back through the village in the dawn that I didn’t even know her name. It was Annie. I will never forget what she did for me when I had nothing, and I will always be more grateful than words can describe. 

Back at the checkpoint, I bought some bread and sat watching the sun rise over the Lofa River. The previous 24 hours caught up to me in a rush of tears of exhaustion, confusion, frustration, and gratitude. When he saw my face, the guard asked if I missed home.

After the previous day’s trials, I really appreciated the ease with which I found a car to Gbarnga, got a seat in a taxi to Kakata, and finally made it home more than 30 hours after the start of my journey. I arrived home to an empty house on the day before my birthday, but my wonderful, amazing roommate left me a note on my door wishing me the happiest of birthdays. Sleeping in my own bed, after a truly epic adventure, was close to a religious experience. There truly is no place like home.

Free and Easy (Down the Road I Go)

Lofa-ventures, Part The First

The last week in January I embarked on a triumphal pre-birthday tour of Lofa County in northwestern Liberia. I had plans to visit some of my Peace Corps brothers and sisters, see more of this country, and eat some new food- Lofa is known for its toborgee soups, the unique ingredient of which is a special baking soda called kitalee, a culinary and digestive adventure to be sure. I’d traveled a lot on the west side of Liberia on mostly paved roads, and I figured I’d level up my travel mojo and tackle the Lofa highway, which is all dirt road north of Gbarnga. The travel gods had been with in my previous ventures, and I was ready: pigtail french braids pinned up under a headscarf, cargo shorts and sports bra (best place to carry money while traveling!) clean, ipod fully charged, backpack locked and loaded in the back, sunglasses on, prepared for whatever the road could bring. Of course, the travel gods despise hubris above all things. 

waiting for my car to fill at Gbarnga parking in Kakata

The journey up was fairly smooth. It only took a couple hours to fill a taxi at the Gbarnga parking here in Kakata (filled taxi= 2 persons in the front passenger seat, 4 persons in the back seat, all the luggage/parcels of frozen fish/random bagged livestock/mattresses and potentially a couple of passengers riding ‘VIP’ in the cargo area. This will be important later). A Chinese company has been contracted to pave the road from Kakata to Gbarnga, so the first two-hour leg of the trip was on gorgeous smooth new coal tar road broken up by sections of rutted dirt tracks bypassing paving-in-progress. We got a flat tire a little over halfway there, but that’s practically a guaranteed part of the  experience for travelers off the beaten path to Monrovia and the driver had it swapped out for the spare and the car back on the road in ten minutes. 

I had already arranged for the driver to drop me at the Lofa parking in Gbarnga, since it is one of the largest cities in the country and pretty spread-out. Once I retrieved my backpack, it took less than half an hour to find a car going all the way to the town of Voinjama, the county seat of Lofa, approximately six hours north. We back seat passengers squeezed in as helpful loaders slammed our doors for us, and we were on the way surprisingly quickly. I popped in my headphones, started up a roadtrip playlist, and opened a packet of chocolate biscuits to share with my neighbors. When you ride in the back seat of a taxi with three other adult-sized humans, creative physics is required. Usually two people sit leaning slightly forward and two sit back against the seat, thus alternating shoulders quite nicely. There is nothing to be done about hips, but once the doors are closed and the car starts moving, everyone shifts and settles into a reasonable level of (very close) comfort. 

Lofa county is beautiful. We drove through gorgeous mountains and forests, small towns and tiny villages of mud huts with thatched roofs, goats and chickens and puppies in the dust of the road. The mountains around the town of Zorzor (halfway to Voinjama) may be the most picturesque place I’ve seen. Most cars making the run from Gbarnga to Voinjama stop in Zorzor for refueling for both humans and cars. We had another flat tire just south of Zorzor (again, fixed at pit-crew-worthy speed...flat tires make very timely stretch breaks too...) so we also waited there while the now-flat spare was patched and re-inflated. We arrived in Voinjama at around 8pm after one more flat tire (changing it in the dark posed only a momentary challenge) and I met up with my host and another NGO worker for some palm butter soup and a cold club beer at a cookshop, full of the victory of a successful day of travel.

The next day I got to explore Voinjama a little bit, checking out the market and ooh-ing and ahh-ing appropriately over the paved roads (a work in progress, but in the active sense of the word progress, which was good to see), the surrounding hills, and the small park area in the center of town with benches and landscaping and a little painted fence. Voinjama has one of the few government-constructed multilateral highschools, which means some students are enrolled in a vocational track alongside their academic work, and graduate with a certificate and some marketable skills, like carpentry, agriculture, electrical wiring, or baking. There is also a mountain on one side of town with a round gazebo-style palava hut built on top, and you can hike up to sit in the hut and watch the sun rise or set. I spent a lovely day cooking and eating and playing games and having awesome conversation, and got ready to leave the following morning for my final destination, a town called Foya in the tip-top corner of the country, where Liberia touches Guinea and Sierra Leone. 

The road to Foya is one of the most terrible roads in the country, but that car ride was surprisingly smooth, without even the flat-tire-stretch-break I anticipated. I had unprecedented luck getting a car and dealing with other associated logistics.  The driver was able to drop me off in the center of the (admittedly not-very-big) town, and I met up with my hosts, who showed me around. Since it is so close to the borders with two other countries, Foya has a pretty unique feel. Most people there speak Gisi in addition to Liberian English, the money changers have Guinea francs in addition to Liberty dollars, and they eat their potato greens fried in red oil over country rice. But in this place, as in most places in all three countries, you can also find evidence of the war. Twenty-one  years ago, there was a massacre in Foya and there is a palava hut built on the site in remembrance of those who were killed. 

two-foot-deep ruts on the road to Foya

I was only in Foya for two days, but it was long enough for me to get a Gisi name: Yawa,  meaning ‘fifth-born’. I added it to my collection: I’m Weade, ‘last child,’ a Grebo name given to me by my host family, who are from Maryland county, beacause I was there last Peace Corps host-child. I also have a Bassa name, Morpu, or ‘bright skin’ because I’m white. So in addition to tasty food and gorgeous pictures and very excellent celebration with some friends, my trip to Foya also netted me a new and lovely name.

Foya Central High

Fill Our Mouths With Cinnamon

While my roommate, the Wonderful, Amazing Heather, was gone to Senegal for the Peace Corps STOMP Out Malaria Bootcamp at the end of January, I didn’t have much to do. So I spent a lot of time wandering around Kakata, talking to our awesome neighbors, and (most importantly) baking. I perfected my cinnamon rolls (much to Lydia’s delight), half-invented a light, simple ginger spice cake, and figured out the best ratio of pineapple chunks to lime juice for tasty muffins. 

While I was working one afternoon, Richard from my 10F class came by to visit. He was curious about baking and stayed to help me bake a batch of brownies and copy some of my recipes. As he was leaving, he mentioned that other students would be interested in learning to fix “sweet sweet cakes” so I told him to put a list together and if there was enough interest I’d start a baking club. 

mixing the wet and dry ingredients for pumpkin cake

measuring out cinnamon

Richard is the class prefect of 10F and a very responsible and motivated student, so he did just that. And as it turns out there are plenty of students who like to eat cake and want to learn to fix it. So the Lango Lippaye High School Baking Club was formed. We’ve had two meetings so far, learning to make banana bread and pumpkin bread. Next week Ruth, who has some experience of her own, will teach us how to fix cassava cake (I’ll report back on that, of course, but I think it’s like cornbread?) and I have plans for pineapple cake and cinnamon rolls for May. And, in tune with the grassroots, sustainable, capacity-building development philosophy put forth by Peace Corps, I’ve got a group of creative, motivated students learning a marketable skill and building strong relationships with each other. I get to hark back to my former 4-H cooking project glories and eat tasty muffins at the same time. There’s no bad here!

Guess Thats Why They Call It Window-Pain

Most of my blog posts, like most of my days in Liberia, are happy, up-beat, optimistic. I love my life and my work and myself here in a way that is impossible to describe, though that doesn’t stop me trying. But Liberia isn’t all sunshine and puppies and smooth roads with perfect playlists. Daily life here is full of heartbreak and sorrow that is terribly commonplace. 

-----

Since Lydia moved into a room in Ben and Fatu’s house before Christmas, she’s become like a sister to me. We bonded over cinnamon rolls and the depths of my loathing for laundry. She lets me practice hair platting on her, gives me cooking tips, and is one of my closest Liberian friends. Her two sons (Rashid-boy, 5, and Brodie, 7) chase the football into our yard in the evenings and “chunk dirt” (take out the trash) for us when we leave it on the porch. Lydia’s husband has a stall in the market selling pills, tablets, and sundry other medicines but we rarely see him. 

One night last week Lydia came over to sit small and lecture in our living room, and she told us that her husband had assaulted her that morning. Luckily, she lives with Ben (who may be one of the best men in the world), and he was able to intervene before anything else could happen. She left the house at dawn to walk ten miles to her brother’s house to ask him to come help her, then walked back and worked all day at the house. She sat in a plastic chair in our candle-lit living room crying because she has no idea what to do. She’s been with her husband for 10 years, and he’s been physically violent for most of them, while destroying her relationships with most of her family. She never finished high school because she got pregnant right after he paid her dowry, but she’s been selling plantain chips and dried fish to pay her sons’ school fees and contribute to a SUSU, a local savings club. She’s terrified that her husband will beat her again, but she’s grateful that it was her head he kicked this morning and not her four-months-pregnant belly. She cried when she found out that she was expecting her third child because now she can’t leave him- no Liberian man would take in a woman with three children by another man- and he always escalates his violent outbursts when she’s carrying a child. She actually said that if it wasn’t for her boys, she might have killed herself. 

She’ll be 29 next month. She’s one of the most vibrant and beautiful people I’ve met in my life. She wants Heather and I to be namesakes to her baby. She’s frightened and ashamed and there’s nothing I can do except hug her and be here for her when she needs it. 

-----

Our taxi came around a bend in the road this morning and almost hit another car stopped in the middle of a crowd of keening, wailing Liberians. The passengers of the other car were all scrambling around trading places and piling in the cargo area while a man cradling a child was pushed into the front seat. As soon as his door closed, the car raced away towards Kakata, a five-minute ride away. The child, a girl, had been hit by a speeding motorbike while trying to cross the road and was being rushed to C.H. Rennie Government Hospital. One of the passengers in my car noted that there weren’t many people actually working at Rennie, since the government hasn’t paid their salaries in almost a year. And that hospital, perhaps stocked with luxuries like gauze, antiseptic, and nurses, is that father’s hope for his daughter.

-----

Princess moved into Ben and Fatu’s house at the end of January, 7 months pregnant and posessed of a quick laugh and a powerful punt in kickball. For the last three weeks she’s been ready to pop, and all anyone (Fatu, Ma Winifred, Lydia, Ma Fata our new neighbor, us) has been talking about is when the baby will come. On Tuesday she looked really sick and on Wednesday night Lydia took her to the hospital, where she was diagnosed with Malaria 3+. She stayed at Rennie because they were concerned about the baby. While I was out of town this weekend, Fatu called to tell me that she’d had her baby at last, but it was still-born. That child goes on the list of people I know who have died from Malaria, just in time for April, which is World Malaria Month. 

-----

Car accidents, still-births, and domestic violence happen all the time all over the world (every 30 seconds someone dies of Malaria. Half of them are children. 90% of them are in Africa). They are especially scary and painful in a place where the systems in place to combat tragedies like this either don’t work or don’t exist. Waiting on the side of the road with your injured daughter in your arms, or realizing that your baby is distressed gets harder when you can’t call an ambulance, and if a car does stop to carry you, the hospital might not be staffed or stocked. The police might come to help you escape a violent spouse, or they may tell you you’ve provoked it and you deserve it, so stop crying. And there’s nothing I can do in the moment. I have to hope that my own example in my classroom and community is enough, because it’s all I have.

May Your Path Be the Sound of Your Feet Upon the Ground

It is difficult for anyone to get an objective, outside perspective on our lives. We all wear blinders by neccessity or preference, or through ignorance of their presence. And sometimes we are blessed (or cursed, ‘May you live in interesting times’-style) with the chance to catch on the limitations of our own perspective and feel out where those blinders begin. Today I find myself  overcome by what I have adjusted to, by the edges of my blinders.

I am sitting in the front passenger seat of a bush taxi whose moving parts are apparently held together with double-stick tape and prayers, not sharing the single seat with any other passenger (a pleasant surprise). Because our car is defying all rules of mechanics to remain in forward motion, the driver is exercising every possible caution and easing the vehicle over any imperfections in the pavement at an agonizing pace. The road we travel, from Monrovia to Kakata, is in the early stages of resurfacing, which seem to entail much tearing up of existing coal tar and general destruction of the current road surface, so the imperfections in pavement are many. And this has become my new normal: appreciating the luxury of none of my flesh squeezed next to any other human flesh, weaving around and carefully traversing canyons and crevasses on a frankly terrible road at a lame snail’s pace, passing by the ruins of bridge supports half-drowning in a creek or shells of houses half-swallowed by the jungle but still showing signs of the mortar fire that took them down not two decades ago, a place so beautiful and broken and precarious that my closed eyes must be a defense mechanism. If I wake up and really look around me, if I open my eyes, it will break my heart.

We stop and refuel our miracle-taxi before leaving Redlight (the truly hellacious, insane, indescribable, chaotic mess that is the transit center located on the road from Monrovia to most of the country north, east, and south of the capital). God’s Willing Filling Station could be any gas station in Liberia. The gaping doors of a shipping container open onto oil-stained packed dirt surrounding a raised cement platform supporting a rickety shelf of repurposed gallon mayo jars filled with pale pink gasoline. Next to the shelf is a length of rubber tubing running to a trapdoor in the cement, presumably leading to a gas tank underneath. Across the top of the shelf is a large funnel attached to another piece of tubing, for putting gas into a vehicle. The platform, overhang, and storage container are brightly decorated in “No Smoke” signs complete with helpful illustrations of x’d out cigarettes for the less-than-literate. A sandwich board advertises “Today’s Rate” of 83 Liberian Dollars to $1 US, and the price of a gallon of gas: 345 LD. Our driver addresses the attendant and requests, “Ma man, plea’ gi’ me two gallon,” handing over the money, unwiring the gas cap, and carefully observing the exchange. The car won’t start up on first try, so he pops the hood and does some magic with the battery before we are on our way again.

As we pull out of God’s Willing Filling Station, we pass a large MTN transit bus making a run from Gbarnga through Kakata into town. The buses run (for a given value of the word) this main transit route as a cheaper alternative to bush taxis. A dozen of them were a gift to the Liberian government by a generous benefactor nation to help with Liberia’s redevelopment. Someone told me on one of my first days in country that as long as I was better than a bus I was doing some measurable good here. That can be a confusing indicator at times.

Sometimes it is easier to see the effects of the physical transit of persons, a measurable displacement with clear and quantifiable results, than it is to see the value in the small victory of conducting 45 minutes of arithmetic review for half a class of students.  A bus carries people to market to buy and sell things, to work or home to see their families, to school to learn and teach. In this country of failed systems, still operating in survival mode, a bus seems like a tangible tool. I can’t carry the weight of a whole country on my shoulders, and I shouldn’t try to do so (that is neither a sustainable model for development, nor within my rights or powers).  And it is easier to identify the cause of a breakdown and initiate repairs if it happens to a physical, mechanical system and not the delicate workings of a human heart or mind.

But I have to believe I am better than a bus. Or maybe I am doing good in a different way. I can be useful here precisely because of my human heart and mind, because little things like my one-year-old neighbor getting her hair braided for the first time or the academic victory of a student passing a quiz mean so much to me, because I do have blinders and my heart breaks and is reforged when I am brave enough to take them off and try to see this place with compassionate eyes. Some days that belief comes as easy as Baby Esther's smile or a student's good morning greeting. Some days it is fought for and earned (the miracle taxi did not break down, and we made it home safely). Some days I can't quite reach that place of faith. Every day I try again. 

Hang a Shining Star

My Christmas was nearly perfect this year, a vacation in all the best ways. 

I left Kakata on the 21st and headed west to a teeny-tiny village on the border with Sierra Leone to spend time with my Peace Corps sisters there. All I really wanted from the holiday was some time out of the ‘hurry up and wait’ business of teaching here, time to sit and bake and 'sit small' with my friends. And I really got my wish. Red carpets were rolled out, tinsel was hung, and the whole community came by to appreciate the unprecedented 50% increase in white women at the house. These PCVs are the first volunteers to be placed in their site since before the war, and their community is enamored of and fascinated by them in equal measure.

Inside, their house was decorated beautifully for the season, with swirls of cut-paper snowflakes flurrying over the wall of the study, toiletpaper-tube reindeer and christmas tree, and a gorgeous banner with stockings hanging beneath it- so I got a Christmas stocking with lollipops tucked inside! We played card games by candle light, listened to all the classic songs, and ate delicious food. I’m including pictures, because their house was gorgeous and I am ridiculously proud of my baking creations...

One day we took a walk to the next village (even smaller with less access or amenities, but with a gorgeous mosque). The half-hour trek along the narrow path through the bush made me feel like I was in King Solomon’s Mines following the intrepid and not-at-all-PC heroine through ‘the wilds of darkest africa’ (TM). Towering, vine-draped trees and dense jungle forest overshadowing us would give way all of a sudden to palm-dotted plain or reedy swampland. Three times we had to step over industrious rivers of big black ants (able to turn into fuious swarms of painful stinging misery with one disturbance), and the jungle was alive with chirping, clicking, humming life in the afternoon sun. The vast majority of my time here in Liberia has been spent in Kakata, so spending time exploring the bush and living the village life was fascinating and a refreshing change.

On Christmas Eve, we headed to Winter Break Part II: Tropical Beach Getaway, which was a refrehing change of a different sort. Robertsport is a coastal town world-famous in the surfing community as one of the preeminient destinations for unbelievable waves. It’s situated between the beach coastline and the edge of a lake separated from the ocean by a thin strip of sand. It feels like a beach town-something about the quality of light, the taste of salt in the air, and the wide, sun-bleached streets. Of course, it is also a Liberian town, so the dense greenery of the hills is broken up by half-bombed abandoned buildings, the streets are more pothole than pavement, and the main (dusty dirt) road past the open-air market hall is lined with trash and tin-roofed shacks. The tables in front of these stores are piled with freshly-caught fish pulled from the ocean every morning, and it boasts a Total gas station complete with air-conditioned mini-mart stocking cold beer and American snacks.

The PCV’s set up a tent city with our bug huts spread out under a huge, towering baobab tree fifty feet from the ocean at a community campground run by one of the locals. There were about twenty of us chiling in hammocks in the shade, tanning in the sun, and spending the holiday with the closest thing we have to family here. Somebody brought a Merry Christmas banner and a strand of red tinsel decorated with ornaments to set the mood, and we shared food over a bonfire in the evenings. Around dawn on Christmas morning, a crew of fishermen pushed their canoe into the water to lay a huge semi-circle of net, then returned to shore to haul in their catch hand-over-hand. Some of the volunteers got up to help, and we were able to pick through the first catch and buy a sandy pile of still-gasping mackerel, which were baked in tinfoil over the fire for Christmas dinner that evening. 

Spending three days bobbing in the waves was nice, and I loved the chance to take a dawn-lit walk through the surf to reflect. Even though I am far away from home here, I am also very much at home, and time spent with friends and family here felt like a good and fiting end to a year full of change and challenge.