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.