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.

Mood of Jubilation

Last week I had the great pleasure of attending the graduation party for my host mother, Winifred, who finished first in her class (the 'ace' in Liberia) with a degree in religious education from the Baptist Seminary in Monrovia. As with all life events here, this was a capital-O Occasion. My host father is the pastor of a large church in Kakata, and both he and his wife have touched a lot of lives. So the entire church turned out in Sunday best to show their support for such a huge accomplishment.

Liberian parties are usually full of people, they always have great food and an absolutely terrible rented/borrowed sound system, and they all have a program or agenda complete with an MC and the feedback squeal of an abused microphone. There are opening prayers, unrehearsed speeches, and frequent audience participation. This party was a magnitude above because my family works so hard here and because it doubled as the unofficial going-away party for their departure to a new life in America. I got to meet my host ma's mother, see the puppies all grown up, and give Delwin a hug goodbye. It was amazing, and I will miss them terribly, but I am so proud of and happy for them starting a new phase of their life. 

The MC called for a prayer to thank God for the "mood of jubilation" we were graced with, and today, on my six-month anniversary of arriving in Liberia, I am full of jubilation in one form or another.

Dry season is fully upon us, complete with bright sun, cool breezes, and the hazy, dusty sky of harmattan, when the winds blow off the desert to the north instead of the ocean to the south. 

On our adventure to the market, Heather and I were blessed by the produce gods with cucumbers, a tomato, a butter pear (avocado) AND a pineapple! When okra and bitterball are the standard fare, this is a trip to the produce section of Whole Foods by comparison. We had delicious sandwiches bursting with fresh veggies for lunch, and loved every bite. The market was insane today, in the run-up to Christmas, which is a huge deal here. The main market road was choked with wheelbarrows full of clothes and other gifts, and navigating the crowds reminded me a little bit of the mall, but with that dusty Liberian twist. 

Today, my last teaching day before the holiday vacation, was a scheduled quiz for all my classes, so mean of me! But I decided to give those students who showed up a nice Christmas gift, and made it an open-book quiz when I got to school. This also allowed me to put the questions on the board in all my classes at once, taking advantage of absent teachers, so I didn't have to stay until six, which was a side benefit. It was a really good decision, because today was the day for stump speeches and campaigning for student government. They go all-out with that here, registering a political party with the PTA, taking a stand on issues like teacher attendance and the lack of desks, and disrupting class to pass out candy and badges. There are also fabulous campaign crowns that any first-grader would be jealous of: a bright paper band with a square stapled up in front proclaiming "SUP for Rights" and "Ferguson wants justice for students." Because Heather and I were virtually the only teachers holding class today, most of the students were running around campus chanting slogans and playing music. Several of my tenth graders asked me if I supported SUP (Student Unity Party, wants to increase teacher regularity and administrative transperancy) or SDP (Student Democratic Party, wants to get more rights and justice for students, whatever that means). I told them I was very pleased to see my students exercising their political rights, and that I was sure that the best party for the school would win. I also got to wish everyone a merry Christmas ("Ms L, you will carry me with you for Christmas?") and a happy new year. 

It's strange to think that I'm almost done with my first semester of teaching here, that it's been half a year since staging in Philly, that I didn't know any of these people six months ago and now they are my family. I have plans to travel to Grand Cape Mount county for vacation (and maybe end up at Robertsport, one of the best surfing spots in the world), and to call home to talk to everyone. I am keeping you all in my heart this season, and I wish you all the jubilation you can handle. Merry merry!

Thank You For The Work

Today was a day of good work, as such things are measured on a Liberian scale.

Since we were gone to training for a week and came back to 2nd marking period exam week, neither Heather nor myself have had time to do a big restocking trip for far too long. So this morning we strapped on our backpacks, faced the nemesis hill right outside our front door, and headed to the market to fill our empty shelves. 

Wednesday morning in Kakata is a bustling, bizarre, beautiful thing. It hasn't rained in a week, so the streets are a dusty brown instead of a muddy red. The row of shoeshine boys who set up camp at the side of the coal tar greeted us cheerfully as we wended our way past them, fighting upstream against a tide of wheelbarrows and bundle-laden teens. The money-changer we stopped at to convert US dollars into Liberian dollars had a chess game set up and asked if we wanted to play. And everyone said good morning. Our usual shopkeepers missed us and gave us a gently chiding hard time for not stopping by to say hello. We ran into at least half a dozen of our students (most of whom sell in the market or do other work in the morning before going to school in the afternoon since they are self-supported and/or have families and children of their own). And we covered a lot of ground, walking around half of Kakata. All told, the adventure took about two hours. We returned with enough time to rinse off the sweat and stash our haul of rice, canned goods, oil, vegetables, and cleaning supplies before heading to campus for school. Pantry: stocked.

This week is the first week of 3rd marking period (a marking period is four weeks of instruction, one week of review, one week of exams repeated six times in a school year) and I made the executive decision that I would teach my tenth-graders actual algebra for this period after months of arithmetic review. So today I introduced the concept of translating English sentences into algebraic expressions. We kept things simple, making a list of words for addition and practicing math sentences using just that operation. I felt like an amazing teacher, too. I had students raising their hands to ask thoughtful questions and coming to the board to give (mostly correct) answers. They even took a mini-quiz and mostly managed to do their own work. 

Part of the reason class went so well is that more than half my students were absent, and twenty bodies are easier to manage than fifty-five. Many students and teachers have decided, apparently, to take their Christmas vacation two weeks early, and campus is like a ghost town after recess except for those dedicated/unlucky few who have Peace Corps teachers and decide to stay. After I finished teaching today, the empty schedule meant that I got some time to 'lecture small', or chat, with my kids and engage in a little Goal Two exchange, sharing American culture with Liberians. They had some great questions, like "do people in America have hard time like Liberians we do?" (I told David and Abraham about homeless people living on the streets, of which I've seen none here- "Don't their families help them, Ms. L? Why don't they get jobs?") and "is there special state for vampires to live in? (No, Martin. Vampires aren't real, we just have plenty stories about them) and "why  your father teach literature and you love to teach mathematics?" (Some people are strong at different things, Eva). I loved having the chance to talk and listen to my kids in an informal way. And they're so curious and open to asking anything- sometimes to a ridiculous or uncomfortable degree- which is refreshing. Students: taught.

Amos the carpenter came by yesterday to finish grouting the tile floor in our living room and reinstall the baseboards, and today when I got home from teaching my one class, I got out a bucket and a brush and, Cindarella-style, took to hands and knees to remove the spots of grout and cement marring our gorgeous new floor. (Tile: cleaned)

 I naturally tackled this task with the front door open and music playing loudly, which the neighborhood took as an invitation to drop by and thank me for the work and jealously ogle our beautiful floor. I had been worried that they would see us as selfish, wasting money on something so superfluous, but everyone's reaction has been overwhelming support and admiration of our investment in our home and the community. They all want to tell us "Thank you for the work," which I find strange since all I did was sit on the porch while three Liberians took less than a day to lay a floor, but since we supplied the materials and had the idea, we get the thanks. And the visitors. First was Ma Mary from up the hill who dropped in to appreciate us and ask if we had any extra cement dust she could have. Then Muistafa, a student, visited to say hello and caught me singing along (loudly) to "Hey, Jude," which probably made his day. And Peace, Ben and Fatu's dog, came by to spread out on the coolest surface in town. But my favorite visitor was Ben himself. I was just putting the bucket away and dancing on clean tile in my bare feet (para bailar la bamba, se necesita una poca de gracias) when his quiet voice interrupted from the porch, "what country is this music?" 

I told him the language was Spanish, and asked him if he liked it. 

"I hear this before, when I were refugee in 2003, it make me think on that time." 

"What place were you a refugee?"

"Oh, near to Freetown, in Sierra Leone. It a nice song..." and he smiled and went back to hooking the grass in his yard. Thank you for the work, Ben. 

Working Hard to Make a Living

It's the Saturday after exam week and there's no rest for the lazy.

My roommate is in town, leaving me on kitten/dish duty. Amos the carpenter is coming to put in a new floor that (hopefully) won't try to trip me to death every morning, so there's a huge mound of sand right in front of our porch steps waiting for his arrival at '8:00' or the Liberian equivalent. I need climbing gear to scale the pile of laundry-to-be-done in the corner of my room. If I don't use the bananas today they will aquire consciousness and possibly take over West Africa. I have 400 final exams and 200 make-up quizzes to grade. There is a rampaging horde of children at the well causing noise, spilling water, and taking forever to fill their buckets, holding up all my other chores. And yet.

And yet the mist over the hills is gorgeous, keeping the heat and bright sun of dry season at bay for a little while. My lap is full of purring baby cat curled up in a little ball of peace. A very kind blind man carried two pumpkins to us yesterday (word of our 'pumpkin business' conversation with Ben last month has spread all over town) so I get pumpkin soup for dinner today and tomorrow. The semi-sentient bananas are going to be delicious banana bread in a few hours. I have faith that at least half my students will pass my class this marking period. And I am here, alive in this moment, looking ahead (forward?) to a full day after a full week in a full month of the hardest and most amazing year of my life to date. Maybe I have a blessings list and not a to-do list. I can see how people love 6:30 in the morning.

An Awfully Big Adventure

Today as part of our training we watched a documentary called Girl Rising, which uses the stories of 8 girls and young women from countries like Peru, Haiti, Ethiopia, Nepal, and Afghanistan to illustrate the point that educating girls is the single most effective thing any country can do to combat poverty. The issue of gender equality wasn't my greatest passion back home, but my presence here as a woman teaching math and standing up for myself is a revolution on a micro scale. Our PCVL came to watch us teach a while ago and brought my attention to the fact that for a review activity with fifteen questions I had only three girls come to answer. I hadn't thought at all about the way I dealt with gender in the classroom here (too busy keeping my head above water for first marking period), but after his comment I made a deliberate attempt to call on girls more often, and to make sure that they felt like my classroom was a safe space. In the last month I have noticed a significant increase in the number of girls who raise their hands to answer questions in class and fight for a chance to come to the board. It feels like a tiny victory in an immeasurable war.

The issue of gender in education in Liberia (or the world) is part of a broader question I have been asking myself lately. When I stand in the front of my classroom, chalk on my hands and mud on my shoes and sweat running down my back, I sometimes see huge possibility and potential. Other times I see the 2/3 of my class who only occasionally cheat on their quizzes, usually come to class, and seem to value the results of education, if not the process. They work harder than any honors student in America, because they have to fight economic obstacles associated with being orphans/parents/self-supported adults, societal pressures stemming from a decade and a half of actual collapse, and the ingrained restrictions of gender roles. My last two classes of the afternoon have the added challenge of literally racing the sun in the sky to be able to see the chalkboard and their notebooks as dusk falls and their dim classrooms become even darker. Sometimes it feels like a losing battle (and an inappropriate goal) to teach them to graph a line or balance a chemical equation. How could that be relevant to the immediate screaming needs of their lives? What else could I possibly be doing, if not this? Is there a better use of my time here, or a better perspective I could find from which to approach our primary project?

One of my fellow volunteers (who has her students call her Miss Frizzle, btw), teaches math and science in a tiny school in a minuscule village. I love the way she looks at the world, and the humor and color she brings to her stories. We had an amazing conversation about our purpose here and what our role really is in development in Liberia. Her 12th grade physics class has less than a dozen students, and she has decided that in addition to helping them master the basics of force, waves, and matter, she is going to explicitly model teaching techniques and ask her students to put them into practice with each other when they take turns as class leaders since one of the only job opportunities for high school graduates is teaching. She described a Peace Corps volunteer in their school as Wendy reading to the Lost Boys, showing them new ideas bigger than themselves.

I think that is our purpose here. Our students are the (not-so-distant) future teachers of Liberia. We need to teach them now to value integrity, hard work, and gender equality. We can show them that progress is possible, you just have to want it. It's not this generation we'll have the biggest impact on, but the next one. We've spent the last week at our inservice training, discussing challenges and successes and sharing solutions with other LR-4's. I've been so consistently impressed by the creativity of my fellow pcvs and their resilience in the face of chaos (150 kids in one room, nonexistent resources, radically different cultural context for the process and purpose of teaching and learning), blown away by how they find incredible victories and dedicate huge swaths of their time and energy and heart to a job that is never done in a country that feels further away than the second star to the right and stranger than any rabbit hole ever could. Sometimes it feels like this Neverland is more real than the California dream I left almost six months ago. Will the lost boys (and girls) be better off for our fairy tales and dreams? No system is too big to be changed, and the quiet revolution of expecting them to participate in and take ownership of their own lives is one I have not yet surrendered. To teach in Liberia is an awfully big adventure.

Celebrate Good Times

On October 31st, as I was writing the date on the blackboard in my first class, I decided to share a little bit of American culture with my students. So I added a "Happy Halloween" below, and after the warm-up I shared some of the traditions surrounding halloween from back home (the dressing up in costumes and trick-or-treating and watching horror movie traditions, not the more religious roots of the day). They really loved when I went all along the front row of desks knocking on each one and saying "trick or treat," and for the next week I was greeted with "Trick or treat, Ms. L" when I saw my students in the hall. I also gave them a quiz that day (Happy Halloween!) and if they finished early I had them write me a letter on the back about what their favorite holiday was and why. I got a lot of random answers, but there were many students who liked New Years Day because they were grateful to God for letting them see another year. There's not much to argue about that sentiment here in Liberia, I feel.

Sharing celebrations with my students was a great way to kick off the holiday season here in the tropics halfway around the world from my family, where I don't have crisp, cool fall weather to set the mood. I decided I would find my own ways to make the holidays special this year. So far, I'm off to a great start.

One of the LR-3 Peace Corps Leaders went home for a couple weeks around the same time (and brought me back a new iPhone, thank you so much to everyone involved with that!) and was really excited about, and I quote, "all the pumpkin-flavored things" including bread and pie and spiced lattes. I decided to bring autumn to West Africa. I got some canned pumpkin and pumpkin pie spice in Monrovia and set up my coal pot dutch oven to churn out some tasty pumpkin bread. I borrowed metal muffin tins from our neighbor Fatu and used laughing cow 'cheese' to make a maple cream cheese frosting. In case you are wondering, the experiment was a success.

In exchange for the use of the muffin tins, I carried some of my victory baking to Fatu, Ben, Winifred, and the kids. Heather and I had a great time explaining the harvest season traditions of America to them, including leaves changing color, jack-o-lanterns, American Thanksgiving, corn mazes, and giant pumpkin growing contests. Ben is a farmer, and he was really interested in the differences between Liberian pumpkin (green and squash-shaped) and their round orange American cousins. They also really enjoyed the pumpkin muffins. 

I stopped by the Peace Corps office recently to pick up some mail, and I had a postcard (thank you Stan) and an amazing package (thank you Carrie) full of gorgeous paper/ephemera and a Smithsonian magazine. The paper became another pop-up 'card' that I hung on the bulletin board in my room.

The Smithsonian magazine actually had a really good article and photos of how giant pumpkins have gotten bigger in the last century because of the pumpkin-growing contests. Heather had a package as well, and her parents had sent seed packets, including pumpkin seeds with a jack-o-lantern on the front. We got so excited about this, and carried them over to show the neighbors all the things we'd told them about. Ben was fascinated with his glimpse into American agriculture practices, especially the photo of a tractor hauling a huge pumpkin out of a field. He reached out a finger to trace the giant tire and commented that it was "a fine fine machine." We handed the seed packets into his experienced hands to try out the American varietals of tomatoes, bell peppers, pumpkins, and squash in exchange for part of the produce. 

Thanksgiving is in two days, and the volunteers have been invited by the US ambassador to the Embassy Thanksgiving potluck in Monrovia. So I will get to eat real pumpkin pie, turkey, mashed potatoes, and stuffing with my fellow LR-4's. It's nice to have family around, even if it's a new and different kind of family than I've had before. I am thankful for so much in my life right now, and the great support system I've found for myself here is at the top of the list.