Carmen in Africa

To Ghana, Zimbabwe, and home.

2009-07-01T00:18:00.003+01:00

I've spent the last few days running around and finishing things -- work, disembarkation forms, saying goodbyes, and packing. I leave for Ghana tomorrow (again at the impossible 4:30 am) in a hired car and escorted by Patrick, a Ghanian crew member. Then to Zimbabwe for a few days, and then home.

I rode through town today for the last time, and I watched women with bowls on their heads, half-naked children, and life just going on in the streets. I felt the twinge of tears, knowing that soon I'd be back where we live very separate lives, where at a traffic light, you can't really see who is in the car beside you, and the regular measure of a traffic light decides the tempo, not the motorbikes pushing, not those on foot scurrying across with platters of fish on their heads.

It's the stuff like that, the lives lived on sidewalks and on sidestreets, that makes people want to take pictures here. You see things that seem strange, that seem unnatural like an old woman wearing a long wrappa skirt and no shirt sweeping the packed earth in front of her home, and the impulse to show it to friends and family takes over and you forget that if you were sweeping your front walk, you wouldn't want a stranger taking a photograph.

But they're images you also want to keep. I want to remember the things I've seen here that show how fully and deeply these people live, how they move and speak to one another and shake hands, how they answer the telephone no matter what, how they always say hello or bonjour, how everything is so different from my bungalow in Austin, Texas, and my neatly rowed streets -- Avenue A, B, C, D, crosscut by numbers 41, 42, and 43.

I'm sad to leave this place and its force, its life.

Street scene.

2009-06-26T08:29:00.002+01:00

Look closely on the right side of the photo for the yellow awning. Beneath it are spots of color -- blue mostly, but yellow and pink as well. There the woman sells plasticwares, and there her babies sleep on a wooden bench beneath shade as the motorbikes and cars pass, and eat bowls of rice and tomato-fish soup from metal, not plastic, bowls.

Sleeping twins.

2009-06-23T22:13:00.005+01:00

In D ward there are a brother and sister. The boy is healthy, but the girl has lived two years with a fistula in her digestive tract, which made her sick each time she ate. I thought at first she was normal size for a two-year old, until a nurse told me they were twins, and I noticed that she was three inches shorter with spindly little legs and a bloated belly.

The boy approached me with outstretched arms the other day, so I picked him up. Then he wanted me to blow bubbles for him, then he began to wail when I put him down to leave. I mentioned it to another who'd been working in D ward, and she explained it well: his whole life, he's been healthy, and his sister has been sick, so his whole life, she's demanded their mother's attention. And lovely young woman though she is and as good of a mother as she seems to be, she could not be enough to both.

You never want to cause more trouble than you're worth -- wailing is something you never want to set in motion -- so I debated about going down again. But I decided this morning to say hello, maybe not pick him up, just hug him and then greet all the other children and with their little catheters and foley bags and nasal-gastric tubes.

But he was there, arms up, and I caved. He was happy to see me, happy to click my pen again and again, and yet I needed to leave for a dress ceremony for the VVF ladies. So I asked his mama, "Can I take him?" She nodded, smiled, and shooed me toward the door with a few wrist flicks.

Down the hallway in the arms of a semi-stranger, he was unfazed. Into the ward full of drums and dancing and women in hospital gowns, his eyebrows were contorted more inquisitively than fearfully. And so he stayed in my arms for the next 15 minutes and glanced around, glanced up and down, and finally, he put his head down on my shoulder.

I was amazed when I felt his head loll off to the side in sleep, because the music was loud and we were only a couple feet from the drums. It was warm and he was heavy in my arms, and I worried that I wouldn't be able to write while holding him. I decided to bring him back to his mother and let him nap there.

As soon as I opened the door, his mother was standing at the sink washing her hands. She smiled when I whispered, "Il dort." I looked over at the bed where they sleep, and his sister was on her back, sleeping peacefully in her pink hospital gown. I carried him over to the bed and his mother took him from me, laid him down, and said her thanks.

I returned to the dress ceremony relieved -- sleeping twins are much more pleasant than screaming ones.

À la plage in early June.

2009-06-21T09:50:00.005+01:00

In the late afternoon, the beach was filled with Beninoise playing soccer and lounging in the sand.

By the time the sun was down, we were the only ones there, with a fire and the fixins for s'mores. Our party ended abruptly at 10, when a storm blew in that picked up sand and threw it against our skin with force. We barely made it across the beach and back to the car before the bottom fell out in sheets.

Out at night.

2009-06-20T10:56:00.005+01:00

There's a Chinese restaurant in an area called Cadjehoun where we go for cashew chicken and the nice breeze that filters through the lanterns to the second-floor dining porch.

At restaurants like these, you can expect a few wealthy Beninoise -- who last night were all six staring toward us as we entered the room, which was a little strange until I realized they were enraptured by a bizarre, Mad TV-like French program emanating from a flat-screen just beside our table -- and some hardened-looking expats sipping liquor on the rocks and smoking cigarettes, the type of men straight out of a Graham Greene novel.

The first time I went, it was midday and we met two former military men from the States who were training UN peacekeeping troops in North Benin. One lived in Germany with his French wife who was two decades his junior; one was the self-proclaimed "fourth best French speaker in the state of Missouri." Both had heavy beards and went on profanity-laced tirades, saying things like, "In Togo they still have railroads that the Germans built in 1915 -- colonialism did a lot of good for this continent" and that the Peace Corps was ineffective -- "They hate us, but we're the ones keeping the peace. Have you ever killed a man in Iraq?"

Last night was calmer. We ate and listened to Latin music blaring from across the street, and afterward we decided to stroll toward it. Under a dark evening sky, beside a busy road teeming with motorbikes and the occasional luxury vehicle, dozens of wooden tables seating four each dotted a wide swath of street-corner. The casual maquis -- a small, local restaurant whose prices are for locals, not expats -- is always busy, always full of men and women with their fingers pulling at fufu and dipping it through the tomatoey fish soup.

Two young teenage boy who said they were orphans (no mama no papa no maison no house, they said) overturned plastic beer crates for seats and we commenced rough conversation in Fon and French and English. The Chinese lanterns continued to glow at us from across the street, behind the silhouettes at the tables relaxing in the cool breeze, and it was easy to feel there was no hurry.

When I leave, I'll miss Africa -- "plenty plenty."

Riding zemidjans.

2009-06-18T16:00:00.009+01:00

There are reasons why women here wear long skirts.

Riding zemidjans is just one of them.

One good one. Sidesaddle isn't the safest option.

Selling on a rainy day.

2009-06-17T23:07:00.001+01:00

The roads were full of water – poor drainage and heavy downpours don’t mix well. Times like today bring a twinge of guilt for being the ones in the SUV, not wading down the sidewalk with baskets of yams covered with plastic sheeting, not pushing a motorbike through knee-high water, not standing under an awning hoping for the rain to pass.

At one corner, a little girl stood soaked in rain. She was about twelve years old, and she wore pastels: a second-hand striped shirt, faded, and a cotton skirt in a large floral print. Her head was wrapped in a purple scarf. She was unshielded from the heavy rain, rain that makes Africans so cold, but she stood there unmoving.

She held in her hand ponchos for sale – for 60 cents each. For the eight ponchos in her hand, for the five dollars she’d bring home if she sold them all, she was a hunched, solitary figure on a street corner.

Later I thought of her as 18 children, orphaned and abandoned but dry, danced and screamed under a solid roof while playing with red balloons. And as I fed a child who looked ten months but might have been twice that, whose skin was mottled with a fungal infection and whose hair was sparse and feathery from poor nutrition, I wondered if she had sold them all.

We were shielded from the waters lapping at our ankles, waters mixed with refuse and filth that seeped among buildings and down thoroughfares, but the girl selling ponchos, a little matchstick girl at a warmer latitude, was etched there on the sidewalk with her feet in a puddle and her head lowered to shield her eyes from the rain.

Listening.

2009-06-14T22:32:00.003+01:00

Spent a long day out in town with my friend Blandine. I went to her church and watched African women dancing and listened to songs in English, Fon, and French, then I visited her house, met her father, her sister, her other sister, her two brothers, their wives and children and in-laws -- in all, close to 20 of her family members -- and looked at their family photo albums.

I ate African food and drank proffered glasses of water and soda and beer at each residence I visited. I rode on her motorbike and in her brother's car though a (literal) middle-of-the-road soccer match, which precipitated lots of angry shouts and beating on the hood of his car, and finally made it home hours later than I wanted -- not because I was having a bad time, but because I was just exhausted.

I was listening all day to words I couldn't quite understand and trying to piece together coherent sentences in French, and it made me feel so tired. The amount of translation that goes on here never ceases to amaze me. In church, there were three preachers. One was Nigerian, so he spoke in English, with a fiery zeal that I've come to believe preachers use to keep their congregations awake -- the people are either up singing and dancing or they are dozing, with their forearm on the back of the pew in front of them and their forehead on their forearm. I think it's because the churches are always so warm.

So he'd preach in English, and the second guy, a little taller, slimmer, in a light grey suit and wide, baby blue necktie, would tone it down a little as he relayed the message in French. Then the Fon preacher, who wore bright yellow patterned tunic with matching pants, would continue the game of telephone.

I noticed that the congregation was silent after the first preacher, silent after the French translation, but when the message was relayed in Fon, they would chuckle, turn to one another with smiles. I turned to Blandine and asked her about it, and she smiled. He was adding things, she said -- she could understand all three languages.

Apparently, the Nigerian preacher could understand as well, because toward the end, he turned to the third preacher and said sternly in some dialect I didn't understand, You repeat exactly what I say. That brought some chuckles as well, but mine was a bit delayed. I had to ask Blandine what he'd said and wait for her to translate -- today's motif.

A strange interruption.

2009-06-11T18:23:00.006+01:00

Four women sit in a row, guests of honor at a ceremony for their new lives. The songs are celebrating them, singing about their healing from obstetric fistulas. They clap along, though they can't quite dance like they'd like to yet.

Clementine tells them not to walk long distances, not to carry heavy buckets of water on their heads, no mama-papa business for six months. The tissue that has just been repaired, the place in the bladder that's been stitched up, is delicate.

But what they can do is interrupt the ceremony -- no matter who is talking, no matter what is going on -- and they can work their way around the singing, the dancing, the preaching, and step into the bathroom. One by one they go -- one woman goes twice. The ceremony continues without her, until she quietly slips back through to her seat and folds her hands in her lap.

I find myself thinking, Oh, how wonderful, and then just afterward, what a strange thought -- what a strange interruption for the guest of honor to make, and then what simple things we take for granted.

Four, three, two.

2009-06-10T21:15:00.002+01:00

On Friday night, there were four of us that lived in cabin 4343.

We piled in four-deep in the back of a car to take Naomi to the airport at 3 am, so on Saturday night, we were three.

And now it's Wednesday night, Emily has flown the coop, and we're down to two.

But we'll make it, somehow.

Posing.

2009-06-05T09:55:00.003+01:00

I was trying to take a photo of the chickens in front of the motorbikes, but this young woman was there and seemed to be posing. So I took her photo, too.

Replacing eyes.

2009-06-03T19:07:00.005+01:00

Watching Bob put prosthetic eyes in didn't make me squeamish but once -- on an old man whose eye wouldn't open wide enough to fit the prosthesis in. Most of the patients were women, some to have adjustments made, some to be fitted for the first time. With those, the difference was amazing.

But my favorite was a girl about 12 years old. She came last week for her first appointment for a prosthesis, and today she returned for a checkup. Sometime in the interim, the girl rubbed her eye and it fell out. Her mother picked it up and put it back in, which Bob said was good because that meant her mother cared, but he just wished she hadn't put it in backwards. As it was, the eye pointed down and out and was quite uncomfortable for her.

Bob needed to remove it, clean it, and replace it correctly. He went to pull her eyelids open, and the girl resisted, a few times. Bob stepped back -- said, "I'm not going to fight with children" -- and asked the mom to come do it. The girl resisted her, too, then said something and the translator told Bob, "She wants you to do it."

So he stepped back in and depressed the lower lid, slid his thumb beneath the girl's browbone and nudged the prosthesis. It slid out easily, and the girl was still as he cleaned it and put more drops in her eyes. But as he went to replace it, she clenched her fists and began squirming and crying.

Bob told the translator, "Tell her that I am not going to force her. I am not going to cause her more stress. It doesn't matter what her mother says and it doesn't matter what I say, the girl must decide. I will give her an appointment for next week and she can come back if she wants."

The translator told her, and Bob went to put the appointment card in her hand. But the girl looked down at her lap at her clenched hands. No, she said, she did not want the card. She wanted the man to put the eye back in. Bob smiled and I admired his subtle powers of persuasion.

So Bob tilted her head back and opened her eye. He pulled back the top lid and slid the prosthesis in, then worked it under the lower lid. He wiped her face with a tissue, gave her a mirror to look at herself and a pair of sunglasses, then sent her out the door.

American Consulate in Benin.

2009-06-02T19:16:00.004+01:00

I went today and got new extra pages put in my passport -- I only had two left on which to put two visas and about 10 stamps, which was giving me mild panic attacks that I wouldn't be able to get home. Two hours and no charge later, I had pages A to X to fill up with stamps, which is good because my passport has five whole years left.

In the waiting area, there was a Beninoise family who I could only assume were applying for visas to go to the States. Two young women wore tight black pencil skirts, one with a tailored fuchsia button down, one in a green blouse with tuxedo frills. They were about 16 and 13, and they had a teenage brother just as sharply dressed as them.

I observed them pass back and forth between their seats and the service window, switching between English and French, so comfortable and sure in their station here, yet soon leaving for a place new and unfamiliar and confusing even to insiders -- an American high school. After teaching in one of those for the past two years, I don't envy them at all.

Yards of fabric.

2009-06-01T14:06:00.002+01:00

On a tiny frame -- if you look closely, you can see she only comes up to the hips of the women around her, but for some reason has enough cloth on her to fully cover one of them.

Other interactions.

2009-05-31T15:39:00.009+01:00

I walked into town today, and on the way out of the port, I saw an old woman sitting on a crate nestled under the back of a mac truck, shading herself from the hot equatorial sun. She was a heavy woman -- here they'd would say a fat woman -- and wore only a piece of patterned cloth draped around her body. I said, Bonjour, madame, and she replied with the same and a smile.

I zigged and zagged through the streets looking for the best way to stay cool, switching sides to walk under an awning, a carport, or the shade from a tree. At one point, I walked close to an old man sitting on a bench who was chatting with a security guard sitting on a stool. He wore a tunic and pants in dark green fabric, and he had large protective sunglasses, like we give to many of our cataract patients.

I wondered for a moment if he'd had surgery on the ship. I greeted them, and the old man looked my way then brightened. He took off his sunglasses and pointed to his eyes. "Very good!" he said. "An operation on the ship?" I asked. He nodded and said, "Fine!" And he gave me thumbs up.

On the way back into the port, I saw the woman under the truck, and since it was after noon, I said, Bon soir, madame. She laughed and replied, Bon arrivé. She was glad to see I'd made it back.

The last day of May.

2009-05-31T10:38:00.005+01:00

My time away now spans only two months -- the month of June on the ship and half of July in Ghana and Zimbabwe. Recently someone said something to the effect of: At a certain point, you don't count up how long you've been here. You no longer say, 'Yeah, I've been here 2 months' or '3 months.' All you can see is how little is left.

And each week is a new reminder as to how little is left. Naomi and I have lived together for 10 months -- I remember thinking that she would be here almost the entire time I was -- and she leaves in five days. Another roommate, Emily, leaves four days after that. I go three weeks later.

It's a little overwhelming to break it down that way, thinking that I won't be in Africa anymore and have moments like when I stood down in the hospital corridor and watched a woman being led from cataract surgery. She wore a blue and white African-style dress under her hospital gown and had a large patch taped over her eye. Her chin was lifted as she sang, Il est bon, Jesu est bon, and I pinned myself against the wall as she passed and watched the others in the hall begin singing and clapping and smiling along with her song.

I'm excited to go home, but those moments will be hard to replace.

Sleeping through.

2009-05-28T17:58:00.004+01:00

A baby sleeping through screaming children and sweltering heat, and when her family joined her, she remained still. Such a contrast to feet and hands and heads blurry with movement.

Two good things from today.

2009-05-27T19:44:00.008+01:00

Today I realized that the thought of a well-fed and healthy child makes me feel content in some abstract way that not much else comes close to. I was at a feeding center that Mercy Ships started on a previous service in Benin, and each month a local NGO comes to weigh the children, to give them a free meal, and the teach the mothers about proper nutrition and basic sanitation.

A simple operation, but seemingly fruitful because the babies and children were fat with shiny, velvety skin. I would like to say they were also smiling, but normally when I stepped close to one, they broke into screams, or they would eye me suspiciously then make a wide arc as they walked past -- just to be on the safe side.

Today I also watched a little boy play soccer in a beautifully adapted form. He has been here almost two months. Yacinthe was burned at one year old when he crawled through a pile of hot ash, and his leg was fully contracted so his calf met his hamstring and his foot, small and malformed, stuck out to the side. Now he has a splint on his leg, which is straight, and he bustles around downstairs on crutches.

Tonight he had a soccer ball -- actually more like a huge beach ball with a black and red cloth covering in the pattern of a soccer ball -- and he would swing his good leg forward without any hesitation, with all of his weight on his crutches and none in the splinted leg, and blast it toward me.

It was strangely terrifying the first few times, even though I knew it wasn't going to hurt me. He continued for fifteen minutes, intent, spinning around when the ball got past him, stopping it with his head and directing it toward his good leg so he could kick it with all his strength, perfectly balanced on his crutches, perfectly adapting to whatever came his way, happy to play and play and play until sweat had beaded on his forehead and his upper lip and he made his way to a chair, lifted his splinted leg to the side, and said, Fatigué.

And now I feel that way too, after well-fed children under a hot sun and an impromptu game of soccer in a hospital corridor. I should sleep well tonight.

Carole has gone.

2009-05-26T11:55:00.004+01:00

She and her mother donned their best when they left the ship yesterday. Carole's dress matched what her brothers wore to visit her, and Janviera snapped at her when she sat on the dirty ground in it.

Carole helped her mom by taking some of their luggage and carrying it out of the port.

And they climbed on a zemidjan, headed to Calavi, a half-hour away, to stay with Janviera's sister until Saturday. Then Janviera's husband will come from four hours away to get her and they will go home, which I am sure will be welcome after a month away.

I'll definitely miss them both.

Four facts only.

2009-05-25T20:36:00.010+01:00

I walked into the room full of women today and began leaning down and greeting each one with a small hug, pressing my cheek to hers. Spread across the room were 19 women with obstetric fistulas, waiting to talk to the nurses about their medical histories and be examined by the surgeons. Sometimes the nurses worked with one translator and sometimes two, as these women were from different places - northern Benin, Nigeria, and Togo. I couldn't communicate with any of them verbally, but one woman, when I bent down to hug her, planted a fat kiss on my cheek.

I spent quite a bit of time shifting through medical histories, looking at their different conditions and ages. At 21, the youngest has lived with her fistula for five years, but the woman who is probably the oldest - she does not know her age - has suffered for 40. Four simple facts were the synopsis, an abstract: age, number of children delivered, number of children living, and did the husband leave after the fistula?

The answers to those questions are heavy. For one, it might be that husband abandoned her after the first childbirth two years ago, the baby didn't live, and at 25 she looks more like 35. For the next woman, her husband stayed, but she only has two children living from the eight she gave birth to and has leaked urine for 17 years.

Yet the facts aren't colored by the women's faces as they tell their stories, or the way they hold their hands or cross their feet or stare at the ground a few feet away from them, distancing themselves a little bit from the memories they share.

Later I'll speak to some, with the help of one translator or maybe two, to get from Bariba to Fon to English, or from N'gourma to French to me, and I'll see those colors, and the end of the story will be better than the facts that came before.

Sunday breakfast.

2009-05-24T10:17:00.003+01:00

Mangoes are one of the things I'll miss the most when I leave in seven weeks - on the street, they're everywhere you turn, large ones for only 40 cents, small for 20, perfect with a cup of french-pressed coffee on a quiet Sunday morning.

Switzerland, Kenya, Benin, and soon Cameroon.

2009-05-23T19:55:00.009+01:00

There's a pool down on the beach road that heads west, and today I went there with my friends and saw some fat, white ex-pats, a Nigerian man selling rice-paper batiks, and two little girls with light brown skin and dozens of meticulous plaits that each ended in a tiny coil. I could hear them speaking to each other in clear, British-African English, and I wondered what they were doing in a French-speaking country. So later in the pool, I asked them. Were they on vacation, holiday?

Yes, the younger one said, it's Saturday.

No, the other one said simultaneously.

I was confused, so I asked them where they were from. Switzerland, they said. That didn't clarify anything, so I asked where they learned English, and they said Kenya. And I was even more confused.

Some gentle prodding evinced the answer I was looking for: they live in Benin, and their mother is Swiss and their father is Beninoise, both French speakers who only speak a little bit of English. They're going to Switzerland for the summer, they told us, then moving to Cameroon when school starts.

The two little girls whose parents can't speak English spent an hour chatting with me and my friends in English and throwing an American football. They found out we lived on a ship - A boat! the five-year-old said. Who drives it? And what do you eat? We laughed and said normal food.

They asked if we were from the United States of America, and the five-year-old told us that our president was Barack Obama and that his wife is Michelle, that she had a t-shirt with the Obama family's picture on it, and she didn't really like English but spoke it because her older sister liked to. The seven-year-old smiled at that.

I felt amazed at how precocious they were - their knowledge of the world and their mastery and use of a language they didn't speak at home - and I smiled when from across the pool, the packed up their things and waved goodbye.

It made me think, sometimes I wish I'd lived all over. It also made me think, I always wish I knew more languages.

Baby Ricardo.

2009-05-21T19:03:00.003+01:00

The one I kept quiet as we spoke to his mother about having three children that were blind. Happy baby, curious to touch and listen even though he couldn't see.

I wonder how he'll end up now that he can.

A simple answer.

2009-05-19T22:01:00.007+01:00

I interview patients all the time and get simple answers. How do you feel? I feel fine. I feel happy. I am thankful. I try to understand and have my theories as to why, theories based on the cultural variances and how we are trained to think, of ourselves and of others. But to be honest, I'm normally unsatisfied by simple answers. I want details about how they felt and lived, what they saw, touched, heard, and thought -- nuanced and complex explanations to weave into a powerful narrative, and simple answers don't suffice.

But today, a simple answer floored me. A eight-year-old boy recently had surgery that allows him to stand up for the first time in his life. Now he has physical therapy three times a week so someday he might walk on his own. For a full hour he shuffles along a silver bar for support and kicks soccer balls and squats and stands, sweating and breathing hard at the effort but wearing a smile the whole time.

I asked him today why he works so hard. His simple answer was more powerful than I ever expected.

"Because I want to walk," he said, then lowered his head and bit his bottom lip.

African checkers.

2009-05-18T10:42:00.002+01:00

Yesterday I learned African checkers is played with rules very different from what I've always known. Men can move forward and back when jumping the opponent -- though they don't call it jumping, they call it eating. Because the men can jump backward and forward, they don't protect the back row as much as they try to keep their men in a solid mass.

And then, when they finally do make it to the opponent's back row, they are kinged, but the king can then move as many squares in one diagonal direction as they want -- a deadly adversary.

And the style is different. They play very quick-paced, with dashing motions instead of deliberate shifts, and they don't get angry when an observer passes a hint to their opponent. There is lots of banter. Yesterday the guy on the left made a faulty move, and the guy on the right teased him, "Why do you give me such a gift?"

Overall, the game plays like lightning, and when I took my turn, I was out within a few minutes.

Plastic wares.

2009-05-12T18:37:00.002+01:00

Any color, size, or shape you want, just sitting by the sidewalk. The woman keeps her two children under a beach umbrella behind, and they eat from tin bowls then nap in the warm afternoon air. At dusk, they help gather it all up and pack it away for the night.

Odilon's new mouth.

2009-05-10T10:24:00.005+01:00

I saw him many times in the wards, a scrawny 4-month old with light brown skin fidgeting in his young mother's arms. He suffered from malnutrition because he couldn't suck through his bilateral cleft-lip and palate, but a few weeks ago, the cleft was repaired, and steri-strips formed a little mustache across his top lip, newly joined together with tiny stitches along a tiny line.

A day before he left the ship, I saw him lying on his side in his bed, his hands curling and uncurling in front of his face. He met his top lip to his bottom and sucked, pulling the top lip in and then blowing out, making a little popping sound each time, practicing a new skill with his new mouth.

Treats.

2009-05-08T20:10:00.004+01:00

Yesterday I helped make rice krispy treats for everyone on the ship. We made nine commercial-sized pans of them, three with chocolate and peanut butter topping, three with chocolate topping, and three plain. There was only half a pan of plain leftover at the end.

This afternoon, I saw the three blind siblings -- who are no longer blind -- and I noticed the girl Nadege was eating a leftover rice krispy treat. She cupped it in her little palm and pulled a few pieces of puffed rice off, then stuck it in her mouth. Again and again, and the translator commented, 'She loves it.'

When I asked the translator did she like it, she said no, 'too sweet.' Africans always say our desserts are too sweet.

Very good.

2009-05-06T18:23:00.010+01:00

Carole and her mother Janviera came to the ship for a dressing change, and I met her outside and sat with her through her appointment. She wanted to wear my nametag and told me her name was Carmen, and mine was Carole. She kept that up the entire next hour and would scold me in French if I accidentally called her by her old name -- Tu as dit Carole! Je m'appelle Carmen!

She lay on the table, and the nurse unwrapped her bandages carefully. Underneath, her arm was mottled and shiny, some places pink, others dark brown. She looked down at it -- Very good! she said in English. Very good! She seemed unbothered by the scaly appearance of the grafts, by the stitches along her forearm, by the patchwork look of the whole thing.

The physical therapist had her playing games to touch her ears, to bend her wrist, to work joints that were frozen for months. And when she was finished, she hopped down, rewrapped her skirt like she'd done it for decades, and pranced from the room. And then we took a picture, at Janviera's request.

63 degrees (Fahrenheit).

2009-05-04T07:49:00.001+01:00

That's the temperature in my room these days, which I combat with sweaters, cups of tea, and washing my hands in really warm water. Last night, I had to wear a hoodie and socks to sleep -- and I even have two blankets on my bed. Makes me feel like I'm not really living in Africa.

It's a strange journey from there to the balmy 90 degree heat of Cotonou. And probably horrible for the sinuses.

A gift of pineapples.

2009-05-03T23:09:00.003+01:00

On Friday evening, I opened the door to B ward to movement and noise and lots of small bodies. It took a moment for me to realize that the increase wasn't in patients, but in children, young boys all in matching outfits of heavily embroidered white cloth, simple pants and simple tunics that hung to mid-thigh.

I looked up and saw my little friend Carole on the floor, then realized her four brothers had come to visit. Carole's mother Janviera -- 27 years old just like me, but with five children, unlike me -- held the baby boy Isaac in her lap and smiled when I came over. I said hello to each boy: Dumas, the eldest; Boniface, a replica of his mother; Abraham, a little firecracker who called me yovo again and again.

The next 30 minutes was a frenzy of Boniface and Abraham playing with balloons and popping bubbles, an uncle coming in and leaving, and then the father coming in and Carole running to his legs and holding on as he walked toward his wife and sat down. He looked about ten years older than Janviera, not especially attractive but with a kind smile. He shook my hand, then made quiet conversation with his wife for the next few minutes. At one point, he told me through the translator that he had a gift for me in the car -- a pineapple.

At eight, visiting time was over, and so they began gathering the children and getting ready to leave. I walked out with them, down the dock to their car where the four boys piled with an aunt, a grandmother, and the uncle who'd been waiting. Eight in a car built for five -- and not even close to cramped by African standards. The aunt spoke English and chatted with me as Janviera helped load bags into the car and Carole danced around. Then the translator who was with us grabbed the blue plastic bag full of pineapples and headed back toward the ship.

Janviera stopped in doorways along the hospital ward and handed out pineapples to nurses she liked, then we reached B ward. The bag of pineapples had made it to my hand, and the translator told me that the rest were for me -- a gift of many pineapples, not just one. Janviera nodded and said she would just like the bag back. About a dozen small pineapples made a heavy load, so I slung it over my shoulder and headed up the stairs.

The next morning, I cut up three and brought them down to B ward where Janviera passed them out to the other patients on paper napkins.

Skirts and motorbikes.

2009-04-29T22:10:00.003+01:00

A common sight in Cotonou.

For 1000 CFA.

2009-04-26T17:08:00.005+01:00

A few days ago, I bought little mangos, miniature bananas, and a large avacado. Today, I bought these.

I stopped on my way back from the cathedral and to see my young friend selling peanuts and fried tapioca and little sweet crackers. She told me a large bottle of cashews was 2500 CFA, but I only had 1000. Perfect, because that's exactly what the plastic bag full of peanut clusters cost.

The entire transaction took place with about 3 words of French, hand gestures, and a smile.

At the artisan market in Cotonou.

2009-04-25T20:33:00.002+01:00

Batiks and drums.

Lovely tree, some people passing, and a donkey having a snack.

Jewelry shop with bronze, beads, and malachite.

Sideways rain.

2009-04-24T12:53:00.005+01:00

Walked by the windows that line starboard side of deck 5 on my way to lunch, and half the sky was dark gray, darker than the water lying below it. The other half was overcast but with bright white clouds.

By the time I made it to the dining room and got my food, the water was pelting the windows, driven in sideways by gusty winds. It made me think of summertime rainstorms when I was young, running down wet sidewalks, the smell of hot asphalt after a few large drops fall on it. It made me think of being cooped up inside, then going out afterward to a yard full of puddles and ditches running with water. It made me think of the lake and hours spent on a screened in porch with a book and a glass of iced tea.

It made me think of the first few days and weeks and months in Liberia, where the rainy season was long and heavy, where the rains washed deep trenches in the red dirt roads, and where old women carried their bundles on their heads but covered them with sheets of plastic to keep the rain off. It made me think of dashing from the Monoprix grocery store to the car, trying to stay dry, with the Liberians under the awning laughing at my futile attempts.

It made me think of the zemidjan drivers out in Cotonou, wearing their yellow shirts and baseball caps, soaked to the bone, waiting to see if it clears.

Carole's mother.

2009-04-21T23:29:00.006+01:00

I walked over to Carole's bed this afternoon because she smiled so brightly at me when I stepped into the ward. She was close to the back, and when I reached her, I saw her right arm bandaged from her hand to her armpit, splinted straight. Scar tissue from a burn covered the right side of her face, and raised marks that looked like angry worms crawled across the upper side of her chest. Further down, shiny skin with no elasticity, no give, reached from her side toward her sternum and down to her waist.

But her smile was so bright. I found a stool and sat, and I grabbed a coloring book at the foot of her bed. We began to color a picture of a submarine--Carole chose yellow for it--and I noticed her mother and a baby sleeping on a mattress on the floor beneath the bed, where all the caregivers sleep. Minutes went by, and finally the mother stirred, emerged from the bed with sleepy eyes, and nodded and smiled. She had straight teeth and small dark eyebrows, her hair swept up, and a lovely balance to her face--its shape, its darkness, the white teeth and round eyes.

Then she stood, and I saw the mother's hand was scarred across the base of her thumb and down to her wrist. She turned toward the bathroom, and I asked Carole in a my few words of faltering French, if that was her mother. She nodded.

Elle est belle, I whispered. Carole smiled and giggled.

When the mother returned from the bathroom a few minutes later, Carole said to her mother in words I couldn't understand but that I knew the meaning of, Mama, the yovo said you're beautiful. Carole's mother smiled, seemed a bit embarrassed, then knelt down and began meddling in their bag on the floor.

And Carole picked up a pink crayon and began coloring the ocean.

Moving, and I've been cold.

2009-04-20T20:28:00.007+01:00

On Saturday morning, we made a move to another dock to refuel. It's strange when the world outside your window changes, but everything inside stays the same.

We stayed there all day Saturday and spent the night there Saturday night. We were back to our original berth by noon the next day. While we were refueling, we weren't allowed to get off the ship, what with being in a heavy duty area of the port. So my roommates and I used it as a great excuse to stay in our cabin and read and watch movies. All day Saturday and all day Sunday, I alternated between films, books, quick naps, and quick trips upstairs for a meal.

Our cabin is very chilly and when I'm in here, I have to wear pants and a sweater and socks, and normally I have a blanket around me as well. Perfect conditions for curling up in my bunk to read, and so yesterday I finished Orlando, by Virginia Woolf (non-realist novel about a man who lives for 400 years and turns into a woman halfway through his life), and made it halfway through The Time-Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger (title is self-explanatory).

I was sick today, so I stayed in my room and wrote some and read as well, and I finished the book a few minutes ago, with solidly chilly feet. Maybe in a little while, I will go outside and thaw in the warm African air, and tomorrow begin a new book where the characters have normal encounters with the space/time continuum.

A second toe injury.

2009-04-17T21:14:00.008+01:00

Tonight as I was walking to dinner, I stepped on a bag in the middle of the road. It was full of something slimey and I slipped and dragged my other foot across the cement surface of the road. When I looked down, all the skin at the tip of my big toe was pulled back like the roof of a convertible. Blood ensued.

Fortunately I live on a hospital ship, which means there is almost always a nurse with me. My friend Liz cleaned me up nicely, then supplied me with bandaging materials when we got home.

It's funny that my toes have made it onto my blog again--I posted my broken toe a few months ago.

And then when my dinner arrived, I had another second: fish with teeth like a piranha.

The first time was at a restaurant on our way back from Togo:

This first time freaked me out a little, but by tonight it just seemed normal.

Mid-week beach trip.

2009-04-15T22:44:00.004+01:00

I was prepared for a morning of trying to entertain sick children who I don't share a language with and who slap each other at the least provocation. I was prepared to sit them down at 11 and feed them a mixture of a tomatoey, fishy soup poured over a strange, gelatinous white mush (called akassa). I was prepared to hold babies with wet diapers, to clean windows beside rusting bassinets, and to feel simultaneously lovely and disgusting when I left the Missionaries of Charity this morning.

Instead, we went with all the orphans to the beach. The three nuns came, the caregivers--about 8 Beninese women, and 25 children all packed into a large truck. Our two cars followed them down to an abandoned resort, where the women swept the floor under the pavilion, set out woven mats for the children to sit on.

We took them down to the water, and many of them burst into tears at the sight of the waves. One of the sisters said some had been abandoned near water, and there might be some resonance with the ocean. Some of the kids played in the waves without any fear, and others just sat in the sand and poked at it with sticks.

The most wonderful part was the caregivers. Some of them had never been to the ocean before, even though Cotonou is a port city, and for the big event, they had dressed the kids in their finest clothes and shoes (which for some were a little mismatched and a tad too big). The women began clapping, singing, and beating a drum in the back of the truck before we even reached the beach, then they stood in the waves and screamed as they crested at their knees. Later, they sang and danced under the pavilion, encouraging the children to dance, exuberant when two of the sisters in the blue and white saris joined the circle.

I left feeling sticky from the salt water, covered in sand and tired from the heat and the sun, but with an image in my mind of those women, with their excitement for the waves and dancing, finding such joy in a simple morning out on the beach.

Photos from Wli and the waterfalls.

2009-04-13T20:53:00.009+01:00

The house across from our guesthouse, with a beautiful tree. Goats and sheep were everywhere throughout the village.

Our guide Alphonso took us up the mountain wearing flipflops, without water or food, and carrying only a machete. The mountain we climbed was over 2900 feet high.

View from the ridge of the mountain with the village of Wli below.

The waterfalls have two parts. The upper falls cascade into a pool that sits at the bottom of the v in the picture. We hiked all the way around the ridge and then down to the upper pool to swim. Easter lilies were growing all around, and little lavender flowers.

Then we continued down to the lower falls, and two blisters and sore knees later, we were swimming again.

It's the sort of place that makes you want to leave everything behind and move to Ghana, without internet or cable television, but with a good measure of peace.

Wli Falls.

2009-04-10T04:07:00.004+01:00

Packing into a van with 14 people today and heading to the Volta region in Ghana, to a place called Wli Falls. The drive is long, the condition of the roads are a big question mark, but it'll be an adventure to see the highest waterfalls in West Africa.

Too bad we're leaving at 4:30 am. Impossible hour.

Sounds.

2009-04-09T15:35:00.005+01:00

When the three blind children arrived yesterday, I saw them in admissions. The oldest boy was sitting in a chair holding a wind up toy as his sister and brother had their blood drawn. He pinched the head of the little swimming man between his thumb and fingers, listening to the whirring of the mechanism inside, oblivious to the legs that kicked and arms that paddled.

Then later, I visited them all on the ward. The girl was asleep, the baby was feeding, and the oldest boy was talking talking talking to himself. So I sat on the ground next to the oldest boy's bed and spoke softly to him simple French phrases. I said his name a few times, then told him my name. Then I started making buzzing noises with my mouth, and he squealed with laughter. I told him I was hungry and made chomping sound as I pretended to bite his hand.

For the next fifteen minutes, he prodded at my face, grabbed my hair, and asked me to chomp - Chomp! he'd say, and I'd obey.

Today, they've all had their surgeries, and are lying in their beds with patches taped over their eyes, looking like little flies. Tomorrow, they will see.

Other than sight.

2009-04-07T21:35:00.006+01:00

All three are blind from birth. I watch them from a few yards away as they sit on a burgundy couch against a green wall smudged with years of dirty hands. The oldest is a boy of seven years, and his eyes cross, his head tips as his listens to his sister's laughter. She is three, and she leans her head against her mother's side and squeals as the baby boy, just a year old, pushes his foot against her ribs. Her laughter ignites the older boy, and then it's her turn again.

The mother sits in the middle and says, Yes, I wonder every day why this has happened to us. Tears form in her eyes and she wipes them quickly and turns her head. The baby boy is becoming restless, so I pick him up and pull him outside. He crawls across the porch and toward the wall. My hand cups his soft brown head to keep him from hitting the wall, and he turns toward the edge of the porch, which drops a couple feet onto a sandy footpath. I reach again, making sure he doesn't come to close to the edge.

The mother despairs, is pessimistic they will actually be healed, and she is tired of waiting at a friend's house in Cotonou, hours from her village and husband and her family and friends. She is bored, and at least at home, she knows the places and the patterns. But she remains in Cotonou, waiting for the operations, showing at least a shred of hope.

The children are fine being in town--they can see nothing through the opaque lenses in their eyes, and so the they rely on things other than sight--the sound of each others laughter, the steadiness of a hand to help them up a stair, the smell of fish soup--the steadiness she brings to their lives, regardless of where they are.

In two days, they will see, and they will learn their places and patterns with their eyes, learn the brilliant smile their mother flashes when one makes the other laugh, see the stairs before they feel them.

I don't know her name.

2009-04-05T09:46:00.005+01:00

On Sundays, I pass the little community that lives just outside the port. They sit on benches and plait their daughters' hair, they lie on the tables in their lean-tos that should sell vegetables but are empty instead. And the drivers of the mac trucks hedging the street rest in hammocks, suspended beneath their cargo containers.

After that, the street is quiet for a few hundred yards, until I reach Avenue Clozel, the main street in this area of town, called Ganhi. There are patisseries and pharmacies lining the street, and women sit on low crates selling tomatoes, plantains, carrots, lettuce, and mangos in flat baskets. Occasionally, a women says bon jour and points to her pyramid of pinapples, but often, she simply chats with the woman beside, whose luck is not as good with yovos since she's selling onions.

I continue along, and at the last intersection before the cathedral, there is a set of train tracks cutting through the pavement. No trains pass there anymore, and a young woman sits on a tall stool in front of a stand of peanuts and cashews. Glass bottles that once held vodka are full of the oily kernels, and a few dollars will buy the whole thing.

I don't know the girl's name, but I pass her every week, and she recognizes me now. Normally I stop and shake her hand and say hello, but I've never bought anything from her. There is another young woman who sells peanuts and cashews at a stand beside her - I think they are both about fifteen - and I like to imagine they keep each other company even though they are competitors.

Each time I pass, I wonder who owns the stand and if she ever gets bored. I wonder if she sells only on the weekends and during the week goes to school, and if she imagines that one days she will teach or become a nurse or work at the pharmacy down the street - or if she sells peanuts every day and will until she gets married and moves to another part of town, where she'll spend every day cooking and washing and sitting on a low crate under an umbrella with potatoes or cocoyams stacked high beside her, watching people, bikes, and cars pass, occasionally saying bon jour and pointing to her wares.

I know which I'd prefer, but I don't know about her.

Africa, by David Diop

2009-03-31T20:16:00.002+01:00

Africa tell me Africa

Is this you this back that is bent

This back that breaks under the weight of humiliation

This back trembling with red scars

And saying yes to the whip under the midday sun

But a grave voice answers me

Impetuous son, that tree young and strong

That tree there

In splendid loneliness amidst white and faded flowers

That is Africa your Africa

That grows again patiently obstinately

And its fruit gradually acquire

The bitter taste of liberty

(Written before independence from colonial rule, and he died just after it began.)

Another first.

2009-03-29T23:14:00.002+01:00

I saw a black and white goat in the cathedral today. He was digging in his heels and balking, possibly having a flashback to his forefathers slaughtered on an altar. But his owner pulled ruthlessly on the rope around his neck, and the procession of dancing men swept them both up to the front. I love offerings-in-kind, especially toilet paper, bottles of water, pineapples, and goats.

And a second: another wedding. But today, I sat on the right side, and I didn't feel as out of place. I've decided that the men and women wearing the badges saying 'church warden' will tell me if I am really screwing up. They have no problem finding the man whose head is resting on the pew in front of him, poking him, and then pointing at the priest--Pay attention!

Homemade rafters.

2009-03-29T00:08:00.003+01:00

Vibrant green from moss and mildew.

Skill and composure.

2009-03-24T21:17:00.005+01:00

Ablavi had her operation today.

She arrived Sunday with her brother Philip, and I visited them in the ward that evening. They were both so happy to be here, and when I think about Ablavi's excitement--oh! She smiled brightly, closed her eyes, and looked down. Her shoulders and head shook, and then she lifted her eyes to mine and smiled again. And God bless you, God bless you poured from her mouth.

Shortly after Ablavi got her appointment, one of the surgeons contacted me and said I should come watch it. Since I would be writing her story, I took Mark's advice. Though it would be bloody and difficult, though it would be long and complex, I would watch it.

Ablavi's tumor bulged from beneath her ear and curled all the way down toward her chin, and Mark began by opening the skin in an arc across it, then he and Gary Parker began excavating. Dr. Parker gave me a little information beforehand, about how the facial nerve could either be stretched across the top of the tumor or could lay below it, and that they hoped it would be below so they could salvage it. But that was all of the context I had for the process, and more than anything, I felt like an observer of movements and details.

I noticed the quickness of their fingers and wondered if that level of dexterity could be developed. I noticed the way they varied how stood, sometimes feet wide and sturdy, sometimes crossing one foot over the other, sometimes standing with heels together, toes out, in spots of blood that had dripped down the drape like wax down the side of a candle.

I listened to the low voices they used as they stood over her head and discussed where the facial nerve branched and to please pass the cat's paw or the cauterizer. I watched them probe the tumor with their fingers and lift it with tools I have no idea the name of.

And I noticed their composure and skill and their diligence, that four and a half hours later, they pulled the tumor the size of two fists from her neck and placed it on the table beside, then took time to show me all the anatomy--her jugular vein and the carotid artery, where the tumor rested against the skull, a lymph node, a salivary gland, and the facial nerve which had been distorted by the tumor's constant growth.

And when I was tired of standing and craning my neck, they stayed to clean up while I hurried off to dinner.

An assumption.

2009-03-23T22:03:00.009+01:00

I went for a run today through Cotonou with three friends. The routes are interesting, passing policemen with AK-47s and chickens as they scurry across the road, breathing air visibly filled with exhaust and worrying a bit about my lungs, hearing sporadic encouragement from bystanders, Bon travail or C'est bon, as if we are actually running a race.

Halfway through our run this afternoon, two of my friends had split off and run ahead of us, and my other friend was a few yards behind me. We came to a major intersection, and I wasn't sure if the two girls had turned left to go back to the ship or if they had kept running straight. So I decided to wait for the friend behind me, and we could decide where to go together.

I was leaning against a light post, stretching my legs a little bit, when a skinny black man in a brown uniform started pointing toward me. I thought he was a police officer telling me to move. I looked behind me to see if he was talking to someone on a motorbike or in a car, or to a woman carrying a massive platter of pineapples on her head. But when I turned back around, he was still gesticulating and shouting French at me over the heavy traffic. I realized he wasn't a policeman, but a security guard for whatever was behind the cement wall encircling the corner lot.

Then he held up two fingers, and he pointed left down the street leading back to the ship. Suddenly I understood that he was telling me, Your two friends turned here. They went down this street. You should follow that way. I smiled, nodded, and said thank you. My friend was by my side by this time, and we set off in a trot back to the ship.

Afterward, his assumption seemed so funny--two white girls run past, two more come by, so they must be together. He had to have been observing us all from his post, and he was so quick to recognize I was looking for them.

I laughed to myself for the next few minutes, feeling light because he'd been so eager to help, feeling amused because of how right he was, and feeling happy that he had pointed me home and I didn't have much longer to run.

Wedding crashing.

2009-03-22T20:06:00.007+01:00

Today the parking lot at the Notre Dame cathedral was full. Motorbikes and Mercedes Benzes filled the outer courtyard, and inside, everyone was shoulder to shoulder.

I didn't realize why until I spotted a woman in a bridal gown walking into the church. Inside, I felt panic. A wedding? I shouldn't be here.

But no one had questioned why I was there, and I had spent too much time getting up, dressed, and walking to the cathedral to just go back home. So I slipped and quickly took a seat toward the back (though the fact that I look Nordic didn't help my chances of being inconspicuous). Slowly the church got fuller and fuller, and I found myself surrounded by fashionable young men in distressed jeans and crisp shirts. I wondered why only the young men attended mass and not the women. Thirty minutes later, I felt another wave of panic when I noticed that all of the single young women were on the complete opposite side of the church.

The wedding itself was quite calm, quite similar to a wedding at home except that there were about four different groups of bridesmaids, each with matching dresses and elaborate headdresses. After the vows, however, one woman in the crowd burst out with a yi-yi-yi-yi-yi-yi-yeee of celebration, and low laughter and chatter spread across the church.

And then my final panic set in as the wedding videographer began walking down the aisle, filming the congregants. I imagined the bride and groom looking at their wedding film and wondering who the hell was the white girl in the young men's section of the church. So I ducked behind the guy in front of me, praying that he didn't come all the way to the back. At the end of the service, I slipped out as quickly as I had slipped in and headed back to the ship.

Though the service was in English, I felt more out of place than the past few weeks when the mass has been in French and Latin. I guess crashing weddings just isn't my thing.

Beds on loan and lost teeth.

2009-03-18T21:09:00.012+01:00

The Missionaries of Charity in Cotonou is a home for abandoned and sick children. Their complex is in a spacious courtyard behind a church and has outdoor areas for the kids to play. And the caretakers are young women who smile as they cut pineapple in the kitchen and sing as they dish food into pewter bowls for lunch.

At the house, there are 25 children who have been abandoned, and there are 25 more who are seriously ill. They stay in separate buildings so the sick kids don't rub off on the healthy ones.

The sick ones suffer from things like malnutrition and tuberculosis, and on the screened porch of their building, a group of young mothers lean against walls and their babies, weak and languid, lean against them.

A little further down, the motherless babies sit together on a woven mat. One has small gold studs in her ears and a colorless rash raised across her brown skin--arms, head, and neck. Another lies on her stomach with a cracker in her hand, her face turned away from the others.

And one, about two years old and wearing a striped onesie, pulls himself to the wall and stands. Then he squats, his butt hits the floor, and he picks up a small white object. It's the size of a pearl and the color of ivory. It's a tooth--a molar lost by some eight-year old. He pinches it between a thumb and forefinger and drops it down the front of his onesie.

Several minutes later, it's back between his fingers, and he is on his back and he is brings it to his mouth. The pretty young caretaker in the doorway notices and confiscates it just before the tooth slips between his lips. She shakes her head--Where did it come from? she asks.

No one can answer, so she turns back to a table, where she dishes food into bowls for children that don't have much besides beds on loan and lost teeth as pilfered toys.

Amy's class.

2009-03-16T13:50:00.004+01:00

This morning, I taught poetry to five students (two boys and three girls) of three nationalities (American, Norwegian, and English). They were attentive, engaged, and funny, especially when we read "Something Missing" and they asked if they could draw pants on this:

Thanks, Shel, for the cross-cultural connection. We can all agree we're quite sad this guy forgot his trousers.

A picture book.

2009-03-11T11:27:00.004+01:00

Yesterday I visited the ward, and there was a mother lying in a bed with her daughter. The little girl had patches over both eyes. She'd just had bilateral cataracts removed.

Today, I went down, and the little girl was sitting in a small chair with a book in her hands. Her eyes were quite red, still irritated from the operation, and she would hold the book close, then far, look at it from different angles.

I took the book from her hand--the story of Jonah--and pointed to the pictures of men and boats and a big fish. I would say those words in French and she would repeat them. She would look down at her feet, then across to the little boy whose head was wrapped in gauze and who was drawing a picture with a blue marker.

Her wandering line of sight made it seem like she didn't exactly know what to make of her new condition. I couldn't speak her language, so I couldn't ask how she was doing, what she was able to see or how she felt.

But the incessant smile on her face was sufficient explanation.

The American Dream.

2009-03-08T11:54:00.003+01:00

A good--sorta long--article about rethinking it. Makes me wish more people read the magazine Vanity Fair, though I'd be all for more people reading Thackeray as well.

A stroll through a forest.

2009-03-08T00:28:00.007+01:00

We visited Niaouli Forest on Saturday, an area preserved by the government and used to research natural remedies, according to our guide. We hiked for two hours through areas that looked like this:

And in other areas like this:

This was our tour guide, Innocent, and this is a tree that has strange nodules.

We didn't go early enough, so the only animals we saw were butterflies and two mongooses, though they were too quick to photograph. This spider, however, was quite sluggish and stayed for a picture.

And these are huge termite mounds. (They're about four feet tall.)

Let's hope they don't get all the trees.

A writer... or a doctor?

2009-03-04T20:20:00.010+01:00

At different times I think, I missed my calling.

Today I thought that, but not for any other reason than: I donned this outfit to observe an operation, and scrubs and booties really make one look like a surgeon.

Do you concur?

Pulling in the nets.

2009-03-02T23:04:00.000+01:00

And bringing them home.

The images.

2009-03-01T22:15:00.004+01:00

The images are easy to record.

A few yards from the ocean and outside a compound of thatched huts, a child lies on top of a grave--not a crypt or a vault but simply a tomb top holding a coffin down. The tomb is tiled in peach-patterned ceramic, which the child's cheek is pressed against.

A few feet from there, hundreds of silver fish like coins lay on the packed sand. They are a shoulder to a sandy yellow road lined on each side by palm trees in neatly spaced rows. Under those trees, paths beaten by foot traverse the orchard, leading from hut to hut.

Miles away is a highway composed of two lanes. The lanes are for traveling east and west, but but both directions pass freely from one to the other, and motorbikes zip past. Beside the highway, women with baskets on their heads walk along another footpath.

And suddenly there's a group of old women. They sit on overturned buckets, on the ground, all facing toward a woman in the center who laughs.

It is almost evening, and they are sitting on the side of a highway which leads to a toll booth where traffic is almost stopped, lorries with noxious exhaust and overloaded beds, buses filled twenty people too many, and still more motorbikes weaving in and around and getting through.

Women weave baskets from palm fronds and stuff them full of crabs, then hold their wares up for the cars waiting to pay the tolls. Buy my red palm oil in water bottles, buy my cakes of white paste, buy my gasoline, which I will pour for you from a shapely, bulbous green bottle with a small neck.

The images are items in a list, things to photograph, make a mental note about, remark to a friend--I saw the strangest thing today.

But what do the images signify? What do old women on the side of the road tell me about here and Europe and Asia and home? Where is it appropriate to sit and chat with friends, and according to whom? What should beautiful glass jars be used for, and where under this hot, overbearing sun is the nicest, coolest place to lie down and take a nap?

Where but on top of a tomb covered in cool ceramic tile, shaded by a palm tree, only a few yards from the ocean.

Ablavi.

2009-02-25T20:05:00.005+01:00

Yesterday I went to one of our eye clinics just a few minutes away from the ship--I'm writing an article about how surgeries have started, and how our dental and eye teams are seeing patients out in town. We arrived at 11 am under a hot sun, and at least a hundred people were waiting outside, hoping to be screened for surgery.

As our photographer was getting photos, I skirted along the outside of the crowd. A few different times, people called me over and began asking me something in French, which I didn't understand. But I would just nod, point to my eye, and ask, Pour les yeux? When they nodded in return, I pointed inside. Waiting was what they'd have to do.

But one skinny young man, approached me and said, in very clear English, "Excuse me, ma'am, can you please help me?" He pulled a woman forward, a pretty woman with light brown skin and long skinny braids of burgandy. "Can you see her?"

Then she pulled back the hair on the left side of her face to reveal a large tumor that protruded from behind her ear all the way down to her chin. It was oblong, the size of a large eggplant, and she quickly dropped her hair back down. (A crowd was forming around us.) The man explained that they had traveled over three and a half hours from a city in Togo because they had heard about the ship in Cotonou.

I took their contact info--her name is Ablavi and his Philip--and told them I would ask on the ship what we could do. I knew there was a secondary screening on Friday, but I hated for them to have wasted the time and money traveling all the way from Togo just to have to come again to be screened. And sure enough, when I got back to the ship and spoke with the woman in charge of screening patients, she said that they could come that afternoon.

So I called Philip, and in that conversation, I learned he was Ablavi's brother. They could come to the ship at 1:30, I told them, when they arrived, I went out onto the gangway to meet them.

Ablavi was holding her hair down so it wouldn't blow in the wind, a movement that is probably second nature to her after living with such a growth for so many years--to pull the hair in front, hold it down, turn her head to that certain angle where the hair falls just so that no one can see the tumor. But her face was smiling, laughing, and she was shaking her head. Maybe she thought it couldn't be so easy.

I walked them down the stairs and through the hospital corridor, and Ablavi was whispering thanks to Jesus under her breath, and Philip said, "You are so gentle, so good. May God bless your family." I don't do the work she will need, so I simply smiled and said that I hoped we could help.

A nurse named Jane took over then, to get her information and her medical history, get a biopsy, and schedule her. Jane told me later that Ablavi will return in a month for an operation to have the tumor removed.

Such encounters leave me thinking of all the different variables that might have transpired instead--I might not have gone to the clinic as research for my article, I might have gone earlier, I might have gone on Friday to a different location. The list could go on, and I don't mean to say that I was irreplaceable or that Ablavi wouldn't be getting help without me. But with the way it worked, I thought of a cog in a wheel that made things turn, and I felt wonderful and light and providential.

Sometimes I get heavy boots thinking of how we can't fix everything, we can't help everyone, and what we do here will not solve all of Benin's problems. But helping Ablavi reminds me the work is good and meaningful, and helping Ablavi is enough.

Ganvie.

2009-02-23T16:26:00.005+01:00

Just west of Cotonou is a village on stilts, called Ganvie. Founded by people fleeing the slave trade, Ganvie means "we who have found peace at last." The people of Ganvie paddle pirogues (shallow canoes) from the age of five and fish in the brackish water, building pens of palm fronds to protect the young ones until they are old enough to be caught. That is, unless a heron gets them first.

What do I know at 27?

2009-02-22T23:40:00.007+01:00

I know the highways of Texas and recipes for gumbo, quesadillas, and cowboy stew. I know how to get around in foreign countries where I don’t know the language, thanks to a few good years of international travel. I know how to read and write, how to compose a good essay, and how to use parallel structure.

But days like Thursday and Friday challenge my idea of what I really know. I don’t know what it’s like to be a mother, to be responsible for someone’s life, making sure they are fed and clothed and sheltered, or what it’s like to stand in line with that baby in my arms, covering her head with a cloth to keep the sun off, going through a line with thousands of others because it’s the only option for my child to have a normal life. All the mothers and the fathers in line reminded me that I have no idea of their experience.

And there were others. One man came not with his child, but with his father. He carried the old man who couldn’t walk and whose upper lip was gone and nose was damaged from what looked like noma. He carried him on his back to the screening location, inched him forward through the line that stretched out to the road, down a long city block and around the corner, then stayed with him as the volunteers registered and weighed the old man, as the doctors examined him, then waited longer for the appointment card. The process lasted all day.

I know that in some ways you can’t compare life experiences, and if things were to go the other way, maybe the men and women and children I saw at the screening days would look at my life and think, What do I know compared to her?

But days like those humble me, and they make me wonder how much I've experienced, how deeply I've felt, and at what point I'll feel like I've been there.

Tomorrow is screening day.

2009-02-18T21:52:00.002+01:00

They will be looking for candidates for cleft-lip and palate revision, tumor removal, plastics (burn patients), and orthopedic conditions. We heard potential patients were already lining up at midday today, planning on spending the night in line.

Only a few times before have I heard of or seen things like this: people camping out in line to buy concert tickets, or iPhones to then resell on ebay for a profit, and people camping out in the Austin Independent School District parking lot to put their children's name on a list--for an intradistrict transfer from a good school to a better school.

To me, the contrast between those images is striking.

500 Cefa = 1 dollar

2009-02-15T19:13:00.006+01:00

And my noodles with veggies and chicken this afternoon cost 3500--worth every cefa.

Yovo! Bon soir!

2009-02-14T20:21:00.007+01:00

I spent my first day out in the city of Cotonou today, which was nicer than Liberia in parts, just as poor in other parts, but where in each part, I was a yovo (white person) who only knew a few words of French. Hopefully I'll leave with more.

Some of the sights:

The fisherman parking lot just beside our ship.

It says, Interdit d'uriner ici. In Liberia, it would have said, No pepe here.

So the graves won't float.

An urban goat.

The Cathedral of Our Lady of Mercy of Cotonou.

We are docked.

2009-02-10T22:55:00.002+01:00

Not much else to say besides that. We had to wait the whole day for immigration forms and health inspections, so we weren't approved to leave the ship until 7:30 or so. By that time, it was dark, and wandering around an unfamiliar city in an impoverished nation after dark didn't seem like the smartest thing to do.

So I'm still on the ship, though we're docked and a lot steadier than the past few days. Hopefully I'll get to explore Cotonou tomorrow and see interesting things to write about.

Bonne nuit!

Anchored and listing.

2009-02-09T23:18:00.008+01:00

I took this photo a few days ago. It's been the sight for the past ten, and while beautiful, I have had my fill of it. I was supposed to walk down the gangway at two today, but there was an electrical problem with the main engine, and we weren't able to get into the port. We are anchored within sight of land, and the lights of the city seem to be mocking us a little bit.

The ship is quiet without the engines running, which is nice, but it lists more than before, more vulnerable to the wind and waves without the arms of a port for protection. Still, the movement is gentle, at times even soothing.

Everyone on the ship is surprisingly tranquil about the delay--the calm continues at least until tomorrow. Last I heard, we begin our approach around eight a.m.

Stillness and calm.

2009-02-08T23:34:00.003+01:00

Tonight there was a very bright moon that, unlike earlier in the sail, drowned out the stars. Objects on the top deck--the jungle gym for the kids, the landrovers, the tall skinny tanks of carbon dioxide strapped together and lashed to the railing--were visible almost like day. The deck was unpeopled, and the waves were gentle.

I stood looking out over the water toward Cotonou, and I thought of tomorrow's entrance and ensuing storm of activity. The contrast was stark between that and the immediate stillness, and I felt almost as if I were suspended in a cocoon of calm, that would last only a limited time. Twelve hours from now, we begin our approach. An hour and a half later, we will be docked, and the welcome ceremony will begin, with long speeches and choirs singing and lots of flags waving and feedback from poorly balanced microphones.

I thought of my mom and dad, rising early to a dark morning to drink coffee together and pray for their children; then my dad leaving the house in that dark, going to an office full of customers with demands and employees with demands, all pulling at him in some way; my mom leaving a little later, hopefully prepared for the same sort of battle, only with teenagers instead of adults. I thought about Joe before a big race, checking the tires on his bike, listening to music, and waiting for the the next one- or two- or eleven-hour challenge to begin.

Tonight I'll sleep in the calm, then wake up to a ship full of anticipation for this new place, these new people, this new service. In the coming months, there will be excitement and frustration and exhaustion and pain and joy, and tomorrow it all begins.

Script on the top of a well.

2009-02-06T16:57:00.003+01:00

Elegant script for an irrigation system lining the hillsides of Tenerife.

For Joe, Anna, Noel, and Lisa, who asked for a new post.

2009-01-29T10:20:00.015+01:00

On Sunday, I ended up on top of a mountain. It was unexpected, as I was prepared for a flat path, but it was something that will go down as an adventure. The picture is from that hike and shows pines and cactuses, a strange juxtaposition that reminded me of my two homes, Southeast and Central Texas.

I found it slightly disorienting on that mountaintop: having recently lived in Liberia and sailed to the Canary Islands; having flown to Texas and visited Sour Lake and Austin; then being back to Tenerife, preparing to sail to Benin. Some people are built for that sort of change. But coming from a family very rooted in a small, small town (I'm a fourth generation Sour Lakean), living like this sometimes catches me a little off guard.

But it's going to continue. We're sailing this weekend, and we should be to Benin on the ninth of February. Interesting things to write about will increase then, and so will my posts.

At home.

2008-12-27T21:50:00.006+01:00

It's strange to travel such long distances for such long periods of time, then suddenly to find yourself at a destination that you've been eyeing for months. I found it difficult to sink in, that I was actually home.

But I am, and I have seen family and old friends and am enjoying being here. Lots of cousins on Christmas day, lots of aunts and uncles, lots of good food.

Also, it's 72 degrees here, which is fantastic. Yay for warm climates.

Like a snail.

2008-12-18T19:18:00.004+01:00

Each afternoon, I've been going to the back of the ship and watching our wake. Each time I look back, I think we are like a snail, leaving a shiny smoothness on the surface of the water. And as we travel very slowly across the Atlantic, we probably look like a snail as well.

We should arrive in Tenerife tomorrow morning at nine am, if all goes well. Hopefully, the Japanese navy ship will be out of our berth in the port, and we'll be able to dock and get onto dry land. I think we're all feeling a bit cooped up after seven days at sea.

Kind of like our snail shell has gotten a little too small.

Still sailing.

2008-12-14T14:50:00.005+01:00

One of the first lessons I learned as a creative writer was that limiting your character's mobility seriously limits your mobility as a writer. For example, having your character incapacitated (in bed with a broken femur, in a mental hospital in solitary confinement) or trapped (locked in a cabin in the woods or stranded on a deserted island) doesn't exactly give you lots of directions to go with your story.

The same is true of blog entries about a smooth sailing hospital ship traveling from Liberia to Tenerife. But here, I don't want the options that would make it exciting to read about, like pirates or a fire onboard. It's a fantastic thing to hear the intercom ding, then the chief officer says, in a very very serious voice, "Dolphins on the starboard side. Dolphins on the starboard side." The only danger is that 300 people rushing to one side might make the ship lean a little, but it's not exactly newsworthy.

Right now, we are somewhere off the coast of Senegal, and we are being tossed about in the trade winds. The ship's movement actually feels a lot like airplane turbulence. I haven't suffered too much from seasickness, but as we were icing Christmas cookies today, I actually started feeling quite nauseated. A couple hours in my bunk, and I am feeling fine again, ready to go up and gaze out at the vivid blue waters, watch the sun go down from the bow of the ship, and then watch the very full moon travel from one side of the sky to the other. At least until I get tired and crawl into my bed and sleep soundly as the ship rolls back and forth.

And then we'll see how tomorrow goes, when it's back to work.

We are at sea,

2008-12-13T16:20:00.005+01:00

and the Atlantic is smooth and the color of cobalt.

A figure in Italian marble.

2008-12-12T13:16:00.003+01:00

Always counting down.

2008-12-11T10:54:00.007+01:00

In my mind, there’s a countdown to leaving Liberia, which will happen in the next couple of days. There’s a countdown to arriving in Tenerife, which should be six days later. There’s a countdown of the hours between when I arrive there and when I board a plane to go home, and then a countdown until I land in Austin, see my sisters, get my hair cut, and then drive to Sour Lake to see my mom and dad and brother. Then there’s a countdown until I see Joe, then the countdown of when I have to leave Austin and come back to the ship.

I could go on and on with others I have in my mind, but I will stop listing at my return to the ship, which is a month away. We have not even left Liberia, and I am anxious to leave Tenerife. I have not even made it home, and I am anxious about having to leave home again.

I have loved the things I got to see and do here in Liberia, and I am excited to spend time in the Canary Islands. I think that being in Benin will be incredible, partly because it will be new and offer different and exciting challenges, and partly because I heard the fabric there is really nice. (Just kidding.)

But that same old problem of setting my eyes too far into the future and ignoring the value of the present reappears. I wrote about this just before I came--how I was at my training and couldn't wait to actually be on thie ship. Now that I am here, I am again looking at what's next. The hyper-productive, goal-setting, live-frugally-for-now-so-you-can-have-more-later culture that I grew up in might have created it, or contributed at least.

I read a book on photography one time by a woman named Susan Sontag, and without going into scientific detail about statistics or surveys, she observed that societies who are highly focused on productivity and work (like Japanese and American) are almost compulsive about taking photographs on vacation time, like they have to prove that they were accomplishing something. It also seems like a guarantee for the future--you will be able to look back on these photographs and they will provide you with your memories. To me, it seems to nullify the present a little bit, as I'm worrying if I don't take a photo, I won't remember it later.

I wish I could worry less about the future, worry less about taking photographs so I can remember Liberia or Tenerife or Benin, worry less about counting down the days until I leave and then until I return, and live more presently. Maybe I should meditate.

But then I'd probably just be wondering how long I had left.

The blackout.

2008-12-07T21:56:00.006+01:00

Saturday morning, I left the ship at 8 am. An hour earlier, they’d announced over the loudspeaker that “blackout would begin in 2 minutes,” and that left us without electricity—no air or light or flushing toilets—for the entire day. (The blackout is a procedure where they shut off all the generators in order to clean the cooling tanks to get us ready to sail.) Instead of staying onboard, I opted to stay at a beachfront guesthouse an hour away. I’d be able to avoid the stuffy ship and have a relaxing last weekend in Liberia.

Normally I try to distill a few days' events into one image, interaction, or impression, both for poignancy and for brevity. I try to think of the most powerful details that linger in my mind and create resonance from that. But this weekend, interactions and images kept surpassing one another. It was like there was a competition for what was the weirdest or most memorable thing of the weekend.

One was Princess, the guesthouse's chimpanzee who wore a diaper, hugged then climbed on the back of the guard dog, removed the top off a bottle of juice and drank it, and then, when her keeper pretended to cry, jumped down from the palm tree and scurried over to the woman. "She doesn't like to see me cry," the woman told me in a tone so matter-of-fact. (My mom used to do this same thing to my brother all the time, and he fell for it until he was about 11. Apparently he and the chimp have a couple things in common--they're gullible and have opposable thumbs.)

Another happened today on the beach. I was lying on a towel listening to music, and a large, gray-haired man in a speedo began closing in on me. He knelt down beside my towel, and he began speaking to me in a language I couldn't understand but later figured out when he said "Russi" and pointed to himself. He spoke very little English, only enough tell me that he was a helicopter engineer (he whirled his finger in a circle in case I didn't understand) and that I was a beautiful woman. Then he kept pointing at my legs and staring at me, and I wondered if he was drunk. I was relieved when he left.

But then he appeared again a few hours later, and he sprawled himself in the sand next to my towel. Again he began speaking in Russian, and Tayler and I just started laughing. "Speak Russian," he told us, but we shook our heads. He continued spewing Russian to us, and we kept shaking our heads and saying "no."

Finally, Tayler decided to make it a conversation. "I have two dogs," she said. "Their names are Oski and Kai, and one is white with brown spots and the other is white with black spots. And they have these cute little ponytails a on the tops of their heads" (here she put her fist on the top of her head to show where) "and they have a little doggie door" (here she waved her hand back and forth to show how) "and they pee outside." Then she smiled, and he nodded and began speaking in Russian again.

The interaction was awkward and pervy, and Mr. Russia was reeking heavily of vodka. He made a few more comments and motions that were strange, but finally our "Go aways" and shooing motions took effect, and he left.

And after that, I thought, A dog-loving chimp and a drunk Russian man in a speedo are enough strangeness for 36 hours. That was until we had waited an hour and forty-five minutes for our taxi driver to bring us back to the ship. Jallah was supposed to be there at 4 pm, but when two Lebanese men in an SUV offered us a ride at 5:45, we accepted it. So all five of us climbed into his SUV.

I was in the middle seat with a body board in front of me and my bag and pillow on my lap, which was uncomfortable for me but would have seemed like heaven to Emily or Tayler, who were in the back. Emily was sitting in a box of nails, and Tayler was sitting on a toilet seat. (Apparently our drivers were in construction.) The situation got worse when we were diverted down a red dirt trail because of road construction. The road got bumpier, and the alternating groans and giggles in the back got louder.

But our driver was quite unfazed by it. He kept punching the accelerator then slamming on the breaks, the whole time chain smoking, talking on the telephone, and reaching across to pet one of the two fluffy white dogs in the passenger's lap. They spoke English to us, Liberian to people on the phone, and Lebanese to one another.

He drove us past his own destination and on to the Freeport (an extra 15 to 20 minutes) and stopped in front of the outer gate. We flashed our IDs and the guard let us pull through. Neither of them had been to the ship before, and they were awed by the nice view and the shining white ship where we live. "This is my lucky day," the driver said, and we all laughed. "No, it's ours," we insisted.

We climbed out of the car, thanked him, and walked back up the gangway to the lighted and cooled ship, where chimps and Russian helicopter engineers and chain-smoking Lebanese men are all in short supply.

A net, a boat, and some shade for a nap.

2008-12-04T23:57:00.004+01:00

A busy day.

2008-12-03T02:29:00.004+01:00

Days like Tuesday remind me how different what I am doing is from what I ever expected. I went to a refugee camp in the morning, wrote a little in the afternoon, and then watched a film with HIV/Aids patients outside in a narrow courtyard in the evening.

Most days I stay on the ship and pester people with questions about their work, details about how many farmers they’ve trained or how many cataracts they’ve removed, then I write it up in a little report. I interact with people from very different places and cultures, but generally, it doesn’t feel much different than home. Or at least it doesn’t feel like I’m in Africa.

But Tuesday night I sat in the breezeway between two buildings with a few other crew members and men, women, and children from all over Liberia. The men and women are almost all HIV positive, but the children are there for various reasons, a small percentage being HIV positive but most suffering from malnutrition or tuberculosis. They are in the care of the Missionaries of Charity, the order of nuns founded by Mother Teresa, and we brought a film version of her life for them to watch.

One small boy sat on my lap, and the others were in plastic chairs in haphazard rows. I am not sure if any of them understood the actors’ accents—Mother Teresa’s fake Albanian one, the British ones, the Indian ones—but they watched silently, even the children. It was a film that would have put most kids I know to sleep, but they all watched with their heads tilted with interest, the boy in my lap pointing at the train, at the airplane, at the nuns’ blue and white saris, which look just like the ones worn by the women who feed him and give him medication. (Strangely enough, I heard today that a friend of mine tried to play Finding Nemo for some of the children she brought to the ship, and they lost interest after five minutes. Yet these children were rooted for two hours.)

I looked back at the sky behind us, and it was clear and black with a skinny crescent moon and Jupiter and Venus hanging below it. I had my arms around Bill, the most affectionate four-year-old who perched in my lap, and my hands rested on his bulging belly. It was a strange feeling, the tautness of it, a surface that should have been soft yet feeling his abdominal muscles rippling down the front.

I don’t think I’ve ever felt a malnourished child’s belly before. I've seen them--I’ve seen the bloated, distended stomach and spindly legs, and I have felt guilt, sadness, the desire to feed her, to give him a glass of milk and a plate of beans and rice or chicken.

But having Bill in my arms was a totally new experience, and as I looked at the sky and then to the people behind me, I remembered that I am doing something really different and compelling and important.

The reflective moment was short-lived. Suddenly Bill pointed at the shadowy ground beside me and said, “A spider!” I scooted my feet away, and he grabbed at the boy in the chair in front of him and said, “Christopher, a spider comin’ eat you!” Christopher jumped out of his chair then looked down, and then seemed satisfied that it was gone.

Christopher sat back down, and the movie finished playing. Bill took the plastic chair he’d brought down—which had been his seat before my lap—stacked it with a little girl’s who’d fallen asleep in another crew member’s arms, picked them both up, and marched off to bed. Life as normal, he seemed to say. And I climbed into the landrover, drove back to the ship, and my life was normal again, too.

An outsider.

2008-11-30T20:11:00.009+01:00

The hardest part of living in a place so different from my own is always feeling like I'm on the outside. It happens nearly every day, down in the ward or out in a market. You pick up expressions and mannerisms to make things easier--you say, "I'm fine" instead of "I'm good" or "I'm well" because here, fine means fine. It means fantastic, it means good, it means so good. You learn the sign language for taxis. You learn the price for a plastic bag of water, and to stay away from the ones that are tied, not sealed.

But I still encounter situations where I have no idea how to make sense of what I'm seeing or what just happened. Last weekend, I went to Robertsport, and about halfway through our three-hour drive, we stopped at an immigration checkpoint. I wasn't expecting an immigration checkpoint, so I was stunned when a man in a khaki shirt and brown pants asked me for my passport. I stumbled through, "It's on the ship. I only have my work ID card," and he nodded and said okay. I sighed with relief.

Then the policeman in black stepped in front of our car. He said something to our driver, which I couldn't really understand, and interaction escalated from yellow to orange. Our driver started shouting, "I have a government license, my car is registered, I pay taxes on everything," over and over again in varying order. The immigration official tried to intervene, but our driver shouted at him, "This is between me and that man, you have no business with us." So the argument was going back and forth and I was so confused about what was happening, about who was wrong and who was right, what was going to happen to our driver and us.

And so my response was to break into a nervous sweat under my arms and down my back. I could not say a word because I was so far outside their world. A few minutes later, we were driving again and the cool air blew through the open window and I felt calm. But our driver's anger at the policeman who was demanding an illegal fee which the driver refused--"What is my crime?" our driver asked. "Having white women in my car? He cannot do a damn thing to me"--lingered, and I knew I was right thinking that I had no place in that interaction. My presence was the problem, and I could do nothing to help solve it.

And I was momentarily stressed again yesterday. A group of ten of us had gone to a lake formed when some company was mining for iron ore--called Bomi Lake, in Bomi County. We had such a nice swim (which only occurred because we desperately chased down a Nigerian UN commanding officer who granted us permission). Then when we went to leave, we saw the gate that kept us in--a single stalk of bamboo stretched across the road that lifted and lowered with a spring and a rope--was keeping four full cars and a crowd of pedestrians out. They were loud, arguing with two Nigerian troops holding AK-47s, one man wearing a woman's bathing suit which made me think they wanted to swim. And so I worried--What if they are angry that we got to swim in their lake and they can't? We couldn't pass through them, as they completely blocked the road. So we sat and waited a few minutes, and I started sweating.

And then a UN water tanker pulled up on our side and needed to pass through. We watched as they lifted the gate and let the cars in, then the water truck passed. We followed it without incident. Some people smiled and some looked angry, and I still have no idea what they were going to do, where the other dozens of people walking in the same direction were going, or why. Questions like this at home would have answers--Well, it's ACL this weekend, or The reason there is a heinous number of motorcycles in town is because of the annual biker rally, so just stay in your house. Similarly, if a policeman pulled me over, I'd know that I was going 77 in a 65, so I deserved it. I'd know my rights, and I'd know if they were violated and what to do about it.

But here I feel like I'm always navigating waters just over my head, like when someone requests me to come to their church and I'm not sure if it's a friendship on my terms (no money involved) or theirs (they'd really love me to give $20 or $200 in their collection). Once I made an appointment to go pay a little girl's school fees. I would pick her mother up at her house, and we would drive to the school to meet the teachers and pay. She told me that when I came, her brother would be there and would accompany us. Just before I drove out there, I had a moment of complete irrationality. Just for a moment, I panicked, thinking that she didn't really want her daughter to go to school, and that she and her brother would abduct me and steal the money I was bringing for the school fees.

Of course, that didn't happen. The woman climbed in the car with a smile. Her brother was nowhere in sight. I felt so horrible afterward, but I really feel it was the product of being an outsider, of having no way to gauge the situation, that made me have such an far-fetched notion.

Customs and rules and language of another place are difficult to learn, and Liberia's has presented its challenges, which sometimes stall me and sometimes I pass right through. But then I think about Benin, where they speak their own version of French, where the culture is less Western, where I've never been and never thought I would go, and I start sweating a little bit.

A bird's nest

2008-11-30T01:55:00.006+01:00

suspended from the branch of a tree over clear water.

Out of reach for the hand, but not the camera.

Observing elements from the shore.

2008-11-25T21:04:00.007+01:00

In Robertsport, the people live between a lake that looks like the ocean and the ocean which looks like a vast expanse of calmness with a few temperamental waves lining the edges. In the town, the streets of concrete, precisely poured and smooth to traverse at one time, are faltering. They are cracked and in some places broken. At one point, rainwater cutting down the hill washed the foundation, and the concrete collapsed. Only one car at a time passes there now.

On the beach, the waves see a different shore to the north and rush toward it, even once they've crashed against the shore they did not want. They slide across the sand, not up and back, up and back, but racing horizontally until they are pulled out with the others. There they have the chance to move north again.

(The strongest waves I ever saw were in the waters of the Caribbean, more vividly blue and green than the Gulf of Mexico or Halong Bay. The beach there seemed to fall off into the water, and the waves did not lap at it but crashed, seemed intent to destroy. They churned up the coarse sand so the water changed from green and blue to green and yellow, and it threw itself against our legs with surprising thickness. Afterward, grains of white sand remained on our skin in a light layer.)

At Robertsport, the crabs are industrious. Ranging from the size of a spider to a rat and colored exactly like the yellow sand with hints of gray, their camouflaged bodies scurry in and out of holes in the ground, carrying a load of sand in their claws and tossing it out like a Liberian woman emptying dirty dishwater. While the tide is out and the sun is hot, they build their tunnels into the cool sand. Then the ocean comes in, the sun lowers, and they emerge. They stand in the surf like tourists, moving as the water goes out, then bracing themselves--planting their legs in a wide stance and lowering their bodies--for the water to wash over them. As the water falls back to itself, the crabs stand again and move in a pack, up or back or left or right. The process begins again.

The crabs run from people, from the huge black crows who wear white across their chests, from the beach dogs whose coats are marred by scars and hang their heads and tails sorrowfully. They peek their heads out of the tunnels just wider than their frames. When a bird or dog or human appears, they disappear.

People pass occasionally, but the beach is quiet except for the waves racing north and the birds calling as they glide toward the sand. And further out, the people of Robertsport eat and laugh and wash, bordered by the shores of the Atlantic and the shores of Lake Piso and a stillness that they hope will remain.

The women's agricultural society.

2008-11-23T23:32:00.010+01:00

On Friday, there was a dedication ceremony for the clinic that Mercy Ships rebuilt at Tenegar. There were a few different development projects going on there--building water wells, teaching community health classes, renovating the clinic, and expanding an agricultural project they already had going. These different villages have really banded together to work at these things, and the women's agricultural society decided to wear matching garments. The number of women wearing the royal blue fabric spotted with peacocks seemed infinite, but maybe it was closer to 100.

The President of Liberia attended the ceremony, and these women gave her a couple of roosters as a gift. At the school opening that I went to, the women gave her some cloth they wove themselves. I wonder what the President does with all those things.

And then there was one woman, who on a sweltering day with a heavy sun wore a black dress made of velour and danced and danced. She led the troupe from the chicken house by the plantation to the clinic across the street, and she linked my arm with hers and made me join in.

Two hours later, when the President finally arrived, the woman was still dancing, but she was also hounding people for water.

Walls at the Missionaries of Charity.

2008-11-21T21:44:00.005+01:00

Views from the street of walls meant to keep people out.

Abraham.

2008-11-19T19:42:00.008+01:00

What I thought would be a quick trip down to the hospital today to drop off some photos lasted almost an hour and a half. I found Edell, a little girl who celebrated her second birthday yesterday, and her mother. Edell came because she had a stubborn infection over a large part of her scalp that developed from an IV, so for months she's had a white bandage on her head that looks like a little stocking cap, complete with a thick strap under her chin. This afternoon, her mother taught me a song, and I watched her knit with yarn of muted pink, green, and yellow.

Edell was climbing on me, throwing herself onto my legs, looking up at me with her large, dark eyes edged with curled black lashes, and a little boy began screaming. He was young--his chart says he is three--wearing a hospital gown, and he squirmed away from the nurse. A translator sitting at the back of the ward stood up and gathered him in her arms, and he kicked, resisted, screamed until she reached the back of the room. She put him down, and he tried to pull his wrists from her grasp. When he couldn't, he began screaming again.

I learned that Abraham had just arrived, and his father, the only semblance of normalcy for him, left the ship to call the mother. The poor boy was left with a bunch of strangers who he couldn't understand in a place that was completely foreign to him. He pulled away from everyone, and as the minutes passed, his eyes became more red and his face more tearstreaked. I tried to shake his hand, say hello, to let him know he was safe, but he just put his head down and hugged his arms against his ribs.

In the bed next to Abraham's is a boy named Esau. Esau is about five and has Burkitt's lymphoma. He came to the ship last week, and the surgeons removed his right eye and promptly began administering chemotherapy, which is very unusual. Normally anyone with cancer goes to one of two Monrovian hospitals, as we can't provide the long-term care that most conditions demand. Esau needed immediate attention, though, so he had his first round here. He'll go to St. Joseph's for the rest of it.

Esau's brother tried to comfort Abraham and succeeded in quieting him momentarily, but what really grabbed his attention was Esau, sitting on a little green and yellow John Deere tractor. He was entranced as Esau pushed and pulled himself across the floor. Esau's brother noticed and asked him to get off the tractor, and I led Abraham to it. Quickly he was in the seat, and quickly he was smiling and laughing.

For the next few minutes, Esau, Abraham, and Edell played like they were old friends. By that time, I thought I could probably leave and go to dinner. I said goodbye to Edell and Esau, but as soon as Abraham saw me at the door, tears formed in his eyes and he began wailing. I promptly stepped away from the door and he stopped. I sat down on the floor and tickled Edell, I pushed Esau and Abraham on the tractor, and then I tried to slip out while Abraham wasn't looking. He spotted me, began to frown, and I stepped away from the door.

Finally, after I'd stopped watching the clock, a man with a nametag designating him as Abraham's caregiver appeared. Abraham got off the tractor and hugged his father's leg, and I was able to slip out and upstairs for dinner, glad to see Abraham smiling and excited to see how he's doing tomorrow.

Lying in the aisle

2008-11-18T22:05:00.003+01:00

at the cathedral. I remember lying down on the kneeler when I was little, and my mother repeatedly pulling me back up into the pew. A few minutes later, I would slink back down, but her hand would again find my arm. Quickly, I was upright.

Proverbs from Achebe.

2008-11-17T23:36:00.009+01:00

I brought Things Fall Apart with me because it has been sitting on my bookshelf for years and I've never read it. I believe that being in Africa piqued my interest because I got through it pretty quickly and loved it. Some of the sayings remind me of the ones I saw at the Firestone plantation, written in chalk on that board.

'The lizard that jumped from the high iroko tree to the ground said he would praise himself if no one else did.' (excusing Okonkwo's boasting)

'As the saying goes, an old woman is always uneasy when dry bones are mentioned in a proverb.' (too close for comfort)

'Eneke the bird was asked why he was always on the wing and he replied: "Men have learnt to shoot without missing their mark and I have learnt to fly without perching on a twig."' (natural selection)

I've already used the first two in a conversation with Joe yesterday, which he found irritating but I though was quite funny. I think I'll look for more and have an arsenal of Igbo proverbs on hand to use in everyday conversation. I'd entertain myself, if no one else.

Dancing girls at the Harvest Celebration.

2008-11-16T23:07:00.005+01:00

Today was the harvest celebration at the cathedral, and for weeks they've been telling people to prepare their gifts. The woman who was chair of the harvest committee would stand up every week and say, 'My brothers and sisters, I beg you, I beg you. Please prepare your gifts for the cathedral.'

And today they processed up the aisle with the gifts she had begged them for. Some brought cases of soda. Some brought bottles of water or rolls of toilet paper or 75-pound bags of rice. Some brought fans and office chairs and huge green gourds. One woman brought a rooster.

The dancing girls numbered eleven today for the special celebration, and two choirs took turns with the hymns and parts of the mass. And I had a part in the liturgy. A man who had surgery onboard the ship is a lector and catechist there, and he came and asked if one of us would read one of the intentions, which is a part of the service where someone reads a list of prayer requests and the congregation repeats something along the lines of Lord, hear our prayer. I said I would, and he handed me a slip of paper that read, May the legacies of love and faith bequeathed by our foremothers inspire us to leave behind a strong witness to gospel living. We pray...

I went to the front at the proper time with seven others. We stood in a line across the altar and stepped toward the microphone when it was our turn. I was so nervous and my hands were shaking and the skinny slip of paper was fluttering. I read it in what I hoped was a clear and steady voice, trying to annunciate so they would be able to understand me. I'm not sure I was successful. Truthfully, almost the whole time I was up there I stared at the shoes of the woman beside me, wishing I had worn a dress instead of a casual shirt and skirt, and that I'd worn heels instead of flip flops. I also wished that I had a piece of cloth tied around my head that matched the dress I wished I'd worn.

I surprised myself that I had such a desire to blend in. Next time I'll dress up a little more, and I might tuck a rooster under my arm as well.

Cassava, fish, potato greens, and rice.

2008-11-16T00:51:00.010+01:00

A Liberian woman who works on the ship invited me to come to her house. We would go to the market, and we could cook some real African food, she said. So this morning I took a taxi to Paynesville and met Garmai, who was carrying a black plastic bag empty except for a kitchen knife.

The market we went to was in a very busy area, and there were meandering pathways between countless vendors. Some sold packages of nameless pills, some sold jewelry, some were wheelbarrows full of flip-flops. Garmai moved quickly though the outer layers of the market and suddenly we were standing in a building. Tables of meat--stacks of pork, chicken, fish, dried monkey--led to tables of potato greens and chili peppers. Then suddenly we were outside and she was buying three bullion cubes and two onions, pulling her kitchen knife out of her black bag for a man with a sharpening stone to work on the blade, and ordering two measures of palm oil that the lady poured into a small plastic bag and tied off tightly.

It took every effort to keep up with her along the narrow walkways, with people stepping between us and stopping, asking how much is the fish or this spice or these pots. I wanted to stop and look at the wheelbarrow full of snails, which were as large as my hand and slid across each other's shells and antennae. I wanted time to see who and what and instead we were in and out in fifteen minutes with everything we needed. The same trip would have taken me two to three hours by myself.

When I put myself in Garmai's place though, it made sense. If I took her to my neighborhood grocery store, I'm sure she'd want to take time as well. But I'd want to get in and out and get home to start the cooking, which is what we did.

Garmai cut up the fish and I helped her daughter clean the potato greens. Garmai put the fish on to cook over a charcoal stove, seasoned with a little salt and shavings of onion.

I helped crush the chili peppers and onion in the mortar. Garmai took my photo.

After the fish and chicken were finished, Garmai put the potato greens in to stew, put another stove on for rice, then we sat for awhile as the rice cooked.

Four hours after I left the ship, I had a beautiful bowl of rice and another of potato greens and fish. Garmai served my portion in her only breakable bowls.

It was delicious, but Garmai was too generous with my portion size. Normally, they only have one meal a day, so they eat plenty. But Garmai was not offended when, half-way through, I told her I could not eat it all. She simply took my food, dumped it into a metal bowl, and called to her son, who is the boy pictured on the left. He came through the back door a moment later.

Are the boys still outside? she asked him. She was referring to a neighbor's grandsons whose mother had abandoned them. He nodded. Then bring this to them. So the twin boys, one called Papa and the other whose name I don't know but who will return to the ship on Monday for a hernia repair, got my leftover fish and rice, and when I saw them a few minutes later, their lips were shiny from palm oil and their hands were dotted with bits of rice and potato green.

Liberian bumper stickers.

2008-11-12T21:48:00.005+01:00

I've always thought bumper stickers were a funny thing. I have never been passionate enough about any organization or politician or band or movement to put one on my car, except for the little Longhorn I excitedly put on my car when I was 18 and had just decided to attend the University of Texas.

Here, bumper stickers have a homemade quality to them.

Over the past 3 1/2 months, I've made note of the different taxis and their bumper stickers, hoping to come to some sort of conclusion about them in the bigger picture about Liberia. George Orwell analyzed the social climate of England in the early 1940s through the art of Donald McGill, "the penny or twopenny coloured post cards with their endless succession of fat women in tight bathing-dresses and their crude drawings and unbearable colors, chiefly hedge-sparrows egg ting and Post Office red," which he says were produced in enormous number though no one would have admitted it. He also used "the boys' twopenny weekies, often inaccurately described as 'penny dreadfuls'" to analyze how the interests of the ruling class were perpetuated through these magazines written for common boys.

I'm not out to make such bold statements, and I've come to no great conclusions about Liberian society based on their painted-on bumper stickers. But I've catalogued many and found different themes, and they're interesting to reflect on.

We can start with the religious ones, which are large in number:

Look up to God
Prayerland #2
Deeds not words
God answers prayers
Show mercy O Lord
May God bless the poor
Faith 1
Love all trust 1
Trust God
God is One
Dependable God
Blessing from God
Good Father
God knows
God bless the owner
Jesus did it
Living Water himself
Grace
Proverbs 23: 2-4 (which if you read it warns against gluttony and greed)
Everything has a time
God’s time is the best time (which I always thought was a funny expression until I saw it again in an introduction to Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart. With the Igbo tribe of Nigeria, a common name is Amaogechukwu, which means God's time is the best.)

Then there are the bumpers that promote good ethics:

Always be fair
Honesty pays
Respect the police
No weapons (which also shows that taxi driver is sick of war)

Some display disillusionment, fatigue, or hopelessness:

No justice for the poor
The country running
Such is life
Why me
2 Busy
Who to trust?
Single man

Actually, I haven't figured out if the "Single man" is a statement about feeling alone, like the odds are too difficult to overcome, or if it's an advertisement. You can decide.

Then there are the hopeful ones, the confident ones:

Good never lost
Don’t give up my son
1 nation 1 people
Fresh n ready
Slow but Sure
Just be patient
One fine day
Life can change
All color
Big boss
Confidence
Think big

Some are self-explanatory, the first two being particularly so:

Think
Student driver—Keep a distance
No food for lazy man
No money no friend
Fix me
Don’t chase me
Mr. Barca
Mother Blessing
Mother Dear
The Wonders Family
3 Brothers Transport
Manchester United
Gbarnga, baby (Gbarnga is a city a few hours drive away)
New Georgia Special (New Georgia being a district of Monrovia)
Liberia is my home

And others which I can't figure out at all:

No equal
Girl child boy children (what?)
Wave your right
Effort

And then individual ones which seem simple, prophetic, haunting, ominous, though I'm not sure which adjective applies to which:

Simple mistake
Last to fall
Follow me
Remember

Where people live.

2008-11-10T21:39:00.006+01:00

The floors of sand, cinderblock walls, and open windows and doorways seem rudimentary, but on a rainy night, those ceilings of shiny corrugated tin keep out the rain much better than a thatched roof. The family has one room in the corner with a cement floor and a wooden door with a pad lock, and they have a little orange dog that sleeps in the sand at the main threshold. The dog barks and howls at the slightest sound, and the family of four can hear the thieves' scattering footsteps across the sandy lot behind the house.

Rushing for water.

2008-11-08T13:32:00.009+01:00

They gathered just after lunchtime at the church on the ridge past the medical clinic. O' mas, mas, and children, young men and old men, all to watch a group of 36 enter the building in white shirts and in a line, singing as if on a march or keeping time for turning over the earth, We are marching to Zion, beautiful, beautiful Zion.

But the children who stood outside didn't care about the priest who spoke or the imam. They didn't care for the drama that the group performed because they couldn't really see it and, from what they heard, only a few parts were funny. They didn't care even about the woman with the black guitar who sang in a dialect strange to their ears. They only cared about the food afterward, the plates of chicken and rice and potato greens, and they stood a few feet away from the women, watching the spoons travel from bowl to mouth, bowl to mouth.

And then one woman put a plate with a small mound of rice and an almost-bare chicken bone between two. Share, she said, and she pointed from one to the other. They nodded, and the boy with the spoon took a bite, then handed the spoon to the other boy, who scooped a few grains and shoveled them into his mouth. One grabbed the chicken bone, which looked like the spine, and broke it in half and handed part to the other.

Another woman said she was worried they wouldn't feed the children at all. She placed the bowl down with one spoon stuck in the rice and went to grab more spoons. By the time she came back, the children had already descended, grabbing greedily and scooping it out with their hands to make sure they got a share. All she saw was an empty bowl and half the rice the ground in a scattered pile.

The children had been sitting outside under the sun a long time. A few saw the jugs of water unattended and pilfered cups while the cooks weren't looking. They trotted down the steps and pulled the top from one jug, quickly dipping the cups into the clear water with ice floating on the top--ice, an unfamiliar substance to their refrigerator-free lives, water so cold it shocked their mouths and they could feel it sliding their throats, down through their chests and into their bellies.

Other children, like ants finding sugar, moved instinctively toward it. They were reaching down, when a woman in a dark blue dress walked by with her own cup of ice water, and catching the movement in the corner of her eye, began shouting for them to Get back, You have no business putting your dirty hands in the water which is not your water. It is not for you. She grabbed the white lid and slid it on top, squeezing a few fingertips and dispersing them as quickly as if she'd dumped the ice on their heads.

But they didn't go far, and they stood a few feet away, eyeing the jugs until the women grabbed each handle and loaded them into the back of the white car.

Under a tree.

2008-11-07T12:17:00.007+01:00

Not impatient, not needing anything, just sitting and watching, chattering like a little bird, adjusting the bear across her lap.

St. Joe's, Rock Hill, and Logantown.

2008-11-06T23:59:00.003+01:00

I visited St. Joseph’s Catholic Hospital and two Liberian homes today with June, the crew member who does the ship’s palliative care. John, our photographer, Holly, a ward nurse, and Jerry, a Liberian translator, were with us. The hospital is down a narrow dirt road with a huge banyan tree in front. It is small, seafoam green with two wings extending out from the main entrance. We pulled up, June went inside, and John and I waited for clearance.

We sat on the curb at the edge of the parking lot. Beside us was a group of ten women, leaning on cars and looking at each other absently. Suddenly, one began wailing, and the sound continued for about 10 or 15 seconds. Then she fell silent and only her red, swollen eyes indicated grief. A few moments later, another woman began, her keening like a song rising, rising, changing key, then going back down. She followed the same scale again, and then she was silent. A third took her turn a few moments later. Between laments, the women were all strangely silent except for one who was on a telephone. She seemed to be in charge of some sort of arrangements.

We went into the cleanly tiled building and up a flight of wide, freestanding stairs that zigzagged to the second floor. At the top, a security guard opened the gate and we were allowed to pass down a bright hallway toward the children. Everything was neat and clean, but the place seemed about forty years behind the times—no air conditioning, open doors and widows, and rusting metal beds.

Wards with six or eight patients were an open door away, and the women who lay in the beds looked listless and drawn. They lay in their beds at odd angles, legs spread, facedown, elbows jutting, or sitting up with hunched shoulders, like their heads were too heavy to lift.

The three boys we visited all had Burkitt’s lymphoma, one seemingly healthy except for a his swollen right cheek, another doing pretty badly, with gauze around his head to cover a shunt, a feeding tube down his nose, and bedsores on his ankles. He was holding onto the side of the bed, crying and whimpering when she came in. His name is Derrick, and June has been working with him for a while, and said that until two weeks ago, he was walking and talking and doing pretty well.

June got him out of his bed and held him across her lap, and he quit whimpering and quickly fell asleep. The other boy sucked on an orange, spitting out the seeds and dropping them onto the peel that lay in pieces on the mattress. After 20 minutes, we left to visit the newest patient, 14-year-old Joseph. Joseph was in a 2-person room with another young man who’d broken his arm and that boy’s mother. Joseph’s relatives were absent, and the other mother said they weren’t returning until the following day.

And then we visited two homes, both of which I’ve never seen anything like. The was first in a place called Rock Hill, where a patient named Johnny was staying. Johnny is 26 and has a malignant tumor that makes his right eye bulge, and because he lives in the interior, his sister Patricia and her husband are letting him stay with them so he can get treatment in Monrovia. About 15 people live in a cinder-block house with open windows, open doorways and rafters open to a new tin roof. The floors were rough cement in most of the rooms, though in some it was uneven, rocky ground. They were covered with sand, and the only piece of furniture I saw was a small wooden table. One main hallway traversed the house, and small rooms turned off on each side. It was dark and empty, though its inhabitants smiled and laughed easily, especially when June pulled out bubbles for the children.

The place is called Rock Hill because, quite practically, it’s on a hill with a lot of rocks in it. Men, women, and children wielded shovels and hoes and hammers to dig around the black crags, pull them from the earth, and then break them into small rocks about the size of walnuts or kiwis. As we were leaving, we saw a woman who was about 18. She had a baby sitting on her left thigh, leaning against her torso, and a hammer in her right hand, smashing rocks into small pieces. Her hands were covered in black dust. We watched as the baby cried and, acquiescing to the baby’s demands, she pulled up her shirt to let it feed, then continued hammering at the rock at the same pace as before.

The last patient we visited was Sarah, a 60-year-old woman, who lives in a much older house in a part of Monrovia called Logantown. After following another small dirt road, we parked and walked about a quarter of a mile over a wide dirt path, between little stalls that sold charcoal, sugar cane, cassava root, and CDs. Children grabbed our hands, and we passed across a clearing used as a soccer field. By the time we reached Sarah’s home, about a dozen children had gathered around us. The followed us into the house of corrugated tin, piecemeal and rusted, down the dark and dank hallway where a woman sat cooking over a tin stove on the floor with its charcoal fire.

Sarah’s room was in the back corner, and she quickly shooed the children away. Her room was dark teal green with a cement floor, a double bed, and a wall lined with jerry cans. She had a small bench for June and a dingy white plastic chair with three legs propped against a small wooden table. She greeted us—Hello, mama to Holly and me, Hello, papa and Hello, boss man to John and Jerry. She told us we were fine, that she was glad to see us, and she said she was feeling fine, though a large malignant tumor bulged from her lower right cheek and recently, the skin broke and the wound weeps.

Sarah sat calmly as June removed the bandage and then cleaned the wound with saline. She perched on the edge of her double bed and seemed unaffected as June passed the gauze over the tight skin over her tumor and the loose skin on her neck. Holly rebandaged her, then June said it was time to refill the medicine.

Sarah stood and lifted her mattress. She pulled out a plastic bag, which in the end was a tray with 18 different sections to hold her pills for each time of the day. It was wrapped in four plastic bags to protect it from the rats and hidden under her mattress to prevent anyone from stealing it. She spoke some of how she doesn’t like to go out because people talk talk talk, she said that she could come on the ship with us and leave Monrovia because what I do here? I don’t do nothing and people just talk talk talk, and then she pulled some pictures of her children and grandchildren from a blue bag that seemed to be her dresser and her hiding place for important papers like the Liberian constitution. She told us that when we come, when she sees us, she knows that God loves her. Then we said our goodbyes and headed back to the ship.

With words and objects from the Freeport to Brewerville City.

2008-11-05T23:03:00.005+01:00

Momoh considered it a burden that the task was incomplete. The culverts that sat like boulders—just as motionless, just as immovable—should have been gone. A week ago they were supposed to repair the washed-out road, but he knew the workers would not come and the responsibility would be his to call the community, to wave each man down and ask for Saturday morning.

His own house was unfinished. The foundation was complete, but cinderblocks and sacks of cement sat in stacks and how refreshing it would be when they were gone. Earlier he had gone to town and saw the yellow taxi in front of him had painted on his bumper ‘Slow but sure.’ Slow but sure, or slow and sure, or just slow, surely.

He had passed girls in khaki dresses with scalloped red collars, boys in white shirts with burgundy pants, and Momoh watched misty rain fall at a distance on the St. Paul River as he crossed the bridge. The police were out, stopping people for small money, and Momoh heard the driver suck his teeth.

‘The best police in the country are just down the road, by the freeport,’ the driver said. ‘They don’t take money off anyone.’

‘It’s a swamp,’ Momoh said, and then they were quiet.

The colors were darker in town and the image of his village was technicolor in his head. The Disco Motel, the Time Printing Press, the supermarket—they were covered in grey clouds and streaks from smoke, dirt, and exhaust, and the vibrant greens lining the sides of the red dirt highway seemed to glisten in comparison. He’d never want to live in the city, not for a favor, not for a dream, not for the iron gate like a spiderweb that he passed and pointed and said to the driver, ‘That’s fine.'

In town for a common task and then back home to his future, his halfbuilt stairs to a second story that would be his house, so the old one could become his medicine shop—Dream Drugs or Momoh’s Chosen Cures. It took perseverance and a vision, which not many people had except to grow fat cucumbers and keep watch over a couple of ducks. They had no taste for it, for what they built could be gone as quickly as a scratch, as quickly as an institute that took years to build could be destroyed, and no law could protect it.

So fishing in the Atlantic and hanging second-hand jeans on a clothesline were the marks of a day for his countrymen and women, all dangling in a balance that they worried would crack at the slightest movement. The culverts would stay on the side of the road, and the red dirt would keep washing out, and in town, the police would take small money from the drivers, and the smoke from charcoal fires would darken the sides of buildings, and over and over until a crack crossed the surface and the details didn’t matter anymore.

Watch your step.

2008-11-04T21:50:00.000+01:00

How to see.

2008-11-02T23:11:00.005+01:00

A white building, a solid structure, two stories with a large front porch sits a few feet above street level. A wide set of concrete stairs on the left side leads up to the second floor. The cement handrail is broken in places. As I passed it this morning, I thought, Maybe it was damaged during the war.

Yesterday I watched as two women walked up a cracked sidewalk in fancy dresses, one in lemon yellow shoulder to ankle, and tight, one wearing a dress with two layers, the bottom a blue slip, the top a billowing layer of gossamer fabric embroidered with sequined flowers. The sidewalk followed the hill, for a few moments under the shade of a large tree but soon emerging into the heavy sun. My discussion with a friend came up a conclusion and a judgment--They were probably headed to a wedding, and wouldn't it be horrible to have to walk places, in dresses and heels under a hot sun up a hill?

And often, as I step over trash on the ground or through mud in the markets or around holes in the street, I think what it would be like for those places to be my home. I think about trash on the ground and broken down cars, and I wonder what it would be like to have that sort of a city be the only one I know.

But then I realize I might be seeing the wrong things, noticing the wrong details, or misreading what I do see. Joe always encourages me to try my hand at travel writing, but that's always my concern--how can I possibly understand a place in a week, in two weeks, in three months even? The handrail could have broken because it was poorly built, or it's just old and hasn't been replaced. Maybe the women were happy walking in the sun, happy that their streets were peaceful enough that they could walk in the sun.

And noticing the broken cars and muddy ground reveals how trained my eyes are to lush but pruned flowerbeds and sidewalks without a crack. An aesthetic preference, a superficial predilection of mine which evokes pity toward those who live in less kempt circumstances. But when they are battling so much else, what does it matter that the sidewalk isn't level?

Three months in, and I'm not close to figuring out how to see.

Layers of colored cloth.

2008-11-02T00:40:00.000+01:00

Unconnected images.

2008-10-31T11:24:00.000+01:00

An old white man was walking down the road. He was wearing a patchwork shirt of African fabric and very light khaki pants. A swarm of gnats hovered above his smooth bald head, following closely as he walked. He swatted at them, tried to duck away from them, but they remained close by, determined in their stead.

I sat crosslegged on the floor of C ward with little boys swarming me. Darus, a three-year old boy with dark chocolate skin, sat on my left leg and leaned against me. Larry, a one-year old with legs which get fatter by the day, tottered over toward us with his uneven, unsteady steps, his arm outstretched to pull my glasses off my face. Darus pushed his hand away, then looked up and tried to grab them himself.

Two old men and an old woman stood in the middle room of a ruined house. One man wore a white embroidered kufi hat and a mustard colored-tunic and matching pants. He leaned on a carved wooden cane. Between mildewed walls with no roof, on floors long covered by moss and grass, they pointed to each room--two girls could live in there, two more in there, two more and there, and a nice front porch. And here they could cook. The other old man and the old woman nodded, then they all turned and walked out, down the broken steps, down the footpath, out to the red dirt road.

Baindu sat in D ward with her baby girl Hawa, five months old with tiny gold studs in her ears. What was a gaping, skinless hole exposing inner layers of soft tissue and infection had become the smooth, even surface of a cheek. Baindu lifted Hawa, spread the sheet out on the floor, then put her back down. She picked up a toy and waved it in front of Hawa's face, and they both smiled, though Baindu could only smile with her eyes. Her operation to shape a new mouth wasn't until the next day.

I sat in a car, waiting to cross a bridge. A heavy downpour was soaking the red dirt road, saturating the already wet grasses, filling the river. Through the passenger window, a woman stared in. She had a bundle wrapped in plastic sheeting balanced on her head and another piece of plastic around her waist. She was old, thin, and her black shirt was faded. She raised her hand to her mouth, like she was holding a piece of bread, and she tapped her lips with her fingertips. Eat, eat, she mouthed. After four cars passed, we took our turn and crossed the bridge to the other side.

Another means of support.

2008-10-29T08:54:00.000+01:00

There are a few cell phone companies in Liberia, but Lone Star was the first and seems to be the biggest. There are no plans--3000 minutes and unlimited nights and weekends for $89.99 would never fly here. You simply add $5 or $10 credits to your phone any time you need them, as there are vendors at every corner lounging on a stool, under an umbrella, behind a rickety wood and wire stand. I'm not sure how many minutes it gives you, but they say it lasts awhile.

I've talked some about the African approach to finances, that due to many years of upheaval and crisis, they depend on friends and family to share (money, food, or clothes) with them when they are in need and that they are called to share with others in times of plenty. Asking for help is not shameful but a necessary part of life. I've also talked some about how much Liberians are on their cell phones and how they have appropriated cell phones to suit their social dynamics, to pull this network of support closer. But yesterday I found another intersection between cell phones and Liberian economic survival methods.

I was riding back from Tenegar when I heard a commercial for Lonestar, advertising a new feature for its customers. In distinct and bold Liberian English, a woman's voice declared, "From me to you, From me to you, From me to you."

After a pause, the same woman explained that the program "allows transfer of fifty cents, one dollar, one dollar and fifty cents, or two dollars from one cell customer to another." A man's voice entered the conversation, surprised, intrigued. She explained to him the ins and outs, and she told him the feature is designed "so you can at least finish your discussion."

His reply was quick: "So do you have credit to give me?"

And of course, she did.

Imagining a program like this in the United States is difficult, but in Liberia, it's quite ingenious.

Writing in a time of need.

2008-10-25T16:45:00.001+01:00

I need your help, I have no one to help me.
Things have been hard for me since I lost my parents nine years ago.
I have nobody to help besides God. Please help in any way you can.

His desperation sings in a few simple words. Samuel hesitates before he sends it, wondering if she will help him or if his plea will go unanswered. One hundred twenty dollars. People have given more before, but he'll ask for one hundred twenty dollars so he can pay rent for this month and use the rest for a motorbike with some of the other guys. He has no work, no money, he borrows clothes and phones and money and even the house where he lives. Smith and Allen give to him because in jail, they became like brothers. They protected each other and looked out for each other, and in nine years, he has been alone enough to know the value of that.

Samuel sits in the barbershop and watches them get cut and shaved though he has no money for the same. He hears them rise in the morning to go to work, Smith to the internet cafe and Allen to the place down the street where what he does, no one is sure of. They both are gone when he wakes up and pulls on jeans and sits outside the front door on a overturned bucket.

The idleness numbs him. He cannot see a good path to take him from this borrowed house and these borrowed clothes. Displaced from the diamond country of Sierra Leone by war and greed, or greed and war, Samuel hasn't found things much better in Monrovia. Still no jobs, still no school, still no movement. Whether he is in Liberia looking for reparations, or whether he's here because Monrovia holds fewer memories of personal suffering than Freetown, he does not know.

He will sit quietly as Smith and Allen prattle and prate after work about humorous antics of people on the street. They are not unkind, they are not ungenerous, and he knows their raillery of the war-addled exists so they can cope. Otherwise, the gravity in each day would overwhelm them all.

Samuel will sit and wonder about what is to come with the message he sent, and whether the woman will help. Even thirty dollars would be something. Even fifteen. But if the days pass and he hears nothing, he will find another way.

Samuel will sneak away one night with Smith's keys. He will unlock the gate to the internet cafe, and he will open it slowly and only enough to squeeze his lean body through. The owner is fat and sleeps too easily, so Samuel will not fear waking him. Only guards at the other gates give him pause for caution. He will walk around the side of the house to the shed, and he will unlock it as well. He will grab the toolkit and wheel the motorbike out, his movements slow and noiseless like many times before. He will push the bike down the road until he finds a decent place to wait for the light of morning, so he can wire the ignition without the keys. Then he will head north and find someone who will buy the tools along the way so he can buy gas and food, and maybe someone will ask for a ride and give him a few dollars when he drops them at the border. Maybe things will be easier in his own country; maybe he will find some kin to help him. Smith will suffer, but not as much as Samuel has, and he sees no other way. And though Smith is like a brother, he's not a brother.

That is, unless the woman answers his message with an envelope of fifteen, thirty, or a hundred twenty dollars.