Church

Several weeks ago I went to church. Not too surprisingly, the over 100 churches dominate camp life, and it’s more of a question of where than if you go to church. All the veteran volunteers recommend going, even just once to get more of a flavor of life here and an insight to peoples lives, and it is never hard to find an invitation to someone’s church. Plus, churches are generally of the energetic Pentecostal variety, and services promise at least good show of music and dancing.

I went with Joyce, my 14 year-old neighbor, who was only too excited to bring me. As I sat waiting for the service to begin, feeling a bit conspicuous being the only white face and feeling a bit of an imposter being certainly the only Jew, a little boy (about 12 years old) came and sat next to me. He seemed to be on his own and was dressed neatly in a button down shirt and tie and wore an almost euphoric smile. He sat there looking at me with that smile. I smiled back at him and he replied with complete sincerity and a hint of sagely confidence “God bless you sister” That was my initiation to church. Everything else is swirl of images and sounds.

I remember feeling like a bit of a fraud when Joyce asked me to raise my hands to the sky and “receive the lord”, but it would have been weirder if I didn’t do it. I remember making the conscious decision to just give thanks to the music gods, in place of Jesus, so that I could feel more authentic. I was really loving the music (every church has at least one drum kit) and feeling joy from that so, I decided to tap into those sincere emotions and dance and pray with the others while secretly being thankful for such inspiring music instead of Jesus. It was my way of acting appropriately, but not in a way that would not scandalize my Jewish mother.

There was kind of a tag team approach to preaching, and I couldn’t quite figure out who was the main preacher, if there was one. At any moment, there were quite a few people pacing, gesticulating and muttering to themselves. They would usually have one hand to their ear as they paced, which gave the bizarre impression that they were having a heated cell phone call. With God.

Not only was I standing for pretty much the entire service, but I was actually dancing most of the time. It would have been hard not to. The music was infectious and the whole congregation was moving so that it would have almost been conspicuous had I not been moving too. At one point I, as an obvious new member, was invited up to the front to dance along with two other newbies. The church hierarchy all shimmied up to welcome us and shake our hands.

I remember being astounded by the apparent elation the church-goers exhibited at the service. Shouting, “thank you Jesus”, shaking their heads, dancing, smiling, hugging one another, and even falling to their knees if the “spirit” so moved them. Maybe it’s posturing. Maybe it’s just how you are expected to behave. Even if those displays of euphoria are disingenuous, there seemed to be something therapeutic about it. I remember in a university psychology class learning about this idea – something like the “facial feedback hypothesis” – that we are happy because we smile not the other way around. Sounded like a lot of nonsense at the time, but maybe there is something to it.

Politics

Sorry to all for letting so much time lapse between this and my last post – especially since that last one was kind of bittersweet. (I’m back dating these posts to correspond to my journal entries) I’ll chalk it up to the fact that the internet has been down frequently, but it’s really also this heat, which makes it hard to think, much less put together a coherent idea.

So there is still lots to tell. Way back on October 11th, I woke up bracing myself for another harrowing day of teaching and was pleasantly surprised when some of my students came by our guest house, crowded around one of the wire mesh windows and shouted in as I ate my porridge- “Sis Kim, no school today!!” That’s something of a comment on how casually the school is run, but it’s really my introduction to Liberian politics. On October 11th, Liberians were given the first opportunity to elect a president after several years of a UN-run interim government. Nearly the whole camp was fasting and praying and many schools were cancelled in honor of the day. Even from a few countries away from the action, it was an exciting time. The refugees on camp cannot vote, but they probably have as much (if not more) of a vested interest in the outcome than those still in Liberia, and almost all are happy to talk politics.

Most people have an opinion about the 22 candidates, even if it is that there are simply too many candidates to achieve any meaningful consensus (a popular opinion). Most, however, prefer one of two choices – George Weah or Ellen Johnson. Weah is a former footballer with less than high school education and the conventional wisdom on camp is that he is the man to unify the country at least in the role of a popular figurehead, but many have doubts about his political acumen and decision-making ability. Ellen Johnson has the experience and political savvy (I think she worked for the World Bank), but she has had ties to Charles Taylor (former warlord president now in exile), so some fear her presidency will fracture the country.

For the most part, people seem to be doing a combination of holding their breath in anticipation of peace, at the same time as they roll their eyes at the prospects of any kind of immediate change. The other day some of the kids who play outside our house were singing a song that kind cuts to the chase. It goes like this – “Liberia, Liberia, Liberia, Liberia. One day Liberia will be free”

overall...

I don’t want to paint an overly romantic view of things here. I am, after all, in a refugee camp that exists without conveniences like enough clean water, consistent electricity and reliable medical care. But this is really more of a settlement or a community in exile than a camp responding to an immediate crisis. Because of this, I feel as though I am living in a village with all the related advantages. I love that I know my neighbors and play with their kids. I love that I can’t walk for more than 5 minutes without running into someone I know from Children Better Way, school or just prior encounters. I love that there are people everywhere you look, (playing games, hanging clothes, cooking, gossiping or talking politics), but no one is in a hurry. I love that you can never get so far inside somewhere that you are not affected by the weather. I love that I can walk to everything and everyone I need to get to. I love the little kids who run up to me all day long and so freely dispense such generous hugs. All of this is probably more of a negative comment on how isolating and alienating our society can make you feel in comparison than a bizarrely sentimental comment on life in a refugee camp.

The pace of life, connection to others and to nature does seem like an improvement over my much more convenient lifestyle in the States. But I am reminded of some of the other trade-offs when I see how often and how easily so many people here get sick and sometimes die. I’ve been here only one month and already the relatively small circle of local people I’ve met has contained an alarming amount of sickness. After about a week here, I found one of my favorite neighborhood boys, normally skipping around and bursting with energy, sitting listless next to our house and barely registering my presence. Normally competing fiercely for my attention, he barely responded when I asked him what was wrong. Turns out he was sick with malaria. Since that time the people who have come down with malaria include, the volunteer coordinator, local bartender, the women who does our washing for extra money, and my roommate! Another teacher at school – again, normally overflowing with energy – became violently ill with dysentery. I went to visit her at her house and she was lying on the floor wearing an pained expression that made her look like a completely different person. Her daughter is in my class and a bit of a over-eager pleaser-type with her hand always first in the air. The day after my visit she came to class and simply put her head on her desk nearly the whole day. I asked her how her mother was doing and she enigmatically told me that her mom’s mouth was twisted and she was not at all well. Turns out she suffered a stroke on top of the dysentery and will no longer be teaching. She is receiving very limited medical care in this critical stage.

Last week a little girl I play with came by and barely cracked a smile when I lightheartedly teased as I usually do. When I pulled her aside and asked her what was wrong, a single tear ran down her face as she told me that her uncle had died that weekend. Since I’ve been here, someone has died next to my guest house and the other volunteer guest house; so has the principal’s brother, my co-teacher’s uncle, and the micro-loan coordinators stepson. Death is just a constant companion, and familial ties are so large that so many are affected by each passing. I’ve simply never been around this much sickness and death.

Another reason not to wax overly sentimental about life here is that pretty much everyone I meet is trying in some way to get to America, Canada or Europe. I wish I could tell them what they’d miss by being there, but I know I don’t have a proper appreciation for how hopeless not having even the option of employment or improvement in your lot can be. Probably about half of my interactions with people have the subtext of how I can help them get to America. Especially those who have been here for a while are quite desperate to get out of here anyway possible. People still fall in love, marry, have kids, go to school and run businesses out of the camp, but almost no one stops dreaming of a different and better life that seems almost impossibly far away.

Differences

One of the things I was naively surprised to find about living on this camp is the incredible diversity of people, of wealth, of abilities to cope. Before you go off to a totally foreign environment, you tend to anticipate things in panoramas of homogeneity – like all the ways that things will be different from what you are used to. Everything you expect is similarly “other” from what is familiar. But then you spend some time getting to know your new context and home, and all the difference within what is now familiar come into stark relief. For example, I was surprised to find that there is such a wide range of wealth in the camp. Simply walking around it is clear to see that some have enough money for luxuries like a bottle of beer and an afternoon at the makeshift “movie theaters” (small concrete and tin structures with an old television and wooden benches) while others struggle to get their children adequately fed. Some of the little houses, I was surprised to see, have generators and gardens and little yards, whereas others contain only a mattress, cooking pot and pile of clothes. Each person and family is having a uniquely different experience.

Although everyone here is a Liberian refugee, the ranges in personality are just as great here as anywhere, and I see this most clearly in my children I teach. Some are embarrassed and shy or lacking in confidence. Others are bold. Others try hard and cry out for praise. Others care most about making the other kids laugh. All this should go without saying. We are commonly human. It’s just that so much in our world is focused on how things are hard or different in other places and it’s easy to let that overwhelm your image of a place. It shouldn’t be a revelation to discover that we are all more similar than different, but for some reason it still can feel like an epiphany.

E's Story

E is one of those personalities that epitomizes the phrase “full of life.” His optimistic spirit and joy shines through in an utterly unself-conscious way. He wears a perpetual smile and is in constant motion, his words animating his whole body in casual conversation making you feel as though he is totally present and completely listening to you. He is a youthful 25 years old.

E’s mother died when he was young and his father (a member of the Liberian government) was killed as the Liberian war broke out, when E was just a teenager. During the war, he was separated from his 5 siblings and walked for 2 weeks to cross the border into Sierra Leone with an aunt and uncle; finally finding is way to the camp without his brothers. For years he simply assumed they had died. He describes his early years in this camp as “very hard” and much different from today, washing with and drinking dirty water (he was treated for Cholera) and fearing the frequent violence. After 4 years of living like this, a man from his church approached him commenting that he looked very much like a man he had met in Northern Ghana and asked him if he had any brothers. E knew his brothers were either in Liberia or dead and he thought little of the comment. But a few weeks later he returned to church and was given a letter with the picture of the look-alike man and a letter from the man attached. It turned out that the look-alike living in Northern Ghana was in fact his brother, had communicated through the church middle-man, discovered that E was in fact alive and living in the camp and had a actually visited the camp the week before! He was unable to find E, but left the picture and letter. E told me about this letter with wide unbelieving eyes and an unrestrained smile, pantomiming holding the precious thing and clutching his heart. He described his happiness at hearing the news of his brother, and I can only imagine those emotions.

The two ultimately reunited, and his brother, seeing the camp conditions, took E to Northern Ghana where they lived together and caught up on lost time. However, ultimately his brother won the coveted prize of sponsorship by an American university and left Ghana for the U.S. E, far from feeling abandoned, is overjoyed for his brother. It’s hard to know whether this is yet another manifestation of E’s optimistic spirit or a reflection of a society in which people literally pray daily to escape their world for the greener pastures of the Western world. I’m just relieved and a bit amazed at the resilience of E and even the human spirit to cope with such loss and continue to hope and find such joy in life. I’m constantly overwhelmed and humbled by people’s stories.

Education

The school year got off to a pretty chaotic start. So far I Have about 35 3rd graders ranging in ages 8 to 13 who randomly selected themselves to be in our classroom. There was no class list, no text books, and not enough copies of the Ghanaian approved syllabus to allow teachers to plan and many are not in that practice of doing so in any event. The drill is that in the absence of textbooks, the kids bring “copy books” and the teacher writes a lesson on the board for them to copy. This, however, is largely an exercise in futility as most of the kids cannot read and just copy letters. It does keep them busy and quite for a stretch and that is enough of a reward for many of the teachers to keep this dysfunctional system in place. The kids do not seem to have been taught to sound out words phonetically in order to read or spell them, but just memorize the way a word looks. Many times they’ll just recognize the first letter and guess at the rest. “Period” could just as easily be “person” or “pencil.” They really do try though and it breaks my heart to see them struggle.

Because of this we are trying to introduce phonics into the curriculum, and everyone was pretty excited about this, but the problem is that Liberian English is so different that they just don’t pronounce words phonetically. I learned this the hard way when I designed a spelling lesson around “th” words. I called out the first word “this” and was met with blank stares. I asked my co-teacher to call out the word, and upon hearing “dis” the kids all nodded with recognition and attempted an answer. The word “book” is pronounced “boo” and “blackboard” is pronounced “blackboh”, so I fear teaching them phonetics might actually make writing and reading even more nonsensical and mystifying.

On top of the general challenges of teaching poor, restless refugee kids of widely varying abilities (some are bored, others clueless) in a classroom that has pretty much no resources and with teachers that may have had interrupted or meager education themselves – some of the kids clearly have learning disabilities, like dyslexia. I fear that these kids will almost certainly fall through the cracks. I just have to keep remembering that this year the kids actually have classrooms and small classes. Last year, hundreds were crammed into a church where effective teaching and personal attention was practically impossible. I now know my kids names, abilities and how to motivate them individually so I hope to be able to help each one of them improve in some way. I am already getting quite attached to them and know leaving will be hard.

As challenging and exhausting all of this is, I find it incredibly and unexpectedly rewarding. These kids do badly do want to learn. They understand that not everyone can afford an education and even the little kids understand that they would have little hope without it. In a lot of ways this makes it easier than my experiences working with kids at home. They respond so well to just the slightest bit of encouragement and thank me profusely for any visual aids I bring into the classroom. In so many ways they are “with the system” It’s just too bad that the system is not always with these kids.