I was sitting beside my friend Andy, who I really need to stop mentioning on this blog, on a bench overlooking the most beautiful beach in Sierra Leone. It was a gorgeous day, the sun calling the bluff of the morning’s grey with a tour de force which would leave this ginger, doxycycline popping Irishman with badly blistered shoulders (just in time for him to lug luggage around Freetown too). The soothing surf and sparkling white-gold sand were a far cry from Banta’s orange dust. We were the guests of a Middle Eastern businessman who has a small house right on the beach and who would treat us to an as-fresh-as-it-gets seafood dinner. It was fabulous and I don’t even really like seafood! As I sat next to Andy (there I go again), I couldn’t help but think, “I want what this businessman has.” I commented to that guy I keep mentioning that it wasn’t really the “stuff” of wealth which I caught myself craving, it was the location. The comment hung in the air for a second and then the absurdity of it dropped.
I have only had a handful of properly paying jobs and even then have usually been looking at something close to minimum wage and usually for not much more than three months. I’m more likely to be found with my head in a library book with a fast approaching assignment deadline or working for room, board and pocket money, a stipend or…well…nothing. But there I was sitting with a plate of freshly caught lobster on a wonderful west African beach. I have never had a big paying job…and yet…I have been blessed by rich experiences and locations…
I have kayaked through the silent morning mist on Western Washington’s Hood Canal and skied in its Olympic Mountains as well as near Germany’s Black Forest. I’ve snorkeled in the Mediterranean Sea and picked handfuls of fresh cherries off trees in the Pyrenees. I’ve worked on and been on television, had my name “on the list” for film screenings, concerts and press conferences. I’ve met officials at the European Parliament in a crepe-filled Brussels and bluffed at London’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office. I’ve seen some of the finest art ever created hanging in Paris and London – Van Gogh and Da Vinci, Picasso and Monet, Pollock and Warhol. I’ve seen Nelson Mandela’s cell and Anne Frank’s hideaway, danced on top of Table Mountain and thrown snowballs off the Eiffel Tower. I’ve held a royal python and fed grapes to ring tailed lemurs; been head butted by a sealion and spat at by a gorilla; I’ve walked amidst a colony of penguins and been flown over by a bald headed eagle; I’ve stroked a cheetah, eaten my fair share of monkeys and dived with great white sharks. I have “rubbed shoulders” with princes, presidents (okay, okay so I don’t really have the stories to back up the plurals) and people living with HIV in Guguletu township, South Africa. I’ve had lunch in Westminster Palace and at the Beahai’s house in the poorest district of the world’s poorest country. And so on and so forth, blah blah blah.
Of course other people will have more impressive “lists”, more interesting stories (I know many such people), and such things when rhymed off like that usually sound much more impressive than the stories behind them actually are. But that isn’t the point. The point is I don’t feel like any of these experiences were “earned”, either monetarily or otherwise. They were gratefully received from generous friends, generous strangers, a loving family and, ultimately, a Heavenly father. So the point is, I don’t get to sit and envy a wealthy businessman’s beach house. Not when I’ve got sand between my toes.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Shorts: December Rain
“The traditional idea is that December rain comes to wash the city clean of all the bad things in time for the new year.”
...we’re going to need a lot of rain...
---
Standing at the side of the road amidst a crowd of fellow Freetown transport seekers, a cry went up as the rain came down and we all retreated under the shelter of Lumley’s petrol station. I stood and watched the rain pound the fast flowing stream which seconds before had been a street. A man filled a wheelbarrow with a lady’s shopping and their clothes, soaked to transparency, clung to them as they wheeled away. A raucous roar went up from the crowd huddled behind me, making me turn quickly. I felt a shot of adrenaline as I was greeted with the sight of three men surrounding one, all four having stepped out from under the forecourt’s covering. Fight! I couldn’t really be sure what had happened, the best I could gather being that the one had tried to steal from one of the three but I could be wrong. The crowd bayed like school boys and the driving rain added to the kinetic energy of the moment. One of the three swung a wild kick at who we’ll call the “thief” who countered with a kick of his own, sending his assailant sprawling to the ground. The other two men lunged forward and grappled with the thief, the third assailant making use of his puddle position to grab a leg and haul everyone down to his level.
One man stepped forward from the crowd and tried to pull the fight apart, appealing to others to help as he did so. A moment later the fracas had been reduced to a stand off between the thief and one of his accusers, each being held apart but trying to force his way forward. A taxi pulled up and my friend and I ran out in the rain and jumped in, along with a couple of women. While we waited for the car to fill up we watched the brawlers through its wet windows and, talking in krio, one of the women lamented, “Everyone is telling them to stop. Why won’t they stop!?” Another responded, “You don’t understand Fullah (a tribal group in Sierra Leone) man, sister. Unless he kills this man his heart won’t cool down.” Then, for just a moment, that kind of extreme conclusion seemed possible as one of the two men pulled a long cutlass (that’s what machetes are called here) from somewhere. The clamour of the crowd peaked but so did its action, one young man immediately jumping forward, wrestling the weapon clear and disappearing with it.
Another passenger squeezed in to our taxi and we pulled away, the two men still trying to claw towards each other.
---
Coming back from my friend Gee’s graduation my taxi stopped at a junction where a police officer stood directing traffic. As cars passed in front of us there was a screech of tires. A large land cruiser, bedecked in ribbon as if coming from a wedding, had narrowly avoided a fender bender with the vehicle in front. The driver, a man of Lebanese descent, had not been paying attention, distracted by the conversation he was having on his mobile phone. The police officer had seen the whole incident and smiled at the driver, giving a little laugh. A grunt of disgust came from the man in the passenger seat of my taxi. He leaned out of his window and shouted at the police officer, “If that had been a black man you would have held him!” Nods of agreement came from the other passengers as the man shouted his commentary. The police officer rounded on him, pointing his finger and spitting out three words. “You shut up!”
The passenger shouted back, “I’ll speak whatever I have a mind to. If that had been a black man using his mobile phone you would have held him!”
“You shut up!”
“No, I’ll say what I want!”
The police officer marched over to the car, his body tight with rage, and shouted again, “Shut up!” He opened the door and jabbed his finger in to the passengers face. The passenger, unsurprisingly, did not take kindly to having his cheekbone poked by an irate police officer and there was a scuffle between the two.
“You are not allowed to strike a civilian!”
“You shut up!”
The man in the back seat beside me stood up inside the car, leaned out the window and joined in the argy bargy, shouting in his friend’s defense.
“What he says is right. Take your hands off him. I will seize your crown.” And with that he grabbed the police officers cap and pulled it in to the taxi. The officer, his bewilderment at this assault on his authority only making him even more angry, wrestled with this second man, eventually pulling his cap free. By this time passers by had gotten involved, one of them holding back the man in the passenger seat and pushing him back in to the car. The taxi driver was calling for calm as was the lady on my other side. I sat, somewhat stunned by what was unfolding, offering somewhat muted appeals for peace. Once the passenger had taken his seat and the police officer had pulled his head back out of the window the taxi driver seized his opportunity to pull away from the situation. My last glimpse of the police officer saw him surrounded by people, dusting off his cap and looking utterly humbled.
Once we were clear the taxi erupted in conversation and, as so often happens in Sierra Leone, anger quickly gave way to laughter.
“I wanted to take his cap and go and report him so no-one could deny the incident,” the backseat passenger explained.
“You were right, if it had of been a black man that police officer would have held him. But since he was white (Everyone is white here unless you are black, little distinction being made between Europeans, Americans, Middle Easterners and Asians) the police officer just laughed back,” the taxi driver summed up.
When we arrived at our destination and we got out of the taxi, the front seat passenger put his arm around me. “Were you worried?” he asked.
“No” I lied. “And you certainly weren’t”.
“I’m not scared of them. Not at all.”
His colleague nodded. “Once you seize their crown you seize all their authority.”
Within a matter of thirty seconds two separate people had come over to slap the backseat passenger on the back.
“Are you the man who pulled the policeman’s cap?” they laughed. The backseat passenger smiled and an extra swagger made its presence felt in his already confident strut.
...we’re going to need a lot of rain...
---
Standing at the side of the road amidst a crowd of fellow Freetown transport seekers, a cry went up as the rain came down and we all retreated under the shelter of Lumley’s petrol station. I stood and watched the rain pound the fast flowing stream which seconds before had been a street. A man filled a wheelbarrow with a lady’s shopping and their clothes, soaked to transparency, clung to them as they wheeled away. A raucous roar went up from the crowd huddled behind me, making me turn quickly. I felt a shot of adrenaline as I was greeted with the sight of three men surrounding one, all four having stepped out from under the forecourt’s covering. Fight! I couldn’t really be sure what had happened, the best I could gather being that the one had tried to steal from one of the three but I could be wrong. The crowd bayed like school boys and the driving rain added to the kinetic energy of the moment. One of the three swung a wild kick at who we’ll call the “thief” who countered with a kick of his own, sending his assailant sprawling to the ground. The other two men lunged forward and grappled with the thief, the third assailant making use of his puddle position to grab a leg and haul everyone down to his level.
One man stepped forward from the crowd and tried to pull the fight apart, appealing to others to help as he did so. A moment later the fracas had been reduced to a stand off between the thief and one of his accusers, each being held apart but trying to force his way forward. A taxi pulled up and my friend and I ran out in the rain and jumped in, along with a couple of women. While we waited for the car to fill up we watched the brawlers through its wet windows and, talking in krio, one of the women lamented, “Everyone is telling them to stop. Why won’t they stop!?” Another responded, “You don’t understand Fullah (a tribal group in Sierra Leone) man, sister. Unless he kills this man his heart won’t cool down.” Then, for just a moment, that kind of extreme conclusion seemed possible as one of the two men pulled a long cutlass (that’s what machetes are called here) from somewhere. The clamour of the crowd peaked but so did its action, one young man immediately jumping forward, wrestling the weapon clear and disappearing with it.
Another passenger squeezed in to our taxi and we pulled away, the two men still trying to claw towards each other.
---
Coming back from my friend Gee’s graduation my taxi stopped at a junction where a police officer stood directing traffic. As cars passed in front of us there was a screech of tires. A large land cruiser, bedecked in ribbon as if coming from a wedding, had narrowly avoided a fender bender with the vehicle in front. The driver, a man of Lebanese descent, had not been paying attention, distracted by the conversation he was having on his mobile phone. The police officer had seen the whole incident and smiled at the driver, giving a little laugh. A grunt of disgust came from the man in the passenger seat of my taxi. He leaned out of his window and shouted at the police officer, “If that had been a black man you would have held him!” Nods of agreement came from the other passengers as the man shouted his commentary. The police officer rounded on him, pointing his finger and spitting out three words. “You shut up!”
The passenger shouted back, “I’ll speak whatever I have a mind to. If that had been a black man using his mobile phone you would have held him!”
“You shut up!”
“No, I’ll say what I want!”
The police officer marched over to the car, his body tight with rage, and shouted again, “Shut up!” He opened the door and jabbed his finger in to the passengers face. The passenger, unsurprisingly, did not take kindly to having his cheekbone poked by an irate police officer and there was a scuffle between the two.
“You are not allowed to strike a civilian!”
“You shut up!”
The man in the back seat beside me stood up inside the car, leaned out the window and joined in the argy bargy, shouting in his friend’s defense.
“What he says is right. Take your hands off him. I will seize your crown.” And with that he grabbed the police officers cap and pulled it in to the taxi. The officer, his bewilderment at this assault on his authority only making him even more angry, wrestled with this second man, eventually pulling his cap free. By this time passers by had gotten involved, one of them holding back the man in the passenger seat and pushing him back in to the car. The taxi driver was calling for calm as was the lady on my other side. I sat, somewhat stunned by what was unfolding, offering somewhat muted appeals for peace. Once the passenger had taken his seat and the police officer had pulled his head back out of the window the taxi driver seized his opportunity to pull away from the situation. My last glimpse of the police officer saw him surrounded by people, dusting off his cap and looking utterly humbled.
Once we were clear the taxi erupted in conversation and, as so often happens in Sierra Leone, anger quickly gave way to laughter.
“I wanted to take his cap and go and report him so no-one could deny the incident,” the backseat passenger explained.
“You were right, if it had of been a black man that police officer would have held him. But since he was white (Everyone is white here unless you are black, little distinction being made between Europeans, Americans, Middle Easterners and Asians) the police officer just laughed back,” the taxi driver summed up.
When we arrived at our destination and we got out of the taxi, the front seat passenger put his arm around me. “Were you worried?” he asked.
“No” I lied. “And you certainly weren’t”.
“I’m not scared of them. Not at all.”
His colleague nodded. “Once you seize their crown you seize all their authority.”
Within a matter of thirty seconds two separate people had come over to slap the backseat passenger on the back.
“Are you the man who pulled the policeman’s cap?” they laughed. The backseat passenger smiled and an extra swagger made its presence felt in his already confident strut.
Thursday, December 04, 2008
Shorts: Tears
At about sixty years old Mammy is my most excited greeter, saying good morning to her "son" with a cheerful embrace and a warm hand shake. As with so many of my relationships with solely mende speaking adults from the villages, greeting can be as far as our language barrier allows us, so we make up for that with enthusiasm.
One morning Mammy took my hand as she always does in welcome as I walked to the office with suitable drendo-time lateness. "So soft" she said, stumbling over the english but making it to the other side admirably. "Mine, so rough," she continued opening her other hand and looking at the palm. I looked at her as she smiled, a few teeth missing in her weather beaten, wrinkled face, and was utterly humbled and moved by the hard graft of her existence. She still works on her farm at an age when she should have been able to leave behind such things, particularly given her high blood pressure, but in a place where a failure to farm results in a failure to eat. I held the chief tools of her trade in my hands and felt like crying. Then I went to the office and moved bits of paper around...
---
I had been dreaming about the coming of my brother and the International President of COTN to Banta. I woke up, rolled over and fell asleep. I woke up again and decided to go to the toilet, stepping in to the parlour (that's SL speak for living room) and as I did so I was bombarded by noise, by shouting, by screaming, by gunfire. I looked out the window and saw streams of people running past with bundles on their heads and backs. The rebels had come and were bringing horror with them. Overcome with terror I brought my hands to my head and let out a cry of panic. Why had I come here? Why had I put myself in such danger? Why was this happening? I turned to the back door, my mind racing - what should I do? The advice of my friend, a man who spent 14 years of his life as a refugee, rang in my ears - "I learned that people who ran got shot. It is better to drop to the ground and wait."
I woke up with a start, my heartbeating like a hammer in my chest, the fear slow to leave me as the dream-fuelled adrenaline coursed through my veins. I had not had a nightmare for I don't know how long, 15 years (?), and there was much that was terrible about the experience. But what I was struck by that night, and what made me weep, was just how real it was. Utterly real. And how long it took me to recover even after the visuals and the sounds had left me. And what I thought of was our kids because I know they have flashbacks of the past and cruel dreams about the present and future - one girl for example dreaming just recently that her father came back to her and asked her to follow him. I cried for them that night and what sleep can mean for them.
One morning Mammy took my hand as she always does in welcome as I walked to the office with suitable drendo-time lateness. "So soft" she said, stumbling over the english but making it to the other side admirably. "Mine, so rough," she continued opening her other hand and looking at the palm. I looked at her as she smiled, a few teeth missing in her weather beaten, wrinkled face, and was utterly humbled and moved by the hard graft of her existence. She still works on her farm at an age when she should have been able to leave behind such things, particularly given her high blood pressure, but in a place where a failure to farm results in a failure to eat. I held the chief tools of her trade in my hands and felt like crying. Then I went to the office and moved bits of paper around...
---
I had been dreaming about the coming of my brother and the International President of COTN to Banta. I woke up, rolled over and fell asleep. I woke up again and decided to go to the toilet, stepping in to the parlour (that's SL speak for living room) and as I did so I was bombarded by noise, by shouting, by screaming, by gunfire. I looked out the window and saw streams of people running past with bundles on their heads and backs. The rebels had come and were bringing horror with them. Overcome with terror I brought my hands to my head and let out a cry of panic. Why had I come here? Why had I put myself in such danger? Why was this happening? I turned to the back door, my mind racing - what should I do? The advice of my friend, a man who spent 14 years of his life as a refugee, rang in my ears - "I learned that people who ran got shot. It is better to drop to the ground and wait."
I woke up with a start, my heartbeating like a hammer in my chest, the fear slow to leave me as the dream-fuelled adrenaline coursed through my veins. I had not had a nightmare for I don't know how long, 15 years (?), and there was much that was terrible about the experience. But what I was struck by that night, and what made me weep, was just how real it was. Utterly real. And how long it took me to recover even after the visuals and the sounds had left me. And what I thought of was our kids because I know they have flashbacks of the past and cruel dreams about the present and future - one girl for example dreaming just recently that her father came back to her and asked her to follow him. I cried for them that night and what sleep can mean for them.
Monday, December 01, 2008
Back in Town
I have so many posts in my mind filtering themselves into something I am happy to put on-line. What is hard is writing something that I think does the relevant story justice in the time I have to write. I want to make things real for you kids who feel like reading, to paint a picture that finds the reality between the romantic and the dull. So for now I will let them simmer away and get back to you.
So this is just a little update post to say that I am in Freetown for a few days. I came to say goodbye to Stuart (Who everyone thought was called George. "My name is Stuart." "George?" So we got him an African name - Pinday. He jumps while his brother runs...) and Dustin (American visitor more commonly known as Dunsten). I'll be here until I can arrange a ride back to Banta. I thought having Pinday here would be strange but it was actually the most natural thing in the world. The time was just too short and the goodbye was a farce of trying to hug whilst running because the ferry was pulling away... And so I am yet again the only white boy around though I do sometimes see other white folks cruise around the city in their huge four wheel drive air conditioned beasts...jealousy is dreadful.
The small world we live in has been a theme for the last while. A couple that visited our project a week or so ago turned out to be good friends with my future sister-in-laws parents as well as the head of my intern programme in London. Then in Freetown Quami, our host for a day or two, showed us some pictures of a visit he took to Malawi two years ago and this Irishman picked out a picture of his Sierra Leonean friend which also included the smiling face of another friend from Seattle. The following morning my little brother woke up to the sound of a preacher from Northern Ireland blaring out from the CD player.
Ireland. America. Malawi. Sierra Leone. England. Add a Denzel Washigton movie marathon (If someone tries to persuade you to rent Out of Time with the argument, "Come on, it's Denzel! When does he make a bad film?" Let me just say, "You would be surprised..") into the mix and you're in for a pretty surreal weekend...
So this is just a little update post to say that I am in Freetown for a few days. I came to say goodbye to Stuart (Who everyone thought was called George. "My name is Stuart." "George?" So we got him an African name - Pinday. He jumps while his brother runs...) and Dustin (American visitor more commonly known as Dunsten). I'll be here until I can arrange a ride back to Banta. I thought having Pinday here would be strange but it was actually the most natural thing in the world. The time was just too short and the goodbye was a farce of trying to hug whilst running because the ferry was pulling away... And so I am yet again the only white boy around though I do sometimes see other white folks cruise around the city in their huge four wheel drive air conditioned beasts...jealousy is dreadful.
The small world we live in has been a theme for the last while. A couple that visited our project a week or so ago turned out to be good friends with my future sister-in-laws parents as well as the head of my intern programme in London. Then in Freetown Quami, our host for a day or two, showed us some pictures of a visit he took to Malawi two years ago and this Irishman picked out a picture of his Sierra Leonean friend which also included the smiling face of another friend from Seattle. The following morning my little brother woke up to the sound of a preacher from Northern Ireland blaring out from the CD player.
Ireland. America. Malawi. Sierra Leone. England. Add a Denzel Washigton movie marathon (If someone tries to persuade you to rent Out of Time with the argument, "Come on, it's Denzel! When does he make a bad film?" Let me just say, "You would be surprised..") into the mix and you're in for a pretty surreal weekend...
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Wildlife on One
I live in a little area carved out of Sierra Leonean palm tree jungle but I have not yet seen wildlife in abundance. Unless you count the wildlife kept by the children and the aunties in the home - the chickens which frequently sneak into our house to peck at the floor and lay an egg or two in the shower or the mangy dogs which roam around with chunks of skin missing from their ears and an ever present cloud of flies. If you go through a day without seeing a brilliantly coloured butterfly or a night without noticing the streak of a firefly you quite simply haven’t been looking. Lizards are also a common feature, sunning themselves on the side of a wall or clambering noisily across the tin roof of your house. To the list of the ubiquitous could also be added what have been described as the “duck frogs”, though you will hear them more than you see them. During my first night in Banta I woke up in need of the toilet (the dehydration/peeing-all-the-time balance took a few days to perfect) and heard this ridiculously loud racket that sounded unnatural to my waking mind. It sounds like half-quack and half-croak with one blast always preceding a tumultuous couple of moments with every reptile seemingly wishing to have his say and then, as if they had all exchanged glances and agreed that nothing more needed to be added, the noise suddenly disappears into the darkness as suddenly and as randomly as it had appeared. When you actually see one of the duck frogs for the first time you can’t help but smile. They are tiny little guys.
Bugs are also generally everywhere. Big flying bugs, little flying bugs. The hateful mosquitoes and black flies, or moot-moot in krio, are also always around hatching some devilish scheme to get a taste of my blood no doubt. One brandishes malaria, the other river blindness and both can make you want to scratch your skin off. One night shortly after I arrived in Sierra Leone I woke up feeling a large pool of sweat that had gathered in the small of my back. Nothing to write home about. But then the pool of sweat started to move up my back and I realised that something else was going on. I swiped my hand across my back and knocked a cockroach into my mosquito net. There are quite a few large birds around but I need the bird watching brother to come and identify them for me. The only ones I do know are the weaver birds that you see quite regularly grouping themselves together to construct their little round works of art in trees near the fields of the farmers they torment in this the time for rice harvesting. I have also seen the bird of prey which hunts the little green and yellow rice thieves – what people here simply call an African hawk.
One of the interns earned the name Munda-Cobra Killer after an encounter with one of those famously dangerous snakes (Munda is a mende name meaning “our own”). Admittedly if you look at him with a dubious expression on your face for long enough he will crack under the pressure and suggest the possibility that his killer blow may in actual fact have really just amounted to a stone landing on a very recently deceased reptile, but I prefer the original version of events. Later in the interns’ time here I myself saw a snake seconds after it had been stoned to death…Munda again flexing his snake killing muscles in the effort (I am always amused by how quickly and directly but with an air of nonchalance he reacted to the cry of “snake”, lifting up the biggest rock to hand and running towards the noise. “No big deal guys, this kind of thing happens in my village all the time”).
However, it wasn’t until later that I saw my first live snake. It was slithering up the road that runs from our home to the school – not all that big, black and it moved sort of sidewinder-like – and initially I just passed by it. Then I realised that really I had to take the danger that this thing represented seriously. Not in Kansas anymore kiddo. In other words, I had to kill it. I threw a stone at it. Missed. I threw another stone. Missed again. Okay…okay…give me a break here – I was trying to kill this guy from a good if-this-thing-can-spit-then-surely-it-couldn’t-reach-me-over-here distance. I decided I should use a bigger stone. I threw a small boulder. Now, I am not prepared to say that I missed with this one but any possible hit wasn’t what you would call direct either. What I do know is that the snake curled up against the stone – either pinned by it or deciding this would offer it some protection from the inaccurate attack it was under. But in this Irishman the serpant had met its match. Brain over brawn was always going to be my only hope of survival in this world. Giving my reptilian friend a wide berth I walked around to the other side of my boulder and played my trump card. I rolled the stone forward with my foot. For the slightest second the snake’s flesh bulged before it popped. I had to use a leaf to scrape bloody yellow snake flesh off my trouser leg, before continuing my walk home with something like triumph in my step.
And so we come to my nemesis, the monkey. Sierra Leone is known for its monkeys with certain areas of the country set up as sanctuaries for them. The chief in a local village used to have a little pet monkey called Shipment but he seems to be no more. It became a running joke between my friend Andy (the aforementioned Munda) and I that I had not seen a wild monkey and even though lots of the interns saw their fair share and even though I have been here for a whole lot longer I have still found the little scumbags utterly elusive. I had to make a statement to these monkey creatures. So I ate one. It was very tasty and I reckon now that I’ve made my feelings clear.
---
I am sorry to all those who have subscribed to this blog and just got a flurry of emails... I finally got a chance to add this stuff and I grabbed it with both hands!
Bugs are also generally everywhere. Big flying bugs, little flying bugs. The hateful mosquitoes and black flies, or moot-moot in krio, are also always around hatching some devilish scheme to get a taste of my blood no doubt. One brandishes malaria, the other river blindness and both can make you want to scratch your skin off. One night shortly after I arrived in Sierra Leone I woke up feeling a large pool of sweat that had gathered in the small of my back. Nothing to write home about. But then the pool of sweat started to move up my back and I realised that something else was going on. I swiped my hand across my back and knocked a cockroach into my mosquito net. There are quite a few large birds around but I need the bird watching brother to come and identify them for me. The only ones I do know are the weaver birds that you see quite regularly grouping themselves together to construct their little round works of art in trees near the fields of the farmers they torment in this the time for rice harvesting. I have also seen the bird of prey which hunts the little green and yellow rice thieves – what people here simply call an African hawk.
One of the interns earned the name Munda-Cobra Killer after an encounter with one of those famously dangerous snakes (Munda is a mende name meaning “our own”). Admittedly if you look at him with a dubious expression on your face for long enough he will crack under the pressure and suggest the possibility that his killer blow may in actual fact have really just amounted to a stone landing on a very recently deceased reptile, but I prefer the original version of events. Later in the interns’ time here I myself saw a snake seconds after it had been stoned to death…Munda again flexing his snake killing muscles in the effort (I am always amused by how quickly and directly but with an air of nonchalance he reacted to the cry of “snake”, lifting up the biggest rock to hand and running towards the noise. “No big deal guys, this kind of thing happens in my village all the time”).
However, it wasn’t until later that I saw my first live snake. It was slithering up the road that runs from our home to the school – not all that big, black and it moved sort of sidewinder-like – and initially I just passed by it. Then I realised that really I had to take the danger that this thing represented seriously. Not in Kansas anymore kiddo. In other words, I had to kill it. I threw a stone at it. Missed. I threw another stone. Missed again. Okay…okay…give me a break here – I was trying to kill this guy from a good if-this-thing-can-spit-then-surely-it-couldn’t-reach-me-over-here distance. I decided I should use a bigger stone. I threw a small boulder. Now, I am not prepared to say that I missed with this one but any possible hit wasn’t what you would call direct either. What I do know is that the snake curled up against the stone – either pinned by it or deciding this would offer it some protection from the inaccurate attack it was under. But in this Irishman the serpant had met its match. Brain over brawn was always going to be my only hope of survival in this world. Giving my reptilian friend a wide berth I walked around to the other side of my boulder and played my trump card. I rolled the stone forward with my foot. For the slightest second the snake’s flesh bulged before it popped. I had to use a leaf to scrape bloody yellow snake flesh off my trouser leg, before continuing my walk home with something like triumph in my step.
And so we come to my nemesis, the monkey. Sierra Leone is known for its monkeys with certain areas of the country set up as sanctuaries for them. The chief in a local village used to have a little pet monkey called Shipment but he seems to be no more. It became a running joke between my friend Andy (the aforementioned Munda) and I that I had not seen a wild monkey and even though lots of the interns saw their fair share and even though I have been here for a whole lot longer I have still found the little scumbags utterly elusive. I had to make a statement to these monkey creatures. So I ate one. It was very tasty and I reckon now that I’ve made my feelings clear.
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I am sorry to all those who have subscribed to this blog and just got a flurry of emails... I finally got a chance to add this stuff and I grabbed it with both hands!
Life...
My life is faintly ridiculous. I can think of no other word to better describe it. This morning I walked to church through a farm and jungle and crossed a stick structure that I’ll call a bridge only because I can’t think of a better word. Yesterday a man came to my house hoping to sell me a large monkey for dinner, having cleverly fashioned a carry strap by pulling a section of skin from the animal’s tail and pushing the head through the hole that created. Regularly I will find myself sitting on the veranda of a family’s mud hut, maybe on a stool or in a hammock, playing with kids whose language I barely understand and engaging in the smallest of talk with their parents or using an older child as a translator. I live amongst almost a hundred orphans, these little lives with no-one in the world able to care for them apart from those provided by a man in America, a man whom many of them barely know but whom they all call “Daddy”. I get to be their uncle, to play with them, read them stories, help them with their homework, discipline them, hug them good night and even put them to bed. That this is what my life currently looks like is ridiculous but what is more bizarre is how seldom I am struck by my situation’s strangeness. As The American might say, “I’m in Sierra Leone, West Africa. No big deal.”
And with this thought there comes another one, one about whether or not the reality of this place has really sunk in. Do I adequately realise that this is real, that these people are real, that this is their life, that these are their daily struggles? This isn’t some movie that I am in in which I, the main character, have embarked on an adventure in some strange tropical land, a strange land which will cease to exist when the action returns to the temperate climate of the main character’s home. My friend and former COTN-SL associate Sarah talks about her feelings of being sweetly broken by this place. Am I allowing this place to break me as surely such a place must do? Or have I found ways of keeping it at a distance…but then surely that would not be possible. What is clear to me however is that we live in a thoroughly surreal world, one where you can leave an air conditioned office with computers and mars bars (not something I do very often you understand...twice in 4 months I think) and walk a short distance before stepping in to someone’s mud and thatch home where children live walking a tightrope with malnutrition. The experience is entirely disorienting but thoroughly real. I want to be entirely infected by the reality of Banta, Sierra Leone. I will strive to continue to work and live in a way that puts me in real danger of being just that.
And with this thought there comes another one, one about whether or not the reality of this place has really sunk in. Do I adequately realise that this is real, that these people are real, that this is their life, that these are their daily struggles? This isn’t some movie that I am in in which I, the main character, have embarked on an adventure in some strange tropical land, a strange land which will cease to exist when the action returns to the temperate climate of the main character’s home. My friend and former COTN-SL associate Sarah talks about her feelings of being sweetly broken by this place. Am I allowing this place to break me as surely such a place must do? Or have I found ways of keeping it at a distance…but then surely that would not be possible. What is clear to me however is that we live in a thoroughly surreal world, one where you can leave an air conditioned office with computers and mars bars (not something I do very often you understand...twice in 4 months I think) and walk a short distance before stepping in to someone’s mud and thatch home where children live walking a tightrope with malnutrition. The experience is entirely disorienting but thoroughly real. I want to be entirely infected by the reality of Banta, Sierra Leone. I will strive to continue to work and live in a way that puts me in real danger of being just that.
Baby business
A fuzzy BBC World Service report recently informed me that Sierra Leone continues to have the worst rate of infant mortality in the world. More children die here before they are five years old than anywhere else, according to the UN. I am no authority on why our babies are dying but I can share a few stories. David is just three months old. His mother is Michaela, a beautiful nineteen year old girl who was at school in Bo, Sierra Leone’s second city, when she got pregnant. The father did what men do – he ran away and denied all knowledge of mother and son. Without things like paternity tests shirking your responsibilities is a bus ride away. Michaela’s father died some time ago and so she came to Ngolala to be with her mother, a poor lady from the village. When I first met Michaela she proudly showed me and my friend, the much missed Auntie Adama, her baby saying, “Watch me fine pikin!” Some weeks later David was running a temperature and every day I went to the village he was the same. After talking to a nurse I organised to bring Michaela and David to COTN’s clinic, thinking that David would just need some small help to ease his fever. But, as my friend Butterscotch once said, “Things just get nasty here”. It turned out that malaria and an enlarged spleen meant that David needed a blood transfusion, something beyond his mother’s finances. But without this treatment David could be killed by the slightest little infection. We got the money, David got the blood and David is now safe and well again. The whole thing, including transport to the hospital, cost about 150,000 Leones. All that was needed was a little knowledge and 30 quid. But that is exactly what Michaela and so many other mothers like her don’t have. David is amongst the lucky ones I guess, he lives near an NGO with a working clinic. I am now working on trying to help his mother to get back to school. I pray that the second chances keep coming but this isn’t a place where people often enjoy such things.
A lady brought her baby to our clinic and our staff explained to her that the child had cerebral palsy. I could have cried as this mother talked about how the people in her village had told her to stop taking care of her son because he was a devil. Another woman came speeding in to our compound on a motorbike yesterday wailing with her baby in her arms. The child had been sick for a while but his mother had waited and waited until he got really sick before rushing him to our clinic at which point there was nothing we could do for them. They had to continue on their journey to the nearest hospital but those who looked closely at the baby were convinced he wouldn’t make it. Why had she waited so long? She didn’t have money to pay for treatment and just hoped that the boy would get better. A little knowledge. A little money.
We have a malnutrition clinic for kids under 5 as COTN tries to respond to Sierra Leone’s depressing statistics. When the children come, Auntie Agnes, our head nurse, has me take their pictures. The little kids stand there, often in tears brought on by the presence of the horrifyingly pale skinned photographer, completely naked apart from the little black juju cord their parents have tied around their waists in a desperate attempt to appeal to the spirit world to protect their child. Painful sores invariably cover their bottoms, their legs, their arms and their faces as the lack of nutrients sees their little bodies start to quite literally disintegrate. We had a case about a month ago of a boy a little older than we usually see, probably 8 or 9, come in a really pathetic state. What was remarkable to me was that he came with his sister, a girl who was in good health and who I knew from the youth camp we had when the interns were here. It was Mussu, still wearing Larish’s American Eagle top. They had explained that the brother had gone to stay with some relatives and this was the state in which he returned. His pictures were taken with him lying down as standing up was too painful for him.
And then the clinic goes about the business of building these little bodies back up again and teaching their mother’s how to take care of them despite their limited resources. That malnourishment is a problem in Sierra Leone is itself surely remarkable. This is a place where I have been struck by nature’s abundance, by how we gain the means of life as a by-product of the natural life around us. There is something about walking down a city street and seeing bananas growing out of the path that affects the way you think of food. But somehow, despite its climate and the richness of its soil, somewhere along the line Sierra Leone has lost the ability to feed itself.
A little orphaned boy who came to the clinic in this kind of malnourished state in June may actually be coming to stay in the home, the newest member of the COTN family here in Banta. The latest in a list of children whose stories have defied the typical narrative of where they live and instead enjoyed the transformation of that elusive, miraculous, second chance.
A lady brought her baby to our clinic and our staff explained to her that the child had cerebral palsy. I could have cried as this mother talked about how the people in her village had told her to stop taking care of her son because he was a devil. Another woman came speeding in to our compound on a motorbike yesterday wailing with her baby in her arms. The child had been sick for a while but his mother had waited and waited until he got really sick before rushing him to our clinic at which point there was nothing we could do for them. They had to continue on their journey to the nearest hospital but those who looked closely at the baby were convinced he wouldn’t make it. Why had she waited so long? She didn’t have money to pay for treatment and just hoped that the boy would get better. A little knowledge. A little money.
We have a malnutrition clinic for kids under 5 as COTN tries to respond to Sierra Leone’s depressing statistics. When the children come, Auntie Agnes, our head nurse, has me take their pictures. The little kids stand there, often in tears brought on by the presence of the horrifyingly pale skinned photographer, completely naked apart from the little black juju cord their parents have tied around their waists in a desperate attempt to appeal to the spirit world to protect their child. Painful sores invariably cover their bottoms, their legs, their arms and their faces as the lack of nutrients sees their little bodies start to quite literally disintegrate. We had a case about a month ago of a boy a little older than we usually see, probably 8 or 9, come in a really pathetic state. What was remarkable to me was that he came with his sister, a girl who was in good health and who I knew from the youth camp we had when the interns were here. It was Mussu, still wearing Larish’s American Eagle top. They had explained that the brother had gone to stay with some relatives and this was the state in which he returned. His pictures were taken with him lying down as standing up was too painful for him.
And then the clinic goes about the business of building these little bodies back up again and teaching their mother’s how to take care of them despite their limited resources. That malnourishment is a problem in Sierra Leone is itself surely remarkable. This is a place where I have been struck by nature’s abundance, by how we gain the means of life as a by-product of the natural life around us. There is something about walking down a city street and seeing bananas growing out of the path that affects the way you think of food. But somehow, despite its climate and the richness of its soil, somewhere along the line Sierra Leone has lost the ability to feed itself.
A little orphaned boy who came to the clinic in this kind of malnourished state in June may actually be coming to stay in the home, the newest member of the COTN family here in Banta. The latest in a list of children whose stories have defied the typical narrative of where they live and instead enjoyed the transformation of that elusive, miraculous, second chance.
Sit with me for a moment
I am sitting on a slightly rickety bench, with the uneven floor adding to the precariousness. I steady myself with my wet feet – I am soaked from the thighs down after my Honda ride (Motorbikes are all called Hondas in a vacuum cleaner/Hoover kind of way). Water drips down from a hole in the tin roof, creating a large puddle in front of me and the dripping rhythm adds to the peace of the morning. I look out from my raised position on the beginnings of the day’s bustle in Gbangbatok. A lady walks past with a basket of cassava on her head. Some children wash outside their house. Behind the covered area, or barri, I am sitting under and down the street towards the river estuary which makes this an important market town, the branches of a large tree teem with chattering weaver birds and their little spherical nests. The barri is empty apart from a few rows of benches facing two tables, one in front of the other. The second table is decorated with a table cloth and sits on a raised section at one end of the barri. I am the only one here until a small black goat decides to venture up the steps and stroll between the benches. This is Gbangbatok’s court and I am waiting on the arrival of the magistrate.
Two days before I had stood at the front of this court, in front of those two tables, when the place had been full to overflowing with gawking Sierra Leoneans. The chief witness, the complainant even, I had stood beside a friend and been told to refer to him as “the accused” when I called him by his name. I had tried to explain that the two people who had been wronged were a dying girl and a poor village woman but I am sure the picture of white versus black spoke more words than I managed. A ripple of laughter spread through the assembled crowd when I was told not to look at “the accused” when he asked me the questions that he had for me.
Later today I will stand in front of this court again, once it fills up and the magistrate has taken his seat at the top table. I will have already have met with him and explained my desire to withdraw this case from his court in favour of a private agreement that has been come to. A colleague will wriggle our way out of paying a “token” to the powers that be and so my second court appearance will be something of a formality – a “once again for the record”. When I finally get home I will be walking across the school’s football pitch when about twelve of our nursery school kids will see me and sprint towards me, jump all over me and then start singing, “So we dance, dance, dance” – the most popular line of a song my friend Andy made up for our children’s camp. I will breath a sigh of relief that I am back doing exactly what I came to Africa to do. And then I will dance, dance, dance.
But for now I will just sit on my rickety bench and watch the drip, drip dripping and the goat’s sniffling around. For now I will just enjoy the quiet morning atmosphere and pray that the day runs smoothly. For now I will just sit, watch, pray and wait.
Two days before I had stood at the front of this court, in front of those two tables, when the place had been full to overflowing with gawking Sierra Leoneans. The chief witness, the complainant even, I had stood beside a friend and been told to refer to him as “the accused” when I called him by his name. I had tried to explain that the two people who had been wronged were a dying girl and a poor village woman but I am sure the picture of white versus black spoke more words than I managed. A ripple of laughter spread through the assembled crowd when I was told not to look at “the accused” when he asked me the questions that he had for me.
Later today I will stand in front of this court again, once it fills up and the magistrate has taken his seat at the top table. I will have already have met with him and explained my desire to withdraw this case from his court in favour of a private agreement that has been come to. A colleague will wriggle our way out of paying a “token” to the powers that be and so my second court appearance will be something of a formality – a “once again for the record”. When I finally get home I will be walking across the school’s football pitch when about twelve of our nursery school kids will see me and sprint towards me, jump all over me and then start singing, “So we dance, dance, dance” – the most popular line of a song my friend Andy made up for our children’s camp. I will breath a sigh of relief that I am back doing exactly what I came to Africa to do. And then I will dance, dance, dance.
But for now I will just sit on my rickety bench and watch the drip, drip dripping and the goat’s sniffling around. For now I will just enjoy the quiet morning atmosphere and pray that the day runs smoothly. For now I will just sit, watch, pray and wait.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Pictures from West Africa
1. A village we worked in this summer, Woonde.
2. Eating cassava and rice at the party we held in the village of Senehum.
3. A photo from camp with Andy one of our American interns, Quami the intern coordinator and Gee T. Payto...intern and camp Igway (Chief).
4. Khadija, one of the kids from our home, walking through the water to Senehum.
5. Teaching Prep 4 at Summer School. That days class was all about the letter J. Good educational times.
6. One of our interns, Sam, with members of the Mogborie village church she worked with as they listen to a solar powered audio bible in mende - people don't really read the language so this is even better than getting the bible translated. Two of our home kids Adamsay and Abibatu look on.
7. Walking through the jungle. No big deal.
8. The only way to get to some villages is in canoes like this one. This river winds its way through Banta.
9. What? You don't think it was important to spread the gospel of limbo to Banta? Shows how much you know. A much loved game we used during our kids outreach in Ngolala.
Just a random assortment of pictures that will hopefully help illustrate a few of the thoughts I have typed on here. I make my way back to Banta early in the morning after my Freetown time off...and I'm very excited about it too...
Thoughts from Freetown
“Uncle Peemay! Uncle Peemay!”
A little speck of a child waved excitedly from the crest of a small hill back in the distance, her shrill voice almost lost on the air. Uncle Peemay, a character created by the children of Banta Mokelleh, stopped, lifted his cap from a sweaty brow and held it aloft. He smiled broadly and shouted back a Mende greeting. A high pitched reply found its way back, a pure expression of welcome or excitement or joy or maybe just fascination at this little white uncle that had just wandered past. It didn’t really matter to Peemay. His heart was bursting regardless. What was most amazing to him was that he had never met the speck before but somehow little Yayma, as he would later find out the girl was called, had heard about him. And wasn’t going to let a little thing like distance get in the way of saying hello.
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I’m at a computer. On the internet. Listening to music. I just ate a little chocolate.
This is amazing! This is Freetown…
And yes, I am Uncle Peemay, my Mende name (Spelt phonetically because I am yet to learn how to spell it in Mende) which means “runner” and which almost always draws a smile from those who hear it. It is an unusual name I guess and people get a kick out of an Irish boy introducing himself as such. When you arrive in Sierra Leone people ask you your name. And then they ask you what your African name is. And if you don’t have one they give you one. I was named by the apprentice (assistant) to the puda puda driver who originally drove us to Banta (Puda pudas are beat up mini buses which have had all the seats taken out and replaced by benches which allow for ridiculous numbers of passengers). And already I find it hard to imagine heading home and leaving my name behind.
I am frustrated that I am yet again faced with the impossibility of sharing a month of life in Sierra Leone with you in one blog post. It can just not be done. I came to Freetown about a week ago and enjoyed a few days of craic and debriefing with our summer interns before they flew their way back to America. My time with the team was a really special one – I will miss them a great deal. But I am excited now to get back to Banta and throw myself in to my job...after I work out exactly what that is going to be of course! (I need to have a meeting with the country director to work out that minor detail). Some of our kids arrived in Freetown this evening for a few days summer holiday and medical check ups and I was just so excited to see them (Summer interns, know that I was asked about you countless times… “Where is Auntie Adama? Where is Uncle Scott?” And my personal favourite, showcasing the wonderful way people here use English, with ten year olds throwing out the most unlikely of words, “Where are your companions?”)
So we finished up summer school and all the rest of the activities I wrote about in my last post probably about a month ago. Some of the interns put together a three day seminar for the Church of the Nations pastors which was really great to sit in on – talking to them about how to understand the Bible, how to put together a sermon, how to lead their churches. Then we launched in to two weeks of summer camp. The first week was for kids aged 6 to 10/11 (In a Carlow-esque way we ended up with tiny little campers who had somehow been allowed to come along) and the second was for anyone from 11/12 up. It was a residential camp so think of it as an Avoca or Cormeen kind of affair (For those of you who know what that means) but I don’t know if that image is a help or a hindrance to your understanding of what it was really like.
Wonderful is what it was.
Wonderful because something like 250 kids came each week, some traveling all the way from Freetown and others walking for miles and miles. Wonderful because we got to give them a break from their usual routine of farm and domestic work. Wonderful because we got to spoil them with three meals a day instead of their usual one. Wonderful because we got to share ourselves with them. Wonderful because they were so responsive to what we had to say and what we had them do – the usual Christian summer camp mix of games and bible study and quizzes and talent shows with some more unique African touches. Wonderful because we got to see God doing some moving and shaking in young lives as well as our own. Wonderful because my house rose to the top to take victory in the Harry-Potter-esque inter-house competition both weeks. “Green House! Fire!” There are just too many little snippets to share – maybe I will try to do so in a future blog post. But for now I will move on…
---
“God is good?” “All the time!”
“All the time?” “God is good!”
“Hallelujah!” “Amen!”
The pastor’s congregational call and response completed, all eyes turned to the fifteen year old girl who had just taken a step forward from the choir. Closing her eyes she sang out, leading her fellow teenage singers in traditional African style.
“What man can not do for me, my God has done!”
The choir burst in to accompany her for the next line, swaying from left to right, eyes closed, hands clapping, faces screwed up with either passion or the impression of passion. Their combined voices surge with energy and soar through the simple melody. The hand clap beat is then swiftly bolstered by three drumming boys in the front row, their faces quieter than their female counterparts, but their hands dancing. Out to the left the sun beats down on a straggling worshipper as he makes his way across the gravel football pitch. His Sunday best, a fine linen shirt, is a splash of moving yellow in the midst of the red earth which itself sits in front of the green palm tree jungle and the brown mud and thatch huts which lie below the bright blue sky.
---
I was asked by one of my summer team leaders about what I had learned this summer, or what had maybe surprised me about my time here thus far. For various reasons I never got to answer her. When you come to Africa to work with kids you fully expect, or at least I do, to learn a lot from those kids and be ministered to by them indirectly. I expected to come here and be loved by the kids that I worked with and I expected to be blessed by that, to learn a lot from that. I expected to come and serve them and learn a great deal in the process. I expected to be ministered to indirectly. But what I have been excited by is the more direct way in which these kids have ministered to me.
The best example of this is from when I was sick. I had a violent and horrible evening of vomiting followed by two days of recovery right before camp started. Such is the way children are treated here (Why do something yourself when you can get a kid to do it for you? More on this in a later post) a kid ended up with the fun job of vomit removal. But what was really moving, and an example of this “direct ministering” that I am trying to explain, was the next day when three of the girls from our home came and prayed for me and sat with me and sang for me. What was really moving was when a kid from Ngolala village heard that I was ill and came to visit me and see how I was.
“What man can not do for me my God has done”. Words sung by orphan kids whose understanding of the sentiment is surely much deeper than many men and women who have been following God for countless years more. Children who have been abandoned or abused or left to die by men and women but who have been accepted, loved and given a home and a family by their God. The beauty of the voices that sing those words and drum those beats is only a scratch on the surface of the beauty of their Father.
Don’t get me wrong. These kids can be brats, just like any kids. They can be stubborn. They can be petulant. They can be selfish. They can be annoying. They can beat (In Sierra Leone they say “flog”) the crap out of each other. And you have never seen grudges held like some of these kids can hold grudges. They’re kids not cardboard cut outs and I really want to be sure to avoid that clichéd the-kids-had-so-little-but-were-always-so-happy kind of stuff. So my point is that, while not being little angels, these kids are teaching me a lot. Indirectly and directly.
My brother sent me a package from America and it included a note written on a COTN card. It was your typical charity card – a picture of cute African kids on the front. But the difference here, and I don’t know if my brother realized this or not, is that I know these faces. They are Isatu. They are Roseline. They are Phillip. I have been blessed to get beyond the cardboard cut out. I don’t know if I am going to be able to help you get past it too with these blog posts, but I am determined to try. And I am determined to encourage anyone who shows the remotest interest in visiting to do just that.
A little speck of a child waved excitedly from the crest of a small hill back in the distance, her shrill voice almost lost on the air. Uncle Peemay, a character created by the children of Banta Mokelleh, stopped, lifted his cap from a sweaty brow and held it aloft. He smiled broadly and shouted back a Mende greeting. A high pitched reply found its way back, a pure expression of welcome or excitement or joy or maybe just fascination at this little white uncle that had just wandered past. It didn’t really matter to Peemay. His heart was bursting regardless. What was most amazing to him was that he had never met the speck before but somehow little Yayma, as he would later find out the girl was called, had heard about him. And wasn’t going to let a little thing like distance get in the way of saying hello.
---
I’m at a computer. On the internet. Listening to music. I just ate a little chocolate.
This is amazing! This is Freetown…
And yes, I am Uncle Peemay, my Mende name (Spelt phonetically because I am yet to learn how to spell it in Mende) which means “runner” and which almost always draws a smile from those who hear it. It is an unusual name I guess and people get a kick out of an Irish boy introducing himself as such. When you arrive in Sierra Leone people ask you your name. And then they ask you what your African name is. And if you don’t have one they give you one. I was named by the apprentice (assistant) to the puda puda driver who originally drove us to Banta (Puda pudas are beat up mini buses which have had all the seats taken out and replaced by benches which allow for ridiculous numbers of passengers). And already I find it hard to imagine heading home and leaving my name behind.
I am frustrated that I am yet again faced with the impossibility of sharing a month of life in Sierra Leone with you in one blog post. It can just not be done. I came to Freetown about a week ago and enjoyed a few days of craic and debriefing with our summer interns before they flew their way back to America. My time with the team was a really special one – I will miss them a great deal. But I am excited now to get back to Banta and throw myself in to my job...after I work out exactly what that is going to be of course! (I need to have a meeting with the country director to work out that minor detail). Some of our kids arrived in Freetown this evening for a few days summer holiday and medical check ups and I was just so excited to see them (Summer interns, know that I was asked about you countless times… “Where is Auntie Adama? Where is Uncle Scott?” And my personal favourite, showcasing the wonderful way people here use English, with ten year olds throwing out the most unlikely of words, “Where are your companions?”)
So we finished up summer school and all the rest of the activities I wrote about in my last post probably about a month ago. Some of the interns put together a three day seminar for the Church of the Nations pastors which was really great to sit in on – talking to them about how to understand the Bible, how to put together a sermon, how to lead their churches. Then we launched in to two weeks of summer camp. The first week was for kids aged 6 to 10/11 (In a Carlow-esque way we ended up with tiny little campers who had somehow been allowed to come along) and the second was for anyone from 11/12 up. It was a residential camp so think of it as an Avoca or Cormeen kind of affair (For those of you who know what that means) but I don’t know if that image is a help or a hindrance to your understanding of what it was really like.
Wonderful is what it was.
Wonderful because something like 250 kids came each week, some traveling all the way from Freetown and others walking for miles and miles. Wonderful because we got to give them a break from their usual routine of farm and domestic work. Wonderful because we got to spoil them with three meals a day instead of their usual one. Wonderful because we got to share ourselves with them. Wonderful because they were so responsive to what we had to say and what we had them do – the usual Christian summer camp mix of games and bible study and quizzes and talent shows with some more unique African touches. Wonderful because we got to see God doing some moving and shaking in young lives as well as our own. Wonderful because my house rose to the top to take victory in the Harry-Potter-esque inter-house competition both weeks. “Green House! Fire!” There are just too many little snippets to share – maybe I will try to do so in a future blog post. But for now I will move on…
---
“God is good?” “All the time!”
“All the time?” “God is good!”
“Hallelujah!” “Amen!”
The pastor’s congregational call and response completed, all eyes turned to the fifteen year old girl who had just taken a step forward from the choir. Closing her eyes she sang out, leading her fellow teenage singers in traditional African style.
“What man can not do for me, my God has done!”
The choir burst in to accompany her for the next line, swaying from left to right, eyes closed, hands clapping, faces screwed up with either passion or the impression of passion. Their combined voices surge with energy and soar through the simple melody. The hand clap beat is then swiftly bolstered by three drumming boys in the front row, their faces quieter than their female counterparts, but their hands dancing. Out to the left the sun beats down on a straggling worshipper as he makes his way across the gravel football pitch. His Sunday best, a fine linen shirt, is a splash of moving yellow in the midst of the red earth which itself sits in front of the green palm tree jungle and the brown mud and thatch huts which lie below the bright blue sky.
---
I was asked by one of my summer team leaders about what I had learned this summer, or what had maybe surprised me about my time here thus far. For various reasons I never got to answer her. When you come to Africa to work with kids you fully expect, or at least I do, to learn a lot from those kids and be ministered to by them indirectly. I expected to come here and be loved by the kids that I worked with and I expected to be blessed by that, to learn a lot from that. I expected to come and serve them and learn a great deal in the process. I expected to be ministered to indirectly. But what I have been excited by is the more direct way in which these kids have ministered to me.
The best example of this is from when I was sick. I had a violent and horrible evening of vomiting followed by two days of recovery right before camp started. Such is the way children are treated here (Why do something yourself when you can get a kid to do it for you? More on this in a later post) a kid ended up with the fun job of vomit removal. But what was really moving, and an example of this “direct ministering” that I am trying to explain, was the next day when three of the girls from our home came and prayed for me and sat with me and sang for me. What was really moving was when a kid from Ngolala village heard that I was ill and came to visit me and see how I was.
“What man can not do for me my God has done”. Words sung by orphan kids whose understanding of the sentiment is surely much deeper than many men and women who have been following God for countless years more. Children who have been abandoned or abused or left to die by men and women but who have been accepted, loved and given a home and a family by their God. The beauty of the voices that sing those words and drum those beats is only a scratch on the surface of the beauty of their Father.
Don’t get me wrong. These kids can be brats, just like any kids. They can be stubborn. They can be petulant. They can be selfish. They can be annoying. They can beat (In Sierra Leone they say “flog”) the crap out of each other. And you have never seen grudges held like some of these kids can hold grudges. They’re kids not cardboard cut outs and I really want to be sure to avoid that clichéd the-kids-had-so-little-but-were-always-so-happy kind of stuff. So my point is that, while not being little angels, these kids are teaching me a lot. Indirectly and directly.
My brother sent me a package from America and it included a note written on a COTN card. It was your typical charity card – a picture of cute African kids on the front. But the difference here, and I don’t know if my brother realized this or not, is that I know these faces. They are Isatu. They are Roseline. They are Phillip. I have been blessed to get beyond the cardboard cut out. I don’t know if I am going to be able to help you get past it too with these blog posts, but I am determined to try. And I am determined to encourage anyone who shows the remotest interest in visiting to do just that.
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Boah!
There is just no way for me to sum up a month in Sierra Leone in one post but communications stuff has been impossible, for various reasons, until now so I am gonna have to give it a shot! I am right now on a weekend trip to Bo, SL's second largest city and we have found our way to an internet cafe. So here goes...
Our arrival:
Travel stuff all went really well apart from a couple of moments before landing when it looked like weather conditions in Freetown might force us on a detour to Senegal! Not sure what we would have done then but thankfully we didn't need to work that out. My first impression of Sierra Leone was one of darkness...we arrived in to the city at night and since electricity is a luxury item here the city took on an almost forboding feel... Our stay in the capital was pretty short however and we made the eight hour trek to Banta a day or two later, without a hitch. The roads are really bad, in places almost nonexistent, but due to the mining in our area a lot of our journey was smoother than I had expected. We arrived in to the children's village a day or two before a team of american teachers was leaving and so their leaving party was our welcoming extravaganza...a concert of poetry recitals, dancing, sketch comedy, singing and even a "contribution" from a group of white types from America and Ireland...which involved rapping...in Mende... My first night in Banta was interrupted by the need for a toilet break (it is important to work out your hydration needs in harmony with your sleep schedule...ha...) and an amazing racket from outside which would come in bursts and then vanish as suddenly as it had begun. I found out the next day that it is the frogs...
Living conditions:
I live at the COTN children's village...a horseshoe shaped formation of ten homes surrounded by our farm (Bananas, pineapples, corn, potato, cassava, rice, palm trees for palm oil amongst other things) which is in turn surrounded by...well...jungle... A five minute walk up the hill from the children's village is where the schools are (primary and secondary), the skills centre, the clinic and our director's house (where I will live once the intern team leaves). Right next to the school is Ngoulala Junction, a small village at the side of the road and about a ten minute walk further is Ngoulal Town, quite a sizable village.
We have a pump well for the children's village - water we wash with but don't drink (we buy water for drinking...). We have toilets which you flush when it is deemed neccessary by throwing water into the bowl. We have what are called "bucket baths" - we wash by throwing water over ourselves with a jug...cold water... We have electricity in the evening for an hour or two - it gets dark at 7.30 and is pitch black by about 7.40. Our food is prepared by Auntie Chris - a wonderful Sierra Leonean woman who can bake cakes on a fire and help us fumble our way through cultural questions.
The kids live in similar circumstances although they don't have the luxury of electricity and Auntie Chris's culinary genius. In the villages it is a different story - houses are much more basic mud and thatch affairs and water is often just pulled out of whatever stream is closest.
My thoughts at the moment about living conditions for people here is that while everything is so much more complicated in so many different ways, it is also really beautiful - you grow what you eat, preparing everything from scratch, you work with your community and life takes on a rhythm which is really attractive in so many ways. However the huge problem is that whenever there is any kind of problem...a health issue, a security issue (someone steals from you or is violent towards you)...there is so often simply nowhere to turn.
What I am doing:
Okay so I am yet to get really stuck in to the work I am here to do for the year as I am currently working with the interns that are here for two months. The way I would sum up the aim of this first two months then would be that the interns are trying to share hope by offering education, building relationships and showing people Jesus. So let me give a brief run down of what that sees us doing.
Sundays: We have been split in groups of two and assigned villages. Mine is Ngoulala and my partner is a wonderful girl from Washington State called Stacy. On Sundays we go to church in our villages and the afternoon we prepare for the week and hang out with the kids from the children's village. I have been here for three Sundays: the first I was allowed to enjoy the service, the second I taught some Sunday School and then two seconds before the service began I was asked to lead it and on the third I preached the sermon. So so far church has been a blast...
Mondays: We spend our mornings teaching English at summer school and our afternoons in our village doing a children's holiday bible club type programme. Summer school is for the kids which struggle in each class and with year groups of up to 100 kids this has meant teaching a class of up to 50. I have loved it but it has been a real challenge as the kids really struggle with even the most basic stuff - I am teaching P4. The village stuff has been really great - we are working with Mr. Gonay, the pastor of my church, and the kids just seem to really love it. This kind of thing hasn't really been done before so it is an exciting break from the norm for them.
Tuesdays: We spend our mornings doing what has been called "personal ministry" and for me that has meant working with the counsellor - a Sierra Leonean woman called Patricia who joined COTN in April but has only started as a counsellor (she has been teaching in the school up till now). She is great and I am looking forward to working with her - we have already done one group counselling session (although it took the form of an educational talk type affair really) with the older girls, jumping in to the deep end of sexual abuse and how to look after your sexual health.
In the afternoon we have "new skills" which means we head to our villages and build relationships with people as they teach us how to weave baskets and cook and speak Mende (I really want to learn as much as possible of this local language...and people get a huge kick out of me speaking to them in it).
Wednesdays: Mornings are spent at summer school and afternoons see us just hanging with the kids in our village and taking a group bible study/bible club type deal for them in the early evening.
Thursdays: Morning is counselling stuff/general preperation time and afternoons is new skills.
Fridays: Morning is spent at summer school and afternoons is free.
Saturdays: These are free with some football thrown in in the afternoons.
COTN:
Basically I am in love with this organisation. It is of course far from perfect but when you stand in the centre of our children's village and watch my new little brothers and sisters play and laugh and fetch water on their heads...it is just beautiful and so exciting and inspiring. People in the surrounding villages have welcomed us with open arms and it is not uncommon for people to be sent home with arms full of coconuts or pineapples or cucumbers. One of our intern guys actually had a new born baby in his village named after him!!
I have a lot to learn about this place and these people but I am having a thoroughly provoking, inspiring and challenging time so far. Sorry for the colourless nature of this post but hopefully you have been given a basic understanding of what is going on here. Please keep praying for what we are doing and for the kids we are working with. And let me thank you again for the love and support you have sent me here with.
Our arrival:
Travel stuff all went really well apart from a couple of moments before landing when it looked like weather conditions in Freetown might force us on a detour to Senegal! Not sure what we would have done then but thankfully we didn't need to work that out. My first impression of Sierra Leone was one of darkness...we arrived in to the city at night and since electricity is a luxury item here the city took on an almost forboding feel... Our stay in the capital was pretty short however and we made the eight hour trek to Banta a day or two later, without a hitch. The roads are really bad, in places almost nonexistent, but due to the mining in our area a lot of our journey was smoother than I had expected. We arrived in to the children's village a day or two before a team of american teachers was leaving and so their leaving party was our welcoming extravaganza...a concert of poetry recitals, dancing, sketch comedy, singing and even a "contribution" from a group of white types from America and Ireland...which involved rapping...in Mende... My first night in Banta was interrupted by the need for a toilet break (it is important to work out your hydration needs in harmony with your sleep schedule...ha...) and an amazing racket from outside which would come in bursts and then vanish as suddenly as it had begun. I found out the next day that it is the frogs...
Living conditions:
I live at the COTN children's village...a horseshoe shaped formation of ten homes surrounded by our farm (Bananas, pineapples, corn, potato, cassava, rice, palm trees for palm oil amongst other things) which is in turn surrounded by...well...jungle... A five minute walk up the hill from the children's village is where the schools are (primary and secondary), the skills centre, the clinic and our director's house (where I will live once the intern team leaves). Right next to the school is Ngoulala Junction, a small village at the side of the road and about a ten minute walk further is Ngoulal Town, quite a sizable village.
We have a pump well for the children's village - water we wash with but don't drink (we buy water for drinking...). We have toilets which you flush when it is deemed neccessary by throwing water into the bowl. We have what are called "bucket baths" - we wash by throwing water over ourselves with a jug...cold water... We have electricity in the evening for an hour or two - it gets dark at 7.30 and is pitch black by about 7.40. Our food is prepared by Auntie Chris - a wonderful Sierra Leonean woman who can bake cakes on a fire and help us fumble our way through cultural questions.
The kids live in similar circumstances although they don't have the luxury of electricity and Auntie Chris's culinary genius. In the villages it is a different story - houses are much more basic mud and thatch affairs and water is often just pulled out of whatever stream is closest.
My thoughts at the moment about living conditions for people here is that while everything is so much more complicated in so many different ways, it is also really beautiful - you grow what you eat, preparing everything from scratch, you work with your community and life takes on a rhythm which is really attractive in so many ways. However the huge problem is that whenever there is any kind of problem...a health issue, a security issue (someone steals from you or is violent towards you)...there is so often simply nowhere to turn.
What I am doing:
Okay so I am yet to get really stuck in to the work I am here to do for the year as I am currently working with the interns that are here for two months. The way I would sum up the aim of this first two months then would be that the interns are trying to share hope by offering education, building relationships and showing people Jesus. So let me give a brief run down of what that sees us doing.
Sundays: We have been split in groups of two and assigned villages. Mine is Ngoulala and my partner is a wonderful girl from Washington State called Stacy. On Sundays we go to church in our villages and the afternoon we prepare for the week and hang out with the kids from the children's village. I have been here for three Sundays: the first I was allowed to enjoy the service, the second I taught some Sunday School and then two seconds before the service began I was asked to lead it and on the third I preached the sermon. So so far church has been a blast...
Mondays: We spend our mornings teaching English at summer school and our afternoons in our village doing a children's holiday bible club type programme. Summer school is for the kids which struggle in each class and with year groups of up to 100 kids this has meant teaching a class of up to 50. I have loved it but it has been a real challenge as the kids really struggle with even the most basic stuff - I am teaching P4. The village stuff has been really great - we are working with Mr. Gonay, the pastor of my church, and the kids just seem to really love it. This kind of thing hasn't really been done before so it is an exciting break from the norm for them.
Tuesdays: We spend our mornings doing what has been called "personal ministry" and for me that has meant working with the counsellor - a Sierra Leonean woman called Patricia who joined COTN in April but has only started as a counsellor (she has been teaching in the school up till now). She is great and I am looking forward to working with her - we have already done one group counselling session (although it took the form of an educational talk type affair really) with the older girls, jumping in to the deep end of sexual abuse and how to look after your sexual health.
In the afternoon we have "new skills" which means we head to our villages and build relationships with people as they teach us how to weave baskets and cook and speak Mende (I really want to learn as much as possible of this local language...and people get a huge kick out of me speaking to them in it).
Wednesdays: Mornings are spent at summer school and afternoons see us just hanging with the kids in our village and taking a group bible study/bible club type deal for them in the early evening.
Thursdays: Morning is counselling stuff/general preperation time and afternoons is new skills.
Fridays: Morning is spent at summer school and afternoons is free.
Saturdays: These are free with some football thrown in in the afternoons.
COTN:
Basically I am in love with this organisation. It is of course far from perfect but when you stand in the centre of our children's village and watch my new little brothers and sisters play and laugh and fetch water on their heads...it is just beautiful and so exciting and inspiring. People in the surrounding villages have welcomed us with open arms and it is not uncommon for people to be sent home with arms full of coconuts or pineapples or cucumbers. One of our intern guys actually had a new born baby in his village named after him!!
I have a lot to learn about this place and these people but I am having a thoroughly provoking, inspiring and challenging time so far. Sorry for the colourless nature of this post but hopefully you have been given a basic understanding of what is going on here. Please keep praying for what we are doing and for the kids we are working with. And let me thank you again for the love and support you have sent me here with.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
FAQs
On 23rd June I will fly to Freetown, Sierra Leone to work with an NGO called Children of the Nations. Here I will answer a few of the most commonly asked questions...partly on the off chance that some of you might be interested but more than that, to help me sift through my thoughts as I get so close to heading off.
Why are you going to Africa?
The simple and quick answer owes much of its shape to my friend Paddy – I am going to Africa because I wish to better understand poverty, people, peace and faith while seeking out a way in which I might be used in God’s work of redemption in that place.
I preface this blog entry by acknowledging that it is, even more than usual, laced with self-indulgence. But it is helpful for me to look back and think about how I got here. My parents have been, are and will continue to be a huge influence and it was they who first impressed upon me our responsibility to do what we can to stand in the gap opened up by inequality. They have always exemplified love of ones neighbour in many different ways and their involvement with Tearfund ensured that this has always had a global aspect. So when I went to university and was exposed to the teaching of Steve Stockman and travelled with him and the Presbyterian Chaplaincy to Cape Town, South Africa to build houses with Habitat for Humanity, a seed was not so much planted as what was already there given some room to breathe and take shape. And, crucially, probably for the first time, flesh was put on the bones of teaching and inspiration. I had met people whose lives were radically different from my own and the impact was intense. I would suggest however that it was not until my second trip to South Africa, when I had the amazing privilege of spending two months in the country, that Africa really dug its heels in.
I have always been ridiculously blessed with fellow travellers, friends who have joined me on different parts of the journey and I owe so much to so many in that respect. This time was no different and the social action group we started on our return home, Boots On Comrades, saw a wonderful group of people meet together to toy with ideas of affecting a change. Something else had happened between Captownship trips. I had been taught African history by the late and quite wonderful Martin Lynn. Martin not only taught with a passion, a depth of knowledge, an honesty and a genuine interest in and care for his students that could not fail to have an influence on me but he also introduced me to Nigeria. This led me directly to an amazing year with Care, working at Coventry Cathedral’s International Centre of Reconciliation and the human rights NGO, Christian Solidarity Worldwide. And for that I will always be grateful.
Christians talk a lot about being “called” and having various issues “placed on our heart”. This can seem like a quite mysterious process. I found it really helpful at Bible college when a missionary was quoted as saying that quite simply, “the need is the call”. Africa fascinates me. Perhaps there is a hint of the white man’s burden about the whole thing and at the very least the colonial past and the controlling policies of the modern era offers a connection to these events and peoples that is perhaps absent for me with other places. It is also the part of the developing world which I know the most about! And Africa is certainly a place of great need (as well as arguably even greater potential). When I was growing up I never had a particular desire to leave home for foreign parts and remember being quite confused by the notion as a child – why would anyone want to leave Ireland, a wonderful, safe place with sensible weather for one of these far-flung places where natural disasters, dangerous wildlife and scary diseases hang out. I remember a friend, Jonathan, confidently proclaiming his desire to be a missionary when he was older. I had no such thought. But over the last few years I have been really drawn to Africa’s western region and at this point going there and involving myself directly in the kind of work I am going to do feels like the most natural of progressions.
Why Sierra Leone?
Sierra Leone first came on my radar properly when reading an article in The Economist while living in the grandeur of Dewis Lodge, Coventry. I was immediately appalled and confused by the viscous brutality of the conflict there and why the violence was marked by such acts of horror continues to be a darkly compelling question for me. Last year I wrote an essay about the war there, comparing the different ways the international community intervened there with the different forms of intervention experienced by Rwanda before, during and after the 1994 genocide. This essay was a pretty tough thing to research – you always think you’ve heard the most horrible story and then you read the next one. Sierra Leone’s story stuck in my mind for all kinds of reasons – the poverty, the character of the violence, the apparent resource curse, the process of post-conflict reconciliation, the role and current trial of Charles Taylor, the colonial past, the philanthropic vision that gave birth to Freetown, the use of child soldiers...and on and on it goes. When I heard that Children of the Nations worked there and when I heard about what that work consisted of, I was immediately intrigued.
Why Children of the Nations?
Children of the Nations mission statement says, “our mission is to provide responsible care to orphaned and destitute children by the equipping of nationals, giving children every possible advantage available to grow in a stable, Christ-centered environment, empowering them to be the leaders of tomorrow.” I am moved and excited by the holistic approach adopted by the organisation and I am moved and excited by the focus placed on nationals. Working with children is something I love doing and Children of the Nations have found some areas of work for me which seem to fit amazingly well with what I have studied and what I have some experience of to date. Working with COTN in Sierra Leone sees me living and working in a post-conflict situation in the developing world and with children, bringing together so much of what fascinates, provokes and challenges me. What COTN is doing in Sierra Leone just seems wondrous to me. It is amazing to think that I am going to be a part of it. And it is great to share in that work with my family and so many good friends who are supporting me financially and spiritually.
With your departure so close, how do you feel?
This is a question I have grown somewhat tired of answering. Partly because I do not have a great response. My feelings are many. I am excited by what lies ahead while also scared of what might be in store. I cannot think of anything I would rather do while, at the same time, feel entirely inadequate. I question how much I know about the two main areas of work that I will be involved in – writing and teaching a course for the kids looking at issues of peace and conflict and helping guide a grief counselling programme for our children – and as a result worry that I will leave my friends and family behind and only have minimal impact where I am going. This is countered with confidence that so much of what has passed in the last few years feels like preparation for this work and the way I have been blessed with financial as well as emotional and prayerful support has also been really affirming. At the end of the day the need is the call. And I am being called. I am offering whatever it is that I have, what I know, what I might be...entirely imperfectly I might add, there will be plenty of moments when I will doubtless do everything but offer of myself...and I just have to trust the rest of the way.
My desire is to, in some way...in any way...affect a positive change. If past experience is anything to go by I will learn more, gain more, than I will ever be able to give. It is also important to note that I share in this year with an amazing group of people who are an integral part by virtue of their financial and prayer support. I pray that we will be graced with a role to play.
Sunday, June 08, 2008
A story from Malawi
Below is a piece written by Debbie Clark who started Children of the Nations with her husband Chris. This little story has previously been included in the COTN booklet explaining their child sponsorship scheme and I include it here as an example of the kind of impact COTN's work can have.---
Peter Robert of Malawi
I spotted him and immediately took a second glance. His clothes were dirty rags wrapped around his small, thin body and his eyes held an empty gaze. He was being held by a sad, older woman who had another, healthier looking baby tied to her back. They had come to the COTN feeding center in this village. She wanted to register these children in the program. Peter was the baby's name and later I learned that he wasn't really a baby, but a two year old child. Peter was one of the eight children this grandmother was trying to provide for. All of her children had died from the AIDS epidemic, so she was here with two grandchildren and six more at home in their small, mud hut. We watched as this grandmother breast-fed the healthier looking baby three times in one hour and Peter, only once. I was reminded of the poem in a past newsletter - 'decide, mother, who goes without...'
It was obvious that Peter would not make it much longer. He had given up the fight to live. He didn't even have the whimper typical of hungry children and made no sounds at all. The next day we learned that Peter weighed only thirteen pounds (That's less than one stone!).
Peter is now living in our Chiwengo village orphanage and is four years old. He is a typical preschooler who is full of energy and loves to get into everything. He loves to sing and play and is full of life!
Debbie Clark
---
I looked on-line to see if I could find the poem she refers to. I found this:
Decide, mother, who goes without.
Is it Rama, the strongest,
or Baca, the weakest,
who may not need it much longer,
or perhaps Sita?
Who may be expendable?
Decide, mother;
kill a part of yourself
as you resolve the dilemma.
Appadura (a poem from India)
Saturday, June 07, 2008
Taxi to Sierra Leone
So I was heading out to join the fine people of Belfast Zoo for a post-Dreamnight party. Dreamnight is an annual event which sees the Zoo open late especially for children from the hospice and the children's hospital and their families. It was a really great thing to be a part of, with the Zoo staff working really hard to make it a really special experience - getting help from the police, the army and the fire brigade who all had fun things for the kids to do (climbing walls, shooting ranges, engines and cars and tanks to play with) as well as Northern Ireland's Hell's Angels who showed off their choppers and circus types who showed off their tricks. There was also a couple of Deloreans which was cool, including one which was done up to look exactly like the car seen in Back to the Future...flux capacitor and everything! I also got to get ridiculously close to the Zoo's gorillas which was really cool and only got better when one of them decided to spit a whole mouth full of water at my friend Brendan's face from point blank range.So, after our late evening of Zoo antics we all made our way home to get ready for our after-party. I got myself a taxi and soon got in to conversation with my driver. He was a pretty chatty guy and I was soon hearing stories about his child and his partner. He then told me that his previous job had seen him work as a bodyguard all over the world. Intrigued, I asked him what sort of places he had worked. The first place he mentioned? Sierra Leone.
I laughed at the coicidence and told him that I was soon to head there myself. Not really sure how he would respond to questions, I asked him some anyway. When were you there? About five years ago. That would make it 2003, a year after the war is considered to have ended. Where were you? All over. Were you working mostly with business men or what? Yeah, all business men.
He then told me that it was a pretty rough place to spend some time. At one point his group had had a run in with a child soldier wielding an AK-47. Deeming that it was either them or the child one of the other guys shot the child. The girl. The ten year old girl. "Job done", the driver commented.
What is our response to the actions of these sorts of private security firms? Their existence is fraught with moral dilemmas and their actions are surely extremely difficult to control. In a situation like Sierra Leone a few years ago or Iraq now, are they a neccessary evil to provide a modicum of stability beyond the capacity of any central authority? Or are they in fact perpetuating instability and making things worse in the long run? And if we do see a place for them then we surely expect them to defend themselves. Whilst killing a child in this way seems unfathomable to me, I wasn't there and of course she was capable of killing many in their group. My driver commented that his collegue had ensured that it was a painless death for the girl - shooting her between the eyes. What I certainly don't understand is why anyone would put themselves in such a situation to protect some businessman darting through Sierra Leone, presumably snaffling up whatever mineral wealth they can get their hands on in the post-war chaos. And of course conditioning children to fight and kill in these ways is disgusting.
The whole thing is just dreadful. I was extremely uneasy with the way he distanced himself from what had happened by talking about it in those kind of "job done" terms, although he did recognise the horror of what had occurred at the same time. How could you process witnessing something like that? I was also surprised, naively probably, that there would still have been child soldiers operating in Sierra Leone in 2003. But I should have known better - just people saying, "The war is over", does not mean that all the killing will cease.
A desperately sad story. But a real one. Told in surely the most unlikely of circumstances.
Thursday, June 05, 2008
Privilege Meets Poverty
So the ethical consumption thought process continued recently as I watched the BBC's Blood, Sweat and T-shirts. What I realised as I watched this documentary style reality tv was very obvious. It is not particularly insightful for the more intelligent. But for me it was an important moment. As the show took a handful of different-shades-of-spoiled british twenty-somethings to India and put them through their paces working at all levels of the Indian garment industry - from intense but reputable factory seamstress-ing to something a whole lot more sweaty, from cotton picking to slaving their guts out (okay, complaining their guts out) at a cotton mill - I realised just how many stages are involved in the production of clothes. And so how many different stages there are to monitor before we can talk about ethical production.
When I think about the ethics of clothing production I think my eyes have been almost totally fixed on the sweatshop with the mill and the field sitting in the shadows somewhere. This show has helped bring them out in to the light for me and I feel like I understand a little more about the massive challenge we are faced with. When companies like Primark talk about the Ethical Trading Initiative and the progress they are making with their producers via, for example, independently auditing factories etc we must always ask the question - just how far back along the production process is progress being sought (if changes are in fact being made at all). I certainly have my suspicions about what the answer to that enquiry would be.
If only Channel 4 hadn't (as far as I could make out) pulled their documentary "The Devil Wears Primark" at the last moment maybe we would have a better look at their argument. The truth is incredibly difficult to uncover when all you have is a laptop and tv production companies to help you out...and as a good friend of mine recently found out, even going in to what passes for the heart of the Seattle-based beast does not mean you get to the heart of the matter...
...
Also, I kinda fell in love with her on the right...in all her big-hearted, ditzy glory...
Friday, March 28, 2008
To sing and to serve...
Below is what we'll call the abridged version of a paper I wrote about the church and development. One of the ideas which I think it challenges is the notion that evangelism - the pursuit of righteousness - is more important than what has become known as social action - the pursuit of justice. In this I also hope it speaks to the personalisation of faith I seem to see constantly in the church: the idea that some people join the worship team while others get involved in the homeless ministry and that what that reflects is a personal choice based on what appeals to ones character...of course different people are drawn to different things but this must never be allowed to result in an imbalanced approach to faith. We must all sing AND serve so to speak.
---
The Church’s social concern has, at times, taken the form of salvation by coercion because of an image of social action as subservient to evangelism. Our vision of the Church’s role in the world has too often been shaped by an unholy equation: while the Bible clearly details a mission of both evangelism and social justice we have viewed our resources as limited, have shown our compassion to be finite and as a result have made a pragmatic choice. Given that the fruits of evangelism are clearly eternal while social justice appears to have more temporal roots, evangelism has been “chosen”. However as Graham Cray suggests:
Mission is not a matter of putting in order of priority evangelism, social action or signs and wonders, but of an openness to the whole agenda of the Kingdom, including its priority concern for the poor.
For with Jesus has come the Kingdom, meaning that Lordship over the whole world rests with Christ. Vinay Samuel and Chris Sugden explain that this allows us to “boldly pray, ‘Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as in heaven’ – and not just ‘in the church as in heaven.’” This prayer is answered when we see Kingdom values manifest in the lives of people, in movements or in the structures of life and politics. Crucial to our understanding of God’s Lordship and his Kingdom values is Psalm 89: 14, “Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne.” The significance of this verse is explained by Cray who writes, “Righteousness and justice form one quality, not two. The Old Testament knows no division between social justice and private morality. The two words…express one complex idea.” When the Church proclaims as well as models the Gospel it acts in line with God’s vision for it, it brings the Kingdom and points to its future fulfillment and in doing so it will change the world around it. According to the Micah Declaration then:
The conclusions we come to about how to best pursue the transformation we wish to see in our world must reflect an engagement with the key intellectual debates but be rooted in an understanding of our place in the wider story of the come and coming Kingdom. It is clear then that the church must focus its efforts on alternatives which highlight the sustainable, the participatory and the human and be confident that our hope does not come from what technology or academia has to offer but is placed in the God of justice and righteousness who has the power to redeem. When Andrew Kirk writes that “Justice includes; injustice excludes”, he makes an important point, for if development is marked by exclusion, referring either to who is to be the focus of development or who is to be involved in the process, we risk failure and injustice. The church should be particularly alive to this truth since fostering participation reflects a central kingdom value, that all of humanity is made in God’s image and is equally important in his sight. Empowering the local community underlines their place in the world, their God given identity. By suggesting that biblical justice is exemplified in the practice of jubilee Kirk reasons that, “in a sense, justice is another word for liberation: the removal of the barriers which prevent human beings from participating fully in the benefits and responsibilities of the community.” This idea draws to mind the work of Amartya Sen whose book “Development as Freedom”, in my opinion at least, details a particularly useful understanding of development. His conception of development is one of , “a process of removing unfreedoms and of extending the substantive freedoms of different types that people have reason to value.” We see throughout the bible that Kingdom change can be brought even if Christians are not in positions of control or, in this context, are not the key drivers of development. Though the kingdom comes most fully through the action of the church it can also be ushered in through the action of society in general.
As explained by Archbishop Donald Mtetemala, “Our efforts must not only be to build the church into a strong institution for its own sake! We need to make the church a servant in the society in which it bears witness.” The church boasts another resource which perhaps positions it well to wrestle with these ideas since, given its quite unique make-up, when we talk about the poor we are talking about members of our own family. It is when the church bases its ministry on the ideas of justice and righteousness, when its words are backed up by its actions and its actions are explained in its words, that the Kingdom breaks into this impoverished world most forcefully.
---
In the film version of Che Guevara’s Motorcycle Diaries, a scene sees the young Ernesto Guevara and his traveling companion, Alberto Granado, refused lunch while staying at the San Pablo leper colony in Peru. They had broken an important rule enforced by the nuns who ran the colony: if you didn’t go to mass, you didn’t get fed. The filmmaker’s contempt for such treatment is expressed by his characters, with Alberto commenting, “Ma’am, it’s unchristian to deny us food” and the patients later smuggling them their lunch. Another example of what has been called “souperism” can be found in the history of Ireland when, during the famine of the 19th century, Protestant clergy exchanged soup for conversions. Nor do we have to go so far back in history to find examples of this kind of behavior. The idea of church-based community development is problematic when that basis in the church translates as a bias towards the church, when community development is sought to bolster the church community rather than, if not in spite of, the whole community. The effectiveness of such an approach, both in improving community conditions and in spreading the Gospel, is highly suspect.
The Church’s social concern has, at times, taken the form of salvation by coercion because of an image of social action as subservient to evangelism. Our vision of the Church’s role in the world has too often been shaped by an unholy equation: while the Bible clearly details a mission of both evangelism and social justice we have viewed our resources as limited, have shown our compassion to be finite and as a result have made a pragmatic choice. Given that the fruits of evangelism are clearly eternal while social justice appears to have more temporal roots, evangelism has been “chosen”. However as Graham Cray suggests:
Mission is not a matter of putting in order of priority evangelism, social action or signs and wonders, but of an openness to the whole agenda of the Kingdom, including its priority concern for the poor.
For with Jesus has come the Kingdom, meaning that Lordship over the whole world rests with Christ. Vinay Samuel and Chris Sugden explain that this allows us to “boldly pray, ‘Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as in heaven’ – and not just ‘in the church as in heaven.’” This prayer is answered when we see Kingdom values manifest in the lives of people, in movements or in the structures of life and politics. Crucial to our understanding of God’s Lordship and his Kingdom values is Psalm 89: 14, “Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne.” The significance of this verse is explained by Cray who writes, “Righteousness and justice form one quality, not two. The Old Testament knows no division between social justice and private morality. The two words…express one complex idea.” When the Church proclaims as well as models the Gospel it acts in line with God’s vision for it, it brings the Kingdom and points to its future fulfillment and in doing so it will change the world around it. According to the Micah Declaration then:
…our proclamation has social consequences as we call people to love and repentance in all areas of life and our social involvement has evangelistic consequences as we bear witness to the transforming grace of Jesus Christ.
The conclusions we come to about how to best pursue the transformation we wish to see in our world must reflect an engagement with the key intellectual debates but be rooted in an understanding of our place in the wider story of the come and coming Kingdom. It is clear then that the church must focus its efforts on alternatives which highlight the sustainable, the participatory and the human and be confident that our hope does not come from what technology or academia has to offer but is placed in the God of justice and righteousness who has the power to redeem. When Andrew Kirk writes that “Justice includes; injustice excludes”, he makes an important point, for if development is marked by exclusion, referring either to who is to be the focus of development or who is to be involved in the process, we risk failure and injustice. The church should be particularly alive to this truth since fostering participation reflects a central kingdom value, that all of humanity is made in God’s image and is equally important in his sight. Empowering the local community underlines their place in the world, their God given identity. By suggesting that biblical justice is exemplified in the practice of jubilee Kirk reasons that, “in a sense, justice is another word for liberation: the removal of the barriers which prevent human beings from participating fully in the benefits and responsibilities of the community.” This idea draws to mind the work of Amartya Sen whose book “Development as Freedom”, in my opinion at least, details a particularly useful understanding of development. His conception of development is one of , “a process of removing unfreedoms and of extending the substantive freedoms of different types that people have reason to value.” We see throughout the bible that Kingdom change can be brought even if Christians are not in positions of control or, in this context, are not the key drivers of development. Though the kingdom comes most fully through the action of the church it can also be ushered in through the action of society in general.
As explained by Archbishop Donald Mtetemala, “Our efforts must not only be to build the church into a strong institution for its own sake! We need to make the church a servant in the society in which it bears witness.” The church boasts another resource which perhaps positions it well to wrestle with these ideas since, given its quite unique make-up, when we talk about the poor we are talking about members of our own family. It is when the church bases its ministry on the ideas of justice and righteousness, when its words are backed up by its actions and its actions are explained in its words, that the Kingdom breaks into this impoverished world most forcefully.
Saturday, February 02, 2008
The Primark Chronicles: Family Matters
One of the things I tried to do with my thinking time at Primark was work out what might be the things in life that I love doing or feel I might be good at doing or that fill me with joy, as I sought potential pointers regarding the ongoing issues of career and vocation. One of the things that I thought of was kids. On my very first day at Primark the supervisor training us shared her distaste for the little hands that rifle through her shoe displays or the little feet that run into people or the little mouths that make up for their size with screaming gusto. For me, I loved it when the Primark Kids crossed my path. (And the adults were just as bad at ruining the displays anyway. It appears to have become entirely socially acceptable for people to TRASH Primark. Not your size? Throw it to the other side of the shop. Knocked over a display of Christmas cards? Keep on walking. Broken something? Just leave it. Stacey’s perfect retort was, “Would you do that in Debenhams??”) Working in the Christmas section meant I got to enjoy the tiny gasps of excitement as kids ran their eyes over the glittering...ahem...tat which reminded them of the coming present-fest. I find kids' enthusiasm infectious and in Primark they rarely failed to put a smile on my face. Often, Primark seemed to bring the worst out in the mothers of these kids. A girl sobbing in the queue after a fight with her brother was viciously shouted at by her frustrated mum and sent to stand elsewhere. Kids would be dragged and pushed and shouted at for crying. It would be easy for me to be overly judgemental but these were genuinely sad moments. Another time an exchange between two teenage brothers and their mother had me in stitches – the older boy leant forward as his mother waited for me to scan her day’s shopping and pretend-whispered in his brother’s ear, “I could kill you on the way out and no one would ever know. I would just say you were trampled to death by a stampede of Christmas shoppers.” When he cheekily replied to his mother’s dressing down she asked him, quick as a flash and with a deadpan delivery, “How about you get adopted?” It was a wonderfully Belfast moment and all good natured. When I commented that she had an impressive way with her children she said that as the mother of seven boys she had had to learn fast.
What took me somewhat by surprise was when I was wheeled in, dressed head to toe in authority figure black, by mothers in need of a last disciplining resort: “You’d better stop crying or that man will throw you out!” I was suddenly, unexpectedly, with my hands full of half folded towel or the latest batch of snowglobes, “The Man”. I was not a fan of being pointed at in an effort to strike fear in to kids but what you gonna do. One mother commented to me, “I really need to stop doing that. The poor girl is going to grow up with a terrible fear of men!” The “best” example came when a lady was trying to get her little girl to settle down in her pram. In what I deemed a gentle voice she knelt down and said, “Look, we’re going to go to the McGee’s in a minute”. I assumed she was telling the child that her shopping was almost over at which time they would both go to the McGee’s, a family friend perhaps, where the little girl could rid herself of the pram and run free and play with the McGee’s stash of exciting toys. She turned to me and said, again in what I took for gentle tones, “You know the McGee, don’t you?” I was taken by surprise at my sudden inclusion in the conversation and replied in what I thought was the sought after “Sure everyone knows the Fun McGees of Fun Street where every kid loves to go and will sit quietly in their pram until they get there because its worth the wait” jovial tone, “Of course I do!” Then I realised that I had slightly misheard. The child’s mother had in fact asked me, “You know the Witch McGee, don’t you?” I had in fact assured mother and child, with a smile no less, that I was well aware of the evil witch and what she did to naughty little children who don’t sit still in Primark...
I am a huge fan of kids and am bowled over by how amazing – in exciting and challenging and terrifying and heartbreaking and awe-inspiring ways – it must be to be a parent. I hope to be a good one (In the future future future). But doesn’t everyone? I saw two beautiful examples of family on my recent trip to America, one new and working it all out as they go and another older and going through the challenges and enjoyments of seeing the children become adults. When I was last in America my friend Kyle was recently married and the conversation at the dinner I shared with him and his wife revolved around my fascination with the wondrous concept of marriage. This time I was introduced to their baby boy and I had the privilege of seeing their small family “be”. As the time came for his young son to hit the hay, Kyle invited me to come and watch them put him to bed. It would feel wrong to share the details of this most moving of goodnights but I will unashamedly say that as I stood in the doorway, my head resting against the frame and being treated to a beautiful vision of what family means, I felt like weeping. The older family, that of the girl sometimes referred to as The American, I shared a Sunday afternoon with. I watched a father wrap up his now grown “little” girl next to him, embracing her with a heartbreaking gentleness and enjoying her conversation and moments of wit. An unspoken understanding existed between the two and a beauty hung about them. I wondered if people saw that in my family's interactions. I hope so. I know the weirdness of family too, the hardness, the strife. I don't mean to over romanticise it. But I am a firm believer in its wonder.
I don’t know if I’ll ever work with kids, if I’ll ever father any or if I’ll just occasionally kick it with them. But they amaze with their vision of what we once were, perhaps how we wish we could be.
Children of Primark I salute you and thank you for dancing in the aisles. Long may you continue.
The Primark Chronicles: How do you solve a problem like Primark? Part 2
As I ate my Sub of the Day (I won’t eat at Subway again for a long long time...and ethics have nothing to do with it...) and thumbed through my Independent (The only non-tabloid paper I ever saw in the Primark canteen was under my arm. My friend Mark once commented, “Who’s reading THIS?” with something close to shocked disgust in his voice. His face was classic when I told him it was mine.) I came across an article by a woman who had forced herself to go a year without buying clothes. I felt suitably self-righteous reading the piece as buying clothes is a rare event in my life – the vast vast majority of my wardrobe has been given to me by ex-girlfriends and family members, attained for free or been in my regular rotation since I was at school (I am often amused by the thought of bumping in to some old school friend while wearing my green fila fleece at which point they may well comment – “Mark, you bought that damn thing on our school tour to Germany...in 1999!” We won’t mention my favourite t-shirt. Which I got for free. Age 8). What was interesting about the article is that it suggested that people regularly buy clothes and only wear them once. Not because they don’t like them or because they are particularly out of date but because...well...they’ve already been seen in them. And because shops like Primark can sell you another outfit so cheaply. This is the other side of the “Low prices are good for the poor types” coin. A woman I talked to over some Christmas shopping told me that her sister never washed her kids’ socks. She just bought new ones!! I don’t have anything particularly new to offer on the subject of changing places like Primark. If we understand Primark as the product of capitalism and capitalism as being driven by supply and demand the answer is simple really – change the demand. Demand something else. Jim Wallis comments on how it appears impossible to change politicians who, driven by a need to get elected and re-elected, lick their finger and stick it in the air to see which way the wind is blowing and then promptly head in that direction. For Wallis then we need to change the direction of the wind. The same is true in retail and business generally. The reason Primark now stocks organic cotton and raises a couple of pennies for UNICEF and has signed up to the ETI is because the ethical consumption movement of the last few years has shown that there is a market for improved ethics. We need therefore to encourage them in this. By campaigning sure. By writing to CEOs sure. By buying stuff in their shop which has been ethically produced??? I think so, yes. This is perhaps the real strength behind Bono’s Red idea – companies like GAP and Apple and so on can perhaps see first hand that they don’t have to forget entirely about making money if they take a step in an ethical direction?
But can the western poor afford an ethical and so pricier Primark? First of all, the guy who heads up the ETI argues that in fact Primark could afford to ensure fair treatment for their producers and still sell their products at their current low prices IF they took less of a mark-up (Although this wouldn’t be very capitalist of them). This reminds me of the awesome bit in the Flight of the Conchords song, Think About It:
They’re turning kids into slaves just to make cheaper sneakers.
But what’s the real cost?
‘Cause the sneakers don’t seem that much cheaper.
Why are we still paying so much for sneakers
When you get them made by little slave kids?
What are your overheads?
Secondly, and this leads me back to my Clements accuser, Shane Claiborne, what exactly do we NEED? I said before that the western (for want of a better word...and I wish one would quickly come to mind as I am growing more and more to dislike the W word) poor had little choice but to shop at cheap places like Primark. But by what standards? I just want to ask the question rather than suggest an answer. Certainly the example of Claiborne and The Simple Way has something to say about things like making your own clothes and about stupid standards which suggest you need two of this or five of that when perhaps one would suffice. I know too little about real poverty to write too much on the subject but I do know that the “poor” can be just as caught up in the world’s consumption culture as their richer neighbours – everyone wants nice things. That’s why people in South African townships live in shacks with a bigger tv and a better sound system than I have. Shacks with satellite dishes. People on the Shankill getting themselves in debt with paramilitary loansharks to buy their kid a new Chelsea top and a Nintindo Wii for Christmas.
I’m glad I worked at Primark. I didn’t change it from the inside. I had minimal conversations with people about the ETI while working there (I did have plenty with friends outside as I told what my brother called, with a roll of the eyes, “Another Primark story”.) We were, in fact, given additional training on the ETI while I worked at the shop because it had become clear to management that their employees hadn’t a clue what to say to customers if anyone asked. The training, as was always the case at Primark whether you’re talking ETI or how to lift a box correctly, amounted to a piece of A4 read at you somewhat hurriedly by a supervisor. My friend Stacey still called it the “Ethnic thingy”. No customers ever asked anyway. But I think I learned a great deal. About a lot of things.
If we’re honest with ourselves we’re all a bunch of sell outs anyway. In need of a little grace.
The Primark Chronicles: How do you solve a problem like Primark? Part 1.
“You’ve been thinking quite a lot haven’t you”, Dylan commented as we sat with Jonny and Chessers over cards and poker chips. We kept losing our place in the game as our conversation grabbed all the attention, as it always should amongst friends as good as these, and I had already noticed that many of my contributions began with “I was thinking about this the other day...”. Primark. A great place to think? It was my first time in quite a while doing a job that frequently saw you undertaking tasks which required little thought...taking little santas out of their (over)packaging and displaying them in the Primark Christmas Shop’s there’s-always-room-for-a-box-more style. The blog entries that follow are some of things that crossed my mind during these glitter filled moments. I should also comment that it wasn’t a bad job really and I’m a big fan of many of the people I worked with during those two months and was sorry that I didn’t have time to get to know a number of them better. Although that shouldn’t lead anyone to think that I would like to be working there still!
Many of my “activist” friends were surprised by my working for the devil in this way. My friend Ryan threatened me with violence and Aaron shared his disapproval in no uncertain (but humorous) terms (Though I later had the distinct pleasure of spotting him in menswear buying socks. He defended himself saying he was merely doing an experiment to see if clothes made in sweatshops actually smelled of sweat...). I met another friend, Ruth, for lunch on my first day. We sat in a small Belfast coffee shop and hilariously, as I talked to her about my decision to become a Primark sales bitch, Shane Claiborne, dressed as always in his homemade ensemble, floated past the window. I immediately stopped speaking and drank in the irony. Was God sending me a message in Simple Way form?? (Shane was in town to give a talk that night and yes I went to it, with Ruth and some other friends, in my Primark uniform, having just finished work. His book The Irresistible Revolution is fantastic and a must read.)
For those who asked about what I was doing, what follows is probably close to what I would answer with. Is Primark unethical? It’s pretty much the worst on the high street. So it was labelled by Ethical Consumer Magazine a few years ago at least. But it is getting better. They have now signed up to the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI) which, although some would suggest is just a means of paying lip service to positive progress regarding their producers, has at least seen them make commitments to improve conditions in the far flung (India, Bangladesh, China – all the Christmas stuff came from China) parts of the world their products are manufactured and shipped from. Primark has set out a plan of action with annual goals and independent auditors checking on their progress. A line of organic cotton products – towels and sheets and underwear etc – can now be found and at Christmas a line of cards were sold with 30p from each sale going to UNICEF (Amusingly, these cards, which would have usually fitted in the £1 price bracket, were sold for...yup, £1.30). It should also be noted that Ethical Consumer Magazine states that in fact none of the main high street stores can be shopped in with a clear conscience...for that we need specialist shops (Fairtrade In-Spires!) or internet sources (Vegetarian Shoes! There’s NOTHING you can’t do with hemp!). A War on Want report about Primark in Bangladesh urges caution when we talk about ethics, progress and Primark but I saw enough to make me feel like I could cross the threshold and don the shiny golden name badge...
That I even had this debate with myself before taking the job has amused some. I remember my friend Rob’s amusement when I put Starbucks through similar paces as I pondered taking a job with them about a year and a half ago. (He has since worked for them, confident that he can do so with a clear conscience having seen the fruits of my on-line labour!) A lot of it comes down to choice. We had an interesting exchange during my time with CARE when an intern challenged us all to buy only fair-trade and boycott Tescos and shops of its ilk. Another (exceptional) intern politely stated that she would be doing nothing of the sort because, while it all sounded lovely in theory, she simply couldn’t afford to do so. My friend Travis (See previous blog entry to fully understand my only slightly homoerotic love for Trav), added that it is in fact impossible to live an entirely “ethical” life and live where we lived, work where we worked. “How is our electricity being created? By “ethical” means? Do we have a say in that?” he asked. His point is important – we may feel good about ourselves for taking the bus but what might the “ethics” be of the petrol it is running on (From stolen Nigerian crude?) The rubber? The metal? And so on. Travis’s comment was not a defeatist one but one that asked for grace. We must not be too hard on ourselves when we fail the ethics test, or on others. Claiborne’s Simple Way is HARD! (Christian types should get this...those who believe that they are literally sin-full but are called to live a holy life...)
This point of choice became more crucial for me as I worked at Primark. I had had the choice of working for the Department of Education for a month and a half marking exams, or for Primark for just over two, where I would also earn considerably more money each week. With a year in Africa to pay for ahead of me and a desire to get working as soon as possible after a month or two of fruitless job hunting, I chose Primark. Others I worked with may not have had even that limited choice. A fellow Christmas temp, Richard, was the same age as me but had a house to pay for, a son to support and a partner to help through college. The ethics of Primark are the last of his worries when taking a job...getting a job is the chief concern. And as I worked there and noted the proportion of the customers which were made up of Belfast’s working class, immigrant and homeless populations I better understood another truth about ethical consumption. It is financially out of reach for many. Just as my CARE intern friend had noted – enjoying a clear conscience can be an expensive business. Perhaps fair trade is destined to be merely a phenomenon of the middle class? So Primark’s low prices, which many would argue are achieved by standing on the poor, are the saving grace of single mothers and Romanian big issue sellers? The poor stealing from the poor ? The rich stealing from the poor to give to the poor (after taking a finder’s fee)? DO they have a choice? How do you solve a problem like Primark?
(See Part 2 for more ramblings...)
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