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...
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