When I was 24 years old, my mother died. She was the strongest and toughest woman I
knew and fear of her had kept me on the straight and narrow path – afraid to
really live. In the past, I had rebelled against her by refusing to get an
office job and becoming a bartender but her influence still controlled me. I was
terrified to try the joints passed to me at parties because I was convinced
that the moment I placed one to my lips, the police would burst through the
door and arrest me. I could vividly
picture my mother’s disappointment and anger as she bailed me out of “Drugs
Prison.” It was clear that this would lead to my bright future unraveling and a
destiny as an “unwed mother” working in the Piggly Wiggly grocery store. However
strong my fear, she was also the one who always fixed things. Without her, I didn’t know how to navigate my
life and I had lost my magnetic North. So in my haze of grief and untethered
from her disapproval, I found myself adrift – and looking for an escape from
responsibility and from suburban America.
So I followed a timeworn path followed by
other mad white people from around Europe, North America, and Australia – I
went to Africa to save the people. Classic White Savior trope. I was going to
use my heartbreak and grief and powerful American passport to save Africa –
even if I didn’t yet realize that Africa was not a country, white girls like me
were a dime a dozen, and that all humanitarian aid workers fell into one of
three “M”s: Mercenaries, missionaries, or misfits.
That’s how I found myself on a plane from
Lagos to Monrovia in 2003 with a more experienced 27 year old aid worker named
Michelle. She was showing me the ropes
and was an old hand. She casually tossed out facts to me that in retrospect
were designed to terrorize me – “ there are about 5000 Nigerian and Ghanaian
peacekeepers in Monrovia right now,” she told me as she casually sorted through
her purse. “They are there to keep the rebels and the government forces from
tearing each other’s throats out. But god knows what will happen if they are
tested. They are completely outnumbered and can’t even control the airport.” I
nodded and tried to pretend like I knew was happening and desperately tried to look
cool.
The tiny plane bounced along over the rain
clouds- rainy season in West Africa. The outline of the West African coast was
our map. This was the “milk run” – we stopped and expelled passengers and
picked up new ones in Conakry, Abidjan, and Freetown. The people getting on and
off the plane could have been in a John Le Carre novel. Skinny bald French
gangsters in plaid suits with fat gold chains, sweaty fat Nigerian business
men, bored Lebanese men who smoked incessantly and tried to catch my eye. Aside
from two flashy women in outrageous weaves with skin tight clothes – better
suited for the disco than the dinky airport in Freetown – Michelle and I were
the only two women on the plane. I wore
my aid worker uniform – khaki pants, a black tank top with a white no-iron
shirt opened over it, and tevas. But my
tevas were new and my white shirt was unblemished. Michelle’s tank top was grey
and stretched out and baggy- which proved she was a real aid worker who had
“field clothes,” unlike me – who had purchased everything on a shopping trip to
Old Navy with my sister two weeks before.
My father frets about me doing this work – do
you have health insurance? Do you have a pension plan? I know he worries about
the men I’ll meet – freaking out that I might show up with a Liberian child
soldier turned business man and some illegitimate child. My father is proud of
my daring, though. But he also worries. Mostly that I’m going to be killed in
some sort of Hollywood shootout. I don’t know how to reassure him that I feel
safer going into this war zone than I did in my cheap apartment in Washington
DC where I heard gunshots on a daily basis and was once chased down O Street by
a hooker for daring to poach her territory. I don’t know how she thought I was
going to poach customers from her unless there is a group of DC men who have a
secret yen to get it on with hippie girls in grateful dead skirts, ankle bells,
and Birkenstocks. I wish there were – I never seemed to get dates in that
uptight city of student body presidents and “the man behind the scene” types
that populate that place.
Finally the plane begins its descent to
Monrovia – I lean towards the window to get a glimpse of where I will be living
for the next 8 months. To my disappointment, it looks just like where I left –
South Carolina. Red clay, rambling green trees, and grey squat buildings.
Except these buildings are mostly missing roofs, and the runway is not paved –
just a slushy strip of that deep red mud. We land and the door opens up and the
smell of Liberia washes in - wood smoke,
dark pungent earth, and something faintly sweet – something I can’t place. We start to climb out down the stairs and onto
the runway – not mud as I had assumed – gravely but covered in puddles of muddy
red water.
My first impressions: A derelict old plane
has been pushed over to the side in a field – rotting and covered with mildew.
Giant white cargo planes with the black block letters of the UN are parked in
front of the airport. Tanks line the runway and bored African men in uniform
lean on top. Men in uniform are everywhere - and a contingent of Nigerian
soldiers snap to attention and salute as the man behind us emerges. He’s in a
magnificent peacock blue robe and wears extremely dark sunglasses even though
it is overcast. A truck full of soldiers pulls up and the African soldiers jump
out leisurely- laughing and joking and slapping each other the back, oversized
helmets hanging over open handsome faces. They shout to each other and start
throwing bags into the back of the truck.
Michelle and I are insignificant specks of
dust in this world of important men –swept away and overlooked as the Nigerian
dignitary is greeted and fawned over. I hike my backpack over my shoulder as
the thick humid Liberian air clogs my lungs and start trudging to the airport
building. Just like in the movies, there are drums in the distance.
********
I accompanied the senior protection officer,
John, to the stadium in Monrovia where thousands of displaced people live. I
entered the warren of training rooms, locker rooms, and other hallways meant
once for football teams and athletic demigods, and the smell was a mockery of
the smell of good honest sweat and hero worship that should be there. It stunk
of unwashed bodies pressed in together, of fires to cook unappetizing meals of bulgur
wheat usually without even a bit of salt to enliven the taste. The building
reeked of body odor, urine and shit. This is what it smells like when you press
thousands of people together in one compound to help them live and protect each
other just by the sheer mass of their bodies.
I walked in there, scared but also feeling rather
fearless. I would not be repulsed. I would not flinch. I didn’t know what I was
going to see on this, my first trip to a displacement camp, but these were
human beings and they needed their human dignity restored. And I was going to
do it.
Liberian society is dominated by extremely
pushy men that have negotiated some power as “block leaders” or “chiefs” who
you have to meet with and have long convoluted conversations with before you
can get to the business at hand of trying to talk to the women and assess their
needs. I was impatient but I knew I had to put on my best face, try not to be
irritated, anxious, and pushy right back at them. Although I had only been in
the country for a few weeks, I already knew that Liberians liked to “palaver”
and formalities could take forever. As a cultural anthropologist, I knew the
importance of the formalities but I hated them!
I sat smiling and writing in my notebook, listening
to their grievances – there’s not enough food, you should pay us to ask us
these questions… John had told me that these are common complaints. Ask any
refugee or IDP anywhere in the world how things are going and they will tell
you immediately – “they don’t give us enough food”. And it would be pathetic
and sad if it weren’t for the old Catskills joke that immediately popped into
my head. “the food – its so bad. Yes, and not enough of it.” Of course, I’m
sympathetic – I struggle with my own food issues. I am not that picky about
WHAT I eat but I am about how its prepared. I like spices. I like tasty foods.
I wish I was a gourmet chef. But I’m not. I’m a Southerner so I travel with
Tabasco sauce and instant grits so that I can always have SOMETHING I can eat
if things get bad.
I look at the sacks of donated bulgur wheat
with the irritating USAID logo printed on it – two white hands stretched out
shaking with the phrase “a gift from the American people” printed alongside and
idly watch the Liberian women cooking it over open fires inside the hallways, adding
some small dried fish from the nearby market to flavor it. They are already
complaining – why can’t we have rice? Don’t the Americans know that Liberians
like rice? I do wonder about the bulgur wheat. Why are American farmers growing
bulgur? For export to Lebanon to make innumerable tabouli salads? Has the
bottom dropped out of the tabouli market?
I am sitting on a little plastic stool – the
best seat in the house. The Africans really know how to treat their guests. The
best food, the nicest seat, formal, treating you with importance. John is
talking, explaining our mission, getting their permission. I sit smiling and
nodding and waiting. I’m finally going to talk to some refugees and my real
life is about to begin. I fidget and try to pay attention as the old men talk
and talk. I doodle – anxious to get out of this smelly hot room and try to
ignore the sweat running down my back and soaking through my underwear. I’m
from the South but I can’t handle living without air conditioning. There is no
air here in the inner offices of these men and it is stifling.
These Liberians have almost nothing but they
hold themselves with dignity. The old men reminding you to shake hands
properly, bringing out old ledger books, and carefully preserved papers that
have been handed out to them by humanitarian agencies in the past. Listing
their grievances carefully and formally and looking at me as if there was
something I could do about it.
I’m ashamed at my impatience with them but
I’m also excited.
….
The little kids gather around me. I’ve got a
digital camera and am snapping photos and showing them their photos and they
are laughing and laughing. The boys strike crazy macho poses- holding up
stringy arms and popping out their nonexistent biceps. “White womaaa, White
womaa – over here over here” they sing to me. The girls with their braided hair
giggle and giggle and smile shyly and reach up to hold my hands. The boys fight
and roll around and push against each other trying to get closer to me and my
magic camera. Half-naked little babies stagger up to me, their faces smeared
with snot and eyes round. They gape in horror at my ghastly pale skin and
freakish red hair and begin screaming and crying. Their mothers laugh and scoop
them up to reassure them. Most of the children have only one item of clothing –
undies or a shirt but not both. The bloated stomachs and skinny legs of the
girls make them seem like heavily pregnant women – they already act mature and
maternal – scolding the little babies, bouncing them on their hips, and even
carrying some of them around wrapped on their backs.
John and I walk slowly through the corridors
- he’s talking on his mobile to our driver and I’m entertaining the children.
Our bright blue t-shirts sort us into our tribe – we wear a uniform so the
Liberians can tell us apart. Today, we’re not the only aid workers in the
stadium – ICRC is unloading some supplies off a truck out front. They are
incredibly organized and their Liberian staff wear small white tunics with the
iconic red cross over their polo shirts. The boxes are sorted, the Liberian
elders are overseeing the delivery and the only other white person in the
stadium is solemnly shaking hands in the complicated handshakes that Liberians
prefer.
The white man turns to watch us walk by. He’s
young - a thin European man – I can tell by his haircut and by the way he wears
his jeans – much thinner and tighter than an American man would ever be
comfortable with. French, I think – looking at the stubble. He’s unrumpled and
fresh in his blue button up shirt opened just a bit too low to be formal. He
looks like he just stepped out of an air –conditioned office somehow even
though the truck standing next to him is covered in dust and mud. I feel sweaty and frizzy just looking at him.
Self-consciously, I throw my chin up a bit and try to project confidence and
authority. “He can tell I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, “ I think – “He
thinks I’m a fraud.”
“Sebastian!” John waves towards him, tucking
his phone between his shoulder and ear and pointing at me, “this is our
newbie.” I smile. Sebastian nods and smiles politely. The smile doesn’t quite
reach his eyes. John keeps talking into his mobile and we keep walking with our
retinue of Liberian children plucking at my shirt and begging for my attention.
I am aware of Sebastian’s eyes following us and I feel silly and frivolous and
young. What an arrogant Frenchman –
typical cheese-eating surrender monkey. Oh great- now I’m channeling Donald
Rumsfeld. What has Liberia done to me? I
hear him laughing at something one of the Liberians said and my bravado
crumbles - I have the sensation that I am a small child pretending to be an
adult in high heels.
