Ariel in Africa

You're not going to faint, are you?

2011-07-08T08:02:00.000-07:00

Back in the fall, I shadowed at a women’s health clinic that provided abortions. The idea was to follow a patient through the whole process—the initial counseling, the paper work, the procedure itself, and then the recovery. As I was about to enter the procedure room, the obstetrician turned to me. “You’re not going to faint, are you?” I didn’t think so, I reassured her. But then lo and behold, barely half way through the eight-minute procedure, I did just that. A nurse had to put me in the recovery room with the patients, and the girl whose abortion I had just witnessed inquired with concern about how I was doing when we both came to. No matter that she was the one who had actually had surgery (and pretty emotional surgery at that)—she was worried about the idiot med student who couldn’t keep it together during her D&C.

Needless to say, I left the clinic feeling pretty dejected and at least a little embarrassed. Is this going to happen every time, I wondered? What if I’ve gotten all the way to med school only to find out that I can’t handle blood? That I can’t handle medicine? The feelings of self-doubt plagued me the whole way home.

As the year progressed, my concerns regarding my fainting tendency faded as I found other things to worry about, such as whether I would pass biochem. But today’s events brought these fears roaring back. The day began with a phone call from Dr. Claude. He had a cesarean section. Would I like to assist? Clearly, I jumped at the chance. This time, the mother was doing fine. The baby was in the breach position, however, which is why the cesarean was necessary.

As Dr. Claude began the procedure, I was engrossed. Just like the other night, he pointed out each layer of tissue as he cut through it. Some layers he sliced through daintily, but at other points, he would make a small incision and the rest we had to pull open with our hands. I felt like we were tearing our patient open, but the technique, called blunt dissection, allows the incision to open along the natural lines of the tissue, making for better healing.

Finally, we got to the delivery. Because he was in breach, the first part of the baby to emerge was his butt. It took less than a minute for Dr. Claude to extricate the rest of him. Happily, our patient now had a healthy baby boy.

Not so happily, however, I start feeling a little dizzy. I try to shake it off. Please, this cannot be happening again, I think to myself. But it is. I’m going to pass out. Trying to keep my composure, I tell Dr. Claude that I’m going to have to sit down. A minute or two pass by, and I start to feel myself losing consciousness. I need to lie down in order not to pass out completely. In a last ditch effort to retain consciousness and avoid a scene, I stumble out of the chair, out of the operating room, and towards a door. As my consciousness dissipates, all I can make out is what appears to be light on the other side of the door, and I’m desperate to get outside where I can breathe. As I escape through the doors, however, I realize that they do not lead outside at all. Rather, I have exited onto a ward of post-op patients. In other words, a delirious muzungu lady, with streaks of blood all over her gloves and scrubs, has just catapulted herself into a room full of recovering patients. Before I have time to realize any of this, however, a hand grabs me and pulls me back out, guiding me to a stretcher onto which I collapse. I only broke onto the post-op ward for a moment, but I can just imagine how it looked to those who saw. If I weren’t so out of it, I would be horrified.

Eventually, however, I start to feel better and Dr. Claude finishes the surgery. But the feelings of self-doubt return. I want to deliver babies, do c-sections, perform abortions. How am I ever going to be able to do any of this if I pass out every time I see a surgery??? Dr. Claude offers some words of comfort, but I am not reassured.

As the day progresses, pretty much everyone hears about what happened. Each time it comes up, I cringe. But slowly, it starts to get better. As it turns out, everyone seems to have a story about passing out in the OR. Our medical interpreter fainted at his first cesarean, and a doctor from the Brigham tells me that she has lots of surgeon and obstetrician friends who did as well. Perhaps more comically (or disturbingly, depending how you look at it), one of the nurses tells me about a kid he went to school with who was handed a severed limb during their first time observing an amputation. Not surprisingly, he, too, got dizzy and passed out.

Though my friends and coworkers do a good job of cheering me up with their stories and assurances that many doctors were once fainters, I can’t help but still feel insecure. It doesn’t help that everyone’s story involves the person in question making it through their second cesarean. What if I don’t? What if I’m that girl who always faints? It’s not a fate that bodes well for the rest of medical school, not to mention life as a physician…

So when Dr. Claude called me again this afternoon with news of yet another cesarean section, it was with no small amount of trepidation that I headed to the OR. I chugged some water on my way there and downed the last of my stash of Goldfish snacks in preparation. “Are you going to faint again?” our medical interpreter teases me. He’s being good-natured, but the question hangs over me like a dark cloud. I don’t know what I’ll do if I faint again.

As we begin the procedure, I try all sorts of strategies to keep from passing out. If I keep my legs moving, I tell myself, I will increase my venous return, which will increase my cardiac output, and I won’t faint. I can thank physiology class for this idea, but I’m pretty sure that the only effect it had was making me look like I desperately had to pee. Other strategies I try include: breathing deeply (not that helpful since the operating room smells of bodily fluids), looking away from the surgical field at strategic moments (the Brigham physician recommended this one, but Dr. Claude catches me and thinks I’m not paying attention), and keeping my knees bent at all times (helpful but looks super awkward and adds to the impression that I’m a five year-old in need of a bathroom).

In the end, however, something must have worked because I didn’t faint. That’s right. I made it through my second cesarean section fully upright and conscious, just like the many fabled doctors cited by my colleagues earlier today. As Dr. Claude placed his final sutures, a sense of euphoria enveloped me. I did it! I’m not the girl who faints anymore! I can be a doctor!

Okay, so maybe one successful cesarean observation does not necessarily mean I’m destined for greatness in the OR, but making it through my second live cesarean section without losing consciousness still feels pretty good. Now I just have to make it through #3…

My First C-Section

2011-06-22T12:25:00.000-07:00

I did my first cesarean section today. The girl was already dead, as was her child. I say girl because she was young, just 21 years old. The story we heard at the hospital was that her mother was constantly berating her, unmarried and pregnant. So this morning, she poisoned herself. Her mother found her, at that point still alive but unconscious. She rushed her to the health center, but it was too late. The girl didn’t make it.
*****
Just a few days ago, a doctor I am working with here in Rwanda mentioned that I might be able to scrub in on a c-section at some point this summer. Interested as I am in maternal and child health, I couldn’t think of any surgery I would rather see. Though I got to assist with a number of births during my time as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Mali, I have never seen a c-section. Nor have I seen any major surgery, for that matter. In medical school, we don’t start clinical rotations until our third year, and I have only just finished my first. I spent the past year in lecture and lab, not in the hospital. Thinking about the possibility of scrubbing in on a surgery, I could barely contain my excitement.
*****
The moment is not what I imagined, however. Not that I spent all that much time imagining what my first c-section would be like, but I always assumed the mother would be alive. Instead, my patient is dead. I ask about the baby, and it too is dead. A double suicide.

As we walk towards the hospital, Dr. Claude, the Rwandan physician called to perform the cesarean, tells me I will do the procedure. I assume he is joking. It only dawns on me that he is not when we are all dressed in our scrubs and he places the special surgeon’s gloves in front of me to put on.

I slip my hands into the gloves, and a wave of panic swells inside of me. I try to breathe in and out slowly to calm my anxiety, and make sure to keep my knees bent to avoid fainting. When I imagined my first surgery, I pictured myself standing unobtrusively in the background as the surgeons did the cutting. At most, I thought I would pass a scalpel, not wield one myself.

The weight of the moment feels overwhelming. It is nothing like anatomy lab, where our patients were old, long dead, and had willingly donated their bodies for the learning of students. Looking at this girl lying there on the stretcher, her body covered but for her protruding belly, I don’t know if I can do it. I don’t know if I can actually take a scalpel to her body and cut into her so recently alive flesh.

I hesitate. “Dr. Claude, you know I’ve never done this before?”

He looks at me and smiles. Of course he knows. The cesarean is post-mortem, so I cannot make a mistake, he reassures me. All I can do is learn.

Before I begin, though, I ask to know her name. I don’t want to see her just as a body, but as a person who once had hopes and dreams like any of us. Someone quickly fetches her chart. Anne-Marie. I repeat the name to myself. Who was she? I wonder. How did her life end this way? What loneliness and desperation did she feel? Standing over her body with my scalpel, the whole experience feels so unbearably sad.

I make the first cut. Adrenaline courses through me, and everything feels surreal. Deeper and deeper I go, as Dr. Claude points out each layer of flesh. After the skin comes the subcutaneous tissue. Then the rectus sheath and the abdominal muscles. Finally, the uterus. Anatomy that I couldn’t keep straight just the other day, but I know I won’t forget it now.

As my scalpel pierces the placenta, the amniotic fluid begins streaming out. Anne-Marie’s belly now laid open, Dr. Claude instructs me to remove the baby. I stick my hand in, but I am too dainty, somehow afraid that I might injure something. Neither mother nor child can feel any pain now, however. Dr. Claude shows me how to take hold of the baby properly, and I try again. As my hand slides over its face, I realize that the baby is nearly full-term. Anne-Marie’s belly seemed so small, I expected the baby to be tiny. Somehow, knowing that the baby is big enough to have survived makes the whole thing feel even more heartbreaking.

After I clamp and cut the umbilical cord, Dr. Claude places the baby in a cardboard box on the floor. “It’s just so sad,” I keep repeating, and the doctors nod. There is no time for mourning, however, as Dr. Claude turns back to sew up Anne-Marie’s belly. He patiently shows me how to do the first suture, and then I am on my own for the rest. When I finally finish, I take a step back to breathe. I can sense Dr. Claude packing up behind me, and I am left with the realization that it is over. We have done our piece, and now the relatives will come to claim the bodies. I peel back the cloth covering Anne-Marie’s face to look at her one last time. Alla munna-en, a Fulbe benediction from Mali. God waits for us all. Turning to walk out, I hope that whatever her soul’s fate, it is now free.

Liberia to Mali by road

2010-07-23T14:55:00.000-07:00

After nearly ten months in Liberia, I finally finished my fellowship with the IRC in June. I said goodbye with a weekend at the beach outside of Monrovia, followed by a party thrown by my office in Voinjama. I decided to attend the latter with my hair braided to match my friend and godchild’s mom Beatrice—a style that looks great on her but is not so kind to a pasty-scalped white girl like myself. Nevertheless, my new hair attracted an endless stream of compliments from my coworkers, all of whom lamented that I hadn’t started braiding my hair sooner.

The next morning, I started my overland trek through Liberia and Guinea to Mali. Most of my coworkers and fellow expats looked at me like I was slightly crazy when I told them about my plan—a lone American girl hitching rides through three countries. But I had plenty of experience traveling in West Africa from my Peace Corps days. And besides, I was excited about the potential for a little adventure. So as soon as the sun was up, my friend Sidiki came to pick me up on his moto, and off we went.

The “quick ride” to the border naturally turned out to take a bit more time than I expected. It was only perhaps 50 kilometers to Macenta, Guinea, but with all the border checkpoints, it took us more than two hours. About a quarter of this time was probably spent at the Liberian side of the border, where the immigration officials tried to convince me to give them 20 dollars to stamp both my passports (I have dual citizenship, and I had stupidly gotten my Guinean visa in my British passport while my Liberian visa was in my American one). Thinking there was no way they could be asking me for twenty American dollars, I gave them twenty Liberian dollars. As this is equivalent to about 20 cents, they laughed in my face. But with a few bats of my eyes and some Liberian English, they eventually let me through.

Once in Macenta, Sidiki invited me to meet his family. Like many Mandingos (the ethnic group to which Sidiki belongs), he thought of himself as equally Guinean and Liberian and moved freely back and forth across the border. He worked for the IRC in Voinjama, but he had built his home in Macenta and so spent the weekends there with his wife and children. Though I was already running late and anxious to find a car to take me to Kankan in Upper Guinea, I knew that it would be rude of me not to say hello. In West African culture, greeting friends and family wherever you meet them is essential, and being in a hurry is never an acceptable excuse for ditching out.

Once we sat down with Sidiki’s relatives, it became clear to me that making it to Kankan before nightfall was not going to be as easy as I had hoped. I had missed the direct cars that leave early in the morning, and taking an afternoon car was likely to result in me spending the night on the road. Instead, Sidiki’s relatives suggested that I find a moto taxi to take me.

Since there are few things I love more in life than riding on the back of a moto, the breeze running through my hair as the changing landscape passes me by, this option instantly appealed to me. I was pretty sure Kankan was far, but if the Guineans were telling me this was a good plan, I was willing to take their word for it. It was their country, so they surely knew what was best. So while Sidiki’s wife made me lunch (FYI fresh avocado with condensed milk and sugar tastes just as terrible as it sounds, no matter what Sidiki’s wife assured me), he went out and found someone trustworthy to take me to Kankan.

When we finally set off, I asked the moto driver how far Kankan actually was. Though he couldn’t give me an exact estimate, it was immediately clear from his body language that I was in for a long ride. And as it was now well past noon, I knew that reaching Kankan before dark was no longer a realistic expectation. But there was no turning back at this point, and as I said, I love moto rides, so I pushed to the back of my mind any concerns about the distance and let myself enjoy the ride.
The first two hours on the road were beautiful, with nothing but lush, green forest surrounding us as our moto climbed and twisted up and down the small mountains outside of Macenta. Needless to say, I was a little bit in love. As time wore on, however, and my butt became increasingly sore from sitting for so long, I began to wonder if I hadn’t let my love of motos and desire for adventure cloud my judgment given that I most certainly would be sitting on this moto well into the night. And that was assuming all went well (that is, no rainstorms, breakdowns or accidents—all of which had a relatively high likelihood of taking place).

However, just at the point where I thought my butt had lost all sensation, a Land Rover appeared out of nowhere and flagged us down. The only car we’d seen on the road since Macenta, I realized just how insane my plan had been when I saw the look on the driver’s face as I explained to him where I was going. It turns out Kankan is about 280 kilometers from Macenta, a trip that takes 10-12 hours in a car. In other words, I wasn’t getting there any time soon on my friend’s puttering moto. The men (employees of a mining company) offered to take me with them to the next major town and help me find a ride on to Kankan. Recognizing this as the more sane option, I bid adieu to my moto taxi and hopped in the car. I instantly missed feeling the fresh air on my face, but my ass was certainly glad I made the switch.

Not surprisingly, we didn’t reach the next town until dusk, so there were no more cars heading to Kankan until the morning. In a show of kindness and generosity that is typical of West Africans, the miners set me up with a place to stay for the night. The driver then invited me for dinner with his family, gave me a tour of the town, and took me back to the taxi depot in the morning. Refusing to take no for an answer, he even paid for my ticket to Kankan. All of this, and not even the slightest hint that he wanted anything in return. Time and time again in my travels in West Africa, I have encountered people who go out of their way to take care of me in this way, and it never ceases to amaze me. It’s why even as a single female, I always feel relatively safe when I travel. In this part of West Africa, there may be frustrations and setbacks to my plans, but I can almost always rely on the kindness of strangers to get me where I need to be in the end.

From the town of Kerouane where I spent the night, it took me about six hours to get to Kankan, further evidence that my plan to ride all the way there from the Liberian border on a moto was borderline insane. From there, I had to change cars one more time before making it to the Mali border and on to Bamako. But I made it eventually, and though my route turned out differently than I had planned, looking back, I wouldn’t have done anything differently. I got to see new regions of Liberia and Guinea, and the people I met along the way reminded me once again why I love this part of the world so much. And naturally, as soon as I set foot in Mali, I felt like I was home.

A New Namesake: Harriet...err...Ariel Flomo

2010-04-16T16:19:00.000-07:00

At long last, I finally arrived back to Voinjama last week. On the ride up from Monrovia, I had a million plans in my head. People to see and check up on, errands to run. So when I woke up Saturday morning, I got dressed and prepared myself for a full day of visiting all the friends and coworkers I hadn’t seen since before the riots engulfed Voinjama last month. Just as I was about to step out the door, however, my phone rang. It was my friend and IRC guard Moibah. “AMINATA!” he cried into the phone. “Aminata, I got baby! I got baby!” (Aminata is my Malian name.) Not having had any idea that Moibah’s wife was pregnant (not to mention that Moibah was even old enough to be married – he looks about 17), I was nevertheless very excited to know that he was now a proud, first-time parent. I hurried out of the house and off we went, Moibah all the while shouting the news to neighbors and regaling me with stories of how he had always known it would be a girl.

Upon arriving at Moibah’s in-laws, I was greeted with a flurry of excitement. As it turned out, Moibah’s wife was the younger sister of Sylvester, another IRC guard that I have befriended and who I lend my computer to daily so that he can practice his typing. Like Moibah, he’s earnest and hopeful despite having lived through some terrible times. When he tells me about the things he’s been through (the killing of his siblings, surviving for months in the bush, escaping to Guinea), I try to listen and respond in a way that helps him, but never having experienced a war, I usually find myself overwhelmed and at a loss for words. What do you say to someone who has witnessed so much suffering?

After being greeted by Sylvester's family, they ushered me into the room where his sister sat with the baby. The room was chock full of female friends and relatives, all cooing over the new baby and congratulating the parents. People came and went, but having had so few opportunities to feel part of a family here in Liberia, I stayed on, chatting and acting as official event photographer. As the morning wore on, the conversation turned to the baby’s name. Seemingly without a moment's hesitation, Moibah made the announcement. “She will be named Aminata. Aminata Flomo.”

Not having seen this coming at all, I have to say that my initial reaction was to say no. I mean, Moibah’s wife had never even met me until today. Sure, I may be friends with her husband and siblings, but that doesn’t mean she should have to name her child after me—and her first child at that. “Don’t you think you two should talk this over?” I tried asking Moibah. “Maybe Beatrice has a name in mind?” At this, I tried to give Moibah’s wife my best ‘Please don’t feel like you need to name your baby after a complete stranger, I promise not to be offended’ smile. But the family was having none of it. Between Moibah and the half dozen in-laws present, the child was going to be named Aminata. And that was that.

Still feeling pretty uncomfortable with the whole thing, I nevertheless accepted the honor and decided the best thing to do in the situation was to befriend Beatrice, the baby’s mother. Maybe then she would decide it wasn’t so bad to have her baby named after me, and I would feel less guilty about the fact that a child she might have liked to name after her mother or aunt (or anyone she had known for more than an hour) was now named after a random white girl she'd never even seen before today.

After a while of hanging out, I began to notice something. Beatrice was calling the baby Harriet. Oh, I thought! She wanted to name the baby Harriet, and so now she is calling her that even though her husband has said that the child’s official name is Aminata. Relieved, I decided to show my support for the decision by calling the baby Harriet too.

I guess I should backtrack at this point in the story to say that earlier on, Moibah had called me outside to record the particulars of the new baby’s birth for her birth certificate. Remembering that my real name is not actually Aminata, he insisted that I tell him my American name and that I write this on the paper along with the name Aminata. Following this, he decided that for the baby to truly be my namesake, she needed to be called Ariel rather than Aminata.

As it turns out, Moibah had explained this all to his wife and the rest of the family. Hence, unbeknownst to me, everyone had started calling the baby Ariel. But since Ariel is not exactly the most common name here in Liberia, nobody really understood how to pronounce it. Some said Carius; some said Awel. And Beatrice, of course, said Harriet.

Apparently then, this was an instance of my insecurities getting the better of me. Beatrice was not, it turned out, secretly hating me for usurping her child’s name. Rather, she seemed to like the novelty of it and giggled each time her friends or relatives butchered its pronunciation. And while I can’t say that by the end of the day everyone was able to say Ariel correctly, I can tell you that Beatrice no longer seems to be calling her baby Harriet.

The rest of the weekend was spent celebrating. We borrowed an old school boom box and played Hip Life music until late in the day. Per usual, I got schooled in dancing by five year-olds. (Indeed, it brought me back to that fateful day in Mali when my female friends threw up their hands in despair and said “Eh, Aminata, why did you never tell us you can’t dance???) And the palm wine flowed like…well…like wine.

Looking back, I know I can’t compare the naming of Moibah’s daughter after me with my friend Koumba’s decision to give her child my name in Mali. While Moibah and I are good friends, and I know he appreciates me taking the time to get to know him and his family while most other expats hang out only with each other, what Koumba and I went through together (the death of one child, Koumba's own near death, and the eventual birth of my namesake there in Mali) connected us on a much deeper level. Nevertheless, the naming of baby Ariel has created a tie between myself and the Flomo family—and that in turn ties me more to Liberia. Eight months in, it’s starting to feel a little like home.

Ghana: A Love Affair

2010-04-11T04:27:00.000-07:00

I am having a love affair. Not of the sort that involves illicit sex in seedy hotel rooms. No, I am not having an affair with a man at all. I am having an affair with a place. Ghana.

It all started when my friend Meghan picked me up from the airport and took me back to the dorm where she (a third-year medical student on a research fellowship) lives with medical residents from across English-speaking Africa. Within minutes of being shown around and introduced to Meghan’s hallmates (smart, young African women) and her research (pediatric HIV), my mind had taken off. Images of myself in three years time, hanging out with all my cool female African friends doing groundbreaking research in Ghana danced before my eyes. Granted, by this time, I’ll be thirty and probably far better off actually completing my medical degree then lighting off to Africa once again, but whatever, I was running with the fantasy.

From Meghan’s dorm, it was off to a party in Accra, where I was further amazed by people having real conversations about interesting things!!! Coming from Monrovia, where the mood tends to be along the lines of ‘God-I-hate-this-fucking-shithole-country-let’s-get-wasted,’ it was refreshing to be in a place where people actually seemed to be positive about what they were doing. That said, I’m sure that at least part of my rosy impression of Accra expat life was due to a ‘grass is always greener’ effect, so my enthusiasm should probably be taken with a grain of salt.

That was night #1.

In comparison to night #2, however, night #1 was a mere flirtation. Night #2 was full on infatuation (if not quite true love). Having woken up late and hung over from night #1, I impressed myself by rallying and getting on a tro-tro (a minibus bush taxi) to the town of Atimpoku, a small town nextled near the southernmost tip of Lake Volta, in eastern Ghana near the border with Togo. If my visit to Ghana in 2006 hadn’t already let me in on the fact that transport in Ghana is nearly effortless in comparison with most other West African countries, my trip to Atimpoku (and pretty much everywhere else in Ghana) brought the message home. As one of the first passengers to buy a ticket, I prepared for 1-3 hours of waiting for it to fill, pretty much the standard waiting time in such a situation everywhere else in the region. Yet, to my great surprise, not twenty minutes later, the tro-tro was full and off we went. And—as if I weren’t already star struck enough—we only sat three people per row! Only one person per seat! Exactly as the original carmaker intended! Holy shit, where am I, I thought? In practically every other West African country I’ve traveled in, the driver would never think of hitting the road without at least 4-5 people crammed in like sardines. Not so in Ghana, my friend. I had so much room, I barely knew what to do with myself.

After about two hours of dust-free riding down a decent paved road, I arrived in Atimpoku. Honestly, there are not even words to describe how I felt upon seeing the lake. The tropical Lago di Cuomo was how I described it in my mind. Even veiled in the haze of the Harmattan (yearly winds that blow sand down from the Sahara and leave the skies of West Africa overcast for weeks), the place was stunning. There’s no way I can swim, though, I thought to myself. This place can’t be that perfect. But no, wrong again, Ariel. As it turns out, Lake Volta is actually so clean as to be a major source of drinking water for a large part of Ghana, not to mention crocodile and hippo-free. Oh – and did I mention there were no mosquitos? Yeah. A-m-a-z-i-n-g.

So there I was, swimming and floating away, starring at the surrounding hills, when my imagination again began to take over. What if I just opened a little health center right there overlooking the lake? I thought to myself. I could even have a floating clinic or boat ambulance to reach communities living on remote corners of the lake! It would be the perfect marrying of my desire to provide quality health care in Africa with my desire to live by a swimmable body of water. Seriously, I thought I could be in love.

From Atimpoku, I went on to the Avatime Hills, where I got my ass kicked (albeit enjoyably) hiking with incredibly fit Ghanaians. Then on to Wli Waterfalls, purportedly the highest in West Africa. Just as quickly as I fell for Lake Volta, I fell for the town of Wli. Squeezed up against the border with Togo, the landscape was green and hilly and seemed more remote (a plus in my book) than Atimpoku. And as it boasted yet another swimmable body of water (in this case, two pristine waterfall pools), I had a hard time deciding which place I loved more. Indeed, traveling around Ghana was like dating locations. Which one would woo me most successfully? Do I want a peaceful mountain lake, or a waterfall in the woods? Eenie meenie minie moe…

But alas, even as I swam and indulged in my imagined Ghanaian future, I knew it was just an affair. Ghana was too easy, too perfect. For love, I need to be pushed and challenged, beaten and inspired. Mali gave me that, and two years out, I still haven’t moved on. So while Ghana was a wonderful vacation, filled with swimmable bodies of water, scenic hills and seemingly effortless public transport, I know it is not where I will end up in the end. Whether I will end up back in Mali, or whether I will eventually fall in love with some place else, only time will tell. But in the meantime, I'm enjoying my affair...

Hello, Baby - Welcome to the World

2010-03-19T10:16:00.000-07:00

When I accepted a Princeton in Africa fellowship as a grants intern with the IRC in Liberia a year ago, I had high hopes for my return to West Africa. Dreadfully nostalgic for my time as a Peace Corps Volunteer—a time in which (don’t laugh, Ginsus) I felt like every day was meaningful, interesting and pushed me to my limits—I told myself that I had to get back to Africa. So what if I’m not really interested in grant writing or donor reporting? Even if my job is somewhat mundane and tedious during the day, the time I spend out of the office getting to know the culture and people of Liberia will make it all worth it. Or at least, so I thought.

Six months in, I realize that I may have been a *teensy* bit optimistic in my expectations. Stuck working in an office all day long, in charge of such stimulating tasks as filing grants and ensuring consistency of font sizes in reports for our donors, I have often wondered to myself whether taking this job was really worth it.

But then there are days like this one where I get to see or do things that teach me something about myself and about life, and I remember what I came here for. The day began several Saturdays ago with me tagging along with an IRC surgeon on his rounds at our hospital in the town of Sanniquellie. As is the general rule with most African hospitals, the air was heavy with the scent of sick people and wounds festering in the heat. Dr. Sahlu and I began traveling around the wards, checking in on the patients. There was a ten year-old in the throes of tetanus seizures, a fifteen year-old with an abscess that had eaten her entire left leg, an eight year-old whose teeth were knocked in when his brother’s machete slipped while chopping wood. It was a depressing scene, and one that brought me back to my time in Mali—a time which was defined by an intense desire to stop people’s suffering on the one hand with a feeling of complete and utter helplessness to do so on the other. As I felt the usual rush of tears, I tried for a moment to channel Dr. Yang from Grey’s Anatomy—she would think this was cool, not sad. But for better or worse, I have never been able to steel myself against the sight of people suffering, so I failed to see anything thrilling about the cases before me.

After Dr. Sahlu completed his rounds, his work for the day was done. I decided to stay behind, however, and take advantage of the opportunity to spend some more time in the hospital. I headed to the malnutrition ward to check on a friend I had made earlier in the day, whose two year-old daughter Fanta was suffering from acute kwashiorkor (a form of protein-deficiency malnutrition where the child is so bloated that he or she often looks fat to the untrained eye). When I entered the malnutrition ward, however, I found no sign of my new friend or any hospital staff. The room was empty except for Fanta, who lay alone on her hospital bed. With a tube up her nose and too weak to move, the little girl just lay there, her frightened eyes following me as I came to sit down next to her. “I ba wa na sisan,” I say in an attempt to explain to her in Malinke that her mother will be back soon. Really, though, I have no idea where her mother and everyone else has disappeared to and can not help but wonder how long they have been gone and Fanta lying here all alone in the world. I stick my pointer finger in her tiny hand, and she slowly closes her fist around it. Not sure what to do to make the little girl feel safer and less in pain, I decide to sing her a song—a decision, I might add, that is completely out of character for someone who is so tone deaf that she even lip-synchs in the shower. Yet, from “Twinkle, twinkle, little star,” to “I’m leavin’ on a jet plane,” I sang pretty much every lullaby or soothing song I could think of until Fanta’s mother and a nurse finally reappeared. Whether my attempt at singing really did anything to comfort Fanta, I will never know—but I always feel it is better to try.

With Fanta being looked after again, I moved on to the maternity ward, where Dr. Sahlu had left instructions with Martha, the midwife in charge, to show me around and let me help out with any deliveries. After about an hour of idly chatting and playing with newborns, an ambulance arrived with a woman in labor. All of a sudden, I found myself crammed into the delivery room with Martha, the woman in labor and her mother. Since I had helped out with deliveries at the health center I worked at in Mali (I was in charge of things like fetching instruments, providing a hand to squeeze and helping lift women onto and off of the delivery bed), and given that privacy does not really exist in most African hospitals, neither the scene nor my presence in it felt strange to me. Where this experience started to diverge from previous births I’ve witnessed was when Martha looked at me and instructed: “Put on some gloves.” Unsure where this was going, I nevertheless did as told and put on a pair of gloves. Martha then giddily shoved me up in front of the woman in labor, explaining how I should insert my hand inside her to feel the baby’s head and the placenta, which was torn. I have to admit, in this moment, I was feeling totally unqualified to be inserting my hand inside a pregnant woman’s vagina, but Martha and the others smiled expectantly. This was how Martha and the rest of the midwives at the hospital had learned to deliver babies, and it was how all the midwives I worked with in Mali had learned. So I followed suit. With Martha standing over my shoulder and explaining what to feel for, I moved my hand around the baby’s head and felt the tear in Anita’s placenta. The whole experience lasted less than a minute, but it was incredible. And while I still don’t see myself becoming an obstetrician one day, the experience did make me excited about learning to deliver babies on my own one day.

Shortly thereafter, baby John emerged. “Hello, Baby,” Martha said as she wiped him off and wrapped him in a cloth. “Welcome to the world.” In the maternity ward, Anita’s mother, friends and family couldn’t stop hugging me, Martha and each other. With everyone so joyful, I couldn’t help but again feel a contrast between this moment and those I experienced in Mali. Whether it was because Peulh culture eschews strong expressions of emotion, or because even a successful delivery was far from a guarantee that the child would survive, or for some other reason that escaped me during the nearly three years I was there, I cannot remember ever witnessing such effusive happiness and thankfulness following a child’s birth in Mali. I have no reason to believe that Peulh women love or value their children less than the Liberian women on the maternity ward this day, but the contrast in their reactions was striking and I could not help but wonder why. Perhaps it was due to cultural differences, perhaps geographic (the women in the hospital were city women and not rural women as in my community in Mali), or perhaps it was just this particular group of Liberian women that were so ecstatic. Regardless of the reasons, it was yet another moment where I wished I had an anthropologist’s eye and was therefore better able to understand variations in culture and their significance to health.

In the end, this day was one of the best days I have spent here in Liberia. Though I saw an incredible amount of pain and suffering, and though I felt helpless and upset for much of the day, there was also joy. Moreover, each of the moments I witnessed was raw and meaningful and made me feel the tiniest bit less ignorant of the realities of life in Liberia. Now safely back in the comfortable and sanitized life of an NGO worker where I mainly see Liberia through the window of my air-conditioned office or a fancy white Land Rover, I carry these rare moments with me. And no matter how uninspired I am at the office most days, I am grateful for all that Liberia has taught me and know that I am lucky to be here for sure.

Still Waters Run Deep

2010-02-27T09:38:00.000-08:00

It’s a Tuesday morning and I’m making the nine-hour drive to Monrovia to meet up with my boss and have some R&R time after two months in the field. As I stare out the window and contemplate the lives of the people around me, I am optimistic. With the rains over and the heat increasing by the day, new houses and buildings are being erected everywhere. Construction, I think to myself, is a sign of progress—a sign that Liberians feel safe and hopeful enough to invest themselves again in their country.

Three days later, my town was in flames. Several people were killed in the violence—their bodies still not swept from the streets some 24 hours later—and more are injured. Most of my Liberian friends fled to the bush, to Monrovia, or to Guinea. Only the arrival of UN riot police was able to stop the violence—a sign that does not bode well for the country given that it will have to take over responsibility for the country’s security when the UN pulls out next year.

Nobody seems sure exactly how things started, but the following trajectory seems to be generally accepted: A young woman in a nearby town was killed, and the predominantly Loma community (Lomas are Christian) blamed the murder on the local Mandingo population (Mandingos are Muslim). They set fire to the local mosque in anger. In retaliation, the Mandingos in my town (the county capital) decided to set fire to the churches, market and houses of government officials in Voinjama.

When I first began to hear reports of the violence yesterday morning, I imagined that people were exaggerating. But when I called my friend Siya, I could hear the panic in her voice as she and her children made their way out of town. “The war has come back,” she cried before we got cut off. As for my Muslim friends, their phones were all off. I assume that they fled to nearby Guinea, but I have no way of knowing.

How could this have happened, I find myself wondering? How did the landscape of my town change so quickly? Over the past six months, I have never felt unsafe in Voinjama, largely because I am friendly and as a result well-liked and looked out for by the Liberians I interact with on my daily escapades into town. On many occasions, I have found myself wondering whether it’s possible that I am friends with anyone that took part in the war, which lasted from 1989 to 2003 and left the country almost entirely destroyed. Realistically speaking, I knew this must be the case; and yet, I still found it nearly impossible to imagine anyone I chatted and joked with in town to be capable of real violence. Following yesterday’s events, everything feels all the more surreal. Was I always too gullible and naïve to see the tensions lying below the surface in Voinjama, or is it just too easy for a small number of angry people to wreak havoc on the peaceful majority?

Safely closeted away in Monrovia and relying on the accounts of others to help me put together an understanding of yesterday’s violence, too much remains unknown and unexplained for me to have any answers. Only once I am able to return to Voinjama and see for myself the destruction and hear from my friends firsthand what happened will I be able to begin to understand how this all came about. I am hopeful that even then, I will still be able to hold on to some of the optimism I felt leaving town on Tuesday. But I am rattled and not without doubt.

To pee or not to pee

2010-02-15T02:45:00.000-08:00

For the past several days, I have been working at an IRC field office in the town of Zorzor, about two hours from Voinjama, where I am based. The office is pretty small, and there are no expat staff stationed here, so normally when I come, I have the office guest house to myself. Not so last night, however, as a workshop with the health team brought into town a host of my bosses, including IRC’s country director (the big boss lady, as we say here), my supervisor Raphael, and two project coordinators. Added on to their group was a British photographer on a short contract with IRC. As IRC’s guest house in Zorzor boasts only four rooms, a six-person guest list was slightly problematic. Luckily for me, however, my Peace Corps friends offered to put me up for the night. So before all the head honchos arrived yesterday morning, I packed up my things and prepared to head to my friend Kelly’s as soon as the office closed.

To my great misfortune, however, my supervisor turned out to be far less enthusiastic about my plan to sleep elsewhere than I had anticipated. Though it was an arrangement that would have been to everyone’s benefit, he insisted that I stay in the IRC compound, citing the fact that my friend’s compound was not “secure” (read: no guards or barbed wire fencing) and that for liability reasons, IRC could not allow me to stay elsewhere. Instead, he decided that the four men in the group could divide into pairs, leaving the nicest room for the country director and me with the room without a bathroom. Since the country director and I are both women, I could just share her bathroom, Raphael rationalized. Of course. Great idea, boss. Except for the fact that country director’s bathroom is inside her room, not to mention the fact that she is socially awkward and intimidating and we have only exchanged about ten words ever on non-work-related topics. I mean, I’m not particularly shy, but I am nevertheless not exactly comfortable with the idea of having to wake my boss up in the middle of the night if I need to pee.

Faced with Raphael’s intransigence on this point, however, I had no other option but to take the room and embark upon Mission: Hold Pee All Night. I did all I could over the course of the evening to prepare for this mission, making sure to pee in the bushes on my way back from the bar in town and refusing to imbibe any further liquids afterwards. By the time bedtime rolled around, I felt confident that my bladder was pee-free.

But alas, my efforts were for naught. At 1:30am, I awoke needing to pee. Shit. Despite having spent hundreds of hours on buses in Africa and Central America training myself not to pee, there was no way I was going to make it until the morning. I started evaluating my options. My room shared a back patio with the room next door, which opened onto some grass. I could use this door to slip outside and pee, but the door screeches every time it opens and the walls of the guest house are paper thin. My second option was a bucket. I had heard of women in Mali having a “pee bucket” that they used at night in order to avoid going outside. I could pee in the bucket in the broken bathroom and then wash it with disinfectant the next morning. No one would be the wiser. Yet, peeing in a bucket was almost certain to make a lot of noise, and how awkward would it be if any of my numerous bosses heard me peeing into a bucket inside my room? So I decided to go with option #1, peeing outside.

I climbed out of my mosquito net and tried to quietly open the door. Just as I had feared, however, the door screeched and dragged over the floor. After momentarily panicking at the thought of my coworkers finding me out, or alternatively thinking that the opening door was sign that I was sneaking in some local suitor, I continued to pry the door open until the space was just wide enough for me to squeeze through. Once outside, I tried to pee as slowly and quietly as possible so that anyone who had heard the door open would not subsequently hear me peeing, but as I did so, a new fear dawned on me—snakes. Liberia boasts snakes a-plenty (including one that Liberians call “the seven seconds”—after it bites you, you count to seven and then you die), and the gardeners have killed several since I’ve been here. So now, on top of my fears that at any minute my boss is going to walk outside and see me peeing in the office yard, I am imagining my imminent death by snake bite to my nether regions and the subsequent discovery of my body in the morning, keeled over with panties ‘round the ankles in plain view of the IRC guest house and office. Sweet.

Thankfully for me, after what seemed like an eternity of peeing (since I was trying to be so quiet—no easy task, let me tell you), I emerged from the yard unbitten and relieved. And since I didn’t notice any strange looks in the morning, hopefully my secret, like my ass, is safe.

Holiday Adventures

2010-01-06T03:23:00.000-08:00

Since I couldn’t go home for the holidays, my friend Shahrzad decided to come to Liberia to visit me (and admittedly, to get her Africa fix since she's an Africa junkie like myself). After nearly having her trip cancelled due to the blizzard that hit the east coast last month, Shahrzad finally arrived in Monrovia. To welcome her to Liberia, I took her out for some typical Liberian cuisine: sushi. No, sushi is not actually a Liberian delicacy – but surprisingly enough, Monrovia boasts two separate sushi restaurants, one of which actually has really amazing sushi. And since West Africa isn’t known for its food, this seemed like a good option for her first evening in town.

For Christmas, we joined up with a former work colleague and some Peace Corps Response Volunteers and traveled to Robertsport, a beach town about two hours west of Monrovia. There, we set up camp under a tree on the beach and basked in the sun and the waves for three days. Despite having been in Liberia for three months, this was my first time swimming in the ocean because the water around Monrovia is pretty dirty. The water at Robertsport was amazing, however – not to mention that there were no monster waves (a la Ghana) threatening to drag me out to sea. The only down side to this part of the trip was the dinner on Christmas. Having spent all day in the sun, and having eaten some really delicious barracuda on Christmas Eve, we were salivating by the time dinner rolled around. To our chagrin, we arrived at the beach restaurant to find that there was not actually any dinner offered, leaving us to feast on lunch leftovers of Pringles and canned hummus. Never fear, though – what we weren’t able to spend on food, we were able to spend on booze, so the night was a success nonetheless.

From Robertsport, we traveled back to Monrovia, where we proceeded to buy up half of the fabric in the market. We also visited the Ducor Hotel, which was once upon a time the most luxurious hotel in the country. It served as a headquarters for Charles Taylor’s rebels during the war, however, and as a result, is a bombed out shell of a building today. Climbing to the top floor where there used to be a rooftop restaurant provided the most stunning views of Monrovia I’ve seen – you could see the entire city practically. The beauty of the view contrasted starkly, however, with the looted floors and shattered walls of the hotel. Nevertheless, none of was surprised to hear that Qaddafi has bought up the property and plans to eventually renovate and reopen the hotel.

The next stop on our holiday tour of Liberia was Buchanan, located about three hours east of Monrovia. Also on the coast, Buchanan’s beaches were framed with coconut palms and the surf was mild enough to allow for hours of swimming. We stayed with a Peace Corps Response Volunteer named Suzannah while we were there, along with several other PCRVs. In addition to checking out the beaches, Suzannah introduced us to the fine night life of Buchanan, including brightly colored gas stations that double as bars. We spent New Year’s Eve dancing our asses off to Liberian music (really music from Ghana and Nigeria, but I think of it as Liberian since it’s what everyone listens to here) and taking endless photos of ourselves making funny faces. Needless to say, I was pretty excited to continue pretending that I am still a PCV and on more than one occasion caught myself referring to myself as a Peace Corps Volunteer like the rest of the group. If only…

There was no sleeping in to appease the requisite New Year’s Day hangover, however, due to the fact that the church across the road from Suzannah’s house was having a raucous three-day revival, involving painfully screeching singing that went into the wee hours of the morning and then started again at sunrise. Since sleeping wasn’t an option, the group of us surprised ourselves by actually being ready for the next stage of the trip by our scheduled departure time of 10am. However, as everyone who has ever been to West Africa knows, nothing ever happens on time. So while we were all ready to be picked up at 10am, the taxi driver who had promised to pick us up at that time to take us to the next stop on our holiday itinerary (the town of Gbarnga, supposedly only 3-4 hours away) was naturally nowhere to be seen. After about two hours of waiting, the taxi finally pulled up and all seven of us climbed in (two with the driver in front, four in the middle, one in the trunk). Unfortunately, the weight of seven people turned out to be too much for the poor taxi, and it could not even get out of Suzannah’s compound. So we all disembarked, helped push the taxi a short ways, and then piled back in. A few short minutes later, however, a police officer pulled us over for having too many people in the taxi (Liberians pile way more people than seven into a taxi), meaning that two members of the group had to climb out and secretly hitch a ride on some nearby motos in order to meet back up with the car and climb back in on the outskirts of town.

Once we got all seven of us back in the car and onto the road to Gbarnga, things started to go more smoothly. Our friend Johnny busted out his speakers and we probably had a good two hours of road trip sing-along time. Yet, what is an African adventure without several break downs in the middle of nowhere? So the dance party to 80s favorites was briefly cut short due to tire bust #1, although we were able to pick up where we left off once it was replaced with the spare. However, since we didn’t have a second spare, this made tire bust #2 a bit more problematic, especially since we were on a rarely traveled back road whose villages were far too small to boast tire shops. Hence, we all climbed out of the car yet again to sit for several hours while our driver went in search of someone able to fix our busted spare. This would probably have tried my patience if I were by myself, but with Shahrzad and the Peace Corps folks, we were able to entertain ourselves by playing various games with the village kids, eating peanuts and getting our hair braided. Around 5pm, our driver arrived back with the repaired tire in tow, and off we went again.

This time, the tire lasted less than an hour. So we pulled over in yet another village. Before the seven of us could tumble out of the car, however, we were swarmed by a mass of very drunken and animated village people. It was New Year’s Day, and literally the entire village was drunk except the small children. It was honestly a sight like no other that I have experienced in Africa thus far. At one point, Shahrzad went so far as to give the drunkest one in the group a sobriety test. Though the woman kept crying that she was “JUST HAPPY FOR 2010” (that is to say, high on life, not alcohol), she failed miserably at touching her finger to her nose, and even her friends in the village could not help but laugh at the sight of her trying. We ended up staying in the drunk village for another three hours or so while our taxi driver again went in search of a tire. Thankfully, the village chief (probably the only sober one) turned up after an hour and more or less saved us from the drunken mayhem that had surrounded us since our arrival. He also fed us, which was much appreciated after a long day of nothing but peanuts and bread. (BTW, opossum does NOT taste like chicken.) By the time our driver finally returned with yet another tire, it was well into the evening. Though we debated just sleeping in the village for the night, we ultimately decided that we’d rather try our luck on the road once again. This may not have been the best decision given the several near-accidents that ensued, but miraculously we made it to Gbarnga in the end (and after only 12 hours of travel!).

After spending the night in Gbarnga, we set off the next day for the last stop on our itinerary: the Kpatawee waterfalls. Less than an hour outside the town, the waterfalls were beautiful and (most importantly) swimmable. We picked up a jug of palm wine on the way and spent the morning sitting in the falls and diving into the pools. The most entertaining moment was probably when Shahrzad tried to climb through the waterfall from where three of us had been nestled behind the water peering out. The water pressure from above was too much, pulling her bathing suit bottom down so that she mooned me and another friend still hiding behind the waterfall while simultaneously pulling down her top so that she flashed the rest of the group, including several Liberians, from the front. Quite a show. Less entertaining for me was when I took my final swig of palm wine and spat out what I thought was a small seed. It was actually a small worm. Needless to say, that was the last of the palm wine for me.

After the waterfalls, Shahrzad and I said goodbye to the Peace Corps folks and made our way back to Monrovia. We spent our last day sipping white wine on a rooftop bar in downtown Monrovia playing Scrabble. All in all, the vacation was a blast. I was so happy to have Shahrzad come visit and to have the chance to see so much of Liberia – particularly parts of the country that I don’t get to visit for work. It was definitely a holiday to remember.

Unsettling Conversations

2009-12-09T11:36:00.000-08:00

In the short time I have been in Liberia, I have found myself privy to conversations and divulgences unlike anything I have been exposed to in previous travels. My first night out in Monrovia, for instance, I found myself having drinks with a group of Lebanese guys, an Israeli, a Liberian-American woman, and a coworker. After a few beers and a couple hookahs, the conversation turned to conflict diamonds. “Who controls the trade in conflict diamonds?” the Israeli, who works for a mining company, asked the group. "The Israelis or the Lebanese?" What ensued was a more or less gentlemanly debate--with one side arguing that the Israelis were in control because most of the diamonds are sent there to be cut, and the other side arguing in favor of the Lebanese because they were on the ground and had more control over the actual mines. Where the hell am I, I wondered to myself, to be sitting amongst people who can discuss an issue like conflict diamonds (the profits from which fueled the recent wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia) as if they were discussing something benign like mangoes or cell phones? When I was a student in South Africa, I remember trying to conduct research on conflict diamonds for a paper; I was just a lowly student—not remotely threatening—and yet, absolutely no one I called to interview would speak to me, not even to deny their involvement. Now here I was, in Liberia less than a week, and people were chatting away.

A few weeks later, I was at a bar in my town, having a drink with some Liberian coworkers and my Kenyan housemate after work. The conversation turned to the question of development since the end of Liberia’s fourteen-year civil war. How was President Johnson-Sirleaf doing after five years of relative peace? My coworkers represented a variety of viewpoints, some believing the president was doing well and that Liberia was moving forward, and others frustrated with the slow pace of change and development in the country. The discussion naturally touched on the past as well as the present, and it was interesting to hear people’s different perceptions of Liberia’s recent history—what had caused the war and how it had affected the country. Though I don’t know my coworkers’ politics, I have always operated under the assumption that not all of them were on the same side during the conflict. All the same, I found myself taken aback to hear a coworker state that, in fact, the best president Liberia had ever had was Charles Taylor, arguing that he was the only Liberian leader to do anything for the people. I mean, sure, I arrived in Liberia well aware that many people in Liberia supported Taylor (he famously ran for president on the slogan, “He killed my ma, he killed my pa, but I will vote for him”). But knowing this beforehand did not make it any less surreal to hear someone that I am actually friends with openly admit to supporting him.

The latest and perhaps most unsettling conversation took place at a recent dinner party held by a UN police officer working in Voinjama. The party was a mix of Pakistanis working for the UN and NGOs, a couple UN police from elsewhere in the world, two American friends and myself. As the conversation turned to the violence going on in Pakistan, one of the UN police made reference to employing something called “the third degree” in their work. As it turns out, “the third degree” refers to torture, which two of the Pakistani police officers at the party openly supported. Again, I found myself suddenly out of my element, wondering how I had ended up at a dinner party with men who admitted to having tortured detainees in their custody? They were all seemingly normal guys, courteous and friendly—the image jarred with that of interrogators willing to beat detainees, keep them awake for days on end, or question them while they lie on a bed of ice for eight hours (practices they mentioned when I asked what they meant by “torture”). And yet, no matter how they had seemed in our previous social interactions, they were admitting right before us to having employed just such measures. I did not know how to react. I didn’t want to smile and nod along with their statements as if I thought torture was no big deal, but I also wanted to hear what rationale they gave for their actions. Thousands of police and military personnel around the world engage in various forms of torture, but few people would open up about it with the candor of the Pakistanis sitting next to me. Moreover, in that context, I found myself incapable of really comprehending what they were telling me—the reality in front of me (nice, normal guys) seemed much more salient than the reality which they were describing (police commanders extracting confessions by force). Unsure how I should respond to their arguments, I kept relatively quiet, listening to what the men had to say about why they felt torture to be justified in their line of work, particularly given the threats and constraints they faced working in a country where the violence keeps getting worse and worse, and allowing my housemate Isabelle to take the lead in explaining why we nevertheless see torture as both immoral and ineffective. She didn’t succeed in changing their minds, and they certainly didn’t change ours, but it was a relatively honest conversation at least.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a neat and tidy way to wrap up this posting as I’m still sorting out my own feelings about each of these conversations. On the one hand, I feel uncomfortable socializing with people who have engaged in actions that I believe to be wrong; yet I also want to understand what pushes people to make these choices. For the time being, I think I’m just trying to listen to what people have to say and take things case by case, but I'm still pretty conflicted about the best way to react.

"My titty is for me"

2009-12-07T06:21:00.000-08:00

November 25th through December 10th marked the international ‘16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence’ devoted to raising awareness about violence against women around the world. Though such campaigns tend to go by unnoticed by those of us back in America, they are usually a big deal for NGOs in the developing world, who often use the time to launch advocacy and community involvement campaigns.

This is certainly the case in Liberia, and I was happy to get back from my trip home to the U.S. in time to attend the last day’s events, including a parade around my town organized by IRC’s Gender-Based Violence program. Having no idea what to expect for the day, I was nevertheless excited for something new—particularly something that would get me out of the office. The morning of the parade, I donned my “complet” that I had made for Siya’s wedding (my friend calls this my “African lady outfit”) and set out for the town square. There, I met up with my coworkers and the forty or so community members that had come out for the parade. Everyone received bandanas inscribed with IRC’s logo and “16 days of activism,” which most of the girls wore as kerchiefs over their hair, and I naturally followed suit.

After about an hour of waiting for everyone to arrive and get organized, my coworkers let us know that we were finally ready to begin. Two teenage girls with megaphones then started to lead a song about not beating your wife, and the parade started to move. After only a few minutes of the first song, however, the parade leaders decided to switch to something much more upbeat. As we moved in two single-file lines, everyone started dancing as they marched. I couldn’t quite make out the words at first, so I tried to listen harder. After some momentary disbelief, I burst out laughing. The words to the chant were as follows:

My titty, my titty is for me – Don’t touch it!
My tumba (aka butt), my tumba is for me – Don’t touch it!

After a dozen or so rounds of these lines, the chant leaders added something along the lines of “If you see my titty, it is not for you, you must pass by it,” and then “If you see my titty, and you want it, you must ask for it.”

Needless to say, this was pretty much the most entertaining song I have ever heard in my life. It was also obviously the crowd’s favorite, most of whom not only chanted along but also enthusiastically shook or gestured to the body part referenced in each line, quickly followed by a finger wagging to passersby as we came to the “Don’t touch it” line.

In addition to laughing at the song’s hilarious lyrics, I could not help but feel a personal connection with the words. This was because I was recently the victim of a “titty grab-and-go” of just the sort referenced in the song! While innocently chatting with friends at a recent party hosted by the UN in my town, a Pakistani peacekeeper came up behind me, reached under my arm, and to my great surprise, grabbed one of my breasts. He then quickly continued on his way across the room, in an apparent attempt to pretend it wasn’t him. Since I was not exactly expecting to have some random guy grab my breast out of nowhere, it took me a second to digest what had just taken place, and I stood there for a moment with a rather puzzled look on my face. Unsure whether I should smack the guy or whether I should just let it go, I ultimately decided the situation merited the former. Yet since I was not entirely sure that I wanted to risk a scene, what resulted was a very halfhearted and thus awkward slap that turned out more like a love pat than an angry, this’ll-teach-you-to-grab-my-breast-you-asshole slap. So much for being a bad ass I guess.

Looking back, I am more inclined to laugh at the incident than get upset by it (particularly since the guy wasn’t remotely threatening and actually was pretty pitiful-looking), but since I was not the first woman to suffer a fly by groping by an errant and under-sexed peacekeeper, the UN human rights officer made the commander of the Pakistani battalion have a talk with his men about what constitutes appropriate versus inappropriate behavior around Western women. Now that I have heard the titty song, however, I cannot help but grieve that the captain was not able to use the song’s words of wisdom to get his message across: My titty is for me—Don’t touch it!

A Liberian Wedding

2009-10-26T12:49:00.002-07:00

A few weeks ago, I made a friend named Siah. The encounter went as follows:
Random woman on the road: Hello!
Me: Hello. How are you?
Random woman: Not bad oh. You my friend, right?
Me: Yes, we’re friends.
Woman: What’s your name?
Me: Aminata. What’s yours?
Woman: I’m Siya. (Brief pause.) You know, I’m getting married.
Me: Oh wow. Congratulations.
Woman: You’ll come to my wedding, right?
Me: Sure.

The entire conversation lasted less than five minutes, but nevertheless, Siya showed up at the IRC compound a few days later with wedding invitations, and I assured her that I would be there. The whole experience is pretty indicative of Liberian culture. Though we Americans feel that friendships require time to develop, here in Liberia, it is perfectly normal for someone to greet you on the street, ask for your phone number, and then call you repeatedly just to say hi. All of which is very convenient when you’re a lonely foreigner like myself, wandering around in the hopes that someone will take you in and befriend you.

In preparation for Siah’s wedding, my new housemate Isabelle and I decided to have African outfits made. We bought cloth and chose out designs for my friend Aissata’s husband to sew for us. The morning of the wedding, we donned our new clothes and set out for Mount Camel Baptist Church, unsure exactly what to expect. We arrived to find the church decorated with streamers and balloons, with the added bonus of an altar wrapped in toilet tissue. While waiting for the ceremony to start, Isabelle and I chatted with various guests and also vied for the perfect photo of a toddler with “I [heart] Jesus” barrettes. Then all of a sudden, a large group of women began to congregate outside the church, singing and dancing in celebration of the wedding. For each song, one woman would start out singing, and then after about a minute, the rest of the women would join in. As they sang, everyone danced, and the whole thing lasted at least half an hour, making this certainly the most pre-wedding ceremony fun that I have had.

The wedding itself followed the structure of a typical American wedding, but with a few uniquely Liberian aspects. For one, each of the bridesmaids did a sort of slow dance-walk down the aisle. When the bridesmaid would reach the halfway point, one of the groomsmen would join her (everyone would start cheering at this point), and they would then continue to dance-walk together the rest of the way. A second unique aspect was that more than half of the ceremony was singing. And not the solemn singing of hymns that I have always associated with attending church. These were a sort of ‘boogie hymns’ that had the whole congregation getting down in their pews. Also entertaining was when the groom’s cell phone started to ring in his suit pocket while he and Siah stood at the altar. He then passed the phone to a friend, who then proceeded to hold the cell phone up to the bride and groom’s mouths as they said their vows, presumably so that whoever had called could hear. The ceremony ended with the bride and groom’s kiss, which took place to the wild cheers of the guests. Unfortunately, the first kiss apparently left something to be desired, so the ushers quickly made slight adjustments to the bride’s veil and train, and then the couple kissed a second time, apparently to the satisfaction of the guests and photographers because no third try was deemed necessary.

The wedding was followed by a reception at a nearby banquet hall. The reception was only able to begin, however, once the bride and groom had driven around town in a car decorated with balloons and toilet tissue (nothing out of the ordinary by American standards), followed by the rest of the bridal party zooming around on a pack of motorbikes (slightly less common). The reception itself was far more lavish than either Isabelle or me had expected. Despite there being well over one hundred guests at the wedding, each of us received dinner. Comprised of fried chicken, potato salad, fried rice, and wedding cake, this dinner was pretty amazing if you ask me. We also listened to a series of speeches thanking various guests for their contribution to the wedding. This was all well and good until the groom excitedly told the crowd: “And we also have two white women celebrating with us today!” (As if we didn’t already stick out.) He then invited me and Isabelle up on the stage to tell the story of how Siah and I had met and become friends, which was all very awkward because the only other person deemed important enough to be called on stage was the groom’s mother. All in all, however, the event was a lot of fun and I am looking forward to any future weddings I get to attend while I’m here.

Me with Aissata and her family

2009-10-19T01:35:00.000-07:00

Market Mob

2009-10-18T14:17:00.001-07:00

This past week, I received a new roommate at the IRC guest house named Isabelle and also made friends with a few other recently arrived expats in Voinjama. Since they all arrived after me, I decided to invite them to meet Aissata, the Peulh woman I befriended, and walk around town. Since Aissata’s husband is a tailor, we decided to go shopping for lapas (aka pagnes or sarongs). After wandering around the market for an hour or so, Aissata and I noticed a small crowd around our friend Yoko, a Japanese girl who just started working for the UN here in Voinjama. We walked up to find a man demanding to see Yoko’s identification documents, which she had forgotten in her house. Though the man had an ID card saying he worked for Liberian immigration, he was in plain clothes and extremely belligerent. Thinking he was just a crazy guy, Aissata and I told Yoko just to ignore him and keep walking. Yet the man kept blocking our way, getting angrier and angrier with each moment. Before we knew it, there was a crowd of twenty and then perhaps fifty people around us (most of them women sellers from the market), yelling at the man to leave us alone and trying to help us get away from him. As I slowly pulled Aissata along, he tried to hold her back, eventually shoving her out of the way (she was carrying her four month old daughter on her back at the time). This made me lose my temper, and I started yelling at him to leave my friend alone. In response, he started lashing out incoherently and calling all the women around us “a bunch of African bitches.” All the while, the crowd kept getting larger, with half the people yelling at the man and the other half trying to calm him down so that we could resolve the situation.

In the end, the crowd was able to help us get to Yoko’s car, blocking the man from following us. At this same moment, the UN and Liberian police showed up. They ended up having to give the man who was harassing us safe haven in the police car in order to prevent the mob from beating him. Luckily, we were able to drive away, and the crowd dispersed with the arrival of the police.

Looking back on the afternoon’s events, on the one hand, it was unsettling to see how quickly the mob formed and the situation escalated. On the other hand, however, what struck me most about the incident was how the men and women in the market immediately came to Yoko’s defense and tried their best to help her escape the man’s harassment. Throughout my travels, I have found this willingness to protect and help out strangers characteristic of West African culture, and it is one of the things I appreciate most about living here.

Mission Make Friends: Accomplished

2009-10-15T04:34:00.000-07:00

The first week or two in Voinjama were pretty lonely. I was living by myself in the IRC guesthouse, which is in the same compound as our office. Since most days it would start raining in the late afternoon or early evening, this meant that I would not be able to go into town or walk around anywhere when work ended at 5pm. Instead, all I could do was just walk the ten feet to my room, at which point I would be forced to occupy myself for the next several hours, the sound of the rain magnified by the tin roof in the background, until I could justify going to bed (I decided 8:30pm was perfectly reasonable under the circumstances). Needless to say, when the weekend arrived, I decided to embark upon a mission to salvage my sanity: Mission Make Friends.

My M.O. for this mission was to walk around town greeting people and hoping that someone would invite me to hang out. Though this would never work as a way to meet friends in most parts of America, it works quite well in West Africa since the culture here is very welcoming to outsiders, not to mention that people enjoy the novelty of having a white person for a friend. So naturally it was not too long before I started meeting people and getting invited to sit down and chat.

Eventually, I stumbled upon a Peulh woman with two small children, and based on the fact that 1) she was Peulh, 2) she had a baby, and 3) she seemed slightly broussey (aka she acted like she was from a village rather than a town), I decided pretty much instantaneously that I would make her my friend. (For those of you who don’t know, the Peulhs are the ethnic group I lived with in Mali, although Peulhs from Guinea are pretty different culturally from those in Mali.) Luckily for me, I was successful in my endeavor, so now I hang out with my new friend Aissata Diallo each weekend. Granted, since we speak different Peulh dialects, we only understand about half of what each other are saying most of the time, but the friendship seems to be working out nonetheless.

Mud, mud, and more mud

2009-09-21T10:03:00.001-07:00

On Friday I took my first trip out into the field. My supervisor, a Congolese man named Raphael, needed to meet with someone in the town of Foya, less than 50 miles away. Despite many of the staff members cautioning me that the roads were very bad since the rains, I was excited to be seeing more of the region.

About twenty minutes into our trip, I began to appreciate a bit more my colleagues’ statements about the road conditions. About every half mile or so, the dirt road turned into giant mud trenches. Though luckily we did not get stuck anywhere along our way, the trip took us over four hours. In the dry season, it takes only one.

If the way to Foya was difficult, the way back was far more challenging. Around 5pm, we arrived in the town of Kolahun, the half-way point between Foya and Voinjama. We stopped at the IRC-run hospital to pick up a patient with a ruptured intestine. Since the Kolahun hospital does not have an operating room, we needed to transport the patient with her daughter and a nurse to the larger hospital in Voinjama. We placed a mattress in the back of our land cruiser, and Martina lay down for the ride. While I had cringed at many of the constant bumps and jerks on the way to Foya, the ride felt a million times worse knowing that we had Martina in the back. To be honest, I really do not know how to describe just how bad these roads were and how painful it must have been for Martina, with her intestines already ruptured. I tried to take photos of the mud (I posted a few below), but they really do not do the situation justice at all. At one point, I tried to calculate the longest stretch of flat road, and I couldn’t ever get past twenty seconds. Martina’s daughter was so bumped around and nauseous from the road and car fumes that she threw up intermittently for most of the trip.

In addition to being jerked around as our vehicle navigated through potholes and ditches, eventually we got stuck in the mud. We were only able to get the car out by having half a dozen Liberians rock the car back and forth with all their strength until the front wheel could get enough traction to pull out of the ditch. This took countless tries over a half hour period, and all the while Martina was lying there in the back seat with only her daughter and the nurse able to steady her as the car jerked to and fro. The saga didn’t end here, however. Instead, once we finally got going again, the sky opened up and started to pour, turning the road into a giant muddy soup. Luckily, we did not get stuck again, but the trip back still took several more hours.

As we bobbed along the road, I could not help but wonder about a lot of things. First, as the rain poured down, I wondered how it must have been for people during the war, having fled their homes and villages, to survive in the jungle with no escape from the rain and mud—not to mention all the diseases that came with them. Never having experienced a war myself, I have no idea if it was silly of me to wonder about the rain and to feel like it must have just made everything worse. Maybe the rain was the least of everyone’s problems. But watching it pour down so relentlessly, I couldn’t help but wonder. Second, as I stared at Martina, lying there in the back of the car, surely in terrible pain, I wondered what other horrible experiences she had been through? Did getting jerked around for hours in the back of a land cruiser with her intestines ruptured seem like a minor form of suffering in comparison? Or did she wonder what trick God was playing on her to allow her to survive so much only to have her die in the back of a car because of something so seemingly insignificant as mud? Third, I thought about Mali and the different challenges faced by individuals trying to access health care there and here. In Mali, Malado died for many reasons, but the final cause was the lack of available and affordable transport to get her to a hospital. Though the health district has an ambulance, patients have to pay, and it would have cost about $100. This was an unthinkable amount of money for Malado’s family and well beyond even my means while I was in Senossa (I only had about $30 and there are no ATMs). In contrast, here in Liberia, IRC provides free health care and transport to patients throughout the county. But what good is free transport when the roads are completely impassable? It was horrible sitting for hours in that car knowing that even with all IRC’s funding and four-wheel drive-equipped vehicles, we might not be able to get this woman to an operating table in time to save her life.

In the end, we arrived safely in Voinjama and were able to drop Martina off at the hospital. The doctors intended to operate on that night or in the morning, but I haven't heard yet if she survived. Another patient died in the car on the way to the hospital yesterday because of the roads.

When I was in Monrovia and expats complained about the Liberian government’s priorities, wishing they would “just pave the damn roads already,” I was unmoved; investments in health care and education should come first. But progress in many key areas relies on people and programs being able to get from one place to the other in the country. Although I still don’t think that the roads should be the government’s first priority, I will not be so indifferent the next time someone laments their poor condition or warns me of a long, bumpy day when I am next headed out to the field.

Liberians push our car out of the mud

2009-09-21T09:51:00.000-07:00

2009-09-21T09:28:00.000-07:00

2009-09-21T09:19:00.000-07:00

Red Cross truck stuck in the same spot for over 24 hours

2009-09-21T09:07:00.000-07:00

Red Cross vehicles stuck in the mud

2009-09-21T08:54:00.000-07:00

Arrival in Voinjama

2009-09-18T01:48:00.000-07:00

In Voinjama, I am living in the IRC’s guest house, which is located in the same compound as our offices. The compound is very pretty, with lots of green grass, flowers, trees, and tropical plants. One tree in particular is filled with birds and what seems like a hundred individual nests, although when I asked what kind of birds these were, my coworker merely replied: “Just birds.”

While I am happy to live in such an attractive compound, the downside is living where I work. Since it was pouring rain when I arrived on Tuesday and again the next evening, I did not even leave the compound for my first 48 hours in Voinjama. All I could do was walk down the path to my office and then back to my house in the evening because it was too wet to go into town. This felt a bit like house arrest, and since the Kenyan woman who also has a room in the guest house is away for a conference, it was quite lonely.

Luckily then, when the office closed today, the sun was shining and I was finally able to see the town. As I walked out of the compound and down the red dirt road towards town, my immediate thought was: Oh my god, it is so beautiful! We are in the mountains, so every so often as you walk along, you arrive at an incredible view of the surrounding jungle. Needless to say, I was very excited to finally be wandering about and it took about all my energy not to start jumping up and down like an idiot in front of my coworker, who was showing me around.

Adding to this excitement was my discovery that numerous Peulh families live in my town!!! For those of you who do not know, the Peulhs are the ethnic group with which I lived in Mali and whose language I spoke as a Peace Corps Volunteer. There are many Peulhs that live in Guinea as well, and it seems that some families have moved here since the war and set up shop. Since I seriously love Peulhs, I just about exploded when, while buying some packets of powdered milk and Nescafe, I overheard the saleswoman speaking in Pulaar (the Peulh dialect they speak in Guinea). Naturally, I immediately introduced myself and made friends with the woman and her brother, all the while so excited that an onlooker might have thought that I had just won a million dollars or a free trip to Hawaii. Needless to say, it was a very good day.

Our ride to Voinjama

2009-09-17T15:32:00.000-07:00

The ride from Monrovia to Voinjama

2009-09-17T14:49:00.000-07:00

Photo: Quick snapshot out the car window of the landscape on the way to Voinjama.

After two weeks in Monrovia, I have finally arrived in Voinjama! Voinjama is the capital of Lofa County, and is nestled in the northwestern-most tip of Liberia, just a few kilometers from the country’s borders with Guinea and Sierra Leone.

Though Voinjama is only about 400 kilometers from Monrovia, the trip took eight hours due to bad road conditions. The first half of the trip was not too bad—the driver had to navigate around potholes, but at least the road was paved. The second half of the trip was along a dirt road. Since we are in the midst of rainy season, this meant driving through what often seemed like giant trenches of mud. And while the jump seats in the back of the IRC land rover were more comfortable than the bench seats of a Malian bachée, after eight hours, my bottom was definitely sore.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed the trip because it was the first time I got to see the Liberian countryside. My face was glued to the window the entire ride, and the Liberians sitting with me kept laughing as I tried to take photos even as rained poured into the car. An additional perk of the ride was the soundtrack. Boys II Men, Whitney Houston, Toni Braxton--you name a popular R&B artist from the 1990s, and we probably listened to them. Alternatively, think of any slow song ever played at a middle school dance. Totally cheesy, but I can't say I didn't enjoy it (although don't tell this to the Peace Corps Volunteer I sat next to on the trip because I'm guessing that his hasty decision to put on his headphones meant that he did not feel the same way about the playlist). Regardless, it was with these songs in the background, and with the Liberians next to me occasionally singing along at the chorus, that we tumbled along the road and I got my first peek at Liberia.

First Impressions of Monrovia, Liberia

2009-09-13T12:52:00.000-07:00

Photo: Standing on the beach in Monrovia.

After ten days in Mali, I flew to Monrovia, the capital of Liberia. Since I arrived at night, I went straight from the airport to my hotel room to settle in. When I got to my room, I found the following: a fridge, stove, sink, hot water shower, tv, air conditioner, and wi-fi access. For someone who is used to Peace Corps-style living, this was like walking into a palace.

The next day, I got my first peak of Monrovia on my way to the office. It is a bustling city, full of people selling anything and everything. Particularly interesting have been the street food options. Pigs feet are incredibly popular, along with slices of Spam on toothpicks. There are also tastier treats, such as bananas, fresh grilled fish, and meat pies (like empanadas). Sadly, I seem to have just missed pineapple and mango season, but this gives me something to look forward to next year.

Surprisingly, the temperature here in Monrovia has been pretty cool. We are in the rainy season right now, so the days are usually pretty overcast. While this has made walking around the city a lot more pleasant than it was in the Malian heat, the downside is that it doesn't make for good beach weather. Since Monrovia is on the coast, there are several nice beaches around, and I am excited to go swimming when the days get warmer. Granted, by "swimming," I mean "wading" because the waves are pretty gigantic. And after my near drowning in Ghana (well, I wasn't really that close to drowning, but it was scary nonetheless), I have learned to stay where it is shallow.

Visiting Mali

2009-09-13T09:04:00.000-07:00

After a long flight, I finally arrived in Mali. Since my job with the IRC did not begin until September, I decided to visit Mali (where I was a Peace Corps Volunteer) for ten days before flying to Liberia. Mali is the only place in the world other than Arlington that feels like home to me, so it was good to go back. Very little has changed in the past year and a half, and if it weren’t for running into children who were noticeably taller than when I last saw them, I could have believed that I never left. My “tokara” (someone who is named after you; see photo) had just learned to stand when I left Mali to come back to the U.S.; now she’s running around, getting into trouble, and pestering her mother like any two year old. Since she was too young when I left to remember me, she was pretty shy around me at first (aka she would run away and hide every time she saw me). But after constantly buying her peanuts and other treats, she finally decided I wasn’t so scary and we became friends. I have to say, it was also pretty funny hearing everyone call her “Ariel” or “Wagner.” Since people in my village call me Aminata (my Malian name), I am not used to hearing my American name (which they pronounce “Awah Wanner”) and often got mixed up as to whether people were talking to me or my tokara.

Though the trip was wonderful overall, it was definitely emotional as well. Within about ten minutes of getting to the village where I used to live, I was called to the home of a friend who was sick. I found Malado lying weakly on the floor of her mud hut, her body reduced to a skeleton. Her family didn’t know what was wrong with her but handed me a note from the hospital. The note simply stated that Malado was HIV positive; seeing her, it was clear that she was in the final stages of full blown AIDS. With treatment (provided for free in Mali), Malado might have been able to return to health; but by the time I arrived, she was too sick and weak to make the half-day journey by bachée (a rickety minivan with the seats replaced by planks to fit as many people as possible) to the hospital. For the next four days, all I could do was visit her and bring her food in the hopes that with better nutrition, she might regain enough strength to be able to make the trip. Saying good bye to her the day that I left to catch my flight in Bamako, I had to fight to hold back my tears. I wanted to cry not just for myself for losing a friend but for Malado’s two young daughters who had been a daily staple at my house for the two years I spent in Senossa and for the unfairness of Malado’s entire life and all the factors that contributed to her fate (poverty, a bad marriage, lack of education, poor access to health care).

This said, I do not want to give the impression that Mali is a relentlessly depressing place. Though the country is mired in poverty, the spirit and generosity of Malians are amazing. This is why I enjoyed living there so much and was so happy to go back.

Introduction

2009-09-13T08:52:00.000-07:00

Hello, Friends! I am back in Africa, working with the International Rescue Committee (IRC) for a year while I apply to medical schools. Since I have never been good at sending out email updates detailing what I'm up to, I decided to create this blog. I am not very technologically savvy, nor do I really know anything about blogs, but I figured I'd at least give it a try. So here it goes...