I’m Home!

I’m back home and I’ve compiled my photos of Camp EDGE 2010 into a slideshow. I’ll be making a presentation about my experience in Liberia on the evening of Sunday, December 5, 2010 at FUMC Mansfield.

The Library Project

I spent the last week of my time in Ganta preparing the library for the arrival of the shipment of books donated by the members and friends of First United Methodist Church of Mansfield. I sweet-talked a couple of the boys into helping me clean the place up. We pulled out all of the bookshelves, unearthing giant termite piles, wasps, and the biggest scorpion I’ve ever seen in person. The library has windows on all sides that stay open for ventilation, so it’s kind of at the mercy of nature. We bleached the shelves, reorganized, and labeled everything. We also repainted the walls, fixed the ceiling fan, and repaired the light fixtures. The place is in pretty good shape now and the donated books should arrive in the next couple of months. The principal is interviewing for a librarian now, so hopefully there will be someone in place to make sure it remains a clean place for the kids to study. The school also wants to implement a system so that kids can check out books to take home!

Vacation Bible School

Camp EDGE has ended and I have just 2 weeks left before I make the journey home.  I have mixed feelings about going – I’m ready to get back to the comforts of home (I want to swim in a vat of anti-itch cream), but I can already tell that I’ll want to return to Liberia someday. With camp coming to a close, the goodbyes have already started and there are going to be quite a few people here that I will miss dearly.

I’m spending this week volunteering at my church’s Vacation Bible School and working to renovate the school library in the afternoons. I’ve grown to love my church here. I’m co-leading the small group for 11-12 year olds and loving it! The concept of VBS is the same here as it is back home; the execution, however, is quite different. There isn’t much in the way of planning ahead (I think it’s just not a big part of their culture), so things like making photocopies in advance or compiling arts and craft materials in advance aren’t really happening. But we make do and have fun!

Parade Through Town

Today all of the campers and teachers paraded through town to commemorate the end of camp. I wasn’t feeling too hot, but I markched halfway across town with them and even beat the bass drum! We used our large cmp banner that the art teacher made and filed behind in two lines. Counselor Jenevie went between the lines leading songs and chants on the megaphone. Gongehluo and Clinton played the drums and Harry and Lee took turns blowing the vuvuzela (which I can’t stand). It started raining on us and I was running a low fever, so I dropped out of formation and headed home early to rest. I got some great pictures of the parade though and I can’t wait to share them with you!

Gun Safety

At the end of today’s field trip, I was hanging out on the side of a remote bush road with some of the campers, waiting for our truck to arrive. Some bush hunters were walking around. I had strolled down the path a bit to stretch my legs. When I heard shouting, I looked back and saw that two hunters were in an argument. They were yelling at each other in Mano and using their rifles to shove at one another’s chests. They were right next to my campers, between me and my kids.  I was shocked that someone would be so reckless with a gun amidst a group of children. And then one of them men begain twirling and flailing his rusty old rifle around in some sort of demonstration of machismo.

I hollered at my kids to move away, further down the road, but they wouldn’t mind me.  There were several adults with them and I realized that I really couldn’t serve any purpose by walking towards the gunfight, so instead I walked away from the fight (you’re welcome, dad), heading down the road behind me where the principal and a few other teachers were. When I saw our truck, I waved them down and explained, with anger in my voice, that there were men with guns fighting each other near the children.

They started laughing at me, saying that it was probably just bush hunters in an argument.

Exactly!! Isn’t it wrong for men to fight recklessly with their guns amidst children??

The men had cooled off and walked away by the time I got back to the kids.

The teasing since has been relentless:

“Haha. Sis Emily, you scared of gun?”

“Sis Emily, why you scared of single barrell rifle? Haha.”

This incident has been quite a startling setback for me. It’s elucidated some of my least favorite aspects of the culture. And mostly, it’s made me feel isolated that my friends here do not have an understanding of how I have viewed this incident through my own cultural context.

I have anger weighing on my chest. I’m angry that this is acceptable to them. I’m angry at a number of things, but can’t quite pinpoint who or what exactly has angered me.

Fieldtrip to Gbedin Waterfall

Today we took a fieldtrip to Gbedin Waterfall. It’s about an hour’s drive from Ganta and we had to take two trips because we had just two trucks in which to haul the kids. So, there was a good deal of sitting around and waiting involved in our day.

The campers had so much fun at the waterfall. I had understood that we were just hiking and picnicing at the waterfall and that swimming wasn’t allowed since most of our campers can’t swim or are poor swimmers. But apparently it was a swimming trip and everyone but me brought swim clothes. It was fun (though stressful) to watch nonetheless. One of the counselors brought a sound system so everyone could groove and shake their booties to all the popular Nigerian hip hop songs.

After spending the morning at the waterfall, we decided to hike up in the hills to a smaller waterfall. However, the base of the hiking trail was an hour roundtrip away and we had to take three trips (yes, that’s 2.5 hours of waiting time). When we began hiking, I had so much fun. The trail was steep (like, really, really steep), but I had a burst of pride-based energy when I made it to the top faster than a few of the much-more-fit-than-me Liberian teenagers. There were plenty of kids who wanted to help me up the path by holding my hands.

When the path got deep into the forest I was blissfully happy. The bio-diversity is awesome and the jungle was dark and cool.

Fighting

It seems like people fight a lot here. Heated argument seems like a pretty typical way of dealing with conflict, including: yelling, fingers in faces, shoving, and threatening. To me, these things signal serious conflict. But here, it can be a relatively minor dispute.

Campers and counselors havefrequently taken any camp management or cafeteria grievances out on me like this. At first, I thought they all must hate me to talk to me in this manner that I interpreted as so disrespectful. But now I’m learning that it’s pretty standard here. (I’m not drawing a conclusion that this is the case for the broader population – just the people I’ve encountered).

I’m sometimes called upon to be the mediator in argument (as the “Camp Coordinator” they keep saying). I usually have no understanding of the context of the disputes. Even if I do understand, sometimes I will tell them that I don’t understand, just to get out of it. I really can’t handle the yelling (esp. since it’s usually multiple people yelling at once). It’s just not normal for me. My typical response is to ask them, “What would Jesus do?” or just say, “I don’t understand. Talk to someone else.”

Capture the Flag

This morning I accidentally started the third Liberian civil war, aka “Capture the Flag – Camp EDGE 2010″.

The rules had to be interpreted and repeated a few times before the kids understood. When I explained that myself and three other counselors would serve as the police – expelling campers who fought or cheated – my interpreter began explaining us as the UN. The name stuck and a couple of the counselors even made UNMIL (United Nations Mission in Liberia) badges for their hats.

One of the teams devised some excellent strategies: marking their palms to help in identifying one another, drawing a map, and sending a reconnosaince mission.

The kids were having so much fun taunting each other at the boundary line. That was until one of the team leaders got overly-confident and got himself captured. I think that really contributed to the stalemate we got into. After an hour of very fun play, the game sort of spiraled into a mayhem of people accusing each other of cheating and lying and there were unconfirmed rumors of a ceasefire. As a “UN Peacekeeper”, I couldn’t keep up with all of the violations (including physical fighting).

In the end we did declare a ceasefire and concluded without a winner. Afterwards I even held my own version of the “Truth and Reconciliation Committee” by corralling all of the players into the gym and asking if anyone needed to apologize to anyone. (After all, our theme of the week had been forgiveness). I set the example by apologizing to a group of kids that I had yelled at during the game. The kids were confused as to why anyone would apologize for yelling at kids. I passed around a frisbee to the person who was allowed to speak, one at a time. I told them they could apologize for lying to a friend, for fighting with someone, etc. It went quite well actually – a whole week’s worth of grievances were aired.

In all, I know the kids had fun, but I think all of the battlefield analogies hit a little too close to home. Hopefully the game was more therapeutic and traumatic.

Would You Sell Your Mother’s Body?

I was riding in the car yesterday and listening to Radio Nimba, our county’s radio station. The afternoon host posed a discussion question for listeners to call in and share their opinions. The daily discussion topic was, “Would you sell your mother’s body?”

Here’s the scenario.

You are about to get on a flight to the United States of America when your mother dies. You don’t have time to bury her or you will miss your flight. You don’t have any other family. You can’t afford to miss the flight. Some witches come by and offer to purchase her body from you (they use body parts for rituals). So, would you sell your mother’s dead body?

The callers were hysterical. Their answers ranged from:

“It depends on whether she had been a good mother.”

“I would ask neighbors to bury her.”

“Maybe God would bless me with more money if I bury her correctly.”

Scavenger Hunt

I did it. I accomplished my most primary objective for Camp EDGE…I hosted a scavenger hunt!

It was difficult to communicate the concept at first, but once they got the hang of it, the loved it. Actually, the hardest part was just collecting everyone to begin playing. It took half an hour of campers and counselors strolling into the gym before we could start. Kids kept asking me, “Are we playing football?” And I would say, “No, we’re playing a new game. A scavenger hunt.” And they would say, “Oh. Football?”

I had to have an interpreter repeat everything I said when explaining the rules. It seemed like he was saying exactly, what I had just said, but when he said it the kids understood.

The campers were divided into 5 groups and their first task was to put all of their group members’ first names in alphabetical order. I’m pretty sure that every single group alphabetized by last name on their first attempt. Alphabetization and listening to instructions are both important skills I wanted to tie in.

When they finished with that, they received a clue that said to go to the principal’s house and present her with a gift of a palm leaf fashioned into a cross. The first group to receive the clue stared at it a while before asking me, “So, we should go now?”  “Yes! It’s a race against the other teams! Go quickly!”

After that initial kickstart, the race was on! They had to sing a song to a counselor, fetch a bucket of water for the cooks, and list 20 books of the Bible.

Their final challenge was to purchase a hard-boiled egg and select one team member to walk with it in a spoon in his/her mouth to the finish line. This is when things went nuts. There were two teams neck and neck for the lead and two other teams at their heels. After receiving the clue, the first two teams darted, so fast, to the hospital where there are usually plenty of street vendors selling hard-boiled eggs. Then they descended upon the counselor at the starting line in utter mayhem, ripping spoons from the hands of their own team members, bodies clashing, and fights about who should walk the egg. It wasn’t exactly the loving, church camp-style ending I had in mind, but there’s no doubt that the kids absolutely loved it. When there was dissension about which team won, I declared it a tie.

It was a very successful scavenger hunt and only one little boy tried to steal my spoon by hiding it in his pants.