How to escape Liberia in Liberia

The expat community here is huge. Ridiculously huge. That means that it is really easy to go to parties, dinners, events, that are attended only by expats from the US and Europe. In other words, it is quite easy to feel like you are not in Liberia, which is probably the only reason most expats here are able to maintain sanity, including myself. I went to two Thanksgiving events in Monrovia. On Thursday, my roommate Amanda and her coworkers from her company threw a marvelous Thanksgiving dinner. Amy (a rockstar singer/guitarist from Boston who is staying in my apt. for a month) and I were responsible for rolls, apple pie, Liberian pumpkin and fruit salad. It was interesting doing all this cooking without electricity, and the oven being electric. So basically I had to beg our landlord to turn the power on 30 minutes early so that I could bake the rolls and everything else. Anyway, the dinner was fantastic, there was SO much food, 4 turkeys, 8 pies, dressing, cranberry sauce, the works.

The next day, Amy and I were invited to the US Embassy thanksgiving dinner, thrown by the American UNMIL(United Nations Mission in Liberia) military observers, a few of whom I'm friends with. Here's a photo of Chris, John, me, Amy and Geo at the embassy Thanksgiving. The dress I am wearing was originally a long skirt that I bought out of a wheelbarrow in a market in Monrovia, it cost $2 US. I took it to my tailor and after 2 attempts and $4US, it became a pretty cute dress. I was impressed.

church dance party

Last night I went to the final night of the Church C Women's Conference: Daughters of Sarah, Women of Destiny, theme: Be Strong in the Broken Places. It has been going on for 4 nights, and it was pretty similar to the other revivals I've been to, only it was mostly attended by women and primarily addressed women's issues. Women's isses in Liberian Pentecostal circles include: specific demons that women get, ways to be appropriately submissive to your husband, how to control your emotions and not act 'like a crazy person', and how to appear sexually attractive to your husband, but not sexually attractive to other men. And on and on, but gender is a big part of my thesis so I'll leave it at that for now. The reason I'm posting about this conference is because of the incredible DANCING that I got into last night.
Because I am often treated as a VIP, I often end up becoming the center of attention at one point or another during the services. Last night, I was sitting with the choir, prayer warriors and praise team. I know all the songs they sing, and I have no aversion to standing up and dancing near my seat like everyone else does. But last night was different. Last night I was literally dragged to the front of the church to dance in a congo line. On 4 seperate occasions. The congo line wove around the church building a few times, and then we'd head back to the front and I had to follow the actions of the woman in front of me, and whatever complicated movents she was doing with her hankerchief, feet, and butt. At first I was embarrassed, but then it became fun. SO fun. I got really into it, and was sweating so much that my white t-shirt was completely see through- luckily I had thought ahead and worn a tshirt underneath it. After the service, the music continued for 30 minutes and half the church stayed around and continued dancing. This dancing was major. Many of the women gathered around me and taught me how to properly shake my 'bottom', which I can only compare to the raunchiest 50-cent video. There were a few occasions when my bottom was slapped. I did not slap anyone's bottom. I need to work towards that I suppose. There were also a few less scandelous but completely ridiculous dances. For example, at one point 10 of us sat on the ground in a circle with our feet streched out touching one another. Then we would lean over to the right, hit the ground twice, lean to the left, hit the ground twice, and so on. Then the dance leader would get up and we'd be on our knees, crawling in a line, shaking our bottoms and periodically getting on our knees, lifting our hands up and shouting 'Jesus!'. At one point we definitely did a little line-dancing, and that move where there are two lines, you're facing your partner, and you touch hands. Then each couple joins hands and runs under the hands of the line...its hard to describe it but anyone who's done PE square dancing knows what i'm talking about. There was also a lot of freestyle dancing, where women would show me different dance moves that I 'must teach the people in America who cannot dance'. My favourite was when i had to lean over, touch the ground with on hand, put another hand behind my back, and then shake my bottom in the air while singing 'Jesus is working for me, I will not worry-o'. The reverand, his wife and all the other pastor were so impressed- or so I was told by Emmanuel after this dance party had finished- that they told the camera man to focus on me for atleast 15 minutes. I was totally unaware of this, so needless to say I will be purchasing that DVD and it will be the most amazing souvenier ever. I'll do my best to post a clip online when I get to Portugal for xmas. So, friends in the USA and UK, get ready to learn how to shake your ass like a good Christian woman when I see you again.

computer repair

so my computer exploded, basically, a few days ago. all was good, i was plugged into a power source in a restaurant and then the thing just turned off, and hasn't turned on since. its not too big of a deal, because i back everything up like a crazy person. I cannot access a lot of my voice files (interviews, sermons, etc) but I doubt there's anything wrong with the hard drive. Still, it is quite annoying not having a computer available. I told Emmanuel about the problem and he got really upset. I mean, he had to sit down, he had this look on his face like he'd been told he had 2 days to live, and he said, 'Queen, everything we've done in the past month is lost forever'. I ended up consoling him! Anyway, he immediately got to work on finding someone to 'repair' my computer. He brought me a man who owns a stationary shop next door, who has 'fixed laptops' in the past, and showed me his rusty screwdriver set to prove it. I asked him how much he knew about computers, he said, 'oh, everything, i will fix it'. I say, 'ok, so you know what the hard drive is?' He says, 'Yes.' I say, 'You know what the motherboard is' (by the way, i dont really know what the motherboard is, but i don't pretend to). He says, 'Yes.' I say, 'You know what the UFO is?' He says, 'Yes.'
I will not be bringing my computer to him.

The Bible Truck is Coming!

On Saturday I went with CEPC on a ‘evangelical jingle’ as they called it, which is when 3 massive speakers, a generator, a very impressive sound board and 10 Jesus-loving Liberians with flyers stapled to their hats and wearing matching tshirts pile onto the back of a pickup truck decorated with flyers and drive around town, advertising for an upcoming event; the event we were advertising is a Pentecostal women’s conference that will be going on all week. There are about 4 tracks that are played on repeat for the duration of the ride. One is a special recording made for the event, which repeats: ‘Liberia, Liberia, Liberia, conference, conference, conference! Women of destiny, you can be healed in the broken places,’ etc. One is the Rev. D’s own CD, which is available for purchase at any CEPC event, in which he speaks over a pretty catchy tune, saying things like ‘Your demons will be cast out in the name of Jesus, let every stronghold be broken, rashaddadawanadadaada, let the blood of Jesus spill over your life, in Jesus name, rashanandadada’ etc. It is pretty fantastic. The other 2 songs were ‘Mama Liberia’ and ‘I Will Worship Thee’. Sometimes the DJ would speak on the micrppone, saying things like ‘The conference of the century, every woman in Liberia will be there and so will you. Come and be healed, this will be the biggest event in Liberia, ever’ etc. As we drove, we had stacks of flyers that we would hand to people as we drove past; if we were driving too fast then, by God, we would just throw a pile of them into the air and they would scatter around the street. I was amazed at the interest that this truck got. It was LOUD, able to be heard, surely from a kilometre away. And people would run out onto the street to see what was happening, and everyone would put their hands in the air asking for a flyer. We might as well have been handing out money. When the truck stopped, people would swarm around it, begging for a flyer. We would stand up in the bed of the truck and dance. If we threw flyers into the air and they scattered into the street, people would dodge traffic to get one. As taxis drove past the truck, at whatever speed, it would get as close as possible to the truck (don’t mind a car accident, God will protect us) everyone would reach out and I would lean over and hand them a pile of flyers. We drove all over Monrovia and the suburbs. It was SO fun. Even by hour 6 on the back of the truck, when my butt was completely numb from sitting on the edge of the truck bed, my ears were ringing and my forearms were turning a shade of purple because I was in the sun for so long, I was still singing and dancing. At one point we made a stop at the Rev.’s house (very large, well decorated and equipped with all mod-cons and electronics; no comment) to say hello. The music continued as we drank Fanta in the Rev’s living room, and periodically a congo-line would form (is that the right term?), and we would congo through the rev’s house, into his yard, etc. It was a regular dance party, and after the fanta-recharge, we got back into the truck and continued.

How to Cure Malaria in Liberia

E had been really tired lately, and was often complaining that he’d feel really cold, but meanwhile he’d be sweating like he’d just run a marathon. Clearly, he had malaria. So, I convinced him to let me take him to JFK hospital to get a malaria test. He had never been to a doctor in his life, he told me. When we arrived, there were no less than 100 people waiting, then a long line of about 20 people who were trying to register as new patients. The line took about 45 minutes, and all that was accomplished in this line was the production of a hand-written index card with the patient’s name, age, ethnicity and phone number. Then we sat and waited for 30 minutes to be brought to another waiting room, where another 50 or so people sat, waiting. E said ‘Queen, I don’t want to wait’ and I said ‘too bad, we’re waiting’, and he said ‘no, we must know somebody. If I know somebody, we give him sma’ sma’ and then we go in so fast.’ Fair enough, so he got up and spoke to the man responsible for calling patients into different rooms. The man told us that today, E wouldn’t be able to see a doctor until 3 (at this point it was about 11am), but that if we came tomorrow, early, we could see one earlier. So, we got the man’s phone number and left. Next day, the man is able to get E to see the doctor by 11, for a nominal fee of 60LD ($1). The doctor orders a series of lab tests: urine (pepe), blood smear, and skin scraping. I take E to the lab and he looks into the room where they are taking blood from someone. He immediately says, ‘Queen, I feel okay lets go’ and I say, ‘Absolutely not, you’ll be fine’. He repeats this for the duration of the 30 minutes that we waited for his turn. He sits in the chair to have his finger pricked, he screams and then laughs hysterically when it is over. Then the lab tech tells him he has to go buy a razor blade (for the skin sample). E looks horrified, and I try to explain that they are probably just going to scrape his skin a bit with the blade, not cut him. He’s still horrified. We buy a razor blade, then they take him into a room, he’s saying ‘Queen, lets go’. He comes out laughing hysterically again, saying, ‘Ah, its not bad!’ All good. Then they give him a cup. He holds it and says, shocked, ‘I pepe in the cup?’ He laughs hysterically. After all that, we wait for the results. By now it is about 3pm. The results come back and he has parasites and malaria. We go back to the doctor, wait a bit, and she prescribes him malaria treatment and anti-parasite medicine. We go to the hospital pharmacy, wait some more, and by 4 we have his medicine. We’ve also paid, in total (including bribes, to greatly expedite this process, which I didn’t want to do but E insisted on) about 600 LD ($10 USD), which is a hell of a lot of money; E said he would never pay that much of his own money, and he didn’t know of many people that would. Fair enough.
Immediately after this, we go to Church C for band practice (I will be playing guitar in the church band – they gave me an acoustic guitar to take home and practice with, so cool).Church C , on weekdays, does deliverance for anyone who turns up to the office. They have to wait maybe 15 minutes, and then they go into a room with a Pastor, prayer warriors and a Bible. First, the pastor talks to them about their symptoms and risk factors. (Symptoms might include pain, barrenness, depression, , fatigue, infections, tumors, marital problems, financial loss; risk factors include treatments by medicine men, encounters with Islam, family members who practiced traditional African religion, drinking alcohol, tattoos, amulets) They are prayed over very intensely, hands are laid on them, oil might be applied to their head, and the demon is battled with and ultimately expelled. After the expellation, the patient is the ‘follow-up’ in which the patient is advised about ways to avoid being afflicted again (avoid the demonic influences, pray constantly, go to church, make offerings). This whole process can last 10 minutes to a few hours, depending on the ailment. When its all over, the patient come out, ‘healed’, having made an offering of maybe 20LD (33 cents). I can’t help but compare this procedure with JFK Hospital, where people wait, wait, wait, pay a load of money, and are then told by a nurse or doctor that they have to take these curious pills to make them better, and at certain times of the day. After band practice, E tells me that he told the reverend about his malaria, so the rev prayed over him. ‘Queen, I am healed!’ I say, ‘okay, but you still have to take your medicine’. He says, ‘I will, but Queen, I feel better now. What will these medicines do? I am healed!’ Needless to say, I have to supervise his medicine-taking. And as usual, no comment. This will be discussed in my thesis, certainly.

Sunday in Freeport

Yesterday (Sunday, the big day), I had arranged to go to E’s mother’s church near Freeport (just North of the center, about 15 min. in a share taxi, which is always easy to get), a tiny little thing that is about 20ftx20ft and holds no more than 30 people, snugly, and was opened simply so that the people who live around have a church close-by. Despite the size of the church, and despite it was well away from any roads where cars drive by, and despite there not being many generators in this part of town and thus in a relatively silent part of Monrovia, they had a small generator in order to operate the 2 microphones and 2 massive speakers. My seat was all ready for me: a white plastic chair in the front, center of the place (everyone else sat on makeshift wooden benches). The music was awesome, just 2 drums and 5 sasas (which I’ve learned is the name for the ‘maracas’) and I danced like crazy. The pastor made special reference to my dancing and said ‘I thank God that she has humbled herself like this, she dances more than some of you! Now I know that even though she is whi’woma’ (white woman) she has an African soul.’ I’ve been told that many times now, which totally pumps my ego up. Anyway, the service was good. It made NO reference to money. Which has never ever, ever happened. A lot of it was trying to say ‘be like Jesus’ in the sense that you love everyone and forgive…that said, at one point the pastor said ‘don’t put your trust in the government, the police, doctors, security guards, army, your boyfriend, your parents, the US dollar. Put your trust in Master Jesus!’ (wild applause). No comment on that for now. So after church, E and I went back to his moms house for lunch; his mom LOVES that I eat Liberian food; when she cooks for me it becomes a small spectacle for the family and neighbors. I think they are mainly amused by the amount that I sweat when I eat (its really spicy) and also because they know I won’t eat the bones (its totally normal to), so someone else will get to eat them when I put my bowl down. So anyway, she made fufu with groundpea (peanut) soup. And mystery meat. I didn’t ask what the meat was before I started eating, it was definitely mysterious, but it tasted really good. It was quite fatty, and there was lots of skin involved, and E’s mother kept going on about how she had ‘very bad stomach today’, but I enjoyed it. When I couldn’t eat any more (fufu is like eating a heavy paste) I passed the bowl onto the 3 children giggling at me; E’s mom grabbed the bones; the kids shoved the food into their mouth quite happily. Then I inquired about the meat: pig feet. Totally not bad at all. My worst nightmare is that I’ll ask and it’ll be rat, cat or dog, which, although not common, its certainly done sometimes. E told me a story about how a few weeks ago, his friends found a cat that had been hit by a car, and ‘they cooked it, Queen, oh it was funny-o’. Uhm, no comment on that one either.
After lunch, I played Ludo (pronounced Ludu), which is this incredible board game that I learned last week just by watching it for an hour; I see people playing it (and checkers) all the time. I won’t even try to explain it here, but it involves an incredible amount of strategy, keeping track of up to 16 game pieces at once, and quick-thinking. I have yet to win a game, although I came close. And I’m playing against 12 year olds, sometimes. Its an amazing game, and I’m definitely bringing back one of the boards (I’ll post a photo of it, its amazing and a mystery in itself). After that, E and I went into the main road of Freeport to find the ‘Scrabble Champion of Freeport’ for a rematch (I played him about 3 weeks ago, and lost by a lot). We play outside of his shop (he rents Nigerian dvds), and it attracts a crowd of about 20. There is an Oxford dictionary, in about 15 pieces, a scorekeeper and judges (each judge holds one piece of dictionary), and the scrabble tiles are in an old tube sock. The ‘Challenge’ is a common part of the game, in which if your opponent puts a word down that you’re not sure is a word, you say ‘Challenge’, and the judge with the correct part of the dictionary will look it up. If it is a word, then you lose your turn; if it isn’t, your opponent takes the word off and loses his or her turn. There were many many challenges in our game. Some examples: I challenged the word ‘Ca’. Unfortunately, ‘Ca’, being the chemical symbol for Calcium, is in the goddamn dictionary. Lost that one. He challenged many of my words as well, all of which were words. He was most shocked that ‘ogre’ was a word. I tried to explain what an ogre was, but it was in the dictionary so it didn’t really matter. At one point, he threw down ‘Ehh’, which is definitely a common word used in Liberia, along with ‘ahhh’, ‘ohh’, and ‘ieeh’, but we all know those aren’t words. Well, unfortunately ‘Ehh’ was in part of the dictionary that had gone missing, so because everyone around me agreed that ‘Ehh’ is definitelyt a word (they all were saying ‘Ehh’ very insistently), I lost that challenge. Regardless, he kicked my ass well and truly: ‘Nobody beats the scrabble champion of Freeport’ with arms raised in the air. Will be back for a rematch soon.

Share-taxis and Kickball

If you were to ask me, ‘So, what are you going to do today?’, I would answer you with something like ‘Go to xyz church, then do some interviews on the street, then take a taxi to Sinkor to meet with Pastor xyz and then go to the market to buy some vegetables for dinner tonight’. However, it is entirely possible, and actually very likely, that none of those things would happen. Such is Liberia, for me at least. But it always ends up being an amazingly productive day full of experiences that contribute to both my fieldwork and my settling into this country as a whole. For example:
On Friday, E and I left Broad Street (walkable from where I live, basically the ‘Center’ of town and a main road) to get to Sinkor (about 2-3 km away, still considered to be Central Monrovia) at 1pm, to make sure we could get to Sinkor for a Revival at a Church that was to start at 5pm. To get a share-taxi from Broad street to Sinkor anytime after 1pm, and especially on Friday it seems, is nearly impossible.
Here I think its worth elaborating on the share-taxi. It is a sedan, occasionally a station wagon, (usually yellow; usually with a shattered windshield; corroded body; may or may not have a complete floor; if it is blessed with a radio it is pumping out Christian gospel, Akon, Celeine Dion, or the popular Liberian rapper ‘Nigga-Blow’; sometimes in order to roll up or down the window you have to ask the driver to give you the one handle he has in order to do this; on an on and on), which will travel a certain route and take in passengers along the way, who indicate where they want to go by using certain hand signals (the destinations are limited to main areas, and you can stop anywhere on the way). The limit to how many people can fit into these cars is relatively flexible (I ask the rhetorical question, how many Liberians can you fit in a share taxi?) but usually, its 4 in the back, 2 in the front, not including the driver (pillows are sometimes supplied for the person who has to sit in the front, middle, on the E-brake and who has to try really hard to not to bump the gearshift). If things are really desperate, drivers will allow anyone willing to have someone else sit on his or her lap or in the trunk. So the maximum I’ve seen is: 2 people in the trunk, 6 in the back, 2 in the front. When I was in a share-taxi on the way to Kakata, I saw 3 people on the roof of another share-taxi, and once someone was on the hood. But these things are uncomfortable, to say the least. Add to that the ridiculous state of the roads, and intense traffic, and a 2 km ride can turn into one hour of sweaty bodies, limbs falling asleep, sore bottoms, breakdowns, arguments about politics and/or Chelsea vs. Man U, ringing ears and more exhaust in your face than on the runway at an airport. Charter taxis are available, where you say ‘take me to xyz’ and you get a large, luxurious seat to yourself and will get there much faster because shortcuts can be used. However, they can cost anywhere from $2-$5 within Central Monrovia during the day. A share taxi, across Monrovia, will cost no more than 25LD, which is less than $0.50. So, its clearly the ride of choice. Most places I go I only spend about 10-15LD. So on certain routes at certain times it is impossible to get one of these. There will be literally hundreds of people on Broad Street, waiting for just ONE small space to squeeze into so they can get home, to work, to church, wherever. So, when that ONE spot is noticed, there will be about 20 people chasing the car; whoever gets their hand onto the handle first, and can hang onto it until the car stops, gets the spot. I can’t believe I’ve NEVER seen a fight over this. If people miss their chance, they look disappointed but not angry. They just get back to looking for another spot. If someone is REALLY desperate, you can find guys who ‘find cars’ and give them ‘sma’ sma’ money’ to find an empty vehicle for you and 6 other people, who are willing to pay ‘sma’ sma’. Then, the vehicle that is found will charge double the fare. But you’ll save yourself a lot of time and trouble.
So, back to what I did that day: Instead of paying ‘sma sma’ for help with a car, I just thought E and I could leave a bit (4 hours) early and try our luck. One hour later, we chased a car, E got his hands onto the handle and shouted ‘Queen Queen come!’ and the crowd split so that I could get through; we got into the car, me on E’s lap, with 3 others already in the back seat, my head bowed as low as possible and my hands holding on for dear life on outside of the car door. Traffic was horrendous, as usual, so it took about 45 minutes to get to Sinkor. E couldn’t walk when we got out of the car because his legs were so asleep from me sitting on them, and I got a massive bruise on my arm from where it kept slamming into the edge of the car window. But we made it to Sinkor, and we had some time to kill. We did some interviews, and walked to the church which was supposed to start the revival at 5pm. At 5pm, the doors of the church were still locked, which was hardly surprising. So we sat on a stoop and drank some water for 30 minutes; people started turning up but not very many. Then 4 girls (about 14-17 yrs old I think) walked by holding a soccer ball. E said ‘they are going to play baseball’. I say, ‘with a soccer ball?’ He says, ‘Yes’. I say, of course, ‘ok, I have to see this’. So we asked if I could join in their game of baseball, they giggled and said, ‘fine’. So we walked for 15 minutes to fields behind the JJ Roberts Methodist School, where tons of youth were playing soccer, basketball, running, sitting and talking, etc. I followed the girls to one field towards the back, where some 10-12 yr old boys were playing soccer. The girls told them to leave; the boys didn’t, so one girl went to one of the make-shift goal markers, picked it up, and threw it over the fence. The boys left. Then she started putting bases down, and I realised, ‘Ah-ha! We’re playing kickball!’ Damn right we played kickball. A proper game, about 6 people (mostly girls but a couple younger boys) on each side, and all the rules of kickball from PE class. I kicked the hell out of the ball and made it to second base. They all started saying to each other, shocked, ‘Whi’ woma’ can play!’ I was proud of myself. By 6:15 I figured I should go back to the church. They told me to come back and play another time, which I absolutely will. I got to the church with perfect timing, praise and worship (singing and dancing) for 20 minutes (they’d been going for 30 minutes already), then I got my usual introduction, except for some reason they said I was a missionary, which got a near-standing ovation, and then went on for 15 minutes about how everyone in the church should ‘pray more that the international community recognises us.

Birthday Pizza

For my birthday on Wednesday I basically planned my day around Things I Want to Eat. The plan was to go to this Nigerian restaurant where I was told I could get Banku and Okro stew, a dish I had in Ghana a lot and which is just fantastic. E and I went, but they didn’t have it, so I decided I’d like to have pizza, at this fantastic Lebanese-owned (of course) place called Jamal’s Pizza. I asked E, ‘Have you ever had pizza?’ He says ‘Peesa?? What is this’. I try to explain: ‘Its round, has melted cheese and some toppings on top, with tomato sauce’. He says, ‘show me it.’ So I take him into the restaurant and ask if they a) have any pizza’s made , which they don’t or b) any pictures of pizza, which they laugh at. So, I order a small pizza for myself, which I’ll share with E, and he orders Chicken Shwarma, which I know he’ll like. The pizza comes and he looks at it like it’s a flying saucer. I give him a slice, he takes a bite and gets a look on his face that I can only describe as how I would look if I was told the mystery meat I was eating is rat. He spat it out, and everyone in the restaurant, who was already aware of this ‘Liberian kid who doesn’t know what pizza is’, laughed and started saying things like ‘oh, you have to put peppa’ (pepper) on it!’ or ‘hey man you need cassava leaf with that!’. It was so funny, then Emmanuel says, ‘Queen, you kill me. That peesa I will not eat even if it is for free!’ I tried to explain to him that if he moves to America (it is his ultimate dream, along with most other Liberians I’ve met), and he reacted like that to pizza, people might think he’s crazy. He didn’t believe me, so I said, ‘What if I said I don’t eat rice, and I won’t eat rice even if it is free’, and he, nearly offended, says ‘why would you say that?’ and I say, ‘that’s what it is like to say ‘I don’t like pizza’. He understood fully, so I’ve convinced him to try pizza again another time, only we’ll put lots of meat and hot sauce on it.

Church C Revival in Kakata

So this past weekend I went to the last 3 days of a week-long revival put on by Church C in Kakata, a ‘city’ about 45 km north of Monrovia (although given the state of the roads, the need to change cars twice, and the traffic out of Monrovia, it takes a good 3 hours to get there in a share taxi). Rev. D has been going to Kakata for 10 years now, and he’s wildly popular because of his preaching on demons, witches, curses, etc, and because he is considered to be especially powerful in his deliverance. So, this revival was a big deal for Kakata. By day the Rev. and his praise team would go to small churches and deliver people for hours. By night the Rev. and his praise team, along with every Pentecostal-ish pastor, preacher, evangelist, etc in Kakata, would lead a 5 hour service.
The pastor had arranged for me to stay in a guest house across the street from the house where he would be staying. This meant that I spent nearly every waking hour with the Reverend, his assistant pastor, and the lovely Pentecostal woman who owned the house. They insisted that I eat no less than 5 meals a day. Liberian food is good. Its greasy, its spicy, always involves meat, and if rice isn’t involved its literally not considered ‘food’. However, you’re not always sure what exactly the meat is that you’re eating, especially when you are in more rural areas. Any meat that is not goat, cow, pig, chicken or fish is called ‘bush meat’ here- I’m going to refer to it as ‘mystery meat’ because when I think of bush meat I automatically picture a giant rat. (Which is quite possibly the mystery meat being eaten). Anyhow, I ate a ton of it quite willingly and never got sick at all. They also force-fed me juice. (You’re not allowed to refuse anything offered to you. If you refuse, then the person who has offered it to you will be very offended. In the Pentecostal circle, at least, the logic is that if you refuse something, then you might as well tell the person offering you the item in question that you do not want it because you think they are giving you an object possessed by demons, and that they are a agent of Satan. If you accept the object, they you are essentially saying, ‘Thank you for the blessing’; because the person has given you the blessing, then they will receive an even greater blessing in return, one day.) So they offered me juice, always, but when they offered me juice, it wasn’t just a glass of juice. They would get a 1-litre box, open it, and bring it to me with a glass. When I didn’t finish the box, they would ask what was the matter, and what were they going to do with an opened box of juice? (Because of lack of constant electricity, refrigerators are not very reliable) So, I drank a lot of juice, too.
In our spare time, we would watch DVDs of American Pentecostal conferences, revivals, crusades, etc, many from the early 90s. We also watched what I consider to be African Pentecostal pornography: one hour of gospel music sung by 6 attractive, conservatively dressed (but still highlighting their womanly figures), Jesus-loving Pentecostals at a massive Christian crusade. When this DVD was on (and it was playing on more than 6 separate occasions), every man in the room looked at the television in complete concentration. And this music is CRAP, I’m telling you, especially when you consider the incredible sounds and rhythms that West Africa creates.
So at the nightly revivals, I was treated as a VIP. I walked into the church (which held a good 500 people) behind the reverend, and took my seat in the VIP section at the front of the church, facing sideways, so that I literally the best view. I was introduced each night, and received a round of applause during which I had to stand up and wave. The services were pretty typical – sermons were about curses, witches, demons, the dangers of Islam, the usual. There was a period before every sermon where they sold merchandise – t-shirts (I bought one that says ‘Destroying the Destroyer of your Destiny, with a picture of an angel standing over a defeated Satan), stickers with Christian messages (ex. ‘Don’t let the devil see your tears’ or ‘I will have financial increase in Jesus’ name’), cassettes of past sermons, laminated cards with various phrases relating to Jesus and salvation, and the favourite item, handkerchiefs with a painted picture of Jesus in his crown of thorns with the words ‘My agony for you’ written on them. Everyone bought them; sometimes two or three. They were fantastic for waving around during songs, and then after 20 minutes of dancing in the hot-as-hell church you could use them to mop the sweat off your face.
On Sunday morning I went to a branch of Church B (part of a large American-based ministry) because the head pastor of that church was at the revival the previous nights and knew E (my research assistant). It was a relatively small church, maybe 50 people, and relatively poor. The service was pretty standard. I had an introduction, after which I was asked to go to the front to ‘say a few words about my relationship with the Lord’. Uhhh. I went to the front, got the microphone and said ‘Praise the Lord’; response: ‘Amen’, and starting mumbling and rambling about how I thank Jesus for the opportunity to come to Liberia and see what amazing things the Pentecostal churches are doing and how everyone has been so kind and welcoming, blah blah blah. It was all true, only I don’t really thank Jesus for that, I thank my massive Stafford Loans. Everyone applauded and I went back to my seat, thankful the attention was away from me for the rest of the service. Wrong. I was invited back to the front so the pastor could pray for me. I faced the front, he put his hand on me and prayed for a good 2 minutes about avoiding car accidents, robberies, demons of sickness and lonliness, etc. Then he spoke in tongues for 30 seconds or so while shaking my head a little bit. It took the power of God to keep me from laughing hysterically, out of sheer embarrassment and the situation generally. So after that I was definitely sure the attention was away from me. Even more wrong. After the sermon was offering time. We did the first offering, like normal. Then, there as a second offering for the guest preacher who had given the sermon. Normal. Then, the head pastor stood up and said, ‘now, we are going to take an offering for our sister Gwen. She is a student and she has come to Liberia to learn more about us. She is not making any money….’ Then I was asked to come to the front, face the congregation, and a song began during which every member of the congregation danced forward, smiling and threw money at my feet. Some people threw 20 LD (5LD is the smallest note; most people will give that in an offering; next is 10 LD – 20LD is about 33 US cents.) At this point, it took the power of God to keep me from crying and/or running out of the building. I have NEVER been so uncomfortable in my entire life. These people are POOR, but they really believe that if they give me money then they will get massive blessings in return. I ended up getting about $10US, which I could definitely not refuse, from people who can hardly feed their families. So, naturally, when they started doing a donation drive 5 minutes later for objects that the church needed, I ‘returned the blessing’ just like the theology suggests. $20 worth of cement and a promise to return to the church later with more, I left. With my stack of money. I think that situation was, paradoxically, both the high point and the low point of my entire life.

Pentecostal Services, Generally

Before I go any further into my adventures in Liberia, I think its important to give a brief (hah!) outline of how a Pentecostal service usually goes, since I’ll be referring to it so often. It usually begins with lots of praying, which is not the Western/mainline church-style kneel, bow your head and be silent type of prayer. Prayer in Liberia means people are pacing back and forth, yelling at the top of their lungs, speaking in tongues, pumping their fists, jumping up and down, crying…its very vocal, to say the least. Before any service, you will have prayed for a good hour. (that said, people trickle in gradually, so that from the beginning of the praying to the beginning of the sermon, the number of people will have doubled or tripled). This praying is exhausting. I’m mentally and spiritually unable to pray for more than a few minutes, so I’ve started doing a number of things (speaking out loud, of course) in order to ‘fit in’. I’ll bow my head, hold my hands in the air, and to make sure I’m adding the speaking outloud element, I usually begin by naming all of the United States in alphabetical order (thanks to grade school for teaching me that ridiculous song), then I’ll say the pledge of allegiance, a few nursery rhymes, maybe go through a few David Bowie, Rolling Stones or Aerosmith songs, and if I’m feeling really energetic, I’ll talk through some of my thesis ideas. Its actually pretty constructive, at times. Anyhow, after praying is ‘praise and worship’, which is about 2 hours of singing, dancing and intermittent praying. The music is usually fantastic…not least because of the drum set, keyboard, 2 electric guitars, sometimes horns, tambourines and always these massive ‘maracas’ which surely have a name but I don’t know it. Usually there is a large choir who sing incredibly well, and sometimes there will be solos which are as good as any professional gospel singer. Its all very good fun, and I am getting better at dancing ‘African style’ according to the pastors and other church members. So after that are always a few testimonials, in which members will come to the front and tell everyone what God has done for them. These range from very general accounts: ‘Thank you Jesus for blessing me and for my church’ or ‘thank you for my job promotion’, to extremely detailed stories about specific events: ‘Thank you Jesus for healing me of my blindness, which I had since I was 10 years old and went to every doctor and they said I’d never be healed but I prayed and fasted and…..’ on and on for 10-20 minutes sometimes. Then are the announcements, which are very long-winded and they go on for ages because of the sheer volume of Christian activity to announce. Then, ‘It’s offering time!!!!’ The first offering, that is. Offerings are also usually called ‘seeds’. The theology here is that if you give an offering to the church, you are planting a ‘seed’ which, in time, will grow and grow so that you will reap ‘100-fold’ of what you’ve given. ‘The more you give, the more blessings you will receive’ and so on. This theology was imported from the US; it’s also called ‘health and wealth gospel’ or ‘prosperity gospel’. Its controversial, to say the least, and a huge part of my thesis, but I’ll leave it at that for now. So we hold our ‘seeds’ in the air, ask for blessings in return, and we start the offering procession to the basket (there might be up to 5 baskets, depending on the number of people at the service). The procession is very fun, you walk through the entire church, dancing to an upbeat song, and you drop your ‘seed’ into a basket. In a large service, this process can take 15 minutes. In a huge service, as in Winners Chapel, there are 6 individual processions, to save time. After ‘offering time’ is ‘The Word of God’; in other words, the sermon. The pastor/preacher/whomever is speaking goes to the podium, microphone in hand, and leads the congregation in a prayer; then everyone is seated and the sermon will go on for anywhere from an hour to two hours. These pastors can SPEAK, I’m telling you. Its hard not to get excited by them and jump up out of your seat periodically and shout ‘Speak to me!’. Well, I don’t do that, but many people do. Often the pastors are interrupted by standing ovations, massive cheering or people walking/running to the front to throw money at the pastor’s feet. Occasionally, someone will faint or fall on the ground twitching. But seriously, the pastors I’ve seen here have more charisma than anybody I’ve ever seen speaking in public. They are absolute masters. Sermon topics vary widely, so I won’t go into that, but everyone listens very intently, always with their Bibles out to follow along, and often with a notebook/pen to take notes. After the sermon is another offering. Then sometimes an extra offering for something else, for example, ‘The pastor is building his house but he’s having trouble getting enough paint, please let us have an offering for this’. Then comes a period of intense prayer and, in some cases, depending on the church and the type of service being held, a mass-deliverance session for everyone in attendance (often deliverance is done with just the ‘victim’ of demonic attack, the pastor, and a few prayer warriors and intercessors). In this deliverance session, the pastor will go through a few prayers, repeated by the congregation, and then perhaps a period of controlled breathing (breath out the name of Jesus). The build-up to the casting out of demons is phenomenal – prayers get faster and louder, drums start beating, and then the pastor will start ‘fighting’ the demon by speaking in tongues very loudly; then a few people will start expelling the demons, often first manifest in blood-curdling screams or people just thrashing around so that a general commotion occurs. This adds to the whole mood inside the church; once the first ‘expelation’ occurs more and more begin; sometimes there are not enough prayer warriors and intercessors to go around, so other members of the congregation need to catch falling individuals or pin their arms and legs to the ground to keep them from hurting themselves or someone else. If there is an idle prayer warrior or intercessor, he or she will approach an individual who looks ‘close’ to expelling a demon, and will being to shout in the person’s ear and lay hands on them, usually on their head and they will shake it a little bit. (See the previous entry about the prison revival to find out more about deliverance). After 10-15 minutes of this, the pastor will begin a prayer of thanks for the deliverance. Usually there are still people thrashing about on the floor, screaming, fainting, etc. but they are being taken care of by prayer warriors. Everyone opens their eyes and look a little dazed. After this is the benediction, and a song or two, and everyone dances out of the church.
So, now that I’ve gone through all that, VERY briefly (I’m telling you, what I just condensed will take up a good 100 pages of my thesis), my future blog entries will make a lot more sense.

One month, real fast

I'm going to try and condense one month of extreme activity into a relatively short entry. this means I'll write a small novel, at best.

So the reason I'm here, for those who don't know, is to write about Pentecostal churches in Monrovia. The following is a REALLY general outline of my subject. Pentecostalism is a difficult type of Christianity to define, but most simply, it is the type of Christianity that focuses on the manifestations of the Holy Spirit- most commonly healing, speaking in tongues, exhuberant religious worship, possession by the Holy Spirit, becoming 'born again', etc...to give some basic statistics:

1) there are up to 400 million Pentecostals(which can also be referred to as charismatic) Christians in the world (which translates to about 25% of all Christians worldwide, while in 1970 they only made up about 6% of all Christians worldwide)

2) In Africa (including Muslim north Africa), 11% of the entire population is Pentecostal

3) If Pentecostal churches continue growing as they have been for the last 2 decades (which they seem to be), then by 2050 there will be one billion Pentecostals worldwide, 80% of which live in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

In my academic field, there's a growing debate concerning the reasons that these types of churches are so popular around the world; there's also a debate concerning the potential social and political implications that theses churches might have. I'm here in Liberia addressing these debates; what makes Liberia especially interesting is the complete destruction that the country is recovering from after years of single-party rule and political and economic mismanagement, 10 years of inept dictatorship under Doe, then 14 years of Civil War during which nearly everything was destroyed; millions of people were displaced, tens of thousands (maybe up to 200,000) killed, government powerless or nonexistant, warlords fuelling the war for access to Liberia's incredibly rich natural resources; on and on and on. So Liberia is a mess, to put it bluntly. UN peacekeepers are still here, the government of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is making small steps to bring about development and try to limit corruption and mismanagement; there's a million and one NGOs from the US and elsewhere here trying to help put it back together.

So, I'm here to research the role of Pentecostal churches in all this. I'm focusing on three churches specifically, for PhD purposes, but going to any and every Pentecostal/Christian/religious event that I can make it to; talking to everyone who's willing to answer my question 'so what is your church', reading newspapers, listening to the radio, etc....I'm as busy as I want to be, and I want to be really busy. So i'm doing a LOT. In this blog I'll probably be referring most often to the three churches that I'm focusing on. I'm going to let them remain anonymous for this blog, but I'll give a brief outline of each:

1) Church C- the church of my research assistant, E, lead by an extremely charismatic and charming couple, Reverend Evangelist Pastor D, Sr. (hereafter referred to as Reverend D) and wife Reverend PD. The church was born in Liberia 12 years ago and has been growing ever since. The church has 5 branches in and around Monrovia, each bringing in about 100-150 members on a Sunday.

2) Church W- The biggest church in Monrovia (and Liberia), holding 2500-3000 people on a Sunday. Church W began in Nigeria and is now a massive global ministry, with lots and lots and lots of money. The head pastor, Pastor S, is from Nigeria and has big plans for the church, which is at this point a massive open-air warehouse with a bunch of undeveloped land.

3) Church S- Part of a large American Pentecostal ministry , holds about 500 people on a Sunday and runs a fairly large Pentecostal school, attached to the church. More to come on this church, as I've only recently decided to focus on it.

So, basically by days are spent going to any and every service that these churches put on. Mondays are the only day that I have no services to go to, hence I come to a hotel near my apartment that has wireless internet, and I sit in the lounge, order a pineapple juice, and make it last for 4-5 hours. I think they're on to me. Anyway, I've already written too much so I'm just going to list some highlights of the last month.

1. Church C has an active 'prison ministry', in which they go to Monrovia Central Prison, which holds 750 inmates, i think 25 of them have been charged; the others are just...waiting. Terrible conditions, naturally. Anyway, I decided to attend the 3-day revival at Monrovia Central Prison. The first day was fine, I sat on stage while the Rev. D lead a service for about 500 male inmates, 20 female. It was all about how if you pray hard enough, and ask for forgiveness, God will bless you and you'd be let out of prison. 'Jesus is your lawyer now!' The service would end with 'deliverance', (note, I will refer to deliverance very often, it is a completely normal part of Pentecostal worship/practice in Liberia and elsewhere) which is when the Rev. says a few prayers to summon the Holy Spirit to engage in spiritual warfare with the demons that are possessing the prisoners. The rev. shouts a lot things like 'Loose, in the name of Jesus Christ you will leave this place by the power of Jesus with the blood of Jesus I cast you OUT of this place' and then he speaks in tongues a lot. This goes on for about 3-4 minutes and an individual who is successfully casting out his or her demons will do one of the following things: scream, thrash about, fall over, vomit, spit, shout profanity, urinate, defacate, jump up and down, have a seizure...things like this. Rev. D's preferred method of demon expellation is vomiting. So I'm in a scorching hot and steamily humid room with 500 prisoners, all of them breathing heavily, a few of them falling over, many of them shouting 'Jesus' at the top of their lungs, and about 10 of them vomiting. Luckily I am on the stage so I can keep my distance from all this. So that was the first day. The second day I couldn't face it so I sent my research assistant with my voice recorder to catch everything. The third day I went, and this day the church had arranged a collection so that we could bring basic items to the prison: soap, toothbrushes, flip flops, towels. The service went as planned. Singing, dancing, praying, preaching, and a good amount of vomit and screaming. Then came the drama. The rev. said into the microphone, 'Bless you all, you are all children of God now. Now the church has arranged to bring you all a few items. I know there are 750 of you here and we only have 50 toothpastes to go around, so please be patient and orderly and you can all share.' Then the church workers proceeded to pour all of the collection onto the stage, in a big, beautiful and accessible pile. Uh, right. I don't know of any situation in which a mob, much less a desperate, dirty, hungry and possibly criminal mob, will follow these instructions. So within a minute, there were 500 prisoners rushing the stage. The rev. started throwing the collection to the back of the stage, where I was, and telling us to put the items back in the bags. I'm thinking, 'uh, i didn't sign up for this job' so I grabbed my purse, and bolted through the crowd, with the help of a few prisoners or ushers i'm not sure, and made it out of the gate while hundreds of prisoners stuck their hands through the bars begging me to come back and help them. One pastor had his phone stolen from his pocket, only to have the prisoner come up to him and say, 'ok papi, i have your phone, i will give it to you for 5 dolla'. deal. After 30 minutes everyone made it out of the gate, they got about half of the 'donation' back; the rest was inside the gate and fights were breaking out over toilet paper, soap, etc. As the church group all left the prison compound, I listened to the general consensus: The reason the prisoners got so out of hand was because there were Muslims praying outside (it was Friday at 5pm), and they had invoked so many demons that the prisoners were re-possessed by them after their own deliverance.

oh man, I'm just going to leave it at that. i'll work on not being so long-winded.

Disclaimer

So, because I'm so crap at sending emails to my friends, and because I'm uploading photos at random times and don't want to send emails every time there's new ones, and because I'd quite like to keep a non-academic log for myself about the crazy situations I'm finding myself in...I'm starting a blog. This is intended SOLELY to let my friends and family know what I'm getting up to. It will have a number of rants, (potentially) culturally insensitive comments, uninformed judgements, rumours, ghost stories and surely an incredible level of sarcasm, cynicism and facetiousness. It is not academic. At all. That's what my PhD thesis is for...this is the fun part of what I'm doing. It's a travel journal. Its intended to be somewhat humourous and not at all educational. If you want something more educational, let me know and I'll refer you to papers and books that I think are good. And of course, when my thesis is done, its going to be goddamn EPIC. Thank you, and enjoy.