Saturday, January 26, 2008
You know you're in Liberia when....
....a woman pulls up her skirt to show you her rotting prosthetic leg, and asks you if you can bring her a new one from the United States...
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
The Deliverance Tarp
Because the rainy season is over, it is crusade season for Pentecostals in Liberia, also known as My Fieldwork Candyland. I have written about revivals (also called conferences), which are slightly different from crusades. To be very brief and general, with respect to what I’ve seen in Liberia thus far so my assessment might not be totally correct, revivals are special events put on by a particular church, in the same town (or nearby) as the host church, usually lasting for a week and are oriented around a specific theme and biblical passage. They are generally held in church building (not necessarily the venue of the host church) and might involve a guest speaker from another Liberian church or abroad. Attendance ranges from 50 to 500 people (although I did go to the last night of a revival led by an extremely boring American, which was attended by 9 people, 6 of whom were children and the assistant pastor of the host church fell asleep during the sermon). Each night, the service will begin with at least 2 hours of praise and worship, then a few testimonials, a number of offerings, sometimes the selling of souvenirs, introductions of pastors and other church staff, announcements, a sermon of at least one hour, an altar call to give your life to Christ, and then deliverance. A crusade is essentially the same in terms of how the service in organised each evening, but it is a LOT bigger and a LOT louder, it is held outside in large fields or stadiums, will travel to different parts of the country and perhaps into neighboring countries, might be put on in collaboration with different churches, and will often involve (in some cases spotlight) a guest speaker from elsewhere in Africa, the US or Europe. So, when rainy season is over, a crusade does not run the risk of being ruined by a sudden downpour that would inevitably destroy the huge amounts of electronic equipment brought in for these events.
Despite that, Church C ‘always experiences rain on the first night of a crusade’. This is attributed to the devil, naturally, which keeps the Reverend D under close watch and is always trying to bring down his incredibly successful (in terms of soul-saving and demon-expelling) crusades. So, when we got rain on the first night of the crusade which occurred all of last week in Barnersville, a ‘suburb’ of Monrovia to the north, we all prayed against the demon of rain and it stopped after 5 minutes. Naturally.
The first night was relatively uneventful. I stress the word ‘relatively’ in that statement. It was a total carnival, as usual, but the main thing I want to draw attention to in this blog is the deliverance tarp, which I saw for the first time ever on the second night of the revival.
Let me first paint a picture of this entire scene. I am, in addition to Church C Editor-In-Chief and Founder of the Newsletter, a card-carrying, t-shirt wearing and photo name-tag bearing member of the Church C Secretariat. One of the pastors calls me Secretary of State. I got this job, I think, because I am one of the few that can read and write (I accepted it because it gives me that extra bit of access that might really help my fieldwork, and since they are so nice to me I really would like to help them in a non-financial way). There are about 6 members of the secretariat, 5 of them are women. One of our main jobs, during the crusade, is to count all the money that comes in and bundle it into stacks of 1000LD. Because there are at least 4 offerings (at most, 8), one souvenir selling period, one hour of ‘voluntary’ opportunities to throw money at the pastor’s feet (or in a trash bin below the stage) during the sermon, and one call for tithes (at least 10% of your income to be put in envelopes that the secretariat folded and glued during that day), we are busy. Very, very busy. So on this Wednesday evening, as I was counting a large dustbin of money on my lap, I heard a frantic, ‘Queen, bring me plastics!’ from the Ol' Ma as they call the pastor’s wife. I grabbed all the plastic bags I could find and ran to the front of the stage to give them to her. My first thought was ‘maybe they will vomit into these bags, at least that is a little more sanitary than letting people vomit all over the ground, like they did at the prison revival and in Kakata’. I was wrong. Instead, the pastor was demanding that anybody who has given his or her life to Christ and wants to have a successful and lasting deliverance must give up all of his or her jewelry. I saw this in Kakata, but it was more of a polite piece of advice than a direct demand from God. Gold chains, silver rings, bracelets, earrings, you name it, it is evil. Unless it was a wedding ring given to you from a good Christian husband, the piece of jewelry was most likely cursed and causing demonic influence in your life. So, hundreds of people spilled forward, dropping their jewelry into these black plastic bags. I immediately put my silver and turquoise ring into my purse. When all the jewelry was collected, they poured it onto the stage and the pastor prayed over it, broke the curses over it, and explained that he would be burning and destroying the jewelry later. Um. No comment there.
After seeing that, I went back to my bucket of money and continued counting while the pastor began the prayers for deliverance. I never though I would get to the point where I was so nonchalant about deliverance, but I didn’t mind being occupied with counting money because I figured I wouldn’t really see anything too out of the ordinary on this night. Wow, I was wrong. First, they started laying a tarp on the ground right next to our money-counting table. ‘Hmm, that’s interesting’, I thought. The prayers were going on, tongues were spoken violently into the microphone, people screaming and falling down, prayer warriors going into the crowd to assist the man or woman being delivered. Totally normal. But then, as I stacked another 1000LD pile of 5LD notes onto the table, I looked next to me to see two prayer warriors and two ushers carrying a woman, each person holding onto one limb, and the woman screaming ‘blood of Jesus’ at the top of her lungs and having a typical deliverance-fit (seizure-type of thing). They carried her to the tarp, put (dropped) her onto the tarp where she continued to have her deliverance-fit, and they ran back into the crown to grab another person expelling his or her demons. This went on for about 20 minutes, with about 30 church workers continuously carrying men and women expelling demons in various ways (yes, there was some vomit) to this tarp, and just leaving them there. (I learned later that there was a tarp on the other side of the stage too)
So, dear readers, imagine a tarp about 20ft x 20ft, with 30 Liberian men and women on it, many of them screaming ‘blood of Jesus’ at the top of their lungs, many speaking in tongues and thrashing about wildly, some kneeling in silent prayer, crying, some having full-on seizures, many kicking or slapping each other because the tarp was too small and as time went on it turned into a pile of people thrashing about wildly, some people dry heaving on one another, some people spitting on one another, some laying there completely motionless (I had to look closely at their chests to see if they were, in fact, still breathing) and all the while the pastor is speaking in tongues, which is a pretty consistent ‘rabababababababa’ sound probably heard in the entire suburb of Barnersville, and the keyboard is playing some little tune that I can only compare to what you might hear at the state fair outside of a funhouse.
When it seemed there were no more people left to be carried to the tarp, and it was nearing 11pm, the pastor began giving his closing prayer. While he spoke, there were still about 20 people on the tarp, most had advanced to the motionless-and-possibly-comatose stage, but others were still screaming at the top of their lungs. The crusade ended after the prayer, and as people left the field they politely stepped over any people remaining on the ground.
The deliverance tarp reappeared on Saturday and Sunday. On Saturday I gave E my camera so that he could get this brilliant production on video. As he began to record the part where they steal, err, request jewelry from believers, the Ol' Ma confiscated the camera from E, telling him, ‘Queen can buy the video’. I was a little irritated at that, but I understand that if I am allowed to record, then everyone is allowed to record, and then the church won’t make a killing, I mean, raise money for Jesus, from selling their tapes. Business is business. But their videos are crap. So I asked the Old-ma (pastor's wife)what I could do in order to have permission to record deliverance. She went on about how the Church C cameras were the only ones that had permission to record, something to do with spirits and praying, and I said, ‘Well, can I give you $10 (the price of one of their DVDs) to record the deliverance,’ and she immediately responded, ‘Yes’.
So, I gave E the camera for the Sunday deliverance, since I’d be way too busy counting money. He had specific instructions: ‘I want you to film when they carry people to the tarp, and then film the tarp’. After the service he says, excitedly, ‘Oh, I got so much Queen, you will love it.’ I uploaded the videos to my computer the next morning, excited to see what I would be able to share with my friends and family (my explanation does no justice to the actual visual impact this event has), and I see 15 clips, each about 20 seconds long, of E’s feet.
So, I will give E a training session about when the camera is and is not recording, pay $10 more, and try to get the deliverance tarp on video at next week’s crusade in Paynesville.
Despite that, Church C ‘always experiences rain on the first night of a crusade’. This is attributed to the devil, naturally, which keeps the Reverend D under close watch and is always trying to bring down his incredibly successful (in terms of soul-saving and demon-expelling) crusades. So, when we got rain on the first night of the crusade which occurred all of last week in Barnersville, a ‘suburb’ of Monrovia to the north, we all prayed against the demon of rain and it stopped after 5 minutes. Naturally.
The first night was relatively uneventful. I stress the word ‘relatively’ in that statement. It was a total carnival, as usual, but the main thing I want to draw attention to in this blog is the deliverance tarp, which I saw for the first time ever on the second night of the revival.
Let me first paint a picture of this entire scene. I am, in addition to Church C Editor-In-Chief and Founder of the Newsletter, a card-carrying, t-shirt wearing and photo name-tag bearing member of the Church C Secretariat. One of the pastors calls me Secretary of State. I got this job, I think, because I am one of the few that can read and write (I accepted it because it gives me that extra bit of access that might really help my fieldwork, and since they are so nice to me I really would like to help them in a non-financial way). There are about 6 members of the secretariat, 5 of them are women. One of our main jobs, during the crusade, is to count all the money that comes in and bundle it into stacks of 1000LD. Because there are at least 4 offerings (at most, 8), one souvenir selling period, one hour of ‘voluntary’ opportunities to throw money at the pastor’s feet (or in a trash bin below the stage) during the sermon, and one call for tithes (at least 10% of your income to be put in envelopes that the secretariat folded and glued during that day), we are busy. Very, very busy. So on this Wednesday evening, as I was counting a large dustbin of money on my lap, I heard a frantic, ‘Queen, bring me plastics!’ from the Ol' Ma as they call the pastor’s wife. I grabbed all the plastic bags I could find and ran to the front of the stage to give them to her. My first thought was ‘maybe they will vomit into these bags, at least that is a little more sanitary than letting people vomit all over the ground, like they did at the prison revival and in Kakata’. I was wrong. Instead, the pastor was demanding that anybody who has given his or her life to Christ and wants to have a successful and lasting deliverance must give up all of his or her jewelry. I saw this in Kakata, but it was more of a polite piece of advice than a direct demand from God. Gold chains, silver rings, bracelets, earrings, you name it, it is evil. Unless it was a wedding ring given to you from a good Christian husband, the piece of jewelry was most likely cursed and causing demonic influence in your life. So, hundreds of people spilled forward, dropping their jewelry into these black plastic bags. I immediately put my silver and turquoise ring into my purse. When all the jewelry was collected, they poured it onto the stage and the pastor prayed over it, broke the curses over it, and explained that he would be burning and destroying the jewelry later. Um. No comment there.
After seeing that, I went back to my bucket of money and continued counting while the pastor began the prayers for deliverance. I never though I would get to the point where I was so nonchalant about deliverance, but I didn’t mind being occupied with counting money because I figured I wouldn’t really see anything too out of the ordinary on this night. Wow, I was wrong. First, they started laying a tarp on the ground right next to our money-counting table. ‘Hmm, that’s interesting’, I thought. The prayers were going on, tongues were spoken violently into the microphone, people screaming and falling down, prayer warriors going into the crowd to assist the man or woman being delivered. Totally normal. But then, as I stacked another 1000LD pile of 5LD notes onto the table, I looked next to me to see two prayer warriors and two ushers carrying a woman, each person holding onto one limb, and the woman screaming ‘blood of Jesus’ at the top of her lungs and having a typical deliverance-fit (seizure-type of thing). They carried her to the tarp, put (dropped) her onto the tarp where she continued to have her deliverance-fit, and they ran back into the crown to grab another person expelling his or her demons. This went on for about 20 minutes, with about 30 church workers continuously carrying men and women expelling demons in various ways (yes, there was some vomit) to this tarp, and just leaving them there. (I learned later that there was a tarp on the other side of the stage too)
So, dear readers, imagine a tarp about 20ft x 20ft, with 30 Liberian men and women on it, many of them screaming ‘blood of Jesus’ at the top of their lungs, many speaking in tongues and thrashing about wildly, some kneeling in silent prayer, crying, some having full-on seizures, many kicking or slapping each other because the tarp was too small and as time went on it turned into a pile of people thrashing about wildly, some people dry heaving on one another, some people spitting on one another, some laying there completely motionless (I had to look closely at their chests to see if they were, in fact, still breathing) and all the while the pastor is speaking in tongues, which is a pretty consistent ‘rabababababababa’ sound probably heard in the entire suburb of Barnersville, and the keyboard is playing some little tune that I can only compare to what you might hear at the state fair outside of a funhouse.
When it seemed there were no more people left to be carried to the tarp, and it was nearing 11pm, the pastor began giving his closing prayer. While he spoke, there were still about 20 people on the tarp, most had advanced to the motionless-and-possibly-comatose stage, but others were still screaming at the top of their lungs. The crusade ended after the prayer, and as people left the field they politely stepped over any people remaining on the ground.
The deliverance tarp reappeared on Saturday and Sunday. On Saturday I gave E my camera so that he could get this brilliant production on video. As he began to record the part where they steal, err, request jewelry from believers, the Ol' Ma confiscated the camera from E, telling him, ‘Queen can buy the video’. I was a little irritated at that, but I understand that if I am allowed to record, then everyone is allowed to record, and then the church won’t make a killing, I mean, raise money for Jesus, from selling their tapes. Business is business. But their videos are crap. So I asked the Old-ma (pastor's wife)what I could do in order to have permission to record deliverance. She went on about how the Church C cameras were the only ones that had permission to record, something to do with spirits and praying, and I said, ‘Well, can I give you $10 (the price of one of their DVDs) to record the deliverance,’ and she immediately responded, ‘Yes’.
So, I gave E the camera for the Sunday deliverance, since I’d be way too busy counting money. He had specific instructions: ‘I want you to film when they carry people to the tarp, and then film the tarp’. After the service he says, excitedly, ‘Oh, I got so much Queen, you will love it.’ I uploaded the videos to my computer the next morning, excited to see what I would be able to share with my friends and family (my explanation does no justice to the actual visual impact this event has), and I see 15 clips, each about 20 seconds long, of E’s feet.
So, I will give E a training session about when the camera is and is not recording, pay $10 more, and try to get the deliverance tarp on video at next week’s crusade in Paynesville.
Saturday, January 19, 2008
Bigger is better!!
In Liberia, it is beautiful to be ‘fat’. By fat, I don’t mean USA and UK-style obese. But for men, it is good to have a big belly. For women, it is good to be curvy. This is to do with fatness as being an indication of being well-fed, and thus of being relatively well-off. Well-off enough to ‘eat plenty’, at least. I can understand that it is beautiful for a woman to have curves. I can also understand why it would be considered a sign of health for a person to be fat. I can understand that if a person looks emaciated, it is not beautiful.
That said, when a woman from the US is told, ‘Wow, you are getting fat!’ it is quite difficult to take this as a complement. Although I try to convince myself that these comments can be translated into, ‘You are getting more beautiful’, it obviously isn’t so simple.
I have been told, ‘you are getting so fat!’ on a number of occasions. The comments started last November. E grabbed my arm and said, ‘Queen, wow! You are getting so fat!’ This totally caught me off guard, because I thought I was losing weight and toning up, thanks to my membership to the World Food Programme gym. Then E’s uncle J, and 3 of his uncle’s friends agreed, ‘Yeah, Queen, getting fat, like a true African!’ and J did a little muscle flex; J's sister poked my stomach. I told them, ‘I know you mean that as a complement, but you should know that when you tell a whi’ woma’ that she is getting fat, she will most likely get really offended.’ They could not understand why, but I told them to trust me. That didn’t stop them from commenting on my ‘fatness’ ever since.
When I went to Portugal for Christmas, maybe I did get ‘fatter’, thanks to my mom’s fantastic cooking and thanks to a week on the couch with the sinus infection from hell. Wow, did Liberians take notice of my slight weight gain upon my return! In addition to being told again, by E and his family, that I am getting ‘even fatter’, I have been told by 9 new individuals that I am getting fat. In Church S on the Wednesday evening service, which is attended by about 100 men and women, I got my usual moment in the spotlight, but this time the head pastor said, ‘We want to welcome back our sister Queen, she has been away for the Christmas time but now she is back, we bless her in Jesus’ name, and wow she is getting FAT like a true Liberian!’ I said a few words: ‘Praise the lord, glad to be back, yadda yadda yadda’ and the pastor, as usual, said, ‘and may you be filled with the Holy Spirit and given the gift of tongues’. After that moment, I began to seriously consider the ‘fasting’ part of their prayer and fasting weeks.
That said, when a woman from the US is told, ‘Wow, you are getting fat!’ it is quite difficult to take this as a complement. Although I try to convince myself that these comments can be translated into, ‘You are getting more beautiful’, it obviously isn’t so simple.
I have been told, ‘you are getting so fat!’ on a number of occasions. The comments started last November. E grabbed my arm and said, ‘Queen, wow! You are getting so fat!’ This totally caught me off guard, because I thought I was losing weight and toning up, thanks to my membership to the World Food Programme gym. Then E’s uncle J, and 3 of his uncle’s friends agreed, ‘Yeah, Queen, getting fat, like a true African!’ and J did a little muscle flex; J's sister poked my stomach. I told them, ‘I know you mean that as a complement, but you should know that when you tell a whi’ woma’ that she is getting fat, she will most likely get really offended.’ They could not understand why, but I told them to trust me. That didn’t stop them from commenting on my ‘fatness’ ever since.
When I went to Portugal for Christmas, maybe I did get ‘fatter’, thanks to my mom’s fantastic cooking and thanks to a week on the couch with the sinus infection from hell. Wow, did Liberians take notice of my slight weight gain upon my return! In addition to being told again, by E and his family, that I am getting ‘even fatter’, I have been told by 9 new individuals that I am getting fat. In Church S on the Wednesday evening service, which is attended by about 100 men and women, I got my usual moment in the spotlight, but this time the head pastor said, ‘We want to welcome back our sister Queen, she has been away for the Christmas time but now she is back, we bless her in Jesus’ name, and wow she is getting FAT like a true Liberian!’ I said a few words: ‘Praise the lord, glad to be back, yadda yadda yadda’ and the pastor, as usual, said, ‘and may you be filled with the Holy Spirit and given the gift of tongues’. After that moment, I began to seriously consider the ‘fasting’ part of their prayer and fasting weeks.
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Sleeping with dogs
I love all the preachers, prayer warriors, praise team, ushers, etc. at Church C. They are nice, they are hospitable, they are funny, they are not extremely lazy, just a little bit lazy. I also find them incredibly amusing. I spend a lot of time at the Church C head office, not out of choice, usually, but because I might have an appointment for 12 and I have to wait until 2 to get in (because there are so many people waiting outside to receive deliverance, and their demons are more important than my thesis). Rev. D has always been aware of my ‘fantastic’ computer skills (that is, I know how to type and send emails) and has been telling me that he will put me to work in the office one day. I am more than willing to do this, because any information that passes through that office is good for fieldwork. Well, Wednesday was my ‘first day at work’, as he called it, and I would be ‘extremely busy’. I turned up for ‘work’ at 9am. Door was locked, and about 6 women were waiting outside for deliverance. We all waited until about 11, and nobody came. I left to go do a scheduled interview at Church S (I had asked for 2 hours of her time, she gave me 10 minutes, bah), then returned to Church C at 12 when deliverance was in full swing and the pastor and his wife were there. I waited for 15 minutes to see the pastor and he sat me down and appointed me to the positions of Editor-in-Chief, Founder and Chief Researcher for the new Church C newsletter, The Voice of Church C. Fantastic. We threw around some ideas for about 15 minutes, interrupted a few times by people coming in, totally excited, about some recent story in which a man who had been dealing with ‘dark forces’ for years was digging a hole and the devil pushed him in the hole and the hole filled up with dirt and the man was buried alive, and praise Jesus that a good Christian is protected from such misfortune. After discussing the newsletter, and looking through a pile of photos that I might include in the newsletter (I selected one in which a woman was bent over during deliverance, vomit coming out of her mouth- what an action shot!) we moved onto my next ‘assignment’, which was to have people come tell me stories about how the devil has ruined their lives and how jesus has saved their lives; then I was to transcribe these stories and edit them so that they sounded ‘better’, whatever that means. This was perfect, because it is exactly what I do for fieldwork, anyway. But wow, did they send in some people with some interesting stories. I will repeat one. The names have been changed to protect the innocent and the guilty (except Jesus, Satan, and Rev. D who is nearly God).
Bob was having so many problems in his life. He was constantly afflicted with lust. Everything he did, he was thinking about the female body and his attraction to it. In addition to this lust, he was unable to find a woman who would marry him, and he could not have the children he so desperately wanted. He couldn’t find a job, couldn’t support himself, and was consistently unhappy. He had gone to the church for deliverance time and time again, but to no avail. Finally, he joined Church C and spoke to the great Rev. D, who pointed out that Bob most likely had a curse, set upon him from up to 5 generations back. (Curses are a normal part of Pentecostal ideology; essentially anything that your family did that was ‘Satanic’ is passed through the blood line and thus negatively affects your life until you break the curse. Because ‘true bible-believing Christianity’ has only been in Africa for, at most, 100 years, this means every single African is heavily cursed.) Bob was told to go back to his village and find out from the people any stories about his family. Wow, Bob found out a lot. His great great great Grandmother, Jill, was unable to conceive. She was constantly making sacrifices to the gods and asking them to give her power to conceive. One day a strange man appeared to her and said that he would return the next day in a changed form, as a dog. Jill had to have sex with the dog, and then she would conceive. She did as told, had sex with the dog, and became pregnant. She expected a human child, but instead she gave birth to a chicken. After that she was able to become pregnant without having sex with a dog, and she would give birth to human babies. From that generation on, nobody had any problems conceiving unless they ate chicken or dog meat. So, the family has avoided chicken and dog meat for 5 generations. Bob returned to Monrovia and told this story to Rev. D, who concluded that Bob was possessed by, among others, the demon of lust. He delivered him of this demon, broke the curse and Bob was healed. The next year he met a woman, whom he married, and has since had 2 beautiful children. He is also able to eat chicken and dog meat whenever he wants. Praise Jesus.
Bob was having so many problems in his life. He was constantly afflicted with lust. Everything he did, he was thinking about the female body and his attraction to it. In addition to this lust, he was unable to find a woman who would marry him, and he could not have the children he so desperately wanted. He couldn’t find a job, couldn’t support himself, and was consistently unhappy. He had gone to the church for deliverance time and time again, but to no avail. Finally, he joined Church C and spoke to the great Rev. D, who pointed out that Bob most likely had a curse, set upon him from up to 5 generations back. (Curses are a normal part of Pentecostal ideology; essentially anything that your family did that was ‘Satanic’ is passed through the blood line and thus negatively affects your life until you break the curse. Because ‘true bible-believing Christianity’ has only been in Africa for, at most, 100 years, this means every single African is heavily cursed.) Bob was told to go back to his village and find out from the people any stories about his family. Wow, Bob found out a lot. His great great great Grandmother, Jill, was unable to conceive. She was constantly making sacrifices to the gods and asking them to give her power to conceive. One day a strange man appeared to her and said that he would return the next day in a changed form, as a dog. Jill had to have sex with the dog, and then she would conceive. She did as told, had sex with the dog, and became pregnant. She expected a human child, but instead she gave birth to a chicken. After that she was able to become pregnant without having sex with a dog, and she would give birth to human babies. From that generation on, nobody had any problems conceiving unless they ate chicken or dog meat. So, the family has avoided chicken and dog meat for 5 generations. Bob returned to Monrovia and told this story to Rev. D, who concluded that Bob was possessed by, among others, the demon of lust. He delivered him of this demon, broke the curse and Bob was healed. The next year he met a woman, whom he married, and has since had 2 beautiful children. He is also able to eat chicken and dog meat whenever he wants. Praise Jesus.
Great Expectations
Obviously, a lot has happened since my last update. I’m not even going to attempt a comprehensive catch-up. Long-story short, fieldwork is still going very well, Liberia is still hot as hell, and I am finding myself in increasingly bizarre, fascinating and thought-provoking situations. I can’t imagine what stories I will have by July, when I’ll be leaving. I went back to Portugal for Christmas and New Years, which was lovely. I love salad, I really really love salad with tons of fresh vegetables. I love brussel sprouts. I love my mom’s fresh salmon fillets with Moroccan lemons and onion. I love cheap bubble water. I love strong water pressure in the shower. I love electricity 24 hours a day. I love drinking water out of the tap. I love cold, fresh air and I love the sound of silence. I love opening my inbox and reading 10 emails in only 5 minutes. I love talking to people and knowing the interaction will never result in my having to say, ‘no I cannot help you’. I love being able to walk down the street and not have to avoid cars, urine, trash, exhaust, wheelbarrows and random people reaching out to grab my hand and calling ‘missy’, ‘fine girl’ or ‘hey you’. Of course I love all these things, but I also love being in Liberia doing what I’m doing. I love that no matter how frustrating my day is, no matter how many conversations I have that end in me thinking, ‘And, what planet am I on??’ I can go home to my apartment, sit in my hammock, go through field notes for the day, and fully appreciate my life as a researcher of Pentecostal churches. Simply the fact that I am a researcher of Pentecostal churches is amusing enough to keep me going. I am never bored in this country, and if I start to feel bored all I have to do is look out my window.
While I was away, a number of issues became glaringly obvious to me. One is the fact that, in the eyes of many Liberians I know, I am not a nice woman from the US who is living in Liberia and when she leaves she will finish getting her PhD. I am not a friend. I am not a ‘sister’ as they call me. I am not even a nuisance who asks too many questions. Whatever I do or say, I am an opportunity. Of course I am. I am white. I am American. Not only that, I am one of the very few Westerners who do interact on a regular basis with most of these people. It seems that, for many Liberians, when an opportunity presents itself, especially as an overly polite and always cheerful young American girl who going to Europe for the holidays and has said, ‘If I can bring you back something small, please let me know’, then why beat around the bush? While I was away, a number of items were requested from church pastors. Note, these pastors have traveled to the US and Europe, they are fully literate and most have degrees (albeit from University of Liberia which is hardly university standard), they know what being a PhD student entails, and compared to the average Liberian, they are very well-off financially and they are running very successful businesses in the form of soul-saving Pentecostal churches. So, the items requested were: 2 laptop computers, 3 Ipods, 3 Digital Cameras, one Digital Camcorder, 4 mobile phones. When I wrote back, very politely, to the requests for the laptop computers, the response was, ‘ok, then if you can just bring me a used laptop I suppose that should be fine. May god bless you financially so that you may have the means to provide me with this blessing so that you may be rewarded in the future.’ When I politely responded the request for the digital camcorder, the response was, ‘Ok, if that is not within your means then perhaps you will just buy us a generator upon your return’. And so on. It is extremely frustrating, to say the least. I brought back nothing for my churches except copies of photos that I’d taken. Perhaps I should have returned with some little trinkets or t-shirts that nobody really wants, just as a gesture. But honestly I was so annoyed with those requests that I wanted to leave the issue alone entirely. I wonder if they actually expected me to bring back these items, or if they were just trying their luck. I’m trying to get to the bottom of this, for PhD purposes.
What attempts I did make just frustrated me even more. When I gave photos to the churches the response was, ‘Oh, you only made one copy, you should have made one for every person in the shot.’ Ok, sorry. ‘Oh, you didn’t print any pictures of me, why not? I know you took one.’ Ok, sorry. ‘It is okay, there is a place in town you can develop more for us.’ Ok. I brought back an MP3 player for E (a cheap one, just 1gig) and, before I left Portugal, asked him what kind of music he wanted on it, so I could download his requests. Reply: ‘I want some cool, cool music, Queen. Cool, cool. Different different cool cool music.’ I say, ‘Ok, like what’. Reply: ‘Cool Cool music, anyting, cool cool’. I say, ‘Ok, so 50 cent? Akon, Shakira, Nigger blow (Liberia’s most popular and disgusting rapper)?’. Reply, ‘Yes Queen, just cool cool music!’ I load it up with some ‘cool cool’ music and give it to him. He turns it on immediately: ‘I don’t love it’, he says, matter-of-factly. I say, ‘What don’t you love?’ Reply: ‘I don’t love it, it is not good’. I eventually had to take the player away from him because he refused to take the headphones out of his ears. I also brought a new Scrabble game for E’s uncle’s shop, where the same 10 or so people hang out every day, and I spend a lot of time sitting there waiting. The people there spend a lot of time sitting watching the television, which is usually some rubbish Nigerian movie, football or sometimes (and this is when people come in off the street to watch) WWF wrestling. They LOVE it. My opinion is that, if they are not out working and are not reading newspapers, at least they can play scrabble and maybe improve their reading skills. They thanked me for the game, and I told them, ‘I am coming back with a dictionary’, because clearly, they will need it. I return with a nice Webster’s dictionary, give it to them and they say, ‘It is not a scrabble dictionary?’ I say, ‘No, but it is the same thing, it is a dictionary. Whatever words are in here, you use in scrabble’. They take it and thank me. The next day I ask E if anyone played scrabble, he says, ‘They tried, but there is a problem with the dictionary’. I say, ‘ok, what is the problem’. Reply, ‘it is no good, they need the scrabble dictionary, all words are not in the dictionary you give them’. I have three words for my situation of trying to give gifts to a Liberian: I. Give. Up.
So that concludes my (first?) proper rant on Liberia. This all has nothing to do with my research; it is nothing to do with Liberia, really. I could go on about the reasons behind this behavior and why it is expected that they ask me for these things and why I should try and be patient and appreciate the cultural differences between gift-giving in the US and in Liberia. I could talk about how this further demonstrates my Western privilege and how pathetic it is to complain about this when there is so much suffering in Liberia blah blah blah. I don’t believe that and I don’t care, to be perfectly frank. I will address these issues academicaly, certainly, in my thesis, whatever my feelings on them. This rant is simply about my personal frustrations as of late. I figured it important to add some to my blog, which, upon reading during the holidays, appears a bit too positive to truly represent my time here. Despite all these frustrations, I must reiterate, I am extremely happy to be here and whatever annoyances I have to constantly deal with, they are absolutely worth it. I should also say that despite the fact that I am an opportunity and not a friend to most Liberians I know, I still think that many of them are wonderful people.
While I was away, a number of issues became glaringly obvious to me. One is the fact that, in the eyes of many Liberians I know, I am not a nice woman from the US who is living in Liberia and when she leaves she will finish getting her PhD. I am not a friend. I am not a ‘sister’ as they call me. I am not even a nuisance who asks too many questions. Whatever I do or say, I am an opportunity. Of course I am. I am white. I am American. Not only that, I am one of the very few Westerners who do interact on a regular basis with most of these people. It seems that, for many Liberians, when an opportunity presents itself, especially as an overly polite and always cheerful young American girl who going to Europe for the holidays and has said, ‘If I can bring you back something small, please let me know’, then why beat around the bush? While I was away, a number of items were requested from church pastors. Note, these pastors have traveled to the US and Europe, they are fully literate and most have degrees (albeit from University of Liberia which is hardly university standard), they know what being a PhD student entails, and compared to the average Liberian, they are very well-off financially and they are running very successful businesses in the form of soul-saving Pentecostal churches. So, the items requested were: 2 laptop computers, 3 Ipods, 3 Digital Cameras, one Digital Camcorder, 4 mobile phones. When I wrote back, very politely, to the requests for the laptop computers, the response was, ‘ok, then if you can just bring me a used laptop I suppose that should be fine. May god bless you financially so that you may have the means to provide me with this blessing so that you may be rewarded in the future.’ When I politely responded the request for the digital camcorder, the response was, ‘Ok, if that is not within your means then perhaps you will just buy us a generator upon your return’. And so on. It is extremely frustrating, to say the least. I brought back nothing for my churches except copies of photos that I’d taken. Perhaps I should have returned with some little trinkets or t-shirts that nobody really wants, just as a gesture. But honestly I was so annoyed with those requests that I wanted to leave the issue alone entirely. I wonder if they actually expected me to bring back these items, or if they were just trying their luck. I’m trying to get to the bottom of this, for PhD purposes.
What attempts I did make just frustrated me even more. When I gave photos to the churches the response was, ‘Oh, you only made one copy, you should have made one for every person in the shot.’ Ok, sorry. ‘Oh, you didn’t print any pictures of me, why not? I know you took one.’ Ok, sorry. ‘It is okay, there is a place in town you can develop more for us.’ Ok. I brought back an MP3 player for E (a cheap one, just 1gig) and, before I left Portugal, asked him what kind of music he wanted on it, so I could download his requests. Reply: ‘I want some cool, cool music, Queen. Cool, cool. Different different cool cool music.’ I say, ‘Ok, like what’. Reply: ‘Cool Cool music, anyting, cool cool’. I say, ‘Ok, so 50 cent? Akon, Shakira, Nigger blow (Liberia’s most popular and disgusting rapper)?’. Reply, ‘Yes Queen, just cool cool music!’ I load it up with some ‘cool cool’ music and give it to him. He turns it on immediately: ‘I don’t love it’, he says, matter-of-factly. I say, ‘What don’t you love?’ Reply: ‘I don’t love it, it is not good’. I eventually had to take the player away from him because he refused to take the headphones out of his ears. I also brought a new Scrabble game for E’s uncle’s shop, where the same 10 or so people hang out every day, and I spend a lot of time sitting there waiting. The people there spend a lot of time sitting watching the television, which is usually some rubbish Nigerian movie, football or sometimes (and this is when people come in off the street to watch) WWF wrestling. They LOVE it. My opinion is that, if they are not out working and are not reading newspapers, at least they can play scrabble and maybe improve their reading skills. They thanked me for the game, and I told them, ‘I am coming back with a dictionary’, because clearly, they will need it. I return with a nice Webster’s dictionary, give it to them and they say, ‘It is not a scrabble dictionary?’ I say, ‘No, but it is the same thing, it is a dictionary. Whatever words are in here, you use in scrabble’. They take it and thank me. The next day I ask E if anyone played scrabble, he says, ‘They tried, but there is a problem with the dictionary’. I say, ‘ok, what is the problem’. Reply, ‘it is no good, they need the scrabble dictionary, all words are not in the dictionary you give them’. I have three words for my situation of trying to give gifts to a Liberian: I. Give. Up.
So that concludes my (first?) proper rant on Liberia. This all has nothing to do with my research; it is nothing to do with Liberia, really. I could go on about the reasons behind this behavior and why it is expected that they ask me for these things and why I should try and be patient and appreciate the cultural differences between gift-giving in the US and in Liberia. I could talk about how this further demonstrates my Western privilege and how pathetic it is to complain about this when there is so much suffering in Liberia blah blah blah. I don’t believe that and I don’t care, to be perfectly frank. I will address these issues academicaly, certainly, in my thesis, whatever my feelings on them. This rant is simply about my personal frustrations as of late. I figured it important to add some to my blog, which, upon reading during the holidays, appears a bit too positive to truly represent my time here. Despite all these frustrations, I must reiterate, I am extremely happy to be here and whatever annoyances I have to constantly deal with, they are absolutely worth it. I should also say that despite the fact that I am an opportunity and not a friend to most Liberians I know, I still think that many of them are wonderful people.
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