Weekend Getaway for Jesus

The Background
'NGO A' is an interesting faith-based NGO; I’m not going to make any judgments about it now aside from ‘interesting’. Their general objective is to set up Christian churches in villages and towns that have no churches, and in which the population is overwhelmingly Muslim or practictioners of ‘African Traditional Religions’. They send local missionaries to these towns, fund them for 2 years (for the pastor’s salaries, to construct a church, for Bibles, materials, etc.) while the missionaries attract a congregation, and set up some community-based project so that the church might be able to sustain itself after the 2-year cutoff point.
Much of my fieldwork is based in Monrovia, so when I get a chance to get out of the city, I will certainly take it. This weekend I accompanied the country director for missions, M, on a trip to Grand Cape Mount County (West of Monrovia, bordering Sierra Leone), during which he evaluates the churches that they are setting up in the villages. M is a Liberian, about 30 years old, who spent most of his life in Sierra Leone, and a good portion of it fighting in the government army. When the war ended, finally, in 2002, M had no job, no family, few friends. He became a born-again Christian and eventually met two American missionaries and their two young daughters living in the country working in Sierra Leone; this family now lives down the street from me in Monrovia where they are working on the Liberia project.
I went to three sites that AFJ started in August in Madina, Gbesseh and Tiene, villages with populations of a couple thousand, and an 85%-95% Muslim population. Construction of the church edifice is underway in each town, so for now in Madina, the church services are held in a clinic; in Gbesseh in a school; in Tiene in an orphanage. The congregations range from 30-70 people; at least half are children under 15. The community project in Madina is well underway: a 5 acre farm which produces rice, cassava, peppers, cucumbers, etc. to sell in the village and surrounding areas. They are clearing more forest in order to expand the project. In Gbesseh, they are constructing a bakery, which is much-needed because apparently in these villages they have to buy all their bread from Monrovia. In Tiene there are no computers, printers, photocopiers, etc. for many kilometers, so they are working on setting up a business center; in

the distant future they hope to get hooked up to the internet.

The farm in Madina

The Congregation in Tiene Orphanage

The journey
So the journey to these sites was eventful, to say the least. M and I set off from my apartment at about 10am; he had 2 bicycles and a small child to drop off along the way. He gave me one bicycle and told me to meet him at Broad street, where we’d find a car to Duala Market. I got on the small bike and started peddling- it was GREAT to get back on a bicycle; the streets were pretty empty, too. I passed by all my usual people who I always say hello to- they were a little shocked I think to see me on a bicycle- ‘Queen, where you going? You move so fast today!’ I got to Broad St. and waited for a bit- M had to pedal with the small child on the back so it took some time. We found a car and paid for 4 seats in the back to carry the bicycles; he and I squeezed into the front. We got to Duala pretty easily, unloaded the car, sent this child down the road to his autie’s house and found another car to Medina. After 15 minutes of negotiating M got a decent price. We loaded the bikes and continued. Then the drama began.
There are road checkpoints all over Liberia- most of them are just police checkpoints where they, I guess, make sure you’re not carrying weapons, drugs or massive amounts of stolen goods. There are also UN checkpoints which, I think, serve a similar purpose but are there for show and just-in-case something happens, but were obviously really important to help end the war and to maintain peace soon after. There are also immigration checkpoints, where they check for visas and passports for obvious foreigners. Any UN SUV or NGO SUV passes through without even stopping. Any other car has to stop and the driver has to get out and give the ‘official’ a ‘tip’ in order to pass; in some cases everyone has to get out and go talk to the ‘official’.
I, being an idiot, forgot to bring my passport. Also, I, being a white woman in a share taxi (a rare sight, I’m sure), was pretty much asking for attention. So, at most checkpoints (immigration and police; the UN waved the taxis through), the ‘officials’ asked me for my documents. I would say, ‘I forgot them’, and they would get a look of shock/horror on their face and say, ‘come with me now’ and I would be ‘arrested’. I would sit in front of another ‘official’ who was always wearing sunglasses and would look at me and yell, ‘what makes you think you can travel through Liberia without documents?’, or ‘What would happen if this happened in your country’, ‘why don’t you respect Liberia’, and other questions to try and display their power. Then, inevitably, ‘so what are we going to do to fix this situation?’ and then M would give them anywhere from 20-80LD and tell the ‘official’ she is a missionary, let us go.
After the second time of doing this, I told M I didn’t want to take part in this corruption any more, I didn’t want to lie about who I was, and that I would turn back at the next checkpoint instead of paying them off and lying. He said, ‘this is Africa, this is how it works,’ and I start getting theological on his ass, even getting out my Bible. Then I try to explain that ‘this is the reason your country is backwards, etc’. Totally over his head, but oh well. So anyway, at the next checkpoint in Sinje, a fairly large town in Grand Cape Mount, I tell M to keep quiet. The ‘official’ yells at me for 10 minutes and I look back at him and say, ‘Ok, so what do I do? You’ve yelled at me for 10 minutes, wasted your time, I understand that I’ve made a mistake, so what can I do?’ he says, ‘well, something can be arranged I’m sure’, I say, ‘I’m not giving you any money. I want you to do what the law requires you to do. According to Liberian law, what are you supposed to do with me? Do I turn back? Do you arrest me? Do you give me a ticket? What are you supposed to do?’ He looks at me with shock/horror: ‘What?’ I repeat my questions. He says, ‘well, I suppose if you want to go this route I can call my supervisor and find out exactly what is supposed to be done!’ I say, ‘Good, call your supervisor.’ He says, ‘surely there is another way of doing this?’ I say, ‘no, call your supervisor, I want to know what the law requires us to do here’. He ‘calls’ his supervisor, and puts the phone down after 5 seconds, ‘Supervisor not available, it is Saturday’. I say, ‘ok, so what do we do?’ he says, ‘ok I will let you go this time, but don’t let it happen again.’ I did this for the next 3 checkpoints along the way, and all the checkpoints on the way back and didn’t have to pay a penny more. I later found out that at these checkpoints, the ‘officials’ weren’t even legally allowed to ‘arrest’ me in the first place, nor ask for my documents because I wasn’t crossing over any country borders, and I wasn’t doing anything illegal. They just saw me as an opportunity to get money.
At another checkpoint along the way, the police officer, one on a particularly high power trip and most certainly drunk, looks at the used bicycles and says, ‘Where did you get those bicycles?’ Moses tells them, ‘At a shop in Monrovia’; the officer says, ‘I need to see a receipt for those’. Moses chuckles and displays the receipt- I am shocked he has one because I’ve never once gotten a receipt for anything in this country, even upon request, even from the Ministry of Immigration and Naturalisation when I extended my visa. But Moses knows the score. The officer looks at the receipt with shock and says, ‘oh, well, there is no official government stamp on it!’ Everyone in the taxi gets out, I stay put, and argue with eachother for the next 30 minutes. At one point the officer starts marching back and forth on the road calling out loudly, ‘I am an officer of the law and you will respect my authority!!! I am putting your bicycles under arrest!’ and then trips a little bit. It was preposterous. M is repeatedly requesting to go to the police station, not far down the road, to talk to the chief. The officer screams, ‘You must respect my authority! I am in charge of this checkpoint and these bicycles are not legitimate!!!’ Eventually, the officer agrees (after about 10 people from the community convince him to calm the hell down) to go to the station. The taxi drives me there, while M and the officer walk. The officer is pushing the bikes, tripping over his own feet and dropping the bikes occasionally. At the station, the chief is told about the situation, looks at the receipt, apologizes to M and I, and we continue on our way, the charges on the bicycles apparently dropped.

A Bizarre Night’s Sleep
We stayed in Tiene for the night; M slept on the floor of one of the pastor’s houses; I was given a bed in the women’s dorm at the Orphanage next door. The place was fine- clean enough and they put a fresh sheet on my mattress, which absolutely reeked of mildew but that is better than sweat/urine/sewage/fish/rotten something/etc that many things in Liberia smell like. There were about 4 women in the room when I went to bed at 10 (way too early for my bedtime, but without a generator there is not much else to do but sleep), more trickled in as I laid there, along with some children. My experience that night was surreal, to say the least. The women did a bit of ‘girl talk’, only apparently Christian Liberian girl talk is about the demons that are attacking you, your home, and your friends. It was almost like listening to ghost stories that you tell at a slumber party, when the lights are out and you are supposed to be trying to sleep. When the girl talk stopped, the women prayed individually, out loud. Typical prayers about protecting oneself from satan and bless me for this and please help me get a job. I finally fell asleep at about midnight, I think, but was woken up throughout the night, literally, with screams, ‘Blood of Jesus!’ or ‘Satan get out!’ Holy. Crap. At one point, I woke up to a women sobbing silently, ‘Jesus, Jesus, Jesus’ and then breathing really heavily. Weird. I had some crazy half-awake half-asleep dreams that night. I was woken again, still pitch black outside but probably about 5am, to women yelling very loudly, ‘Devotion!!!!’ Devotion is what morning prayer is often called. And wow, did they pray. Loudly. And sing, even more loudly. For 30 minutes. Right in the hallway about 10 feet from my bed, so surely every man, woman and child in the orphanage saw the strange white woman laying there, pretending to sleep, and clearly not doing her morning Christian duty. Devotion finally ended as the sun started to rise, and I fell asleep, woken a few more times because the children were cleaning the dorm room and they had to sweep around me. I woke up again at 7.30, got dressed and stumbled outside into the already sweltering sun. The women from the orphanage called out, ‘Good morning, how’s the sleep’. ‘Great!’ I lied. Then they gave me this for breakfast:

It is apparently a root in the cassava family called Edo or something- they gave it to me and said, 'It can make you so fat!' Great.

Street Preaching

Street preaching is a pretty common sight in Monrovia; it often attracts a relatively substantial crowd and can last anywhere from 2 minutes to 2 hours. If I have time, I stop and listen to what they are saying. The topics are often the same- Liberia is being taken over by the forces of darkness and in order for Jesus to come again we all must go to church. And then there is inevitably an offering or two, and the preacher will tell the crowd about his (I’ve only seen men street preaching so far) church, and give his phone number. Last week, I noticed a small crowd gathering on Randall and Benson Street, and a man franticly pacing back and forth and periodically ‘writing’ illegible things on the street with a rock. I stopped to listen, and one hour later the crowd had grown to about 40 people, and another preacher had taken over. Turns out both of these men were ex-Generals (one was called General Dirty Water) for the ‘rebels’- the NPFL – during the war. During the ‘preaching’, they were basically telling the crowd all of the atrocities they committed- killing hundreds of people, practicing black magic, traveling to the demon underworld to talk to Satan, killing and eating babies to gain demonic power, raping and killing women….fairly typical Liberian civil war stories.
After the preaching, and after 3 offerings, the second preacher did an ‘anointing service’, in which he had anyone willing to pay 60LD (1USD, a pretty high price for an anointing), stand in line in front of him (about 10 people went forward). He got a 2litre bottle of mineral water, held it in the air and turned it into the blood of Jesus. He then twisted the cap three times, ‘In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.’ The people walked forward and he poured water into their hands; they were to splash it on their face and drink some. They walked away healed.



Naturally, during this whole thing, I talked to everyone and asked what they thought of the preachers, etc. There were mixed opinions- some said they were ‘holy men’, others said they were ‘robbers who are not preaching the Bible, they are just here to make money’. One man I met told me he was a Secretary in his Pentecostal Church, and he had some very interesting opinions on these preachers: ‘they are only here bragging about their stories, when what they should be doing is talking about how Jesus has changed them into better people’. This man, Bropleh, told me he would pass my card along to his pastor.
Later that day, I got a call from Bropleh’s pastor, Rev. RS. He told me he was interested to meet me, would love to give an interview, and could I meet him later in the week. I assumed I would be meeting him in his church, but when I arrived at the place he told me to meet him, he begins to tell me about ‘God bless Liberia ex-combatant rehabilitation center’, which he has opened and which is where we are going. Awesome. We arrive at the destination, and there are two older white men, one interviewing a large man; the other filming the room, and about 30 young men sitting around, listening silently. Turns out the 2 white men are with Youth For Christ and are in Liberia for a few days to ‘highlight the plight of ex-combatants in Liberia’- one of them starts crying as he tells the group, ‘To see what Jesus Christ has done for you is truly touching’, and it takes the power of Jesus Christ Himself to keep me from rolling my eyes. The man being interviewed I quickly realize because I’d met him briefly before after a crusade and seen plenty of pictures in the newspaper, is former General Butt Naked, Joshua Blahyi. This guy has recently become a bit of a celebrity, since appearing in front of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and admitting to killing 20,000 people, many of which were women and children, eating human hearts, traveling to hell and back, etc…but who is now a prominent evangelist and a bit of a hero for the born-again ex-combatant community. I’ve been trying to arrange a meeting with this guy for ages, so it was total luck that I happened to walk into this room. It also turns out that Rev. RS was the man who initially prayed over then-General Butt Naked and caused him to receive Jesus Christ and become born-again. Now, both Joshua and the Rev. run this center for ex-combatants-turned-Christians. So, now I have an ‘in’ to this community, which is a major breakthrough for my fieldwork. Just when I thought my life here couldn’t get any more interesting….

Sow seed me shoes-o!

Last night, after Day four of the Church C Paynesville Crusade, I was riding home in the church truck with the Church C driver and some other church workers. Just before we reached my area of town, he says to me, totally nonchalantly, 'Sow seed me shoes-o.'
This statement is absolutely loaded, and really sums up so much of my 4 months in Liberia thus far. Let me break it down.
1. 'Sow seed' - this is the Pentecostal way of saying 'Give me', only if you consider it as 'sowing a seed', then you are doing it because whenever you give something to someone else (especially the church), you can expect, some time, to get a blessing in return that will be greater than the original seed (because, of course, the seed will grow into a plant). I have found that this 'seed faith' is quite pervasive in other Christian churches and among Liberians generally. It is an extremely common way to get people to offer money in the church: 'If you sow 100LD seed today, you get 100-fold next year!!' Most people I speak to consider this ideology as fact. Most people also tell me, upon my asking, that if they had $1000 USD, they would sow it to the church before putting it in a bank in which they could recieve interest: 'If I die tomorrow, then God will know where I put my money,' or 'I have guaranteed blessings if I sow seed to God, a bank might close down and take all my money', or 'This is God's money, not mine, I cannot rob God'.
2. 'Sow seed me' - English is pathetic in this country. No, I'm not talking about Liberian English, which is certainly a different language altogether. But when most people are speaking or writing in 'American English', it is absolutely terrible. Surely this is down to lack of education and such widespread illiteracy, but even the educated Liberians don't speak in perfect English. The newspapers are pathetic, at best. A lot of journalists will throw around big words that they clearly don't understand the meaning of (thanks to the thesaurus?), and string these big words together in totally unintelligable sentences. Sometimes I'll be reading an article and I'll think, 'Wow, finally, a decent article with good English' and then towards the end I will see, in bold, 'Click here for more information.'
3. Shoes - This guy has owns a truck, he has a job, he's relatively well-off by Liberian standards (which means he's just above the poverty line), but he's still finding it necessary to ask me for shoes. Shoes, in rich countries at least, are a pretty basic necessity. Here, they are almost a luxury (most people will wear flip-flops). If a person owns shoes, they wear them until they get holes in them or the straps break. Then they repair them with patches of leather or rubber. About five different people have asked me to help them buy shoes.
4. 'Shoes-o' - In Liberia, 'o' is added to the end of sentences in order to add emphasis to the statement. It makes the English, which is pretty brutal to listen to, a little bit prettier. I am often amused by the things Liberians have added 'o' to, for emphasis: 'Jesus is working for me, I will not worry-o'. 'Amen-o'. 'George Bush-o'. 'Thank God-o'. And so on.
5. 'Sow seed me shoes-o'. As a person from the West, and as a person who is seen to have untold amounts of wealth compared to an average Liberian, to ask me a question like this is totally appropriate. I get asked for things all the time, many times a day, by strangers, acquaintances and 'friends'. If a stranger asks me for something ('Hey missy, buy me scratchcard-o', I will usually respond with a firm 'No' and keep walking, but, if I'm in a particularly irritable mood, I'll say, 'Ok, I buy you scratchcard then I buy everyone around here scratchcard, then I buy all of Liberia scratchcard, want me to do that? Huh, HUH??!!'). If an acquaintance asks me for something I'll usually say, 'Sorry-o', chat for a bit, and move on. If a 'friend' asks me for something small (a newspaper, an orange, water), I'll usually buy it. If it's something big (camcorder, mobile phone, US Visa, wife, job), I'll try to patiently explain why this is not possible for me to do. I told the driver, who is an acquaintance, 'Sorry-o' and the issue was dropped. My refusal to buy him shoes did not offend him, as far as I can tell. He was just trying his luck, I guess.