Ghana: A Love Affair

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

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

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

That was night #1.

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

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

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

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

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

Hello, Baby - Welcome to the World

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Still Waters Run Deep

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

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

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

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

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

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

To pee or not to pee

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

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

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

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

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

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

Holiday Adventures

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unsettling Conversations

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

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

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

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

"My titty is for me"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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