Return%20to%20Liberia

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Return to Liberia

• Aldo Benini
• August 2008

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When I surfaced in the swimming pool, the rain
was so fast that I had trouble breathing. I had
walked the 200 m from the hotel to the pool in a
flooded street. Returning, I struggled with a
river and promptly tripped into a sinkhole,
hurting my sheen. I was reminded of an old Red
Cross legend, of a smallish Swiss delegate being
washed down a gutter and saved from drowning in a
manhole just barely.I had been in Liberia last
in 1993, when the rockets were falling on
Monrovia. Now the country was in peace, but the
force of the rains had not relented.
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We were to visit a Red Cross center for Child
Advocacy and Rehabilitation, code for a
vocational training center for war-traumatized
adolescents, many of them former child soldiers,
in danger of lapsing into delinquency,
prostitution and fresh violence if they could not
be stabilized enough to survive in the harsh
world out there.For a long distance, we rode
past street markets, under the rain alternating
between drizzles and reckless downpours. The air
was pleasantly warm, not oppressively hot.
Vendors were concerned about the integrity of
their wares more than about their own physical
comfort.
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We crossed a wide river on a bridge that
miraculously had withstood the war. A dirt road,
with deep puddles, led to the center hidden from
the main road, yet massive besides the modest
homesteads of a place called Brewerville City,
difficult to tell from brush and farms.We were
welcomed into the neat and dry atmosphere of a
meeting hall, past stalls of trade samples
manufactured by the trainees, baked goods, stew
and rice, and drink filling the U-shaped
verandas, the whole reminding me of church bazaar
bustle in my early childhood days.
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The stunningly beautiful Tina sold me batik
pieces that she and her colleagues had dyed. I
noticed the strength of her arms, which at one
time may have brandished an AK-47. I asked how a
particular batik pattern was crafted. The women
tried to explain. An instructor intervened,
telling them, without cause apparent, that this
was not the way to talk to visitors. A male
accountant seated not far from us was very
worried that I should get the right change back.
The conversation with the batik women died. I was
left with beautiful souvenirs, photos that commit
the moment to lasting memory, and a glass wall
between black youth and white man.
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Inside the hall, a well ordered celebration
program made visiting parents, Red Cross
notables, center staff and us foreigners aware
and appreciative how life-changing, life-saving
such shelters can be for young people who had
many inroads with evil. The coordinator gave
everybody their due recognition. He illustrated
the challenges, pointing out that when the youth
were taken in, they were so neglected they could
not even speak properly. Thus I expected some
trainee to get the chance to address the
audience. But only adults did. They would address
the children, in a script that was
comprehensible to the adult visitors only. And
the children? They spoke to us jubilantly dancing.
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I regretted the lost opportunity to learn
anything personal from the former child soldiers,
on their work and plans for the future, if not on
the painful things that they were leaving behind.
I did have happy conversations with several
instructors and with the chairman of the parents
association, a distinctly gentleman character. I
parted grateful, sad, charmed, richer in love and
in gifts for my loved ones at home. No sooner
were we back in the rain-soaked city than we saw
exemplars of youth who had not had that kind of
saving chance - dejected, miserable, fighting to
survive.
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When you are out there, things will happen. Bad
breasts, open moles, side problems to name but
the most ordinary ones. Worse if you are the man
or woman who cant born, or your manpower is
nonfunction. Want to be cleaver in school?
Malaria, worm, snake bite.You will turn to
Herbalist Mami Water Kakata, with his mermaid,
snake medicine, good luck and mobile phone
number. And, as my friend said, you will HOPE
that your diagnosis is only rhumatism. And not
what you get if you have to sell your body, run
drugs or scavenge the garbage.
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But ultimately, all storms die down the storms
of life as much as the rain storms of Liberia. If
it was a bad storm, we are chastened, hurt, or
drowned in the gutter. A good storm leaves us
cleansed, refreshed, maybe enlightened. There are
mermaids out there who want our good. There are
Tinas who learn to speak while preserving a wild
beauty. There are storms that are over.
With love from Liberia Aldo Benini
August 2008
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The End! Get dry!