Gbarnga, chickens and how I don’t know how to wait

So… why did the chicken cross the road? Turns out, this is actually a really thoughtful, enigmatic question. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn if a Japanese zen poet had written a koan or two on the subject.


Chickens crossing roads is not something I’d contemplated much before last week. On Thursday afternoon, in Bong County where I was working for the week, I found myself traipsing along a typically orange dirt road, in Mimi the land cruiser, dodging chickens. In the car with me were Daniel, Octavius & Helena (the LEAD staff who operate our Bong County office) and their families. In all we were: 6 adults and 5 kids. And we were en route to the Kpatawee waterfalls, which are about an hour outside of Gbarnga, the capital of Bong County where LEAD’s regional office is located. We drove through scattered villages, landmarked by NGO development projects; through acres of palm farms, which produce palm oil, one of Liberia’s main exports and a local commodity consumed in every Liberian home; past hills and valleys of lush, green jungle; and finally through a gigantic World Bank rice field, just outside the waterfalls, which was shockingly and ravishingly lime green.


It seemed that every village we passed through had suicidal chickens. They would wait till we were too close to brake completely and then catapult themselves suddenly from that side of the road where they’d been pecking away in seeming contentment, towards the irresistable Other side of the road. My response was, every time, to brake as much as possible, and holler “Chickenchickenchicken!!!!” through the windshield, which never failed to produce gales of laughter from my passengers. At the end of the day, I believe the Kpatawee chicken population remained undiminished by our passing, but only by a feather.  


Oh yes, and the waterfalls were beautiful. Our 2 two-year-olds (Octavius’ daughter Octina, and Daniel's daughter Ellen) sat themselves down on the path overlooking the falls and immersed themselves in a tremendous conversation. Thus excluded, the rest of us walked through the water and over the ledge to climb, barefoot, up and down and all over the rocks which sloped down from top of the falls to bottom. All in all, the women pulled off a fine fine showing, as far as being the most adventurous and indomitable, particularly Daniel’s wife Sharon who climbed all the way to the top and didn’t let gallons of water gushing over her feet intimidate her. I was intimidated on her behalf, but she was fine.

I had arrived in Bong County last Monday, taking the 4-hour trek from Monrovia alone. This was the first road trip my staff has allowed me to take solo. We (myself and I) thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, and arrived in Gbarnga safe and sound. During the week, I focused on computer trainings with the staff, and on client interviews for Partners Worldwide. For the latter, the focus was on both story-gathering in general, and ongoing profile development for a mentoring project. We had a very productive week, and it was wonderful to spend more quality time with our regional staff there than I'd so far been able to.  


The journey home to Monrovia was ever-so-slightly more interesting than the journey there. I was slightly less than “alone with my thoughts” because I carried two gentlemen, a woman and her two children. And her bag of chickens. (English 101: every good story comes full circle, and includes a couple of chickens.)

In Liberia, it seems to be an unavoidable evil that I find myself quite often driving Mimi-the-behemoth-Land-Cruiser by myself. The travesty in this is the amount of struggle that the average Liberians faces in the realm of transportation. There is little transportation infrastructure, and this means that – particularly commuting to and from work in downtown Monrovia, Liberians line up at the side of the road by the hundreds and thousands, waiting for buses, for cabs, for motorcycles… to carry them into the city in the morning, and carry them home in the evening. It is very Waiting, Waiting, Waiting for Godot. I am awed at the patience and resignation with which Liberians face this reality. I do not mean to romanticize it by saying that, nor to minimize the very real frustration and daily setbacks that this can mean for any working professional. I am reminded that I am such a New Yorker every time I have to wait an hour or two for an event to begin. And then I remind myself that James, our Education Coordinator, sometimes has to commute three hours to work in the morning, to reach our office downtown. Three hours one way. I don’t know anything about waiting.  


And so, inevitably, as I drive Mimi to work and out and about in the counties, I am often the sole passenger... just me and my very guilty conscience. When I have LEAD staff with me, we will pick up passengers, with a particular preference for women and students, or anybody we recognize or who might be related to someone who is related to someone who is someone’s friend (etc, etc, etc). But when I’m alone, there is a general policy of “don’t pick folks up.” However…


Friday afternoon I was scheduled to drive back to Monrovia, and Friday morning I drove in the opposite direction – to Ganta, the capital of Nimba County. I was doing a school visit there on behalf of Active Kids, a role I inherited from Renita Reed. Active Kids is a Canadian-based organization which builds up the resources of schools in Liberia, among other countries. And so I was fortunate enough to be traveling to Ganta as a representative of Active Kids, which had received a library and other support from the organization.  


I headed for Ganta early, so as to maximize my limited four-hour workday back in Gbarnga with the LEAD staff. I drove up into the highlands of Nimba County, on orange roads though mists and jungle that was broken by open vistas of hills and valleys and coconut trees bending over the road… it was magical. It was Gerard Manly Hopkins, “The world is charged with the grandeur of God / it will flame out, like shining from shook foil…” It was like driving and praying, becoming the same thing.  


I arrived in Ganta, met up with Rev. Wehyee and visited Trumpet Baptist School, where I attended a program at which the kids’ singing – as usual – stole the show and made you grin so hard your face hurt. And en route back to Gbarnga, I managed to acquire a carload of passengers.


I was stopped at a checkpoint by the LNP/National Police of Liberia – which sometimes can mean a lengthy negotiation with a policeman, who may or may not be hoping for some “cold water” (being a euphemism for $). However my skepticism was shown up, as it so often is, by the request that I carry his two friends to Gbarnga, as they had been stranded in Ganta trying to collect their salaries from their employer and had met with no success (a common labor woe of Liberia’s workers). I made a spontaneous exception to my own rule, and as William and Albert and myself drove along, getting acquainted, we were flagged down by another would-be passenger. I am accustomed to the flagging and usually continue on past, because I feel like I have to, but for absolutely no reason beyond that I had already donned the taxi-driver hat for the day, we slowed, reversed, and backed-up. Before you knew it, we had acquired Victoria, her 6-year-old daughter Sarah, and her two-month-old, breastfeeding baby. Oh yes, and a gimungo UNICEF bag full of I don’t know what and a number of burlap sacks. One of which was making some very suspicious sounds in the family of “Cheepcheepcheep.” But it is Lent... and chickies means Easter is coming. (Even though chickies in Liberia are year-round, since we have no spring here. But I digress...) The burlap bags were laid gently in the back seat.


I don’t feel the darkness of Lent here, the way you feel the cold and the dark and waiting of it, back home in Brooklyn. But there’s always a heaviness around, if you stop to be with it. James told me this morning, in the office, that he was headed to Grand Bassa later this week for a funeral of a close family member. My colleague Helena was telling me last week about her long, interrupted education - how she'd been relocated so many times during the war that she'd only just been able to finish her high school graduation two years ago, at age 28. My 8-year-old at home, Anais, knocked on my door and crawled into bed with me Sunday morning, to tell me that Sis Hawah’s niece had died during the night, and so we’d be going to a different church for morning service. There are sad things and struggles everywhere, mixed into all the warmth and generosity of Liberia.


By the time we had arrived in Gbarnga, it was 11am, and as all of my passengers were ultimately Monrovia-bound, we arranged that I would pick them up – three adults, two kids & the chickies – at 3pm. So they sat and waited for me. Would you sit and wait four hours for a ride to Monrovia? Granted it was a free ride. Granted, I am generally nice to my passengers. Granted, Mimi is a pretty comfortable vehicle to travel in. But… still. Liberians teach me that I don’t know how to wait.  

So eventually, I picked up my passengers, and after 20 minutes of chatting, they all fell asleep for the duration of the journey. With the exception of Sarah, our 6-year-old, who starred out the window and occasionally at the crazy bango driver (bango = Pele for "bright one" ie. white person).

“Sarah, honey, how you doin’ back there?”
(Nodding head, with a shy smile). Okay. We’re doing okay.

* * *

The world is charged with the grandeur of God

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil

It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil, crushed

Why do men, then, now, not wreck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod.

And all is seared with trade, bleared, smeared with toil

And wears man’s smudge, and shares man’s smell

The soil is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

There lives the dearest freshness, deep down things.

And though the last lights off the black West went

Oh, morning at the brown brink eastward springs

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent world broods

With warm breast, and with ah! bright wings.

- Gerard Manly Hopkins