Parties, bike rides and scary sights
26th July 2006
Birthday Party
The average CBW employee earns 150,000 cedi ($NZ 25.86) a month
thanks to the crapiness of CBW management.
That's not enough.
Kate - who is always having clever ideas like these - decided to
throw a surprise birthday party for Emmanuel
- a grade three teacher at the CBW Primary
School.
Emmanuel, or E-Man, is a top bloke. He works for next to
nothing and is still passionate about the work he does. If anyone
deserves a surprise birthday party, it's E-Man.
We also invited some of E-Man's friends along to join in the
celebration. We had it at Holiday
Feeling, a popular volunteer hangout.
The "Surprise" bit of the evening went pretty much as
expected. Lights were dimmed, E-Man was lured in, people shouted
"Surprise". Nothing special here.
What was special though was when the Liberians started singing.
It was very very cool. One lady called Gardia sang
a song for E-Man. The song was about the struggle of the
African people. It was full of sadness and full of hope. It
reminded me of how distant I am from these people. I don't
understand the struggle of Liberians. I don't feel their
pain. All I could do was listen.
A guy called Pele also sang some
songs. Some were soulful and full of pain like Gardia's, and some
were very modern and done in a rap style. All very cool.
I had a lot of these sort of experiences in the Philippines - hanging out with Filipinos and enjoying their culture. Not nearly
as much here in Little Liberia. I think some of it has to do with
not forming many adult Liberian friendships, which is due to every man
and his dog wanting money form me. A real
shame.
It will be interesting to see how adult
friendships work out in Uganda, which is only seventeen days away
now. Yikes!
Bike rides
One Saturday afternoon I went bike riding with Matty
and Jim. Jim is relatively new to
the program and is staying in Guest
House One with me. He will be in Tanzania at the same time I'm
in Uganda. I hope to visit him in Tanzania.
The bikes cost us 2000 cedi ($NZ 0.34) an hour to rent.
We biked for a total of four hours. It was great. It felt
like I was in the Real Africa as opposed to this weird little refugee
camp I am on.
We passed many Ghanaians along the way. We gave a friendly smile
and a hello to all of them and they returned in kind.
The kids in particular got very excited when they saw us.
Though one Ghanaian kid took one look at three big white guys on bikes
and burst into tears. Understandable.
The only downside was a sore butt for a
number of days afterwards.
Scary Stories
Living on a Refugee Camp can be just like living anywhere else
in the world. You have surprise birthday parties, you go for bike
rides and you chill out with friends.
Sometimes though, it just strikes you that you
are living with people whose life is so vastly different from your
own. Their histories are horrendous, their present is surreal and
their future is sketchy at best. Here are a few stories that
remind me how vastly different these peoples' world is from mine.
Feeding Frenzies
I attended a cultural cooking event for one of the grades I help
teach. Every student contributed one bag of rice and 3,000 cedi
($NZ 0.52) for the meat for the meal. I supplied drinks for
everyone.
After the event had finished, I was sitting outside just chillin'
with some people. A lady bought out a large pot of left over
rice and gave it to some of the kids that were hanging around.
They took to the rice like animals. I don't mean to
sound derogatory or condescending or even racist, but that is what
they look liked. Animals. They scooped up the rice in
their dirty hands and shoveled it into
their mouths in a bizarre feeding frenzy.
It was a scary sight.
I guess it really hit me just how hungry
some of these kids are. The lucky ones are getting one meal a
day.
Sound
Effects
Matty works in the IT Department
teaching Liberians all about the wonderful world of computers.
One day he was teaching them how to put sound affects into their PowerPoint
presentations. The Liberians were taking great fun in putting Pops,
Whizzes, Crashes and Wallops into their presentations.
One gentleman found a machine gun noise and put it into his
presentation. When it was played, everybody ducked.
I guess they were familiar with the sound and knew that they should
duck when they heard it.
Scary.
Wrong Signals
I was at Guest House Two relaxing with some kids. One of
them was a bit of problem child. She is about fifteen, a
child-prostitute and has attempted suicide a couple of times.
I was standing quite close to her and reached
up to scratch my head. She cowered away from me in fear.
I was so shocked at her fear of me that I
didn't do anything. What I should of done is sat down and had
her look me in my eye and say something like, "B____, I will
never ever hit you or hurt you. Do you understand?"
But I didn't.
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(c)
2005 and 2006 Malcolm Trevena.
All the stuff on this site is written by me, Malcolm Trevena. Feel free to
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