It rained a lot in Liberia when I was there. Of course it was rainy season and so it was to be expected, but unlike here in the Northwest, where it constantly drizzles with the occasional down pour, in Liberia it really pours. It will be sunny and very hot one minute and in the next, grey clouds are rolling in and everyone runs for cover. The clothes wouldn’t even be gathered from where they had been hung to dry.

Many of the kids ran to our porch so that they would be “stuck” with us, but others were caught under the eaves of buildings and most in their own dorms.  

As it rains, the soft red dirt is carved into little riverbeds that flow through the whole compound. For whatever reason I couldn’t seem to get any Liberians to come walk in the rain. They looked at me like I was crazy. After all, who would get wet and dirty their clothes and risk getting weird worms through their feet just to enjoy the rain? 

I guess…me.  

I’ve been busy writing letters to the matrons and the children: a family is going over to the orphanage next week and have agreed to take and distribute my letters. I am so happy; I have really been having some hard times missing the kids. So I’ve been writing like mad and haven’t really given a thought to the blog today until now. So today you’ll get two new entries… 

The family going over is adopting two children: Henry and Angel Toe. Henry is the little boy who broke his leg the day before we got to orphanage, and I had no idea he was getting adopted. I have no pictures of Henry but there is a picture of him from a year ago on the blog of the family who is adopting him (www.rutledge6.blogspot.com). I only met him once and he was immobilized the entire month. Once I took him some medicine and read him a few stories. He was very interactive and interested in the stories. I’m so glad that he’s getting adopted.  

I’m sure some of you may be wondering about the practical issues we faced at the orphanage like what we used for drinking water and how we took baths. Today I’ll focus on some of those things.  

Instead of buying water bottles, we would buy small packs of water. They resembled a sealed plastic baggy with water inside. They fit nicely in the palm of your hand, and when you wanted a drink, you bit off a corner and sucked away! I think one bag of water turned out to be half of a Nalgene water bottle. I had to drink at least four a day to stay hydrated.   

At the orphanage there was no running water or electricity, but there was before the war so all of the fixtures still exist. There is a full size bath tub and sink, a perfectly good toilet, and mostly good well-water.

There was a big Rubbermaid storage tub under the sink and next to the bathtub. Every day we took turns hauling water from the well across the compound to fill this basin. It took about 12-14 good sized buckets to fill the storage tub with water, which was then used for toilet-flushing, bathing, hand-washing, and –once- I saw it used as drinking water!

Hauling water is not easy.

Redeemed taught me how to carry the water bucket on my head, and this proved to be much easier than staggering across the compound, bucket in hand, water sloshing all over the place. To haul water on my head, I had to learn how to balance my whole body, and make my steps small and slow, but it was definitely much easier. And the kids thought it was hilarious, need I say more.

To take a “bath”, you scoop up a bucket of water from the basin and lift it onto the edge of the bathtub. Then, to cleanse any unwanted bugs or parasites from the water, you add a capful of a special disinfectant called Dettol. Pour water over yourself with a cup, wash your hair and rinse your body. After the heat of the day and coming into contact with all the bugs that wanted to lodge themselves in your skin, it was great to be nice and Dettol-clean after a long day. 

With no running water, we used a small bucket to flush the toilet. When enough water was poured in to the toilet, it created a flush. On the whole it was a very good system, just not as easy as pulling the handle like we do at home.

Hauling water is not easy; neither is taking an icy cold bath after a rainy day, neither is heating water in the rain. But I am so glad that I got to be a part of that culture and experience things the Liberian way.

This is me reading to the kids. My Grandma Rabel thoughtfully sent me with books to read to them: what a great idea! Books served as: a diversion (I could read to them while Christie or Rachel plucked rocks out of their scrapes or soaked a foot in stinging Epsom salts), entertainment (they loved listening and repeating every phrase I read), and as a reward (good behavior meant a child could read books and look at pictures). Another smart thing my grandma did was send books about famous black Americans and books about people with black skin. This was probably the best thing she could have done. The kids loved pointing out people that looked like them in American books!

Some days I would set my chair out on the porch and simply start reading aloud. First a few kids would come, then a few more, then some matrons, then a few more kids. Soon there would be as many as fifteen people around me. The cutest thing was that every time I would read a phrase (”the dog jumped over the chair”) all of them would repeat it and wait for the next phrase! Reading one book could take a half an hour but was it ever adorable.

Moses loved reading stories. This is the same boy I talked about before who hurt his leg. Every day he somehow had new books – that I hadn’t brought – and asked me to read to him. One was about Garfield and one was about a shipwreck and I don’t think he understood the content but he soaked it all in. He also enjoyed coloring on the books!

pepe egg

Cooking was a fun pastime that Irene, Redeemed, Naomi, and some of the other older girls loved to do when given the supplies. They would cook fufu, jalloff rice, fish, chicken, rice, plantains, a red-bean and chicken soup, and eggs. Of course, included in all of these recipes were the mysteriously spicy Liberian peppers. They had no name other than “peppers” so I never actually found out what kind of pepper they were. But man, were they good!  Fufu, as I have already mentioned in previous blog entries, is like floury fermented cassava-root dough served with spices and pepper soup. Jalloff rice is rice cooked with canned vegetables, tomato paste, hot dog bits (popularly known as “sausages” although they were really plain old hot dogs) and the pepper and other spices. It was one of my favorite dishes, it was so delicious!  

Here Redeemed and I are cooking plantains and pepe egg. The peppers are mashed up and mixed into the raw egg with onion and then fried like an omelet. The plantains, which I have made twice since coming home, are simply cut into rounds and deep fried. Its flavor mimics banana but when cooked has the consistency of a potato.

Redeemed preparing plantains for frying

Me, Christie and kids

While we cooked the kids would come over and play their games and talk to us and try to covertly peek into the pot. After we were done I stayed and hung out with them. They tried to teach me a game but I soon discovered my throw-a-nail-in-the-dirt skills weren’t all that sharp. After my attempts, they would look at me, look at each other, and then laugh and laugh. While they were still trying to suppress their giggles they would all try to show me at once how it was supposed to be done- “Ellie, Ellie, like this. Like this.” Then as they expertly thwacked it into their circle, I would say, “Oh, like that?” and lamely try to mimic their practiced hand. It was worth a try anyway.  

teaching me to play Nancho

Me and Hannah

Eric

Kehmah plaiting Redeemed’s hair

Throughout the day, all over the older and younger girls’ dormitories, the matrons and older girls would plait hair. Very much like the Nancho game, they would expertly and quickly braid, twist, curl, twirl, loop and weave their short hair in to beautiful works of art. It gave them something to do and made the hair beautiful, and stayed looking neat and fresh for about a week and a half. I even got my hair plaited once. It took a bit longer- but it was worth it and the little girls thought it was hilarious. “Ellie got her hair plaited!” They would giggle, and I had to laugh along with them as they stroked my braided hair.

Me in plaits

Thank you to everyone for your prayers and encouragement. I’ve spent the last couple of weeks getting organized and rested. We went on vacation for a week and I organized my pictures and inserted some into the blog entries my mom did while I was away. As I am inspired to write, I will post new entries with pictures. Here are some stories I thought of today. 

Spiders, ants, and cockroaches were everywhere. Not that they particularly bothered me, especially not the cockroaches.

But by far the worst of all these offenders were the ants, (because the spiders, while big, didn’t do much). These particular ants were in the house, behind the house, on the porch, on the ground, on the road, everywhere. And they bit. They could bite even if you were stamping your feet in an attempt to deter them. The kids (and me too) hated them and called them “devils”. After the initial bite, which hurts more than a bee sting, they itch for at least a week or two afterwards. It wasn’t long before my feet were covered. J   

This is a little albino girl named Baboa (Ba-boh). She is the only white-skinned child at the orphanage. Albinism is caused by a lack of melanin in the skin. Actually I saw quite a few albino people during my stay, often in town, and they just look like all other Africas except with white skin and hair. But Baboa and albinos typically are, sadly, mistreated by some of the children and sometimes even by the matrons. She tries hard to fit in, but even at her young age she probably knows she can’t completely, because of the color of her skin. I tried to give her some extra attention and love. She is one of the sweetest girls I met while there. She has a great sense of humor, she’s not shy, and I can see that she loves me back for who I am, not for what I can give her. Baboa is one that needs to get adopted, and she almost has a greater need for getting out of the country than some. She desperately needs the love she has never received, and she needs basic hygiene. Her light skin shows how dirty she is and she often has a runny nose. She is also severely sunburned and needs to be in an environment where sunscreen and basic skin care is an option. We’re praying for little Baboa!  

There are so many fights erupting each and every day about “slippers” (flip-flops). The older children will steal slippers from the younger ones and sell them on the street for 5 LD (Liberian Dollars), which in US dollars is less than ten cents. The children need slippers, though, because of the many worms and parasites contracted through the feet. The slippers, although flimsy, provide that much needed protection against these nasty bugs. Often one of the things we treated in our homemade “clinic” was ringworm and simple parasites (the ones that could be killed: many needed a proper hospital). For ringworm, I washed the affected area with soap and water, then dabbed on rubbing alcohol and rum (yes, any kind of spirits will do the trick!!) with a cotton swab. To finish suffocating the fungus, I applied Vaseline thickly. If I treated the worm for three or four days, it would completely heal. Eric had ringworm on his nose once and after treating him for just three days, it was completely gone!  And back to slippers, there are more fights about who took whose slippers or who got them dirty or who ruined them, and revenge is almost mandatory. The slippers end up like this:  

These are Hannah’s slippers and her feet are so small they end just before the holes start.  One day shortly before leaving, I threw away my green pair of Old Navy flip flops which had holes in the soles. The next day I saw a little boy named Day wearing them, holes and all. To me, they were completely unsuitable, but to him, it was a pair of brand new slippers.

Day enjoying a new book

Ellen just went off to sleep in her own bed. We didn’t get home until 2:00 a.m. - they missed their flight from Newark to Seattle due to the length of time it took to get through customs. They travelled 37 hours straight to get home! We already heard lots of stories and I looked at about half the pictures before the camera battery died. After she gets some sleep and does her laundry (in the washing machine and not a bucket!), Ellen will take over the blog and fill you all in on her adventures.

She is a tired and happy young lady. What a tremendous experience!   

Redeemed and her relatives

Rose (a cousin to Redeemed) makes a “plain cake”

Spoke briefly with Ellen on her last full day in Liberia. Redeemed’s aunt and uncle came to the orphanage to hold a little party for Janice, Christie, Rachel and Ellen.

 Ellen said that is has been good to stay this long in Liberia but she is also looking forward to coming home.

Thursday was Liberian Independence Day. Ellen said everyone in the orphanage attended a long service. There is a deaf children’s orphanage and those children came to the service, too. Ellen sat with them. After the service all of the children filed out of the chapel and received some combination of treats: glowsticks, teddy bears, small toys. Then they all went back into the church for a “huge plate of food”. Ellen said the kids all got a can of pop and a plate filled with jalloff rice (rice fried with red oil, egg and spices), macaroni salad, a bag of popcorn, a package of cookies and a sucker. She said the children were so excited.

Some other children from Dixville showed up to get a share of the treats and food so Ellen said she had to be “security” when they tried to get in line. A few kids from the orphanage tried to get in to the line a second time and Ellen had to watch for that, too. She said it was hard to turn those kids away.

When we spoke today, Ellen had just returned from town where she did some shopping. She was on a mission to find a drum for our friends at home who are adopting from the orphanage. When the kids get to Bellingham, they will have a little piece of home waiting for them.

In town Ellen had a chance to read this blog. She said she made a mistake about the “paypay” peppers – she didn’t realize that they aren’t called paypay, it is just the way it sounds when the Liberians say ‘pepper’. Oops

As we were speaking I could hear the most lovely, melodic singing in the background. Ellen said it was the choir practicing. The choir is made up mostly of older girls from the orphanage. They sounded beautiful  – singing a cappella. 

Ellen isn’t ready to come home! She talked to Eric today and expressed disappointment that her trip is over in a week  

I sent out an email the day before we received Ellen’s (below). Among the things I said was this:

As expected, [Ellen] has seen and heard some difficult things. She seems to be handling it well, though. She understands that sin and depravity will be found anywhere she might go, and even so, she is encouraged by the precious people she is surrounded by. I thought that perhaps by this time in her trip she would have complained at least once about heat, bugs, dirt…anything you might expect a fourteen year old to be bothered by…but her attitude is as positive and enthusiastic as ever.

When I talked to Ellen today, she and I had a good laugh that it would be a spider that was the catalyst for the tears she described in her email. I assured her that there is a difference between complaining and being overwhelmed with emotion (and who wants a spider of any size crawling up their leg, anyway!).

She said it was too rainy today to go in to town as they had talked about doing. It has been raining “lots and hard” and the water levels are high. When it rains like that the kids stay inside or sit under the building’s overhang.

happy for the Ovaltine

They got another jar of Ovaltine today and enjoyed it very much. She said, “Hot Ovaltine or cold Ovaltine or any Ovaltine: we like!” She said she got “two cups of rich, creamy Ovaltine”.

Fufu

The food they are eating is very spicy. The cook uses lots of hot peppers called Pepe (spelled? pronounced “paypay”). One favorite snack is fried doughnuts with pepe sauce. She is really enjoying a food called Fufu. She didn’t actually know what was in it so she asked Redeemed several times to help her describe it. A dough made from cassava (which tastes “sour and floury”) is covered with okra, bitter ball (a plant) soup and pepe sauce. She said they don’t chew it, just swallow it.

a meal for seven people?

The food situation has been hard for her in a way she didn’t expect. I won’t say too much about it – I’ll let her explain more when she gets home. But for now, I will say that they their meals are not consistent. Sometimes the food is abundant and tasty and other times quite the opposite. Although it can be this way for the kids much of the time, the American missionaries bring money to pay a cook to provide them food and other supplies like soap, disinfectant,  etc. It provides work for a Liberian and ensures the Americans do not shift too abruptly from their eating patterns (at least that is what I understand the reason to be, I could be wrong). I edited out quite a bit, but here is some of what Ellen said in her email:

Chocolate and Esau

If you could pray about our food situation that would be greatly appreciated. Dinner is [a] substantial meal, but there is not very much of it. (If we do have any leftovers we invite select kids from the porch to come in and finish it off. Last time we invited a boy named Chocolate and a boy named Esau, I love the names here!)  We go to bed hungry lots of times, and I just don’t get it. And then I get confused because I feel like I’m being ungrateful and look what everyone else in the country is dealing with, a lot worse than just going to bed hungry. It’s like a battle in my mind.  

Ellen said there is a lot on her mind but she can’t talk about it all right now. She will have much debriefing to do when she returns home! She said she is grieved by the evil that she is aware of. It is hard to see/know about what horrible things people to do to children without consequence. She said despite the difficulty, the power of God is evident. She indicated she will have a very hard time leaving.

Ellen had a story about going to “witness a movie” at the theater – which is the schoolhouse where a fellow sets up a tv and vcr. She said she saw an African film called “A Kiss From a Rose” which “isn’t what it sounds like”. She said it was ‘cheesy’ but fun to experience. It cost 25 Liberian dollars to witness the movie.

Ellen had a fever today and was trying to rest. She gave an update on the kids with injuries that she mentioned before -

Benu

Benu’s thumb is healing

Moses

shin is healing

Moses’ shin is almost all better

Mercy

Mercy’s toe has some dead  skin but looks like it won’t be lost

Henry is immobile with his broken leg. It has been ’set’ and is propped up by a pillow and mat as he stays in bed waiting for it to heal.

She is encouraged that these children are getting well.

After describing a situation where one of the girls at the orphanage ”got vexed” with her, Ellen said, ”This is such a different culture, mindset and way of thinking. You can’t go into this as an American. You have to learn to be Liberian really quick.” 

Please pray that: Ellen’s good health will continue, that she will make the most of the opportunities she has to be influenced spiritually by the faithful Christians she is with (both the Americans and the Liberians), and that she will keep seeking daily what God would have her do while she is there.