The Fellowship of the Chicken

“John…  John…  John.   JOHN!!” 

I awoke to my student Charles outside my window.  It was my first morning at site, and I could have slept for hours.  My watch showed 8:00 am.

“What is it, Charles?” I moaned.

“It’s time to wake up.  We go to the market.” 

My principal had assigned Charles to look after me during my adjustment to site and school, and he was doing an excellent job.  Over the next week he would cook for me, clean for me, wash my clothes, tell me who to buy from and who not to buy from, how to get where and what shortcuts to take, and which important people in town I should know.  He kept my doors locked, kept little kids from poking around my room, and he even twice caught me walking outside with my fly down.

“Ok, hold on.”  I rose from the mattress, already showing a slight dip where my body had laid, and unbolted the front door.  Charles immediately went to work, sweeping and washing my popcorn bowl.

As I reached for the water bucket, an 9-inch long red centipede appeared beside it.  Trained for two years to treat large centipedes as the devil incarnate, I jumped back. 

“Charles…Charles… is that dangerous?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”  He said, unimpressed and unexcited.  His tone said, “yeah but it’s the least of your worries.”  He killed it and brushed it outside.

I moved to the toilet, undoing the pillow case I had nailed up the low window the night before.  The room needed more light.  As I relieved myself, I wondered how bad it would be if someone out that large window caught a view of me.  Before I had even finished my business, one of my 9-year old neighbors walked into view, squatted over the dirt field, and relived herself less than discretely.  Well I guess that answers that question.

Charles took me shopping.  I desperately needed shopping.  We bought sheets and cooking supplies and containers and other miscellaneous things to help give some character to my drab concrete home.  With the place starting to fill out, I moved to more important cultural assimilation.

“Charles, I want to eat Liberian food.  Let’s cook a good Liberian dish.”  I asked while looking around one of my student’s family “stores.” 

“You want Liberian food?  Ok.”  He smiled, as he reached for pasta and tomato sauce. 

“NO!  Real Liberian food!  Not spaghetti.”  As I would come to learn, my impoverished student often ate pasta with tomato sauce and eggs because it was a very cheap meal. 

He agreed to make me potato leaf soup with rice.  But what kind of protein did I want?  “Cold meat,” I answered emphatically.  Without any cold fish at the market my first morning at site, that meant a trip to the rubber plantation store.  Soon we set out for an adventure that took much longer than I anticipated.

Our village exists because of the enormous rubber plantation nearby.  It employs, students tell me, about 75% of the people here.  The white people who run the plantation, who everyone here automatically calls “my friends,” shop at a small store within the plantation limits.  And to there we ventured.

We soon left the bustling concrete houses of the homely Shire, crossed the stalls lining the center of town, and passed by the Two Towers (our twin cell towers), crossed the railroad tracks, and entered Mordor the plantation.

A terra-cotta landscape suddenly transformed into a thin forest of only rubber trees and low-growing vegetation.  Most trees bore candy-cane scars from when workers cut at the bark to allow the white rubber sap to drip down into small collecting cups held to the dry by wires.  Some freshly cut trees were slowing dripping rubber into these cups.  

What started as a walk through the village became a beautiful hike in the woods, enhanced by a slight lingering morning fog.  I could easily seeking solitude in this quiet forest with iPod in tow during weeks when I need to get away.

The walk took us past a small compound of houses for families of some of the plantation workers.  These Liberians had electricity and satellite dishes, though their houses weren’t ostentatious.  Now on a main road through the property, large trucks kicked up clouds of dirt as they sped past us.  We left the road for a forest trail.

Thirty-five minutes into the adventure, we found our store, and it wasn’t at all what I expected.  I was the size of a gas station convenience store and sold many of the same things I could find at the town market.  Their one prize, however, was small freezer full of hand-wrapped mystery meats and factory-packaged chicken.  I went with the chicken.

Returned from our adventure, Charles prepared a delicious soup from “red oil,” a bouillon cube, salt, potato greens, chicken, hot peppers, and fish.  I loved it.  So many flavours, and so much spice.  I just with he hadn’t bent my sharp kitchen knife hacking at the frozen chicken.

We made food for ourselves, for my neighbors, and for the additional students who seemed to arrive just in time for lunch.  With full stomachs, I put those students to work cleaning and organizing my house.  Those on picture posting duty did their best with a limited supply of tape, though my hands-off guidance means some of them are upside down.  Instead of bothering me, it makes me smile.  The house is building character, I’m getting closer with the community, and the food is delicious.  I can’t wait for the next adventure.