Blue Clay People Seasons on Afr William Powers

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.M-16s, tommy guns, and pistols hang from shoulders and belts, and one soldier shifts to balance an antiaircraft gun on his shoulder.The plane slows to a halt where the airport's former control tower has crumbled onto the runway.We deplane into confusion.While customs agents are inspecting my World Health Organization booklet for yellow fever immunizations, soldiers scuffle with panicked passengers trying to get into the baggage area.I soon realize why: You need to get in before your bags disappear.I spot one of the seventy-pound bags I have brought to Liberia.As I press against the crowd, a dozen airport employees shuffle the incoming luggage like Coney Island three-card monty sharks.Trying to keep my eye on the ace, I finally manage to squeeze between two soldiers and slip inside.But as I reach for my bag, another soldier pushes me back."No!! You must stay there and wait.Wait!""Wait? Wait for what?!"The soldier's jowled face tenses, and he squares his body to mine, his M-16 across his chest.In that moment I hear a voice: "Mr.Power?" A big-chested woman who looks to be in her late thirties stands before me."Powers, yes," I say."You are the chief who brings many powers from America!" she booms out, her impossibly white teeth set against a face so dark, it is nearly black.She presses a few bills into the soldier's palm and the M-16 falls slack at his side.As we breeze through the crowds and round up my luggage, she explains that she is Amanda and that I am to replace her as Catholic Relief Services (CRS) director of projects for Liberia.I trail Amanda through the airport door into another mad swarm of people outside.A gang of teenagers rushes to grab my luggage.One of them wrestles a bag away from me and drags it another few feet to a shiny white Jeep Cherokee emblazoned with a dark green CRS on the door.With sweaty gusto, the teen hoists my bags into the Jeep, and we push our way into its air-conditioned interior as desperate-looking faces press against the glass, demanding money.Amanda lowers her electric window in the front seat and hands a single bill to one of them and then growls at the others, "That boy carried this man's bag! What did you do?"She laughs, saying, "Ah, Liberians, zay always back down in the end!" For the first time, I notice a touch of Amanda's native French: She is Congolese.Earning a graduate degree and successfully directing a prominent nonprofit in her own country helped her land a coveted CRS international staff position—permanent foreign service jobs paid on an American, rather than host-country, salary scale.I have been tipped off about her tragic experience in the Congo.It seems that she walked into her home one day after work several years ago to find that rebels had captured her husband.Her two children's heads, severed from their bodies, were lying on the kitchen table.As our driver shifts into higher gear, I glance back over my shoulder at the Russian Wesua plane sitting alone on the airstrip.As we race forward, it shrinks and finally disappears.We pass through a nearby village called Smell-No-Taste, and I ask about the name.The driver answers that Robertsfield Airport was originally built by Americans during World War II as a military base."The people in this village near the Americans were hungry-o! They could smell their food but surely could not taste it!"After Smell-No-Taste, the asphalt slices through a grassy savanna.Lamp poles lining the highway have been decapitated, and their multicolored wires toss in the wind.I ask the driver his name, and he tells me that he's Momo.He jives his way through various military checkpoints as the savanna gives way to increasing urbanization.Cinder-block buildings rise up along a white sand beach.Women and children hand-wash clothes in lagoons buffered from the Atlantic's waves.As we weave through the potholes downtown, I examine Monrovia's war-torn skyline.The highest building stands at ten stories and has been reduced to a windowless shell.We slow to a crawl on the far side of downtown, where thousands of pedestrians choke the street.Shanties crowd the roadside.Orange rust covers the corrugated iron roofs.Sweat accumulates on my face, and I see a similar sleek of wetness covering everything outside, bleeding out of the vegetation that thrives in the gaps between shanties and slicking the road.My stomach tightens.It's been over forty-eight hours since I've slept.Out of the swirl of colors (the bobbing, slapping, striding press of people) rises a pile of trash—smack in the middle of the street and blocking our way."The mountain^ Amanda exclaims.Momo hits the brakes, steps out of the Jeep Cherokee into the crowd, and clicks the two front tires into four-wheel-drive position [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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