Photos and Liberian culture

People here love to have their photos taken, especially children. They don't actually want or even know that you can make a copy of the photo - they just like to look at themselves on the camera screen. But many times, it's not the children who ask to have their photos taken. Last week, I was taking some photos of kids and a lady walking by asked if I would take her photo. Here she is. She laughed when she saw herself on the camera screen.

Sometimes they are really funny about having their picture taken. Today, I was walking through an area to go to one of our patient's homes and a man came up to me and asked if I would take his picture. He had seen me the week prior taking some pictures. So I said yes but then he said he wanted to go put on his suit jacket. He was in really grimy, torn shorts and tshirt so I said on my way back from where I was going, I would take his photo.

So anyways, we were sitting in Thomas' house talking and this man comes in (no one has doors or anything so no one thinks this is strange) and he didn't just put on his suit jacket, he was in clothes they would normally wear to a wedding or some very important event AND he had this laminated certificate from some ministry of Liberia stating he had passed an exam and is now certified as an inspector and sand cutter. So he showed me the certificate and I dutifully exclaimed how great it was he was able to get this (I assumed he was looking for praise...I'm not really sure).

So I took him outside and took his photo with his certificate. Then on my next trip, I will give him a copy. Here he is. This is only one of the many, many differences between Liberian and American culture. The funny thing is that this is the second time this has happened. Another lady a few weeks ago asked if we would take her picture but she wanted to change. About 10 minutes later, she came out in wedding-type clothes. Too funny!

I learned about another cultural thing today that my logical mind can't comprehend. We visited with Thomas today (he had the 12 year old son Joseph who passed away two weeks ago) and all of his relatives are still here from the memorial service from a week and a half ago. So we questioned why they were still here (there were 7 of them from a village that is a 2-3 days drive from here) and Thomas said he didn't have the money for their transportation home. So we were puzzled but gave him some money to help.

So we asked Jerry our translator what that was all about. He said it is a very common belief that if you live in Monrovia (the city vs a village or the bush) then you have lots of money. So whenever anyone dies, many extended family members travel to the funeral and then require that the deceased person's family pay their transportation home, not to mention feed them the entire time they are visiting (this is why we provide a 100 lb bag of rice to the families of patients who die). This would be like my 4 siblings and me flying one way to California and then expecting my brother there to pay our way home. It's crazy. The people in Monrovia that we are working with are dirt poor including Thomas. He is having to use money he would otherwise use to send his children to school.

But what is even more illogical to me is that people will pay for the transportation home because, if they don't, the family members will say bad things about them to the community to which they are returning! So in this case, Thomas will probably spend money that would be used for school to send his relatives home (whom he didn't invite to come) just so they won't say bad things about him.

Culturally, West Africa and the U.S. are night and day. Whatever we seem to find the norm, the opposite is probably true here. I know I'm generalizing but it is frequently true. I'll start posting more about the differences so you can see why assisting countries like Liberia to get back on their feet is so complicated. There is a huge potential for misunderstandings not to mention our western belief that everything we do is the 'right' way. Western countries coming to Liberia to assist have in many ways actually hurt the progress here. More on that on another day.

One last photo that has nothing to do with the culture, just having fun with kids. This is me with Mawi (I posted a picture of her in an earlier post) and the new baby, Genevieve, that was born into one of my patient's families recently. Actually this new baby was almost born on the ship. The mother was on the ship from Sunday - Tuesday, we took her home on Tuesday afternoon and she had the baby Wednesday morning (one month early). The nurses on the ship would have freaked out but it would have been really exciting compared to all the bad emergencies we have had on the ship in the last three months.

P.S. Baby Joanna had her surgery today and Mama is big-time happy. It's too early to tell how her new lip looks because of the bandage over it but I'll post a photo as a soon as the bandage comes off (see post from Sept. 28 if you don't know what I mean).

Peace,

Michele