Road Trip

It’s a long road trip to Zorzor.  One can’t help but wax nostalgic.  If the ridiculously bumpy ride doesn’t knock some sense off the roof of the ol’ skull-cap, then the kids with their sticks and thin limbs and pouched bellies waving, running happily, and yelling after a stranger’s Toyota Four-Runner will.  The road is dried and parched straight in some stretches and soft lush deep agony red in others.   Toni the driver says that the war was especially cruel in Lofa.  “In 2003 we risked our lives to drive it,” he says, “some times our cars even died on the drive up.  But then after a week or so we got them running.”

“Look at that stone,” Toni says.  He points to the distance but I only see a sideways yin and yang of brilliant textured greens separated by a sky of expanding macabre clouds forecasting rain.   “That is Voinjama,” he laughs as if our journey flaunts, is ridiculous, must be acknowledged for its spirit and aspiration whether or not we reach our destination.

“What stone?” I ask, “I don’t see it.”

“There,” Toni says leaning forward to duck his head into the windshield to show me better.  Toni wears a brownish grey corduroy fisherman’s cap with the front rim inverted.  The rear view mirror almost knocks it off.  Toni is pointing to a very round pale bush-covered semi-circle of mountain in the distance.  It looks like West African Fou Fou—smooth and solid on the outside but likely mushy, sticky, and living at its center.  Like Fou Fou, chances are it too is made of cassava-- a resilient chameleon plant that can be prepared innumerable ways that has fed billions of people on the African continent for thousands of years.  As a plant, cassava actually provides little nourishment—the opposite of ginseng.  It pushes out vitamins and minerals leaving a solid large mass of root that can live in dirt for years but which can be dug up and pounded long and hard to eventually form the foundation for meals whose main purpose is to fill up the stomach’s space.

“Ah, that stone,” I say, “I see it now.”  It is my turn to laugh, “that stone seems very far away.”

“Yes,” Toni says, “Very far away.”

“How much longer to Voinjama then?” I ask.

“We will make it to Zorzor before dark.” Toni does not look at me as he replies.  He drives with his eyes fixed to the road for its various goat, people, tree trunk and boulder obstacles, which he skillfully avoids.  His forearms bulge from years of gripping steer wheel in unpredictable terrain.  In a way, Toni physically lifts the car through the Liberian landscape.  I cannot do what he does.  I am the opposite.  The bounce and hum of a mechanical journey puts me to sleep.  Maybe my mother did not rock me when I was a baby because I can sleep in any vehicle, anytime, anywhere.  Even when I knock my head against the side window or against the poor passenger next to me, I cause more consternation to passenger than to myself who likely fears the management of severe head trauma in a sleeping zombie.  I barely stir.  Everyone has a skill.  I am both doctor and cat.  Sleep deprived, prone to laziness, lounge bound, suspicious of large dogs, will pounce.

I deliberately missed the UN helicopter this morning.  I would have preferred one hundred times over to take the helicopter for sheer efficiency-- the ride through the air is one hour instead of 8 hours on the ground; plus it is safer.  But the schedule said 10:30 a.m. and I was called by IRC’s travel head at 8:15 to inform me that I was to be at the airport at 8:30.  My schedule was tight, planned and immutable.  I planned after staying up all night because I knew I could nap in the chopper to be in the office by 8:25.  Fire one of my doctors from 8:30 to 9:00.  Meet with the national health staff at 9:00 to hear from them and let them know where I wanted us to go.  Orient my intern from 9:45 to 10:00.  Rush off to the local airport in time to jump into the chopper by 10:25 wishing it had wings.  When David called, my answer was quick and certain, “Can’t make it,” I said.

“But then how will you get to Zorzor?”  he said

“I’ll have to take a car,” I said.  It was one of the few moments out of many moments when I had to make good hard decisions against competing priorities which made me feel that I understood my job. 

How does it work?  Where does the road eventually go?  We have just hit a small fleeing bird.  From the mirror, the billow of dirt bustling from the car’s rear buries its carcass. I wonder how long it will take to for a larger bird, or dog or hyena to eat this unfortunate spontaneous dusted cream puff.  I am cast back to my time in Rwanda in 2007 on a road not unlike this but in pitch dark when a small girl not more than three years old ran into our lane and I slammed on the breaks and spun the front wheels as the van I was driving skidded sideways towards the small girl.  I was rewarding my nurses after a long day of work to “brochettes des chevres” or goat meat shish kabobs near the Tanzanian border, because the local joint was out.  The cabin atmosphere was celebratory.  There had been a lot of progress in the hospital as of late.  Our quality assurance teams were doing regular chart review of patients in the ward and issuing report cards to nurses and doctors alike leading to improved documentation, diagnosis and treatment.  There was now a triage system in the emergency room that prevented people from dying while waiting.  We now had oxygen in the pediatric ward.  We had just built a lovely volley-ball court in a field of banana trees for the staff who were from the Capital, now living in the boonies and with little to do.  A tournament was scheduled for the following week. 

All of us in the cabin let out a collective scream/yell/ moan.  I knew I now could do nothing but prey to a God in whom I have never believed. I closed my eyes and waited for a sick thud.  That thud never came.  It was as if the girl was simply lifted then disappeared.  There was little opportunity to celebrate.  The prospect of killing after a day’s worth of saving was too antithetical.  In the rear view mirror there was only a pitch black wake. Later we ate and the meat was good but there was after taste.

Toni tells me intermittent one-sentence stories.  IRC Drivers used to only get paid 150 dollars a month.  Mousa had a bullet scrape his forehead but no one was ever killed.  The villagers walk to the fields at dawn and back the same way before dark.  They burn the forest to give way to rice farms. 

I once showed Toni a video I made of Harlem while walking to work during a snow storm.  Then I showed him a picture of a NY Knicks – LA Lakers basketball game from box seats at Madison Square Garden.  To both he summed up, “I should like to go there.” 

“Sometimes it’s a little much,” I say, “But New York City is great.”

I don’t apologize from where I come.  I don’t feel guilty about the disparity.  But I know it is a great gift that Toni gives me to count my blessings and realize my opportunities even if at the time I was cold, had a bad haircut and became too drunk.  The irony of Toni seeking out Harlem snow and the glitz of 34th street and me leaving Harlem to come to here where few want to come does not evade me.  I assume my Dad’s position for an instant and think what the hell is wrong.  What makes me tick?  Was it the egg sandwich I just bought in dirty Kataka from the guy whose secret ingredient is a sliver of onion and Accent?  Is it the joy I feel when I hold stinky babies at JDJ hospital, their butt resting on my right palm, their bodies supported by my other hand enveloping their chests?  “Regard,” I say.  Maybe its the innumerable holes dotting the sand on the beach in front of our apartment right now each with a proprietary crab.  A friendly Liberian boy showed us.  When you look their way, tiny crabs by the hundreds side step in.  When you look away, they side-step out.  They are the dance of undulating life waves.  They are transparent exoskeletons with little pretense but the desire to grow orange and live.