Race Matters II
There are four basketball games in the Capital of Monrovia of any importance: The game at Paynesville Park on Sundays from 07:30-10:00. The run at the American school from 18:30-21:00 Monday and Wednesday evenings. The play of the “old timers” at the YMCA downtown Saturday’s 07:00 to 10:00. And the mad dash until you crash suicide drill at the UN Filipino base in Bushrod Island Sunday most afternoons a) if you know a Filipino and b) if you first call.
I started playing in Paynesville when I first got to Liberia in February 2011. It was a great game introduced to me by the internet guy at the apartment where I first lived who could never quite get my internet fixed, but who more than made up for it by the reference. I made friends as soon as I got on the court (and played). Of course Taps, Porter, Flamo, Jordan, Macintosh and the rest thought, who is this Chinese guy, but I was quick to correct. I wasn’t rude because there was an actual Chinese man who played at Paynesville who smoked in between games. He wore an old Charlotte Hornets Jersey, which kind of made him look like blue striped bumble-bee. Of course, I am Taiwanese.
Paynesville Score Board with Score Keeper
Paynesville was a great game and I could feel that people really enjoyed playing with me, which in turn helped me to improve my game. I often thought that Americans would never be as welcoming. I also thought how cool and trivial that men could be so emotionally close to those who they connected with on the court—a kind of man to man affair. People who play team sports might understand this particular irony. Around us the town children would gather, many selling seven-cent bags of water, muffins and eggs. They would giggle with chins dipped and lips capped with curled fingers when the adults argued calls as if they were adolescents. The children would stand up and cheer when the least or most expected player made the winning shot. Between games they would run onto the court in hopes of shooting an occasionally errant ball before they were shooed away.
In Paynesville I met the Vice President’s son Joe Joe, who was friendly and confident but who refused to pass. It was he who invited me to the American School on Mondays and Wednesdays after work, which he personally organized in terms of renting the gym, arranging for its maintenance and collecting fees from participants which was $20 a month or $5 a night for drop-ins. By Joe Joe’s style of play I should have deduced that I wasn’t going to enjoy myself at the American School. Joe Joe like many Liberians who grew up in the States and who had returned to their homeland, had cultivated a tremendous ego. It was this ego that allowed him to take shots six feet off of the three-point line regardless of the number of defenders on him. When he was ambitious, Joe Joe would also fly down the lane hurdling towards the rim much like a caboose, flipping up an inconceivable layup looking less for the score than the foul. When the foul call would did come, because no one needed to foul Joe Joe-- he was going to miss any way-- play would be interrupted and an argument would ensue.
“Where’s the foul!!!” Joe Joe would scream, “I was fouled!”
“There was no foul Joe Joe,” the referee would say.
“He hit me,” Joe Joe would continue pointing at no one in particular, his right arm gesticulating in an unsteady fashion like the rifle barrel aim of a blind man needing to shoot.
“No one hit you, Joe Joe. You were not in control.”
“Not in control? You are not in control. Let’s see what happens when I am refereeing your game and it is I am who am in control.”
“Let’s see what happens if you threaten me again.”
“Why do we have referees if we don’t listen to the call?!” I would eventually interrupt, my voice higher and tinged with more sarcasm than I liked, making me wonder how a forty-one year old Taiwanese-American winds up with belligerent Liberians at an American School Gym in Monrovia, which has seen much better days. The comment though would inevitably expand the number of participants and scope of the argument, leading to more unrest. A true exercise in democracy.
“Yeah!”
“Makes sense.”
“Yeah, we shouldn’t have refs.”
“No, we should have refs but we should listen to the refs”
“Yes, respect the calls.”
“Yes, respect the call.”
“Respect the calls!”
Argument of this sort easily lasted 10 to 15 minutes. During any given night there were at least three of them.
Sam and Me
One particular night, as I stood waiting for an argument on the score to resolve, which in the end didn’t and culminated in Joe Joe flipping off the lights, effectively cancelling the evening, I began talking with Sam, who was one of President Sirleaf’s senior advisors and former Minister of Finance. I used to be scared of Sam who seemed mean. Six foot one, rock solid, old or young you couldn’t tell. He was fearless inside and he guarded you with a smirk glued to his face, daring you to take it at him to get injured or squashed. With time I learned Sam’s game and it was I who was at advantage. It made me think about confidence; how so much of confidence is linked with impression and context when it really need only come from within. I have been working on this epiphany my whole life, really. Sam could see I was frustrated. With that same dastardly smirk he told me about a Saturday morning game at the YMCA on Broad Street at the turn before the Bush Rod Bridge. He told me that the players at the “Y” were much older, but they used to be Liberia’s greats. He told me that the games were competitive, there was much less arguing and that I should come.
The players at the Monrovia YMCA are indeed “old timers” and they call themselves as such. Many have been playing at the Y for over thirty years, through Liberia’s 23 year Civil War, and were adolescents when they first sliced, diced and flew along the Y’s now faded court-lines. Stories flow and jokes come easy among the players before and between games and the dusty, leaky, and dark gym with randomly hung signs of Christian sportsmanship and summer camps gets a kind of post-hoc renovation and wipe down as the players speak. A short man with a pop-belly not unlike a smooth tortoise hump is speedy Lester, who could get through any trap and score easily a lay-up from end to end in 3.5 seconds flat. “And boy could he pass!” Smooth Luke now moves with back bent forward at 25 degrees and only shoots from the outside but decades ago he could play both inside and out and would make the defender choose his poison, which eventually he was forced to drink. “Dead!” Sweet Willy can still dunk, still do 200 push ups a day, and carries a wash board stomach which would rip most clothes but he can no longer place 20 Liberian on the top of the rim looking down. “Sweet Willy jumps, but back then he could really jump! Skies were ceilings to him then.”
YMCA. Sing it.
You have to get to the Y early to play, otherwise you wait. Early mean’s 6:55 when the games start at about 8:00. You put your name on a list with blocks already partitioned out from 1 to 5. These will be the five-player teams and although names are placed on the list on a first come first serve basis, there is unusual interest in the matchups for at the Y as in most pickup games in the world, winners stay. My first day at the Y was like every succeeding day. Casually, the same group of 7-8 would be there by 7:00 putting on their basketball shoes while shooting the shit, sitting on the Y’s stoop waiting for others. Diesel, the youngest player at 32 who played like he was powered by rocket fuel. Sam who because of his connections I never saw but who always ended 1 or 2 on the list. The Reverend, who was fifty five years old and slower now but still crafty and exact. Empathy (yes his name was Empathy) who played defense like a man-sized pest. And of course Lester, Luke, Willy and myself.
At 7:30, the metal door to the gym would creak open, and silently like blue collar workers with clear job descriptions, we would get to work-- the court swept, the two basket nets mended, the immaculately conceived puddles mopped, the other steel door propped. At 7:50 the group would gather at center court and hold hands to sing and pray. Lester had a deep voice and would usually start the one or two hymns to be sung as the others naturally joined in. The group would rock back and forth, elbows set straight, heads to the sky leading necks, eyes closed. Everyone knew the words except me. When the singing was done, I would pray that the Reverend would not be asked to pray. The Reverend while a great ball player, who made quick sound decisions, was neither succinct nor coherent in communal prayer. The Reverend’s prayer could easily last 20 minutes. The record was 35.
“Dear God, one fatherly God, most blessed God, God of all Gods, hear us God, we who pray to you God to watch over us today, we who love you God. This is not say we don’t know your love God, blessed God. Your love we know dwarfs the love we feel, however strong, we are weak, you are strong, we the weak among the one God, who is strong, but all powerful, the father, the son, the holy ghost. Oh God."
The first time, I thought the Reverend was joking, but then I ungraciously opened my eyes at the ten-minute mark only to discover everyone else’s eyes closed. A second time I swore I saw Sam open his left eye, only to quickly close it. A fellow conspirator! But Sam would never admit to this nor would I ever think to accuse him. A third time, being the only one left with eyes open, I closed my eyes extra tight in devout determination, trying to concentrate on the foreign message proceeding before me in tongues but really only thinking that this prayer was going to require additional stretching. My limbs often went numb in the prayer's circle when the Reverend prayed. A sign?
Basketball at Monrovia's YMCA
The games would begin by 8:15. Opposing teams would be given different colored loose halter-tops to put over their shirts. If we were lucky, someone would have hand washed the tops from the previous week’s games. If not, the smell was not unlike pickled bamboo shoots. Games at the Y had the usual two referees but unlike the other venues, the referees worked all the games. Games were to 10. One pointers and two pointers only. Change sides at 5. Score kept on the chalkboard. More than 8 fouls and you shoot free throws worth 1 point (a killer to opposing teams). Lose and you wait two hours to play again. This meant no one at the Y liked to lose and they played like it, desperately, ferociously, like one had in this life just one last game to win.
At the Y, I didn’t shoot much. This frustrated Sam and the Reverend who typically begged me to shoot more. But, the Old Timers generally didn’t like to pass. Their minds operated in a place where they could leap, sore, spin, brush, swish, clamp down while their bodies bolted them to a reality of smooth heads, pooched bellies, arthritic knees and creaky backs. This in sum meant players took a whole lot of outside shots only occasionally venturing into the lane to attempt a highly dramatized lay-up. At the Y, I liked to work on my cross over, move along the baseline then pass to Sam. Or, fake the shot, step in, draw the defender then bounce to Willy. Or back up Empathy to the basket with my behind taking the lead, turning my head one direction then the other as the ball moved from left to right, forcing Empathy to back up with me or choose a side, at which point I would pivot and then make a lob pass. Since passing was such a rarity at the Y, an assist would garner just as much intensity, screams, and excitement from the crowd as a score. It was amazingly fun. I dare say I made a lot of friends at the Y simply because I shared the ball, yet it was I on Saturday mornings who was continually grateful for what I received.
Like a kid who falls in love right before the end of summer (to a neighbor who is moving), I discovered Monrovia’s premier game at the UN Filipino base towards the end of my work in Liberia. This was a fantastic game introduced to me by a Filipino man working with the UN police or UNPOL.
The Filipino soldiers are a jovial bunch. I learned that the troops really enjoy their time in Liberia even though it takes them from home for a year. To start, the UN pays really well. Also, Liberia is an English speaking country. Also, their is little violence here which means the boys have the opportunity to play a lot of basketball in their spare time-- the Philippines national sport. I have never been to the Philippines before but the base expresses a distinct feeling of community and home. There are the prerequisite green of palm trees, large leafy plants and bright-disorganized wild flowers. There is a small corner store painted in light pink that sells ice-cold beer, soft drinks and snacks. There is a swimming pool surrounded by gravel with sandy red tiles as stepping-stones. The barracks run in rows like housing units. At each door, soldiers squat on their haunches shining their shoes in flip flops or doing the laundry, which is hung along clothing lines connecting the barrack wall planks. The whole get-up overlooks a grassy field then Monrovia bay. Against the outer most fence rests an extremely well kempt basketball court. The lines are clearly painted including the shooters square on blue-colored backboards. Nets have been strung up on each end of the court to prevent the ball from bouncing into the Nigerian’s base. Spotlights are positioned at equal distances around the court for games blending from day to dusk to night.
Basketball at the Filipino UN Base in Bushrod
