church stories

When I was little in Liberia, I went to church one Sunday in a relatively large church on the road to Monrovia. I went with my dad, who was a minister and therefore sat up front with the other important people. I usually sat with my mom among the women, but I was alone, so I sat in the back with all the kids, and, as kids do, I squirmed and talked to the kids around me. I fought to keep my headtie on slippery white-girl hair (in order to keep it on, if you have slippery white-girl hair, you have to tie it so tight that your head hurts), and I am sure I said know-it-all things to the kids around me, because I was a know-it-all. After a while, the guy with the big stick came by and whacked everyone a few times to make us shut up. He hit everyone except me, because I was white and immune, even though I was likely the squirmiest. Fortunately, I was also easily quashed in the face of disapproval from adults, and I am fairly certain that I was silent and careful for the rest of the service. At least, silent and careful when he could see me.

Another time, in another church along the road to Monrovia, or maybe the same one, my mom and brother and sister and I sat along the side of the raised platform at the front. My dad was preaching in Bassa by then, and he kept leaning down and pointing at something on the ground, raising great sheets of laughter. "What were you doing?" I asked, afterwards, and he told me he was talking about how God must have laughed, peering down at the tiny humans trying to build the Tower of Babel, trying to build something that would reach the heavens.

Our last Easter in the country, in 1990, we went to a service that was four hours long, all in Bassa. I set a goal for myself to sit perfectly still, and I did, not even nibbling at the hourly Wilhemina peppermints my mom doled out. Usually I could make each peppermint last at least an hour by first biting off little crumbs of the edge around the Queen's face and then working my way through the middle. This time I sat perfectly still, not moving or shifting or wiggling, except for the songs. It was a relief to stand up and clap, and to follow the songs, and to say the Lord's Prayer, in Bassa. "Abba vneh..."

When we came back to the US, we had to speak at churches, and my dad wanted me to read the story of Jonah in Liberian English. I was nearly eleven, and I was tired of being the odd person in a thousand different churches on two continents. I refused to read it until he started trying to read it himself. If there was anything that embarrassed me as a kid, it was listening to adults try to mimic Liberian English. (It still makes me just slightly lose it - I have a very low tolerance for those international, I mean, ALMOST EXCLUSIVELY US AMERICAN workers in Liberia who get all excited about how they are "learning" Liberian English. I have to literally stick my fingers in my ears and hum to tune it out. IT'S NOT A DIFFERENT LANGUAGE, AND YOU SOUND STUPID. Er. Did I say that out loud? It's just that I spoke that way from the time I could form words. And nobody works on "learning," say, Ugandan English. It just isn't done. Pick up some phrases, sure, but keep the accent you have.) So when my dad started reading the Jonah story in Liberian English, I snatched the paper from him and said I would read it, and I did. "Jonah was a prophet. Jonah head be hard. Jonah head be hard toooo much."