Epilogue

I’m sitting in the Houston airport, about to return to Connecticut after three days of condo-hunting. I am now officially the property of Baylor College of Medicine and will be starting med school in July. I will re-emerge in Spring, 2011 with more letters after my name (I never really liked the implications of ‘Eleni Benson, B.S.’) and much less money than I have now (farewell, mere poverty; hello, insurmountable debt).

It’s been three weeks since my departure from Monrovia. I’m completely unjetlagged, I’ve washed the Africa out of my clothes and I’ve taken my deworming pills (they’re not just for dogs!), but I still get a rush from jumping in the car to drive anywhere I want without telling anybody, or going for a run without turning around every 400 meters when I come to the end of a UN-guarded dock, and without expecting everyone I see to pull out a knife and ask for my ipod.

Stepping off the plane onto the Gatwick Airport tarmac in London felt like Dorothy’s arrival in Oz. The cool, lucid air gave me a light head after months of labored breathing in the 4390857849% humidity (maybe it was less the air itself, more my frantic lamaz-ish breathing to soak it all in). Once in the airport, I was dizzily overstimulated - the lights weren’t only on but they were bright, the stores took credit card, there were white people, lots of them, who didn’t work for NGOs or the UN, and all the people were just so… beautiful... I suddenly felt very lame in my missionarious formal attire – my best pink wife-beater, black sweatpant capris, and once-upon-a-time white socks and sneakers, stained red from too much soccer in the African dirt (missionarious is a term we coined to describe what missionaries wear). Contributing to my feeling of lameness was the fact that no one told me I was beautiful or asked to marry me, and not a single little child tried to touch my hair or hold my hand. Cue plummeting self-esteem.

My trip home involved some six plane flights, four countries, two weeks, and 387 relatives visited, giving me plenty of time to digest my experiences in Africa and providing a sort of buffer to my transition back to real life (or maybe less real – who’s to say). Here are my resulting thoughts, outlined illegibly in a notebook on the airplane tray table:

My time in Africa was an incredible sojourn into a world that I never knew existed. Africa is a world where organizations like Save The Children, World Food Program, World Vision, UNICEF and Samaritan’s Purse are no longer just different brands of sappy commercials with the requisite large-eyed skinny black kids, pleading for your support and probably prompting a quick channel change. In places like Liberia, these organizations are for many people the difference between life and death. I met a 16-year old girl at the Fatima Orphanage who would not be alive today had Save The Children not found her starving on the streets with her little brother – both her parents died, one in childbirth and one in the war - and placed them in the orphanage, where their food was mostly supplied by the World Food Program.

Africa is a world where spiritual affairs are acknowledged just as much as physical, and I think that this is something from which Western cultures, including the churches therein, are so far removed as to be unhealthily focused on the physical (i.e., materialism). Driving through the market one day, we were stuck in some traffic (probably waiting for cows to cross the street or something) and a man came to my window and said, “You are from the Mercy Ship. Your ship is good, it is physically and spiritually powerful. No demon can stand before your ship.”

If someone said that to me at home I’d probably sniff for the alcohol on their breath, but in Liberia, where the spiritual world is very much a part of everyday life, it was a profound thing to hear (I know it was profound because I got goosebumps). Animistic religions there call heavily on demonic powers, and there is much evidence for successful channeling of these forces, which manifests itself most horrifically in the sick brutality of war – mutilations, cannibalism, etc. On the other hand, the Christian church in Africa is generally very much aware of what it is up against, and calls heavily on the Holy Spirit and God’s angels to fight for and protect it. This is one thing that the African churches have right: It’s hard to fight a battle if you don’t know it’s going on, and I think that here in the sanitary, scientific West, Satan’s biggest victory must be in convincing us that he doesn’t actually exist. I think perhaps our churches could benefit from a slightly more African awareness of the world between what we can touch.*

War-torn Africa is a world where life is hard. Death often comes early and is difficult to evade without basic medical care. Tragedy is routine, and it’s difficult to find anyone in countries like Liberia who isn’t eligible for some sort of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Physical labor has yet to be replaced by technology, so everything is done by hand, from scrubbing laundry on a rock in the river to transporting water into the capital by wheelbarrow. Jobs are scarce and require elaborate networks of connections, education is too expensive for most, and there is no infrastructure to support and rehabilitate the impoverished masses. Justice is just beginning to re-emerge from the ashes, but the jails are still full of innocent men who have never been on trial while crimes perpetrated on the streets go unreported and unpunished.

And yet, though hopelessness seems to prevail, a vibrant culture survives. Through the Monrovian streets wallowing in trash and sewage, elegant women glide with slow, stately steps that can only result from a lifetime of balancing their burdens on the tops of their heads. Though it may be the only outfit they have to their name, the vivid colors and intricate patterns of the lapas tied proudly around their waists are mesmerizing against the dark background of their graceful skin. Together, they are a beautiful collage of colorful grace that speaks hope into this broken place; and that is how I will remember Africa.

Thank you so very much to each and every one of you who supported me with your finances, emails, thoughts and prayers. I am incredibly blessed to have had such a network of friends and family standing behind me for this journey! My understanding of the world and of the scriptures has been challenged, and my faith has been strengthened. I hope that through this journal I may have also given you a glimpse into a world not your own, with all its tragedy and beauty.

God bless you!





*see Ephesians 6 for more, I probably shouldn't have tried to tackle that subject in a paragraph...