A snake, a rat, and a palawa...

My team and I are working to prepare the five fellows who are going to South Africa for the Man UP conference with culture shock /biculturalism training, information on the other countries the participants are coming from, etc. But we knew that they would also need some time to think about how best to represent their own history as well. With that in mind we decided to show Pray the Devil Back to Hell (a well-worth seeing documentary on the women's peace initiative and their actions in Liberia and Ghana) last night. Otherwise, civil war being such a heavy subject matter, I would have waited to show the movie until later on in the course - but they are going to see it at the conference in South Africa next week anyway, and as they are the contingent representing Liberia, we thought that it would be a good idea to show now.

It's an intense movie - along the lines of Constant Gardner, maybe not as intense as the Last King of Scotland. But watching it with the fellows, the other staff, and some members of the community that join us when we watch "shows" -- you could feel the tension mounting in the room, the veritable heckles rising. A loud "gong, gong, gong" outside on the metal stair railing caused Sis Essie to yell "Whooze dat na?" and Allieu to reply "dat snake-o".... Lo and behold, Jimmy had stepped on a smallish snake, coiled up on our welcome mat, and Allieu had killed it by whipping it against the stairs.

Interrupted for a few minutes as the excitement died down - we eventually finished the film. "Ayh man. Too sorrowful." We sat down to talk to some of the fellows who were particularly disturbed by the snake and the fear of sleeping in a house that could have one come in..... until Mercy pointed out, "there's a rat!" Oh boy. In Liberian English a rat might mean a mouse, but whatever the case, the chase was on. Emmanuel pursued it out of the linen closet, and Cori grabbed a mattress to blockade it into the front entryway - where Emmanuel and Allieu cornered it. Allieu grabbed it and threw it down, breaking it's neck. It was a rat alright, and it had bitten Allieu's finger - which he promptly stuck into a bottle of rubbing alcohol.

We turned to the mundane task of washing dishes when a 'palawa' - a heated discussion/fight - broke out between some of the fellows. We spent some time trying to debrief with them there.... and committed to work on it more when the day broke. Mostly I kept wondering to myself - was this just the wrong time to show this movie? Why was there so much intensity atmospherically beyond the content of the documentary itself?

Sometimes, when I'm walking through the towns, and I walk past a crowd of young men who are clearly (at least in my mind) ex-combatants: the glazed-over eyes, the hardened expressions, the controlled swagger..... I admit to myself that I haven't the slightest idea how to really bring about conflict resolution in a post-conflict setting. How does transformation come to a country, a community, a household, an individual? Slowly, I'm sure. I'm afraid of those guys, at least when they walk around in groups like that, and yet many of them are my age. I avert my eyes when I walk past them - wondering, what do I represent to them? What do they represent to the average citizen who lost family members to the "small smal boy soldiers with big guns" ?

Oh keep me from doing more harm than good - I hope that showing the documentary wasn't a bad idea...