paradox

I was in the clinic at the far end of the hospital this morning when I heard the drums begin to call. Voices raised in ululation beckoned me back to my ward, and I followed the sound of the singing.

As I walked the length of the ship, the hall was deserted save for a woman clad in a hospital gown, a faded lappa tied tightly around her waist. She moved slowly away from D Ward, her eyes on the floor, hands clasped tightly behind her back. I passed by, drawn by the tumult spilling from the open door.

Inside, the room was alive with the kind of vibrance I've only ever found here in Africa. Translators and patients clapped and stomped and played any instrument they could get their hands on, from bongos to cowbells to rattles pieced together from bowls and scraps of metal. At the head of the room sat Sietou, resplendent in a bright yellow dress, her headdress piled impossibly high above a beaming face. The swirl of noise and music pulled passersby off their courses while nurses from the operating rooms and the other wards paused in their work to stand at the door. Everyone was gathered to celebrate her, to watch her dance.

Sietou's story is familiar in its heartbreak. Her parents died when she was young. She got pregnant, and the baby died inside her, tearing her apart and condemning her to the life of an outcast. She had another baby, but when she went to his father for money, he turned her away, threatened her with a cutlass, told her he'd cut off her head if she ever came to him again. So she's been alone, and she's been wet. For eleven years she's been living on the fringes of society, leaking urine from a body that betrayed her in her moment of greatest need.

Today, Sietou danced. She laughed and she sang and she hugged and she danced. And her chair, when she left it again and again to take her place in the whirling crowd, was dry.

And out in the hall, the old woman walked slowly back and forth, back and forth, the lappa around her waist slowly growing wet again as she shut her ears to the sound of a celebration she had no part in.

It's been a few days since I've posted, but there is an explanation for my silence, partly because Saturday was the ship-wide blackout where the engines were shut down while the cooling systems were cleaned. I spent most of the day relaxing poolside at a vaguely seventies-era hotel, the Benin-Marina, lounging on a padded chaise and downing fresh crepes with mango ice cream while my poor husband sweated in the engine room back on the ship. At one point, I fell asleep, and when I opened my eyes again, I had no idea where I was. I couldn't reconcile the palm trees and pristine pool with the image of Africa that fills my mind. The rift between rich and poor is so much starker here in Benin.

There are pockets of Cotonou where I can see my much-loved Liberia. In the winding alleyways lined with wooden shacks advertising their wares in chalk scrawlings on slabs of wood out front. In the bare-bottomed babies squatting in the dirt, playing with scraps of rubber and metal while their mamas hawk mangoes by the side of the road. In the sharp, earthy smell of the patients who are admitted from up country, explanations flowing through several translators before they press their thumbs to the pad of ink in lieu of signing their names because they have never held a pen.

But so much of this place is so much more modern than I ever expected. The rich really are wealthy, and the dichotomy robs me of my ease. Standing in the lobby of the Marina on Saturday, I couldn't stop thinking about the Ducor Palace in Liberia. It sits perched on top of the hill, overlooking the city of Monrovia, and it was once a five-star hotel. In fact, back then, all of Liberia could be considered five-star; it was the country against which all the other countries in Africa measured themselves, the so-called Gold Standard. Liberia was peaceful and prosperous, and hotels like the Ducor bore witness to her success in its shining opulence.

And then the war came.

And like everything else in Liberia, the Ducor Palace was soon nothing more than a gutted shell, inhabited by thousands of refugees made homeless by that war. Just before I got to Liberia, the squatters were thrown out and the Ducor was truly abandoned, nothing to show for the years of wealth but the scattered remnants of humanity left behind in the scuffle. Old shoes, some cast-off rags and various epithets scrawled across the bare walls the only echoes of former glory.

I stood in that lobby on Saturday, the marble floor cool under my feet, and I couldn't stop myself from imagining what it would look like without the expensive furnishings, the stained wood paneling, the carefully polished glass. I stared past the luxury, tracing the shape of the room, seeing it lined in nothing but concrete and empty space, grass growing in the cracks in the floor.

It's strange; in Liberia, I wanted nothing more than to rebuild, to gather the shattered pieces of a country and forge something new and beautiful. But here, when I'm faced with something that's actually close to that imaginary end product, I can't accept it. It's too good to be true, somehow. Maybe it's because, here in West Africa, this kind of progress seems just too breakable, too fragile.

If Liberia could fall, so could Benin.

So I don't know where that leaves me. I'm constantly torn, trapped between two worlds, a white girl awash in a sea of brown skin. Unable to enjoy the beauty of where I am because of the squalor I know lurks just around the corner. Yearning for the best but fearing the worst.

I have no answers.

I am torn.