bearing the stain

As he appeared in the doorway, we both looked up. Her body stiffened. She stopped coloring in the flower, heart and star I had drawn on her paper. The man in the red cap. The man who is the reason we are sitting here in court today. The man who did an unimaginably terrible thing to this little five-year-old girl sitting beside me.

He appeared in the doorway, looked at me, and then turned around and walked out.

Little Letty didn’t go back to her drawing. She didn’t say anything or even turn to look at me. She stared straight ahead, her eyes starting to water.

I leaned down and whispered in her ear. Should we sing the song again? She nodded almost unnoticeably. “Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so. Little ones to Him belong, they are weak but He is strong…” Her eyes don’t move, but she doesn’t start to cry. Soon enough we are back to coloring.

"A wan go na os," she says in a little squeaky voice.

I can't imagine what this would feel like to her. Five-years-old. Sitting in a big court room, with big people in uniforms walking in and out, just waiting. I would want to go home too. We talked about how when the big man comes she needs to tell him what happened and then she can go home. But not really go home. Not go home to the way things were before she was raped.

Letty no longer lives at home with her mother and father. The man who raped her lives next door. Her father decided it best for her to live with her Grandmother on the other side of town. Away from the man in the red cap. Away from the scene where it happened.

He says he wants to move the family to another community, so she won't have to bear the “stain” of shame from what happened. Her bear the stain?!?

But the family doesn’t have the money to move and he has a reliable job working security nearby—alongside the man in the red cap, the man who traumatically violated his daughter and stole her innocence. But a job is a job.

The presiding Magistrate agreed to allow Letty to give her testimony first thing in the morning, 10 a.m. It was now 12:30 and he still hadn’t come. Finally around one o’clock he arrives. We all stand, the perpetrator takes his place in the front of the room, and with no reason given the Magistrate adjourns the trial until tomorrow. 11 a.m. sharp.

Surprised? No. Frustrated? Yes. Little Letty will once again have to wait in a big, scary courtroom anticipating having to relive what happened to her.

But to my surprise, her eyes light up and a smile brightens her beautiful little face when she sees me from across the crowd the next morning. When we sit down to wait - an ambiguously indefinite length of time - for the Magistrate to arrive, she begins to talk in her little squeaky voice, although today, a little bit louder. I give her a sparkly heart sticker and she is instantly captivated.

When the Magistrate finally entered, we all stand. He orders everyone out of the room except the police prosecutors, the perpetrator, Letty, her mother, and me. He asks Letty to take her place on the witness stand. When he realizes he won’t be able to see her over the railing, he allows her to stand on a bench near by.

He begins with questions she can easily answer. What is her name? Where does she live? Where does she attend school? She is answering, although quietly, but it's more than she was able to do the last time in court. Baby Love is the last witness to testify in the trial. She was unable to speak without crying the past four times the case had been called to court.

Earlier this week she came to the office and Mameh, the FAAST rapid response officer, and I talked to her about how important it is for her to be brave and talk to the big man about what happened. She sat on the couch fidgeting with her fingernails, her mouth moving but no audible sound coming out. But today is different. Today little Letty is being so brave.

She is ashamed, her father had said at the office. At five-years-old, she already knows the stain she will bear in this community for the rest of her life. The stain she will bear because of a man’s desire to overpower a little child by taking away her innocence. Letty was brutally raped by a neighbor man whom her father worked with. Although the man was arrested, he has been released on bail and continues to blatantly provoke the family. Her father determined it would be best for little Letty to live with her grandmother to avoid facing her abuser.

As soon as this is all over I want to move from this place, her father said. I don’t want her to have to bear the stain.

Bear the stain? Letty bear the stain? The stigma resulting from rape rests in all the wrong places. Little girls feeling shame for the abuse they are forced to suffer. It disgusts me, yet it is why FAAST is here.

Not only do these little girls need someone to sit with them, sing with them, love them and tell them of their worth – but the communities need to understand it too. The communities need to understand the worth of a child, of a young woman. The beauty they possess and the vulnerability they exude. Only through education and sensitization can the understanding and mentality toward trafficking, rape and abuse become that of protection, prevention and redemption.

That is why it was so important for little Letty to stand on the bench that day and relive a traumatic past. So everyone will know she is not to blame. So the man in the red cap will understand there are consequence for his actions. And I waited with her for hours in that crowded, stifling hot courthouse so Letty would know she is precious and beautiful and worth it.

the power of a story...

(written for the WHI anti-trafficking blog)

There are stories all around us.  We each have a story.  Stories of life, experience, joy, love, turmoil, hardship…lessons learned, lessons to be learned.  We live our stories and we share our stories.

Stories are incredibly powerful.  Through a story we see into a life that is not our own.  We can experience things beyond the boundaries of our own world, peering for a moment into the vast world of another person, another time, another place. 

I have discovered the powerful gift of writing God has given me.  The opportunity to unveil realities of this world to those who would otherwise not know or see.  To take people to experience another world, beyond their own.

It is easy to live in the context of our own stories.  To get caught up in realities of our present condition, present situation.  It is easy, especially for us in the West, to lose sight of the stories that compel us to follow Jesus’ teaching to love and care for the least, for the poor, for the widows and the orphans.  Number and statistics can be compelling, but also pushed out of sight and out of mind, our attention changed as easily as the channel on the TV.  But a voice, a story, is hard to ignore.  It is an invitation to imagine, just for a moment, what it would be like to walk in another’s shoes, to live another’s story.

***

I have been living in Freetown, Sierra Leone as a Hope Corp volunteer Field Writer for WHI anti-trafficking program Faith Alliance Against Slavery and Trafficking.  My job is to write the stories of trafficking survivors.  I often tell people I have the best job, because amidst the dark evil of modern day slavery that still exists and enslaves hundreds of thousands throughout the world, I get to tell the story of hope.  The story of freedom.  The story of beauty in the resilience of humanity.

I have been here in Sierra Leone for over four months now.  I have written stories that make me cry, and stories that make me laugh – I have met children who have experienced more injustice, exploitation and horrors in their short lives than I can even imagine – yet I have seen them smile, as a child should, and it is in this smile that I am reminded of why I am here.  I want the world to see this smile.  To experience, if just for a moment, the joy and peace and freedom of a child who has been redeemed. 

At the beginning of December I led a training workshop with the FAAST staff on story and report writing.  Earlier, in November, I traveled to Makeni to lead a training on story writing with the WHI staff there as well.  I have loved these opportunities to teach for it is in these moments that I get to share my heart, my passion, my love for writing the story. 

For the staff, it is about the chance to take a moment and reflect on the reason we do the work we do. The story of the face behind all the hard work, the long hours, the frustrating challenges. The story of the one.  The one reason we believe that little by little this work is changing lives.  And if I can teach and empower them to write these stories, I truly believe it will not only give others around the world a glimpse of why prayer, emotional and financial support is extremely necessary for more of these stories to be written, but I believe it will also give my colleagues a chance to realize the power behind what they do.  The smiles that are renewed because God has placed them here to do His work. 

I believe God has given me a powerful tool in the gift of writing.  But as with all of His gifts, the true power comes from taking the opportunity to share them.  I hope and pray that when my time comes to leave this place, I will leave more than a few stories I have written.  I hope and pray I will leave knowing that the stories will continue – continue to be lived, and continue to be written.

tis a season to remember...

Oh, mi belle full! As I lean back in my plastic lawn chair looking out at the breathtaking view of Man of War Bay from the ledge of an unfinished concrete building the Wilson’s call home, I bask in the warmth and joy of a perfect day. It is Christmas Eve, and I cannot think of a better way to be spending it.

After taking a refreshing swim in the ocean this morning, wondering to myself if there is anywhere else in the world as beautiful as this, the Wilson girls, Letty and Samarata, come to collect me. I’m already hungry for lunch and so looking forward to the groundnut stew we are about to make.

I have become especially close to the Wilson family. They live near my house and the whole family attends the church I do. The two girls, Samarata (13) and Letty (10) are my favorite neighborhood kids (don’t tell), Hensley (15) is a smart boy with potential and promise, and little Gwendolyn Hanna Euphemia (we typically use any one of her three names) is the sweetest little thing…who is immediately handed over to me, any moment I am within arms reach.

We arrive at their home, an unfinished cement structure where the Wilson’s occupy two small rooms. We enter through a door leaning against the door frame without any sign of hinges, with all the necessary ingredients for delicious groundnut soup, one of my favorite Sierra Leonean dishes. Henrietta appears from outside on the veranda, a thin ledge along the side of the building facing the water, through the brightly colored gara cloth hung in the doorway that splashed a pink and green glow throughout the tiny dark room. She immediately ushers us outside in a haste that may have been motivated by her seemingly embarrassed demeanor toward their home or maybe just the beauty of the view from the hillside.

We spread out the food on an old wooden table outside being held up by a crate on one end. The fresh vegetables that are laid out in front of us are much more than the average person would ever get to use for cooking one meal. It’s good to be reminded in moments like these of how much I take the food I eat for granted and treat as so disposable. When I asked Henrietta to teach me to cook we both agreed groundnut soup would not only be the easiest but it is also one of my favorites. I like it with bocu vegetables and chicken—so I supplied all the goods!

We first boiled water in a big coal pot. All Sierra Leoneans use coal to cook, even Marie our house help, although we have a gas stove. We add the groundnut paste and allow it to bubble and boil. Groundnuts (peanuts) are a major crop grown in Sierra Leone and you can see them everywhere piled high on plastic trays a top women and children’s heads selling them boiled and in the shell or raw and already shelled. Groundnut soup is made out of groundnuts ground into a paste — peanut butter — which you can watch them make at any market. Unfortunately, based on the cleanliness of the grinding machines and the markets I wouldn’t recommend spreading it on your toast.

The girls make sure I take part in all of the cooking. From pounding the pepe (peppers which Sierra Leoneans LOVE and thankfully they appropriately reduced) in a wooded mortar, to chopping each of the vegetables, not on a cutting board but directly into the now rapidly boiling groundnut paste. We add garlic, spring onions, carrots, green beans, eggplant and lots of salt. As it boils, the soup gets thicker and thicker and smells of the rich aroma of nutty garlic. We cook the rice in another coal pot—no measuring cups, no recipes, no timers. It’s amazing to watch. As if they are just born knowing how much and for how long.

It has become an all-afternoon endeavor and by this time I am starving. When the rice is finished and the soup has been tasted and approved we fill a huge bowl with rice and pour the soup over. It is normal for everyone to eat out of the same dish…with your hands. Today we used spoons, a gesture made just for my sake. It was the best Sierra Leonean food I’ve had since I’ve been here! And the company made it so much better.

mmmm...groundnut stew!

This family has become my own. I’ve laughed with them, cried with them, prayed with them. Taught them things and learned so much from them, far more than just how to cook. Sitting there, at their own home, eating together, laughing together, holding baby Gwendolyn Hanna Euphemia I am completely taken back by how much I have come to love them, despite the short time I’ve known them and the worlds apart that we live. But there is something in Henrietta, an understanding I don’t feel with other women here. I feel truly loved by her, not just for what the color of my skin might promise, but as a sister.

***

In many ways it is still so hard to return back to my compound, filled with electricity, fans, running water, a full refrigerator. To snuggle up on the couch in the soft glow of the Christmas lights sharing Dutch chocolates while sipping tea and watching the Nativity Story with my housemates. It’s hard to know that most of the people around me will go to bed tonight without so many of the necessities I have, the traditions of this time of year I enjoy.

But on Christmas morning, as we gather together in our little unfinished church home, filling the air with dissonant, off key carols, I feel so much joy that God would merge my world with this one.

Letty, Samarata, Hendry and me with baby Gwendolyn Hanna at church on xmas morning

Christmas evening was a whirlwind of old traditions with new friends! The expat international bible study group met together for a potluck dinner. It was so fun to watch Remi, Saidu, Mohammad and Maka (four Sierra Leonean boys who live part-time with friends of mine in expat community) decorate a Christmas tree for the first time, to see the closest thing they’ve seen to snow from a “just add water” kit, to exchange white elephant gifts and see Maka’s determination to keep the huge plush towel probably meant as a gag gift. It was a Christmas of good friends, without all the excess (although we certainly had plenty of food). It was a Christmas of singing carols and taking time to truly reflect on what they mean, what it means for Christ to enter this world as a baby, lying in a poor and feeble manger...yet as the King who came to teach us how to love.

me and Remy at Christmas dinner

It was a Christmas that warmed my heart to the most important things this time of year and how God is letting me discover how truly blessed I am. Blessed by my Sierra Leonean family, who are teaching me more about this country and this culture than I knew I had to learn. Blessed by the chance to share my own traditions—tortilla soup with my housemates, coke floats for the FAAST staff, decorating Christmas trees with twinkling lights and shiny ornaments. Blessed by new friends who share in the desire and struggle to figure out how to balance the abundance we have with the lack we are surrounded by and give of the love we have to give.

***

We rang in 2010 with praises to God for another year of life given. It is common for Sierra Leonean Christians to go to a Watch Night service on New Years Eve. To count down to the New Year in fellowship and praise. I’ve never gone to church on New Years, but I don’t know why we don’t. It was a wonderful way to thank God for 2009, for the endurance and the strength, the providence and the blessing of one more year of life. And to praise Him for what is to come!

The streets were filled with crowds singing and clapping as we made our way home. We filled the air with sparkles and light, laughter and smiles – to put the finishing touch on 2009 and give a hearty welcome to 2010! Happy New Year!

Twas truly a season to remember…