"Becoming a teacher is such a fun career because no two days are ever the same. You may be teaching the same thing that you've taught before, but it's a totally new group of kids and each day has new and unique challenges of whatever's going on in your life and in the kids' lives. Teaching has changed my life. It gave me the opportunity to travel to Liberia and to see people who have an existence that is so dramatically different.
I remember the kids in the village; they would ask us a million questions. When we first landed, we stayed at a beachside guesthouse near Monrovia for a few days while we gathered supplies. The village we were in is much farther inland, and one day the kids asked, “What does the tide of the ocean sound like?”
And so, one of the Canadians on the trip said, “Well, it's kind of like whoosh, you know, like [makes whooshing noises].” And then the principal of the school stands up and he goes: "kids, you remember the RPGs? It sounds a lot like an RPG." Like, Oh my God. Yeah, it totally would be, I mean, I don't know. I don't know the firsthand experience of RPGs, but that made sense to a group of 10 to 20-year-old kids. Imagine, that’s their reference point for the sound of the ocean, an RPG.”
One poignant thing that I will never forget - in the Manno language, that most of the people in Kwendin speak the word for "white people" is "Kwee-poo." Everywhere we went, people would say "Kwee-poo!" One day in 2019 we took a 2-hour motorbike ride out to an even more remote village, Konweh-town, to see the gravesite of a friend of ours who was the woodworking teacher at our school, and who had died unexpectedly. As we rode through other small villages, children came running out of houses shouting "KWEE-POO!" excitedly.
I later learned that the literal translation means "Civilized people." Their name for "White People" is "Civilized People." That's some colonial bullshit...now, when I hear that name I feel a bit of a sting with it because I know that the "Kwee-poo" have not been kind and have not acted very "civil" towards the native populations of Liberia and many other countries. In 2014 when we were walking away from the public school (kindergarten under the trees, etc...), the kids just came walking with us. They all wanted to hold my hands. I had 5 kids on my right side, each grasping a finger, and 5 on the left doing the same. I could hardly walk!
They would rub my arms, because I have hairy arms! It was so bizarre/unusual to them to see a man with hairy arms! I don't know what they were saying, but they would rub my arms and speak to each other in Manno and giggle.
It was funny. But...now that I know they were calling me a "Civilized person" it feels weird too. I learned a lot about my white privilege on those trips. I tried hard to be there as a person with privilege who was trying to pay it back, and not to be there as a "white saviour." I still question it hard...was I playing "white saviour" or was I doing good work there? I think that because it was a community that I had a connection to, that it wasn't me coming as a great white saviour but as a friend. But maybe I'm wrong about that...
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