How a pilot could know where he was going without instrumentation was beyond my aviator-challenged mind. Jeff, however, was in his element, being trained for that very thing. Hearing the excitement in his voice, I could not help but smile as I watched him.
After an hour’s flight, the plane suddenly took a sharp turn to the left and then cut veeringly to the right. It was the first real civilization that I had seen since leaving the capital city of Monrovia. Six houses, an airplane hangar, a Bible school building, a medical clinic and an OB clinic, along with a few other buildings spaced alongside the airstrip. The airstrip? As I looked, I only saw a long open strip of grass. Looking carefully at the faces of my husband and the other pilot, neither seemed disturbed by the lack of tarmac, so I just held on tightly to Michelle and watched us descend into that new world shrouded by a welcoming lush green canopy.
After an impressive landing, I looked straight ahead to see a massive crowd of people standing by the hangar, but it was the sprays of colorful, exotic flowers that took my breath away! Pinks, blues, yellows, and purples woven exquisitely around the poles celebrated our arrival. Half of my heart beat gratuitously for the warm welcome, but the other half felt like I was falling into a black pit from which I would never again ascend.
As the plane came to a complete stop and the engines were cut off, I heard the singing and was involuntarily initiated into the rhythm that is uniquely African. The women were dancing and swaying perfectly to the music. It was beautiful and I liked it immensely. Even in his height of excitement, Jeff remembered and turned to take my hand. With his beautiful brown eyes beaming, he squeezed my hand and said, “Welcome home, Missy Abernethy.”
CHAPTER THREE
Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. I Corinthians 13:1
Fat and Sassy
We stepped out of the plane smack dab into the middle of a strange, but intriguing world; the place to which God had asked us to move, to live, to raise our children, while sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ to those around us. After respectfully giving us time to greet the waiting missionaries, the African Christians moved in to take a closer look at the new arrivals. Soon I was surrounded by at least a dozen African women pressing in, trying to touch Michelle’s hair. She would have none of that and held on to my neck tightly.
At the same time, I heard some of the Africans praising Jeff, pumping his hand enthusiastically as they kept looking back at me. It was an effort to understand what they were saying even though it was in English. The Liberian English accent was a uniquely rounded, musical sound that took time to pick up. Nevertheless, I thought I heard them rhythmically chanting, “Tank you, teacha, for your fat wife! She’s too fine, she’s too fat! Oh, tank ya teacha for your FAT wife!” (Thank you, teacher, for your fat wife.) It was at that moment I was glad that I had a head cold to blame for my watery eyes.
Our belongings were cursorily loaded into several well-used wheelbarrows as we were invited to walk the fifty yards to our new home. After we had been shown to our mud block house with concrete floors and only screens in the windows, I succumbed to the despair of realizing how far away I was from my mother and that I was stuck in the African jungle ministering to people that enjoyed calling me fat! Jeff had forgotten to warn me about that unusual “perspective“ on body size.
To an African, if you had any meat (and fat) on your bones, you must surely be blessed by God. For you see, that would mean you had the means to buy and eat all the food you wanted. Once I heard the explanation, I felt humbled and somewhat thankful. It still stung my pride a little about the “fat” part, but I tried to submit to the cultural contradictions that were certain to happen frequently.
As much as I loved our house, the layout of the rooms, and the simple quaintness of it, my mind was still on overload with the reality of how far away we were from America. I started fantasizing about how I could get in the one engine plane, return to Monrovia, hop a larger plane headed to Europe, take another plane to NYC, and from there board a plane that would take me to Charlotte. A plane where it would be climate-controlled, where they would speak English in an accent that I could understand, and where they would serve peanuts and Cokes. However, that conjecture did nothing but make the helplessness and despair mount up in my soul even more! I was a panic attack in the making if I didn’t stop.
For weeks, I battled the fantasy of leaving that intriguing, but strange place and never coming back. Though I did not write down the verses God used to assure me that I was in the right place, He reminded me of how I was created...to be an adventurer for this very time! God tenderly revealed to my hurting heart that He knew my frame and exactly what I was supposed to be doing. I was reminded of that repeatedly as I learned the idiosyncrasies of living on a mission compound in the African jungle and little by little acknowledged that He would be sufficient for me and that He would use me in spite of myself.
Pampered American
A couple of days after getting used to our house, I wrote in my journal:
After we started unpacking our container, we realized how much we had as Americans in comparison to the Liberians. Some items that we brought out now seemed silly and frivolous, but yet, there they were, a reflection of the person I had been just a few weeks before. It was an ethereal feeling but yet freeing to think that we could really live without so many things. The American mindset can so often trap us into thinking that we simply cannot do without our things.
Jeff paid some of the Bible school students to help unload our belongings into the house, and I remember feeling a little shiny and pampered. The men were so kind and never made any comments around us about what they were unloading, but their silence did make me wonder what they went back and told their wives about the American missionaries and their things. I have learned over the years of living in West Africa that most Africans expect that we would live differently than them, so perhaps they were not thinking anything negative at all.
Another notion to be accepted was that we were fundamentally, in most every way, somewhat distanced from them because of who we were and where we came from. There was no way that we could understand them on their basic cultural level. The most comforting thing was that we had come to share Christ and when that was accepted, the bond we had in our Savior would cross over many of those physical and cultural barriers. All of that took time. One basic truth that spanned the years that we spent ministering to and with Africans is that even in that tight Christian bond, there was also a fragile liberty of mutual acceptance of each other’s culture and perspective. That acknowledged, anything was possible.
Food, Food, Food of the Jungle
So many Liberians came to our house the first week to welcome us, it almost seemed overwhelming! Many of them remembered Jeff from the year before when he had come out on a survey trip, but it seemed that all the people we met were thrilled that we were there. I was personally thankful that there was no more discussion about my fatness. It was heartwarming to see how much they cared that we had come to live among them. One of the most endearing things about an African is that they never visited without bringing something meaningful. Our pantry floor was quickly scattered with bowls and bags of exceptional West African country rice, fresh vegetables and fruits, and some cooked dishes that took a little courage to sniff and taste. It meant so much because they, who had so little, wanted to share with us.
This is a good place to describe some of the rice dishes that the Liberians cherished as their “bread of life”. They call their dishes “rice and soup” even though the soup is much more like a thick stew that is put on top of the rice. Liberian soup is prepared by first cooking meat and onion in a good amount of oil (mostly palm oil) until very tender. They would then add whatever vegetable they had on hand: eggplant, okra, bitterball (a small round eggplant-like food that
