The Package

November 11, 1983- Part One: The Package

(Morning)

It is Friday morning. The overcast sky does not show any sign of rain. It’s cool but moist yet not as humid as few months ago. I have been looking forward to this weekend. My plan is to drive my pickup truck down the paved road, south to Monrovia, to attend the welcome-reception for Lorette Rupee, the director of Peace Corps, who is touring on country visits in West Africa. Liberia is her third stop after she visited Senegal and Sierra Leone when she came from Washington, DC. I really would like to meet her but I mostly wish to catch up with my friends whom I have not seen in three or four months since I moved to my site, Gbarma. I feel giddy and light hearted, thinking about us all getting together and having a few drinks in a local bar, chatting away and laughing at our silly encounters in our respective towns.

I want to feel connected again after these past few months of isolation in Gbarma. Being with my friends, would make me get off the stage where I have been the object of display, constantly, from one day to another, since I have arrived at my far away village, in Liberia.... My first experience with rainy season is over now. The torrential rain has ceased drenching the tropical moist forest since a few weeks ago as winter approaches our West African turf and the earth beneath my feet dries up. My little mail man, Tokpah Varney, my landlord's son, has showed up at my door and knocks loudly. He calls out my name,

“Maima, Maima, come now!”

“I’m coming out, ya!”, I yell back.

“Ah, bring you package, ya!” he pronounces a pitch louder. I hear his panting as his shadow casts behind my bedroom’s window. The boy has brought me a small package from the Peace Corps delivery mail truck that makes its round to my part of the country infrequently. I see Tokpa's smiling face with his beautiful expression of guilelessness and his charming bright eyes glisten in the dustiness of the air surrounding them. He squints and two small but perfect dimples magically appear on the centers of his cheeks. He blinks his eyes while his velvety black lashes open and shut curling in perfect order. His face is pure beauty framed in the background of emerald forest. He is hardly four and half feet tall. I would guess the child is not more than nine or ten years of age. Perhaps, he is a bit short for our western growth-chart. Tokpa waits patiently while I examine the address on the package.

"It's from my mother!", I say smiling at him.

"Da’ big big thing o’, fur you?”, he asks me, flashing his bluish-white teeth. “you, o'pinit! ya? that thing you can eat? Show me it missy ya!", he begs.

I look at him for a second, absorbing his facial expression in my mind as I envy his naive gestures, shuffling his feet, back and forth, on the ground. Then I pat him on the head and I take out my red Carpenter Swiss Army knife from my back pocket of my pants. I am under Tokpa’s intense observation, his innocent stare is like a spell.

Every move on my part is a mental note for my small friend. I sit him down on the steps beside me. We collaborate on opening the tightly wrapped package that my ma has sent me as an early birthday present from America. Tokpah cannot wait for the postal adhesives to come off the padded envelope. He moves his fingers over the blue and white American stamps. I see in his eyes that he really wants to have them and I am not going to deprive him of such token. Carefully, I cut out the six pretty stamps from the package and hand them to him. The boy sighs and smiles. He feels elated and quickly pockets the stamps before the crowd of small boys, who have gathered around us, could make their claim. Someone in the group asks if he could have the remainder of the package to draw pictures for his school project. “Gladly!” I say. I tear up the package in half; the front piece goes to the boy who requested it and the back of the package disseminates into three smaller pieces each going to a different claimer.

Now for the content: a pair of black corduroy pants with a letter from my family! While I hold my early present in hand, I feel heavy in heart and sad that these possessions are my only fresh bondage between my family and me.

The small boys’ circle around me dissipates as the they take off with their war trophies clenched in their hands!… I hide the letter in my shirt's pocket waiting for an opportune moment or alone time by myself to read my mom's hand written letter in Farsi.

(High Noon)

By mid day, the sun is more intense than earlier this morning. I feel that I must make at least one trip north to Tarkpoima or Weasuea to check out the status of their wells in digging process. Both of these sites are hard to reach by vehicle. The roads are rugged and the majority of the bridges are in decrepit shape. Log bridges are mostly man-made. I have had a couple of opportunities in the past to visit these towns. I had traveled to Tarkpoima (lower Lofa county) once, on the account of Mr. Varney, my landlord, while he schemed to make a sneaky visit to his new wife. He knew he could easily allure me to venture with him to parts of Lower Lofa where white folks had not dared to go. Perhaps the only daring ones were the Evangelical or Lutheran missionaries.

We drove up to Tarkpoima one day with my Toyota pickup truck as an excuse to haul rice bags to his cousins, unbeknownst to me, at that time, he was hauling goods to his second family. I also recall going up to Weasua, a town which is located in the dense forest area, up country, popular for diamond mining. In fact, I made it to that part of country when Deputy Minister of Rural Development, Mr. Faya Johnson came up to visit my site unexpectedly with Ms. Cathy Berie, a statuesque modellike Peace Corps volunteer --an engineer, and a favorite of the Minister Gray nevertheless. I was not sure whether our trip to Weasuea was to impress Ms. Berie, who had arrived in Minister's motorcade in her pretty dress and spotless makeup, with the deep culture, or to get news coverage for Mr. Johnson, or both!…

I fill up my gas tank with my rationed gasoline saved in containers and stored in my kitchen, courtesy of the Ministry of Rural Development. I am now ready to head out north to Weasua, to fulfill my monthly visit as a dutiful Peace Corps volunteer! The road is empty. The weather is beautiful. I am humming to myself while driving calmly on the dirt road… I watch the little boys waving at me in my rear view mirror as I distance myself from Gbarma, driving the truck. My village remains behind me while the road narrows ahead in perspective like a brown mamba slithering forth.…

(to be continued in the next installment of the stories of persian peace corp volunteer in West Africa)