Missing Husband

At the village, we were served a delicious meal of cassava leaf soup and rice, much the same as last night's dinner. Larry ended up with the treasured piece of fat—which he ate with a smile on his face. (He's my hero.) We sat inside Pastor Flomo's new house made of mud walls and a tin roof, which is surprisingly cool. As we ate, Cindy noticed that the assistant pastor didn't look so well. He had malaria—and she happened to have malaria pills in her purse. He should feel better by tomorrow.

We checked out the school that Larry (Marshall) has been helping the villagers to build. (Right now the students are meeting in a makeshift pavilion that will not be adequate for the rainy season.) It's quite impressive how much work they have done without equipment. They carry forty pound buckets of sand on their head up from the stream to make cement to make blocks to build walls. (Larry tried it once and got a bruise on his head.) Everyone carries things on their heads here—even backpacks! :)

We are invited to greet the students, and each of us are expected to say something. In response, the kids sing us a beautiful chorus. As Larry and Cindy conduct some other business, I try to teach the kids tic-tac-toe in the sand, but they just laugh at me—clearly not understanding. Eventually I make my way over to "kitchen" which is another dirt-floor pavilion with a fire pit in the middle. The women sit there quietly and someone pulls a chair from someplace for me; ducks and chickens wander around, pecking at the dirt. No one says anything, even when I try to engage them in conversation. I find out why later:

One of the women was Pastor Flomo's sister, and her husband went missing about three weeks ago. Flomo has been doing all he can to help find him back (there is no police force for this kind of work), but no one is hopeful. The most likely explanation is that he was captured and used for a ritual sacrifice, a common practice even today. I wouldn't talk either if I were facing trauma like that.

On the way home, we gave a few people rides to various locations—and this time I noticed the rubber trees. Amazing to think that rubber drips from trees like maple syrup. Eventually we even picked up a colonel from the Liberian National Police and gave him a ride for about 20 miles or so, which meant we had to stop and chat at each checkpoint rather than being waved through, but that didn't stop us from stopping to buy plantain chips from a roadside vendor (which tasted much like potato chips). The timing worked out fine: We made it to our favorite Thai restaurant and home before dark, and thus avoided the somewhat scary red light district at its worst time.