two questions

A friend asked me on the phone what my happiest and saddest memories of Liberia are. I answered her incorrectly on the saddest one so let me get it right here. (btw, it's 5:45am here and I've been laying awake in bed for the past hour. this whole sleeping thing has eluded me for quite some time now...)

saddest:
I would actually call it the most disturbing memory but it's sad too.
So if you've never heard Liberian English, it's a whole nother dialect and virtually impossible to understand for the newbie. Knowing this, the Liberians speak freely (aka quickly and without fixing grammar and vocab) around the white folks (they considered my nephew white as well which I got a kick out of) when they don't want for them to understand - like their own secret language.
So I'm chillin at the compound and there's about 10-15 guys sitting on the steps with me. One of them is telling a story and they're all laughing and prodding him on. I begin to tune them in, curious about the topic that has them all attentive.
The story teller is in front of the group (they're all about 20-30yrs old) and his whole body moves as he acts out portions of the tale. If I can read his lips, I understand about 50% more of what he's saying so everytime that he turns his head, I have 25% of an idea what he's saying.
'The general was just standing there, totally surrounded. You know what they did to him?'
(audience laughs)
'They stabbed him and stabbed him and kept on.'
(more laughter as the story teller acts out the part of the general getting stabbed in the lungs. He begins wheezing for a breath that his body cannot hold. he looks surprised everytime that he gets stabbed. more laughter)
'And he just takes it! And he's like (storyteller continues wheezing) and there's blood blood a-ll over the floor coming from him, like a river, more and more blood'
(I rise up from the stairs and exit the scene, trying not to cry at the reaction to the story being told. I understand that there's only so much that these men can handle and that we all deal with war and trauma differently... but the callousness and the emptiness that is required from someone to speak this way... it's a side of humanity that we ignore and push aside {have you seen 'The Beach'?} because it's so much easier to speak of Brittany and her boys rather than the brutality of the world that surrounds us. I can't help but wonder how we can just stand aside and watch this happen... I wonder why so few are willing to help, and why even fewer follow through when they're on the ground.)

happiest:
Probably hearing my son call me 'Mommy' for the first time. I've never, and will never, tell any of my children to call me Mom. I want for them (the adopted children) to come to that conclusion within their own hearts without my pushing them to it.
I was headed to the bathroom for a splash of cool water on my face when I heard Big P ask some woman named Mommy what she was doing. I glanced around the bedroom, and sure enough, I was the only woman there.
I looked over at my nephew to ask if I had heard Big P correctly. My nephew smiled and nodded his head, "he called you Mommy, Raquel. Congratulations!"
I, of course, gave Big P an unexpected and delayed hug. He winced with pain. I apologized for forgetting about the tumor on his back. I rubbed his arm instead. He smiled at me quickly and then looked down shyly. One of the pineapple-and-beaches moments...