“Change my story. / I tiyad, aye, Papa.”
This was the chorus of the song I marched along to during a
funeral in February. The funeral was for
my landlord and friend, Frederick Mark B. McGee. Mark, as we all called him, was only nine
years older than me, yet he was a very caring figure to me and my sitemate,
Rachel. Mark really looked out for the
both of us. He made sure things were
fine with us in Gbarma: he always asked
how our relations were with others in the community and school and made sure we
were being well-fed by the occasional Sunday rice + soup deliveries from his
fiancé. He was like the older brother I
never had, and I’m glad I at least got to know him for the first year and a half
of my service.
Mark’s birthday was just last month, and he would have been
35. He passed away in a motorcycle
accident in late January. 35. Thirty-five. What a terrible thing, to have life pulled
out from under you so soon. I wish I
would have made the time and would have had the emotional push I needed to
write this post earlier, but here it is a few months late. This is a tribute and a thank you to a friend
that is truly missed.
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| Me & Mark, March 2013 |
Everybody is Gbarma Town knew Mark. I’m not exaggerating. Everybody
knows him. He was involved in many
organizations and had many friendships with people in the community. He was very devoted to improving the
conditions of others. He constantly
worked with the youth of the district to encourage them to have a voice, to get
them to organize, and to facilitate their contribution to the betterment of the
community. And, it took me over a year
into my service to realize this, but he was also helping students at our school
with their school fees. For example, his
generosity allowed Fatu, a single teenage mother, to continue to the 9th
grade this year. The reaches of his
connections to helping others never ceased to surprise me.
Because of his busy schedule, Rachel and I didn’t get to see
Mark all that often. He was a student at
Univ. of Liberia (a sophomore, studying Sociology) and between that, his job
with the World Food Program, and the bazillion other things he did, he didn’t
get to spend too much time in our town.
However, no matter how little time he had in Gbarma―even if he was just
passing through―he always made time
to come check up on us.
Whenever we saw Mark approaching, we’d exchange a quick look
that said “here we go!” Mark loved to chit-chat. Really, “da man can talk-oh!” Although his impromptu visits usually meant
four-hour-long “lectures” (conversations), Rachel and I definitely enjoyed
talking with him. He was one of the few
people in the community that really understood our perspective on things, or at
least tried to. During our talks, we all
would exchange jokes and laughs…man, did we laugh! We also would exchange tidbits
of information of American vs. Liberian culture and Gbarma town gossip. Mark always had the latest scoop for us as to
what was going on in the community, and we’d also use our lectures with him to
vent our frustrations about the school / community, knowing that he’d see to it
that people were talked to and that issues were resolved. During our lectures, Mark also asked us about
our future plans and aspirations and expressed his own. He was the kind of person that liked to dream
big, but he knew the work that was necessary to get to the finish line.
Mark was someone that was definitely going places. He had the desire to become a politician and
wanted Rachel and me to come back to Liberia in 2017 when he planned to run for
local elections. He had big hopes for
himself, for his family, and for his community, and watching him talk about all
his plans was electric. His long arms would punctuate the air as he excitedly,
and speedily, talked through some upcoming plan. His dimples would sink in deep into his
cheeks, and his eyes would shine with enthusiasm. He was so full of energy that it was
infectious. (I wish I could be that
excited about anything!) I never once
saw Mark in a bad mood either. He didn’t
seem to let the little things bother him.
He just kept on keepin’ on. I
remember that during difficult parts of my service, there were instances in
which I felt that just being in the presence of his resiliency was the
encouragement I needed to keep going. Mark
was always complimenting us, encouraging us, helping us problem solve…he did so
much to try to make our service easier, better, and more meaningful.
The day before his accident was a Sunday. I had just woken up from a nap and was hot
and crabby. I was rushing to get to
school to do some work. It was one of
those days. As I was walking down the small
gravel hill in front of my house to reach the main dirt road, I saw Mark’s tall
figure approaching. “Ah, here we go,” I
thought. “I hope he doesn’t talk to me
forever. I have got to get to school to
get this grading done!” And he
didn’t. Mark sensed that I was in a
hurry so we just caught up for 10 minutes or so, right there along the edge of
the road. As we parted ways, he shook my
hand and held on to it, saying that we’d lecture some more later on, and he
wished good luck to his sister. With that,
I continued on towards the school and he went back home to lead a Royal Ladies
/ YORWI (local women’s organization) meeting.
The next day was a Monday and Rachel and I were at school typing
tests until sundown. It was a long
day. Once we were back at home, we began
working on our lesson plans for the next day by the light of our headlamps. Out of nowhere, David, one of our neighbors, shouts
through the window, “Ms. Bendu! Did you
hear about the accident?” I took out one
of my earphones and shouted back, “What?”
Then Rachel got up and went outside to the front porch to talk with
David using voices at a non-shouting volume.
He informed her (and she then informed me) that Mark was in a motorcycle
accident in the afternoon and had been taken to the hospital in nearby
Tubmanburg, Bomi County. The motorbike
had been hit head on by an SUV, and Mark wasn’t wearing a helmet. He was thrown from the bike headfirst into
the windshield. He was “taking oxygen”
and unconscious in Bomi Hospital. And
guess who was the owner (not the driver
though) of the car that accidentally hit the motorbike? A politician.
He was literally hit by two tons of irony, no?
Tuesday, Mark’s accident was all anybody in Gbarma could
talk about. That day he was moved to JFK
Hospital in Monrovia, and we tried, unsuccessfully, to get in touch with
Joanna, his fiancé. By Wednesday, his
condition had worsened: brain
hemorrhaging, coma, broken bones. What
could be done in a place with subpar medical services besides praying? So everybody prayed. Even I
prayed and I’m not a religious person.
By 7:35 A.M. on Thursday we found out Mark had passed
away. The sound of ol’mas wailing was
what woke me up that morning. Rachel and
I woke up and unlocked our doors at the same time (they face one another across
the hallway). “Dany,” she said
morosely. “F*ck,” I replied. We knew.
We knew what those cries meant. Those
30 seconds or so we stood in our doorframes felt like an eternity. We didn’t know what to do next. I felt sick to my stomach and kept telling
myself that it was just a nightmare that I’d soon wake up from, but I
didn’t. The longer the wailing women passed
the back of our house (where our bedrooms are), the more it sank in that he
really was gone. I will never forget the
sound of those women’s cries, all the pain that fully infused each one. It was one of the worst sounds I’ve ever
heard.
Fast-forward to February 8th: the funeral.
Skip the crying in front of a class full of fifty 10th
graders while giving their test instructions the day of the death. Skip the terrible town gossip that my
Counterpart had placed some witchcraft on Mark to cause the accident to
happen. Skip the people paying their
sympathies to the bereaved Peace Corps.
Skip the Mefloquine dreams in which Mark was there, saying it was all a
bad joke and he’s a-comin’ back to Gbarma Town tomorrow. All that was hard, but the funeral and the
day before were two of the hardest days I’ve had this year here in Liberia.
Imagine a large, concrete “palava hut” (pavilion) with a
large, shiny wooden casket inside the center.
A blue, satin blanket, dotted with white bows and bordered with a white
fringe, is draped across the top. Members
from our women’s group, the Young Rural Women’s Initiative (YORWI), formerly
the Royal Ladies Birthday Club, begin to march around the casket. Music is blasting from two huge speakers,
propped up on tables on opposing ends of the casket. The beat of the music is fast, requiring
everyone to drop a foot onto the hard, cement floor quickly in order to pick up
the other one. When Rachel and I were
first summoned to march with our fellow Royal Ladies, I was reluctant. In Liberian English, I’d say, “to be frank, I
na get intrest to do dah one.” No
interest at all. I did not want to march
around a casket to an upbeat Liberian gospel song blasting in my ears. But I did it for the Royal Ladies. And I did it for Mark, as he was our Board
Chairman.
When the official wake ceremony began in the middle of that
hot, Friday afternoon, Rachel and I were two out of four women that kicked off
the marching. By the time we tapped out,
there were at least over 20 people there… I had a difficult time counting who
all was in the circle. Just think how
slow you have to march when there are that many people in a congo-line-loop in
a confined area! Anyways, the point is
that so many people participated in this activity: men, women, old, young. They were all there to celebrate the life of
Mark, and to share with one another their pain at his loss.
I marched around that casket for nearly two hours, until my
feet hurt and I was dehydrated. At times
during the march, tears were streaming down my face. I tried to find a dry spot on my sweat rag
but it was already wet from all the sweat, dust, tears, and snot from earlier
in the day. I was a mess, but I didn’t
care because we all were a mess that day.
No one judged one another; instead, we just shared our grief with one
another.
That night “Gbarma was lively-oh!” as people drank heavily
and blasted music until 4 A.M. I don’t
know why, that’s just how they do it here.
Let’s just say I didn’t sleep much with the walls of our house literally
shaking from the sheer volume of the music. (It was blasting from next door, where Mark,
Joanna, and their daughter, Naomi, used to live.) The next day was the funeral, and we marched
to the palava hut for the service with the Royal Ladies. We carried a banner than Rachel and I had
made for the occasion. (Together, we
spent at least 12 hours on that thing.) The
palm frond awning that was erected near the palava hut wasn’t large enough to
cover all the attendees, so we stood out under the scorching sun during the
hottest part of the day—and subsequently got sunburned—with everyone else
during the service. It sucked, but it was worth it. We didn’t go sit in the shade when we were
told to and we didn’t sit when we were told to.
“Your skin will spoil-oh!” they warned us. “It’s ok,” we replied, and for that day it
was. That day we wanted to be like all
the other Liberians in Gbarma, and they let us.
As the service ended, we began the 15-minute walk to the
other part of town to where Mark would be finally laid to rest. Some people even trudged through the creek,
shoes and all, to reach the other side, as the tiny wooden bridge was backed up
with foot and motorbike traffic. Once we
reached the tomb, the pallbearers began chanting and lifting the casket up and
down, a final celebration of Mark’s life.
And then that’s when I lost all composure I had worked so hard to
maintain and lost it. Crying―no, wailing―uncontrollably
alongside other members of the community was just the release I needed. I’m glad I didn’t hold it in and that I was
able to share that moment with them.
Now (months later) that I think about it, it’s fitting that
we marched to that song around Mark’s casket for so long. The Liberians explained it to me that day
that in the chorus, someone is appealing to God to let them rest. They are asking for God to let them go from
the pain in their current mortal life and move onward to peace in the next
life, to join him in heaven. They’re
saying, “Lord, I’m tired. Change my
outcome, change my story.” While I’m not
Christian like most people in my community and don’t share most of their
beliefs, I get the explanation. While
I’m not quite sure what I believe, I know that Mark is now at rest, at least
from the pain and injuries from the accident.
He fought as hard as he could, and although he couldn’t physically make
it, his memory will live. Through Joanna
(his fiancé), Naomi (his 5-year-old daughter), the citizens of Gbarma, Rachel
and myself, and so many more, the memory of Mark McGee isn’t going to go anywhere…not
for a long time.
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| The banner we made for the funeral and laid upon Mark's casket before it was sealed in his tomb. |
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| The crowd of people who attended the funeral. |
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Yes, they print t-shirts for funerals here, and yes, I have one.
Mark's face is on the front. |
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| The walk from "in the town" to the tomb. |
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Even in death, Mark went out with a bang. His friends hoisted his
casket up and down right before they laid him to rest in the tomb. |
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| The Tombstone |
To check out more photos from the funeral, click
here. Also, here's a super old text I remembered I kept in my phone from Mark. He sent it to me back in Dec. '12 when I was getting sent home on my med-evac.
"Open heart receives love. Open mind receives wisdom. Open hands receive gifts. Merry Christmas and may God safely return you to America. From, your brother, Frederick Mark B. McGee"
If there's anything I've learned from all this, it's that you should truly cherish the people that are important to you (and let them know it!) because you never know when they'll be gone.
