That Christmas

People sometimes ask me what was my most memorable Christmas. It wasn’t a Christmas in Hartington with all the gifts, Rudolph with the taped on red nose blinking on the porch, relatives coming and going, and the singing Rossiter family standing outside singing Christmas carols. Those are all lasting, loving and good memories but it was not the Christmas that reaches out and grabs me to this day.

I wasn’t in the United States on that Christmas. I was trying to make a career out of flying and had taken a co-pilot job on a Lear Jet 24. That jet had cameras in the belly and we were doing a mapping project in Africa—Liberia to be specific.

Liberia was a hell hole. There was such a divide between the rich and the poor and anyone making $100 a month was rich. The rest of that population ate rice and beans when they could get them.

An old woman chased me down the street one day. She pulled at my arm and hollered “nicka, nicka.” I had no idea what she wanted but I assumed she wanted money. She was dirty and in rags. She was Black and maybe she weighed fifty or sixty pounds. She was skin and bones and my guess was, she was starving to death. I had five bucks in my pocket so I gave it to her. She screamed, looked at me, and ran away with her arms waving in the air and her rubber flip-flops slapping on the dirt road.

When I got back to the hotel I asked what “nicka” meant. The desk clerk told me it meant a nickel. Can you imagine your life depending on five cents?

Monrovia is Liberia’s capitol city. It is full of people who have nothing to do but sit around and watch life go by. At that time, the Tolbert regime was in control. We were there on a contract with the Liberian Department of Forestry. Our task was to fly the country and take detailed photographs. From those photographs they would try to finds valuable stands of Ebony. Liberia was not the Africa of lions and giraffes and other great beasts. Liberia was the land of big snakes and dense jungles.

We couldn’t take good pictures even though we had some of the best cameras in the world. There was a brown layer of smog about 5,000 feet and the cameras couldn’t penetrate it. The sky was a bright blue above that layer but it was only after the greats storms came through and cleared out the atmosphere that the people in this country ever saw those blue skies. Liberia was also the birthplace of many of those depressions which became monster Atlantic hurricanes.

Raw sewage ran along dirt roads. The poor cooked using open charcoal fires. The humidity held and the smog layer kept those smells close to the ground so opening a window to get some fresh air was out of the question. Liberian life soon closed in on you. Life didn’t mean much over there.

Aid groups such as CARE and church groups send tons of clothes and food over there but as soon as that aid hit the docks, those donations was impounded by the authorities and found their way to the local bizarre as merchandise for sale. The profits went to the favored class and the poor got little or nothing.

We were supposed to leave Liberia and were scheduled to be home for Christmas but because of the obscured sky, the company amended our contract and extended our stay for six more weeks. That would take us into the new year.

We flew less than once a week, and when we did, we climbed up to 41,000 feet and came right back down so we didn’t produce anything usable.

We went two weeks without a break in the weather and my boss wanted to do a run-up just to make sure the engine seals got lubricated. After starting up, we taxied out to the end of the runway, set the brakes, and ran both engines up to 100% for a few seconds and then back down. On the third run-up the crash truck came roaring down the runway toward us. They were waving their arms at us so we shut down. I thought maybe there was a fire and we couldn’t see it.

There was a problem all right. We didn’t notice the tin shacks about 50 yards behind us. The blast from the engines sent the tin and the palm constructed suburb skyward. We created a homeless problem.

I let mom know about our change in plans.  She was disappointed Mr. Adventure would not be home for Christmas. She knew I was depressed about my job. I didn’t get to fly that often and I didn’t get along with my boss. Nobody did. And nobody was getting a holiday plane ticket home.

Mom sent me a letter that a care package of her Christmas cookies was on the way. I couldn’t wait. But, they never made it. Like everything else in Liberia, those cookies didn’t make it out of customs.

I made friends with a ten-year-old boy when we arrived. He was a light skinned black kid with reddish black hair. He was living in a tree outside of the Monrovia Intercontinental where we were staying. This Intercontinental was not your average Intercontinental. It was run down and lost water pressure and air conditioning on a regular basis.

The restaurant daily special was always rice and fish. Hamburgers smelled rotten when you got one about an inch from your mouth. Eating was always and adventure and if it wasn’t for a daily trip to the American Embassy cafeteria, I would have lost more than the 25 pounds I did lose.

My young friend hollered at me on day two of this adventure. I looked around trying to locate where the calls of “hey, white man” were coming from. Finally, I spotted him lying over a tree limb like a leopard right above me. He wanted me to hire him to watch our Land Rover for a quarter a day. He explained that vandals would let the air out of the tires if I didn’t pay him. He was constantly trying to scam me out of money so I named him Angles. He always had one.

A week before Christmas, he presented his Christmas list. “You buy me shoes,” he said.

“Shoes?” I questioned. “Just shoes. No socks.”

“No No,” he piped up. “Shoes and socks.” 

He smiled. He always put on the greatest smile after a scam. He was the product of a white American sailor and a local woman which explained his light coloring and his red hair. That coloring also made him an outcast. He wasn’t black enough to be accepted by blacks and wasn’t white enough to be accepted by whites. Both parents had abandoned him. The hotel cook left food out for him at night and he had also raped him. That’s why he lived in the tree. In spite of that life, his personality was funny and I liked him. He was the bright spot in my Africa trip.

He had a dark brown patch on his cheek that I was a little concerned about so I wrangled an appointment with the embassy doctor.

The Marine doctor took one look at the cheek and then looked at me.

“Worms,” the doctor said. He had a pocket of worms under his skin.

The day before Christmas, we went to the bizarre and shopped for shoes and socks. All the goods were laying on the top of old plywood boards on sawhorses. I let him pick out his shoes and try them on. The big grin said it all. I also gave him a bonus of two new used t-shirts and a new used pair of shorts. Total, $10. There was no need to wrap anything. He put on the big smile on his worm-free face and scampered off into the crowd.

Sometimes a smile is enough. He had never owned a pair of shoes.

As Christmas Eve darkness fell over Monrovia, I went to the bar and order a big glass of Jack Daniels. No ice. Just whiskey. It was a warm sticky night so I walked out to the pool area and looked out at the harbor and the open sea. I love the sea and on that night, a couple of ships lay at anchor.

Somewhere out there was home. Even though I was alone, I knew I had plenty of company. Soldiers, sailors, Marines, and others serving the country were also looking the same direction. Somewhere out there in the darkness of night was the warm glow of home and family and friends.

I knew Mom was rushing around getting things ready for the family dinner. Uncle Bill was sitting at the kitchen table in his dress bibs and stain-free Dekalb hat pulled down to the top of his nose. No doubt he had pulled a can of Velvet tobacco out of one of the bib pockets and a cigarette paper out of another and rolled a cigarette. She would give him hell about coughing and blowing lighted tobacco all over her kitchen. There would be big plates of cookies all over the house. Some were hers. Many were gifts from the neighbors.

I laughed when I thought about it. You can spend Christmas when nobody is around.

That’s when I heard it. It sounded like Silent Night but it was in very broken English. I went to the edge of the pool and looked down at the houses below. The hotel was located on the highest point in the city so it was on a cliff. At the bottom of the cliff were a bunch of houses. Huts, really. They were having Christmas.

The broken song drifted up to me. I was having Christmas, too. I couldn’t help but wonder, if they were grateful and praising the Lord for their lives in this place, what was wrong with me? They had nothing but everything. That was the message from the first Christmas, wasn’t it?

Christmas changed for me that night. I still like to spend Christmas alone and remember that night in Africa and remember that the gift of life is the greatest gift of all.

Merry Christmas.