COMMENTARY
Aloha has role in spreading hope
By Betsy Mow
"Alooha? How do you pronounce that word again?" asks my Liberian friend Eddie.
Spreading the aloha spirit around the world is simpler and more appreciated than one might think.
Just a few months before Liberia hit the news, a drawing from a Nu'uanu Elementary kindergartner brought color to an illiterate bush village. A card given by a homeless guest of Honolulu's River of Life Mission sent hope to a woman displaced by war. A free shirt I had won from the Honolulu MADD Dash became a gift for a little girl who had run away from abusive caretakers.
When I left Hawai'i eight months ago, I became a relief worker and spent time in war-ravaged Liberia. I went with Global Hope Network International, a humanitarian aid organization started by Hawai'i kama'aina and former state Rep. Hal Jones and his wife, Lana, that now helps the poor, widows and orphans in more than 20 countries.
Perhaps it sounds exotic — or the opposite — to find someone from Hawai'i who trades paradise for "the world's worst place to live in 2003," as the Economist magazine said of Liberia. But I suspect many people would be wary, as I once was, of investing time or money in the "black hole" of Africa — worried that good will could not bridge the distance of culture or needs, or wouldn't be worth it.
That wasn't what I found. Liberia's palm-lined beaches gave me a taste of old Hawai'i, and its villagers a new understanding of 'ohana. When our rickety brown van stalled roadside by a mud house, a little woman grateful for our "visit" offered a coconut. Liberian partners invited us to speak on college campuses, once battlegrounds of civil war where students would stay to talk with us. As one of only a handful of foreigners I saw in Liberia, I was their voice to the outside world.
Leela, a pretty young woman about my age, is one of the fortunate ones who can find the $500 a semester it costs to attend college. She studies medicine (there were fewer than 20 doctors in the country in January), but schooling has been sporadic and high-level teachers few.
Louise dreams of going to college and becoming a gospel singer but as a 13-year-old who has been displaced and lost everything three times, she admits, "I am afraid I will never make it."
I meet Justin, 18, in a second-grade classroom at a free displacement camp school set up by his neighbors.
All dream of education — nonexistent since last spring, when the homeless overtook the schools, but scheduled to recommence this month.
"When you go back, tell our stories, OK?" almost every student I met would ask.
In Hawai'i, I had learned little about Liberia or Africa. In Monrovia, my new friends honored my American citizenship and reminisced about old episodes of "Hawaii Five-O."
"Before 10 years ago, we had electricity for television," my friend Eddie told me. "That was when we were 'the shining star of West Africa,' the shopping capital."
Imagining Monrovia as a shopping capital is as difficult as imagining Waikiki as a slum where people from every island must take refuge. Liberia's dollar dropped from being equal to the U.S. dollar in 1997, to a rate of 40 to 1 in 1998, and 80 to 1 in the past year. Infrastructure has not been touched in 10 years, and the brightest paint to be seen is on government-sponsored billboards — one of which reads "United We Stand" with a picture of a Liberian and American flag joined as one, an ironic boast since the United States urged U.N. sanctions, but carrying new meaning since the arrival of U.S. troops.
One must have a "hang loose" attitude to live in Liberia. The unknowns of each day are like potholes in the dirt road one must pass to reach the village where guests are presented with cola nuts and greeted in song. My first African road trip was truly a lesson in passenger protocol, with 14 bodies crammed into the "miracle van," scrawny gift chickens pecking at our toes, and every 10 minutes a military checkpoint that would pass us through with the wave of a hand.
A handful of Americans visiting poor villages for a few weeks cannot have a long-term direct impact. But Global Hope Network International sends teams to work with local partners, nationals trained in outreach and committed to ongoing projects. Volunteers bring encouragement and the connection to an outside world that seems often far away and uncaring.
The connection is more than just collaborative food distribution or sending supplies to start a farm or a school; the volunteerism shows the face of compassion behind the gifts provided.
My last day in Liberia, our team received an invitation to the home of Jewel Howard Taylor, wife of the infamous ex-President Charles Taylor. The politics of Liberia were, as she told us, far beyond her control, but among her people she was known as a pioneer of humanitarian efforts.
"I try to help the poor in what ways I can, but it's never enough. Nothing is enough apart from what I find through faith," she told us.
I visited a church one Sunday, finding myself silenced by sounds of praise and dances of jubilation coming from people enslaved by a country named liberty. They who worship amidst an 85 percent unemployment rate, 14 years of civil war and thousands of children dying of AIDS each year — these are the heroes of hope. And yet when my light face is noticed in the crowd, I, as a foreigner, am called on to offer my words of hope.
The good we can do in places like Liberia will never be enough. And we will always have enough problems of our own — in our communities, families and selves — to keep us from reaching beyond.
But we must remember this: Spreading the aloha spirit afar will bring more hope to individuals at home and far away than we could ever imagine. The smallest gifts that I gave away — drawings from 5-year-olds who could read and homeless women who could easily find food — sometimes became the brightest colors in a village.
Our paradise is not only beauty, but also freedom and the opportunity to make a child smile, give a rising leader hope.
Former Honolulu resident Betsy Mow now lives in France.
