Pretty And Polished: Liberia
Pretty & Polished founder Christina Holder has been serving in wartorn Liberia, West Africa over the last year. There she has been working as a freelance journalist, covering the post-war development of this nation traumatized by 14 years of civil war, and volunteering as a counselor to war-affected people. She shares how the Pretty & Polished concept has made the transition from elderly women in the United States to vulnerable, forgotten women in Liberia.
Here at Frontline, Pretty & Polished is a volunteer group that visits nursing homes in the D.C.-area and gives residents simple manicures. Painting nails speaks powerfully to women who no longer feel beautiful but still long for beauty. Pretty & Polished volunteers remind these women that they are, indeed, beautiful and are Jesus' treasure.
It's a burning day on the outskirts of wartorn Liberia's capital city of Monrovia, and Haja is working under the shade of a rainbow patio umbrella pitched along a dirty street.
Every day she is here on this street in my neighborhood selling sundry items each for several pennies — bread, roasted peanuts, butter in thumb-sized plastic bags. She makes small money to feed her family and somehow makes it through another day in her war-ravaged homeland.
In Liberia, a 14-year civil war that ended only about five years ago has left this nation with historic ties to the United States mostly without electricity, running water and critical infrastructure like navigable roads outside of the capital. Most Liberians live in the ruins of buildings that were burned and looted by rebel factions. They are desperate to make money in a country with an estimated 80 percent unemployment rate. Their daily struggle is to live among the poverty and disease and trash that has infiltrated their communities.
I met Haja last year on the eve of the U.S. presidential election. She was pregnant and gave birth to a baby boy. She named him Obama, after our President. Almost every day I am in Monrovia, I pass by her rainbow umbrella to see her.
“Haja, how the day?” I say in the informal Liberian English used on the streets.
“I alright-o,” she responds.
“How the business?”
“Alright.”
“How Obama?”
“He fine.”
All our conversations start like this. But everything isn't always fine. The life of a woman in wartorn Liberia is difficult and very painful at times — and it's unlikely she will tell you that her life is, in fact, not “alright-o.”
In the process of building relationships with Liberian women, I've seen that it takes time for them to tell you the deep hurts of their lives — husbands that leave to spend the night with girlfriends, the memories of being raped during the war, how they blame themselves when they have family problems.
While so many women are hurting on the inside, they appear tough and resilient on the outside. Maybe it's the war that made their gazes so fierce. Maybe they are just trying to survive.
Most women here spend all day working in the hot sun. They farm or tend to gardens they've planted on the roadside. They spend hours washing clothes with washboards and buckets of cool, soapy water because they don't have washing machines.
They can spend half a day cooking. A Liberian woman goes to the market every day to buy a few cups of rice and ingredients to make different toppings, generally called “soup.” Often, a day's meal is all she can afford.
Most Liberians don't have refrigerators to keep leftovers, and even if they did, they would need extra money to power the refrigerator with a generator. Today, the lights are coming back on in Liberia after the country's power grid was destroyed during the war, but only for the people who can buy expensive generators and the fuel to run them. The typical Liberian woman works from sunup to sundown, always with the hope that she can sell enough to feed her family.
Her plight is similar to that of many women in Africa. She feels vulnerable, marginalized, forgotten.
And with all the dirt under her nails, the dust on her feet, the sweat on her brow — she hardly feels beautiful.
She sits like Haja under her rainbow umbrella ... trying to escape the sun ... trying to make the best of her circumstances ... trying to believe that one day she will see a restored Liberia.
I know Haja doesn't think she is beautiful.
Or special.
Or wanted.
And that's why I sit down with her under the rainbow umbrella.
I take the lid off a jumbo Blue Plate mayonnaise jar filled with hot water I boiled in my apartment and pour it into a large plastic bowl. I foam the water with some olive soap. Haja plunks her feet into the warm water. Some children in the yard occupy Obama's attention. Passersby look at us with curious stares and smiles.
I focus on Haja's hands. First, a hand massage with cocoa butter creme, a favorite of Liberian women. (“It fine-o!,” Haja says.) Then I wrap her hands in a warm towel. Next, I free the dirt from under her nails with a bobby pin I pull out of my hair. (Next time, I'll remember to bring orange sticks from the States). Finally, the polish. Cherry, magenta or a glittery gold. She chooses magenta for her fingers and cherry for her toes.
“Haja,” I say, trying out my Liberian English again, “How the day? You feeling fine?”
“Yeah-o. I fine.”
“How the business?”
“Fine.”
“How Obama?”
“He alright.”
I continue to paint. Later, I scrub her feet in the warm, soapy water and massage the cocoa butter into her rough heels. We talk about where she was born in northern Liberia, about her family, about her boyfriend, Shariff, who has just pulled up on a motorcycle.
“Haja,” I say, “Tell me about Shariff. Tell me how you met.”
She smiles. Surely, Shariff can't hear us talking.
“I will tell you next time,” she insists.
“OK,” I say. “You promise? I want to know!”
Soon the simple manicure and pedicure is finished. The sun has baked the pink polish on her nails and the red on her toes. She is ready to get back to work.
“Haja,” I said. “You like it? You looking fine! You look fine-o!”
“It fine,” she said. “Thank you.”
She is happy. I can see it in her smile. I can see it in her eyes. I can see it as she wraps her shiny pink fingers around Obama and pulls him close to her heart.
She feels beautiful.
“Haja, I want you to know why I doing this,” I try to explain. “You know, I believe that no matter what you go through, that even though life can be hard and even though you may not feel beautiful ... that God thinks you are beautiful, Haja. He looks at you, and He says you are beautiful. He sees you as His treasure. I want you to know that.”
“Thank you,” she says.
And the sun still burns down on the rainbow umbrella. And there still is so much work to be done. The selling. The washing. The cooking.
The surviving.
But my prayer is that there also is hope that comes with the knowledge of how God really feels about His daughters. I hope that Haja comes to believe more and more that she is beautiful because she is a child of God. I hope that she will trust that He can restore all of the years of war and pain and suffering that she has endured. I hope that she will be prompted to seek out Jesus every time she looks at her shiny fingernails and toes.
And I hope that as I continue to find her along the dirty street and duck under her rainbow umbrella, that we will get into the “not-alright-conversations.” I hope that I will be able to encourage her and to pray with her and to remind her of her true worth.
But until that time, it's enough that her nails are polished.
And it's enough that she feels beautiful today.
