The black sofa chair was on fire. I had poured some lighter fluid on it and lit a match. As I watched the black chair ignite in tall, wiggling flames, I felt an odd sense of therapy. Why therapy? Because the chair was old, kids had peed on it, and earlier that day the chair was found to be the culprit of a very bad smell in the main room of the New Hope Orphanage. My Mom had provided the funds to purchase it, so I figured she’d understand the reasons that the chair’s time had come.
I admit, occasionally, I have those types of days. Days when, after pretending everything is okay, I sort of lose it and do something mildly crazy. That particular day I needed to watch that chair burn. Here is the back story -- that day we had a diplomatic guest coming over, and while getting everything in order, I kept catching whiffs of something truly foul. Everyone, adults and kids alike, had to go around as “nose detectives” to find the source of the smell. Joel found it in the chair, guessing that Aloha (Green Eyes in Africa’s youngest orphan) had peed on it.
BURN IT!
This blog isn’t about the chair. It’s about the lesson, the therapy, which the continuing story of the chair ultimately gave to me. And it had nothing to do with pee, a clean room, important guests, or even me. It had to do with Jean-Paul.
I’ve wanted to tell Jean-Paul’s story for a long time. His story is so overwhelming and unfair that I don’t really want to interview him to get the details. He’s our First Assistant and night guard. He’s the father of 17 children. He’s from Chad and is a reformed polygamist dealing with the aftermath of having produced so many children (many of whom died).
I’ve shared good and bad times with Jean-Paul. The worst was holding his dead little boy in my arms while he hunched and groaned in agony. I have a deep respect for him. He’s astonishingly tender and soft-spoken, which is refreshing in Cameroon, where speaking quietly and politely is not always the norm.
He loves the children of our center, and the children outside of our center for whom we care. He tenderly and patiently took care of Pepito, a 15-year-old boy in a wheelchair who could not do anything for himself, even eat. I’m always learning from Jean-Paul, randomly but consistently.
Before I go on and share what the chair has to do with Jean-Paul, I want to make a small disclaimer. I hate the idea of being “grateful” for what we have by pointing out the suffering of others. I hate statements like, “It was so sad seeing all those children suffering. It made me realize how lucky I am to be an American. We just take everything for granted!”
Does it make sense that those statements rub me wrong? I can’t really explain why…it just seems a little sick to feel better about my life because I see someone else’s misery. Maybe that’s human nature and normal. I don’t know.
Back to the burning black chair. As the flames began to get really tall, our diplomatic guest showed up. I quickly began to put out the fire, smoke going everywhere. A burning sofa chair probably appeared more unfavorable than the original state of the smelly sofa chair. (Don’t worry, the guest is still a dear friend of Green Eyes in Africa.)
The burned chair sat next to the house for a few days. The black fake-leather covering was melted away on a large portion of the chair exposing yellow foam underneath. I was so glad the smell was out of the house (I’m a nose person…if you want to watch a person act like a parrot caught in a fan…give me a disgusting mystery smell that lingers and cannot be found).
So what does the chair have to do with Jean-Paul? In his usual, humble way, he approached me about three days after my blazing therapy session. In his culture in Chad, looking someone in the eye is disrespectful. He never looks me in the eye. It drives me crazy. Oh well. He sees me as the Director, and I am the Director, so if that means he respects my position, so be it.
Without looking me in the eyes, he gently asked me for the chair. “Jean-Paul, it smells like pee and we’ve burned it half away.” He said it would be of great use to him and asked to have it. I felt like it was insulting to “give” it to him, but he insisted. Okay, Jean-Paul.
Now, I’m pretty sure that if I had lived through the things Jean-Paul has experienced, I’d be toting a machine gun around, covered in tattoos, smoking cigarettes, and wearing an eye patch. But one would never know Jean-Paul has been through the worst things a refugee can go through. He has the gift of patience. And that’s a good thing because the burned black chair story isn’t over—it gets worse.
Jean-Paul was carrying the chair on his head, walking back to his residence from our center. I have no idea how far away his residence is from our place, but I know it’s too far to walk to on foot with a huge, burned black sofa chair on one’s head. I am sure he was exhausted and sweltered under the black chair in the blazing sun.
ACT I: Jean-Paul Carries Chair
STAGE LEFT: Enter the police
I use the word police for lack of a better word -- “Protect and Serve” is not their standard. They stopped Jean-Paul and accused him of having stolen the chair. A foul-smelling, burned chair! I don’t know if they thought he was really stealing or not because he obviously didn’t have bribe money to give them.
The next day Jean-Paul told me that he had to provide proof to the police that he had not stolen the chair. I could not go into the police offices because it would just make things worse. A foreigner like me is automatically seen as a cash tree and no matter how ‘in order’ I have my papers and everything legal, they’ll find a way to try and intimidate money out of me. In this case, I’m guessing they’d invent some sort of “permit” I did not have in order to give away a chair, or they’d ask the most popular two questions, “What are you doing in our country?” and “Is that the way you do things in your country?”
So I told Jean-Paul that he needed to ask Bridget, our Nanny, to take a photo of him next to her with the sofas that match the burned chair and write a note saying that she gave him the chair.
Jean-Paul’s stories really do make me grateful for my privileged existence. Not only did he want a smelly, burned chair so that he’d have a chair like that for the first time in his home, he was accused of stealing it. Grrrr! It’s so frustrating. Seeing things through Jean-Paul’s eyes makes me feel like I’m spoiled, makes me feel grateful. But that’s sick, in a way, isn’t it? There needs to be a word to describe this semi-sweet emotion. I bet the Germans have one.
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