Perception:  Stalkers are bad.

Perspective:  Some actually enjoys my ass enough to obsessively call me.

Perception:  Dried monkey paw meat is not a tasty meal (blog coming soon!)

Perspective:  People are resourceful in eating what they can in order to avoid starvation.

Perception and perspective…people mistaking interchange these words, but I have come to realize the vast difference in them.  A difference so great, it can hold the power of life or death in its hands but for me, it was the different between sanity and insanity, depression or purpose.

Perception is how you receive a viewpoint; perspective is how you administer it. 

Why is this so important?  Because I have been battling depression.  No, that is a lie, Depression had me in a chokehold and I have been calling people in order to receive sympathy, not change my perspective.  See, my position here in Africa has made me give up a lot of freedoms that I enjoyed.  These things that I enjoyed I realized help shaped me into the person I am and inspire to be.  There is no lie that “Independent Women, Miss Independent, or even I-N-D-E-P-E-N-D-E-N-T” all rotate heavily in my playlist and here, I feel like a daggone Scarlet O’Hara, dependent on the world around me and not able to use the voice that screamed so loud in America.

So, I was ready to board the plane. I hated Liberia. I hated Africa and I instructed my mother to burn all my “Power to the People” shirts.  I bleached my red, black, and green arm wrists, and I knew I was gone when I started to side with the Gammas and the Gamma Rays in School Daze…”don’t you wish you had hair just like this…then the boys would give you a kiss.”

I was in full plot, how to get home and start all over, because that is the luxury we have in America. To start over. I go back to teaching, I pay bills, I do everything I was doing, but all that did was depress me more.  I mean, how is that I travel so far and not go anywhere?  So I was stuck with nothing to do but to think. But, I didn’t think…I waited to be rescued.  I wanted to have my Titanic moment when I was swept off and rescued. And I screamed at God when my rescue wasn’t working out like I planned it too. 

Perception:  I am not important enough for you to want to date me.

Perspective:  You just opened my schedule up for me to talk to multiple people because you have proved stupidity.

See, I have been allowing other people’s opinions, actions, words, thoughts or their perception have impact on my perspective on my life. 

Perception:  Africa will be a life-changing experience.

Perspective:  Africa will be an experience; I will find ways to make it monumental in my life. 

So, it is at midnight and I realize that someone’s perception has influenced my perspective and caused me to be a mass of negativity and self-pity.  Because I was allowing someone else to determine my destiny or the purpose of my destiny and I felt lost within it.   When you live someone else’s perceptions (opinions, life, viewpoints) it will mess up your perspective on the life that is entitled to be yours.  You cannot be fulfilled or happy when you are going after someone else’s goals. 

So, simply in order to clear my mind I have to ignore some perceptions and remember why I came here.  I have a longer range of plan and I will use this as a stepping-stone to get closer to the end, not as a pity party to begin self-doubt.  

So living out here is a big adjustment and I’m in “big girl” mode.  You remember when you were younger in order to please everyone and be a “big girl” you did stuff you really didn’t want to do like…sit down, eat your peas, and shut the mess up and maybe it wasn’t until you just read this statement that you realize that you wasn’t a step closer to being a big girl, you was just being suppressed so you can identify with other folks.  So like I said, right now I’m going through “big girl” mode.  I see a lot of stuff that don’t make sense, but I don’t say nothing because I am trying to indentify with other folks. I want to say a lot of things, but I get that look that Momma used to throw your way that says, “Say something and you won’t remember how to breath when I’m finish with you.”

Which brings me to this next statement; I respect and bow down to the Old School generation. I do, for the civil rights movement, to sitting on the back of the bus, for walking to work, but mostly, doing it in the dark.  Doing it in the dark is the world without electricity, it is the world without a cell phone, and it is the world without an electric stove. It is a world where, doing it in the dark can go from frying chicken, to rolling hair with toilet paper.  From waving church fans for air, to dressing and realizing that NOTHING MATCHES.  From not having entertainment except watching the kids outside playing ball, to walking down the street to give a message because the phones don’t work.  Old School has a lot of tricks of the trade and now when my Grandpa tries to begin a story with “I remember when….” I can now throw back in his face, “Naw…I know now…” due to my experience with generator living, propane gas stoves, and now having to do it in the dark.

So what is so unique about me saying this statement is that my momma raised me in the wilderness.  We used to live in the woods for family vacations, fight crocodiles, and fish for dinner.  I am one of the most countrified city folk you will ever meet, boiling water for dishes, mixing powder milk, lighting a furnace for heat, I can get down with the Old School, I just never had to rely on these skills for survival.  It was always a choice.

So recently the New Generation (me) and the Old School (someone else) came to butt heads in an emergency situation and Old School triumph over the New School.  Long story short, I accidently set the kitchen on fire.  Just know that a propane gas tank should ALWAYS be turned off when not in use and a wooden match is breakable and can fly through the air in search of something to light.  So the propane tank is on fire, a blaze and all I can remember is “DON’T THROW WATER ON A GREASE FIRE” now, in the midst of this statement I can’t remember what TO DO instead.  New school thinking is like where is the fire extinguisher; Liberian living though…that isn’t an option. So finally I remember flour (remember the propane tank is on fire this WHOLE TIME) but the only flour I know about is in the refrigerator with chicken seasoning in it and when I go to start sprinkling it on the four foot flames, Old School comes running out and grabs the salt and pours it over the fire.  I decide to take cover in the bedroom; I have seen enough Mission Impossible movies to know that something is about to blow!

Well, security comes in and throws sand and dirt all over the fire and the carpet on the floor (something New School would notice) and the fire is gone.  When Old School looks at New School, New School realizes the importance of them old stories when she was younger and the grown folks used to get drunk and tell.  They wasn’t just to learn the family secrets and who was doing what, it was to teach and to mold.  It doesn’t matter how New Age you get, you still got to go Old School when the going gets tough.  Lesson learned, respect is bowed down to. Doesn’t matter how much technology we get or petition for, if you can’t do it at the basic level or in the dark, you really don’t know what you are doing in the first place. 

I got it.

However, if we had electricity in the first place…

I got my school loan bill today.  Just say, long story short I owe the government and unless we can negotiate on the child labor laws of the first unborn child I shall bear, I will be dealing with that collector for a long time coming.  So staring at this bill and the glaring words of “PAST DUE” I grimace thinking of the many ways I will prostitute myself to make this monthly payment I was hit with a realization of truth.

Liberia doesn’t have a public school system, they don’t have governmental assistance programs to help with school other than scholarships or work related schooling.  People are not given the chance or the right to gain knowledge.  Education is looked at as the answer for all struggles and here…it is something that you have to fight for.  You have to fight just to be able to pay for a normal life.  And it starts with the youth. 

It is only customary for us to see children in school. America has a free public school system, meaning that every child under the age of 16 must be attending classes somewhere within the United States borders.  Liberia doesn’t have that same concept.  I see children all day walking around selling small items so they can contribute to the family income.  In the rural areas, the schooling only goes to sixth grade and then it stops.  No junior high, no high school courses, so a child can read but then what?  There is no life after learning, so why learn?

If you ask a child here what is it they want to do, the answer is school.  Whether it is elementary, high school, or college, all answers end up being those that deal with education, which is no wonder as well, that one of the biggest money makers here are universities and training institutions.  So it boils all down to money.  Those who have it get knowledge, and then they are positioned to gain power.  Those who don’t have money continue to live in cycles of poverty.

And if they had a choice, do you think a parent would sacrifice being able to feed a child for the opportunity for that same child to spend all day in a book?  How do you look at your hungry child and tell them it is more important that money go towards school fees and uniforms rather than their tummy?  Money is an unfair game and here it is the cost of opportunity.  Majority of the schools are private and for less than my monthly cell phone bill, a child can go to school for a full semester.

So now, even though I owe money, I realize that I was given an opportunity and promise for my dreams to come to pass. With just a questionnaire, tax return, and a couple of forms a financial promise was given to me with the expectation that I would graduate and be able to repay on this dream.  Its like someone believed in me without me having to prove my worth.  My heart guided me to the correct place and that was a degree.

We are giving opportunities and chances that we choose not to capitalize on. We finds ways to wallow in self-doubt and destructions holding on to excuses that limit our possibilities.  There is no excuse when a position opens itself up to you.  You have to be in a mind frame that you will do whatever it takes to accomplish your goal until you can’t anymore.  Let someone else lend the soundtrack that says “No.” Don’t limit yourself before you even try to play.  Sometimes trying to be in control of your destiny means that you are in control of your fall.  Being such a control freak and not capitalizing on a blessed opportunity is a slap in the face for all those who are oppressed and can’t decide their own fate.  The world is like that. There is a group of forgotten people who cannot remove themselves out of a rut and then we in America throw away scrapes because we are not in a good mood.  It’s just sad that our scrapes could change a life out here.

School is not a game.  This loan of learning was a chance that isn’t afforded here and the time I spent in school shouldn’t be wasted opportunity.  The loans that we are given because we stand on American soil should be proclamation for prideful moments that are to come.