I am sitting in a Bungalow type house. It
is not exactly inside but on an extended rooftop of a warehouse. The warehouse
is built just adjacent to the bungalow and the rooftop is accessible from the
second floor of the house. The person who designed it must be a very good
architect. I try to move one of the benches around a square shaped
table so that I can sit more comfortably. The person who welcomed me a few
minutes ago smile at me because of my fruitless attempt to move the
bench. The wooden color misleads me. He says “it’s too heavy to
move, made of stone. I am waiting and enjoying the green forest
around me. He has left me to inform the person for whom I am here. Everything
is so quite. The place is not very far from the place where I stay but
everything seems different to me. It might be for serenity and tranquility
around me. It might be for the magical illustration of light and shadow in the
green dense forest. It might be for the holiness and freshness of the morning.
Besides the chirping of unknown birds, I can hear the dropping sounds of
basketball somewhere near. My house in on the lower valley of this mount, in a
small town and the bungalow is 2 km upper at the edge of a reserved rain
forest.
I am actually assigned to conduct a
qualitative research. I heard that a qualitative researcher is a “lonely wolf”.
That’s what I am experiencing now. I come here to talk with some West African
graduate students. They are from Liberia. I get connected with them through one
of my classmates who is also from Africa.
Few months ago, I was watching a
documentary on Liberia. The name of the documentary was “The Cannibal Warlords
of Liberia”. That was really an experience to see the cruelty of the
civil war. The central person of that documentary was the “General Butt Naked”.
He led his troops naked except for shoes and a gun. He believed that
his nakedness was a source of protection from bullets. In the
documentary he claimed that he would regularly sacrifice a victim before
battle, saying, "Usually it was a small child, someone whose fresh blood
would satisfy the devil." He explained "Sometimes I would enter under
the water where children were playing. I would dive under the water, grab one,
carry him under and break his neck. Sometimes I'd cause accidents. Sometimes
I'd just slaughter them. He confessed to taking part in human
sacrifices which "included the killing of an innocent child and
plucking out the heart, which was divided into pieces for us to
eat.” His rampage ended in 1996, when the civil war in Liberia was
coming to a close. He converted to Christianity and credits his conversion was
bolstered by a church in Liberia. He is now the President of the End Time Train
Evangelistic Ministries Inc., with headquarters in Liberia.
My understanding of Liberia is constructed based on that documentary. Though I
know that the documentary was about the war that has ended a decade ago, when I
think about Liberia it’s just the war, brutality, drug, hunger and so
on. One or two weeks after watching that documentary, I was sitting
in front of the graduate school. I saw some of the African students passed by
me. After few minutes, I went to them and asked where they came
from. I was surprised to know that they were from Liberia. Then my second
question was “Do you know General Butt Naked”?
Hello my friend! Welcome to
our mansion! (Later, I come to know that they call the house mansion for making
fun) I turn my head and see him. His words have brought me to the
present. After shaking hands, he says to me “you are from Puerto Rico, right?”
I laugh and say, no my friend, I am from Bangladesh. Bangladesh!
“Bangladeshi people are very easy going”, He says. How do you know that? I ask
him. I meet Bangladeshis in Liberia, he says. Then I understand that
many Bangladeshi soldiers are in UN peace keeping mission in Liberia. He also
adds, Bangladeshi people do not like Pakistani people. That’s his reality on
Bangladesh. His reality is based on the interaction with the Bangladeshi
soldiers working there in Liberia.
"My reality is not your reality”,
people often say like that. Reality often varies from person to person even in
the context of same phenomenon. It is always a question how people come to
understand their reality. In the case of my participant from Liberia, he
interacted with some people from Bangladesh and internalizes his experience and
conversation. As sociologists say, it’s through socialization we understand our
reality. Reality is not constant; it changes as we gain new experiences. I
think our understanding of Bangladesh and Liberia will change again after the
conversation, as we are gaining new experience. In our technological society,
media is also playing a very important role. It is providing us images of
experience continuously from where we understand the world.
Few days ago, I was reading a related
article. The author described that the experiences of others and their
retelling can also be important in shaping a person's view of reality, and in
some cases the reality shared by any entire community. He showed example - while
not all black males have had a "bad experience" during a police stop,
enough have that the accounts of such experiences are ubiquitous in the black
community and a pervasive fear/dislike of the police may exist as a result.
When black celebrities like baseball announcer Joe Morgan discussed for the US
national media how he was stopped while driving expensive cars in upper middle
class neighborhoods, a logical conclusion was that minorities continue to
harassed by the police needlessly. Understanding of what the real is really
puzzling….
….Truth may perhaps come to the price of
a pearl, that showeth best by day; but it will not rise to the price of a
diamond, or carbuncle, that showeth best in varied lights. A mixture of a lie
doth ever add pleasure. Doth any man doubt, that if there were taken out of
men's minds, vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as
one would, and the like, but it would leave the minds, of a number of men, poor
shrunken things, full of melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing to
themselves? (The Essays by Francis Bacon. Of Truth, 1601)
