Sierra Leone Reflections

Dragonflies, by Cami Sigler

Originally published in The Cry, an advocacy journal of WMF, Vol. 11, No. 2 (Summer 2005).

A friend recently asked me about my thoughts on the kingdom of God here in Sierra Leone.

“Uh, what?”  I thought, drawing a blank and fumbling like a clueless oaf.  So much for all that Bible school training.  Like a desperate Daffy Duck, I pleaded with my slow brain, “Think, think, think!”

“Dragonflies,” I cautiously posed.  Then, with more certainty, as if trying to convince myself, “The kingdom of God is like blue dragonflies.”

Then I laughed.  At myself.  Madeleine L’Engle writes that unless we take ourselves lightly, we will never truly take ourselves seriously.  So I laughed, and then I tried to unpack what I meant.

Rusty razor blades are strewn along the lane where I live.  The gutters overflow with all kinds of rotting, smoldering refuse.  Have you ever read the Shel Silverstein poem about the kid who refused to take the garbage out?  This is worse than that.  The stench produces a gag response in the tropical climate where fish, citrus, feces, plastic, tin, all manner of paper and who knows what else, bubble, foam, and ooze in the slimy, tarry gutters.

Some days I feel as if all of life is like those gutters; my soul is overwhelmed with the constant suffering that barrages my soul.  Desperate, hungry, pleading children beg for bread in chaotic traffic; they cling to my arms and clutch at my shirt. After living here for two years, you would think I would recognize most of the beggars on my daily walk to work.  But there are always more, more, more.  I find myself constantly wondering just how many amputees there are from the rebel attacks in the war.  Pretty teenage girls, about my niece’s age, prostitute themselves to UN workers, just so their families can cook a pot of plain rice this evening.  Tempers burst shortly like artillery fire from all around, all day, every day: taxi drivers with their horns and fists, mothers with their canes and brooms.  I remind myself that months of sleeping on the street with malaria and not enough to feed my children would soon make me an emotional wreck as well.  Still, the yelling and cursing explode in my ears, in my soul, from dawn till dusk most days.  Even at night, as I sweat and wrestle to sleep under my mosquito net, the curse, “Halaki!” (worthless bastard) resonates in my dreams.

Here is where the dragonflies come in.  As I walk home each day, weary and often at my wit’s end, the blue dragonflies dance.  They dance and soar, they play over the reeking gutters.  These magnificent little creatures remind me that despite all the suffering, God is good.  Beauty and hope are here.  And as many times as I get overwhelmed and forget, those little flitting beings remind me how to be here: simple, joyful, free.  The dragonflies don’t wallow or get stuck in the muck.  Instead, they play in God’s rays of love.

Jean Vanier writes in Community and Growth, “We are simply a tiny sign, among thousands of others, that love is possible.  We are a sign that there is hope, because we believe that the Father loves us and sends His Spirit to transform our hearts and lead us from egotism to love, so that we can live everyday life as brothers and sisters.”

As much as I yearn to, I cannot end all the suffering in Freetown.  But, like the dragonflies, I can be a tiny sign of hope and love.

Cami serves with Word Made Flesh, a ministry that is committed to serving Jesus among the poorest of the poor. Cami serves among refugees, street children, former child soldiers and in slum communities in Freetown, Sierra Leone.