The Hauling of A Foot
"If you had finish hauling that foot by now the pain would have been gone"
Everything suggested by the nice neat acronym that had been my support in the first 5 days of the injury be damned. I was now faced with the realities of my first foot sprain that didn't last the 2-3 days the physician who examined me in Ghana had suggested. Never having been incapacitated in this way despite all of my years of dance and athletics, I remember feeling odd when I had to be wheel-chaired within my hotel and then within the airport before my departure. Come to think of it, my being in a wheelchair and away from my baggage for all of 5 minutes when I sent my bag to be wrapped, is all the explanation I need for the bag that was eventually checked in but never arrived with me in Monrovia. Still, the "VIP" service of an express security check-in and then being elevated on a platform through a special entrance on the plane was new and exhilarating...until I arrived in Monrovia. I had to hop down the stairs into the dewy mist that hung in the humidity of Liberia's afternoon air. I had to hop onto the bus that would take me to the main building where a wheelchair was provided. Once my taxi came, I was on my own with my walking stick.
Everyone that saw me in the first few days after expressed their sympathies. "Oh! What happened to your foot?" "Sorry yah?" And a few short niceties later, the inevitable words just came tumbling out helplessly: "You na find somebody to haul that foot?", my empathizers wondered? That acronym ironically named RICE, after Liberian people's staple food- Rest, Ice, Compress, Elevate, did not hold weight here at all. Honestly, now fully passed the 2-3 days the physician suggested this might take to heal, I started to wonder if I could be doing other things to accelerate the process. But hauling? Someone once finally dismissed everyone's inquiries and said aloud for everyone to hear in the local hospital I work at, "But y'all American people...I don't know if you can just bear the pain of the hauling and then in 2-3 days you will be walking just like normal. But y'all pa, y'all not used to that one". I resorted to a mixture of resting, and my own version of rehabilitation while I continued to contemplate the merits of hauling. The Medical Director of my hospital and the staff even found me crutches and a stabilization boot I just couldn't fully comply with. The crutches were too big and wearing a boot seemed like an oppressive and over-the-top solution to a more localized arch of my foot injury. There was mutual space for commiseration as my younger cousins came to spend time with me in their last 2 weeks before school started and also served as my on-call masseuses when I needed help with a light foot massage. Their mother suggested also commissioning a "hauler", someone who I was told would pull the hell out of my sprained muscles with some herbs and other things and then Voila I would be back to normal. Somewhere along the way, we decided that I seemed to be gradually getting better so that a hauler was no longer necessary. Maybe if in the very beginning of the injury it would have been more effective. I winced at the thought of someone hauling a foot I couldn't even stand on lightly in those first few days.
My hesitation all rested in the connotation and mystery behind Liberian's use of the word "HAUL". See, Liberians have a way of saying things in an informal English known as colloqua. English words, I've come to understand might sometimes even take on a whole new meaning, relative but distant to it's original meaning and usage of a word. Other times, it's a new word entirely. For instance what's known to most as an Avocado in Liberia is a "Butter Pear". If you are unfamiliar to this linguistic art, you have to not just tune your ears to the accented words but appreciate the poetry and sometimes euphemistic phrases that are allegorical in nature. So even if colloqua is your first language, listening to it is still an exercise akin to what I felt my senior year of AP English was like in Brooklyn. Except, there's no highlighter and the dissection of phrases and words and their interpretation is a complex cerebral calculation that leads you to an interpretation (often done within milliseconds)---if you're lucky the interpretation is on point and widely understood, easily relatable, and BOOM- you've said something without having to say it outright! So you see, my reservations to have my foot hauled was a 4 week mental dance while praying that my body would allow my foot to just walk normally again so I could avoid the whole thought process altogether!
Finally, a few massages in and able to walk again albeit with a lingering limp, this Sunday morning on the 2nd day of September in the Year of Our Lord 2018, I've succumbed to having my foot hauled my people! And.it.was.amazing! My "hauler" knocked as promised in the wee hours of my early morning slumber sometime between 7 & 8am. Annoyed, I sleepily arose and used the bathroom and contemplated sending him away and changing my mind. As I limped to the door though, I grabbed my ointment and thought- "I'll take a foot massage in the very least", worried about what the hot towel he suggested I have ready would add to the "hauling" process. Ladies & Gentlemen! It was an amazing intense massage that I'm extremely grateful for. Granted I wonder what kind of screaming I would have been doing if this was done 4 weeks earlier as everyone suggested. It was amazingly therapeutic and such a Sunday morning treat for this aching sprain.
Who knew? My mom's blessed hands had initiated me into this hauling culture years ago! I was born severely bow-legged. Family members that see me now and saw me before the age of 2 are always shocked that my legs are straight today. That I'm a dancer is a shock to many. I wore metal braces on both legs with orthopedic shoes when I was beginning to walk. In my younger years, I experienced alot of residual aches and pains as a result and I have memories of wailing in the night and my Mom coming into my room to massage my legs with ointment and sometimes even "tying" it small (colloqua for "a little") with a headtie. Aren't mothers amazing? I just never experienced it as a remedy to an injury. I had also never been injured quite like this before. In any case, I'm feeling extremely blessed and grateful this morning. God Bless the traditional healers out there, there's so much beauty and knowledge out there that a language barrier and a dominant culture can help to erase or assist in fostering skepticism . I've got to say, although the herbs and the chalk were missing, I'm super glad I experienced a version of hauling from someone who was taught by his own father. Fathers are amazing too!
Here's to being able to truly dance again soon!
