‘Can Americans Learn the Rice Dance?’
A few years ago I traveled with a small group of people to the interior of war torn Liberia located in northwest Africa. As a group, we conducted a building project, mobile medical clinics, visited orphanages, fed children and other well defined objectives scheduled for the ten-day period.
One afternoon when the temperature was a blistering 112 degrees, an elderly Liberian woman with the lines of time deeply etched across her face, her back severely bent after years of hard labor and wearing a tattered dress managed a pleasant smile as she entered a mud block building we were working in. To my surprise, she threw a handful of dried rice on to the dusty floor and immediately began to joyfully chant and dance on the rice she had just sprinkled.
I was unfamiliar with the local customs and wondered what the meaning and purpose of the dance represented. Later, when I inquired into the nature of her dance, I was told that the rice dance was an expression of her thankfulness for our coming and sharing what we had. I literally sat stunned, trying to define what I felt, trying to process what I had seen and heard. Imagine the vexing paradox of witnessing an impoverished Liberian woman celebrate a rice dance for affluent Americans.
In the early 1960s, as a young boy I had seen many poor people in small towns located in parts of New England. A few years later I witnessed abject poverty in the city streets of Memphis. As a teenager I was dismayed and deeply saddened to see impoverished families still living in tar paper shacks in rural parts of Arkansas. In the 1970s, I was stunned to discover there still destitute people living in pockets of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. Even to this day, I am keenly aware that the gloomy cloud of poverty looms over too many places in America. That being said, I still can’t help but wonder if it wouldn’t do our nation some good to learn our own version of the rice dance.
I think Americans forget that our country was once primarily populated by thousands of people living in the most humble of circumstances. But those same early Americans produced freshly painted hopes, filled their pockets full of dreams and made plans to chart a new history. They literally saw their children as the future dancing barefoot in the joyful soil of opportunity. Those determined settlers worked, sacrificed, planted and built a nation from nothing. Our predecessors may have begun in meager circumstances, but ultimately they were able to envision themselves as one day thankfully riding the mighty iron horse on the highway of steel that linked the east coast to the west coast, into a destiny trimmed in gold!
Far too often, it seems as if our generation has nothing in common with our forefathers who humbly knelt in the snows of New England giving thanks and would gaze expectantly toward the heavens seeking provision, protection and direction. Our forefathers would have clearly understood the rice dance.
Consider this: “According to findings of a Harris Poll survey of 2,345 U.S. adults surveyed online between April 10 and 15, 2013 by Harris Interactive, only a third of Americans (33%) are very happy.” A Gallup poll released in June of 2013 concluded that, “70% of Americans hated their jobs.” A CNN poll released in July stated that, “With signs of patriotism abounding for the Fourth of July, a new survey indicates seven in 10 Americans think the Founding Fathers would be disappointed by the way the United States has turned out.”
While I am well aware that our nation has its own share of deficiencies, tensions, burdens and differences, I can’t get the image of the rice dance out of my mind. In an area of the world where many eat only once a day, I am reminded that the rice on the floor represented a meal and rather than consume it, a thankful soul shared it with us in a dance. Though I didn’t understand a word that the Liberian woman uttered, still, I wonder if it’s possible for her to teach us how and why we should be dancing.
Larry Douglas is a resident of Waynesburg.