Photo of the Day

Chewing straw in Buchanan

Color Commentary

I think the U.N. chose powder blue helmets and rifles so as not to alarm anyone.

And I appreciate that because seeing Timberland-clad twenty-somethings with AKs yesterday made me choke on my heart a little. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Liberian_Civil_War#Impact)

"We've Got a Great Big Convoy..." Part II

I spent two days pondering how best to describe my 18 hours on the president's trail. I settled on stream-of-consciousness.

Why is my mother my alarm clock.

Why is my mother wearing the same outfit as me.
What do you mean we're not leaving for two hours.
The president is very small.
Where do I get a velvet staircase to descend from Jeeps?
Why is the camera crew in our trunk.
Why would you autotune a campaign song.
My country is so clean!
...and there goes a Coke can out a car window.
Look at all the trees! My people are so eco.
Sign: "Welcome to Firestone." Oh, wait, no. It's a rubber farm.
Brick houses.
Thatch houses.

Clay houses.

Are those people lining the roads?
(Two hours later)
Those are still people lining the roads.
That's, like, the eighth pant-less kid today.
Chickens!
There's a man getting dressed in the street.
I'd dress in the street, too, if the President rolled up on me.
Why are we stopping on a half-built bridge.
Who is singing?
Oh, it's a sea of neatly-pressed children.
Holy frenzy over free t-shirts.
There's someone's grandmother (minus a blouse, plus a mud mask).
Goats!
That is the tallest blonde anyone has ever seen anywhere at any point in time.
How do I drop "soccer" from my vocabulary.
Now we're ordering flags for the townspeople (which, to me, sounds like, "More cowbell.")
Now we're cutting ribbon at a clinic.
Now we're ambushed in a church.
Now we're dedicating a market.
Now the president's blowing up spots.
Now the villagers are abducting their delegate.
Who tells the president no one's peed in five hours?
Now we're distributing rice...
Now I dodge a black eye. (Note: do not distribute rice anywhere in Liberia.)

Why is the mayor frowning at me.

Why is the president frowning at me.

Maybe I'm frowning? Better not frown.

Election fever is... fine...but it's been three bloody hours of one song so I'm just start gonna kicking wildly. Observe: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_H5KmOD-EQ&t=0m19s

The urge to kick subsided sometime after midnight. In bed. Which I did not leave for 15 hours. Let it be known that a 72-year old politician on no sleep ran laps around me. I don't even know what to say about that. The girl is fierce.

"We've Got a Great Big Convoy..." - Part I

My mother is a bit Captain Obvious about...everything...so when she shoved me awake yesterday and pointed outside the Jeep window, I assumed I was looking for a tree.

No tree: there were four piglets sprinting alongside us.

Mom gets yesterday's gold star.

Ours was one of 15 trucks in President Sirleaf's convoy to Grand Bassa county. When I agreed to be awoken before 6am, I imagined a leisurely road trip to the countryside. No one mentioned the 84 mile drive includes two epic, pot-holed hours on dirt (nay: mud) roads.

But I digress.

We arrived in one piece to celebrate steel behemoth ArcelorMittal's mining in Liberia -- a major coup given Lakshmi Mittal is the 4th richest person in the world and Liberia is ranked 224th by GDP.

I don't know what I was expecting of an iron ore mine but it's exactly as unsexy as it sounds. Nevertheless, it was my first glimpse of Madame President -- a super-chill, brilliant smart-mouth.

I loved her immediately.

President Sirleaf: Mr. Mittal, I'm holding you to your promise to pave the roads out there.
{Audience cheers. Mittal feigns annoyance}
Mr. Mittal: I'm not clapping.
President Sirleaf: I don't need claps. I need cash.

I was deep in a Liberian-Indian feast when the president entered the canteen. There's nothing like needing to stand at attention to snap you out of a food coma. Briefly.

Which brings us back to the nap cut short by Mom and her piglets.

Photo of the Day

The president steps out of a church in Grand Bassa

Stickiness

In my old life, "stickiness" referred to efforts to retain customers.

Since moving to Liberia, though, there has been one thing every day that leaves its prints on me. I'd like to call that "stickiness."

8 out of every 9 Liberian dishes are cooked in a gallon of glorious, heart-stopping palm oil. Lettuce is basically sold on the black market so yesterday I begged my mother to go walking with me. There is no sidewalk and, more importantly, no ritual of "exercise" here so the two of us hoofing it down a dirt road in stretch pants and blinding sneakers furrowed more than a few brows. An hour and a half later, a tiny voice from a porch calls, "Fine girl, you fine-oh!"

This is me getting picked up by a six-year old girl who probably hasn't eaten all day.

Today, I see a teenager doing choreography in her third-floor apartment. The girl is laughing, she's barefoot, and I'm in a car on Broad Street. How do I know she's barefoot and laughing? Because her apartment has no walls. I scan the building and, lo and behold, there are 10 families living in a concrete skeleton. They're peeling vegetables and raising children and dancing without walls.

The pride and guilt are heavy in me in this week.

Scream

Tonight found me in Scene One of a slasher film I don't remember signing up for. I'm home alone with my mother and the power goes out. Everywhere. We venture into the night with flashlights and hear rustling.

"Hello?"

No response.

"Hello?"

Then someone turns off all the frogs and crickets.

We bolt back into the house, lock ourselves in our respective rooms and hope that this isn't the last thing we ever see (though, really, I could do worse):

Terrace by night

Photo of the Day

Sunday in Congo Town

Lictionary I

Pawpaw (n):
Papaya

Butter Pear (n):
Avocado

Pehn-Pehn (n):
Any motorcycle

Kwee (adj):
Posh; also, a Liberian educated in the States who returns with an American accent

Pohk-Pohk (n):
The sound you make at a gate or window to announce you've arrived at someone's house

Customs

I might be, hands down, the worst Liberian anywhere. "Flummoxed" is my default setting when interacting with people.

This, for example, plays out 2-5 times a day:

{I walk towards a person. Person scowls.}
Me: Hello!
{Person stops scowling}
Person: Hello.
Me: How are you doing?
Person: Thank you.
{I leave abruptly}
                                               
Occasionally the person will reply "Thank God!" which is slightly less confusing but still puts an end to the conversation as far as I'm concerned.
                                                   
                                           * * *

The roads here are flanked with people throwing up gang signs at packed yellow cars. Eventually, I realized they were all just hailing cabs.

Now I've hailed about eleven hundred cabs in my day and it's always the same. But in Monrovia, your signal tells the driver what neighborhood you're going to (which is genius given there are inevitably already four sticky strangers in the car).

Exhibit A: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FljFbRQJrfg

Please pray I never have to do this. You know I'll end up in a rice field in Mali.

Kendeja

Bob Johnson, the founder of BET, built a luxury resort in Liberia. I don't know what possessed him to do this but I thank him because the place is clutch.

Apart from the fact that the concierge tried to charge me $5 for the WiFi password (come ON, bro) and the waffle toppings were jam, jam or jam, the place gets today's gold star. There are these transparent crabs that you aren't even sure are there until you see one run like the wind (which explains the flocks of  bluebirds that gang up on them). The water is warmer than the Pacific will ever be; the surfers have visible limbs, as they should.

Basically, I'm going to live in one of these chairs. See you all next year. 

Music

7pm to 7am is melodious by the shore in Monrovia. Yesterday I left a pitch black patio for a pitch black house: imagine your eyes are useless and you hear nothing but crickets shrieking in the tall grass, louder than the loudest song on your Nano. Later, the crickets chill out and produce a soft rattle like faraway maracas. There are the frogs that sound like baby pigs fighting over who gets to sit in the front seat. There is the bird that sounds like the teacher in Charlie Brown. There is the hum of a generator in a field somewhere and the echo of water hitting sand. And finally there's you, clicking through your Kindle beneath a tipsy ceiling fan at 3am.

Delayed Realizations

It took me three days to notice that there are no traffic lights in this country.

Additionally, no one goes to the beach.

(Probably because they're stuck in traffic.)

                                                ****

My mother keeps the heavy curtains drawn in her office, which would be only vaguely quirky if her windows didn't look out onto miles and miles of ocean. It's strange to be 28 before you start to seriously suspect you were adopted.

Overview

Official Name: Republic of Liberia
Capitol: Monrovia
Neighbors: Sierra Leone, Guinea and Cote d'Ivoire
Language: English and about 20 Tribal Dialects
Government: Democracy
President: Mme. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (catch her on The Daily Show?)
Population: 3.9 million
Currency: $1 US =  71 Liberian Dollars
Investors: Chevron, Firestone, ArcelorMittal

Terrace by day

In retrospect...

I probably should have considered the following:

1. Liberians put fish in every damn thing which would be cool if I weren't deathly allergic. Classic.

2. Liberians do not drink coffee. I spent all morning looking for one human who had both Folgers and milk and would sell me this combination of things.

3. Showers are a magical thing. When you live in a gated compound abandoned by the seminary (which refused to pay its water bill), "showering" entails getting into the shower, remembering where you are, then immediately getting out and beginning the chore of boiling water, combining it with well water and attempting to recreate your American life.

Still the best decision I've made in years.

A Guide to Your Twenties

1. Spend 25 years in NYC.
2. Fall in love.
3. Spend 3 years in San Francisco.
4. Fall out of love.
5. Get waitlisted and turned down by Wharton and LBS.
6. Actually meet someone you like.
7. Leave San Francisco anyway. (See #2 and #4).
8. See everyone you ever loved in NYC. Stay up until 8am. Go to MoMA. Get a waffle in Central Park on a Wednesday in September.
9. Go to Georgia. Drop $1,300 at Walmart. Admit you've never been to Walmart.
10. Cut your hair to mid-ear.
11. Pack the next year of your life into two suitcases and two barrels.
12. Somehow wind up at Delta check-in with 14 pieces of luggage.
13. Land in Monrovia 15 hours later to English that isn't English and rain that lasts two days.
14. Realize your mom is a local celebrity. Immediately get weirded out.
15. Interview. Grin through jetlag.
16. Live the dream (or your version thereof) from age 29 to 30.

Prologue

Those who know me know I'm the least likely blogger -- the desire to maintain a life that's just mine outweighs everything else.

Or it did.

Then a new desire won out, one that compelled me to leave lives in California and New York to spend a year in my parents' land.

This year deserves a public life. So here we are.