Milton Bradley

"I'm sure you've seen her. She sucks at life," Brian once said about someone we knew. I think I laughed my ass off. I'd never thought of living as something you could be bad at. At 18, success seemed so easy -- I used to destroy people at Life™.

Later that year, masochism set in and I invented this need to impress societies that -- if I'm honest with myself -- make me ill.

Thankfully, my very secret, very epic laziness took the edge off.

But something about Liberia has inverted those two impulses. Suddenly I'm 18 again: excited about life and oblivious to strangers.

Maybe contentment isn't reserved for impossible Fridays in the future when I leave my loft for my country house or collect my kid from the school I name-drop.

Maybe, post-MBA, I set up shop on the Swahili Coast and raise kids who are more happy than impressive. Maybe contentment is a car that says, "Let's see your car make it through the jungle." Maybe it's opening your door to a fisherman holding live lobster and lime.

Yes, friends. You can be a winner at The Game of Life.

Meeting

Certain things really merit a heads-up.

For example: "Welcome to the team! Good to see you. Also -- staff meetings start with a blessing."

Nothing conjures confusion like unanticipated collective prayer.

The team prayed for a "good and productive meeting."

It was neither of those things.

Salem

I have a friend who lives in the forest.

When done with the chimps, she goes to the village.

And in the village, a woman is ill.

The woman is dying, but there's a cure.

All she needs is a ride to a city.

So a car is a called, but the village says, "No."

No? No?? Surely they mean Yes?

"No," say the villagers. "Leave her be."

It seems the woman's a witch, you see.

And so the witch dies at twenty-four.

And the car arrives an hour later.  

Dollar dollar bills, y'all.

This week I won a bet that Monrovia's classiest hotel would not accept local currency.

Let me repeat: there is a place twenty minutes from the airport that won't take a Liberian dollar (LD).

I kinda felt like a jerk setting the waiter up, slipping him 50 USD and 100 LD, forcing him to turn back to ask, "Madame, do you have a...different kind of dollar...instead?" He couldn't bring himself to say what I already knew.

A little background information:

1. There are no coins in Liberia.

2. Old LDs look like rice paper marinating in a jock strap. 

This is not the first time I've encountered bill snobbery. A woman was buying oranges from the backseat of her car (yeah...) and, upon receiving dirty "pieces" (small bills) in change, said: "I can hate to give clean money to the market women, oh!" The market woman just laughed. Crisp bills, I gather, only circulate among the well-heeled, with their wallets and ATM receipts. LDs get reserved for buying street produce, or tipping bartenders, or buying gum from the backseat of your car (yeah...), or paying off checkpoint cops, or thanking gardeners for jump-starting your car.

I thought I understood the system until the other day, when a street vendor tried to charge me a fee for buying pineapple with USD. My face somehow conveyed a "WTF, dude." Evidently, acquiring goods with USDs is kind of a pain in the ass where he lives.

Photo of the Day

'rovia Hills, 90210

The New Job

Nobody knows how to say my name. No one wants to talk to me. And I waved to my mother on the road but she'd already turned away.

I've just relived the first day of school.

Playing Wii alone at home is really starting to regain its luster...

Little Children

I'd hit 12 Liberian kids if I threw a stick in Monrovia. (No, I am not in the habit of launching sticks at children.)

As I've mentioned, there are many expats in Liberia (Westerners, Indians, Lebanese, Chinese) brought here by work. Where they send their children to school, I don't know: I never see non-Liberians in the 6 to 26 age group.

But today I saw an American preteen in a schoolyard and nearly pounced on her from the terrace. "What are you doing here?" I wanted to ask. "And where are the rest of you? Did you escape? Is there a fence?"

Yesterday I came across an old message board posting from a guy wondering whether he should move his wife (bursting at the seams with triplets, mind you) to Liberia. The response was a resounding, "No, dude. Keep your crazy ass wherever you are."

It's not that you can't raise children in Monrovia: you can. It's community-oriented and has plenty of  inexpensive labor. (The 300 USD you're about to spend on a smartphone gets you a nanny, a driver and a housekeeper. For a month.) But imagine New York City. Take away all the parks and libraries. Keep all the concrete and add long, unlit dirt roads and notoriously inept drivers. Add occasional sidewalks with open manholes. Subtract top-notch health care. Add malaria.

Nothing puts you off procreating like a Dutch boy riding his tricycle in circles in the parking lot of a treeless compound. 

Out

One of my favorite lines from Six Feet Under (and there are many) is this:

Nate: "Does this party seem a little weird to you?"
David: "On a scale of 1 to 10? 90."

I'd give San Francisco a 90 out of 10 for "cities in which you can be comfortably gay."

Manhattan gets an 8.

Monrovia is hovering around 2.5.

It is illegal to be gay in Liberia, yet I'm the only one dumbstruck and scratching her head when grown men on a walk hold hands, happy as clams.

I suspect this cultural peculiarity is a loophole to allow everyone a little undercover PDA without granting actual, you know, rights.

(My buddy Robbie nails it, here: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/03/the-obama-administrations-bold-but-risky-plan-to-make-africa-gay-friendly/254086/)

Dos Mil Doce

Being back in Monrovia after nine days in Morocco is a little disorienting.

For starters, my wool scarf went back into the closet. Immediately.

Today I saw a Liberian balancing hand-wrapped snacks on a platter on her head. I see fifty such woman a day but this woman dropped something and, without removing the platter, bent down, felt the sidewalk for the AWOL packet, found it and carried on. She did all of this without breaking eye contact with me.

I have never felt so uncoordinated.

Wait, that's a lie. I was falling all over Marrakech, with its uneven sidewalks and inexplicable stair separating living space from bathroom. (Who remembers a stair in the middle of the night??)

I decided to assess the Marrakech vs. Monrovia situation.

MARRAKECH	MONROVIA
Has winter.	Has no winter.
Has rich kids who look like Jersey Shore extras.	Has rich kids who look like Jersey Shore extras.
Culinary linchpin: tajine (for roasting).	Culinary linchpin: mortar & pestle (for smushing).
Has cinemas.	Has no cinemas.
Strangers demand money for things you didn’t want.	Strangers demand money for, like, no discernable reason.
Likelihood that you can communicate with a local in at least one language: 87%.	Likelihood that you can communicate with a local in plain English – 11%.
Medina kids misdirect you, hoping you’ll follow them in circles and pay them for their services.	City kids stare blankly at you, then remember they’ve been pulled out of school to earn money.
Girls and women giggle side-by-side on their own motorbikes.	I have never seen a non-male drive a motorbike. Ever.
Old men ride bicycles.	Old men don’t even cross the boulevard.
People stare until you notice, then shyly look away.	People continue to glare at you long after you’ve noticed.
You deprive a seller of fun if you don’t haggle.	You deprive a seller of funds if you haggle.
The muezzin reminds you it’s time to pray.	An empty wallet reminds you it’s time to pray.
If your hair is hidden, it’s tucked under a scarf.	If your hair is hidden, it’s tucked under a wig.
Customer service is an actual thing.	Customer service is a figment of my imagination.
Soccer is best in flip-flops, anywhere.	Soccer is best in flip-flops, anywhere.