Dr. Spock

Last week, I watched two people hail a cab in Monrovia.

Each was 7 -- maybe 8 -- years old. 

(And I thought I was pushing it on subways at 13.)

Despite VICE guides and World's Worst lists and Wikipedia articles, Liberians confidently send their little ones out into the world each day. 

There are no known kidnappings.

Parenting looks very different in Liberia: there are no school buses or foam-padded playgrounds. (There are, however, plenty of Crocs.) Every day I spot youths selling single sticks of Winterfresh between lanes of cars during rush hour. Babies tied to their mothers in cloth take six-person taxi rides and motorbikes. Almost any elder is "Pa" or "Auntie" and you can totally spank your niece or neighbor: the child belongs to the community. (DNA be damned! Apparently, it takes a village.)

Parenting took on a new form today on my way from work when I spotted a woman (a first!) selling newspapers between lanes of cars during rush hour.

She was 7 -- maybe 8 -- months pregnant. 

Invasion

This morning, I woke up covered in ants. That was new. It was also extremely annoying. On the plus side, the ants were of the non-biting variety but that's beside the point. I don't like the unknown creeping up on me.

Understandably, then, Liberians wouldn't come within 24 feet of me the week I had the flu. (These people will trek to work in the throes of typhoid but an American-style fever freaks them out.)

Alien things can be scary.

For example, a Swede brought this ridiculous thing into our home. It's fish in toothpaste form. It is now the first and only thing I see when I open the fridge.

It's scarier than the ants.

Gibi

One day, Will drags me to see Mount Gibi.

Why boys need to spend a Saturday driving to a sad, creepy mountain, I don't know. It isn't tall or even interesting apart from the fact that the mountain is haunted.

But that's another story.

We stop somewhere to ask for directions and villagers all but hide when they hear where we're going.

At last, we ask a rational-looking young man if we're on the right road. And he says, "Yes."

Will asks, "How far from here?" and the villager says, "Three hours."

It's hot and I'm miserable so I'm ready to strangle Will when I remember something clutch about him and about Liberians. So I ask the young man, "Three hours...on foot?"

"Of course."

"But we're not on foot," I say from the Jeep. And the villager nods and says, "Correct."

"My friend, how far is it by car?"

"Ten, maybe fifteen minutes."

Insight: I miss you, old pal. 

Protect and Serve

Today I got pulled over for, seriously, no reason. And the cops hovered outside my window, waiting for me to pay them off.

It was 9:14am.

I'm well aware of the way things work in Liberia: X earns Y dollars/month and expects Z to supplement it, which Z does in order to get to Q on time.

This happens over and over again in every aspect of daily life.

So now you've got a lot of undercompensated people throwing around what small power they have to get a few extra bucks or a free beer or whatever. Often, they don't even have to ask for a bribe -- people can smell it on them. So citizens roll their eyes and toss money out their car windows and speed off and the behavior is reinforced. Extortion is so easy, it's stupid. And one day, you find yourself doing it just for fun, because nobody stops you.

Personally, I wouldn't give five Liberian dollars ($0.07 USD) to a cop so I sat there for 45 minutes calmly playing Tetris until they got bored and let me go.

I'm probably going to get my ass kicked one day. The fight against corruption is a lonely one.

Makeshift

Gas station + chairs = bar

Fence + mirror + clippers = barber shop

Table + fruit + cookies = deli

Strapping young men + wheelbarrows + housewares = Walmart

One motorbike + three Liberians = taxi

One van + fifteen Liberians = bus

One pickup truck + fifteen well-dressed Liberians = wedding party

Underwear + ocean = swimsuit

Tree limb + hangers = thrift store

Teeth + beer = bottle opener

Intuition + ingredients = recipe

Seinfeld

On Wednesday, Will had the neighborhood rooster assassinated.

(Oh, uh, Will’s my steady. He’s alright.)

The whole thing cost $15 -- $5 to acquire the wrong bird the first time around and $10 correct this.

Not one Liberian involved seemed to find this strange. They don't really question what the pale, silly expats do. 

Neruda

There's a laugh that emanates from teenage girls when they want to be noticed by boys. It's a vile, unnatural shout echoing right now in an American mall.

I heard an old Liberian make the same sound as she left a hospital flanked by friends.

Only the woman wasn't laughing.

And nobody noticed but me.

I wonder who she lost. I've never seen a grown-up weep with such shameless, public agony.

If I ever have to feel that way, may I live somewhere I can scream it out freely.

I watched her from my hot, parked car and thought of a poem I used to read and read and read.

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.

To think I don't have her. To feel that I've lost her. 

To hear the immense night, more immense without her.

And the poem falls to the soul as dew to grass. 

As if to bring her near, my eyes search for her.

My heart searches for her and she is not with me. 

Although this may be the last pain she causes me,

and this may be the last poem I write for her.

Angst

I'm one of those people who kinda looked forward to turning thirty. It's a nice round number. Thirty is when all your twenty-something restlessness flies off somewhere, when you can tear it up downtown or stay home with wine and whatever your weird hobby is.

Yesterday, however, I had a real Benjamin Button moment, took stock and began to wonder if I was actually my age. I mean, who's broke, house-less and writing off society at twenty-nine? I was a tat, a piercing and a missed shower shy of gutter punk.

I hoped that, today, the world would be done mocking me.

It is not.

I am currently trapped on a casino terrace under a dirty sky watching a man pee.

It's 3pm on a Thursday. 

Modesty

Yesterday, I saw a stranger naked.

It happened the day before, too. And the day before that. And just about every day since I landed. 

There's a strange mix of overexposure and modesty when it comes to the nude form in Liberia.

Liberians believe the universe will curse you if you see your mother naked. (And here I thought it was just super uncomfortable.)

But when you take away plumbing, privacy and electricity, you get a lot of families scrubbing themselves in alleys and on stoops. At night, your trusty headlights illuminate the nude and the soapy.

(Note: the bather, who can see in the dark, is more annoyed that you've blinded her than by the fact that you've found her bathing alfresco.)

Then there's the club scene.

I haven't even made it to the larger, randier nightclubs but wherever you go, there is a parade of women in what can only be described as underpants. For this and other reasons, many places are off-limits to UN staff. (It doesn't matter, though. The ladies will find you.)

You can imagine the look on my face, then, when the passport office told me to cover my arms, that I was indecent.

It's my fault, though: I forget this is 1840 and men lose themselves at the sight of my stupid, pointy elbow.

A Primer for Real Life

Someone wonderful wrote:

Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. 

Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft. 

Having done all of this, I would like to add:

Live in Africa. It will make you gangster. And you will need this after leaving California. 

I went to San Francisco trusting no one ("Why is this person smiling at me?") and left three years later having faith in most. 

That ended on Friday.

I made it to 29 1/3 without ever having anything stolen from me. I felt pretty good about that. It's almost CV-worthy. Then a "maintenance man" snagged my sweet, sweet Android during the few seconds it took me to walk to the kitchen.

Honestly, screw the phone. That's not the issue. It took all of 11 minutes to replace it. I even kept my number.

And the fact of the matter is that that stupid phone would cost a housekeeper two-months' pay. 

So if my phone feeds a family of fifteen for a while, cool. I will write it off as a charitable contribution. 

What kills is that someone climbed five floors above the bloody Maltese embassy, identified that I was alone, surveyed the room, sent me on a wild goose chase, entered my personal space, took something from me and then looked me in the eye before vanishing like Keyser effing Söze.

Damn you, California! You had me thinking the world was all high-fives from strangers on Fillmore Street.  I am ruined. I revert now to my original meanness. Nobody puts Baby in a corner.  

Delicacies

On New Year's Eve, I ate my first rabbit. Having owned and loved a bunny (Scottie!), it just seemed wrong.

But at dinner in the mountains of Morocco that night, my options were rabbit or anaphylactic shock.

I think I chose well.

The thing is, though, that I still feel a little dirty about it. (Scottie!) But people eat rabbit on the regular. It's not even exotic. I don't hesitate to order duck or quail or lamb. Yet memories of snuggling caramel fluff back when boys wouldn't kiss me in spin-the-bottle cloud my better judgment.

You will not get me to eat snail or frog; only last year did I accept oysters as an actual food. Clearly, my feelings towards what's edible aren't to be trusted. But other people, grown-up people, people with duller gag reflexes eat just about anything on a menu.

And so we enter the bushmeat arena. (My good friend Wikipedia will fill you in:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushmeat#Hunting).

I'm not going to go into the ethical particulars of bushmeat but conservationists want the hunted species to, um, live, while the hunters and sellers want to, um, make a living.

Personally, I can't make a meal of smoked primate arm but I invite those of you with more sophisticated palates to school me.