Etiquette

A guy came into my office to have a chat. But the chat wasn’t with me: he was already on the phone. And he stayed on the phone. For thirty minutes.

I didn’t have the energy to explain how strange this was so I put my iPod on and kept working.

Then he pulled my headphones off, which crossed the damn line. “You need an audience for your phone call?”

“No,” he said. “I have a question.”

“You can ask me when you're done.”

I went to the kitchen to retrieve my lunch and returned, headphones in place. And after I’d eaten, he hung up and asked why I hadn’t shared my lunch with him.

“You don’t even eat lunch.” (Note: this is true of many Liberians.)

“That’s not the point. You sat here in front of me and you ate all of your food.”

“This is my office.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

So now, somehow, I’m the ass in this story.

Not five minutes later, I walked into another trap.

“When are you going back home?” he asked.

“Home to the States?”

“Is the States ‘home’?”

“Well, yeah.”

“And when does Liberia become ‘home’?”

“When I feel at home here.”

“Will you stay long enough for that to happen?”

“I may check out East Africa.”

“Alone?”

“No.”

“With your boyfriend?”

“Yes.”

{Long silence}

“What now?” I asked.

“You need to soften your Western values with African ones.”

“What?”

“You can’t just move around the continent with a man you’re not married to.”

“Oh?”

“It’s not correct.”

“I’m not racing to get married so that Africans can sleep soundly.”

“Nor would I.”

“What if I got engaged? Would everyone be satisfied?”

“That would be fine.”

“What if I pretend to be engaged? How authentic does this need to be?”

“That’s between you and God.”

I feared I was about to blow his mind and ended the conversation.