Miss America

Eight months in, I cave: I miss America. Or, more accurately, I miss my version of America.

I want to button up a hooded coat.

I want to ride a bicycle.

I want to fly somewhere without a passport.

I want to find waffles at 2pm.

I want to choose seats in a whisper in a movie theater.

I want to lay in a park.

I want to drink tap water in the middle of the night.

I want a can opener that opens cans.

I want to shower between 8am and 7pm.

I want to pillage a bakery.

I want to go to a concert.

I want someone to un-break my Oliver Peoples.

I want to eat pad see ew.

I want dry laundry that doesn’t smell like wet dog.

I want to have a beer on a rooftop.

I want a steady supply of dark blue denim.

I want to load a YouTube video.

I want to hear the words “Cash or credit?”

I want to talk to the locals and maybe, under my breath, say something they find funny.

I want every series season since September.

I want postcards reminding me it’s time for a check-up.

I want to cling for dear life to a subway pole.

I want an oven with numbers on the dial (Chinese, Arabic, any numbers, guys).

True Blood

This week, a man ate another man's face in Florida; he was shot on the spot. Years ago, a different man got rich helping his neighbors kill each other; he was finally sentenced today.

It seems all the bloodsuckers got what they had coming this week.

Charles Taylor sentenced to 50 years in prison for war crimes

Taylor was found guilty last month of 11 counts of aiding and abetting war crimes and crimes against humanity by supporting rebels between 1996 and 2002 in return for conflict diamonds. He was convicted of offenses including murder, rape, sexual slavery, recruiting child soldiers, enforced amputations and pillage.

Delivering the sentence on Wednesday, Judge Richard Lussick said Taylor's crimes were of the "utmost gravity in terms of scale and brutality".

But the judge added that Taylor was "in a class of his own" compared to others convicted by the United Nations-backed court. The 64-year-old warlord-turned-president is the first former head of state convicted by an international war crimes court since the second world war.

In his final address to the UN-backed tribunal the 64-year-old denied encouraging human rights abuses during the prolonged civil war in neighboring Sierra Leone, insisting he had in fact been trying to stabilize the region. (www.guardian.co.uk)

Rear Window

Liberian pedestrians over the age of 12 have a way of crossing in front of oncoming traffic that gives the appearance of running without actually moving any faster than their original walk.

It's the run of people who don't expect to (or worry they'll) get hit.

People wait...wait...wait until you're a meter away before strolling across your windshield like nonchalant deer in the night.  

This confuses me, given the number of collisions in Monrovia each week. Proof of our mortality is sitting, charred, on the front lawn of the police station.The incinerated lump was once a BMW carrying three twenty-somethings who crashed and caught fire and never made it out of the car.

Anyone who knows me knows I am not a driver by any stretch of the imagination. I got my license at 25 and let it collect dust until two weeks ago. I asked someone how to prepare for driving in Monrovia and he said, "Expect that the motorbike cabbie in front of you will lose his flip-flop; as you swerve to avoid him, the parked car in your path opens all four doors at once and a goat runs into the road."

Best advice I've ever gotten.

I wonder what it is that makes people reckless -- even the chickens seems to have a death-wish.

Then I remember the fourth time I met my half-sister. I was 26 and learned I had heaps of photo albums while she had no pictures of her youth: everything had been abandoned and lost during the war. Or I think of the ferocity of Liberian fury that, once aired, disappears as though it never was.

There is a powerful defense mechanism in having a short memory and in not looking too far ahead. I, on the other hand, have been fretting about how to send my kids to college since before I went to college; I recall every mortifying moment of my life and still cringe. All I do is look forward and backward, forward and backward...

...which is helpful when you're reversing your car and a goat runs into the road.

A Carol for Bianca (and Sierra Leone)

In my ten days in Freetown, the city gave to me:

   Goats-only parking

   Shady-sounding beachtowns 

   Beds made of concrete

   Streams outside windows

   Eight hours of this shit

   Hurling by the roadside

   in Gola Forest

   No gasoline!

   Hunting for clams

   Hills, fog, rain

   Incognito bugs

   And a reason to do it again

Mr. Pink

Consulting is rad because when you're in between projects it's perfectly acceptable to watch Reservoir Dogs at 9am on a Wednesday.

Nice Guy Eddie: C'mon, throw in a buck!

Mr. Pink : Uh-uh, I don't tip.

Nice Guy Eddie : You don't tip?

Mr. Pink : Nah, I don't believe in it.

Nice Guy Eddie : You don't believe in tipping?

Mr. Blue : You know what these chicks make? 

Mr. Pink : I don't tip because society says I have to. All right, if someone deserves a tip, if they really put forth an effort, I'll give them something a little something extra. But this tipping automatically, it's for the birds. As far as I'm concerned, they're just doing their job.

Mr. Blue : Hey, our girl was nice.

Mr. Pink : She was okay. She wasn't anything special.

I don't usually identify with Tarantino characters (apart from Beatrix Kiddo) but Mr. Pink is spot on. I tip. I tip all of the time. Yet in Liberia, I wonder why. Yesterday I read this, though, and reconsidered my alliance with Mr. Pink:

"Let's get down to basics. The official, lawful and totally outdated, statutory minimum wage is US 25 cents per hour for a 48 hour week - or US $2.00 per day. Most of the hotels, restaurants and bars who focus on young expatriate customers invariably do pay 25 cents per hour. There is no sick pay. No holiday entitlement. No job security. And no union. Think about that - 25 cents per hour for the waiter who serves you while you are paying US $18 for the meal and drinks."

Damn. I'd be surly as hell, too. Spitefully withholding my dollar doesn't seem so clever anymore.

Irie

Friday: beer, rainstorm.

Bare feet pounding sand in hut.

Technotronic! 'Sup.

Be Prepared

On the radio on Tuesday, a Liberian trying extra hard to sound like the BBC made a remark about the Boy Scouts of Liberia.

Me: Wait. What!?

T: What.

Me: There are boy scouts in Liberia?

T: Yes.

Me: What do they DO here?

T: Go to events.

Me: I can't believe this.

T: We call them chicken rogue. It make them mad but we laugh.

A rogue is a thief in Liberian English. Why would you call someone a chicken thief? Because small, nimble people thieve chickens.

Among other things.

Later that day, my colleague came in looking confused.

Me: What's up?

D: My little sister's sick.

Me: Is she OK?

D: Yes. She's my baby.

Me: You have many babies. How's your chimpanzee?

D: They took him.

Me: Who?

D: Thieves.

Me: To do what?

D: To eat him.

Me: How do you know??

D: They came over the fence at night. 

Me: Maybe they stole him to resell as a pet.

D: They left a blood trail. They took my dog, too. 

Me: Your...dog?

D: People eat dog here. They call it issue.

Me: They cooked your pets?

D: They cooked my pets. Meat is meat.

In the States, this would require family therapy and an immediate assembly of the neighborhood watch. 

Here, it's just Monday.

Berlitz

Someone I know lost his phone, so we made a deal: I'd replace it if he taught me something in Liberian English each day.

One morning:

Me: How are you?

T: You fail already.

Me: Fail how?

T: Start with Good Morning.

Me: It sounds too formal.

T: You can't skip it.

Me: Good morning. How are you?

T: Fine. What you want to know today?

Me: How do you compliment someone's clothing?

T: You say, "Where you sew you shirt from?"

I'm nice with languages but this one...this one is testing me. Observe: http://tinyurl.com/A-to-Z-Liberia. I think it's because I can't think of it as its own language and not, you know, English. Because why would I call a cartoon a muppet show? That is never going to happen. I'm on the verge of giving up speech entirely.

Extra! Extra!

The Daily Talk looks like a cupboard on the side of the boulevard, strategically angled to catch rush-hour commuters. It bursts open in the morning and shuts at night like a flower. Inside is a chalkboard broadcasting the biggest stories of the day.

It's a newspaper.

Photo credit: Rosebell Kagumire

It's as though "novel" and "retro" had a big wooden baby.  (And while we're on the subject of retro novelties: Rollerblades. Are. Everywhere. In. Monrovia.)

For a while now, I've wanted to write about this thing around which car and pedestrian traffic slows. But I am lazy. And Al Jazeera beat me to it:

In Liberia, a country where radios and televisions are luxuries most people cannot afford, one enterprising journalist has found a way to get daily news and information to Liberians. 

The Daily Talk [is] a chalkboard 'newspaper' displayed on the side of a decrepit wooden shack.

I met some of the passers-by that depend on him for their news: Michael, a former child soldier who makes a living selling souvenirs to international aid workers; Larry, who teaches the pupils at Hope School for the Deaf how to fend for themselves.

While the global media too often define Liberia in terms of the tragedy of the recent civil war, from its street-level perspective The Daily Talk describes a busy, hopeful nation in the process of renewal.