Capote

Today, I finished a book I'd always wanted to read but never did. (A murder in wheat country? Yawn, man.) But I got my hands on it here and couldn't not read it because it's fantastic. The author turned a two-paragraph news story into a 300-page masterpiece about a wealthy Kansas family killed on their farm by strangers; the town is beside itself. This is a true story.

I thought abut this story two weeks ago when the following happened.

There are too many children in the Monrovia school system so morning sessions end at noon and a different mass of children goes to school in the afternoon. I was sitting in my lifeless car at a gas station midday when a homeward-bound Liberian girl paused near the pumps and took out a notebook; I put my head on the steering wheel and waited for a mechanic to come. Then the girl knocked on my half-open window and threw a crumpled strip of paper at me. "I don't want this," I told her but she ignored me and continued down the road.

The note said, "I like you. Please call me. [Telephone number]."

What?!

I have been trying ever since to figure out what made her think I was a safe bet. I'm not the beefiest girl in the world but I could probably still kidnap a lanky school girl, right? I play squash now; I have tricks. But the girl saw me through my dirty windshield and decided that that was enough information. Maybe she'd seen me before or knew she'd see me again -- Monrovia, for all its one million people, is very, very small. It's that  big-town vibe that makes people, once acquainted with things, let down their guard, sink into the dulling tropical heat, trust in the people they share these familiar corners with, and let their bags get stolen on a beach. I watched this happen to someone I know.

Growing up in New York can put you permanently on edge. It made me the kid who'd rather carry her parka around an Amherst party than leave it, undefended, behind a sofa with everyone else's. And Liberians have lived through many things, things you'd think would make a person extra cautious. But there I was, weighing a teenager's phone number in my hand; I eventually let the wind carry it away. (Have you seen To Catch a Predator? No thank you.)

A week later, I was in my parked car again, waiting for a friend. The excited attendees of a sunset church service were streaming out of the Christian Fellowship and someone knocked on my window.

"You remember me?"
"No."
"I gave you my number."
"For cryin' out loud..."
"Why you did not call me?"
"I don't call strangers."

She started saying something but I'd stopped listening and wished her a goodnight when I heard her pause. She walked away dejectedly.

Chick doesn't know this yet but the world is bigger than her well-tread grid from 12th Street to 9th. Villains find even isolated farmhouses in the middle of the night. 

Money for Nothing

Last week, short on cash and going more than a little mad, I allowed myself to be roped into event coordination for the UN's Post-2015 High Level Panel Development Agenda Monrovia meetings.

A mouthful, right?

All you need to know is that England, Liberia, and Indonesia decided to lead big talks on how to make the poor less poor. Each co-chair hosts an international conference in his or her respective country. Last week was Liberia's moment in the sun.

And oh the frenzy, my people.

Roadblocks. Gaping holes in roads and sidewalks magically patched up. This thing going up almost overnight. Communities of zinc-roofed shacks bulldozed on the boulevard. Thriving street markets shoved into corners. Road lanes suddenly lined with cat's eyes. Placards (still drying) crowding intersections. Soldiers, guns, journalists.

And a dozen solar traffic lights.

WHY. There is now traffic where there never was.

I will refrain from describing the indoor chaos of the conference itself. Suffice it to say that the next time the  "Special Assistant" to a dignitary or his wife barks at me because she wants fifty color copies of a twenty-page document in five minutes (in Liberia), I will cut her.

The whole production got me thinking, though. Why wait until the foreigners flood the city to make the town shine? And why tuck away all the things that make post-conflict Monrovia what it is? The city seems to say, "Dear world, thanks for all of that free money. Just look at how much we've done with it. But...umm...please don't cut us off -- the rest of the country is totally falling apart."

A certain delegation did not get the memo that things in Monrovia are really looking up: they brought their own mattresses to lay on top of the mattresses in the hundreds-of-dollars-a-night hotel.

Slow Down Your Neighbors

I don't know if you've ever seen Modern Family but there's an episode in which a woman loses her mind trying to get a neighborhood speeder to drive more sensibly. She plasters the area in signs that no one understands:

Last night, I watched from my balcony as a beast of a drunk American let lose, encircled by horrified tenants and security guards.

In Liberia, you don't really expect your Friday night cartoon indulgence to be interrupted by a man screaming, "Don't you ever honk at me. Don't you ever disrespect the white man." And that was just the beginning. There were references to blackness and simians and violence. It was vile.

This is 2013.Why do people move to Africa when they clearly, clearly hate Africans? Is there nowhere else in the world to do business? Oh, to have been a sniper last night. I'd have slept like a baby afterwards; I am not a turn-the-other-cheek kind of girl.

You're a Monster

Liberia

ICE 2

Your Neighbors!