Last Wednesday. I leap out of bed at 5:32am to wait 7 hours (what!?) for an 80-minute flight. Now I'm sitting in the departures lounge of Spriggs and all the posters are telling me I'm probably going to die today. Nice. I'm boarding the UN plane to Harper, Maryland County, the southernmost point in Liberia, a place I've never been to but that's in my mom's blood.
This place is half the reason I'm on Earth and I felt it all over me about five minutes after landing.
But back to the airport. We leave a freezing lounge and walk single-file like baby chicks across the hot tarmac. I am the only non-military girl in the group and all the Pakistani and Indian soldiers eye me strangely like the ugly duckling in an American Apparel hoodie. I know I don't belong and worry they'll boot me off the flight but then the doors close and the engines start. I'm flying south from Monrovia for once, over all the little shacks sitting in Matadi mangroves against all logic and reason. I find myself seated directly under a propeller. It looks like a deadly pinwheel. I plan what I'll do if it detaches from the plane and bursts through my wall. Three minutes in, we disappear into cloud cover and I think, "Well, there are worse ways to go." Then the sea opens up below and there is just so much freaking water.
We're still ascending; the thick yellow coastline gets thinner until it's just a child's sketch in white chalk dots.The river goes on and on like the long, mean slide in Chutes & Ladders. Everything else is green and there are no towns. The land disappears and suddenly there's only my pinwheel propeller and the ocean and sad, cigar bar smokiness; Gangstarr plays in my head. The sand and the river are snakes racing past trees that are dense and awesome like all the hair you never see sported in Monrovia.
21 people sit aboard looking bored, but me? I’m filling pages writing this.
There are weird splashes and stripes in the ocean but I've got no one to ask what's up so I tell myself it's a train of dolphins. (It's not.) From above, the waves are still sheets of salt lying just offshore. Suddenly, the forest turns into hilly plains and I'm bouncing involuntarily in my seat. I see a fat, red road that looks like an artery. People below wave up at the plane.
When we land, it sounds like a contract tearing in half and I think, "Seriously? I'm going to do this again in two days?" (I'm not, but I don't know that yet.) I uncharacteristically ask total strangers for a lift to town and get deposited at my buddy's place at the top of the hill, Up Cape. We go for a walk and I fall in love over and over again because there is nothing cooler than shipwrecks and trees growing inside abandoned mansions, here at the edge of the world.
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I have a swell two days roaming my ancestral ghost town and pack my bag to head back to Monrovia but of course, because I'm me, the flight is canceled. Rain. Everywhere. Stubborn pools collect triumphantly in every room in the house and the roof cries quietly onto my nose over breakfast. The whole community is submerged in water. This somehow works out for me, though, because now I've got the whole weekend to get into trouble in Harper. I eat spaghetti and pseudo-Spam in a roadside tea shop and sip condensed milk and coffee as a funeral procession goes by. I watch my first (ever?) soccer match on a swampy field in the rain. I walk into a club and realize my shirt is inside out. I befriend dogs and children. I meet my doppelganger: she's got grandchildren and I want to be one of them.
Everyone visits Cape Mount, where my dad's family is from (left) but Maryland is a little less...obvious (right).
This place is half the reason I'm on Earth and I felt it all over me about five minutes after landing.
But back to the airport. We leave a freezing lounge and walk single-file like baby chicks across the hot tarmac. I am the only non-military girl in the group and all the Pakistani and Indian soldiers eye me strangely like the ugly duckling in an American Apparel hoodie. I know I don't belong and worry they'll boot me off the flight but then the doors close and the engines start. I'm flying south from Monrovia for once, over all the little shacks sitting in Matadi mangroves against all logic and reason. I find myself seated directly under a propeller. It looks like a deadly pinwheel. I plan what I'll do if it detaches from the plane and bursts through my wall. Three minutes in, we disappear into cloud cover and I think, "Well, there are worse ways to go." Then the sea opens up below and there is just so much freaking water.
We're still ascending; the thick yellow coastline gets thinner until it's just a child's sketch in white chalk dots.The river goes on and on like the long, mean slide in Chutes & Ladders. Everything else is green and there are no towns. The land disappears and suddenly there's only my pinwheel propeller and the ocean and sad, cigar bar smokiness; Gangstarr plays in my head. The sand and the river are snakes racing past trees that are dense and awesome like all the hair you never see sported in Monrovia.
21 people sit aboard looking bored, but me? I’m filling pages writing this.
There are weird splashes and stripes in the ocean but I've got no one to ask what's up so I tell myself it's a train of dolphins. (It's not.) From above, the waves are still sheets of salt lying just offshore. Suddenly, the forest turns into hilly plains and I'm bouncing involuntarily in my seat. I see a fat, red road that looks like an artery. People below wave up at the plane.
When we land, it sounds like a contract tearing in half and I think, "Seriously? I'm going to do this again in two days?" (I'm not, but I don't know that yet.) I uncharacteristically ask total strangers for a lift to town and get deposited at my buddy's place at the top of the hill, Up Cape. We go for a walk and I fall in love over and over again because there is nothing cooler than shipwrecks and trees growing inside abandoned mansions, here at the edge of the world.
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Monday comes too soon. I'm on the back of a motorbike and am so grateful for the sand in my eyes 'cause now I've got an excuse to wipe them. I drag my feet through the airport gate. No one tells me I'm taking a helicopter home, though, so I'm all kinds of confused for a while. I've got on those ridiculous headphones and am facing ten other people. All the signs are in Russian and men's thighs are pressed up against mine. Great. I strap myself in. The windows are open. I fall asleep for the first hour. (What. It's like a loud rocking chair. Leave me alone...) When I wake up, everything below is soggy and Wednesday's flight plays out in reverse. I'm starving and being chatted up by two completely inappropriate people. No one has boundaries anymore.
The helicopter touches down like a sparrow landing on a twig. It's soundless. I grab my bag and hightail it out of there, only slightly deaf. I hop on the back of a Malian's motorbike and am overwhelmed by how much is going on in Monrovia. It's the anti-Harper. I don't know how I feel about anything anymore.
I leave Liberia in nine days.
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