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!

Henry III

This week, my brother Emailed me to say he was coming to Liberia.

Let me unpack that sentence for you.

1. I have a brother. We have the same mom. (Allegedly.) He's 38. He's a loner. He teaches himself to play instruments.

2. My brother and I have no idea what to say to each other in person so his recent acquisition of Email and FaceBook accounts has changed my life.

3. My brother hasn't been to Liberia since 1988. I was beside him on that flight: I puked all over my denim jacket. When he finally stopped laughing, he woke up Mom. (The snitch...)

4. My brother hasn't been on a plane since 1994. In the beginning, this was due to the usual early-twenties lack of funding. But then he was a cabbie in New York in September 2001 and that was the end of that. (Some time later, he got a tattoo on his neck of a Boeing. He won't tell anyone what that's about, either.)

So while my mother's not holding her breath that he'll come, I'm already thinking up things to show him. At the top of my list is Rita.

Rita is the coolest girl in Liberia. I could drop her into a party in the States in her mauve skinny jeans and no one would notice. She is 32, gorgeous, and single with no children; she lives alone. (Sometimes, I wonder if she's actually Liberian.) She bought property outside of town and carries her deed and bank book everywhere. During the war, she fled to Lebanon with the family she'd been working for; she lived there for ten years and learned to speak Arabic. She's sharp and funny and warm and doesn't take any shit from anyone. She's fantastic.

And Rita can't read.

This is one of those things about Liberia that is both beautiful and sad: you've got communities set up to help people get through life without ever becoming literate.

The most endearing thing about Rita is that she's not even secretive about the fact that she can't read. She says it confidently and casually, the way other people say things that just are.

I forgot that people fall through the cracks elsewhere, too, until I was squatting in arrivals a week ago, filling out  immigration information for this traffic-stopping Gambian and her kid. "I don't write," she said, vaguely regal and annoyed, to the customs agent distributing the forms. The way she phrased it -- not "I can't write" but "I don't write" -- made it seem like a choice rather than an unlucky draw. But I looked into her passport -- born 1983 -- and I thought about her and the rest of her life.

I decided I'll ask Rita to let me teach her to read.

Then I'll ask her to let my brother take her out.

Then I'll tell my brother to suit up for his first date in a decade.

Then he'll give my mom some grandchildren and take the pressure off me.

(What, you thought this was philanthropic? Please.)

North by Southwest (or, Three Weeks in Senegal)

This year, like last year, I spent Christmas in a Muslim country. I’ve never been big on holidays to begin with so there’s something oddly satisfying about being somewhere strange, surrounded by strangers who also have no idea what day it is.

It is December 20th. I get off the plane in Banjul, the Gambia. (I don’t know why the country insists on being called the Gambia. No one else gets away with that. But I digress.) The Gambia is a sliver of a country that cuts Senegal in two:

There are 1.5 million people there. They speak English. All of the tourists are English and everyone thinks I'm English. The airport is shaped like the bat signal. The Gambia dubs itself The Smiling Coast. It feels safe but everyone is entirely too friendly. Our guesthouse is owned by a Swede with dreadlocks that graze her heels. The room has no hot water; the windows don’t lock; the curtains (where there are curtains) are made of white lace so all activities take place in the darkened hallway. Lunch overlooks a crocodile swamp. Crickets fly over the dinner table. (Crickets fly.) The next day, on a green lawn, a four-foot lizard strolls across my path – I skid to a stop and book it in the opposite direction. One of a thousand self-appointed tour guides strolls two blocks with us as we walk to dinner. He has a business called {Something} and Skippy. He's Skippy. The lasagna at dinner is very good; the owner is Italian and he has coffee with us. He, like the taxi drivers and the rest of the country, will not so much as whisper a criticism of the government. There is a checkpoint every twelve kilometers and a photo of the president every six. (Beyond that, I, too, will hold my tongue for fear of disappearing in the night.) I watch Easy Rider for the first time.

We rent a Daihatsu 4x4 that rattles like tin cans strung together and pulled down a road. It’s perfect.

We head south with a weathered map and cross the border into southern Senegal. There are 12.5 million people there. They speak French. Most of the tourists are French or Belgian and everyone thinks I'm Dutch. I can no longer speak English to anyone but Will. Somewhere along the way, the tar turns to red dust. There is no A/C and no radio so every window is open and the iPod dock is running on AAA batteries. We are coated in dust when we get to Kafountine. All of the men are rastas or Muslims. (Or both? Can you be both?) We are lost in a maze of roads, looking for a guesthouse that may or may not exist; we’re scared. We’re wondering if the locals are messing with us, sending us deeper into nothing, but we find the place and resist the urge to high-five one another. The lodge is beautiful until the next morning when I learn that spiders the size of pancakes descend from the roof in the night. I spend a while coping with that. The crepes help, though – they are unreal. There is a bridge past the baobab tree that leads to a path that winds through hedges and empties onto the beach. The sand crunches underfoot just like packed snow. It’s the best sound. It is December 22nd. I watch Midnight Express for the first time.

The owners of the lodge are French and Senegalese and have a son who is four. He makes me think I’m looking into my own future. I avoid him; he gets it. We head to the village and brake hard when a pelican the size of an eighth-grader walks into the road.

There are no gas stations in Kafountine and the fuel gauge is purely ornamental so we accidentally buy diesel (called gazole) instead of gasoline (called essence) from a man with a funnel and a jug by the side of the road. We hightail it ninety minutes to Bignona, through bleak salt marshes and mangroves, past cocky soldiers who want money for nothing. We acquire the correct form of fuel but even this is a lesson in frustration: the gas station attendant won’t acknowledge me because I’m the wrong gender but Will can’t speak French and keeps referring to me to translate to the guy who won’t acknowledge me.

The car is a smoky, stuttering wreck for a few days. Christmas is awful: a forced lunch at a banquet table with hateful, hateful people. We are traumatized and don’t come out of our room again until check out the next morning. It is December 26th. There is a festival beginning today but we have been dissuaded by the swarms of European hippies roaming Abéné. At a check point, a soldier asks if we mind transporting an old priest to a neighboring town. We decline despite the obvious bad karma of doing so. We drive to Cap Skirring in the very south of southern Senegal.

We accidentally find the sweetest nook of the trip (excluding that night's dinner, which is an unspoken pageant of rich French kids). There are steep stone stairs down the cliff to the beach and it is so, so cool. The locals have been selling their family land to the French and Belgians, who build beautiful things that are nothing like our guesthouse, which is Senegalese-owned and feels like home.

It’s morning. Will says he’s grouchy because of the roosters next door but I think he’s more upset that his Nescafe comes in a bowl. There are piglets foraging in tall grass and bored cows standing in the surf.

We have shrimp in a hut on the beach. We find the only place that’ll sell us bottles of beer – it’s an upstairs bar above the main strip. We pretty much swear in blood to return the empties; the woman watches for us from the balcony for the next two days. We are now hooked on Flag beer. WiFi is down all over, making it impossible to translate what is wrong with the car to a Wolof-speaking mechanic under a tree. (Note: this is the first of five times our car requires immediate medical attention.) Ten dollars later, the car is worse than it was before so we rent bikes and have an argument. Have you had an argument while cycling through the streets? It’s almost funny because you can just speed off when you’ve zinged the other person. I get to a beach and we’re still fighting. It’s hot. I drag the bike through the sand to a lone tree and we’re still fighting. The bike and I are now both without a kick stand so I kick sand at poor Will and I ride home. A shiny, shirtless carpenter asks me for a sip of water; he doesn’t mind that there's sand in the bottle so I gladly give it to him and go.

René, the guesthouse owner, takes us on a tour of his garden and a tree pollinates Will in a fat yellow stripe down his face. He has no idea and I’m a jerk so I don’t say anything for a while.

We eat a fruit called carosol that I’ve never seen before. We return to our bungalow, where a creature is rustling in the quilted ceiling. I figure it’s a bird. Then a long, scaly tail curls down from the ceiling. I scream and throw my sandals at it as the creature (which I’ve now decided is a possum) scratches its way to safety on the other side of the room. Now I’m crying because the thing is clearly going to fall through the quilting and onto me in the night. I sit in the corner and follow Will’s gaze up, up to the gap in the quilting where the ceiling is exposed and there’s a ledge at the top of the wall. There, friends, is a reptile a yard long. I sleep on my stomach and under the mosquito net that night; nothing’s clawing my face in the dark.

In the morning, there are goats dodging the heat by pressing themselves up against cool stone walls and hiding under bushes. There is a trail of cowpats across the road. We go hunting for croissants and tartes tatin and fail. It is New Year’s Eve and Will is sick. We miss everything. We go to the infirmary at the police station where a man in a sweat suit shoots Will with drugs, straight into the muscle. Will, trembling and sweating and empty, stares pleadingly at me but there are so many little things I don’t know how to say. We go home and don’t leave. We watch The Wire. René makes a cure-all cocktail of marshmallowy fruit I’ll never see again. René realizes we haven’t eaten all day and brings us crevettes and langoustines and frites. He leaves his own birthday party in order to do so. It is December 31st.

We leave Cap Skirring in search of English-speaking doctors. We are speeding back to the Gambia with the windows down and the wind gets under my sunglasses. We are kicking up dust. We are stopped at a check point. The soldier likes Liberia and we continue, back through the salt marshes and mangroves and angry red roads. At another check point, the soldiers ask for money to make tea. We decline. We are playing Steppenwolf. I lock eyes with a pissy preteen girl who spits water at our passing car. We cross back into the Gambia. The customs agent realizes he did not stamp my passport when I first crossed the border. He says it’s all good. (It is not, but I don’t learn that until days later when I’m on a sofa, trying to cross the northern border, being blackmailed for $3 US and chips.)

There are seventy pairs of unattended slippers outside the mosque as we enter Banjul. The women here wear headscarves. There are mountains of watermelon every thirty feet. Signs declaring the people’s duty to and love for the president don’t miss a beat. A cowherd is leading his steer across the highway: a cow gets caught between two lanes and inadvertently enters a game of Frogger. “This is every cow’s worst nightmare,” says Will. I don’t think cows lose sleep over things like that, though. My body aches and Will is still an inhuman shade of grey so we do it up at a posh hotel. We are now hooked on Julbrew beer. We sleep.

The ferry and the border are shut for the day so we trek four hours out of the way to the  alternate ferry crossing (also known as Plan B). We are stopped every fifteen minutes by very feisty soldiers. We stop at a gas station that has a manual hand pump like a well. The attendants then violently rock the car (with me in it) to ensure that the tank is completely full. It’s not quite a day at the amusement park but it’s free. We get to Soma and, among the overstuffed trucks, get packed like sardines on the ferry.

We cross the northern Gambian border with less money (and pride) than originally budgeted. We are heading north through Senegal this time, north to Dakar. Somewhere along the way, the donkeys are replaced by horses that cart people and the things that people collect. The sun has set.

The accelerator cable snaps in the middle of the night in the middle of the road yet we inch our way to a general store. The whole town is alive in the dark. The shop owner is from Mauritania. He doesn’t speak French but he does sell wire. We park beneath the storefront light. A miracle named Mamadou wanders over and patches up the car in silence with my cell phone's flashlight hanging from his mouth and using a kitchen knife we’ve been carrying around. I could kiss the kid but I don’t. We drive. We cruise down the European highways and empty boulevards of Dakar. It is 1:30am. We’ve skipped lunch and dinner. We find a hotel. I shower off layers of red dirt and pass out.

Downtown Dakar by day is intense and heavy with harmattan haze. We’re stuck in traffic. A man taps the window to show me his wares: a barred crate full of baby sparrows. What I’m supposed to do with one of these at eleven o’clock on a Thursday, I don’t know, so I just stare at them until the light changes. There are no signs for anything anywhere in Dakar so we spend a lot of time going in circles. All along the waterfront are whitewashed walls of graffiti censoring something naughty about the president. Midday, Dakar becomes an outdoor mosque and men run through traffic with undersized rugs or strips of cardboard to join a hundred others in sidewalk prayer. We flee the city center for Almadies. We have lunch in a restaurant on the third floor of an art gallery and everything is fantastic. We get a hotel with a slice of a sea view between two buildings. The people in Dakar drive with even less regard for self-preservation than Liberians do so we cheat death a few times; one motorcyclist manages to skid himself beneath the trunk of our car. A shiny BMW switches lanes to pass a man on a horse-drawn cart. Only now do I notice that the carts are rolling on thick, rubber car tires: there is nothing Romantic about them. We get stuck behind a cab with one absurdly small rear wheel. We get a drink at a beach bar; I watch a Senegalese man sweep trash and leaves from the sand and throw them into the waves like the guy in the myth with the rock up the hill in hell.

We leave Dakar. The second I remark that no one has hassled us in days, we get pulled over. I watch a horse eat the load he’s supposed to be carrying while his driver, unaware, fixes a flat tire. My dress earns a nasty scowl from the gas station attendant in Thies. Adding insult to injury, I am faced with one of those impossible hole-in-the-floor toilets you just hover over, a toilet that was clearly not built for a girl; it ends badly. We get back on the road and the landscape gets dry really quickly. The lush green trees of the south become scratchy brush and arched, withered perches for vultures as we near Mauritania and all of that desert. There’s a lone camel under a tree and a new ethnic group enters the scene. A couple of signs appear only in Arabic. It is the middle of the day and the donkeys are pressed up against the cold brick walls. We drive to Saint-Louis, in the north of northern Senegal.

Saint-Louis is an island wedged between the mainland and a peninsula; once a year, it hosts a rather epic week-long jazz festival. This is not that week, though, so we find ourselves in a waterfront ghost town. The buildings look like Crayola Cuba, or Miami on Zoloft: washed-out shades of pink, green and orange and old wood shutters.

I taste the best lamb I’ve ever had before it’s ruined by swarms of tenacious flies. We pass young goats fighting over a piece of cardboard and cross two bridges to find our hotel.

Everywhere, the sheep are as big as I am. As we squeeze down the road between the fish market and the cemetery, two huge eyes and tiny fingertips appear in the passenger window – it’s a kid saying Hi. In the early evening, there are Muslim women gathered under a tent wearing all the colors of Christmastime. It is January 5th.

I wake up freezing the next morning and every morning thereafter; this, apparently, is normal in the Sahel. We go to the beach and drink Flag and keep to ourselves. We leave Saint-Louis early and head south. Our trusty map is in shreds. We take a one-hour shortcut through scorching savanna with few signs of civilization and pray we don’t get a flat tire. We encounter the red dust again and crispy trees and goats on their hind legs nibbling on leaves and donkeys and massive steer with curved horns a foot long. The horizon is so steamy that I swear a wood post with ribbons is actually a child waving from afar. We hit a town (YES!). I ask a well-dressed man for directions but politely say No when he asks for a ride and I feel bad about this for the rest of the day; I vow to stop watching Law & Order. By now, Will and I have gotten into Zenn and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance-style communication and just silently nod to indicate things of interest. We pass road workers huddled with women under a tree, all eating lunch from a big bowl. The paved road disappears whenever it damn well chooses but we don’t stop until we cross the Gambian border.

Everything is alright for about four minutes.

Then our car gets a thorough cavity search by the Gambia Drug Enforcement Agency. These guys are in plainclothes but they do not play -- fondling my unmentionables to find my Epipen, locating hidden pockets in book bags, demanding an explanation for every vitamin supplement, feeling for packages embedded in the seat cushions. I've never felt so dirty...until fifteen minutes later, when we queue up for the ferry at 3:35pm and find ourselves still parked there -- in our filthy, unventilated car -- at 9pm. We are sitting ducks for the cold drink sellers and begging children and ferry workers awaiting bribes from incensed would-be passengers. Will watches me start to go a little mad, trapped in a car, weighed down by hungry, curious eyes. With no other option and only a boat ride standing between us and white cotton sheets, we add our ten bucks to that of the Gambian guy and German girl in the car behind us and weasel our way onto the last ferry of the day. It is the best thirty minutes of my life. We get a hotel, order cheeseburgers and pass out. It is January 8th.

Breakfast is a sea of happily burnt English people. We attempt to do normal, end-of-the-holiday things. The mini golf course is a lumpy cement afterthought; the swings squawk.

I want a massage until the gym receptionist walks into the room – knee socks, slippers – with his hesitant hand in a tub of grease; I sprint past him and out of the room and don't look back. After returning our beloved Daihatsu to the dealer, we decide to go for a drink on foot. This is a mistake in Banjul, though, as we end up surrounded by Gambian sellers in star formation, barking at us from five directions. I very publicly lose it, swinging my arms and screaming obscenities. Everyone is scared now, including Will. We make it to the bar and sip our drinks and strategize a return to the sanctuary of the hotel. “Go along the water. They don’t go that way,” the waiter says, overhearing the plotting. So we run, full speed, full of beer, down to the water’s edge and another two minutes across the sand to the hotel. Everyone is watching us but we don’t even notice anymore. We are laughing hysterically and out of breath and so, so happy.

We leave the next day.

Things You Can Do at a Liberian Funeral

1. Miss the first half hour. (It seems that funerals – only funerals – start on time in Liberia. Thanks, Mom.)

2. Refuse communion because you had a "rough night" but not because you're areligious. (Thanks, Mom.)

3. Be documented on film as not knowing the words to any hymn or prayer. (Mom...)

4. Wear head-to-toe white. Or purple. Or  a leather shirt and jeans.

5. Wonder, midway, if you're at the right church.

6. See an African sing Italian opera.

7. Pause the service entirely and force the congregation to walk the aisles and greet each other.

8. Refer fondly to memories of being born out of wedlock and spanked as a child; the crowd laughs.

9. Collect money "for the burial" though the deceased is being laid to rest several time zones away.

10. Answer your telephone.

Grooves

I used to complain about uninspired, repetitive radio play in the States but the U.S. has nothing on Liberia. One morning, I heard a new Liberian song on my drive to work. Then I heard it again. I went into the bank, returned to the car, and heard the song two more times.

That's four times in twenty three minutes. On the same station.

And it wasn't even a good song. It was bad from the get-go. Combine terrible techno with lazy R&B and every unimaginative lyric you've ever heard.

Much of the catchy music in Liberia isn't Liberian. There's a song in particular by Nigerian twins about a guy whose girlfriend steals money from him. (It's all good, though, because she's beautiful.) This song makes me want to take a running leap into an empty pool. I was sure it had been quarantined to the region until I heard it in a bar in South Africa last month. Nightmare.

On occasion, though, a song will make you feel good and you'll look forward to it on a Friday night. Sometimes I like a song but haven't mastered the lyrics and just decide what the words are. This would probably work in America -- not so much here. One of my favorites, from Ghana, is about a guy...schooling...his girl. And I convinced myself that if I just kept singing along, the lyrics would reveal themselves to me. Today I succumbed to my own OCD and Googled the words. Surprise! Half the damn song is not in English. I know what you're thinking: no big deal, it's like Reggaeton, right? It is NOTHING like Reggaeton! Daddy Yankee's singing a language most of you learn anyway!  (If you retained nothing from high school Spanish, I have no sympathy.) How am I supposed to learn this song!?

Take it slow baby and wind for me
Move it closer and do let me see
You want to know the thing, you for be humble
Make you no dey take am dey gamble
Ino be gidigidi ibe simple
Make you no dey rush am so you no go fumble
Yde agorT yi reba wo fie den ne amirikatuo yi
I can give to you all nite long
If you feel it sing the song
Ybhyeea hyeea ay sono
Ybhye soa hye so a agye s anTpa nTn krono
(Gye s anTpa nTn krono) ansaana ybie yn pono yeaa
P wizzle tell al di likkle gal dem

I asked Will if I was the only one in Liberia singing songs in languages that knot my tongue -- surely Liberians, many of whom were displaced by the war, picked up the dialects of neighboring countries and understand the songs they are shaking to on the dance floor?

Not so.

Kinda cool, though, no? And trusting, like getting a tattoo in a language you can't read. Sadly, I am not a trusting person and will be translating all tunes from now on.

Edgy

The guys I know seem to get a real kick out of living in neighborhoods with edge. I guess the grit makes them feel a little powerful and dangerous. I thought about this the week my car was in the shop. The shop is part of a chain operating in only two cities.

Monrovia. Kabul.

Who in the world opens a business in Liberia and Afghanistan? An effing genius. 

Civil conflict is big, big business. (See Why We Fight if you think I lie.)  People need things. And things cost a bloody fortune.

Money aside, fragile states give you insta-street cred. Last month, in Cape Town:

- Hello! Welcome to the estate.
- Hi. I'm Avril, this is Will. We wanna ride horses and we wanna quad bike.
- You want to do...both?
- Yeah, we leave tomorrow. We have none of this stuff where we live.
- Where do you live?
- Liberia.
- Siberia!
- Liberia.
- Good God, that's worse. [Concerned maternal look]

This happened two or three times during that trip. ("Gun or machete?" a waiter asked, peeking under the table.) And since every report, article, and documentary about Liberia starts with the words "devastating," "fourteen-year" and "civil war." I don't blame people for thinking I'm in danger. Late last year, a journalist was overheard calming his irate girlfriend back home. Why hadn't he her called in days and days?  "Baby, baby, it's crazy here, alright? I'm in a war zone."

This was in an air-conditioned hotel lounge with WiFi and flat screens. The sun was shining.

So let me set the record straight. There are no bullets whizzing overhead -- I'll more likely get caught in a rip current or hit by a student driver. Crutched former child soldiers hold your car door open for you as you fumble with your shopping bags. I found myself in the passenger seat of a 4x4 at a 45-degree angle and not two minutes later had been pushed from the ditch by dry strangers who marched confidently into shin-high water. Someone will probably tell you your twenty is hanging from your pocket. Ghost stories keep me off the beach at night but, hell, that's basic self-preservation. There are occasional muggings and break-ins, fine, fine, but nothing explodes unexpectedly in the middle of the day.

Heartmen aside, I'd say I'm safer than the lot of you.

M.D.

Today I had the option to buy a clean bill of health for $50 or obtain a health certificate based on actual examination. Having nothing better to do, I figured I'd go to a Liberian clinic.

1pm. The receptionist is singing to herself and texting vigorously. The sign on the wall says Give only tay-tay water to your baby from birth until six months. That means, "Breastfeed your kids, kids." Newcomers to the waiting room instinctively greet the group; I immediately feel awful for not having done so. The crowd is transfixed by a 20-inch TV on the counter: there's an African soap on. The storyline involves a shipwreck and, somehow, an extramarital affair. The men and women across from me are heatedly analyzing the series though I'm pretty sure they're strangers to each other. The receptionist is still singing. A patient leaves the building briefly and returns with a beer and a bottle opener. The man across from me is asleep; he's in a green, short-sleeved suit. The woman beside me whips out her boob. The pharmacy door is wide open, leaving the drugs  completely unguarded. No one attempts to steal them. The sign on the wall says Go to the big belly clinic four times before delivery. My name is called. The doctor has to ask me questions twice because I don't know what he's saying. He puts a thermometer into my armpit and weighs me in kilograms. I have no idea what's going on. He sends me to the lab for some series of tests. The lab tech stabs me in the finger without warning and without gloves (bless her heart). She gives me a cup. I climb the stairs and dodge a leaky roof to find the Female Bathroom. There is no lock. There are no curtains, either, so it's just me and the traffic. I look around. Surely there's a paper bag or an opaque box in which to clandestinely transport my business through the bloody waiting room? Nope. There's no toilet paper but there is soap. The only working faucet is in the bathtub. Steeped in Western modesty, I wrap a trusty Kleenex around the cup and carry it proudly through the crowd. I needn't bother; no one is interested. They've all got lives. The tests say I'm clean. I pay $11. I pass a woman selling scoops of hot lunch from a plastic box. I leave. It's 3pm. I see now why the guy brought a beer to the doctor.

The Gossip

"The greatest trick the devil ever pulled 

was convincing the world that he didn't exist." 

- The Usual Suspects

I drove my mother to the president's house to pick something up or drop something off. She showed her face and the gate swung open. (Only in Liberia.) She climbed out of the car and into the arms of an official who asked her who I was.

- I'm her daughter.
- Daughter!?
- Yeah.
- How long have you been here!?
- A year.
- Why do we never see you??
- Umm...I keep a low profile.

The mouths of the nearby SSS guards fell open. "A low profile?" they mused.

Let me explain.

1. It is near impossible to go incognito in Monrovia.
2. I am the only person who wants to go incognito in Monrovia.

This is especially difficult given that I'm voluntarily on the outside of not one but two social groups -- Liberian "society" and the expatriate scene. Trying not to get wrapped up in the soap opera of one group necessarily means moving toward the soap opera of the other. It's like Pong. It's not that I hate people; people are fine. But the people here know each other. And there are no cinemas or concerts or cafes. So people just talk. A lot. About other people.

One day, over Ethiopian, a friend asked me why I didn't know (and couldn't supply her with) all the Liberian high society dirt that expats are generally not privy to. I didn't realize until then that I was failing at what, apparently, is my role as a go-between.

I hate having people I don't know sharing -- or inventing -- versions of stories from my personal life when their own lives get a little beige.  There are a million people in Monrovia, but you can get the grime on people you've yet to make eye contact with. It's like being a freshman at Amherst again. There's a cabbie here who used to casually dish out the late-night dirt, as simple as storytelling; a couple nearly broke up in his car. If I had a secret, I'd immediately export it to the States -- I couldn't even tell my favorite friend here. People can't help themselves: you've got to tell just one person, right? That one person can do serious damage here, though, when you're forced to live and party and work with the very same crew.

So I stay out of the whirlpool for weeks at a time and the words "I forget you're in Liberia..." have become music to my ears.

Thursday morning

The phone rings.

Me: Hello?
Will: Hi.
Me: Forgot something?
Will: Nope. I'm driving past the UN. A motorcycle crashed outside. An angry mob is throwing bricks over the gate. The guards are fighting them off with rakes.
Me: Okay then. Lunch?
Will: Sure.
Me: See you. 


End of call.

Bambi

Last night I walked into a supermarket and past a teenager with wild eyes. He was chugging something sugary. With one hand, he chucked the empty plastic bottle onto the pavement; in the other, he cradled a live deer. The deer was for sale. It had wild eyes, too. It looked at me but I looked away. Never lock eyes with something you know is about to end up in someone's soup. 

Mint

A very old friend went to Jamaica once to meet his family. I asked him if he thought about living there. "Absolutely not," he said. "It's way too poor."

We were teenagers but I always thought that was a really cruel thing to say -- I've been looking at him sideways since. (To be fair, I'd have found some reason to give him the evil eye regardless. We'd dated for a week or two. It was all very Rated G.)

A few years later, in 2004, I came to Liberia for the first time since the beginning of the war. And did I think about living in Liberia then? Absolutely not. It was way too poor.

Thankfully, no one ever asked me that question so I only ever horrified myself with my response.

Imagine my shock when, a few years later, I find myself not only celebrating a year here but signing up for another nine months. I'm almost afraid to get into school. What happens when you leave Liberia for London? Mint.com starts to judge you again.

"You have spent $1,800 on clothes this month. This is $1,900 over your budget." 

"You have stopped contributing to your IRA. You will be working for the rest of your life."

"Your short-term goals do not include buying a ship. What is the matter with you. You embarrass me."

Once you've paid rent, fueled your car and stocked your fridge, it is bloody impossible to spend money in Liberia. You can't find a proper cocktail or a level pool table. There is no retail therapy.
There is almost no advertising. You want to stay home and cook dinner and read Vonnegut. You're happy.

Except now I've got DStv and the West (via Nigeria and South Africa) is telling me to spend $7,000 on a wedding dress, to lighten my hair, to fill my kids with frozen fries.

I've got no qualms about living in a poor country. It's the rich ones that scare me.

Bewitched

- Hi Uncle Newman.
- Where were you??
- Cape Town. 'Sup?
- I was dying. I called you.
- What!?
- Yeah-oh.
- When!?
- Wednesday.
- What!?
- Everyone was here, crying, crying.
- What's the matter?!
- I couldn't move.
- Couldn't move what?
- Anything.
- You can move now?
- I can sit up small. 
- What did the doctors say?
- That it's not medical.
- It's not...medical.
- No. It's juju.
- It's -- what??
- Juju.
- From where?
- Coworkers.
- Coworkers?
- I got promoted.
- So they...
- Yes.
- Can you ask them to lift the, uh...
- Juju.
- Right.
- There was no quarrel. But jealousy is strong-oh.
- Paralyzing envy.
- That's it.  

I Always Feel Like Somebody's Watching Me

So I'm squatting in a township in a crowd outside Mzoli's eating braai from a bowl on the sidewalk when...

Wait. Let's go back a bit.

I find myself in a recurring predicament when I have to give my address to Liberians.

"Where you live?"
"Thirteenth St."
"Fifteen?"
"No, thirteen."
"Fourteen?"
"No! Thirteen. One, three."
"Twenty-seven?"

The problem is that Liberian's pronounce thirteen tight-teen. I really can't bring myself to scream those words into a phone so I just end up picking up my own take-out. Meanwhile, another number became unutterable, too. I spent four weeks really losing the plot over it. I'm surprised no one had me medicated.

So like an old dog padding off alone to leave this world, I went to Cape Town to turn thirty. It was as far from home as the continent permitted. I almost had a grip on things until the night of my birthday, when I was sitting in an opera house watching Porgy and Bess. Someone asked Bess how old she was and Bess said, "Twenty year." The cast howled; someone shouted, "Dat girl's thirty if she's a day." The saddest little eeeep! flew from my throat.

Soon it was midnight and I was really out of my twenties and everything was alright. Then the fog of narcissism lifted and I was acutely aware of being quietly watched by South Africans. (The irony of this is not lost on me, having spent much of that next week staring down animals of all walks.) I had fallen into one of my favorite parts of any book:

"It had taken some time but the tables had been turned; now I was in the zoo, and they were watching."

Cape Town is full of beautiful things; what it lacks are multicolored couples. No one says anything rude out loud (apart from those baristas in Stellenbosch -- thanks guys) but the air is oddly heavy and you remember how recently apartheid ended. Liberia isn't the most diverse nook of the world but here I never feel like I'm breaking the rules. So for all the thrills I had there, Cape Town can have its horses and vineyards and haute cuisine and antelope steaks and fancy meats and ostrich rides and penguins and sanctuaries and whale-watching and bed-and-breakfasts and clean water and bungee jumping and zip-lines and vistas and water sports and malls and gems and hikes.

Just let a girl walk hand in hand with her dude. What else is there in this life? (Note: I will retract this statement after a week in Monrovia.)

Cat Call

Today, I lived the dream of straight guys the world over: I got hollered at by a smiling schoolgirl in a uniform.

To quote Closer, "It was the moment of my life." There I was, stuck in traffic, listening to smooth jazz (...), patting myself on the back with a "Well done, Avs."

Then I remembered I was in Liberia.

And the schoolgirl wasn't flirting at all: she was getting my attention so she could cross the road.

Today, I lived the disappointment of straight guys the world over.

Liberians of both genders respond to the ksss-ksss sound that says, "Waiter/stranger/prospective lover, please look in this direction," turning the world into an endless construction site.

Personally, I refuse to respond to a ksss-ksss from anybody.

Until today, that is.

Evidently, I'm a sucker for a girl in uniform.

How Liberia is like Game of Thrones

Last month, I devoured two seasons of medieval porn (more commonly known as Game of Thrones) in six days. Then I re-entered the outside world and wondered whether I was still in Westeros.

• Liberia has a recurring cast of lords (called Big Men) vying for the Iron Throne. 
• Liberia has rebellious wildlings whom the city-dwellers keep an eye on. 
• Liberia has confusing, drawn out civil wars -- no dragons, though, just gunfire. 
• Liberians use black magic against their enemies. 
• Liberia has traditional religions ("the old gods...) and Christianity ("...and the new"). 
• Introductions to strangers must ultimately answer the question, "Who you ma, who you pa?" 
• Most of the population lives in super simple shelters.  
• Prostitutes are a totally regular part of society.  
• Kids are casually given away to be raised by other families.

This place is almost art. To quote my imaginary friend Method Man, "I like the misery. I like this world."

Marley

I loathe earrings. I went out of my way to get six piercings that now sit idly like freckles. Under the weight of a look from my mother, I may cave and wear studs but that's it. The idea of gleaming, wiggly metals hanging off the sides of my face is just wrong.

I can't be bothered with the decoration.

So you'll understand, then, why I chopped half my hair pre-Liberia and the other half mid-venture. On a practical level, I know myself: I am irritable and twelve months of sweaty strands gingerly cupping my neck was not, at any point, an option. On the vanity front, however, I had no intention of dating (...) and wanted to see if I could still look at myself in the mirror unadorned.

As it turns out, I can. Cool. Experiment over. I'll be growing out my "Jewfro" until 2014. (For the record, my great-grandpa's last name was Kaulmann; "Jewfro" applies.)

My haircut was never supposed to be a discussion piece but I came to the wrong damn country to go unnoticed.

On Saturday, I made my first trek to Exodus, a hotspot for the locals. The place has good music. I like that. But you've got to be in the right mood: you've got to be cool with some guy's sweaty hand gingerly cupping one of your buns. It's like New York with cheap beer.

But I digress.

In 90 minutes at Exodus, I had two complete strangers (one male, one female) come up behind me and grab a handful of my hair. And hold onto it. Before starting a conversation with me. I can't even convey the depth of the violation that is having a stranger -- one who is not shampooing you -- grip your skull. I have no words. In Liberia, though, hair is more or less community property.

And with good reason.

Almost no women go into public with their own hair. Hair is bought. (The best lit shop on Airfield Road looks like American Apparel but is actually a wig vendor.) Wigs are socially acceptable -- no, socially prescribed -- in the capital and elsewhere. Women actually sporting their own thick hair fall into three categories:

• Women whose household budgets don't allow for things like wigs;

• Dreadlock rastas quietly growing in numbers, influenced by Jamaica and Sierra Leone; and 

• Neo-hippie repatriates who were born and/or grew up in the States. (Hi!)

A wig is an important status symbol for the upwardly mobile. The hair pieces in question, though, are not even a little bit natural looking: these are flowing, Harlequin novel tresses. And because they're expensive and malodorous when wet, you'll see women drenched in rain capped with plastic bags. When they aren't busy keeping the hair dry, women are seen slapping their hot, itchy scalps through layers of wig. There are few things stranger than a composed bank teller or supermarket cashier suddenly beating the crown of her head (repeatedly and without explanation).

I will stick with my fro, thanks. But I may take to wearing a hat.

Spectator

This weekend, I buckled and watched Zoolander, a film I'd never seen (or ever wanted to see) in its entirety. I now join the rest in the globe in praise of "Blue Steel".

Something was missing in it for me, though, and my enthusiasm was tepid and fleeting. It was a lot like watching sports.

Later, I stood with a beer on a friend's balcony. In the distance, virgin marshland; below, Slipway Community. Slipway is a shantytown of zinc-roofed shacks and squatters packed so tightly that adults must get stuck in the alleys. And from my perch above Slipway, I watched the Liberia-Nigeria football (err...soccer) match.

I use the term "watched" loosely, however, because I didn't actually see the game. (That doesn't sound like me at all.) Instead, I watched the reactions of the Slipway children, pouring out of their homes at regular intervals, screaming and running with their tiny fists in the air. Every climactic moment yielded the intense collective cry of five dozen kids on a sliver of land. I eventually dragged myself inside to join the dinner party I'd come for and which, through no fault of its own, fell flat in comparison to the scene outside. The match was a draw but it didn't matter: up and down Tubman Blvd, crowds roared. You've never seen a city celebrate 2-2 so proudly for miles. Motorbike drivers did handstands on handlebars. There was spontaneous dancing. Fans trickled out of the stadium on the cusp of religious ecstasy and walked the hour home in darkness. This was my introduction to vicarious euphoria. It's electric. (Boogie woogie woogie.)

In future, I think I'll experience the things I've avoided through the visceral joy of Liberian spectators. It is so much better than watching the real thing.

Now then. How to get a shantytown to watch tennis and Austin Powers...

Shortest. Visit. Ever.

Liberians don't know anything about looking their age or counting calories so they are missing the tact that comes with living in the West.

Last weekend, I walked into my aunt's house.

Me: Hi Aunty Mary.
Mary: I seh, Avril, you gettin' hips finally. Come so, turn 'round.
Me:  Okay then, great chatting with you. Mom, I'll just collect you later.

I think I'll stay indoors 'til I turn 30. Twenty-five days isn't so long.

Math

Once upon a time, I had math with a Mr. Ledenev. I had a crush on the guy to my right and the moral support of the friend on my left.

Anything the two of them said took priority over math.

One day, Ledenev calls on me and I, of course, have no idea what he's asking.

"What?"
"Is 'what' your answer?"
"I didn't hear the question."
"You didn't 'hear'? Or you weren't 'listening'?"

So now I'm getting schooled in math and English by a Russian.

That that was sixteen years ago and I still remember it. The sad truth is that there are many moments in which people try to connect with me and I actively tune out; I think it amuses me to just nod and concur at the right moments.

I've missed more than I realized.

On Sunday, I kidnapped my mother until she taught me how to cook palava sauce, my favorite of all Liberian foods. Midway through the lesson, I remembered the thing I've been waiting to ask my mom for years, the thing I probably already know piecemeal by mental osmosis but was never really listening to.

"Mom, can you talk me through your family tree?"

Remember, I am 29.

It took an hour and four sheets of construction paper to cover the 116 years since her dad was born; that was as far back as she could go. 

"....So then, as you know, my father was jailed..."
"Wait -- what?"
"Avril, I told you this."
"You tell me a lot of things! Tell me again."
"He founded an opposition party so the government locked him up."
"For how long?"
"A few years."

This is a man who held prominent positions as a lawyer and businessman and still managed to have 12 children with 7 women in 23 years.

Yeah. I'm still doing the math on that one. (I really should have been listening to Ledenev.)

Lean

My glasses are fogging up over a bowl of plain white rice (with salt!) because it's pouring and because I'm allergic to everything else in the fridge. (My mom thinks it's fun to keep gifting me food guest starring peanut butter. It is not.)

Maybe this is my belated attempt to empathize with Liberians, who more or less live on rice. Maybe I'm paying my respects to the "hunger season" (June -September). Most likely, though, I'm just too embarrassingly lazy to go to one of the five (5) supermarkets within half a mile.

Lately, I have no real interest in food; this is worrisome given that, in San Francisco, I was up to two breakfasts before 11am. I chug hot acidic water almost exclusively. I have also taken to watching the DStv programming channel. (That's the channel that tells you all the shit you're missing out on because you don't actually have DStv.) I shoot daggers at Will as he rinses his toothbrush in half a bottle of spring water and I run mine under the tap; I choose $7 mystery detergent over $21 Tide and scratch my skin to shreds for the rest of the month.

Someone I know once moved very far away for three years of voluntary suffering (also known as law school); he referred to this experience as his hairshirt. I seem to be having my own fling with self-inflicted pain.

There's a unique shame in rolling up on a country and living better than just about everyone. It makes you do strange things. Once a month, I drive my mom to a proper supermarket where she spends $50 on food she'll actually eat and $150 on food she'll gradually give away. Don't be fooled: my mother isn't charitable. It's just makes the next month of relative extravagance palatable. 

In an episode of a series I'll pretend I never watched, the main character reflects on the torture that is med school. "Why do I keep hitting myself with a hammer? Because it feels so good when I stop."

Happy Eid to one and all. 

Price Check

I have never heard a Liberian say the words, "No, that is not something I can do."

- Can you clean?
- Yes.
- Fix my car?
- Sure.
- Cut hair?
- Definitely.
- Tailor clothes?
- Of course.
- Plumbing? Carpentry?
- Without a doubt.
- Massage?
- Absolutely.
- Drive?
- I'll learn overnight.
- Cooking?
- That's my specialty.

(Note: do not actually hire one of these people to do all of these things. Trust me.)

This is one of the many reasons I have concluded that I am not, in fact, a Liberian. Not only do I have zero areas of 'expertise' ("Da ma area!" Liberians like to exclaim), but I have no compulsion to overstate my abilities.

Despite all of this, my on-paper Liberian-ness is really cramping my style.

Thursday, August 9. Potential Employer #1: "Avril, I know I promised you a permanent position with a respectable salary but the people at HQ can't justify paying you as an international." Translation: You're Liberian and should get paid like one.

Thursday, August 16. Potential Employer #2: "Avril, I don't think this is gonna work out. The last time we hired a Liberian from the States, the environment turned very quickly." Translation: our local staff will eat you alive when they learn your middle name and hear your accent.

Let me explain something.

1. If you hired a local Liberian and an 'international' to do the same development job (and why would you?), you could pay the local $800/month and the international (foreigner) $5,000/month.

2. American citizenship makes me, now and forever, an international.

3. Liberians who hear I'm Liberian decide I must be Americo-Liberian (less affectionately known as Congo), the non-native, minority elite who ruled Liberia for a century and a half. I am not.

4. Ignore the public service announcements: you can still taste the resentment between indigenous Liberians and the descendents of the old elite.

I came here expecting to be super useful and in-demand; really, all I do is upset the natural order.

I left the States, where "parents were too perfect at parenting. You're just so sincere and interested in things! There's a confidence in you guys that's horrifying. You're all A.D.D. and carpal tunnel. I'm freaked out by you kids. I hope I die before I end up meeting one of you in a job interview" (Greenberg).

I arrived in Liberia thinking I was one of those people but I am not. I'm no wunderkind here: I'm just some lucky kid in someone else's way. I no longer saunter into interviews with a spring in my step, but with my tail between my legs. Every day, I contend with "the deference of educated young people towards their unschooled elders" (Richard Dowden).

The way I see it, I've got three options:

1. Hide behind my passport and weird features and lie when asked where my parents are from.

2. Proudly wear my "Hi, I'm Liberian" sticker until payday; sell out immediately.

3. Forfeit American citizenship. Officially become Liberian. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $4,200.

FML.

1950

The other day, someone asked me how things were going in Liberia; I described it as an "opportunity to do things like cook and read and decorate and hum."

I was immediately horrified.

Unless you're blessed with a short memory span, there isn't a ton to do here for the 0-99 age group so when I moved into my new digs last week, I just about burst with glee.

Swimming pool. Exercise room. Uninterrupted power. A waffle iron. Washer and dryer. An oven that isn't trying daily to set me on fire.

So now I get a real kick out of watering plants and baking cookies and hanging pics and barbecues. I don't know if -- in the parallel life I'm living somewhere in the States --this would have happened anyway, this...softening.

Yuck.

A younger version of me is turning in her grave. 

The softening (yuck) only happens within the confines of my house, where everything is clean and safe and beautiful; where I can choose whether the hammock overlooks the palm treetops of the Lutheran compound or the real world.

The real world is a place where you go to an interview that should be in the bag but isn't because you're the wrong gender and ethnicity. (This, in an African country with a woman president.) The real world entails sprinting from the supermarket door to your car and still not beating the blind old man and his cherubic guide as they plead with you to help wi' sunting, Ma. The real world requires gesticulating, armed only with your best Liberian English, on Center Street at the amputee who has voluntarily "cleaned" your car. In the real world, friends' laptops get fished through the bars of their bedroom windows or plucked from coffee tables as they sleep. The real world is mud, potholes and car repairs. It is sending your curtains back to the tailor three times because he can't read his writing because he can't read or write. It is averting your eyes from the child excreting a few yards away. It is giving directions that include the words "...go over the Chinese bridge along the poo-poo beach..." because absolutely everybody knows it used to be the most public of public toilets. Locking the car door before you've closed it; putting your purse on the floor and not the passenger seat; watching the meter at the gas pump because rumor has is Super Petroleum will cheat you-oh; making acquaintances who turn cold when you return from abroad empty-handed; having your accent mocked before you're out of earshot; never knowing how much things really cost because you look like you could use a good fleecing. The real world has public schools with four-hour days that offer little more than babysitting and free lunch; it pushes hills of trash from the main road to one just out of the way.

So I'll keep my postwar America illusion and go soft and domestic in my nest: outside, out there, I'm a machine.

Verlan

A few years ago, I went to Nepal,
'bout which I made sure to read nothing at all.
Inquisitiveness in reverse is rad:
the trip becomes yours and not one others had.

But eleven months into being 'home',
I wish I had left fewer things so unknown.
Verlan is French slang that flips words around;
I, too, am reversed in my days in this town.

Staff at Monroe Chicken shout, "You're welcome!"
as I walk through the door, confused, looking dumb.
I haven't said "Thank you." Where was my cue?
Is all of Monrovia just messing with you?

Boatman to island to see chimpanzees
says, "I know deh river, but it not know me..."
implying one drowns or loses one's hands
in rivers that plot against innocent man.

Few people signal, wear helmets, pay tax:
most everything binding society's lax
and orderly people like me are cursed
when laws are made last, and peace is made first.

But how can I lecture when I, at noon,
learned the beach I look onto from every room
was where thirteen officials were tied, shot.
A knower of Liberia's history, I'm not.

I think that my mom, for better or worse,
buried the news clippings deep in her purse;
all of the facts I should already know
were glossed over, sugared, dulling the blow.

So now I'm devouring a book that explains
the stories of places I've been and their names,
their truths and their myths, their villains and ghost --
I'll leave knowing more than the quirks of this coast.