Kids

After former President Charles Taylor was convicted of war crimes on Thursday, I finally let myself watch Johnny Mad Dog. 

It just seemed right.

Johnny Mad Dog is a 2008 French/Liberian film that follows fictional (but spot-on) child soldiers as they march towards Monrovia. The film is almost incoherent if you've never heard Liberian English but you could watch it on mute and not miss a thing. (It's like 300.)

I have a real soft spot for dark, brutal tales. I don't know why. My mother, a self-described chicken, won't go near Dexter or roller-coasters because "the things [she] read at UN were scary enough." But if I've got an afternoon to myself, give me something disturbing to watch.

That said, Johnny Mad Dog is one of the eeriest films I've ever seen.

It took me several years to man up and watch Hotel Rwanda. I didn't really know why. Maybe I knew it would hit a little too close to home. But this movie...this Liberian movie...is home. The actors -- some of them actual former child soldiers -- have the features and inflections of my countrymen, people with whom I share sidewalks. I started to feel sick. I reminded myself it wasn't a documentary and the film became digestible. I was fine. Then I saw my cousin -- my cousin -- attacked in a scene and all the distance I'd created evaporated. I immediately felt sick again. And I remembered my poor mom and thought: Yes. The world is scary enough.

Mount Coffee

Y'know, just hangin' out at the old hydroelectric dam. (May you be reborn and bring my bill below eleven-hundred dollars).

1

2

3

4

5

Mad Men

I'm still doing the math but I'm pretty sure I'm only, like, 3/4 of a person in Liberia.

I've never lived anywhere where women were generally considered less-awesome than men. I'm not sure how I only recently noticed this, either -- I think the president and her Cabinet distracted me. There are billboards and public service announcements explicitly asking men not to beat or rape or stifle their women. These are important (if unsettling) messages because I get the feeling I'm only good for male ego-boosting; once it's apparent that I am not in the market for a sugar-daddy, I become more or less irrelevant.

I think I failed a job interview once when the interviewer made a crude joke about Liberian prostitutes and I paused, surprised, before giving a hearty laugh and a back-slap. (The interviewer, for the record, was American.)

A neighbor was floored when he realized I was steadily employed. "You and Will both work?" he gasped. (The neighbor, for the record, is American.)

When I shop for cars I can actually drive, the dealers only address Will. They hesitate to shake my outstretched hand and Beyonce suddenly plays in my head (When you're in the big meetings for the mils / You take me just to complement the deal).

My requests for fixes around the compound are white noise to the Lebanese. The Liberian security guard once asked me to recommend his friend, a housekeeper, to my husband. "You can talk to Will," I told him, "He'll be back soon." "No, no, no," he insisted. "I tell you, Boss Lady, and you tell the Boss Man." There are rules, you see. Eighteen years of private school just to be the funnel to my husband's ear. Beyonce suddenly plays in my head (Still play my part and let you take the lead role).

So what do I do? Bow out, fuming silently, and let the men talk business? Channel my inner frat-boy-exec and bust out scotch and cigars?

Maybe I take a cue from Bobbie Barrett: "You're never gonna get that corner office until you start treating Don as an equal. And no one will tell you this, but you can't be a man. Don't even try. Be a woman. It's powerful business, when done correctly."

Fancy

There is an episode of Spongebob Squarepants in which the protagonist, a sea sponge, is invited to the underwater bubble of his new neighbor, a squirrel. Spongebob is desperate to appear sophisticated (which, according to a slow-witted star fish, entails keeping your pinky raised at all times). So into the squirrel's waterless home Spongebob goes, pinky out, suffocating silently on air.  

I often wonder how indicators of sophistication develop. 

There are unusual words that find their way into casual speech in some circles of Liberians; of them, my favorite is buttress, a word I've heard in run-of-the-mill staff meetings (“…but to buttress what ___ is saying, I think that we should ___"). Not once in my 29 years have I used the word buttress. I concede, though, that I do now use the verb vex on a weekly basis. 

Beyond vocabulary, there are other weirdnesses intended to show social status (or, at the very least, upward social mobility). This may be a pan-African thing but I speak only for my people: Liberians seem to love photos of themselves in what I think of as unremarkable places -- particularly airplanes. A grim Liberian in a suit in coach is, like, the Holy Grail of profile pics. 

Photos capturing meals in upscale restaurants are also popular. And I don't mean that American-style my five best friends and me, perfectly-lit, perfectly angled, beaming over wine glasses pose (which, in itself, is really weird. Let's be serious). No. There is nothing poised or Facebook-worthy about the photos in question.

In other circles, class is indicated by the possession of a car (and the reliability of that car). Sometimes its in the number (and titles) of past employers who would readily refer you. Sometimes social standing rests in your last name alone.

Sometimes you shrink away from fanciness, though, as my driver Tony (28) did last month when we drove past a friend of his who pointed and laughed. Tony was immediately defensive: "It's not my car, man. It's the kwee girl's." Kwee basically means bourgeois, which is generally a hilarious insult to me but really stung that day. I guess you don't need "fancy" when you've got street cred.

Manbearpig

Yesterday, the front door opens and this (more or less) transpires.

Will: Hey.
Me: Hey Will.
Will: You know how you always wanted me to bring home a creepy-ass endangered species?
Me: Um. No?
Will: Half lizard, half sloth, half mole?
Me: UM. NO?
Will: Oh. Well, here you go. 

Pangolin (Smutsia gigantea)

Marshall, Marshall, Marshall

Find fisherman with sturdy vessel.

Row, row, row your boat...

...Gently down the stream...

...Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily.

I can't even begin to caption this one.

Lappa

On Saturday, I left my house wearing a lappa, a rectangle of patterned fabric you wrap around yourself and hope for the best. The theme of that night’s party was “Come as Your Country” and, having failed to find cowboy boots at the market, I decided to be Liberian.

For the record, I hate costume parties. (Incidentally, this made a love affair between San Francisco and me impossible.) Naturally, because this is my life, only 6 of the 200 attendees came in costume, so now I’m traipsing around in what appears to be a tablecloth for no effing reason. At some point, however, I forgot how out of place I looked and found myself flailing along to the techno.

Then I started to wonder if anyone realized I was in costume.

See, the following confusion occurs nearly every time I meet an expat:

Expat: What brought you to Liberia?

Me: I was into natural resource management and my parents are Liberian so I figured I’d check out the scene.

Expat: So, you were born here.

Me: No.

Expat: But you grew up here?

Me: Nah, I never lived here.

Expat: Is this your first time here?

Me: I came before and after the war.

Expat: {{Pauses}} You don’t sound Liberian.

Me: Right. I grew up in the States.

Expat: Do you speak Liberian English?

Me: Uh. It sounds kinda lame in my mouth.

Expat: {{Squints}} Wait -- so, you're not Liberian?

I imagine that showing up to a pool party in my lappa and head-tie finery put an end to the mystery. Maybe I make this a Saturday tradition, incorporate it into my wardrobe. Once you accept that you’re in an unsecured tube of cloth, it’s pretty damn cool. Lappas really hold their own when you're dancing/eating/visiting restrooms. They come off as easily as tear-away pants, yet no one suspects you’re a male stripper. Badass.

Eats

Sunday was an epic fail on the culinary front: the lamb was un-chewable and the haloumi disintegrated in the pan. So much for being classy: we threw everything away and ordered burgers.

Liberia is hit or miss when it comes to stocking your kitchen so I flip out when I find steel-cut oatmeal ($7.50) and slivers of brie ($11.00) and pita chips ($14.95). What I wouldn’t give for some of that San Francisco sourdough: the bread here rather consistently tastes like index card.

Sometimes the cost and effort of crafting deliciousness at home outweigh the benefits (see paragraph #1). Then again, going out to eat poses its own challenges. [FYI, Liberians put the stress on the second syllable of challenges. I love it.]

Rasta Bar. On a Thursday.

Waiter: Drinks?
Friend: Can I have a Club Beer?

Waiter: Large or small?

Us: Large.

Waiter: No large Club Beer.

Friend: Why did you even ask?

Waiter: I’m not sure.

Sam's BBQ. On a Saturday. 

Waitress: Drinks?

Me: Can I have a Coke Light?

Waitress: No Coke Light.

Me: OK. Fanta.

Waitress: Anything to eat?

Will: Can I have the quarter chicken with jellof rice?

Waitress: No jellof rice on Saturday.

Will: Jellof rice is served everywhere in Liberia.

Waitress: Mmm.

Will: Do you have fried rice?

Waitress: Yes.

Will: Isn’t that essentially jellof rice?

Waitress: Yes.

Will: Fine. I’ll have the fried rice.

Waitress: And for you?

Me: Can I have the BBQ ribs?

Waitress: No BBQ ribs today.

Me: The menu says they are a Daily Special.

Waitress: Yes, but not today.

Me: Tomorrow?

Waitress: No, probably not.

Me: Can I just get whatever Will ordered?

Food arrives.

Me: Can I have some BBQ sauce?

Waitress:  OK.

Ten minutes pass.

Me (to random waiter): Can I have some BBQ sauce?

Waiter: We don’t have BBQ sauce.

Me: Everything on your menu is barbecued.

Waiter: Ma'am, this restaurant does not serve BBQ sauce.

Me: What’s in the red bottle?

Waiter: Ketchup.

Me: What’s in the dark-red bottle?

Waiter: Ketchup.

One minute passes.

Waitress: Sorry for the delay. {{Sets what is clearly BBQ sauce on table}}

I can't even tell you how many nights I just skip dinner altogether.

Inception

Yesterday, at 2pm, I 'woke up' inside my own dream wearing exactly what I was wearing in real life and at the same time of day. My eyes were glued shut. I heard strangers’ keys in the front door. All I could do was sit with my back to the wall (when I managed to find the wall) and cry.   

When I really woke up, I had no idea what was going on.  

According to the property owner, the people who broke in and fled with my Scrabble were sending him a message. The prime suspects are the squatters he evicted from the adjacent property, which he'll renovate and rent for 3K a flat.  

I wonder if thieves know they climb into your dreams. Maybe I should be I grateful I have the luxury of Sunday afternoon naps and bad dreams that have an end.

Come Together

There's a woman I have seen three times now. She is 60-100 years old. She walks downtown as I drive to wherever it is that I work and she is always, always wearing a red wool hat.

It is 90 degrees in Monrovia.

My mouth hangs open as she passes by. Is she serious? How is she doing this?? It's enough to make you run back to the predictable nudity of the Castro.

Yesterday, I got publicly torn a new one at the end of my own workshop by a team that does nothing but ruin my day.

At the root of the assault was the fact that I am not "one of them."

When I am in the States, I feel mostly American (in mood, in pop-culture) but know there is something vaguely foreign underneath.

Here, to myself and to others, I don't have one un-American pore: I am a Westerner with a Liberian middle name. Hell, I don't even look Liberian; I've got half a mind to interrogate the milkmen of early-'80s Queens, NY. Years ago, I helped a friend (we'll call her Friend) cater a Sri Lankan cultural event; we got cornered by three guys.

Teen (to me): What part of Sri Lanka are you from?
Me: I'm not Sri Lankan.
Teens: Really?
Me: Yeah.
Teen (to Friend): What country are you from?
Friend: I'M SRI LANKAN.

In her defense, Friend had just gotten a perm and was looking especially exotic but her sense of self took a huge blow. I feel that now. Where is the justice in a world in which I leave the States -- where nobody can tell where I'm from -- and come to Liberia, where no one recognizes I'm one of them?

It sucks. I'm having an "I Suck" day.

Maybe I'd fit in in a red wool hat.

Anatomy of a Crime Scene

Wake up. Assume a drunk roommate pushed the coffee tables toward the open sliding glass door.

Wonder what Super Scrabble is doing on the balcony. Consider finding new roommates.

Realize every window in the house now looks like this. Spot suspicious safety pin outside.

Find stick tied to paint roller -- ideal for pulling coffee tables across living rooms in the middle of the night.

Find empty box. Contents missing.
Mourn briefly, then get really, really pissed. (It's Super Scrabble!)

Hmm.

Liberians have a different concept of time than I do so when I entered the living room yesterday I immediately assumed, "April Fools'?"

After a quarter century in New York and forty months in San Francisco, I have officially had my house broken into.

If you can call it that.

The only item taken, you see, was Super Scrabble. (RIP, friend.)

Photos to come.

The Boat

I have a friend who once decided to leave the States for two years. As he packed, I began to panic: what if he was The One? (In retrospect, this was a ridiculous idea; I think he's still laughing about it.) Google has failed me but somewhere there exists a dialogue to the effect of:

-You missed the boat.
-What boat?
-The boat that, when it comes in, is a boat but when it leaves, is a ship.

Below rear-window Madonna and Manchester stickers, many cabs in Monrovia have a little message. The messages are referred to as Taxi Wisdom. Taxi Wisdom is painted only on the back bumper, though, so you can't read it on an approaching car.

It only hits you as the car is pulling away.

Taxi Wisdom says a lot about Liberians -- mostly, that they are God-fearing people. My favorite is TROUBLE CAN'T LOOK FOR MAN.

I think it reminds me of friends who hand me their tattered lives and say, "Here. Fix this." Maybe it reminds me of me, making ships out of boats and forgetting I'm on a yacht.

A Life in the Day

One of the coolest stories I've ever read is six words long.

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

I am never going to write anything that sad and perfect but a girl can try. I present to you: a housekeeper.

Loved books. Husband ran: scrubs flats.

The Crosswalk

Last week, after failing to find a pool hall, I passed a man standing proudly on his knees on the corner of Broad St. 

"Will, what's happening?"
"He's crossing the street."
"On his knees?"
"His legs are damaged."
"Why isn't he in a wheelchair?"
"I guess he prefers to walk."

I couldn't believe it: the streets are unnavigable enough on foot or by car. Under the same circumstances, I'm pretty sure I'd go the Homer Simpson route ("They have chairs with wheels? And here I am using my legs like a sucker").

I ran through all the reasons someone would make a difficult life more difficult. Then I thought of a friend who once confessed that his greatest fear was paralysis. (This had never even occurred to me as an option: my own recurring nightmares involve free fall and silent assailants.)

Could it be that some people, above all, simply want to carry their own bodies across this earth?

I didn't dare ask the man anything; I knew how it would go.

"Sir, why are you walking?"
"I'm too tired to jog."

"Sir, do you need help?"
"Yes. I've been waiting on this corner for you for twenty years."

"Sir, is your wheelchair nearby?"
"No. It's in the shop, along with my Mercedes."

Instead I went home, where I sat on a chair and talked myself out of a run.

True Love Waits

(Note: The title of this post is a Radiohead song. I have not completely lost my mind.)

Someone I know was on the prowl, met a guy and made the mistake of hitting it off before asking him The Question.

The Question is not "Are you straight?" (if you, yourself, are straight) or even "Are you in a relationship?" (which, apparently, is not a dealbreaker here).

"How long are you in Liberia?"

"Four months."

End of conversation.

I had a friend who was never quite sure who she was, having spent every second year of her youth somewhere new. This always sounded so cool but now I see the downside: people without roots seem strange, fly-by-night. They're poor social investments. The expats who are here long enough see friends and lovers leave in cycles and it can be excrutiating. Eventually, you assess whether people are worth knowing by their answers to The Question.

The thing is, though, that contracts get unexpectedly renewed and life back home can lose its shine from afar. Four months has been known to stretch three years. Plans change. I, for example, was supposed to be starting an MBA stateside this August. I assure you that that is no longer the case.

I blame this entirely on my answer to The Question.  I should have said "Not long" and been a social pariah, alone with my books and homeward bound.

The Walking Dead

I am not ashamed to say it: I have long feared a zombie apocalypse and went out of my way not to watch The Walking Dead.

It found its way into my room anyway, though, so I inhaled all of Season One in a day.

It was not my best-laid plan: I am now positive that the end is near.

Living in Monrovia doesn't exactly ease my concern.

Half the times I leave a parked car, I'm beseiged by beggars and amputees. They can smell the the guilt on me. And when I return, the car is being watched (read: sat on) by 1-5 self-appointed guards who then claw at my windows, enraged by my escape. 

I heard that someone visiting Monrovia once announced, "I am not here to nourish you!" Fair. I wanted to scream the same thing recently: sometimes, you see, the creature that wants a piece of you doesn't even approach you like a man -- it creeps into your water and eats you from the inside as I learned when I awoke looking well into my third trimester. Let me present my new friend, Giardia, a lovely little parasite that latched onto my intestine and fed its ass off.

Shooting it in the head wasn't an option and my pickaxe was not where I left it so I took a pill and hoped for the best.

There better be a cure for all of this (my irrational stupidity, included) in Season Two.

Chia

This week, I acquired a papaya the size of my thigh.

The market-woman was cradling it like a baby.

I don't know how effective this was but you never know: strange things happen during development in Liberia.

I think it's the heat.

According to Liberian legend, a woman noticed her housekeeper striding into puberty and promptly beat the girl's chest with a wooden spoon, hoping to stall nature (and her husband's advances).

The motorbike drivers, the wheelbarrow pushers, the roving ex-combatants -- tough-as-nails young men -- almost always look trapped in perma-youth like dolls or preserves.

And small children gyrate wildly to songs whose lyrics make me blush (or, you know, my version thereof). It's as though they were born with grown-up swagger (or, at the very least, moves like Jagger).

I wonder if, at any point, the housekeepers and tough guys and gyrating children got cradled as sweetly as that papaya (which, for the record, was amazing. I think it was the heat).

Talk

There are less than four million people in Liberia.

A third of them live in the capital.

And they all know each other.

I'm talking names, ancestors, youthful follies, family scandals. All your business is public knowledge because

            Small-town familiarity
      + Story-telling culture
+ Close quarters
            = High-speed gossip mill

Forget the internet: word spreads like wildfire in Monrovia.

First, there was the rumor that the Vice President died overnight in December. This belief had so thoroughly permeated the working class that I called my mother to confirm. She hung up on me, still laughing.

And there was the one about people buried on the beach and suffocating in containers during last year's riots. This so incensed the opposition that my journalist and governance buddies took police escorts and went exploring. (I sat in the car where it was cool and where I was safe from future lectures from Mom.)

There are, of course, the rumors that turn out to be true. And pics of political leaders in threesomes make fantastic roadside billboards. 

Photo of the Day

Between this and this, I think I'm beyond surprise this week.

So when I stood eating cereal at 7am and saw a frog leap across the living room, I didn't blink. I didn't even stop chewing. I just nodded, said "Of course" to nobody and watched the water for a while.

It's Always Sunny

I forgot to mention that I drive a taxi.

More accurately, because I can't drive stick, I sit shotgun in what appears to be a Liberian cab.

I am constantly being hailed; this week, someone nearly climbed in the backseat.

The car in question is a Nissan Sunny. I have never had a car and know, like, zero things about vehicles but of all possible cars, my mother gifted me a taxi.

With stick shift.

(My mom has a peculiar sense of humor.)

The Sunny -- and the three-month fog -- got me thinking a lot about all things bright.

I was in the Sunny the other day and the driver stopped for a pedestrian. The girl froze and stared into my car until someone honked and broke her trance. 

"She's looking at you," the driver laughed.

"I doubt that," I said. "She's looking at you."

"Why would she look at me, black as I am? She was looking at you. She saw another bright person and thought it was a mirror."

In Liberia, bright has nothing to do with smarts or luminosity: bright is a skin color. 

I have seen bright people and I am not one of them. Due in part to German ancestry, I think I fall into the red category, as was concluded in the maternity ward many, many years ago.

In Liberia, nearly everyone has exactly the same dark, gorgeous skin so outliers draw notice. And classification.

One day, I saw a car full of uniformed albino kids and wondered if they were being collected, like action figures. Albinism is unusually common Africa (1 in 4,000 compared with 1 in 20,000 worldwide). Thankfully, albinos in Liberia are generally well-regarded (unlike, say, here).

Skin color can be pretty incendiary, as President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf recounts in her autobiography:

Early on during my historic 2005 campaign for the presidency of Liberia, rumors began to circulate about my ethnicity. My detractors began whispering that I was an Americo-Liberian, a descendant of one of those first American-born founders of our land — and thus a member of the elite class that had ruled our nation for long. This was an explosive charge. It could not be brushed off or ignored, not if I wanted to win. It was crucial that the people of Liberia know my background was not unlike their own. 

Madam President is Gola, Kru and German.

She is hovering somewhere between bright and red. Maybe she's bright red, I don't know.

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.

A Recipe

I'm feeling hella prolific this week so I'm gonna go with it.

My mom's had about 400 boyfriends; of them, I've liked only two.

The first turned out to be very, very married, which put me off guys for a decade or so.

The other -- the current one -- is losing his leg right...now.

I am so pissed off.

Disaster

Cook Time: 2 months

Total Time: 2 months and 5 days

Yield: Serves 1

Ingredients:

2 cups diabetes

2 cups denial

2 cups Liberian machismo

2 cups procrastination

1 doctor

1 witch doctor

1 flight to the States

Preparation:

Combine. Wait. 

Phobia

On Sunday, while my friends were floating (drunk) down a river, I was at home, sobbing into a long-distance phone call because in my kitchen was a spider the size of my hand. (And, as Brian and Melanie will attest, I have massive hands for a girl. I could palm a basketball on a hot day.)

But I digress.

This monster was sitting on a box of Kashi that, incidentally, I can no longer look at.

I don't know if you've been to the tropics -- in truth, I have yet to go into the bush (uhh...forest) of Liberia -- but I'm pretty sure the insects are on steroids. And you really don't know what tricks they're up to. Do they bite? Will I die? Are there wings tucked away somewhere? 

So there I was, scream-crying as I beat this thing with a Windex bottle while the jerk on the phone just laughed and laughed. 

And now I don't sleep because surely there's an angry mate somewhere. Waiting. 

This now ranks #1 on a list of Traumatic Moments Since Leaving the States. 

The previous #1 took place a week into my stay when a see-through lizard fell from the ceiling. Of my 5-by-5-foot bathroom. Needless to say, the Sonicare went flying and a showdown ensued because you cannot -- cannot -- just go to bed or forget about it. No: the enemy you were kind enough to overlook might crawl into your sleeping mouth or lay eggs in your face (thank you very much, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark). 

No: you remember the Native American's story from Natural Born Killers that goes,  "Once upon a time, a woman was picking up firewood. She came upon a poisonous snake frozen in the snow. She took the snake home and nursed it back to health. One day the snake bit her on the cheek. As she lay dying, she asked the snake, 'Why have you done this to me?' And the snake answered, 'Look, bitch, you knew I was a snake.'"

Amen.

It's a jungle out there. And not that concrete nonsense -- a real jungle. And I want it far, far away from me.

In other news, I work in environmental conservation.

Kerouac

There are several -- but not many -- kinds of people.

Among them are the Dean Moriarty types, "the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars."

And there are the Sal Paradise types, about whom the Dean Moriartys say, "Don’t you think, Carlo, there’s a kind of a dignity in the way he’s sitting there and digging us, crazy cat came all the way across the country."

I’m that guy.

I don’t go to parties: I watch them. I flew clear across the world just to do what I do: lean against things and chronicle while the people around me enjoy themselves.

This makes me a real freak of nature in Liberia, where talking -- that is to say, stringing words together at length for some unfortunate captive audience -- is the national pastime.

Instead, I type. I scribble. I snapshot.

This is blog post number one-hundred and one.

Makes all my leaning against things worthwhile.