Liberian pedestrians over the age of 12 have a way of crossing in front of oncoming traffic that gives the appearance of running without actually moving any faster than their original walk.
It's the run of people who don't expect to (or worry they'll) get hit.
People wait...wait...wait until you're a meter away before strolling across your windshield like nonchalant deer in the night.
This confuses me, given the number of collisions in Monrovia each week. Proof of our mortality is sitting, charred, on the front lawn of the police station.The incinerated lump was once a BMW carrying three twenty-somethings who crashed and caught fire and never made it out of the car.
Anyone who knows me knows I am not a driver by any stretch of the imagination. I got my license at 25 and let it collect dust until two weeks ago. I asked someone how to prepare for driving in Monrovia and he said, "Expect that the motorbike cabbie in front of you will lose his flip-flop; as you swerve to avoid him, the parked car in your path opens all four doors at once and a goat runs into the road."
Best advice I've ever gotten.
I wonder what it is that makes people reckless -- even the chickens seems to have a death-wish.
Then I remember the fourth time I met my half-sister. I was 26 and learned I had heaps of photo albums while she had no pictures of her youth: everything had been abandoned and lost during the war. Or I think of the ferocity of Liberian fury that, once aired, disappears as though it never was.
There is a powerful defense mechanism in having a short memory and in not looking too far ahead. I, on the other hand, have been fretting about how to send my kids to college since before I went to college; I recall every mortifying moment of my life and still cringe. All I do is look forward and backward, forward and backward...
...which is helpful when you're reversing your car and a goat runs into the road.
It's the run of people who don't expect to (or worry they'll) get hit.
People wait...wait...wait until you're a meter away before strolling across your windshield like nonchalant deer in the night.
This confuses me, given the number of collisions in Monrovia each week. Proof of our mortality is sitting, charred, on the front lawn of the police station.The incinerated lump was once a BMW carrying three twenty-somethings who crashed and caught fire and never made it out of the car.
Anyone who knows me knows I am not a driver by any stretch of the imagination. I got my license at 25 and let it collect dust until two weeks ago. I asked someone how to prepare for driving in Monrovia and he said, "Expect that the motorbike cabbie in front of you will lose his flip-flop; as you swerve to avoid him, the parked car in your path opens all four doors at once and a goat runs into the road."
Best advice I've ever gotten.
I wonder what it is that makes people reckless -- even the chickens seems to have a death-wish.
Then I remember the fourth time I met my half-sister. I was 26 and learned I had heaps of photo albums while she had no pictures of her youth: everything had been abandoned and lost during the war. Or I think of the ferocity of Liberian fury that, once aired, disappears as though it never was.
There is a powerful defense mechanism in having a short memory and in not looking too far ahead. I, on the other hand, have been fretting about how to send my kids to college since before I went to college; I recall every mortifying moment of my life and still cringe. All I do is look forward and backward, forward and backward...
...which is helpful when you're reversing your car and a goat runs into the road.
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