Moving Units

Whatup y’alls!? I’m still here. Homeless for the time being but in good spirits. Unfortunately the woman whose place I was staying at decided to come back last night so I had to crash on a friend’s coach. As an introduction to my new, less luxurious life, I was invited to clean up two dead mice and kill the biggest cockroach I’ve ever seen. I also learned a valuable lesson about sleeping in a non-air conditioned room in tropical heat: it suckz. I need to find “my own” place soon. Since it’s ridiculously expensive it looks like I’ll have to aim towards the lower end on the Monrovia’s real estate market. The parameters at play are: between what hours is the generator on, does the shower have warm water, is there a security guard. The capital has no central electricity at all and is run solely on private generators. Charles Taylor paid his “boys” by instituting Operation Pay Yourself during which they basically looted the country with impunity. Electric poles were stripped of their wires and the copper (or whatever the hell is in those things) sold on the black market. All throughout the city there are still bare poles lining the street. President Johnson has promised electricity to parts of the city by Liberian Independence Day (July 26th) – I’d be extremely surprised if this actually happened. More likely there will be disappointed rioting when this doesn't happen.

Life here continues to be surreal. First of all, there’s next to no interaction between UN-staff and the locals. It’s a huge problem in my book but people here don’t seem too bothered by it. I know you’re thinking that I’m trying to be ‘that guy’, and to be fair, it’s not like I have a bunch of Liberian homies that I hang out with on the regular. It’s not easy to bridge the gap either. If you’re white here, you are rich and any relationship invariably has a strange backdrop tainted by have and have-nots. Point taken. But is it really necessary to blast through the city in a huge UN jeep right after it has rained splashing each and every pedestrian on the sidewalk? Would it kill you to invite the one Liberian kid looking on when you are playing soccer? How come every Liberian I say hello to (again, they all stare at me so I have to say something) gets this really surprised look on his/her face? Amazingly, one of the UN compounds (Mega Compound) sits right next to the most unsanitary slum on the beach. You feel like you’re walking into the dirtiest refugee camp you’ve ever seen, take a quick left and you’re in a gated community with a huge pool, literally just a thin, barbed-wired wall separating you from the outside.

The ways people try to get my attention continue to reach new highs (or lows, depending on what you feel). “White Man!” I spin around when I hear that one, of course, since I am, indeed, a white man. “Yes, how can I, and my whiteness, be of service?”
Another favorite: “Hey! Biggie Smalls!”

On Sunday we went to the beach. Liberia’s entire coast is basically sandy beaches and it will make an amazing tourist asset one day. I didn’t bring my camera but will next time. It’s almost pathetically beautiful. Colorful fishing boats, fishermen wearing next to nothing (gasp!), little kids selling trinkets, laughing at you when the waves pummel you, me in my perfectly chiseled body = perfect way to spend a Sunday.

I have to work now my dear little tooties.

Yeah!