Liberia
My sweet little man. That bright-smiled deep-dimpled love of my heart. Elijah. I at once craved and dreaded seeing my little angle. Excited because his smile, his laugh, his breast-fed plumpness and joy brings a smile to my face so easily; dreaded because to see him again means his mother is still sick. And so […]
In defiance of all generalizations and laughingly agreed upon norms among my Liberian and American friends, Liberians were the first to arrive at our party- well before any Americans showed their faces. First was Belecca, friend in tow, dressed to the nines in a lapa suit I’d never seen and a fancy head wrap. I […]
They are often yellow. Technically they are cars. The similarity between Liberian taxis and American ones ends there. Even outside of California’s extreme, where the rules of vehicle maintenance seem to border on impossible to maintain, there are limits to the jalopy-ness permissible in a motor vehicle. All the more so if people will be […]
It was exquisite. Despite sleep still pressing lightly on my senses, I could hear it in the distance. I mistook it for a call to prayer – the voice clearly singing Arabic – but the sound was not a call to prayer, it was music. And at the far reaches of 5am, the sun still […]
Soft like the final raindrops of a lingering storm – its rage exhausted – I heard the patter footsteps. My paraffin lamp pinned my shadowed self to the dark walls while my flesh self crouched on a wooden chair hugging my knees and repeated a whispered mantra over and over. “please don’t get into my […]
She didn’t make a sound. Her small eyes looked left and right, not quite fixing on any one thing. But she didn’t cry. She was noiseless. It was larger this time. Ill-fitted to her tiny body. Her soft feet and hands seemed so insubstantial – weightless – against the enormity of her swelling head. Little […]
An 8-year-old Chad D. has had a lasting impression on me. Twenty years ago, when I made a rather lucrative teenage living from babysitting, I was preparing a snack for that precocious little boy when he uttered, “they’re only weevils.” My hand was in a bag of bread preparing to make him a sandwich, but […]
“do you like mangos?” “in Sierra Leone we have different types,” Sierra Leone said. “there is one kind, sheep tongue, that—“ In interrupted him there, “sheep tongue?” I made a face, “That doesn’t sound like anything I want to put in my mouth.” “not tongue, tone. T.O.N.E.” “oh, that’s better,” I smiled. “see, in Creole […]
There are times when the generosity and kindness of Liberians makes it easy to forget that the country was ravaged by war – or the crisis, as it is often referred. But little things prick the memory and I am reminded. More than the pin pin boys on flashy motorcycles dodging in and out of […]
generosity
She looked at me a little confused. Her nose, in the center of a clear teak complexion, crinkled slightly as she shook her head. “hair is something we do as friends, you don’t pay for it.” I had pulled out LD ready to pay her as much for her cornrowing skill (I have more hair […]
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