Observations
The call to prayer chases itself from one minaret to the next – echoing its multiple births across the Place Boujeloud outside the medina gate. Sparsely populated during the day – mostly students from the adjoining college sharing the shade of a row of mulberry trees dropping ripe fruit – the paved expanse is crowded […]
“he’s inside, sleeping,” she called to the vehicle. We had settled to a stop in front of a mud home with a woman, colorful lapa held loosely at her waist, bare-chested except for a red bra. She had been bent over cooking something on the open fire in the front yard. “that is my older […]
Scents seize me. Hold me hostage to a moment- a memory. Sometimes the relationship – time and smell – is uneven, smell weighing so heavy against my senses that I can’t recall the memory itself. Cloaked by the heady emotion, I find myself pulling at the edges of my mind, coaxing that morsel of my […]
“Morning-o!” I called out to friends in front of the County Health Department building. “You are busy with work?” someone called after me. “Small small,” I replied; a very West African response which – like adding “o” to the ends of words, I’ve taken to doing. I’m not sure what feeds my inclination to not […]
The rain came running. I could hear it; feel the wind that carried it, before the first drops fell. I sat pondering time and tadpoles while enjoying the breeze until the rain began to run under the door. Walking to the back of the house where Sierra Leone was napping, rain snuck through the small […]
This morning it was a damp patch of dirt, the color only slightly darker than the surrounding cinnamon brown. Yesterday it had been a muddy puddle; all that remained of the vast and fairly deep puddle that had obstructed the rocky road that runs in front of Sierra Leone’s house. I’d watched the water suspiciously […]
Change gon’ come… Time is so relative, despite appearances to the contrary. Sixty seconds to 60 minutes to 24 hours…and days turn into months turn into years. Neat. Orderly. The same for everyone. Except it isn’t. For the last five months time has been this slow moving vehicle transporting me through my Liberian experience. And […]
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 […]
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 […]
Continue reading about generosity