Observations
The flames scream out from the parched earth. Ash mingles with dust and dances on the cooling air – night is approaching soft like a lullaby. The crackle and snap of burning brush soothes. The orange flames dance. The smoke conceals the smell of renewal. The beauty goes unnoticed. Pin pin boys race by on […]
I picked up the palm frond from the makeshift parking lot beside the hospital. There is no paving there, but the hospital and county health department vehicles often park there when not in use or when they are being worked on. The patch of parched earth and scraggly grass was almost empty and the hospital […]
Our pump is out of water. Not all pumps, but the one closest to our house. And the one in front of the nursing school has bad water. The next pump I’m familiar with is on the other side of the school and I’m not- I can’t – haul water that far. Well, I suppose […]
The first time I saw an apple beyond Monrovia‘s city limits, it was nestled beside un-refrigerated yogurt cups and foster clark’s *packages. They, along with a myriad of other random and unrelated objects – crackers, soap- bumped along the rutted dirt path in front of the nursing school. The apple was 70LD ($1) and I […]
It took a moment for the sound to register. Kids congregate at our house, and since the tree in our back yard started producing some tiny pear looking fruit – they spend hours throwing rocks and sticks high into its branches, enticing the little green and red fruits to fall. it isn’t unusual to hear […]
This morning I woke up with a start. Bleary eyed and wondering what time it was since I, once again, fell asleep with the light on. Half an hour more of sleep but the bathroom was screaming at me so I attended to that and then turned off my light. A few moments later, after […]
Everything takes longer. Sick. Feeling it slink in after the giddy feeling of dodging it over breakfast…boiled casava and plaintains in sardine sauce that gagged me just so after a few bites. But I spit it out and smiled smugly believing triumph over heaving. But the day marched on. Longer than usual. And the feeling […]
The low hanging sun danced hazy off the morning fog. Moisture, draped temporarily over cotton and rubber trees, softening the edges of cassava leaves and muting popo (papaya) trees in the distance. From a distance, in a blink, behind the cool mist, it looked like the Africa of storybooks, of every old movie and cliché. […]
Liberia takes everything back. The land, the people. They are all seemingly swallowed, digested, and then sprout anew. Be it the banana peel I throw beside the trail to my house. The next day I see it brown and trampled. in a week it is gone. Eaten or carried away. Ground into the earth to […]
foreign in language
“how old is he?” The he in question was toddling about, intermittently crying for no particular reason and grinning at me from behind his cohort Samuel. “he is two.” “and…?” I pointed at Samuel. “he is 18 months. Breastfed,” my neighbor said pointing at Samuel, “not breast fed,” she declared of the other one. I’m […]
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