Small town, Sunday afternoon

My plans to go to Firestone today fell through, so this morning I faced another Sunday with nothing to do and nowhere to go. After making and consuming my first post-return batch of guacamole, I ventured out for a long walk across town. In case you were for some reason contemplating such a plan, I should note that 3:30 in the afternoon during dry season isn’t exactly the ideal time for a long walk in Monrovia, but I had time to kill and needed to get out of the house.

Starting out of my building, I decided that I might as well run the first bit, as it was ground I covered several times a week and the exercise would be good for me. The street had an entirely different feel today – the void of Sunday afternoon, when most people had gone home from church and were spending the rest of the day with family and friends. There was no rush hour bustle with throngs of people waiting for share-taxis, many fewer boys with wheelbarrows full of odds and ends to sell. In my neighborhood, the sidewalk was mostly empty, making my run a bit less of an obstacle course than usual. I dodged only broken chunks of sidewalk and cars sticking into the road rather than the ususal retinue of vendors, schoolkids, and scratch card sales guys. By Capitol Hill, I was virtually alone, with only BBC football news on my headphones and the constant stream of cars driving by with their alphabet soup of acronyms – UNMIL, UNDP, UNPOL, MOS, MLME, TOJ, EQUIP. I crossed to the shady side of the street in front of the Executive Mansion and headed down the hill past the Ministry of Tourism to the Ministry of Lands, Mines and Energy. I slowed to a walk and turned left past the gas station, taking in the city once again.

All the shop doors were shut for the day, bright metal doors hiding the contents inside but offering block-letter hints about the nature of businesses to be resumed Monday morning – furniture shops, construction supplies, tailors. By the Ministry of Defense I was running again, passing its high fence and thinking about the terrors that had gone on behind its imposing walls. Further down the street I ticked off the Ministries of Labour and of Public Works. I eventually made the turn past the Ministry of Gender, debated my course and opted for the road better known, turning toward Randall Street and the nice grocery store in town. I let myself think about the welcome relief it might offer with a few minutes of air conditioning and a bottle of water. Too late, I remembered that it was closed Sundays, so I continued past, annoyed that I’d let myself think about water. A few blocks later, the tenor of the street changed, so I decided to turn back around and head for home.

Finally letting myself off the running hook, I tried hard to get out of my own head and to really see things around me as I walked back. I passed three women that I’d seen on the way out, all dressed in their Sunday best and all looking just as perplexed by me as they had before. An old man with thick dreds and a gap toothed grin said hi, making me realize how few people here have dreds. Half a dozen women and girls having their hair yanked into various plaits made me wince in empathy. A few small groups of boys broke out laughing when they saw me and yelled something that sounded like “Jambo!”, but this isn’t the right part of the world for that greeting, so I’m not sure what they were saying.

A few blocks on, an impromptu football game took over an empty parking lot, reminding me that Monrovia has virtually no green space and painfully few publicly spaces at all. Despite the intense afternoon heat, I passed a young baby thorougly swaddled and apparently content in a bright fuschia fleece blanket. Making my way back up Capitol Hill, I aimed for the shady side of the street again, only to be very politely directed away from the Executive Mansion by a Special Security Service officer. Initially skeptical of a random guy approaching me on the street, I was actually quite happy to be treated like everyone else, even if it meant more time in the sun. Crossing the nightmarish intersection near the University of Liberia, I realized how much I missed the LNP officer who directs traffic there duing the week.

Plodding the last few blocks home past the UNMIL compound and into my building, I was greeted enthusiastically by BoBo, an older Liberian man who tidies things up in our building and generally hangs around to greet people and help when he can. BoBo lives in a small shack on the roof of the building right behind my deck and always looks out for me, even if he’s confounded by my running and marginal parking skills. We try hard to communicate, but he’s mute and my diminishing knowledge of American Sign Language is pretty useless here. We’ve settled for muddling through with pantomime, which today consisted of him making huffing and puffing gestures and then exhaling exaggeratedly, apparently a commentary on my exercise regimen. Gertrude, the evening guard, smiled good-humoredly at me as she usually does, and gave me an approving nod when I told her how far I’d gone today. Leaving them both, I half-bounded up the stairs to my apartment, closing the door and finding myself alone again, no company but the thoughts in my head. I’d filled less than an hour and a half of my day.