You Know You're in Liberia When (Part Deux)

With kind permission, reprinting below an email I recently received from Lizzie Goodfriend, who works in Liberia.

For the first "You Know You're In Liberia When" post, see here.

1. You learn, after much experimentation, that the frozen vegetable which tastes most like its fresh self is cauliflower. Brussels sprouts are a distant runner up, and corn comes in third place - though canned corn is better than frozen.

2. Baking becomes an exercise of commitment and diligence, particularly if you want to bake anything delicate, because your gas oven does not have a temperature control, and you therefore have to spend time opening and closing the door, as well as slightly turning the gas tank nozzle, to adjust the temperature appropriately, as dictated by the oven thermometer you keep inside. As you lament this fact, you watch the community members outside your window cooking on their coal stoves.

3. The slightest fatigue or smallest stomach ache has you wondering if you might have a parasite, but then you decide you're probably just overworked and underhydrated - though chances are you do, in fact, have a parasite that will go untreated for at least the next several months.

4. Again, after much experimentation, you discover that, for potholes less than 6 inches deep, the optimal speed at which to drive over them is 35-40 miles per hour. For anything deeper, it's best to keep it under 5.

5. It stops occuring to you as strange that your monthly internet subscription is twice what you pay for your housekeeper's monthly salary, and the cost of hosting a consultant for one day, including hotel and per diem fees, is more than you pay your drivers for one month.

7. Your moral mores about monogamy and fidelity begin to drift, the more you discuss with your male friends their many girlfriends and the more you and your girlfriends contemplate affairs with married men.

8. The country becomes panic-stricken when, along the way of the gossip chain, a public announcement meant to inform Monrovia residents to expect and prepare for the water supply being shut off briefly in order to clean the pipes (which included mention of collecting water in advance and being aware that rust might discolor it) distorts itself into a prophesy - which was widely believed - that God was mad at Liberia and thus, if everyone did not draw water at 3a.m. (the time varied, depending on the story teller) on one morning in some kind of atonement, the city's water would turn to blood.

9. No one seems to have noticed, until the very last minute, that there are not enough hotel rooms in-country, or at least in Monrovia, to house the 400 international women, and their entourages, who are expected in the country for a massive international conference that has been planned for over a year, and a week before the event, several VIPs remain without accomodation.

10. These things all strike you as somewhat amusing, but also eminently 'normal', and you are less and less convinced that you can remember how recipients outside the country might respond to them.

[Monrovia, Liberia - Photo from emadventures.org]