Today marked my five-month-aversary here on the ship. Five months ago, I landed at Roberts Airfield and walked off the plane into the dark, sticky Liberian heat. Five months ago I drove for the first time through the dim streets of downtown Monrovia, arriving to the port to see the ship, lit up like a beacon in the night. Five months ago I walked up the gangway and into the dining room, explored the ship and tried vainly to find my way around. Five months ago, I ventured outside the port gates and walked down the road to the market for the first time, fearing for my life almost the entire way. Everything was new. Everything was strange. Everything felt larger than life. Everything was an adventure, and I was an unsure pioneer, stumbling through my days as I searched for the path under my feet.
I’ve come a long way, baby.
Today, I made that same walk down UN Drive to Duala Market. Jenn and I ran down the gangway into the cool Liberian air. (In reality, it was probably around eighty degrees, but the overcast sky and slight breeze made us briefly consider going back inside for sweatshirts.) We wandered down the road, circling enormous puddles of muddy water and garbage, and figured we’d been given an extremely wide berth when a taxi scraped past us with about a foot to spare. We stopped at a bakery and the supermarket and the UNMIL store, chatting in Liberian English with the workers there and buying cinnamon buns and Jello and screen-printed t-shirts, three for five dollars. We wended our way through the stalls and wheelbarrows in the market, buying slippers and lappas and hairbands for Jenn’s Bible study group. And then we hailed a cab, jumped in and got ourselves dropped off at our gate, handing the driver our fare without ever having to ask what he was charging. It all felt so normal.
Jenn said it best, somewhere between the port and the bakery. If you can do this, you can do anything. If dodging Liberian taxis and speaking English so garbled I sometimes don’t understand myself can be second-nature, what can’t I do? If bartering for prices and buying flip-flops out of a rusty wheelbarrow can seem commonplace, what can’t I get used to?
I was just writing an e-mail to my travel agent, asking about booking a ticket home for Christmas. It’s been five months, and it’ll be almost six more before I fly, back to what we wryly refer to as the Real World. When I look at my life now, this new normal, I have a vaguely unsettled feeling that I don’t belong there anymore. But, like so much else that’s changed over the past five months, that thought doesn’t scare me half as much as it did on the day I left. I’m just not sure I really want to go back.
