Lights Out

View fullsize

It's as dark outside on the ground as it is from 32,000 feet when I emerge from Monrovia airport customs.  I am an hour late for my pick up because one of my three pieces of luggage-- my orange backpack-- didn't arrive.  I want to quip that, that an orange backpack is hard to miss, yet missing, but I am alone with now 20 drivers and hotel representatives crowding around me asking where I am trying to go and if I need a place to stay.  I do not feel threatened.  This is what it is like in most places in the world when you don't have prearranged transportation or at least when you have some but decide to ignore it.  I remind myself that people are generally cool and how the opposite would be much worse:  You emerge into a new country welcomed by a blast of hot air and there is no one there at all. 

That backpack by the way, contains a year and a half worth of disposable contacts, 4 duplicate awesome books on emergency procedures and how to read x-rays during pediatric emergencies, and of course all of my underwear.  I want to be optimistic, but the thought of twenty Ghanaians wearing large boxer briefs doesn’t seem very far farfetched.   It's 8 pm and it's 80 degrees  (that's 34 degrees Celsius for you three metric system lovers out there) and I am not thinking straight.   I am thinking that my Dad would think me disgusting.  He didn't want me to come.   "You must change your underwear every day," he used to teach me. 

Finally, after 10 minutes of searching my person for the list of important emergency contacts should I be lost,  a petite man with a yellow IRC t-shirt approaches me and says, "Wilson?" 

"Yes," I say.  

We exchange greetings.  The man named Blama takes me to the organizational car with our logo plastered against it.  I introduce myself to the driver, Molta.  I climb in.  Molta starts the car starts and we accelerate into the blackness--  a ribbon of pavement pulling us along.  The tires hum slightly sticky.  Molta turns on the radio and would you believe Toto's Africa comes on.  I mean what are the odds!!!!  Outside people line the road using the light of oncoming cars like ours to show them the way.  Many walk with newly scavenged twigs and branches perched on their heads.  Some carry 1/2 gallon yellow containers full of water cradled in their arms or perched uneasily on shuttering bicycles.  The people lined path at this late hour is less artery than vein.  The distance people travel to wherever they are going is chronic, long and torturous.  The purpose is to simply to return home.  I have arrived.