humor in sharing

So I decided about a year ago that for my next apartment I would like to live alone. My theory is that if you don’t get married by age 22, you inevitably reach a point in your independent life when you recognize that roommates are great (love you Melissa!) but you just desire to live alone. When living in Chicago and planning for my move to Africa it was impractical to pay extra rent for my own place, that’s how my plan became that at my next apartment I would fly solo. When sorting out the details for my housing here in Liberia, there was a moment when I thought I was going to be living alone – and this moment was scary! I remember speaking in load tones about how yes, I would like to live alone, but not in Africa! So I was relieved and excited to hear Nelly would be staying with me. Our ‘roommate relationship’ has been awkward at best! Haha This is mostly because our roles are defined by Liberian standards, but in my head I’m still a Western gal. My interest in doing my own wash and cleaning the bathroom and washing dishes has been hard for Nelly to understand and even harder for visitors. Today Harbi was visiting and when I mentioned having done some wash this morning he asked me why I would do that. I found myself explaining that if I didn’t do anything domestic, I would be bored. My weekend days here feel more productive when I clean up the kitchen, or wash my bedding, for the simple fact that I don’t have a lot of other options for activities to engage myself – I mean I can only read for so many hours a day (especially since I’ve been flying through the few books I packed)!

Having a housemate (regardless of cultural standards) means that sometimes things won’t be where you left them and sometimes the last orange is gone when you’re ready to eat it for breakfast. Nuances also emerge when sharing a home, for example during my first weeks here I noticed that my face wash was always located in a different spot than I left it in the shower. To me this indicated that Nelly was using it (not gonna lie – this sent my constantly-budgeting-resources-mind into a frenzy!) so to be sure that I wasn’t losing my mind, I asked her one day ‘have you been using my face wash?’ She replied no and that was that. Just this week after I started using different face soap, I removed my former cleanser (a tube of Neutrogena cream face wash) from the shower. A couple days after this Nelly came to me saying ‘I did not find the oil’. We went back and forth in a bizarre rendition of English fragments and finally after her gesturing to her arm and pointing to the spot in the shower where the aforementioned item was supposed to be located, I realized she was speaking of my face wash. I got it out (visual aides are crucial) and she said that was what she was looking for. Things started coming together for me at this point, and when I asked what she had been using it for, she said cream (again gesturing to her arm). Turns out, she didn’t know what it was, but when she investigated the contents, decided it was lotion so she’d been using it on her body (post-shower) as if it were body cream. I imagine this felt nice (it has a cooling feeling to it) but I still can’t grasp how long it would take to rub in face wash on dry skin! Haha I explained it was soap for my face (face wash is a phrase they don’t use around these parts) and sent her with money to buy some proper cream for her body. We both laughed quite a bit!