seeing is believing

What’s up Chi-town! I saw a man wearing a Cubs shirt last week. And word to Ohio – I passed a guy wearing BGSU shorts just yesterday! Because there are such a variety of scenes to mentally register, I’ve come to live by a new motto here: I’ll believe it when I see it. This applies to the notion that some day there will be a handpump well inside my compound (3 weeks ago they said it would be ready in 2 days) and also the idea that there will eventually be a generator that operates for our entire compound. I’ve heard rumor that there are coins in Liberian currency, but until I saw one yesterday on someone’s desk I wasn’t convinced because the smallest denomination I’d encountered was L$5 bill. You really do see everything here, including men and boys peeing in the street or on the side of the road any time, any place – also saw a girl balancing something on her head just stop and squat to pee along the road once. There are monkeys that ride on top of semi-trucks, 25 men standing in the back of moving pick-ups, a woman breastfeeding on the street corner, piles of garbage half a city-block wide. There are always women carrying lots of different things on their heads, sometimes just to transport them elsewhere, other times things are for sale, like raw fish, plantains, peanuts, fabric, fresh donuts, dried monkey. Yep – that’s right. For the first time in my blessed existence on this planet I saw women carrying dried monkey (still furry) on their heads for sale. I came straight home to tell Nelly to please never make a soup with monkey in it. She just laughed, which makes me nervous because sometimes I think she sneaks in weird food when she’s cooking, like the sea turtle meat – she didn’t admit it was turtle initially, she first declared it was meat from the sea but after further probing on my part she announced its true origin! She says the monkey has plenty, plenty meat and that it tastes sweet. I think I’m okay not confirming what monkey tastes like!