First Night

During one of our many medical presentations during training, our medical officer defined stress as the difference between reality and expectation.  Sitting alone on my concrete “kitchen” floor, I aimed my headlamp on an empty Heineken bottle and jammed in a fresh candlestick.  Without electricity, I’d be making this and all future late night dinners by candle and dad AAA battery.  With the same match I lit both the candle and the left burner of my gas stove, all while sitting, again, on my concrete floor.  It had been such a long day that I had forgotten to eat, and the only food I had in my house was oil and popcorn kernels.  I’m so glad I had such low expectations, I thought.  Otherwise I might have been having a panic attack.

That morning I had visited the bank and finished shopping in Liberia’s second largest city, Buchanan, which would be my future oasis when I need a break from my site in the middle of Grand Bassa County.  Buchanan is still barely a city, though at least there are stores selling cheap wine.  It’s also only an hour away. 

That afternoon I arrived with a Peace Corps escort at my new house, was shown my porcelain toilet and adjacent hole in the floor for showering over, my three “bedrooms,” my “storage room,” my common area, and my quaint outside porch.  I chose a bedroom and closed the doors of the other rooms, knowing that I would probably never open them again.  The place was too big.

I had wanted plop down my new foam mattress on the floor and fall right to sleep, but my entourage had other things planned.  First a welcome from teachers and students at the school, which is a fifteen minute walk away.  Then an hour and a half long meeting hosted by Peace Corps to explain to the school what actually I was there for.  Then a tour around town from some of my high school students.  Then a drink with the principal.  Then another tour.    

I felt loved, I felt welcomed, and I felt incredibly tired, but it wasn’t until late at night that I was finally “home.”  And home was a cave of concrete. 

The popcorn popped quickly and it filled my large plastic bowl.  Picking it up, I began walking to my bedroom to enjoy the meal when a small dark figure scurried across the floor.  A cockroach.  “So you Fuckers are here too, huh,” I sighed.  I was too tired to put up my mosquito net, so I hoped desperately that the nocturnal critters left my alone for my first night. 

I barely finished the bowl before I was fast asleep, on my uncovered mattress, next to two unopened suitcases, lying a room away from a “kitchen” that was nothing more than a gas can connected to a two-burner stove on the floor.  That could have been a very stressful night.  But I slept like a baby.