Africa
Just as I was leaving the office in Mamba Point, in Liberia, a guy turns around and says, “Hey, have a look!” Piano Teeth spoke to me in a firm, hoarse, commanding voice. He was crouching down on the pavement by the bend, almost hunched over as he entertained himself with the finishing details of…
They say that nobody ever saw that Spanish woman who worked for the embassy again. They say that when the war broke out she chose to stay in Monrovia. They say that after a few months she just stopped phoning. Her emails never arrived. She no longer spoke. She disappeared. Josep is now on the…
“We are going out tonight,” says François as he grabs onto my arm at the Sajj. I gulped down one more Club beer and felt apprehensively ready to hit the night in Liberia. “They’re going to throw themselves at you,” Hans warns me. And here we go. We find ourselves in a Nissan Pathfinder, the…
Did you know that the sea and air conditioning sound quite alike? When I am lying in my room wavering between the shades of dark and the air conditioning has finally stopped puffing, I can hear the waves surging against Miami Beach. I can hear the haughty sea making its way up to the zinc…
This is what expats ask each other: “Where are you from?” “How long have you been in Liberia for?” “How long will be you be staying in Liberia?” “What organisation do you work for?” “Where were you before?” They are the classics. The typical questions you will get asked, time and time again, especially by…
The meeting will begin at eight o’clock in the morning. That’s what the green paper on my desk says and that’s what I tell Roland, who has driven me here in the Toyota Prado. It’s my first ever meeting in a public building in Liberia, at the premises of the Liberian Government, in Africa. We…
Now. I walk down the hill of UN Drive towards my house in Mamba Point and I see her. It’s as if the Liberians who are randomly walking around on the street move to one side to let her go by. It’s like the Moses effect, when he parted the sea. She is like a…
I hit the streets once again without an umbrella in Liberia and after taking a mere seven steps, I have to go back in. Under some kind of porch, I wait to see if the rain gradually calms down. But the rain keeps pouring down. It makes sense; we’re right in the middle of the…
There is someone in the kitchen. It’s a young man of medium height. His name is Anthony and he moves stealthily. As if he were wearing socks instead of shoes. Anthony opens the pantry, takes out some fruit and brings it all out to Josep and I at the table. We have breakfast looking out…
The granite tiles at the Zaventem airport in Brussels are a stranger colour every time I see them. The marble I slowly discover increasingly adopts an expression that I cannot decipher. I walk past the gates and then more gates, Gate 3, 24, 55, 77, 91… there are fewer and fewer people at this end.…