Lazy Sunday

It's Lebanese time again. This time, a restaurant. A blanket of dried palm leaves suspended 20 feet above shields our putty-coloured plastic table. The leaves surround the restaurant on every side. I feel like I'm in a Toronto Zoo exhibit, this time on the other side of the glass.

This is my formal introduction to Lamii, JHR's Liberian country director. He's chewing on a toothpick, scanning the room for onlookers.

I ask him what he thinks is the biggest human rights issue in Gbarnga, where I will be staying for months starting next Wednesday.

"The judicial system is very bad." His white teeth are almost blinding. The yellow-toothed at home would pay thousands to get them bleached his shade.

He continues, "People are detained if they are accused of a crime, without a hearing. There are some who have been in jail for years, without even committing an atrocity."

Jess is here too, telling us about visiting a Monrovian prison for a story she was working on with a Liberian journalism student from the university. One man has been detained for three years, accused of armed robbery and still hasn't set eyes on a court house. The other doesn't know what he's in for.

An inebriated stray cat resembling my first one as a child approaches our table but the Liberian waitress shoos her away.

It's Sunday today, the formal resting day in Monrovia. Most people are moving slower than usual. Others are working.

On our way to lunch I see crews of men, building new paved roads. It wasn't long ago when rebels were knocking everything down. Now the people are building it back up again. And even improving upon what once was. Many locals give Monrovia's female mayor and Liberia's female president the credit. People are tired of fighting. During the war, which ended less than a decade ago, all the markets had to shut down. People starved, trying to find anything to eat. Many survived on oil from palm trees.

After lunch Aaron takes me to the beach. He says he needs it as an escape every once in a while. Fine with me.

We go to "Thinkers Point," where other ex-pats assemble in clusters under thatched huts. Surf boards stuck in the sand. Two foreigners whip a tennis ball back and forth between two wooden paddles. I long to join them. But the waves are waiting.

"Let's go!" I say to Aaron, and we walk through the deep sand to the water's edge. The coffee (con leche) coloured sand squishing between our toes. Sinking deeper and deeper. If I stand in the same spot for more than a minute, my foot may be lost forever. These15-foot waves closing in.

The salty Atlantic is tepid, not shockingly frigid, like jumping into an Ontario lake on the first day of summer.

We move slowly into the grey daunting waters. The sky is still full of dust, blending the ocean's horizon into the atmosphere. Crash! I'm not fast enough to catch the wave and the bubbly wake hits my back with a mighty force. "I am smaller than all of this." I feel subjected to the whim of the earth's moods.

Aaron floats on his back. I wish I could do the same but I shouldn't even be as deep as I am after an ear operation a couple of years ago. I'm not allowed to get any water in it. And no plugs can do the tricks, the doctors say.

We play in the water and time disappears.

Eventually Aaron is ready to get out, so I join him. I'm not going to play roulette with the sea, apprehensive of being swept away into the raging riptides.

We sit in our salty soaked suits, drying off and talking about human rights and our families. An Australian girl and her Dutch male friend block our view of the ocean. "We are going for Ethiopian food tonight, would you like to come?"

"Yes, that sounds good," Aaron says. Jane looks at me, "You should join us too." And they disappear.

Later, Aaron and I say goodbye to the beach and squeeze into the back seat of a taxi with two other people. Taxi's consider themselves full with four in the back and one in the front. The 10-minute trip costs about a dollar. We could have hopped on the back of a motorcycle for hire, but I'm wearing a skirt and Aaron says our destination is too far away for two wheels.

We get out and transfer taxis. Each destination has a special hand signal to wave a taxi down. We stick out our right hand in the direction of where we want to go, moving it up and down, fingers straight.

Another close ride. But people don't care about resting their arms each other's laps or swinging them behind heads. There's no where else to put them.

Six of us sit on a patio. Two Americans; one with a British accent. A German, an Australian, Aaron and me. We order a variety of dishes with spongy sour bread that soaks up the sauce. Chunks of lamb and chicken sandwiched between.

Conversation moves from Gabriel's recent trip home, where he climbed a mountain in the snow. His eyelashes caked in ice. Maria, the German woman, talks about trying to save endangered sea turtles. People from her organization talk to locals, trying to prevent them from taking the eggs these turtles lay on the beach. "They will become extinct," she tells them. Maria says the locals are understanding and agreeing to stay away. I wonder what their alternative food source will be.

We plan some events before Jane the Australian has to leave. I haven't been to many of these places, so I'm grateful to be included. She is in the process of building a raft out of large plastic water bottles and wants to set sail in the swamp before departure.

"How many people will get on this raft?" I ask.

"Well, may be just one. My plan was to get 300 water bottles but I only have 25 now and I'm leaving in a week."

She asks me to save my empty bottles for her boat. I tell her I will.