I generally consider growing up in Liberia to have been the Best Childhood Ever. The ending wasn't so great (see: April/May 1990, Location of NPFL* in), but when people ask the ever-simplistic question, "What was it like growing up in Africa?" I generally have a positive response. (I don't say, although I am tempted to, "I DON'T KNOW, CRAZY PERSON. I DIDN'T GROW UP IN YOUR NEBULOUS AFRICA." Random story: when my friend S. came to Rwanda, she would hiss the first syllable: "Afffffff-riCA!" as a way of mocking all the people who kept saying, "Oh, man, you are going to Afff-riCA? You are so brave!" End random story. I, as it turns out, I grew up in Buchanan, Liberia, thankyouverymuch.)
Anyway, when people ask, I usually say good things, because I think that growing up in a culture other than your parents' is one of the most interesting ways to live on this earth. You can learn to slip easily between cultures as an adult, but it's never as instinctive as the cultures you learn as a child. That and the fact that my friends and my brother and I had so much fun dangling from trees and sharing bikes and building fires and generally raising all the havoc there was to be raised on Upper Buchanan Road. (Kidding. Obviously. I have been a rule-follower all my life. I was 28 before I even thought about rebelling. It took Gone West + vodka to teach me how. Circa 2008.)
This weekend, though, driving through huge trees in National Forests that seem to stretch forever, listening to S. and N. talk about camping there and hiking there and climbing that mountain over there, I started to see the allure of knowing one place well. I can't say I know any place well, not outside and in. I know Liberia, a little, and Michigan, a little, and Rwanda, a little, and New York, a little, and Gone West, a little, and Tanzania-Uganda-Kenya-Sudan-Honduras-the Netherlands-England even littler, and that's not even counting vacations. It would be lovely, I think sometimes, to be surrounded by things that have been familiar since childhood, but my childhood is across a continent and then an ocean, and I can't afford to go there right now.
So when I looked up at those beautiful mountains, and heard tell of childhoods lived with them nearby, constant, something constant in this world, well, I could see why people find a place and make a home.
* You don't know what the NPFL is? Peoples. Read up on your Liberian history. Liberian History 101 is a pre-requisite for reading anything I write.
Anyway, when people ask, I usually say good things, because I think that growing up in a culture other than your parents' is one of the most interesting ways to live on this earth. You can learn to slip easily between cultures as an adult, but it's never as instinctive as the cultures you learn as a child. That and the fact that my friends and my brother and I had so much fun dangling from trees and sharing bikes and building fires and generally raising all the havoc there was to be raised on Upper Buchanan Road. (Kidding. Obviously. I have been a rule-follower all my life. I was 28 before I even thought about rebelling. It took Gone West + vodka to teach me how. Circa 2008.)
This weekend, though, driving through huge trees in National Forests that seem to stretch forever, listening to S. and N. talk about camping there and hiking there and climbing that mountain over there, I started to see the allure of knowing one place well. I can't say I know any place well, not outside and in. I know Liberia, a little, and Michigan, a little, and Rwanda, a little, and New York, a little, and Gone West, a little, and Tanzania-Uganda-Kenya-Sudan-Honduras-the Netherlands-England even littler, and that's not even counting vacations. It would be lovely, I think sometimes, to be surrounded by things that have been familiar since childhood, but my childhood is across a continent and then an ocean, and I can't afford to go there right now.
So when I looked up at those beautiful mountains, and heard tell of childhoods lived with them nearby, constant, something constant in this world, well, I could see why people find a place and make a home.
* You don't know what the NPFL is? Peoples. Read up on your Liberian history. Liberian History 101 is a pre-requisite for reading anything I write.
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