A Man or Malaria

There are just some things that you are born into. For me, it is bad skin. Eczema has always plagued me from enormous breakouts to a mild symptom…eczema has always had me in a chokehold. In the growth of my womanly being I have realized that in the midst of certain breakouts I manage to avoid men. I can always do a sexy in a turtleneck top but if it ever came down to shedding down to some laciest threads I didn’t want to explain the bumps and scars on my skin. It’s not fun pillow talk. You always want your skin to be a landscape for fingers to wander, not a lesson in Braille writing.

These moments in my life had me working on all natural diets, Crisco mud baths, oatmeal injections, whatever drug I could find to cure my eczema breakouts…and always a tube of horticozone cream on standby. I can give more remedies then that doctor on Oprah; I am an expert of treatments of eczema, legal and illegal forms. Men don’t understand how important that moment is of nakedness, full exposure…the ability to see every lump, flop, bump, bruise, excess or not enough of…so whatever possible a woman will endure that just to have a flaw free exposure striptease.

In Africa, me and my eczema has become one. (Read more…)

I’m not too sure if at the moment, if I am truly conflicted. It may be perhaps my nature and what I WANT my nature to be are two different things. My auntie recently called me selfish, and did it out of love…as a moment for self-realization and I had to agree. I just know that the money I have worked hard for, I have the right to choose where it goes and if it is to gratify my well-being so be it. I don’t like crying over a dollar spent out of stupidity, and I have done that recently…not understanding the tipping status quo of a third world country.

Understand, suffering and poverty is part of the climate in Liberia. It’s a country coming back from a civil war. To explain it in American terms…It’s a New Orleans without the conscience of President Bush but with help of an underfunded Red Cross. If Katrina victims got nothing and had to build up, you would see a struggling process. Some people are a little better than others, but the only ones who are living it good are the ones who can go anywhere they truly want to be. Mostly everyone is trying, and everyone has a hustle, some are lucrative, some are legit, some are just prayers, but it is whatever gets a bowl of rice on the tables at night.

Today, the security guard smiled at me and then told me he was hungry. My first reaction was, “Me too.” But looking into his eyes, I realized it was more to this statement. (Read more…)

Bananas Anyone? The Price of being American….

I had the image of me throwing dollars, making it rain like the videos when I first arrived in Liberia. There was even a small part of me that during the great economic fall-out and crisis I would possibly sniffle, but not shed to many tears because I had left the good ol USofA for a country where one of my US dollars equaled 60 Liberian dollars. I had visions of me in an Liberian drop-top, rims spinning, hold a bottle of Chris in my hand, dressed in all white, pouring some out for my broke homies back in the states. Little to say now….

I was wrong. (Read more…)