I was going to miss my connection. I had just arrived in London-Gatwick and had not so much time to make it to Heathrow for another flight. But damn, those magazines looked good.
I was literally standing at the counter to buy a bus ticket to get to Heathrow. A man behind the counter told me, again, Ma’am, that will be 19 pounds. I looked at him, and I looked at the magazine/newspaper shop just a few feet away. I wanted to leave my luggage and start running and bury myself in a New Yorker, Time, and, god-forbid, even a Cosmopolitan–all at the same time.
Shelby, I told myself, there will be magazines at Heathrow. I forced myself to turn back to the man behind the counter and handed over some money.
The first thing I did when I got to Heathrow:
28 hours of travel later, I’m home. I posted the previous two blog entries in the amount of time that it would have taken me to open Google in Liberia. It’s good to be back.
Liberia was different when I left than when I arrived in December of last year. Sitting in the airport waiting lounge, two flights arrived and departed before my plane landed. When I first got here, we joked about there being one–if any–flight that came into Robertsfield on a given day. Although, as it got darker, the lights in the waiting lounge dimmed as the generator switched gears to handle the additional needs of the runway lights. This was a little reminder that Liberia still has a long way to go.
Going from Liberia to the US, my overwhelming thought is always this: It’s not that they’re poor and we’re rich. It’s that they’re incredibly poor and we’re incredibly rich. I always hated buying groceries in Monrovia because I couldn’t help but wonder what the Liberian cashier thought about me spending $4 on a box of soy milk. What I spent on food in one day could probably feed a Liberian for three weeks, if not more. In Heathrow I saw a shirt that cost 40 pounds, or about $80. That is the salary of a Liberian civil servant for three months. And that civil servant is probably supporting 10 other Liberians.
I am no better equipped to reduce this horrifying inequality than when I first got to Nigeria in October of last year. I am full of things I have seen that don’t work, but what does work, I’m not sure.
Cosmopolitan???????
Roger
welcome home shelby, and thanks for everything, i will miss your blog on Liberia
That’s much like i felt when i got to Abuja last year from the East. I could have been coming from a poorer country, the road network, the lovely houses, the cars jeez. I don’t like to think of places in comparism of who is living better, and who isn’t. If i was earning in Owerri what i earn in Abuja, i’d be a millionaire, but here it could barely do more than my day to day needs. That is life, i guess. Someone who would always have something more than another does.