Friday, November 2, 2018

Plants, Boundaries, and Squatters

I'm trying to wrap my mind around some of the mindsets here in Liberia. Life is looked at differently and what may seem completely non-understandable and outrageous makes perfect sense to people here. One of those issues is boundaries. For example, this morning I was sitting on the back porch at 6:30 a.m. eating breakfast and reading my Bible. I was really enjoying the quiet as the sun was coming up. The dog was wandering around the walled in backyard. I heard a rattle and suddenly some strange man was standing there. There I was, thinking I was in my private space and a random man was there. I was shocked speechless. He started talking about how the plants looked watered and good. I had wondered where those plants had come from and now I knew. I heard there was a gardener who had a side business helping people with plants for their houses. I had made it clear that we didn't want help with the plants because the yard is all torn-up right now for construction, but here he was wandering around my backyard in the early morning. I really don't think that to him there was any boundary he crossed when he opened the gate and walked in without permission. Living seems to be much more community oriented here.
Let me give you a little glimpse about where I live. We're on the Old Embassy Compound which basically means that this is a little American Community with housing and some recreational spaces. There's a big wall around the compound with barbed wire on top. To enter the compound you have to come in through one of the gates where you must show your badge to prove you are an embassy employee. So people can't wander in off the street onto the compound. It's a busy place during the day because there are several major construction projects going on as well as the normal maintenance, so there's always some local staff around.
But this next story is one I still haven't been able to rationalize or wrap my mind around. Because I'm at work all day, I'm not really aware of the business going on at the compound. We get in our 40 hours of work by 1:00 on Friday so we have the afternoon free. I had noticed a lot of people wandering around the side of our house on Friday afternoons, then I was home one day to take care of a few things and was really contentious of all the people lingering around my yard. On my way back to work, I noticed the door to the crawl space under our house was ajar. I cautiously took a peek inside and couldn't believe what I saw. A full break room had been set up, complete with a water cooler and microwave wired into the house's electrical. I was flabbergasted. There's no way to really explain the mental battle of how to grasp and feel comfortable with people hanging out under my living space. That night I noticed lights on under the house. Because I'm an absolute 'fraidy cat, I got a friend to check things out for me the next day. She claimed that there were no squatters living in there. I hope not! A few conversations with the right people at work got the situation quickly under control. By Monday afternoon the crawl space was completely empty and swept out. I've noticed that a table has crept back in but right now I'm turning a blind eye to the squatters. I'll give it a bit of time then we can check it out again.

The entrance to the crawl space
A water cooler for breaks. 
Some chairs to hangout in and look, a microwave that they wired into our house wiring.
An outlet - what a convenient place to charge a cell phone while working.
And why not dry out the clothes overnight?

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