Chapter 5: Chill and Road Trip

Saturday
July 6, 2019

Chapter 5: Chill and Travel Day

Unlike every other day so far, Saturday was to be a day with no scheduled activities. It was a day of two halves. First half, me at the RLJ. Second half, Jay and Colin on the road. The morning gave a chance to do a little housekeeping, tidy my room, organize things, etc. It also gave me time to play Word Connect on my Fire tablet. I am on level 116 with 1570 points. Thank you very much. I caught up Delphi emails and spent more time on a program I am writing. These items out of the way, the rest of the morning was devoted to more action.

I took a walk around the RLJ grounds, walking the entire width and length of the property. The shape of the premises is more or less rectangular, tall walls line three of the edges, with the remaining border being the Atlantic Ocean. There are guards at each of the entry points, including where the property butts up against the beach. My walk took my basically along the inside of the three walls and along the beach, probably a half-mile loop all the way around. I saw many of the big, colorful lizards — two or three times bigger than Florida lizards — that dot the grounds. I went past the guards with a wave or smile. I chatted with one of the beach guards. One reason for my walk was to plot out a path for a run. So once I had it all more or less mapped out, I returned to my room and changed into running attire. I went back out and ran two quick laps on the full loop. This was followed by a swim in the pool, a few laps, and back to the room.

Somewhere in the course of the morning I shocked myself in the bathroom. I was reaching for a glass on the counter,

brushed my hand against a wall, and BZZZZZZ! I yanked myself back, and stared at where the jolt came from. Turns out the metal part of a plug was left in one of the socket holes. It stuck out about an eighth of an inch, just far enough to brush up against and be zapped. That was unpleasant! I spent way too many minutes trying to pull the broken prong out of the socket without success. Using any insulated tool I could think of — toothbrush, razor handle, balloon — I used to jab, prod, and grip the prong to no avail. Only once in my efforts did I get a second, much smaller zap.

I then spent more time poolside, under the pavilion, eating a plate of chicken wings, a salad, and typing away at my laptop. This when Jay showed up by my side and told me it was time to hit the streets. We were off.

We were on a road trip of sorts. Our destination: the Firestone rubber tree plantation, about an hour to the northeast. This is the largest contiguous rubber plantation in the world. Our drive took us through cities to towns to rural areas, where houses are more sparse and more crudely constructed, to rolling hills of rubber trees of all sizes as far as the eye could see, and ended at Firestone itself. Built nearly a hundred years ago, this is an entire community built to support the production of rubber. The buildings and identical houses arranged symmetrically throughout give it a company town feel. Very different from the usual neighborhoods and towns we pass where buildings are all different shapes and sizes, arranged without much coordination one with the other.

On the way back we pulled up to a collection of roadside food stands. All sorts of fresh from the earth food items were for sale: greens, fruits, bush meats, grains, and shrimp. Every item had been picked or caught, prepared, and brought to the handmade tables and stalls by children and women. This was their livelihood. Jay was stopping for one thing and one thing only: spicy shrimp. He knew what he wanted and he knew this was the stand to get them at. We weren’t even completely stopped when we were mobbed by children with items for sale in their hands. They crowded to my window, Jay rolled it down, and four, five, six hands shot into the car in front of my face, bags of red, marinated shrimp in their grip. He ordered them to get their hands out of the car. They did. He told them what he was after, picked three different sellers, and offered three of them $100 Liberian for three bags from each. The transaction

was made, three made a good sale, and Jay had his snacks for the road. He was excited. In each bag were three dried shrimp, soaked in a mildly spicy red sauce. I must say they were tasty. I had one bag of three. Jay ate the rest, with relish! You eat them without shelling them. They turned out to be a perfect mix of crunchy and meaty with just enough spice to be flavorful with a tiny kick (Xane would LOVE them!) Reminded me very much of the shrimp flavored potato chips from our local Oriental market. Yum!

We made it back to the city and stopped at Jay’s house, the first time I’d been there this trip. His property is pretty amazing. His lot is ringed by a tall wall the top of which holds coiled barbed wire. To enter, you must pass your car through a large metal gate that is opened by a guard from within. There are

three houses on his lot, along with a tall water tower, a well, and a guard tower overlooking the gate. He lives in the smallest house on the lot. It is the only one that is fully built and prepared to be lived in. The other two are in the process of being built. I toured the one closed to being done. Very nice. Three bedrooms with bathrooms and closets off each, good sized kitchen, large dining/living area, garage. He plans on adding a large, closed-in patio as well as a pool. I was very impressed with what he’s done and is going to do. We ate dinner there — greens, gently spicy rice, and chicken. Very ungentle spice was offered, but I declined. (Gentle spice is good for me and my stomach. Jay loves the ungentle spice.) We watched Roger Federer win a match at Wimbledon and played with his daughter.

Our next trip was to fetch the keys to one of his bedrooms from a guest who had stayed there recently. She was a twenty minute drive away. We needed the keys so I can use the room she was staying in. I’ll be moving in there tomorrow.

This short errand turned into a longer errand. The friend is named Cynthia. She owns and runs an establishment by the name of The Boss Bar. This is where we spent a good chunk of the night. The Boss Bar is small, with a few seats inside and a small patio in the front. It is one of three businesses that share a small building tucked away from the street, behind a larger building. The first idea was to simply get the keys from her and go. However, she wanted to talk to Jay for advice (dating problems!). We parked and made our way to the bar. I met Cynthia and her friend, both friendly and lovely. Since we were staying a while, Jay bought me a drink, and a simple Coke would not do. A few minutes later, on the patio at a hightop table, I met my first cold Heineken (When in Rome…). I hung out on the patio while Jay and Cynthia got deeper and deeper into conversation. Clearly she had very important things to say and Jay was the right ear for her.

Throughout the night, serving as a soundtrack, was a continuous blare of African pop songs with their bouncy beats and peppy rhythms. As you’d expect, every song blended into the next without breaks between the two. But what I didn’t expect was that at random spots in every song, no matter if the song was slow or fast, dancy or sing-songy, the same “Oh, shit!” would pop up. “Da da da ta da, do do do to do…Oh,

Shit...da da da ta da, do do do to do…Oh, Shit”... Every song. Every time.

I whiled away my time by watching sports on one of the TVs and looking on at a massive jumble of boxes in the driveway. Both the TV and boxes deserve more description. Of course, like any bar, different sports are on the TVs. Inside they were showing football (soccer to the American reader) and on the outside screen was an international canoeing event and that was followed by an international amateur mixed martial arts competition. I had no idea either sport existed. But what really captured my attention about both events was the broadcaster. Their TV feeds were from an Iraqi network, complete with Arabic subtitles for every scene. What? I know! Iraq! Of all countries! Who would’ve guessed?

More entertaining than the televised sports were the boxes. Blocking the driveway, the pile as tall as a man, were hundreds of cardboard shipping boxes, each filled with a dozen or so bottles of shampoo. Boxes were every which way, some closed, many open with bottles scattered here and there. And all of these boxes were piled atop five or six jumbled, brand new, still in plastic, full-sized mattresses. When we first pulled up we watched a car carefully back out of the driveway. With each tire rotation another bottle of shampoo would explode under its weight and shoot a stream of paste flying through the air or onto the car or onto a nearby wall. What looked to me to be the punchline to a pretty great story, an amazing spectacle, a situation that demanded immediate attention from everyone, was very uninteresting to anyone and everyone around.

Whoever owned the shampoo should be doing everything they can to get it gathered up and transported to wherever. There were thousands of dollars of brand new product scattered all over and no one seemed to care. And they were on top of very valuable mattresses and again no one was too concerned about any of this. People would walk by, glance, and move on. Somewhere there is an owner of a grocery store yelling, “Where is my shampoo?”

I watched this jumble for some time. At one point two men came along, tromped through the now perfumed and colored mud, and started throwing the boxes on the ground and around the edges, onto the top of the pile. They did this for long enough until they could wrestle one of the mattresses out from under the weight of the shampoo. They would yank out a mattress, wipe off any mud and shampoo, place it on their heads, and walk away down the sidewalk. By the time we left, they’d completed this task with two mattresses.

That was my day. Not much for changing the world through education, but fun, enlightening, and great, nevertheless.

Tomorrow we go to church!