lydia

We brought Cynthia to the airport today. (She’s my dad’s boss.)

We had to wait around forever and it was getting boring, but then a skinny Liberian man stepped out in front of all the benches and loudly cleared his throat. He was wearing a shiny top hat, goofy toy glasses, purple suspenders, and size 20 shoes. A clown. I couldn’t help staring at him, and he winked at me.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “what better diversion could there be during a long wait than entertainment?” His jokes were about as funny as a middle-school history teacher’s on a bad day (sorry Mr. Jenkins), but Ben and I howled anyway. A little heat stroke would make anyone delirious.

When the clown finished his performance and carried his hat around for donations, I was devastated to not have any more cash. Most unemployed people around here simply asked for money from others, but this guy wanted to earn his income, to give something back. I admire that. I ended up borrowing from Mrs. VanderHook so I could drop some bills in the clown’s hat. I was glad to see that others were also contributing.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 22nd, 2006 at 4:31 pm and is filed under Liberia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.