Boss lady

Mary, manager of our country programme, got an email from one of the drivers, Sam, saying 'have a blessed day boss lady'. He's in the team I'm temporarily overseeing so she forwarded it to me and it made me chuckle.

Sam will drive us when I go to the field with colleagues at the weekend. He was telling me his wife always urges him to 'be careful' on such trips. Does this relate to the long distances, I enquired. Apparently not; it's because she's worried he will be tempted to sleep with one of the village women, who gently flirt with NGO car drivers, assuming they're earning decent money.

I asked Sam whether it's common for male NGO workers to have relations away from home, given that work whisks them off for weeks on end. He says it's 'very, very common' and that men can get themselves into situations where they're giving money to women in far flung locations who start to depend on them. Sam says a surefire way to raise his wife's suspicions is to arrive back from field trips with clean clothes. Even though he may have washed them himself, or paid an old crone to do it, his wife will assume it's the work of an eligible female rival. Sam is under strict instruction to return with his dirty clothes so his wife can wash them herself.

It's fascinating that the occurrence of adultery is discussed so openly and with some humour. It speaks to a recognition that some humans are fallible creatures, for whom the social construct of marriage vows may fail to curtail carnal desires. Sam was indicating that he remains faithful, but that extra marital sex is rife. Unless in an open relationship, discussions such as this would generally be much more taboo in the UK, guaranteed to lead to a more damning state of mistrust and tension if aired.

There is so much in the global news about gender relations, that this exchange made me think. Different women appear as both dependent and powerful in this story; the dependence perhaps related to the perceived eligibility of and competition over men with slightly more material wealth than the average; the powerfulness related to the African woman's role as a matriarch and boss of the family. It could simply, and is likely, to be that in Liberia gender roles allow men to manipulate situations to get sex if they want.

So far, Liberia is synonymous with diner life. I had lunch at this rundown diner, and an evening meal at another. The American influence is strong in some parts of Liberian culture, such as delicious crispy fried chicken.