I was right, of course. Tomorrow morning is always better after I have my little curl-up-and-whimper episodes. Woke up feeling fine, threw my bag over my shoulder and headed out to explore the neighborhood. Sinkor is what most people back home would describe euphemistically as  “mixed” – the city hospital and iLab Liberia around the corner, collapsed buildings and tin shanties between them. But it’s a neighborhood – families live here and little kids play in the streets.

The beach, only a couple of blocks away, intrigued me. I rounded the corner made my way past churches belting out competing joyful gospels down the street. Exchanged the usual Sunday morning pleasantries with kids eager to demonstrate how brave they were to talk with the white guy as bemused mothers watched from the step. Past chickens and charcoal fires, then out onto the wet sand. The beach was gorgeous, gray and empty – it had a Mood. Two girls playing in the runoff stream from this morning’s thunderstorm reached in and flipped minnows out onto the bank for fun, then giggled and squealed at each other. An older gentleman hiked his pants up and forded the crossing, pausing to smile and say “Sure, why not?” as I hoisted my camera in the universal “Okay if I take your picture?” gesture.

Coming back on to pavement from a different street, I realized that I hadn’t yet had breakfast and stopped in at a roadside convenience stand. Gentleman behind the counter was preparing a tasty-looking egg sandwich for another customer, so I got one – about 85 cents. Retreated back to Moko’s as the rain came back in.

And hey – no one, including myself, seemed to be aware of it, but Monrovia is just a smidge off the total eclipse line for today’s solar eclipse. Wait – what? Today’s eclipse? Yeah, going on right now. Maxes out in about half an hour. Of course, we’ve got solid cloud cover as per usual for Monrovia, but now that I look around, it’s substantially darker than it should be at noon. Heh. Who knew?

Anyhow, still no sign of my luggage – I need to give them a new location to send it if it ever shows up. But you know? I’m feeling fine. And I guess I knew I would.