June 25, 2007
Mayhem in Monrovia

Today I witnessed something that will forever stick in my mind.

As my dad and I were out checking on the status of all our adoption stuff we had received a call asking if we could go and pick up a friend who just got done with a meeting and wanted a ride. We agreed, and said we would be there shortly. The heavy traffic was the same as any other day and we chose a route that would be the fastest. We drove to a very wide main street and went with the dense traffic until we reached the side street that our friend was waiting at. We turned; picked her up, drove around the block and were surprised to find that the traffic was almost twice as bad as it was 3 minutes ago. We nudged our way in and slowly made our way down the street. It took us another 10 minutes to find out why the traffic was so bad, and by that time we were stuck right in the middle of it. I will never forget what I saw.

As we approached the scene, there was a large crowd of about 50-60 people who were all grouped together. We couldn’t see want was going on at first, but all of a sudden there was a loud explosion and as a small number of people ran away, we saw flames leap from the hood of a taxi. It took a second to realize why everyone was gathered around it. I thought any intelligent person would get as far away from that thing as possible seeing as how it could explode at any second. But just then the traffic began to move a little and when it stopped we were about 10 feet from the burning car. It was then that I saw what everyone was doing. One man was ripping the rear bumper off, while another was trying to tear the lights out amidst the smoke, and still another was speedily working at getting the tires off before they got swallowed up into the flames. Everyone was trying to get a piece of the almost destroyed hunk of metal (which they probably will sell later). It would have been a somewhat comic sight, if it weren’t for the fact that someone’s life savings and job were literally going up in flames. I’m pretty sure no one was hurt during this whole event, and it didn’t seem like there were any other cars involved (no … it didn’t explode … just completely destroyed and torn apart). We made it slowly thought the traffic and eventually made it safely back to the house we are staying at.