WILLIAM LEVIN RETIRED FROM THE PRACTICE OF EMERGENCY MEDICINE AT THE END OF June 2008. He moved to San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua, where he lives near a beach. He is writing a memoir about his time in Liberia. He writes in the morning, works in the public clinic for a few hours in the afternoon, and then walks the beach each evening as the sun is going down.
Yvonne Evans-Smith stayed in Liberia. She lives in Sinkor, teaches accounting at Cuthington College, and makes dinner for her brothers and sisters, her nieces and nephews and their children every Sunday afternoon.
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf finished her second term as the president of the Republic of Liberia on January 18, 2018. George Weah, a former soccer star, was elected to replace her. His vice presidential running mate was Jewel Howard Taylor, senator form Bong County and the divorced wife of Charles Taylor.
Julia Richmond lives in Bolinas, California, in a little walk-up apartment near the sea. She works at San Francisco General Hospital three days a week in the walk-in section of the pedi-ER. She sees coughs and colds and sore throats and kids with constipation, and she has all the Keflex and Betadine she needs. She’s trying to learn medical Spanish. There’s a psychologist she knows who writes poetry and who drives over the Golden Gate Bridge on a beautiful red 1964 BSA Lightning every other weekend, and who doesn’t need to crowd her space, and that is pretty good. But she knows and he knows that she is always looking for the brilliant eyes of someone else when she looks into his. And she knows and he knows that the clock is ticking, and that before long she will have his child, and they will move in together and love the child and each other in a different way, and that she will always remember the time when she loved with all of herself, and not just with her daily routines, not just by being there in body. Then the man she is with will love her by being patient with her absences and will love her by being willing and able to find her in the places she is hiding. One day soon she will let that man come to find her more often when she is buried in her thoughts and memories, and she will let him bring her back to the present from time to time and throw her arms around him and feel the warmth of his body and feel him flow into the empty spaces inside her. And being back in the present with him will give her some pleasure and even a little joy.
That time is coming. Just not quite yet.