When I was in college, my 21st birthday evening ended when I was dropped on the curb by two burly bouncers at a bar named Kilroy’s after pounding a shot called a Mind Eraser. That Mind Eraser went down really smoothly but quickly bounced out of my stomach like a basketball. I’ll let you imagine the rest of the story, as the Mind Eraser was not the only thing I had ingested that day…..

Fast forward to 2024, and once again, I’ve been thinking about that evening, not because of the exact situation at Kilroy’s, but because of the drink’s name. Living here has forced me to erase my mind in a good way, with no assistance from a bartender or bouncer.

As mentioned in a previous blog post, the first view of Côte d’Ivoire is slightly less pristine than many parts of the US. Things like plastic bags, which might be viewed negatively in the US, are embraced here. The bags themselves signal economic development as opposed to trash. If you order take-out food, you can expect to receive one plastic bag for every item ordered and then another bag to hold all the bags. Even plastic silverware gets its own bag at the Vietnamese restaurant. However, due to systems that are not fully developed (like recycling or even an apparent, organized trash collection time), there is more trash on the street than you would typically see in the US.

In the US, we often equate cleanliness with safety. If you enter an extremely dirty neighborhood with apparent trash and debris, sometimes the brain sends up a safety alert. This is where the idea of the mind eraser comes in. A lack of cleanliness does not necessarily mean a lack of safety here. That fact is a mental hurdle that takes time to overcome. Abidjan is a very safe city that doesn’t necessarily look like it if you don’t wipe out your accumulated lifetime of understanding from an American perspective.

The mind eraser strategy also applies to logic. You go through a metal detector when you enter a shopping mall (or any large store). Walking through the metal detector, you put your backpack on the side table beside the security guard. Do they open the backpack to inspect the contents? No. Is this logical? No. Enter the mind eraser strategy.

When Owen visited me this past week, he wanted to buy a bottle of water from a vendor, and they told him the price was 200 Francs for a bottle. When they gave him the bottle, it was a small one, so he asked to buy two instead. They told him the price for two was 500 Francs. When he tried to argue that he should be able to buy two for 400 Francs, they said, “No, that’s the way it is.” Trigger the mind eraser.

Every day, I am forced to forget the things I have learned in my life and the logic behind them. It’s kind of freeing in a bizarre way, to accept things at face value even when they don’t make sense.

My 21-year-old self would be proud that my time on the curb outside Kilroy’s may have prepared me for my life.