Running madly... in circles?

It's been a long time... Not that I had nothing to say, rather that I found it difficult to arrange my ideas in a coherent way. So many things happen every day, in the world at large and in my own life. How can I make sense of it and decide what would be most sensible as the next step forward?

We Western privileged people with a telly or a radio and the tiniest ability to understand what the newsreaders are saying know that the whole world economy is in turmoil. Everywhere, there is fear and apprehension: will I lose my savings? will my employer let me go? what about my retirement? my lifestyle?

Most of this is due to the fact that collectively, we've built a lot on sand or even in the air: speculation was rife... and still is, which magnifies the repercussions of every single event.

Since the West got rid of the immediate concern of feeding people on a daily basis, it has been forgetting gleefully about the basics of life: work, earn (not win!) money, have a roof over one's head, feed one's family, provide for their health and education. The workforce has become a commodity, it's now considered much more clever to make money through investment/speculation than through hard work, a house is just another gamble, health and education funds are being played around with to make the quickest, biggest buck possible.

To me, what we Westerners have been doing... and today's result is perfectly summed up here:

Do you think I'm jesting? Think again.

When everything else fails...

... it's nice to know that there is One Who never fails. Of course, this mechanic flunked his grammar tests and failed to repair your truck, but take heart, breathe deeply, and read a few verses.

To me, an appropriate choice would be Psalm 119.50. Those of you who suffered in the hands of a wicked (strike: incompetent) mechanic know that in times of distress, you need superior comfort. No matter what happens to your ride, don't give up hope and remember: only He will never disappoint you (this rule suffers no exception, not even the mechanic a non-motorist just pitched to you as the best one around).

Read on... After all you've nothing more pressing to do, have you? Remember, you're on the roadside, the bonnet is up, steam is coming out (of under the bonnet and out of your ears) and you've just given up on the above mechanic. Cheer up. This one is exactly what you need:

Of course, you won't be able to actually call the specialist (noticed the obliterated phone number? maybe a disguise to avoid attracting repeat customers? I'm told popularity is sometimes a burden) and I have no clue what "warshing" could possibly be, but while you wait, you can rejoyce (either because the specialist was located, is at work and you're hearing promising grunts coming from under the bonnet, or because you've finally found out what really matters in life...) and go straight to reading Psalm 100 and Shout for joy!

Disclaimer: this post is not intended as an endorsement of the above vendors and the author accepts no responsibility in case of faulty repair work performed by said vendors.

Wonders shall never end

Just at the corner of my street... I never saw it before, so it is probably new...

Shall he, now?

I was always told Jesus was brought up by a carpenter, so who am I to disbelieve His Father might be a tiler?

Nobody here will find this sign even slightly funny, but I have the nagging feeling I've slipped into the Twilight Zone.

Madam, the egg moved

I know I'll sound like a cynical colonialist but here goes...

Yesterday I found that there were fingerprints on the fridge and asked my (new) househelp to clean it. She took it upon herself (laudable initiative) to clean the top of the fridge too. There she found a cardboard tray of eggs where there was only one egg remaining.

Instead of taking the one remaining egg, shoving it into the fridge, discarding the useless tray and cleaning the fridge top, she pushed the tray until the obvious happened: the remaining egg landed not too elegantly (well, flat out) on the floor.

Or that's what I guessed after she came to my home office door saying, in a half pitiful, half panicky voice: “Madam, the egg moved!”

Yes, we are in an animist country, not too far from voodoo shrines... She certainly had nothing to do with the egg moving and crashing on the tiles, surely the egg took it upon itself to commit suicide in my kitchen.

I found it VERY hard not to laugh openly. But it would have been uncharitable, considering how panicky she seemed.

We are not of the same species

Remember my previous experiences with Moringa oleifera (leaf powder, brewed like tea) and Cyperus esculentus (a/k/a tigernut; vegetal milk + powdered almond-like residue)?

Since I like experimenting almost as much as eating, an idea crossed my mind: why not bake a cake that would be almost-but-not-quite a Matcha green tea almond cake?

Here we go then. Let's start with the ingredients:

175g (6oz) soft butter or margarine
125g (4 1/2 oz) sugar
3 eggs
250g (9 oz) self-raising flour
100g (3 1/2 oz) powdered almonds (I used half grounded tigernut, half grounded egusi (shelled squash pips) instead)
2 tsp Matcha green tea (I substituted Moringa leaf powder)
5cl milk (tigernut milk, of course)

Brew your tea in the hot (but not boiling-hot) milk. Mix all the ingredients in the order above, adding the tea+milk mixture last.
Bake in a pre-heated oven for 15 min at 180°C (356°F), then 40 min at 160°C (320°F).

Here is the result:

The kids found the colour so off-putting that they wouldn't taste it. Too bad for them, hurrah for me! One thing puzzles me though: they don't seem to believe we are of the same species. I mean, they don't really expect me to drop dead eating my concoctions but they won't believe that what agrees with me won't poison them either. Life with teenagers is so strange at times...

The ultimate cake tin shop

One of my hobbies is baking cakes. I even toy now and then with the idea of a change of career. Of course, I do use state-of-the-art silicon cake "tins", but if I had to revert to the old aluminium ones, I know where I would buy them:

It's just opposite the place where I pay my broadband connection. This is a true Ghanaian business. A few years ago, there was only corrugated tin available here and cake tin makers had to hammer the sheets flat before giving them their final shapes. I am not sure it's still the case, but even starting with a flat sheet, it's skilled and inventive work.

Ovens are also built locally. I'll post a picture here soon.

My beautiful bed

After seven months of dithering, I finally found the perfect bed for my huge bedroom. I couldn't opt for an ordinary bed, which would have been lost in this immensity. I'm only slightly exaggerating: I measured its area at 62sqm, that is about 667sq ft (inclusive of dressing room, bathroom and terrace).

Last week I saw a nice carved bed on the roadside, but after enquiries, it appeared that it was king size, whereas all the mattresses here are only doubles. The carpenter told me he had a double bed in the making and showed me rough planks he had only just started carving. Nonetheless, I liked what I saw and decided to put a downpayment on it.

The bed was delivered yesterday and look at how beautiful it is!

The carpenter who did it is an artist, I think, even though he calls himself "just" a carpenter. There are quite a few wonderful discoveries one can make here. I guess it is why I love this country so much.

A word about "fair trade": I did not discuss the price. I know it is standard procedure and it labels me as a "foreigner" when I do not, but I found the price he quoted "fair", and thought it was a good thing if he felt that he made easy money and I that I made a bargain and obtained a beautiful, unique work of art.

The quicksands are swallowing me

How dit it all begin? Not so young and supposedly experienced, I thought I could help my neighbour, that he would welcome my help, that we would work at it hand in hand and that in a not too remote future, we would all rejoice at being alive and well, better for the stimulating cooperation we would have experienced...

Today, I am much more circumspect. Having pursued my dream to exhaustion, I have now more questions than answers:

1. Does my neighbour feel the need I, as an outside observer, think has to be fulfilled?

2. Does my neighbour want to be helped and, if so, am I the help he desires?

3. Am I qualified to help him? What superior experience/know-how/skill do I have that makes me fit to help him?

4. Do my values remain valid once I cross the threshold of my neighbour's house? Does what I perceive as valid for me have the same value in his context? Is there anything like universal values? If so, which are they?

5. What if the statu quo were actually the wisest option?

Help. I need help. Everything is getting blurred and grey. Must be oxygen deprivation now that the quicksands are well above my head.

Politically correct or culturally sensitive?

You may wonder why I haven't mentioned by name any of the African countries I allude to here. Well, let's say I am a seriously deranged person, who has suffered several traumatic experiences of citizens of the said countries accusing me, because I dared describing a situation as I lived and felt it, of hating their country and its inhabitants.

My experience is that people have culturally-ingrained traits, on top of their individual personalities. There may be rogues in "the friendliest country in West Africa" (I'm told it's Burkina Faso), but overall, all people I know who visited, stayed and even lived for some time there have very mild comments about the country and its inhabitants. On the contrary, when I told people (even expatriate citizens of my current host country) about my intention to move there, they told me "you will suffer". And indeed, I do, although I must hasten to say that I've also made what I hope will prove very long-term friends.

Discovering someone else's culture doesn't mean that you have to forsake yours, live like them or espouse their views. This opinion might be misinterpreted for despise or hatred, especially by people who know no other culture than theirs and genuinely believe there is nothing or not much "wrong" with it. It is possible they are perfectly right. The issue is not that one culture is "good" and another "wrong". One is mine and another is not. There is no judgment in this, just bare, sometimes unsavoury, facts.

Like "integration". Nice dream. Even a utopian like me had to stop believing in that. Being allegedly bi-cultural, I am supposed to be the perfect synthesis of both my father's and my mother's cultures. Stop dreaming. If you see me from afar in a crowd, you'll immediately spot me as the "odd one" in the picture. Too tall, slim, fair-skinned for the African countries where I live; too tall and dark-skinned for the European country where I was born and brought up. And that's even before I move or utter a single word.

Inside, I feel like a zebra. Outside, I look like a zebra whose stripes were blurred by someone who carelessly wiped my coat while it was still wet.

Castles in the air

When my father was about the age I am now, he used to say he would retire at 45. I found it a mightily good idea. After all, who said a self-employed person should wait till 60 to retire if at 45, they have saved enough to be able to live happily ever after?

I wish I could do the same, but I have to acknowledge that I won't have squirrelled away enough by 2013 for it to be a serious proposition. However, I think that after more than 20 years of hard work, I am entitled to change my way of life a bit and enjoy nice surroundings, non-essentials like a sea view, etc.

Water is very important to me. Were reincarnation my thing, I would think I used to be some kind of marine animal in a former life. Being rather matter-of-fact, I'll just say I like the look and feel of water, which has a calming effect on me, helps me relax and be serene.

One of my most positive character traits is that I don't get easily discouraged by seemingly impossible dreams. If you apply enough pressure, most obstacles will yield. That's my belief, and I may be about to be proven right.

A few years ago, I spent 2 years in my preferred African country to date. Unfortunately I had to relocate to Europe for health reasons, but after having recovered and spent 2.5 years elsewhere on the continent, I long to go back to this place. I have been considering this new move for more than one year now, and went for a fact-finding trip last October. I was a bit apprehensive, because I had so fond remembrances that I was afraid reality wouldn't be up to par with my recollections. I shouldn't have harboured such doubts: the actual thing was even better than what I remembered.

There, less than 7 miles from the capital city, lays a wonderful house, complete with swimming pool and kids' pool, own beach, several terraces, poolside bar and barbecue, etc. I visited it and found it almost as wonderful as it seemed from afar. The beauty of it was that the then tenant was to vacate the property by end July 2007.

I was informed that the landlord didn't want to rent anymore but sell. There was no way I could come up with the money, but I saved the real estate ad in my favourites and within months, discovered that the tenant would go by end May instead of July, that the property was on the market for rental again, and that the price had dropped by $300. I got in touch with the the landlord, told him I was still very interested indeed, and racked my brains to find a way to come up with what he was asking (1-year rental in advance, plus a $2,000 deposit). While I was thinking hard, he sent another email saying he was prepared to offer another $150 cut on the monthly rent.

So in about 6 months, thanks to the drop of the US dollar and successive price reductions, my dream property had become quite affordable indeed: for the same price, in Paris, France, I would be able to afford a one bedroom, one sitting room 40sqm apartment in a not-too-good neighbourhood.

Of course, the property will cost much more than a Parisian apartment in maintenance. But again, it was built as a guest-house and even though it hasn't been operated as such for the last few years, its potential is tremendous. I decided that I would therefore re-open it as a guest-house and offer to share my little eden on the beach, for a fee. This should at least take care of the maintenance. I would also be able to meet people, with no strings attached.

Who knows? Maybe life can actually be as good as you can dream it?

Entrepreneurship

If you knew me a tiny bit, you could probably say that I don't yield to facility. Sometimes (often, actually), I wonder whether I should rather acknowledge I don't easily yield to reason. Take this: when I first visited my father's country 30 years ago, I fell in love with what I discovered and decided Africa was the continent where I would live when I grew up. Well, I did grow up and since 2000, I have been trying to make this dream come true.

You would think that fulfilling a child's dream means living happy ever after. Forget it. I find it mightily difficult to function here. Not moving to Africa as an employee or even a volunteer, with a company or a NGO having paved the way for me and providing a safety net in case any problems arise, means that I often come head-on with any type and amount of issues, and that I have to face them alone: I decided to create a company which, in itself, is a challenge, wherever you do it.

Doing business in Africa is a whole different world. You encounter ways of doing things you weren't prepared to face and which, frankly speaking, seem very odd at times. It is likely that I made a lot of mistakes, some of which I am probably not even aware of. I know I keep blundering again and again.

Let's face it: when you come from Europe or North America to set up a company, chances are that those you will meet in the process (officials, partners, employees, etc.) will take it for granted that you have come to take advantage of a cheap and pliable labour and make a lot of money on their backs. If it is not your case, it will take a lot of time (if not forever) to overcome some of those people's prejudices.

The blame is not all theirs: most people won't consider expatriating unless they can make a bundle in the process. Well, being an utopian, I went with quite a different agenda. I intended to give work to young African graduates and help them make a transition, as smooth as possible, between their formal training and the international markets at large. Because I tested dozens of candidates, literally from Tangiers, Morocco, to Cape Town, South Africa, I knew there was quite a gap, which I set out to bridge. It was at the same time a training programme and a job that I wanted to offer.

2.5 years later, I can say I haven't made a bundle, quite the contrary. I'm not surprised, it was not my aim. Of course, it would have been nice to do good and get rich at the same time, but not very realistic. I spent the first 18 months sleeping between 2 and 5 hours a night only, because of the staggering amount of work involved when you want both to help people increase their skills and have a usable output to deliver to your international clients (who have no idea of your dreams or circumstances).

A lot of what you are going to read in this blog will tell you about my professional experience of the last 2.5 years and nice (and less nice) asides. Why am I doing this? To warn the utopians that reality is not always rosy? I knew it wasn't and it didn't deter me. To let off steam now and then? Probably. To stop boring my friends to tears with accounts of my trials? Possibly.

It's so unreal...

My friends (I tend to call such whoever suffers my ramblings for any amount of time) often tell me your life is so weird you should write a book. Well, being environmentally-conscious, I decided against having trees felled to satisfy my narcissistic urges in favour of going the Internet way, although I wouldn't bet that whatever goes between my fingers here on the keyboard and you reading these words doesn't have an even worse impact on the environment. No kidding. "They" say there is nothing like a free lunch. Chances are "they" are right once again. Take my word for it: I am often the one ending with the bill at the end of the meal.

To begin with, I'm a very unreal being. Verging on the virtual. Almost. Remove 6ft2 of a 38 year old slim and honey-skinned personable woman and you have your virtual being.

What's so unreal about it is that, in this time and age, my self-description is absolutely true. That's when life becomes difficult for me to comprehend: I discover that seemingly simple things like truth have a relative aspect to them and that whatever is valid in one environment may be completely irrelevant in another. It wouldn't be so bad if I didn't belong to two very different cultures and, even worse, if I didn't insist on living in the one I didn't grow up in.

Well, that's me in a nutshell: I'm in a muddle, trying to find the way out and stubbornly refusing to grasp the obvious pole out of my self-inflicted pond.

It has its good side: I learn a lot. The other side of the coin is, there is no safe ground anywhere around me. I just have to waddle through, knowing I'll get wet, hoping I won't drown in quicksand.

Having sketched the context of my hectic and exhausting life, it's time to tell you see you soon for more about my good and bad experiences, and everything in between...