Safari in Kenya....awesome!

Thomas

He was standing at the front of Utaliia Hotel, alert, polite and smiling. Wearing his perfectly pressed bellhop uniform with the dark blue cap cocked slightly to the side, he looked distinguished and professional. He was a short man, quiet and mild mannered. I stepped out of the van and wondered if he would remember me. I clumsily fumbled for the plastic bag and walked towards the entrance of the hotel. A slow smile emerged on his face. I knew then that he remembered me.

Raymond asked hastily: Do you remember us, we were here last year? He nodded and answered: “Of course I do.” We shook hands warmly. I opened the crumpled plastic bag and retrieved a small photo. “That’s me” he said, in a proud voice. Of course it was him, standing so seriously just as he was today wearing the same uniform with the gold buttons. Raymond and I are standing beside him and I have one arm around his shoulder.

Memories flashed back like the images of a cluttered power point, as last years’ events were present in my mind, coming alive by the second. In October 2010, I had been extremely ill having difficulty breathing, nausea and dizziness compounded by an excrutiating headache. Thomas had organized my move from the hotel to the hospital. He had acted quickly, pushing the old wheel chair close to my bed and had gently given me a warm blanket and had softly said: “I’m sorry madame, I’m so sorry.” His compassion and caring had touched me. Even in my terrible state of health, I felt the kindness of this Gentle Soul. Through my half-opened eyes, I had seen the worry on his face as the car had pulled away from the hotel.

Upon my return from the hospital after 4 drug-induced days, Thomas’ wide smile and shy demeanour welcomed me back at Utiliia Hotel. “Good to see you madame, good to see you,” Thomas had said in his quiet way. I had smiled at this genuine, caring man, remembering so well this gentleman. He was probably a father and had undoubtedly worked as a bell hop all his life. A great spirit leading a simple life. These thoughts were slowly moving through my convalescing mind and body as I reached the door to my room. The smell of exotic flowers, like brightly colored jewels welcomed me. Beside it was a basket spilling over with fragrant African fruits. It was a feast for the senses! Propped up between these generous gifts was a get-well card simply signed “the staff at Utiliia Hotel”.

A year ago, Thomas’ kindness had touched me, the kindness of a stranger, really a man just doing his job. I had come back to thank him, given him his picture and handed him a Canada baseball cap. It was a moment, a moment in time where two Beings connected.

We said goodbye. Raymond shook hands and I hugged him thanking him again for his kindness. As the car pulled out of the parking lot, Leah our GO2Africa Safari guide said: “he is a humble man”. Indeed he is, indeed he is I thought, unable to speak. She had captured in that simple word the essence of Thomas. Perhaps it was his kindness juxtaposed with the violence of malaria or perhaps it was the synchronicity of the universe that had sent me this African angel, but today’s visit was a life giving moment, a precious moment with a transcendental quality.

I choose

Feeling blue today. It’s Sunday and with it comes a long day of nothing. I have no plans for the day. As I look out the patio doors, the sun is singing its bright melody. Hooray, I think to myself, looks like monsoon season is over! The sun’s revelation helps move my inner feelings of drab and dull up a notch. The phrase: “I don’t want to be here any more” has been living in my head since the day we made our decision to leave Conakry. I find it a struggle to live here, to be in the moment and to have a positive outlook in my every day life. The material environment continues to affect me: the red dirt and dust that stains feet and socks, the garbage mounds in the streets, the stench of old fish and waste rotting and the poverty of my Guinean brothers reach me to my core. Everyday.

Weekends are most challenging. My life grinds to a halt. During the week days, school keeps me busy but life on weekends is confined to living in the apartment watching food channels, reading, doing school work and preparing meals. Feeling bored is not the feeling. It is beyond that. It is a lonely existence, an isolation from society and a sense of feeling trapped, confined. I feel I have no choice but to endure life in Conakry with the limitations that choke me. No choice. No friends. Nowhere to go. Limited existence. If I would drive it might be different but even then, where would I drive to? There is no Shoreline Path to hike, no malls, no beach boardwalk, no parks, no cafes, no Starbucks, no beautiful countryside road to drive along. These do not exist in Conakry. What I long for does not exist here, period. The few friends that I have are all out of the country right now. Our favourite couple has moved to India, our humanitarian friend Colette is gone on home leave to Canada for 4 months and our only French Canadian couple is unavailable(he is working 16 hour days here and she is undergoing dental surgery in Quebec). Sigh!

Impasse. That’s where I am this Sunday morning. I am also battling a sinus head cold……my head feels like a ten ton truck loaded with bricks. Yuk! I haven’t had a bad cold for a long time. I had forgotten how miserable it makes one feel. Anyway, back to Sunday morning….

Our routine Sunday activity is to walk to the pool, do 30 minutes of laps, lounge around the pool and then walk back home. Raymond is ready to leave at 10am this morning; he too is suffering from cabin fever! My head weighs heavy with the sinus headache and I debate whether I have the energy to undertake the 30 minute walk or stay in the quiet of my apartment. I quickly opt for the walk, knowing that the gains of going out, getting vitamin D and changing my environment will also change my inner environment. I am right.

Once at the pool, Raymond starts swimming and I settle down to writing this blog. I notice a young French couple sitting nearby. He is reading and she is doing a cross stitch project, comfortably sitting on the pool’s lounge chairs. She is a gorgeous blond in a bikini doing cross stitch! This is not your typical picture of the pool side crowd!! She has an aura about her that is peaceful and content…so curiosity got the best of me and I approached her. We end up talking for an hour, introducing each others’ husbands and finding common threads in our life experiences. They arrived in Conakry 10 days ago from their previous posting in Sudan; he works for the French Embassy and she will be teaching French at the Cultural Center. They too feel isolated. We exchange emails and phone numbers and agree to meet again soon. What is it in human beings that happens, that split second decision to make a step, to dare move out of our comfort zone and speak to a complete stranger? I know that this morning I had a deep need to reach out and connect with people, even if that meant complete strangers. I’m glad I did. This morning made me realize that I’ve been dwelling in a mental state of “have not”. I do not have friends, no social life, no gym, no Starbucks. NO, NOT and “fed up” have been living in my head for the last 2 weeks. I’ve been feeding the demons of negative self-talk and they are now overweight! They are weighing heavy on me, heavy on my mind and to no surprise I am suffering from a head cold. Body and Being are so connected. Time to let the demons loose!

We can look at life and see a glass half full or a glass half empty, to coin a common bumper sticker saying. I guess I’ve been doing the latter. I hear my sister Mariette’s voice ringing in my ear right now. Mariette is an Ever-Ready bunny dynamo of positive energy! As far as I know, she has never been depressed one day in her life! If she was here right now she would tell me that I always have a choice. I always have a choice in the way I respond to life events. It is impossible to be completely stuck and say that one has absolutely no choice. I choose to see my present life circumstances with positive eyes or negative eyes. I choose. Having made a commitment to a 2 year contract, pursuing my goal of helping a little school in distress, I can choose to live happily or not with the constraints of life in one of West Africa’s poorest countries. Friedrich Nietzsche explained it well: “The end of a melody is not its goal; but nonetheless, if the melody had not reached its end it would not have reached its goal either.” The process of leaving has started and I will reach my goal June 15 2012, when I end my contract in Guinee. Meanwhile, I embrace the process, the experiences yet to come and the people yet to discover. I choose.

Leaving

     September 2011 is now here and we are back in school mode working at our little school with the big heart: American International School of Conakry(AISC), here in Guinea. Am I glad to be back? I do not have the same enthusiasm as I did last year. I do not vibrate at the newness of everything like I used to last year. I do not get frustrated with everything that does not work. I know my reality now. There is a sense of acceptance of my life as it is, here in Guinea, Africa. Am I glad to be back? I am glad to be working at the school and want to complete the projects that I had started last year. I and we did commit to a 2 year contract and we will honour that, but I am finding living in Conakry more challenging than last year and I do look forward to a more comfortable lifestyle and a new place to live in the world.

     On September 14, Raymond and I announced to the school staff that we would not renew our contract and that we will leave in June 2012. We explained that we love the school, staff and parent community but living in Conakry is very challenging. All the teachers were sitting around the table in the staff room and not a word was spoken. Even if I was at peace with our decision, I could feel the sadness and tension in the room. I wanted to jump out of my skin! Some teachers were crying and most were staring at the table, eyes downcast. I had feared that there would be a big reaction from the staff but not this big. This was a solemn moment. Africans, I have come to observe tend to be more contemplative than we North Americans. We process information, crises and difficult situations by talking and talking more. Africans are more quiet. They let news of any kind sink inside of them; they honour silence and are comfortable in a room full of people that are silent. So at our announcement, they were processing the news they had just heard, in silence. One teacher looked straight at me and said “you” pointing at me. I shrugged my shoulders, bit my lip and tried a half-smile as I squirmed in my chair. She was telling me that she did not like our decision. Since last year, she had been telling me that we needed to stay at least another two years, that the school was doing so well with the two of us here, that the school needed the continuity, that the staff admired the positive atmosphere and noted the upward momentum since our arrival. I had not given her any sign whether we were leaving or staying.

     After the initial shock, Raymond got up and we both walked outside. Three teachers came to chat with us, still in disbelief. “Is it something we did?” one asked bravely. We immediately answered no! What followed was an open, frank discussion of the many factors that we took into consideration as we were deliberating to add on another year or to leave. The school is a wonderful community. Living in Conakry is the challenge. Too bad the school is not located somewhere else in the world or even in another country in Africa. That discussion on the steps of the school opened the communication doors wide. I’ve noticed that since then my colleagues are more transparent; they are sharing their thoughts more and that is good. Last year, I often wondered what they were thinking and feeling and perhaps now our relationship will change. We were real, frank and transparent as we announced our difficult decision of leaving and they sensed our openness and truth. No one begged us to stay. They knew.

     Nevertheless, this was indeed one life moment I will never forget. If we would have been wavering in our decision, we could have easily been swayed to stay because the group reaction was so strong. We are appreciated and we both feel fulfilled at our school. June 15 2012 will be a very sad time when we say our final good-bye. But, I also know that I will carry in my heart our little school forever and the people that I have grown to love also. That I know for sure.

Awa

I can’t help but be in a reflective mood this week. We have made it through our first year, our first year in Africa. “Rejoice for this accomplishment”, a little voice says inside of me. It really is an accomplishment! To have been uprooted from our abundant Canadian lifestyle and parachuted in Conakry, one of the top 10 failed nation states and have survived it is a major achievement.

School’s out and with it comes an immense sense of relief. As I look back at my year in Conakry I am grateful for all the life lessons learned:

1) The first of these lessons was to experience life in its simplicity. I can live with very few material possessions. I don’t need a bunch of stuff to be happy. I can do without many things. I can live very well with my beautiful, white bare walls in my simple apartment on the sixth floor in Conakry.

2) The second life lesson was to evaluate the way I live my every day life: is a life of high-speed- internet style really that fulfilling? I’ve learned that Africa-slow-down-and-smell-the-roses style has many benefits. The first benefit is a richer, more interesting life and a life with less stress. I am learning from my Guinean brothers that relationships are foremost important. Everything stems from the relationships you have with people. In order to establish relationships, you need to take TIME to connect with people. This means talking to the tailor for 30 minutes before asking him to sew up a new outfit. It also means asking Myriam, the girl at the fruit stand how her life is going, how school is going for her before purchasing the fresh produce she is selling and it means checking in with the clerk at the store on her family and her kids. It all takes time, but it is very important time.

3) Being vs Doing. I have struggled with these two concepts most of my life. My father used to say Avoir et Etre, the two most common verbs in the French language, but they determine how you choose to live your life. He is SO right. I threw myself in a whirlwind activism as I arrived at a new school, new job of teaching Middle School and new place to live in the world. I worked and worked and worked. On the weekends, everything stopped. There was NOTHING TO DO, really nothing to do. This is when the Being started to make its way in my consciousness. It is ok to just Be I would tell myself. So used to moving about and DOING stuff, I struggled with this for most of the year, but I have learned to tame the notion of being comfortable with Being.

It was a very challenging year, an intense experience of dealing with culture shock, poverty, a national election, riots in the streets and living with a curfew and trying to find my place in this place that at times shook me to my core and s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d me as a human being. I questioned my values and beliefs and struggled to find an answer to what’s missing in my life (see earlier blog).

In my other overseas experiences I took language courses so I could communicate with the local population. Here I never did. There are so many dialects spoken that it is mind boggling, so I chose none. However there was one word that I kept hearing over and over. The word was “awa”. My curiosity got the best of me and one day I asked ”What does it mean?”. I learned that awa means yes. So now after a year in Africa, I can say awa; it is true that I lived a very enriching, challenging year. Awa it was an intense year, emotionally, physically and intellectually. Awa to the many beautiful people I met at my little school with the big heart. Awa to all the relationships I made with the people in my neighbourhood.

I learned. I grew. I learned more. I grew more. Now after this time of reflection I say awa to another year.

7:20AM

Monday morning June 6, 7:20AM and I just got to school. My head is prioritizing. What to do first? Well, first things first. Photocopies for my first class at 8:30. That was easy. I walk over to the computer lab and greet my Malian fellow colleague Issa. He always brightens my day. He has such a positive outlook on life and is goodness incarnated, compassion on two feet really, caring and generosity all rolled into one great human being. So after our usual small talk of the weekend’s ventures, I start to make copies…..Vram ! The photocopier gets stuck. Issa immediately rises from his chair and comes to help me. We work out the few kinks from the antiquated photocopier and start again. First, second and third try…..and I give up. The machine jams every time. Issa reminds me in his usual practical philosophy that the machine is tired, after all it is over 10 years old. “Just like human beings” he says, “elle a de l’age.” « I’ll go see Ruth, » I hurriedly tell him and walk over to the office copier. Same thing with the same results. Aggggghhhhh ! By now, I am sweating and my stress level has gone up a few notches. Two machines to make copies at our school and they both are on the blink. For those who are not teachers, photocopiers are our life line. So many lessons are planned around having handouts for students so NOT photocopying is not an option!

I walk over to my classroom, unlock the door and as I walk in, the heat hits me in a huge wave. I flick the switch for the air conditioner and hot air pushes out…..OH NO! I say out loud ! Not again…the AC does not work ! I walk back to the office at a quick pace and now sweat runs down my back. Nothing works this morning….AGGGHH ! I get to the office and tell Ruth in a frazzled voice that the air conditioner in my classroom which by the way was not working either on Friday, is still not working now Monday morning. I glare at her….isn’t she supposed to get things fixed. Ruth stammers: « I called the guy on Friday but he never called back she says. I’ll call him now….yes please I said ! It’s urgent…you are dealing with someone who has serious hot flashes…And a soon to be room full of complaining, smelly teens.

Running around like this at such an early time in the morning over stimulates my bladder so I head off to the bathroom. The toilet does not flush….aghhhhh ! I open the tap to wash my hands and no water comes out….I wait a few seconds and brown water sputters out……yuck I say ! Finally clear water barely trickles out, but there is no soap. I rinse my hands. There is no paper towel to dry my hands. Agghhhhhh !

I look at Raymond and fire comes out of my eyes…. « Nothing works this morning » I practically scream…..AGGGGGHHHHH! It is 8am and I am not ready for my class. We start with morning assembly; announcements and then we walk over to our classrooms. I have to get to my classroom door before my dear Middle School students, otherwise the day starts chaotically. They are usually as high as kites on Monday mornings….excited to see each other after a weekend deprived of each other’s company. I head off at a quick pace, ahead of my teenage tribe, but Raymond stops me. I look up and see him with a mother and two kids. The oldest looks like a possible student for my class. I walk over and in my usual cheery voice say « Bonjour! « They are from Cote d’Ivoire so I know that French is their first language. I imagine that they are visiting the school and want to inquire for the August start up of school. NO!! To my surprise the young girl is coming in today to visit and will stay till the end of the school year….she speaks no English at all! Aghhhhhh…what will I do with a new student when there are 10 school days left. I walk with her over to my overheated classroom with the already hyper students who have been screaming and laughing, because of course I have been delayed. She has no desk, speaks no English is evidently uncomfortable, completely lost in this sea of noisy, overzealous teenagers.

I try to make her feel comfortable and speak to her in French. I ask my students to introduce themselves and I introduce the young girl. I find a chair for her to sit on. My students are now even more excited to have a new student in class and are showing off by being even more boisterous. « But its too hot to stay in the classroom, » they complain. « I know, tell me about it » I said…trying to keep calm. I wait for everyone to calm down and look at me. « Looks like things are not working well this morning. I want you all to find your inner Zen, your inner peace right now. Think about the day you want to have, will it be positive or negative? You all have the choice to decide which one it will be…will your actions will be positive or negative? » As I hear myself say those words, I am finding my inner peace, SOMEWHAT. I can’t believe what I have been through since this morning and I haven’t even been at school for one hour yet. I’m exhausted! And yes there are only 6 school days left….whew! My students file out of the room with me as we seek out to find the nearest air-conditioned room. Comfort at last…. we decide to go to the Library. The air conditioner is humming as we walk in and the cool air is refreshing; it becomes immediately a wonderful oasis…..even with the smell of rotten mice and mold in there …..Sigh! This is my little school in Africa…..and I’m not used to the dysfunctionnality after a year. Will I ever be? I wonder.

The day ends on a more positive note. Once I arrive home, I walk over to the supermarket. I buy $70 worth of food items. The polite man at the cashier says that he will help me bring my bags home and I accept his offer as it is a 5-minute walk. We chat along the way and exchange ideas about the lack of expatriates which makes for a poorer Guinea. “They do bring in a lot for the economy, “he says, in a matter of fact yet sad undertone in his voice. Then he explains that his salary is 200,000 GF a month…I am speechless. I repeat 200,000 GF a month to him as if I did not understand; “how can you make ends meet,” I say? This is $30 a month and he needs to feed himself and his family of four. He says that it is difficult, « mais c’est comme ca. » Guineans are eternal optimists. I thank him as he leaves me at my door and I add an extra amount of money in his hand. I have nothing to worry about, don’t I? I have no right to complain about my life..….

Happy 30th Anniversary!