A few other thoughts

Things I’ll miss from Africa:

1. The people – First off, let me say that Malians are probably the nicest, warmest people I’ve ever met in my life.  I’ve never been to a country where I felt more welcomed by total strangers and that feeling lasted the entire year and a half I lived there.  On top of that, I met a lot of really cool people who are working overseas.  Be they American, Canadian, European, or whatever, they have a wealth of interesting personalities and backgrounds and I truly feel privileged to have met so many of them.
2. Drinking from glass bottles – Nothing is more refreshing than an ice-cold Coke or Sprite from a glass bottle.  I wonder what it would take for the US to go back to offering more glass bottles of soft drinks in stores and restaurants.
3. The craziness – Life in Africa is almost always interesting.  Whether it’s crazy drivers, seemingly bizarre local customs, or the always-interesting intersection of African tradition with Western influence, there was something on a near-daily basis that would make me think, “This kind of stuff never happens in the US.  Never.”
4. The music – Mali especially has a great music scene.  There were bands playing at parties and street festivals almost every weekend and the air was full of music. I got to see some really great concerts and the music scene in Bamako is just as vibrant as what you’d find in Austin or Nashville or Chicago.
5. I don’t really know how to describe this last point except to say that life in Africa was a lot like something out of a Richard Scarry “Busytown” book.  Everyone does everything outside and in the span of one city block you’ll see people building furniture, fixing cars, selling livestock, weaving fabric, bathing children, sleeping, talking, and even going to the bathroom. It’s such a change to come back to the US where almost all of these things happen behind closed doors. In Mali, you were never bored sitting in traffic because there was so much to watch on the street right in front of you.

Things I won’t miss:

1. The heat – I’ve long suspected it and now it’s confirmed.  I just don’t like hot weather. I don’t mind a few weeks of it here and there, but the oppressive, never-ending heat of the hot season was too much for me.  Every time I came indoors, my clothes were sticking to me from sweat.  I spent most hours of the day inside, out of the heat and sun, because it was near impossible to do anything between the hours of 10 and 6.  I like cold weather. I like snow.  I like a brisk fall wind.  They don’t have these things in Mali.
2. The trash – I can’t speak for all African cities, but Bamako and Kinshasa are really dirty.  People throw their trash wherever they please and it’s never picked up. Garbage dumps are spread all throughout the city and you never know when you’ll happen upon one.  Sewers are open and can get pretty rank by mid-day. Even the air is dusty and filled with smog and car exhaust and the smell of burning garbage.
3. The French language – sorry.  People talk about how beautiful of a language French is, and how they love speaking it.  Give me Spanish any day of the week.  I just don't like French.

On leaving Africa

Since coming back to the US around four months ago, my wife and I have been telling a lot of people why we decided to move back.  Sometimes our explanation has been prompted by a direct question, but just as often we've told people so they get a sense of who we are and why we've made the decisions we've made.  Most everyone seems to understand why we decided to move back, though I think they identify with certain reasons if they're expats, or other reasons if they've never lived overseas.

(I'm not going to try to order these according to importance.)

Being on the move

It only took a few months into our time in Kinshasa to realize that the expat crowd lives a very different life than most other people.  When you work for an NGO or embassy or whatever, you get used to the idea that you're adopting a nomadic lifestyle.  You'll spend two or three years at one post and then it's on to the next one.  If you're a contractor or you split your time between home and working overseas, you live an even less stable life.  You're always on the move, looking to the next post.  Just today, I realized that most of the friends I have from Kinshasa have all left the city, and I moved there just over two years ago.

For my wife and I, we've reached a point in our lives where we don't want to be on the go for the next twenty years.  We'd like to be somewhere, to have a place where you build up real relationships, get used to your residence, and just have a sense of stability in your life.  Don't get me wrong - it's fun and exciting to move to a new city and learn about the fun things to do, the layout of the streets and neighborhoods, where the good restaurants are located, and so on.  But I think that with that it's hard to get a feeling that any place is truly "home."  Even coming back to the states to visit, we see how much neighborhoods and people change and while our possessions and family were all still here while we were gone, things changed and that created some distance.  The longer we stayed away, the greater that distance could potentially grow.

Building relationships

While overseas, one of the first questions asked when meeting someone new (besides "What are you doing here?" and "Where are you from, originally?") is "How long will you be here for?"  The answers range from a few days to five years.  There's all these overlapping timelines for people, where some are just ending their post in a city, others are in the middle of it, and some are just starting.  It's hard to build friendships with people when it seems like every other person you meet is leaving the country in three months, or else you're leaving the country in three months.

Don't get me wrong - I made some really good friends while overseas and if one of them emailed me years from now to let me know that they would be in town, I'd happily let them stay at my house for as long as they wanted and I'd look forward to catching up.  But that day-in day-out contact you have with others doesn't last very long when you're overseas.  You have your time together, and that's it.  Could be a week, could be a year.  After that, each of you go on to new experiences and you don't necessarily have a lot in common besides the time you both spent together. I guess it's like the distance that grows between high-school classmates after a few years. Sure, you can laugh about stuff that happened in high school but who wants that to be all that their relationships stand on?

If nothing else, living life this way has taught me to value the time I do spend with people.  Before living overseas, I'd always think that I'd see someone again next week, or the next time we played frisbee or whatever.  Instead, I learned to enjoy the time I had with someone and take it for what it was, without necessarily planning on building a long-term friendship with them where I’d see them on a regular basis.

Working

My wife's work with ACME took us from Congo to Mali, and who knows where we would have gone next.  There's no ACME post in Paris or Tokyo or Vancouver.  ACME does most of their work in emergency situations or in impoverished countries.  At some point, she would go to someplace like Haiti or Afghanistan or Chad.  Life in these places is hard.  Life in Kinshasa was hard, and it's tough to think about going to a place like that for your job and making it your home for a few years, and even tougher to think that most of the places you're going to live for the next twenty years are going to be like that. We were very fortunate to get a post in Mali.  For ACME, that's considered a nice place to live.

On top of that, I would constantly be switching jobs. I was very fortunate to find work in Kinshasa after only being there a month.  In Mali, I never really found a good full-time position, let alone a full-time position that matched my education, career background, and interests.  At our next post, who knows what I would have found?  It's stressful being out of work, and it's even harder being out of work in a place where jobs are hard to come by because you're an outsider.

Life in a developing country

Make no mistake, living in a developing country is exciting.  It's also very hard at times.  Power and water outages, weird diseases, lack of conveniences that many of us take for granted (like fast internet), polluted air and water, dishonest government and authority figures, and language barriers are some of the things you deal with on a daily basis.  While it's thrilling to tell someone I had an intestinal parasite, it's no joy to go through the pain of living with it for four days or wonder if it will come back again sometime.  When the power goes out for hours at a time and you can't sleep because of the heat and you're wondering if all the food in your fridge will go bad, it's not quaint.

My wife suffered from a continual barrage of illnesses and maladies during our two years in Africa.  None of them were life-threatening (well, except for the two cases of malaria and her bout with typhoid), but she was sick of being sick once a month.  Even more than that, it was hard to come down with some mysterious illness and know that if we were in a city with a better-equipped medical facility, a simple test could tell us what was going on.  Instead, we had to rely on the best guesses of a local doctor or else fly to South Africa or Europe for further testing.

The expat bubble

As an expat, you life a life which is very much apart from the rest of the population around you. We lived in a nice house with a big wall around it and a gate, at and the end of the day we would drive our white SUV though the gates, close them up, and that would be it.  We hung out with other Americans or Europeans.  We watched American movies and TV shows, craved chocolate chips and Doritos, and went back the US to visit our friends and family.

Even though we had Malian and Congolese friends, we were never going to become part of their culture. It was cool to learn about what they found funny or meaningful, and on a human level you can relate with almost anyone. When it came down to it, though, we would never fully fit in with the population around us.  Especially if we were moving every two or three years, there's no way it could happen.  By the time you just start leaning the local language and customs, you're off to some other part of the world that's completely different.

And so, we hung out with other expats.  We shopped at the same stores, went to the same parties, discussed the same things. I met lots of really fascinating expats who had amazing backgrounds.  But again, they're all coming and going and just about everyone has their eye on their next post or is talking about the post they just came from. It gets wearisome.

The further you get


When we looked at most all of the points above, we realized that the longer we spent overseas, the harder it would be for us to come back.  It could be hard to find work if you’ve spent the last twenty years working overseas. Not being a part of your home culture makes it hard to relate when you do return.  Some distance can develop between you and your friends and family. My wife and I looked down the road and decided that this was not the kind of life we wanted to have when we were in our forties and fifties.  We wanted a place of our own, a regular circle of friends and co-workers, some peace in knowing that we had decent medical care if we needed it, and so on.

And so, we're back.  We moved to Denver, found work and a place to live, and we're getting used to the idea of being in Denver for more than the next 24 months.  Although we both miss Africa in different ways, we're both happy with our decision to return.

Diougal club reigns

On Sunday I had the chance to play in an ultimate frisbee tournament that was set up by an expat who's working to bring the game to Mali.  Rodrigue has been working with kids in different neighborhoods of the city and teaching them the game over the past few months.  Ultimate is a great game to teach here since the rules are simple and all you need is a frisbee.

Rodrigue put in a lot of work to get Sunday's tournament set up.  He rented a field, organized transportation for six teams, brought in cold water and a dj, and promoted the event locally.  Soccer is still king here so there wasn't a huge turnout of spectators, but any time there's a dj playing music and some white people running around, it will attract attention.

An invitation was extended to the expat community to get some players to participate.  Only a handful showed up, but I can't say I blame folks.  Running around outside at 4:00 on a hot, sunny Sunday afternoon isn't necessarily preferable to sitting inside an air-conditioned house or lounging next to a pool.  Nevertheless, seven expats were divided among the six teams and the tournament began.

For only having played frisbee for a few months, the players were really good.  I saw some acrobatic catches and passionate play from every team, and it was neat to see boys and girls playing together.  In the many soccer games that go on around town, females are not a part of the game.  Also, younger kids could take part in the games too since the frisbee usually requires more speed and dexterity than brute strength.  My team, Diougal Club, played well enough to win our pool and advance to the championship.  We beat our opponent and won the title to much celebration.  My French isn't good enough to carry on anything but the most basic of conversations and my Bambara (the local language) is non-existent, so I didn't take part in any extensive strategy sessions with the rest of Diougal Club.  Still, a high-five or fist bump is universal and I felt like I was part of the team, if only for an afternoon.

After the matches were over, everyone shook hands and my teammates from Diougal club headed back to their neighborhood, celebrating their victory.  I had a great time and I wish I could take part in the next tournament in mid-July.  By then, though, I'll be back in the US.

Here's an article written about the event (translated via Google Translate).  I guess I'm one of the "European Practicioners" referred to in the article.

Here we are, at the beginning of a match...

...here's a nice action shot...

...me watching the younger, more energetic players go at it...

...showing off my extra-close haircut and one-size-too-small jersey...

...and posing with my skinned knee.

As you can tell from the pictures, even the rented fields around here have lots of dirt patches and piles of garbage. 

Promises, promises

Yeah, about all those forthcoming blog entries...  Well, life has gotten rather busy for me in the past month.  As of the beginning of May, I'm the full-time art and health teacher at the American school.  The previous art teacher had to head back to the states early so the school asked me to step in and cover her classes until the end of the year.  It's kind of nice getting out of the house for most of the day.  The staff and students at the school are great and it's been a cool change of pace for me.  I've also picked up some more local freelancing work that's kept me busy in my free time.

My wife and I have also had a few opportunities to get back out to Siby to go rock climbing on the weekends.  Since we don't have our own gear, we can only go along with friends who have the gear and expertise to help set up the climbs.  Here's some shots of my wife as she's starting a route...

...and as she completes it on her second try.  She was one of the few who successfully completed the climb that day and was suitably proud of herself.

And here's some shots from yesterday, where we climbed to the top of the natural arch before setting up some climbing routes.  We spotted a storm just north of us that would roll in a few hours after these pictures were taken. 

It was a great day to be climbing since it was overcast and breezy.  It's been sweltering here the past few weeks. The rain hit as the afternoon was winding down for us so our timing worked out perfectly.

We've still been playing frisbee on Sunday mornings.  I met an expat who's been teaching Malian kids how to play ultimate frisbee.  Next Sunday, he's set up a tournament on an actual soccer field (or football pitch, for my non-American readers) where expats and Malians will play with/against each other.  Should be fun.

My career as a nascent jazz bassist in Bamako will culminate in a performance with the small jazz group I've been playing with for a few months.  We have a performance coming up at the beginning of June at the annual end of year program that's put on by the French school.  I guess we'll be accompanying the school choir and then doing three songs by ourselves: "Take Five," "Georgia," and "I Do Care" (I can't find a link for the last song - it's by a Swedish singer named Viktoria Tolstoy).

And finally, the biggest piece of news is that after a lot of prayer and discussions, my wife and I have decided to move back to the US this summer.  It's not a decision we came to easily, but my wife and I both feel that it's the right one.  There isn't one big reason compelling us to return - it's a lot of small- to medium-sized ones.  Ultimately, I think it's that we both realized that the expat lifestyle isn't for us and the longer we continue in it, the harder it will be for us to establish a life at home in the states.

In a future post, I'll probably go into our reasons why.  Right now, though, it's after midnight and I have to be ready for a full week of school starting bright and early tomorrow morning.

It's been a year

It's been a while since I updated this ol' blog (man, has it really been two months?) and I wish I had an interesting reason why. If anything, I guess I can chalk it up to really settling into a routine here in Bamako. A few weeks ago I celebrated my one year anniversary of moving here from Kinshasa and what seemed new and fascinating at the time has now become pretty ordinary over the past few months. Unbearable heat, friendly Malians, misadventures with the French language, the ever-present dust... it all seems like part of the routine now. That said, in the next few weeks I'm going to try to get some entries on here that show a bit more of what day to day life is like around here.

Over the past few months, I've been working a bit from home and also getting called in to sub at the American school a few times a month. I've taught math, science, English, geography, and even Spanish and French. For those two language classes, I was pretty much responsible for putting in a DVD and pressing play, since my French is nowhere near the level it would need to be for me to teach a class and I've all but forgotten most of the Spanish I've learned.

I've still been mountain biking on the weekends. Last Saturday's ride was canceled due to rain which is very unseasonable in April. We're into the hot season and while mango showers are not uncommon here in Mali, it poured on Friday night and Saturday morning. The weather here has been pretty strange all year, from an almost non-existent cool season to the early onset of the hot season, and then a genuine it's-raining-cats-and-dogs thunderstorm last weekend.

A few weeks before that I went on a ride with my friend Tim. We attempted to find a connecting trail between two routes we already know just outside Bamako. When we left around 8am, the temperature was already in the mid 80s. The ride was only supposed to be around 18 miles and things started off normally, but we soon found ourselves pushing our bikes up the side of a rocky hill with no clear trail before us. Fortunately, a couple Malian guys were pushing a motorcycle up the same hill so we followed them. Tim speaks a bit of Bambara, the local language, and he asked them if they were headed towards the road to Kati. This is the road that would take us back to Bamako. I think they misunderstood us because instead of taking us to the road to Kati, they led us all the way to the village of Kati itself. Kati was the complete opposite direction of the way we wanted to go. This added another 10 miles onto our ride.

The guys who led us out of our way were really nice and had a lot of questions about us. Malians are pretty interested in what expats are doing in their country, and our Camelbaks are pretty fascinating as well. En route with our new Malian friends, we stopped in a village so one of them could greet his sister. While waiting around during his visit, we saw this kid who was playing with a dead mouse. The people in the village didn't seem to think to much of it, so I'm not sure if it's something this kid does on a regular basis or else it's a stand-in for a regular plush toy.

I've also started playing ultimate frisbee again with a few people on Sunday mornings. It's good to play again, although we have to play in the street since lush fields of grass are almost nonexistent in Bamako. We have to pause for automotive, pedestrian, and animal traffic and avoid the open sewers that run alongside the road. Thank goodness it's dry season and there's nothing in them right now. We can only manage about an hour or so of play until the heat and the sun get to be too much.

Oh, and I completed my one hundred push ups challenge in mid-March. I'm glad I did it, and especially glad I finished it before the hot season really got going. I'm taking a sabbatical from push ups for the foreseeable future.

Some biking pictures

I keep forgetting to take my camera with me when I go biking on Saturdays. I grabbed a bunch of photos from my friend Tim's Flickr collection - he's the one who usually organizes the rides and heads up the group of mountain bikers.

These first shots are from a long ride my wife and I went on a few weeks back. The ride was beautiful. After an incredibly tiring ascent that seemed to go on forever, we rode on a boring and rocky plateau for several miles until starting our descent back down towards where we began the ride.

Here's some of the group taking a breather after the climb (my wife and I are in the middle of the frame - why is almost everyone wearing white shirts and black shorts?)...

and here's the beginning of the long descent back down into the valley to the left...

Once at the bottom, there was a treacherous crossing over a muddy creek on some old boards...

...and finally, here's Olivier, a very nice French guy, with a bunch of village kids in the background looking on.

Who knows what the locals think about all these crazy white people who breeze through their little corner of the world on a Saturday morning, riding their fancy bikes and wearing shorts.

On a ride back in January, we rode through a dump...

...and then through a minefield.

While seeing the "DANGER MINES" sign threw me for a bit of a loop, I wasn't too worried. There were lots of families and houses in the area and I think that all the kids and dogs running around would have set off any landmines years ago. Don't worry, Mom, I stayed on the trail anyway.

On last week's ride, we crossed the Niger in a hired boat, along with all of our bikes. Cost for seven people plus their seven bikes: $2.

These Saturday rides have been a great way to get out and see the city and some of the surrounding area, and I've gotten to know a few of the other riders as well.

Over the past month, I've been relatively busy with all kinds of different things. I ended up getting called in almost once a week to sub at the American school, at least until I caught the strain of strep throat that had been going around. That put me out of commission for a few days. Last week I taught middle school math plus middle and high school science for the entire week. It was fun, although I didn't have to grade any papers or give out any tests which made things a lot easier.

Since mid-January, I've also been following the one hundred pushups program. As you might guess, the goal is to get to the point where you can do a set of one hundred pushups. I used to have a regular routine of pushups and pullups when I lived in the states, but I'd fallen off the wagon after moving to Africa. While at home, I picked up a set of these Perfect Pushup thingies from my brother, who was tossing them out. I don't know if there's anything all that sensational about them. At the very least, it's a gimmick to get me inspired in the mornings. So far so good - I'm just over halfway done with the program and I hope to hit the one hundred mark before the hot season really kicks in, around mid-March. Let me tell you, it's already plenty warm at 6:15am when I get out of bed and start my day.

Newsflash - Mali is still hot

Boy, I really do miss cold weather.  I got back from the US on Monday night and temperatures here are in the 90s during the day, although it's been as, ahem, cold as the low 60s here at night.  Even the expats are talking about how chilly it's been.  I don't buy it.  In Chicago I very much enjoyed the crisp cold air and I wish I would have taken the time to go out for a jog or two while I was home.  It still feels at hot as ever to me here.

Anyway, it was good to be back home again.  This time at home it wasn't as hectic as our last trip.  We had less shopping and doctor visits and it was easy to see friends and family since there were so many get-togethers due to the holidays.  This meant a lot less time driving around and a lot more time relaxing and hanging out with people.  Some of the highlights of my time in the states:

• I didn't go as crazy as last summer when it came to eating.  I still enjoyed Giordano's, White Castle, Wendy's, Russell's bbq ribs, Dunkin Donuts, and had an excellent burrito from a local Mexican restaurant.  There was a lot of good home cookin' to be had, too.
• My father in law took me to the Penguins-Senators game at the fabled Mellon Arena.  I've never seen an NHL game outside of Chicago, and it was cool.  The Pengiuns pounded the Senators 8-2, and Evgeni Malkin scored a hat trick.
• I played hockey once, which is better than not playing at all, I guess. 
• My cousin Nora got married the day before we flew back to Africa, and it was great to be there as well as see some of my relatives who I haven't seen for a while.  Congrats to Nora and Tim!
• I got a lot of good gifts from Santa this year - mostly bike stuff and a few odds and ends for my computer.

Accompanying my wife and I back to Africa was a large box containing a bike and an extra set of wheels.  My brother gave me his Specialized mountain bike:

I also picked up the spare parts I needed to get the Trek frame I have here up and running again: 

Over the past few days I've worked on cleaning up the bike and getting it together.  I still need to install the chain and find a cable for the rear brakes.  I'm told there's an area of the local market where used bike parts are available and I'll be making a trip over there soon.

Big, big thanks to Kevin Dean (even though he doesn't want to be acknowledged) for helping me box up the bike and all the spare parts.  Big thanks also to my cousin Patrick for giving me a set of tires, a saddle, and a jersey.  And of course, thanks to my brother for giving me his bike.  I was riding it around the neighborhood yesterday and a security guard went out of his way to tell me it was très jolie (very nice).

Unfortunately, my substitute gig for the fifth grade fell through at the last second.  I was called in to sub for the high school english teacher on Wednesday, and that was fun.  I was battling jet lag and a few roomfuls of students who weren't too excited for their first day back at school, but it was a lot easier than trying to muddle my way through math.