Aftermath

Well, it’s done. I’m back on safe ground, back home, back to where everything started.

I’m only barely starting to feel the effect this travel has had on me. But I know I’ve changed. I can feel it deeply. I know I stand up straighter, I’m a lot less afraid. And even though my mind is still just as scattered as it was before, I am feeling just that little more focused that I used to be.

But this is just the beginning of the effects

Bassam

On my second to last day in Côte d’Ivoire, my boss woke me up at 7 in the AM to tell me that we were leaving for a little tour of Bassam. Bassam is the coastline city, right next to Abidjan. It still is close to 45 minutes away, at the very least.

Here are the resulting images from this masterful journey. Touching the sea was a highlight

Sleepless in Abidjan

I can’t sleep. It’s no surprise really. If one manages to have insomnia at home, one is very much at risk of experiencing the same troubles when traveling…

My mind has been on lessons a lot lately. With everything that happened on this trip, and with it soon coming to an end, it’s time to think about what I’ve gained from it all.

I’ve been away from home almost a month now, yet it feels like I’ve been away forever. Not necessarily in a bad way, just in the general sense. I’ve gotten used to everything here. From truly alien, the surroundings have become familiar, the customs and ways of being became completely natural. Time is a relative beast. It never flows fast enough or slow enough, yet it always adapts to the situation. Not that long ago I was sitting in the departure lounge at YUL, eyes wide open, ready for adventure, happy and elated. Then came Casablanca and the “Flight of Misery” that took me from there to Abidjan. Not too long ago I was waking up in Abidjan for the first time, feeling completely out of my own skin, fighting back the tears and the pain with all my might. Those days felt like they lasted years. Then quickly, the pain subsided. Only a few days sufficed to get myself back on firm ground, to start tackling this new beast.

New people, new smells, new feelings. A different way of walking, standing up straighter, feeling stronger as a being. Knowing that I’m changing, positively. Knowing that my system has finally found ways to adapt to new situations. Finding ways to deal with my inherent need to run away from all things difficult, from all potential of pain. There’s no lesson like not being able to run away to truly teach you how to deal.

And then the penny of my faster return dropped. The whole plane ticket situation. Another lesson right there: dealing with failure. Another great fear of mine, the fear of disappointing. Of disappointing others, myself, of disappointing the ones I love, my family, my friends. And through all, realizing that the people who love you love you no matter what. Whether or not your work contract terms made you come back earlier, they love you still. Whether or not you break down in tears 8000km away from home, they love you still. The people who love you, they love you.

I’ve gotten such a crazy amount of support from friends and family on this crazy journey. From my family giving me advice and encouraging me when I was only seeing the bad sides to my well-traveled friends explaining that all I went through is actually very normal for a traveler, especially a rookie. From all the friends and family commenting on this blog. From the super good MSN chats with my father and all the positive reinforcement he has done. All those elements made me realize that I am not quite as lonely in the world as I often believe I am.

I used to often try and shy away from spending too much time with friends. Any excuse was a good excuse to just go back home, to be on my own. “Sorry, I can’t go, I have to do laundry”, “Sorry I missed your party, I wasn’t feeling too well”, “I’m super sorry, I really wanted to come, but something unexpected came up”. It was always easier to just be on my own. I was struck by a fear of people, of spending time with people, of new situations. Yet, the moment I’d be on my own, instead of fear, I’d be struck by the pain of loneliness. Self-inflicted loneliness. Often, in Montreal, I would just spend evenings feeling very miserable, spending time in my room instead of having quality time with my roommates/friends. Being alone hurt, but I guess that, somehow, somewhere, deep down, I enjoyed that pain. Maybe it was fear of rejection, of being judged, of being inappropriate. Fear of stupid things like being too ugly, too fat, too stupid to be worthy of spending time with my friends or to be socializing at parties and evenings.

This trip will have made me embrace loneliness. Only a couple of months ago I couldn’t bare to be home alone without internet access, even if I were in Montreal and friends were only just a few metro stops away. Now, I’ve been living in an apartment in Abidjan, alone, without internet access and I’m feeling fine. My mother made me realize that in a phone conversation last Sunday, when she said: “Oli, have you noticed that you will have spent your whole Sunday alone, in Africa and yet you are neither blue nor depressed?”

Maybe I think too much about life. Maybe I’m trying to understand too much of everything that goes on in and around life that, in the process, I forget to just live my own life. I get so caught up thinking about the what ifs and the maybes that I can’t even know what is real and what is theory, what I truly want and what I wish would be. Also, maybe I just spend too much time judging myself.

So where do I go from here… When I left I thought that this would actually be the beginning of my career as a photographer and a retoucher, yet, as it turns out, I didn’t shoot all that much, neither for me nor for work. Didn’t actually get all that much time on my hands to just go and shoot my own work and not that many actual clients at work for whom to shoot. Do I still wish to work as a photographer? I don’t know. It is a possibility that I do not have the drive for it enough. Or maybe it’s laziness. Maybe it’s lack of passion or lack of talent. Maybe I’ll just get back home and start working on my own projects again. I truly don’t know. I guess I don’t need to either.

(I should point out to those who are still reading this that, despite what the tone of this text might indicate, I am in a good mood. Just somewhat pensive. And wanting to sleep. I want to sleep).

African // WiFi Leeching

I realised today that I’m more accustomed to living here than I expected. On my way to work this morning, I decided to take a different path, in order to go and buy a baguette for breakfast.

On my way, I bumped onto two guys who were holding hands. I needed to cross the street but had to wait right behind them because a car was crossing the street as well. I thought it was very cute and refreshing to see two guys in their twenties holding hands in this part of the world, but at the same time, it’s not too much of an uncommon sight to see men express some form of physical contact, without it meaning anything. One of them turned around and saw me and motionned to his friend. They started talking to me, saying stuff like: “yo, white guy, you chocooo” (Choco means something like good looking, stylish, fly, that kinda stuff). I thought it was pretty odd, so I feigned that I didn’t know what it meant. They started making conversation, asking me if I was swiss (where the hell did that come from? do I look swiss?!), asking me if I had had the common Ivorian meals like Attiéke and Aloko (I have, actually, thanks for asking) and the like. They asked me for my phone number, what I was doing there, etc. When I asked them what THEY did in their life, they confessed to being unemployed and actually just walking around, waiting for people to give them money. At this very point, my hands went straight into my pockets and didn’t get out of them.

The two boys followed me on my way to the bakery. Something felt just odd and fishy. At one point, they wanted to cross the street. Normally I would have had to do the very same thing but I faked having to keep on going forward. So they left me alone. Upon arriving at the bakery, I was quite proud at the way I just kept it cool and somewhat naive even though I knew they probably were just looking to get some money from me.

Fast forward to the end of my workday. I had to go and get some food for dinner and breakfast tomorrow, as well as buy some laundry detergent (Omo brand, how funny is that ). I did all of that, dropped by the corner brochette sandwich place (see bottom of this post for an explanation on what those are) to get a sandwich and then went to get some bread for tomorrow.

I decided to walk back home using the very same path I had used in the morning. Nothing better than going back the same way in order to erase any trace of nervousness that the morning encounter could have brought up. Walking back and reflecting on how I was acting towards the streets, the cars, the people passing by and staring (people stare when they see a white person AND they stare even more if the white boy in question has a pierced nose and pierced ears), I realised just how it felt like a second nature to act here. I am not scared to walk back home at night. I am not nervous about living alone in Africa. Maybe that’s what my coworkers meant when, a couple of days ago, they proclaimed that I ‘was African now’.

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The corner brochette sandwich places:
Those stands are more or less everywhere. The concept is rather simple. You have a charcoal grill, surrounded by meat brochettes by the hundreds. They also have hard boiled eggs and baguettes. You tell them the number of brochettes they should include in the sandwich and whether you want eggs or not and they get to their business. You end up with a half-baguette filled with chili (they put chili on everything here), meat (what kinda meat is anyone’s guess. but it’s tasty, it’s all that matters), tomatoes and onions, a bit of mayonnaise (which is in sealed packets, so no risk of salmonella there). All that for 400f CFA (about 0.90$ CDN). Add an egg and it costs 500f. Pretty neat AND well tasty to boot.

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I made a nice discovery. One of my neighbours has an open WiFi point. So I’m sitting home, drinking a nice african beer, listening to Ludacris and typing this right from my very couch in my very African apartment. Hello

Excerpts of a Sunday (in Abidjan)

Those kids were just amazingly cute. As I was walking around, taking pictures, they came running, yelling: “photo! photo!” First they wanted me to take a picture of them… And then, they wanted to take a picture of me. Here’s what their magical innocence managed to churn out:

A beautiful Hibiscus, growing wildly beside someone’s house:

Dis da way they be clothesdryin’:

Still Life, with Broom & Adidas

Woro Woro Station at the 2

Jamais de ciel bleu à Abidjan

Voilà, je dois m’excuser pour mon manque de mots des derniers jours. Les journées passées au travail furent très occupées. Aussi, le fait de ne pas avoir accès à internet chez moi réduit mes possibilités d’écrire sur mon blogue d’amour. Mais aujourd’hui, chers amis, famille et autres gens que j’aime, j’ai décidé de faire fi de ma situation au travail afin de vous écrire quelques mots à propos des derniers jours.

Avec tout ce qui s’est passé dernièrement, le stress, l’incertitude, le questionnement, j’ai réalisé que je suis beaucoup plus fort que j’ai tendance à le croire. Même que, en fait, je suis plutôt fier de moi présentement. Ce qui me surprend le plus c’est le fait que, peu importe ce qui arrive, j’en reviens toujours à avoir un point de vue positiviste sur la chose. Un point de vue optimiste.

Oui, mon voyage est FORTEMENT écourté. Oui, d’une certaine façon, c’est l’échec d’un projet, mais en même temps, je crois qu’il s’agit du meilleur échec possible. Le genre d’échec duquel on ressort grandi, on ressort avec de nouvelles connaissances, un nouveau bagage, un nouvel apprentissage. Je vais tellement avoir de choses à raconter à mon retour, tellement de pensées à trier, tellement d’idées à laisser germer. J’ai vu ici un tout autre espace mondial. Jamais je n’aurais pu imaginer que tout soit aussi différent.

En plus, l’Afrique, peu importe la durée du séjour passé en son sol, vous transforme. Le fait de vivre avec les gens de la place, de suivre un peu leur train, leur rythme, leur façon de communiquer, a pour effet de vous faire apprendre encore plus sur vous, sur votre position sur le monde, sur la différence, sur vos réels besoins dans la vie.

Je dois avouer que ce voyage m’a aussi fait explorer les limites du contrôle de soi. Beaucoup de fatigue, de frustrations reliées au travail, de rebondissements non planifiés et de changements abruptes et de dernière minute. Beaucoup de petites choses qui, mises ensemble, m’ont souvent donné envie de me fracasser la tête contre une paroi de béton à multiples reprises, jusqu’à ce que mon cerveau dégouline comme un oeuf frais.

Aujourd’hui, il me reste officiellement 10 jours en Côte d’Ivoire. Je prévois bien en tirer le meilleur possible. Mais putain que j’ai hâte de revenir à la maison et de voir un ciel bleu… Je veux voir un ciel bleuuuuuuuuuu.

Des bouttes nature

Une ville, une fleur, un poisson

Dealing With Uncertainty // Spending Time With The Locals

My work contract terms have been changed quite a bit since I arrived here. Not for the better. One of those changes affects my ticket back home.

I learned yesterday that I will have to pony up for my plane ticket back home. I must confess to not being very happy about that. In fact, if so is the case, this change to my work contract (along with another insidious one, which I’ll refrain from whining about here) makes my being here semi-pointless (I say semi because I do realise that this is a tremendous life experience and that I am benefiting from it). And so, if that is the case, I’m coming back to Canada either at the end of August or early September.

Part of me is sad about all of this. It kinda feels as though ever since I left home, tiles keep falling from the ceiling. Maybe that’s the big lesson to this trip: to learn to deal with whatever life throws at you. If that’s the case, then I’m quite proud of myself. I’ve dealt pretty well, all in all.

Yet, knowing all that, I’m still freaked out by the feeling of being here with no actual means to go back home now.

In a month, I’ll most likely be sitting with the family, laughing it off over a glass of wine. Right now though, it’s like sitting on thorns.

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Yesterday was my first day off ever since getting here. I spent the bulk of it just following my boss around. Later in the afternoon, I was meeting up with a coworker for a beer in a maquis. It turned out to be a brilliant end to a crummy day.

It was that very morning that I had gotten the news from my boss re: the plane ticket back home. My mood being as easily affected as it is, I wasn’t a joyful, cheerful camper for the bulk of the day.

But sitting down with my coworker and a friend of his and just drinking beer there, outside, with the sun setting, truly turned my mood around. Everything felt right again. I guess that’s another one of those universal things in life. No matter the shit that happens, you can always talk and laugh it off with mates over drinks. I guess that, as humans, we need to blow off steam with people around us, we need to socialise and communicate.

After that beer, we took a woro woro to another maquis, closer to my place. Before having the last beer of the evening, we stopped at a street corner booth making grilled sandwiches on the spot. Not only was the sandwich really good, but it also felt just good to be having some of the local stuff and eating it the actual local way. Pardon my occidentalism, but I have been sheltered from other cultures for so long, so I can’t help but enjoy those moments.

Security Is Relative

The notion of security, whether security of oneself or of one’s belongings, is entirely relative on what’s being judged as safe and secure, as what’s being the yardstick for security.

I grew up in a small city of about 50 000 people. That city is about an hour away from Montreal, which is the biggest city in all of the province of Quebec. People in my hometown tend to perceive Montreal as a savage place to be living in, where one’s not really safe, where one should always watch his back.

I’ve lived in Montreal for a bit over 4 years. It didn’t take me long over there to realise that it truly isn’t as dangerous as what it was made up to be by the dwellers of my hometown. Very often I walked back home past sundown and never any harm was done to me (actually, that’s a bit of a white lie. I once was attaqued by a drunkard, in plain view of the police, in full daytime. the police quickly intervened and all the harm that I suffered was a scar on my arm). I always felt very safe in Montreal. People walk freely in the streets and come and go out of buildings without problems.

Over here, things are different. Everywhere you go has a security guard, a concrete fence, a huge metal door. People warn you not too walk in the streets past a certain time because that would be calling for trouble. Especially if you’re the white guy in the place.

I’m moving into my very own place tomorrow. To get to my apartment, one must first go through the gigantic security door that safeguards the whole apartment complex, THEN one needs to go through the smaller metal door that safeguards the small backyard/semi-balcony and THEN one needs to actually open the apartment door. That’s a lot of steps to get into a house.

To me, this appears very foreign and has a bit of a sad undertone to it. It’s as if this city was saying: “we know that bad things might happen again. we know we might get burglared and robbed, we know we might get attacked and taken hostage, we know there’s always danger. damoclès is never too too far. so we stay ready for it…”

Shouldn’t everyone be just free to roam the streets of their own city without risking any harm? Shouldn’t that be some sort of universal right? Or am I being naive again?