Goodbye to Guinea

I know there’s a lot more to say about Guinea than I have in me right now.  As I may have intimated before, some of this is for reasons of privacy; my employer has been central to most of the drama that’s happened to me over the last few months.  Which makes sense, since most of my time has been taken up by work, and my home and social life have revolved around my colleagues out of necessity.  This blog is one of the first things that comes up when my name is googled, and I know it’d be bad form to air any grievances about my employer, which means that most of what I’ve spent the last six months talking about (to my friends, to Jenn, to myself) is out of bounds.  (Incidentally, expect another, less complainy post not long after this one, to push this down from the top of the page.)

But enough of what I’m not going to talk about.  How was Guinea?

...Wet!

As far as I can tell, nobody comes to Guinea on purpose.  That makes sense on its face: between the malaria, the political instability, the lack of access to stable power or internet, and the cratered, sunken roads that are always choked with traffic, this isn’t anyone’s first choice.  The diplomatic corps staff members were all assigned here because of their lack of seniority or unpopularity in the department—this is a necessary evil for most of them, a first step before they can be assigned to literally anywhere else.  As you might imagine, this leads to some pretty frikkin’ gross ‘tudes, gross enough that I wrote and deleted a long post shining a spotlight on the racist nonsense that comes out of their mouths sometimes.  Most of the expats here spend their time complaining about it—a common enough thing in cushier destinations like Japan, too, though here that note of bitterness is even more common.

As for me?  Despite all the corruption, the difficulty in recreating a middle-class American lifestyle here, the daily inconveniences?  I like it here!

I’m walking a fine line on this one, I know.  Media is awash in depictions of Africa as a place of unrelenting tragedy, and I don’t want to make this yet another bout of indulging in “Heal the World”-type pathos.  On the other hand, emphasizing what a lovely time I had would seem to be just wallowing in my own privilege, especially when, yes, Guinea suffers from terrible unemployment, corruption, medical crises, failing infrastructure, and more of the hallmarks of perennially exploited countries [/handwringing].

I would come back here, though.  I would live in Guinea again, even in Conakry.  I don’t know if Guinea and Guineans are all that distinct compared to other West African nations, if living in Senegal or Cote d’Ivoire or Ghana would have all the positive points of living here with fewer negatives.  From my own experiences, though, I know that much like people, places are absolutely formed by their history.  The scars of occupation in Seoul or Berlin, for example, are clearly critically important parts of those cities’ identities…and if that’s a self-built identity, one designed for tourists, that doesn’t make it any less important or authentic.

For the armchairiest of historical speculation: Guinea was the first West African nation to gain independence from France.  It did so nonviolently, but aggressively, definitively, casting out French influence to forge its own future, and has served as an example of African independence for decades since.  It’s also gotten extremely thoroughly screwed over by France, more so than many other former colonies, and according to the popular sentiment here, the fact that the French took everything with them when they left has been largely responsible for Guinea having such a rough go of it.

So basically, after being devastated and having generations of its people kidnapped and murdered, Guinea has still gotten the short end of the stick (less foreign investment, more neocolonial pillagers at the door).  It’s just that now, this time, that raw deal has been the unfortunate result of decisions that Guinea made for itself.  I know that can’t be any consolation to the families with no potable water and no mosquito nets, but from a cold, heartlessly romantic perspective, I think Guinea has something to be proud of.

This is why I teach kindergarten, right here.

To take it back to the personal: the people I’ve met here have been welcoming, friendly, and warm.  Some of the encounters I’ve had have been among the most beautiful moments of my life.  Jamming with friends—my ukulele, their traditional Kissian polyphonic singing.  Watching the sun set over the giant, unfinished stadium while bats flit overhead and the call to prayer suffuses the air in plaintive, cracking voices.  Hearing my students grow to express themselves more every day (one of my students, searching for a word to use when discussing the behavior of mosquitoes, hit on “heart water”).

One of the hardest things about living abroad is the realization that you’ve never “done” anywhere.  As long as I’ve spent anywhere I’ve lived or visited, there’s never been a moment where I thought, “I never need to come back to this place” (except maybe Sagada).  Even if Guinea wasn’t on my list of places to visit before, it’s definitely on my list of places to revisit now.

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Guess I had more in me than I’d thought.  Tune in next time for more photos of adorable children!

Well Come

As I stumbled, blinking, into the Senegalese night from the cool of the airport, I saw masses of people behind metal fences.  Some waved around signs, none of which had my name on it.  I'd never met the people whom my colleague told me I'd be staying with, but I was told the person who would be picking me up had a picture of me and would be carrying a sign.  I hadn't found a SIM card for my phone, either, so I was flying blind, with only a name and a useless phone number.  I passed through one checkpoint, then another, then another, until a tall man in white called to me from behind a barrier.

"Mister!" he said.  "Mister!  What's your name?"

Unthinking, shifting my backpack, I replied, "Harry."

"Mister Harry, I was sent for you," he smiled.  He gestured for me to follow.  "Come on."

I came a little closer, hesitantly.  "Who sent you?" I asked.  "Amina sent you?"

"Yes, Madame Amina," he confirmed, still smiling.  "Come on, let's take a taxi."

I shuffled behind, hesitant, but somewhat encouraged by his confidence.  As a taxi ran in front of me, I heard "Psst!"  I saw the taxi slow and the driver wag his finger at me.  I glanced at my guide, who was talking to someone else at this point.  The taxi driver shot his eyes toward the man I was following and again wagged his finger.  My stomach started to prickle.  Finally, fucking finally, I chose between rudeness and safety.  I walked back the way I'd came, crossing the barriers into the walkway leaving the airport.

"Hey, Mister Harry!" the man called from behind me.  Without turning, I shouted back something about making a call and booked it back to the entrance to the airport.  All the way up to the rifle-carrying guards, anyway.

I stood there for a long second, not really processing what had just happened.  Unable to think of literally any other option, I tried walking again: past the taxi touts, ignoring anyone calling "Monsieur!" or "Hey, mister!" or "Mon ami!"  This was the Conakry airport in January all over again, with a dozen places labeled "Meeting Point," each presumably the last before dumping travelers onto the mean streets of the capital.  Except this time there seemed to be other risks than just being asked for money.

"Mister Harry!" a muscular young guy in a beard called to me.  I met his eyes, and he pointed to the end of the walkway.  Others called to me, but I walked towards where he'd pointed, though with every step I second-guessed myself: did this guy just hear me talking to the man in white?  Was he my ride, or was this just the start of an exceptionally well-executed con?

"Hi, Mister Harry, my name is Mohamed.  Welcome to Dakar," he said with a smile as he took my hand.  I shook it even more tepidly than usual.

"Did, ah...who sent you?" I asked without a great deal of resolve.

"Excuse me?" he said, blinking.  I repeated myself, using different words, and his eyes turned to comprehension.  "Amina, yes, Mrs. Amina."

I sighed in relief.  "I'm sorry, there was just a guy—"

"Come on, let's get a taxi," Mohamed said, turning.

I walked behind him into the surprisingly well-lit parking lot.  All of Dakar was surprisingly well-lit compared to Conakry, where indeed the students sit outside stadiums and airports to study after dark.  Casually, smoothly (yeah, right), I began to press Mohamed for details.

"So, I know Geneviève is coming on Wednesday," I said coolly, dropping the name of my colleague.

"Yes, yes," he said, seemingly without recognition.

I tried again: "And, uh...how is Mariam?" I asked.  From what I understood, Geneviève's little daughter was staying with Amina.

"Yes, ha ha," he said, still not meeting my eye.

Suddenly chilly, I stopped in my tracks.  As calmly as I could, I asked to see Amina's phone number so I could compare it with what I'd written down.

"Wait, wait," he said as he fiddled with his phone, no longer smiling.  Then he showed me a picture:

(That's me in the back.)

I don't think he bears me any ill will for regarding him with such suspicion—though I wouldn't blame him if he did.  Since that first meeting, though, I've struggled to fill the long, long taxi rides with conversation, and it's obvious that Mohamed has been trying, too.

"What kind of sports do you like?" he asks, or "What kind of car do you like?"  A noble effort, and probably smart questions for most other guys, but sure-fire conversation-enders with this particular knucklehead.  Even "Do you use social media?" is a pretty short talk, perhaps unsurprisingly.  We converse in English, since he said that's what he prefers to use with me, though sometimes it's clear French would be better (if more difficult for me).

On Tuesday he took me to a roadside tea cart, one of hundreds in downtown Dakar.  I bought us tiny plastic cups of very powerful, very minty, very sweet tea, and he introduced me to some of the regulars at this particular establishment (which was only just a couple of thermoses and a wooden bench on the sidewalk).  With one of them, a youngish Fulani man whose name I don't catch, I hit it off immediately: he and I discussed linguistics and geopolitics, mostly in French, while Mohamed sat next to me, smoking quietly.

Taking Jenn's advice, I've been trying to deal with the awkwardness by pretending that it doesn't exist, pretending that our long silences are companionable and mutually agreeable.  It works, some of the time at least.

I've realized over the last several days that I put a lot of pressure on myself to be charming and polite, meaning I haven't really liked myself very much here in Dakar; we don't really share enough interests or enough of a language for me to be very funny, and the pressure I put on myself to entertain makes for some severely unentertaining banter, plus the fact that I have no idea what's expected in this culture means I might be acting like a total jerk much of the time.

I didn't ask for a guide—though a day walking around town quickly shows me how much easier and safer things are with one—and I often get caught up in myself.  I'm frustrated that I'm not getting to vacation the way I'd imagined I would, frustrated that I'm not able to be pleasant and charming and funny, frustrated that I care, and frustrated that I don't care enough, as though Mohamed is unworthy of my trying to put forward my best self.

The food, meanwhile, is excellent, as is the weather and the freaky North Korean-built monuments (see above).

Right Location, Right Time

Tanti Amina and her four children live in Keur Massar, a community on the outskirts of Dakar.  To look at it, Keur Massar could be extraordinarily old, a ruin of some forgotten war, with crumbs of concrete being swallowed and regurgitated by slithering mounds of ochre sand.  On the contrary, Tanti Amina's neighborhood is very new, under development for only about three or four years.  In fact, Tanti Amina's house—sparkling-clean, ornamented with various succulents in pots of seashells behind the front gate—is under construction, too, with workmen piling concrete bricks on top of the roof and hammering at all hours.



She tells me one morning that she plans to turn the extension into a location, another apartment for vacationers to rent for a week at a time.  I tell her about AirBnB, and she seems interested.



Inside, meanwhile, it is cozy, tastefully decorated (not that I'd know, of course), with comfortable, new-looking couches—the kind without obvious butt grooves, that tend to have tablets left on them (best to check before you sit down).  As Mohamed, my self-professed guide (he pronounces it "gweed"), shows me in, Tanti Amina and her children greet me warmly, excusing their lack of English.  I thank them profusely, promising to try my best with French for the next week.  Considering the type of houseguest I am, it gets much easier once Tanti Amina reminds me of the phrase n'importe quoi, "it doesn't matter."



After a few fits and starts, mostly due to faux pas or fear of committing one on my part, we sit to eat dinner.  It's late, after 9:30, and I apologize for seemingly having kept the family waiting.  I assume my poor French is what causes their confused looks, though it becomes clear over the next few days that dinner in Senegal rarely happens before nine, nor lunch before two.  We eat our couscous and chicken in a rich red sauce from a common dish while sitting on the floor, and though Tanti Amina's questions lead me to believe this isn't an everyday affair, the family's evident comfort with eating in this style make me marvel at its authentic exoticism or exotic authenticity.

Before going to sleep, I fret for awhile about eating before the young woman who cooked our food ate her own dinner—am I profiting from some misogynistic tradition where the younger daughter eats after the rest of the family?  My mind is put at rest the next day when Mohamed tells me that that girl is the family's hired help (giving rise to anxiety about having committed another faux pas by being unable to tell apart family and employees).




It's a long, dusty walk to anything from Tanti Amina's house.  No taxis come anywhere closer than ten minutes away, to the Shell station near the highway.  As Mohamed walks me that way in the morning, I note several horses and donkeys lashed to strange two-wheeled carts, as well as dozens of big golden eagles wheeling over the unfinished, brightly-colored houses.  Later, in a crowded city bus painted brightly like the Jeepneys of Manila, we ride past bald vultures clashing on what looks like an abandoned playground.  It's relatively quiet between Mohamed and me on the bus, and before that on the walk, as well as on the taxi rides downtown, across town, and back home.

Mohamed and I hadn't gotten off on a very good foot, unfortunately.  But that's a story for another day.

Front Lines

Just a short update in case you haven't been following the news (or even if you have; Guinean news doesn't tend to dominate CNN even when we don't have a human kielbasa belch as president).  This is cobbled together from the scant English-language news I've found online, poor translations of the scant French news I've found online, rumors, hearsay, and my own limited impressions, so take with an entire shaker of salt.  Warning: this isn't a fun one, might want to skip ahead if you're looking for cute kid drawings and weird food stories.

Photo by Reuters (so don't worry, Mom)

For the last three weeks, local schools in Conakry have been closed.  Teachers and students have been striking in solidarity with junior teachers who have been laid off and in protest of low salaries.  On Monday, the demonstrations grew in scale and severity, with blockades being put across the roads (apparently by strikers) and violent clashes between security forces and protestors.  Numbers vary, but around six people were killed, some of them police, and at least thirty have been injured (likely many more).  The official government line is that these protests have been illegal, a scary assertion given past governments' actions against "illegal" demonstrations.  Though an agreement was reached on Monday between the government and representatives of the teachers' union, disruptions have continued to interrupt daily life.

For the last several weeks, I've been hearing stories of a different kind about life in Conakry.  A significant problem facing the city, among many others, is the high rate of unemployment among young men, who come to the capital from all over Guinea to find a job.  Finding none, these young men, many of them university-educated, soon find themselves with little money and a great deal of time.  Unemployment and poverty, combined with bad roads, a rapidly increasing population, and lack of access to reliable electricity and water, has led to high tensions that have only gotten hotter in recent years.  Police and the military have had little luck addressing these problems or quashing protest; government employees are paid badly enough that it's common for the police to put up "security checkpoints" of their own, where they shake down passing cars to supplement their incomes.

On Monday night, one of my coworkers was picked up from the airport by a driver hired by our school.  The 10-km drive took them an hour and a half, as they were stopped at two dozen flaming barricades where they were confronted by young men demanding payment.  When they ran out of money, the driver surrendered his phone to buy them passage.  When that was gone, the men surrounded the car, pounding on the hood and the roof, trying to open the door, and trying to snap off the side-view mirrors.

My coworker did make it back safely, as did the driver, though they both still have a shaky smile and haunted expression much of the time.  They and several of our colleagues were stranded in various safe places throughout the city (mostly hotels and embassy housing), but they all made it home sometime on Tuesday or Wednesday.

Photo by Getty Images

And me?  I didn't leave my house for two days while all this has been going on.  I feel a bit silly for drinking most of my emergency water already, but apart from a looming toilet paper crisis, I've stayed as safe as possible.  The teachers' housing is pretty distant from the worst of the unrest, and I've been looking at the guards, walls, and razor wire that I was complaining about a few weeks ago through different eyes.

For the moment, things have become quiet.  There are still reports of shots being fired, and outside the walls of the school, sometimes there is chanting that lacks the reassuring regular melody of the neighborhood mosque's call to prayer.  Allegedly the local schools reopened today as promised, but few students have returned to classes, and the streets are mostly empty (not that I've been venturing out to look).  One of my Guinean coworkers predicts that the rest of this week will be eerily quiet and periodically explosive, but by Monday things will be back to normal.  Such as it is.

Child's Play

Based on what I'd been told before arriving, I was expecting the most difficult things about working at this school would all be tied to life in a developing country: frequent power outages, periods with no running water, difficulty accessing the internet, safety, etc.  From my arrival in Conakry, however, I've been pleasantly surprised to find the people of Guinea friendly, the walk to school dusty but safe, and the housing comfortable if not exactly without excitement.  The teaching, on the other hand, was immediately way, way harder than I'd anticipated.  Working with my mentor teacher, I'm only teaching nine students (soon to be ten), and compared to the kindergarten classes I'd observed in Kansas and the kindergarten I'd taught at in Osaka, nine students sounded like...well, child's play, if that's not too clever.  I was a little anxious about starting to apply all the skills I'd been learning in my grad program related to differentiation, assessment, collaboration, etc., but classroom management would be no big deal, I figured.  Kindergarteners like me.  Kindergarteners are sweet.

That was the biggest surprise, one that had me in literal tears (the worst kind) after my first day teaching: even though there are only nine of them, classroom management was way, way harder than I'd anticipated.  During those first few days, six of the nine students would be crying, running away, or punching the other children at any given time.  I felt horrible at my job, especially with this apparent failure to keep control of the class in front of my mentor teacher.  I could come up with several reasons these students behaved the way they did, and I tried to let these ideas inform my response (not that it helped me feel much better): they came from vastly different cultures from my own, most of them have low levels of English, most are still unused to school, all of them were getting used to a new teacher and new routine halfway through the school year.

Along with my crisis of confidence, I began to have a real crisis of conscience: why was I so bothered that it was so chaotic in the classroom?  They weren't obeying me, but did I really want to be an authoritarian, a force for telling these students to sit down and shut up because I said so?  That's certainly not the teaching philosophy I'd studied for the last year and a half in my education program, and it's not what I had imagined I'd be doing as a kindergarten teacher.  And to put it bluntly, I didn't want to be the white guy yelling at a room of nine black people (children, but still people) to stop talking!

Perhaps most critically, I think I had been comparing these nine international students to Japanese kindergarteners who were in a culturally homogeneous, strictly regimented school environment.  These students are from Guinea, Cote d'Ivoire, or were international school brats.  What do I know about the school or home culture these kids come from?  What if...well, what if yelling is what these students know as a sign to be quiet?  What if my mild-mannered, touchy-feely, hippie-dippy persona doesn't register as an authority figure as them?  Or worse, as a teacher?

Well, last week, this particular crisis came to a head.  I decided I didn't want to be the yelling teacher, the overwhelmed, frazzled teacher.  I wanted to be the hippie uncle teacher, the one with the dopey ponytail and the ukulele and the dumb print shirts.

Easy fix: I brought my ukulele to school.

And how did it go?  Well, a bit anticlimactically.  My students enjoy the ukulele, and they enjoy singing, and while there's still a lot of punching etc., when I can get them on board with "Down By the Bay" or "The Green Grass Grows All Around," for a minute or two, I can stop shouting and get them to behave like adorable little children instead of complete maniacs.  For now, that's enough.

Compound Sentences

For the last several months, I've been making the same joke about the oncoming international move: "Ha ha, I'm pretty sure I have no idea what I've gotten myself into!"  It might have been funny at some point, but I don't think there will be any huge outcry if I kill this particular thigh-slapper by dissecting what makes it (ostensibly) funny.

The root of the humor here, like 80% of the things I say, is self-deprecating.  If I had to pin down a thesis statement, it'd be something like: "Only a complete fool would move to a foreign country without knowing a great deal about that place.  Before you stands one such fool."  And as should be clear from the last few posts, there's a lot of truth to this statement: I did shockingly little research before this, my first time living in a developing country, my first international school post, my first visit to Africa.  As tends to happen, I found myself with very little time to do any reading about these subjects in the weeks leading to my departure...or more accurately, I had a lot of other things I just preferred to do instead of that research.  Karaoke may have been involved.

And cookies.

To put it bluntly, I don't think that decision says a lot of good things about me.  I know that there's only so much preparation that could be done from thousands of miles away, and I've already had a fair amount of experience moving and living abroad.  More to the point, though, it's too late to prepare; I'm already here.

All of this is an incredibly long-winded way of saying "OMG, you guys, SO MUCH has happened in the last week!"  Enough that I'd have a hard time compiling it into one post, so...hell, it's my blog, let's break it up a little bit.  What follows will be in no particular order.  First up: the housing and security situation.

The view from my window.  The constant cloud of red dust and smoke from garbage fires makes for some killer sunsets!

Despite the occasional foibles that I understand are common to housing in developing countries (frequent power outages, mouse problems, unreliable laundry facilities), the living situation here is chock full of amenities.  The internet works great, we have a swimming pool, the geckos are puny and inoffensive, and the compound's guards are friendly and helpful, most of the time.  Yeah, compound.  Guards.

I've never lived on a compound before; the term definitely suggests cults or militias, neither of which really jives with the hippie lifestyle of the kind of tool who still says "jives."  Yet here I find myself, living behind a tall stone wall topped with razor wire, with a front gate manned by guards 24/7.  My place of employment is likewise surrounded by walls, razor wire, and guards, and I have a driver to transport me to school every morning though it's just a 15-minute walk around the local stadium (which is also surrounded by walls, razor wire, and guards).  Everyone here in the school's employ who's here to help the teachers stay safe and happy has been incredibly friendly and welcoming.  So why do I feel like such a schmuck when I cross paths with them?

In a lot of ways, I feel incredibly unsafe being surrounded by such imposing security measures at all times.  It reminds me of some fond memories of my research on Gothicism back in grad school: building enormous castle walls is done to keep out danger, yet those walls are a constant reminder of that danger, and having one's mind filled with the threat of violence gives rise to nightmares when it grows dark within the walls.  The guards at my compound naturally carry some of that baggage with them, like it or not.

More immediately, the walls and guards are a constant reminder of the specter of colonialism that hangs over my life in this country.  It's kind of hard not to think about the fact that I, a white man from a wealthy country, being paid more in a month than most families here will see in a year, am scared and defenseless in this place.  For all my power—to move among countries freely, to find employment at an international school, to have near-constant internet access—I am powerless in my daily life, and I am completely reliant on locals to get through even basic daily tasks.   Being reminded of one's privilege is a good thing, I think, and necessary from time to time, but it's also kind of a punch in the gut.

I'd like to think that I'm contributing something to the community here, that I'm not exactly here to plunder natural resources, but the fact that I'm reliant on the much poorer local people to keep me safe, drive me around, and clean my house is deeply unsettling nonetheless.  It's taking a lot of getting used to.

I think some of what's pulling me up short when it comes to speaking with servants (and I really think that might be the right word) is that the whole institution feels so...well, un-American.  In all the books and movies that I can recall from when I was growing up, bad guys were generally the ones who had servants; the hero tends to do things for himself, sidekicks notwithstanding (and they're more frequently compelled to serve through friendship, not a paycheck).  I don't particularly like the idea of becoming comfortable interacting with servants.

So now, when I find myself interacting with the school or compound guards, I do so sheepishly, even brusquely.  I'm not generally rude, I hope, but I find myself tending to look away rather than smile and make eye contact, nodding rather than asking "Ça va?" or "Comment allez-vous?"

My new coworkers don't seem to have the same problems as I do.  Some of them are unapologetically distrustful of our staff, citing previous thefts, rudeness, drinking on the job, etc..  Some are coldly competent when discussing how to best vet locals we're considering hiring to cook or do our shopping.  Some have no qualms about greeting them with a handshake, a smile, and a "Hey, brother, how are you going?"  (This last happens to be Australian.)

I'm really trying not to keep myself on the rack about this one.  Interacting with people through a new power dynamic is a hard thing, and it's not anything that anyone is born with.  I really think I'm going to make it through the next six months in one piece; let's hope I can leave in June not having made anyone's life harder or more demeaning for having met me.

Casablanca

It hasn’t been all that long since I’ve traveled somewhere new, but it’s been long enough that I’d forgotten just what it feels like.  Specifically, I seem to have blocked out just what a fantastic mix of lows and highs the whole affair is.  The lows started coming on sometime while I was writing the previous blog post, and got much lower after I boarded the plane to Casablanca.

After carefully stashing my small backpack and my precious ukulele in an overhead compartment and getting settled in the middle seat right by the wing of the plane (of course), between two middle-aged Arabic-speaking men, I was alarmed to see another passenger take my bags out of the compartment, insert his own hefty rolly-bag, and roughly begin to cram my uke and backpack back in.  “Hey, hey, careful!” I snapped, half-standing.  Every passenger in the back of the plane turned to look at me…except, of course, the guy who was manhandling my gear, who continued to stuff them in between other, much heavier suitcases before finally sitting down.

For the next half hour I sat there fuming, hating every minute of the travel experience.  I hated how long we sat on the runway.  I hated the cramped space.  I hated the fact that the video screens hadn’t been turned on yet.  I hated the smell of the other passengers.  Most of all I hated the notion that some rando had busted my gear, the valuables that had been so carefully packed, that had survived thousands of miles of travel by train, ferry, plane, and bicycle.  I eventually convinced myself that the only thing that was likely damaged in the repacking was the half-finished bag of Cheez-Its in the side pocket, and those were mostly busted already.  This conclusion ended up being entirely correct.

Something else I’d forgotten is what it feels like to travel alone.  The last time I traveled anywhere without Jenn was ten years ago now, and I mostly remember spending my time moping around London and Oslo, shunning human contact and feeling sorry for myself for not having any money.  That may have been a function of youth, or perhaps listening to too much mopey music (which itself is often a function of youth); whatever the reason, wandering around Casablanca for three hours felt like an almost comically long amount of time.  And while I still shunned most human contact during my day on the town, spending a few hours walking and taking pictures definitely felt like a high point.  (It helped that the $20 I withdrew from the ATM turned out to be way, way more money than I needed for buying a coffee and lunch, enough that I also splashed out on a couple of pastries in the marketplace and a bottle of water in the airport.)

I didn’t forget how much easier traveling by yourself can be than traveling with another person…in fact, I had never known this.  It’s lonely, sure, but not having to justify poorly-informed or impulsive decisions cuts back on stress in a big way.  For example: after a nap in the airport-provided hotel, I rather unwisely decided to just walk towards where Google Maps claims the Old Medina is.  It should come as no surprise that there was very little where the pin was placed by Google, but the fact that I was only wasting my own time made the experience much less of a thing.  Likewise, choosing a restaurant is often a fraught experience with travel partners: when one person doesn’t like the feel of a place the other person suggests, that creates some natural conflict.  (Also, had there been anyone else around, I probably would have been embarrassed that after two and a half hours of wandering around the city I ended up eating at the awesome French restaurant right by my hotel.)

Speaking of, it’s striking just how much less stressful it is speaking French with people for whom French is likely not their native language.  I’ve griped about this extensively before, but it bears repeating that many French people are kind of…well, to put it as kindly as I can manage, they’re proud of their language, they place a premium on being well-spoken, and they don’t take terribly well to the fumbling efforts of cretins like me getting grubby fingerprints all over their beautiful language.  Speaking a simple sentence in Korean or Japanese in those countries is frequently met with smiles of relief (and sometimes literal applause), no matter how simple the grammar or how awkward the pronunciation.  Not so French people, who tend to correct minor errors and/or appear frustrated when they hear a foreign accent—not that everyone we’ve encountered has been rude, of course, but no matter how kindly it’s done, it’s frustrating to have one’s best efforts with the language met with condescending correction at best and angry criticism at worst.  This is one reason I managed to make it out of seven months of living in Normandy and still speak pretty piss-poor French.  After today, though, I’m hoping that I’ll discover that speaking French to French speakers not from France will be just as easy in Conakry as in Casablanca.

And what of Casablanca itself, then?  In some ways, it was completely different from what I had expected: it was quite green, especially from the air, and it was chilly enough that I ended up needing the hoody I’d packed.  In other ways, though, my expectations were confirmed: the architecture is white and dusty and gorgeous, the coffee is powerful, and the city is crawling with a population of extremely pathetic-looking stray cats.

That may not be a great deal to learn over three sleep-deprived hours getting lost in Casablanca, but it’ll have to do for now.  I’m not sure if I’ll ever stop thinking “I wish Jenn was here to see this,” but it’s good to know that I can have a good time discovering a city even when I’m alone.

Air Male

I know that I’m breaking very little new ground when I say that airports aren’t the most pleasant places; the better airports are generally distinguished not by appealing qualities, but by the relative lack of the indignities that characterize the species.  When graded against pretty much any other human-built structure, even the best airports would fall short—less convenient than train stations, uglier than government buildings, less fun than, say, Dave & Buster’s.

All that said, New York JFK appears to suck even for an airport.  Unlike in O’Hare, outlets are in criminally short supply, so I type this sitting cross-legged on the white tile floor, hoping it’s less dangerously unhygienic than it looks.  There’s also a complete lack of electronic departure boards, so underlying all the boredom is the persistent worry that my gate has been changed or flight cancelled without any way to know.  So I sit here, eagerly awaiting the moment when I can stand in line to sit in a tiny chair and breathe in recycled farts for six hours.  The only way to travel!  (In that there is literally no other way for me to reach Guinea.)

I’ve been traveling for twelve hours now; I have about twenty-four more until I arrive in Conakry, Guinea.  My flight lands at 1:30 a.m. on Sunday, and the first day of school is Monday.  Tick-tock.

I’ve been teaching for roughly eight of the last ten years, which I understand will make me something of a hotshot at the international school where I start work in about sixty hours.  It’s nice to be taken seriously and have my experience respected as a useful resource.  On the other hand, all eight of those years were enabled by my exacting qualifications of being born an English speaker and pretty much nothing else.  It should be no surprise that I’m still stuck in that wonderful tailspin of ego and imposter syndrome that’s characterized my career to date: “How dare they treat me as a clueless newbie just because I’ve been hired without any teaching qualifications?  They’d better respect the expertise I have to contribute to the school community…just as long as they don’t discover that I actually have very little idea what I’m doing!”

Twenty-three hours and fifty minutes.

Of course, they know what they’re getting.  Last year this school actually offered to hire Jenn and me both, sight unseen, certification unnecessary.  The only thing that kept us from accepting on the spot was prior commitments, but the fact that I have another year of graduate classes and teaching experience under my belt should make me overqualified if anything.

This is it, then, my big chance.  After the next six months and a few more grad classes, I’ll have the license and Master’s degree to back up the sense of self-importance.  I’ll be qualified to teach in elementary schools around the world.  Assuming, of course, that I make it out of the next six months alive.

That’s another point of conflict: for as much credit as I get from friends and relatives about my international lifestyle, I’ve spent extremely little time in developing countries (to use a somewhat loaded term), and all of that has been in very tourist-centered countries such as Lao and Indonesia.  Sure, plop me in a foreign city and within a day I’m confident I can manage the subway system and mail a postcard home.  The thing is, in addition to having to worry about tropical diseases, poor infrastructure, and wild dogs, I understand Conakry lacks both public transportation and a postal service, rendering my international skills (such as they are) pretty moot.  Mooter than usual.  The mootest, even.

What little I know of my incipient workplace has been fragmentary and not a little frightening.  I understand the school lacks a lot of resources and until this year was housed in a relatively unsafe environment (the phrase “razor wire” doesn’t crop up in most pedagogical literature), and has been kept open and revitalized by the U.S. government in order to maintain diplomatic relations with the country.  Communications with my new coworkers have done little to allay my worries.  If nothing else, I’m confident I can manage the students; jokes about butts transcend culture and language, I’ve found.

I think it would be relevant to bring up how alarmingly poor is my knowledge of Conakry, Guinea, and Africa in general.  I can finally point the city and country out on a map after a bit of sweating, and I know that the lingua franca is French (appropriately enough) and that the region is famous for drumming and, more recently, Ebola.  I feel a bit sheepish about entering a long sojourn in a country with such pathetic ignorance of my new temporary home (not that that stopped me in Korea), but with twenty-three and a half hours to go, it’s a bit too late for that.

I guess knowing things about Guinea is about to sort itself out, one way or another…