Visa

List of documents you need to prepare and collect to obtain a non tourist visa extension in Nepal:

1- write a letter to the Social Welfare County requesting a visa extension, with the following attachments:
1.1 - application form with picture. you and your dependent.
1.2 - copy of the General Agreement of your NGO with the Government
1.3 - copy of the Project Agreement (the reason why you need a visa)
1.4 - report of the activities of the last year
1.5 - personal report (how did you improve in the last year thanks to the fact you were in Nepal)
1.6 - marriage certificate (if you have a family who needs also a visa)
1.7 - birth certificate (if your family comprehends one or more child)
1.8 - translation in English of points 1.6 and 1.7, done by a certified translator. Please notice you need to submit 1.6 and 1.7 even if it's a visa extension. Like if in the meanwhile, my child decided to change parents.
1.9 -  Assignment letter from your employer
1.10 - CV


2- they will answer with a letter to the Ministry of Women Children and Social Affair. you should pick up the letter and bring it to the ministry, with the following attachments:
2.1 - application form with picture. you and your dependent.
2.2 - copy of the General Agreement of your NGO with the Government
2.3 - copy of the Project Agreement (the reason why you need a visa)
2.4 - report of the activities of the last year
2.5 - personal report (how did you improve in the last year thanks to the fact you were in Nepal)
2.6 - marriage certificate (if you have a family who needs also a visa)
2.7 - birth certificate (if your family comprehends one or more child)
2.8 - translation in English of points 2.6 and 2.7, done by a certified translator.
2.9 -  Assignment letter from your employer
2.10 - CV

3 - The Ministry will answer back to the SWC, and so your visa request can finally go to the Home Affair. A part of printing the umpteenth cover letter just changing the letter head, you should provide:
3.1-  their own application form with picture
3.2 - please copy from point 2.2 to 2.9
3.3 - their own CV format

4- if everything is ok, your folder will pass to the Labor Dpt.
A part of all the documentation, plus some extra pictures, they come to visit you office (for which you have to pay a per diem, even if not even them know why exactly they do the visit) and they interview you, with question like:
Why exactly a Nepalese cannot take your place?
How are you sustaining Nepalese economy and social culture?

then they tells you that from this year you are oblige to do the working permit, for which you have to pay 10,000 rupees (100 USD). Plus other 10,000 fine because you did not do it last year...when it wasn't required. And you pay.

5- Finally, you see land and you arrive to the IMMIGRATION DPT.
You can see the queue from a satellite picture. In the High Season is longer than the Great Wall.
That is because there are a lot of people, expat and tourist, who wants to renew the visa and because the people working at the immigration office are the slowest, nastier, arrogant guys ever.
You cannot apply for a renewal but just at the very last moment...and during this last election there was a 10 days strike which blocked many offices. So many people ran late and the visa expired.
The officers recognize it was a case of force majeure.

And then, smiling, the prepare the fine receipt.

Relativity

It's election time now in Nepal. But not everybody agrees.

There is a party alliance that call for a ten day national strike to prevent the election.
The situation is very complicated, I'm a swot in political analysis and I can't tell which ones are the good and the bad ones. If they are any.
Anyway, we planned a visit in the countryside (we call them 'missions'...jerk...) and to avoid the strike, which in Nepal means that all the streets and road are blocked by a yelling crowd, we went during the weekend.

We drove for seven hours, we spoke with some people, we met an NGO acting in the area, we slept in a tiny freezing room on a harder than wood mattress and, as usual, they brought us to visit a school.
I don't like to visit schools.
Especially if, as in this case, you do not have any plan to work with this particular school.
I don't like it because you always bring with you a high expectation...
"Oh!, the foreigners are coming! We are safe! We will finally have water, electricity, a computer and internet. We will not be isolated in this country side Nepalese mountain freezing village"
Then, I don't like it because they always use children to offer you flowers, to sing or dance.
And finally, I don't like it because generally children are so dirty and poorly dressed that you'd prefer to go to visit HAVING some future plans to develop in the school.

This visit was the compendium of all this, plus a icing on the cake.
The local NGO is implementing in that particular school a project aimed at increase the awareness of the students and the teacher about child and education rights.
Well, not only the children (dirty and poorly dressed) were waiting for us with flowers in a row at lunch time standing under the sun, but then they sang, played and three of them danced.
One of the dancer, one of those whom should be aware of her right as a children and a student, was forced, by one of these teachers formed in child and students rights, to dance even if sick.
For us. The ones who perhaps were coming with money.
Rights relativity.

The sick one is the one on the right almost fainting

  

Before

When I came to meet this man, he was at the end of his career.
Thirty-five years in cooperation. He was one of the first. He worked for everybody and everywhere. He met legendary people like Nyerere and the king of Afghanistan.
In those times only mercenaries and missionaries were living in countries like Congo and Cambodia, and so he was in the interesting situation to be considered one of the only objective eye on the spot.
He wrote for dozens of international magazines and, to make more money, also he started to take pictures.
He had thousand of interesting anecdoctes of this era where real adventures where not sold in internet for groups of 8 or more.
And, of course, he was an alcoholic.
Once, after a very heavy shift in Angola, he decided to take a break and, thanks to some friends, he was embarked on a luxury ship cruise as photographer.
"It was great", he told me, we were in a bar in Arusha.
"As part of the staff I could drink for free. And I was the only staff member who was allowed not to be always sober"
"And the pictures?"
"That part was also ok. But never try to work in the darkroom during a storm. Or to pee standing up. Or the two together. But, my god! what a superb whiskey, almost arrogant! And the champagne...friendly as a curious girl...Ah, the first week was memorable..."
"The first week? What then?"
"I start to vomit blood and I had to stop drinking"
"...yeah...there are more funny things to do than vomit blood"
"Of course, but you I did them before"
And his laugh was superb as a whiskey.

women wisdom

In this job, you have to accept a huge number of invitation:
schools graduation ceremonies, wedding parties of some relative of a cousin of a colleague, also funerals, Hindu festivals, Buddhist mountain climbing, and thousand of lunches or dinners.

I don't know how to explain it, but you always feel uncomfortable.
Once they asked me to do a speech  during a wedding of which I've never met before the groom or the bride. Just because I'm the foreigner, the attraction. Inexplicably, you become the guest of honor wherever you go.
Just because you belong to that part of the world the majority of the people in developing countries thinks is all looking as Hollywood.
It's annoying that the only reason why they want you at their celebration is so vain.
Even if you stink, or you are a pervert, if you are the expat, you will be always invited.

A part of the speeches, and the fact they always serves you first, and they always try to make you TOO comfortable, in Tajikistan was an additional reason to feel bad about those dinners: women were not allowed in.
Once I was invited by Makhtob, a translator, a woman, at her place for dinner. And I didn't see her at all during the evening.
Women were in the other room preparing the dishes, and kids were sent to bring them. In the dining, only men.

I asked about where Makhtob were, and his uncle explain me the reason: "She's not allowed"
I said I had to go to bathroom, a declaration that always create panic in the room (will our inadequate toilet be enough adequate for a foreigner pee?), and I sneak out to find Makhtob, imagining her in a tiny, dark, cold room preparing food.

I found her. She was with other women in their own female party. They were laughing, joking, chatting, and preparing the plate. When  she saw me she was surprised: "What are you doing here?"
"Well, you invited me for dinner...And I didn't know you were not supposed to actually be in the dinner"
"I knows, this is how it works...That's why in Tajikistan, between women we say: If you do not want to see someone, invite him for dinner!"

I don't know if she actually ever realized her gaffe

All men

Like a man

In each project there is a component of gender.
Of course also for the water project.
Women are the one (and child also), fetching water, managing it at home, using it. For cooking, washing, cleaning, take care of babies and all.
A full time job.
So our duty is to stress the communities to bring the attention to the great value women have in the family economy and try to involve them in the decision making for the project activities.
At the end, they are the one fetching water, isn't it normal they discuss where the pipeline should actually pass by?
Isn't it one of the most important achievement to bring equity for all those women and girls not allowed to go to school, married as a child to old men, sold as prostitutes by fathers, killed while still in mother's belly because considered inferiors?

As I told you already, we were living in a camp in the savanna with a Masai community.
The chairman of the village was also the manager of the camp, Isaac a pure Masai. He was helped to go to school, to send his children to school, his community has benefited from all the projects on the NGO: water, renewable energy, agriculture and so on. They were our neighbors, we were living together, we shared food, water, space, drought and floods, elephant incursions, sad and happy moments.
There was also a volunteer in the camp, a girl, Beatrix.
One day she stumble on a root and felt down badly, injuring her ankle. So I gave her my super arnica liniment and she recovered in a blink of an aye.
Few days later, also the Isaac felt down, badly, and because he was wearing the Masai dress, a blanket passed over a shoulder and tied with a belt, he got all the haunch injured.
I wanted to offer him the same liniment and so I addressed him: "Hey Isaac! I want to give you something. Remember when Beatrix felt down the other day..."
Suddenly, offended, he stopped me: "Hey! She felt like a woman. I felt like a MAN".

After five years of gender oriented project.

the camp. 

Justice. Expat heir.

There was a baby girl,
running naked in Chinese's hotel in Lhasa.
Her name was Justice.
Speaking Chinese and English.
Borne in Tibet, from an american couple.
The father was an expat, the mother...a Expat wife.

And then was Kaya,
Borne in Tanzania from a Dutch girl and a Tanzanian boy.
The mother was a beautiful, powerful Dutch girl giving her life to teach a job to the last Arusha's teenagers, the father a Tanzanian putting together slum's boy playing football as a team.

And then is my daughter, Frida. Spanish and Italian parents.She's two now and she had been living in Tanzania, Haiti and Nepal. Visiting Spain and Italy. She speaks three languages, she had been playing whit Masai, her first nanny was Creole.

Sons of expats. What they will do?
They will never have a country, they will learn different cultures.
They will not understand many thing, because they will not belong to a culture. Mr. Bean, for example, Sharuk Han will be more attractive than DiCaprio, maybe.
I they will have jokes we will never understand.

What are we doing to them...or are they the luckiest ones?

The snake

This is a short story to tell, no matter how good are your intentions,
you can always
fail.

There was this spring, down there in Tanzania
and there was a snake living there in the neighborhood.

People was forced to go to that spring because it was the only water source available.
And sometimes people was not coming back.

One day they decided to kill the snake, and so they did.
And water stop flowing from the spring.


This was because the snake, crawling between the rock's cavities, was keeping them clean, from mud and pebbles, giving water a clear path to follow up to the spring.

The village though they were cursed, and they moved in another place.

South African mother has priorities

In Tanzania we had this field camp, close to the project area.
It was a beautifully equipped tented camp, whit a dining, kitchen, solar heated water, office and solar panels. And so batteries and transformer.
The solar system was installed by the same Ben who was killed few weeks ago in Nairobi (the-man-who-raped-chicken ) and whenever there was a problem (let's say every 10 days), he was happy to took the occasion to go in the Savannah.
Apparently I was the only one hating that place: dust, huge swarms of killer bees during dry season, snakes during wet season which brought rats. all the others found those thing extremely romantic. But I'm not a volunteer.
Anyway once Ben was bitten by a snake while moving one of the batteries and he immediately called his mother, a snake expert, in South Africa to know if that species was poisonous or not.
"Mother, I was bitten by a snake!"
"Not now darling, I'm busy".

And so he decided to shock himself with a car battery, because electricity degrades venom proteins.
He survived.
That time.

entrails market

I've met this man.
French, ex mountaineer, ex rugby player, ex UN consultant...he WAS many thing.
Now he's an old man living in Nepal since decades in the countryside, with a Nepalese girlfriend.
I guess that at a certain point of his life he gave up his body and stopped to take care of what people think about him.
His arm was cemented in a solid block so that, to put sugar in his coffee, he had to move 3/4 of his body. After an accident he lost some parts of bones between the elbow and the hand.
He had some bolts in a foot and other in a hip.
But also he had long nails, oily hairs, yellow teeth, huge fat body and he was spitting while speaking.
Not knowing how NGO are working, he was asking for some funds to run a small project in his area. AHAH! I don't have a dime!

Anyway, he was also an engineer, and he followed the construction of a new private clinic in Kathmandu, and he told me about a new profitable business catching on in Nepal.
In the new shining expensive ultra equipped clinic there were something like 50 beds and 11 dialysis bed.
A not insignificant ratio.

"It's a new form of tourism"
"What. For people with kidney problems?"
I knew a lot of Europeans use to go to India to visit a cheap dentist or to North Africa for a plastic surgery, probably also dialysis is too expensive in some countries.
"Not dialysis, no...but kidney are"
"Oh, no"
"Oh yes! At the end of the works, they offer to my crew, all poor skilled workers, a free kidney visit"

But he had no idea how much a kidney can cost. To the clinic to buy and to the 'tourist' to install.

Football match goats against human in the countryside 

Europeans are crazy

At certain point looked like we were selected to participate in a kind of 'world wide water project championship', organised by a private foundation and one of us was invited to go to Europe to assist at the awards ceremony.
We decided to send the engineer.
God, he was exited. He was so exited that driving in the Savanna and speaking about is next trip, we got completely lost, in time and in space.
But obviously at the end, after hours driving having as only reference the Kilimanjaro down there, we found our way back to the camp and Simon did not loose his flight toward north.
Everybody envy him, but did not want to admit it.
So someone was murmuring that the water project wasn't so spectacularly good, and others that had to be very cold in those days in Europe and there was not better climate than the Tanzanian one. "Dry season is so good for the skin".
But when Simon came back, with a fancy and sporty new jacket, and an horrible and huge and heavy copper trophy, all of them were around him, the brave engineer who actually managed to go out from Africa, expensed.
And he past like seven full working days to explain and tell about this so called First World.
I was thinking he was impressed by things like traffic lights at each crossing, elevators in each building, dust bin in each sidewalk, pine scented toilets, tunnel through the mountains, women in high heels carrying the fat fruits of their abdomen in a stroller and not in their backs, but the storyteller, the water engineer, was fixed on that point: from the aqueducts they do not have water, they have BEER!

Someone in a bar just served him a draft beer.

His name is not actually Pedro. A Masai leader  

The man who raped a chicken

I had this friend. Ben.

A big South African serious and funny at the same time.

Even if he was born in SA he pretend to be a Dutch, but the way he was drinking beer and talking about the African Governments left little room for doubt about is real origin.

He came to Tanzania from South Africa by car to take up a two months job, and when I met him, he was in Arusha since 5 years.

He was curious, passionate about technology and extremely suspicious. He was one of this exhausted white thinking that in every man was a thief. He made this IT Company and the guy working for him used to go around visiting the client by motorbike. Well, Ben put a GPS in each motorbike and then he used to monitor constantly where his workers were. And if a motorbike stopped where it was not supposed to, or taking a suspicious way, Ben was calling the astonished guy, like he was the Big Brother or a kind of minor God.

But as a friend he was fantastic. Always present when you need him, always ready to move his connections to solve a problem and, at the end, very proud of himself when able to help a friend or solve a situation.

As a good South African, he LOVED to organise barbeques with tons of different dead animals, and his speciality was the “Raped Chicken”: open a can of beer, take a chicken (already dead and plucked) and ‘sit it’ on the beer. Salt, oil and spices on the skin and then on the barbeque, cover. When the beer in the can is finished, you will have to most delicious chicken ever.

He also had a very strange sense of humour. More than strange I would say overly bastard. If you accidentally left your mobile unguarded, even for a single second, on the bar table or in the jacket pocket, he took it and start to send embarrassing messages to whoever in the list. Your boss, friends, other’s girlfriends, providers.

When it was possible, he preferred to send those messages from and to people in the same room, to spy secretly the reaction and taking reason for intimate fun.

Once, at 4 in the night, a message woke me up. It was from my boss, the one I deeply dislike. “I feel horny, please meet me now. I won’t tell anybody”.

“Fuck Ben, I was sleeping...”

Then I lost him: he moved first to Dar es Salaam and then he got a better job in a security company in Nairobi. I moved to Haiti and then to Nepal.

The other day he was chatting with my spouse: he was getting back to South Africa soon to get married.

This morning I received a mail from a common friend: That night Ben was shot eleven times in his house in Nairobi by a bunch of robbers.

I hope they did it quick.

What people want to see of Africa

lesson 6: preparing to start to plan to think how to implement a project

Ok,
You have a contract to implement a project written by an intern in Europe.
You flow to the country, met the staff or selected one, and your staff had many meeting to decide if trying a friendly or professional approach. Somebody proudly and altruistically decide to kamikaze with a sexual joke, just to see the reaction.
You met the government stakeholders and the community. Everybody is enthusiastic of you well written project whom expected results are something like "annihilate forever poverty, discrimination, malnutrition, pimps and mcdonalds whole over the universe". You signed Memorandum of Understandings until your pen exhausted and then...
You fill lost.
Lost in translation, lost in eternity, lost in space, lost and in need of mammy and daddy. You feel like a lonely cell in a plasma so far bigger than your human possibility and not strong enough to change the life of thousand, thousand of people.

After years I learned how to emerge from this quicksand of bureaucracy and politeness: you go to the staff and illustrate again the project activities, one by one, and then you say something that sounds like: I want this team to be committed and participating and I want to empower you and give you self-government till the day you fail me.
And then: If you were walking in my shoes, what you would do next?

This always work

this is what happen when you call for a meeting in a Masai community.

Future plans

I saw a Masaai newborn.

The father was proud of his boy and told him: "you will be a warrior and you will attend the university in Dar es Salaam".

I wish your life will be beautiful.

I saw an Haitian newborn.

In a shelter after the earthquake.

In a mixture of Voodoo, Christianity and  indifference the majority of the visitors wishes for her richness luck and beauty to marry an American.

I wish your life will be beautiful.

And then my daughter was born.

My mother could not resist holding her, my father waited out of the room, not daring to enter.

And then my sister looks at her and said: My-my! You still don't know that Darth Veider is the father of Luke Skywalker.

tibetan village, the closest internet connection is four days far (by yak). p.s. we have made an aqueduct there

wrong assumptions

Just today I had a meeting with the ministry in charge of deal with disable people.
Saying 'deal with' I mean the ministry in charge of issue policies and action plans to fight discrimination, create accessibility, integration, equal opportunities.

There is a call for proposal focused especially on development if the rights of disable and women.
And so, people like me, specialized in water and sanitation, and struggling to hit a donor, starts to read thousand of pages on human rights, disable status, women empowerment. And also go to talk with ministries to know which are the national action plans, priorities, and so on.

I admit I did not, of course, meet the Ministry itself, but still, this man working for the Ministry, after a thirty minutes speech, where no interrupting question were allowed, but often interrupted by his own greasy laughs, ended with:
"My advice is not to work with blind people. They are extremely touchy"

"EXCUSE ME?" 

expat disease number 3: they don't scream

the third and most insidious expat disease is:
is...I'm afraid to spell that word,
but is: racism.
there are two different shape of racism.
The first one, and the most simple to explain, is the racism against institutions. If you work in Tibet you end up hating Chinese government, that all see and preview, and if you work in Palestine, at the end you hate the government that prevent you to give basic service to women and children.

The second one is more difficult to explain. Maybe because, fortunately, I'd never fell in that trap.
Let me try to explain: you come from a so called developed country. You have social security, free education, democracy, newspapers, hundred of choice for university, motorbike with compulsory helmet, traffic lights, and credible policemen. And you have the right of all this.
You arrive to a country where there is not even water. Where communities are left alone to solve their basic problems because government cannot, economically, take care of them.
And then you start to visit the communities to identify the felt needs, and they tell you they are missing water. And in the meanwhile it's raining cats and dogs.
And so you simply ask: why you do not put a bucket now, to harvest enough water at least to cook and wash dishes today?
And the answer is: Ahhhh!
But then they don't.
Why?
Why the hell Masaai do not put a fucking bucket to collect water when it's raining?
The fact is they are not really waiting for the Mzungu to come like an Harry Potter and waving the stick, solving the problem.
The fact is that life is like this.
Always been.
Since centuries ago.

And whites are coming spreading incomprehensive circumlocutions about cooperation and community building.
And if at the end, they have a tap close to their house, they say: thanks god. Of course, thanks to the NGO, but thank god who brought the NGO to us.

This kind of racism, the one who make you think that some communities are hopeless, usually come to people who lived for more than ten years in the same developing country, in this case, in my mind, Tanzania.
They see the infinitive possibilities they have, and they see them not taking advance from them.

You loose hope, and you start to hate them for what they are loosing.

I saw a girl, the day before resign, saying 'bloody monkeys' to a community. She was definitely burned out, and,
she was crying.
She could not understand.

For me, I was lucky.
I understood all the day I saw a woman deliver a couple of twins in a Masaai hut.
They called me to drive her to an hospital because she was too far in pain.
I was waiting out of the hut, at 6 in the morning, and then the father came to tell me that was all gone, and everything went good, and I could go to work.
The thing that surprised me?
She never screamed.

first bucket of water celebration

in the car

The car is you first home, first office.
You spend more time in the car than in the bed.
doesn't matter how close is a village in kilometers, in rural areas you can also spend seven hours to make 30 km.
That actually was my record, and that day I was driving. Rainy season in Tanzania.
You can imagine that, once arrived, was too dark to do anything.
I almost cried thinking on the way back.
It's never entertaining get stock in the mud in the savanna by night.
Alone.
With a water war ongoing.
And your car, white, with a huge logo of the organisation working in water.
Fucking visibility.
And a crazy elephant in the surrounding killing people, so that they were organizing patrols to kill him.
So everybody was already armed.
But that is a border case.
For example, Tajik people are not famous to be cheerful, so in the long hours to the villages listen to so much music that I could not stand silence anymore.
In Tibet we were chatting all the time, sharing stories.
In Nepal, so far, road are quite good, so I work. Reading stuff I've never time to read.
In Haiti, everything but watching outside. Half naked people living in moldy shelters and you knew that 70% of them had AIDS and almost the totality of women were raped since after the earthquake.
The car.
When it's broken you feel lost, worst than a tragedy. All your plans become ash. you held improvised and nervous meetings with the staff in order to get the car ready yesterday and try to stick with the plans.
Once I almost deliver some pipes with donkeys, just because the day before, after a almost violent arguing with a chairman, we ended up like this:
"I do not gather the people to dig the trenches because I do not trust anymore Mzungu (whites) who come here to help us"
"So tomorrow you will have your pipes and then you will explain your people why they are not having an aqueduct. I swear on my mom"
Of course the car brake.
And when I start to rave about donkeys, my driver told me about this car of a relative.
Saving a donkey.

Now I love to stay so many hours in a car. In Nepal I have a driver, I didn't drive yet myself, maybe because it's too crowded and messy, between cars, monkeys, cows and chariots, so I sit and think.
Hours a day to think.

About future and about past.
Missed opportunities and improbable developments.
And still I like it.

limit case...but also happened. Tajikistan 2006. The car is a Niva.

Fishing (expat disease number two)

Burning out is when you are so stressed, so under pressure, so exhausted that you lose the north, and you start to make reasoning that doesn't look fool only to you.

Is not a pleasant situation.
You do not sleep, you do not eat, you do not have sexual impulses, you get hungry for a trifle, simple problems appear like insurmountable peaks that drives you in a blue and dark deeep hole.

It's more frequent in places where the word 'airiness' is a dusty fossil, like South Sudan, Iraq or the refugees camps, but the Burning Out is like the devil rabbit of Donnie Darko. It's pops up whenever you are not ready for.

Not funny.

Even if some funny stories comes from this.
Like this man, so exhausted but still too proud to resign, first he purchased a gun because he was sure the logistician wanted to kill him, then went for a weekend on the sea side trying to relax, and finally he tough was a good idea to use the gun for fishing and shoot his feet. The last drop.
But he won a long holiday.
Nobody knows if he shoot himself in purpose to run away, I was told that he confessed so once.
But maybe because, when is mind came back on the straight way, he realized the idiocy he made, that he felt ashamed.
That was his last mission forever.

Expats has an expiring date.

Expat diseases number 1

I just read an article ten minutes ago.

Expats are subject to alcoholism, pedophilia and burning out.

Alcoholism it's true. when you go home and you have to digest all the work you have done is felling apart, that you built an aqueduct based on community cooperation , and now people is chopping neighbor fingers off with a machete to have some more drops of water, you drink.
You are stressed. You work 14 hours a day and then you go home and still you have to reply emails, then you go to sleep and you think about all the problems waiting for you tomorrow, and to escape from all this, you drink.
You pass all your week in the field, with no water, no electricity, no girlfriend, you come back to the city and you drink.

You often live in places with no cinemas, no theaters, no TV, no bookshops, no parks, so you meet with the few friends you have (temporaries and selected by necessity), and drink.
Moreover alcoholism is a wide spread problem in most of the ex-violent or still-violent countries. Drunk men do not do the revolution, at the most the beat up wives and children. But those categories are not famous to have their right recognized. So alcohol is usually very cheap. And very bad.
And because not everybody has time to open a bottle and share with good friends, they often sell surrogates of gin or whiskey in plastic mono-dose bags. If you have a couple of coins in your pocket, you can drink at least a sip. You have no ideas of the thousand of those small plastic bags sold in the last small village lost in the savanna. So everybody drinks because it's easy.
But the alcoholism of the in-country people is different and much more bitter than the expats' alcoholism. Expats run away from the stress, people run away from their lives taking the only path available.

You don't care if you turn yourself into a sub-human monster unable to speak clearly and to walk to the toilet. In a year or two you will change country and you can start fresh to ruin your reputation again.
Or, worse, become the king of the expat social life.
I was unable to drink before starting this job. My friends made fun of me saying I was getting drunk with a coke.
And then happened Tajikistan. At the beginning I though was funny to be received in the villages always with a vodka. At the beginning.

Everything it's funny at the beginning.

and Russel Crowe do not dance

There is a whole word importing culture not from United States but from other sources.

From India.
I'm speaking about literature, music and movies.

When in Europe we think about Bollywood, we think about B-movies with fatty dancers and incredibly long love stories between humans with no sex scene and no car accident. More or less is like this, but in Tibet, Indian movies was the non plus ultra of the imported goods.

Drudak, our driver in Lhasa was a little tacky and thug. The car was his empire, and one day, arriving to the office, I discovered that he just put fake bullet holes stickers along all the car side, just all around our NGO logo and that he installed, at his own expenses a small TV, just over the ashtray.

The interiors of the car were changing from leopard spotted to the Manchester United flag every month.

Anyway, he probably spent all his money on this TV, and so he had only one DVD to play. Video music from Bollywood movies.

I think I watched 'It's the time for Disco' at least 20 times every day, because the villages were very far.
A gang of women, beautiful and very fat compared to the LA standards dancing. The One Diva in front and 50 others in the back all making the same not very athletic and archaic typically Indian movements. Let's say that the lack of choreographer was repaid by the abundance of human being.
The song was technically very poor, but the girls twirling their wist were cute enough.
But then, something disgusting happened.
Another gang of men started to do the same hips shaking and hands cute movements, singing in play back.
And, if the Diva woman was beautiful, the man was, well, he was Shahrukh Khan always him since fifty years, always playing the role of the teen in love.
"Guys, do you really think is cool for a man in his late forties to dance in a disco with a group of men?"
But I wanted immediately to cut my fast tongue for telling to a group of Tibetan that the only foreign stuff allowed was in fact a crap.
But they just looked at me as my taste for art was completely underdeveloped. That, in fact, was the coolest thing to do for a real man. Also for Drudak, the one sticking fake bullet holes in the car.

So I shut up, and started to think about Fred Astaire and also Michael Jackson, all good dancer and looking cool, and I started to think that also other Hollywood movies, with some song and dance in the middle, would not appear ridiculous...No fucking way!
What would be of the Gladiator if he starts to dance in the arena with his fellows morituri te salutant?

Mr Crowe would have say goodbye to his Oscar, and to his fun club.

As a Gladiator would say: "to Caesar what is Caesar's...and to Indians what is Bollywood"

Amen

That's amore

There are still some romantic expats...they fall in love, they struggle in wet bed sheet by night, they over drink to forget, they eat irregularly and...they speak a lot.

Anita elected me as her confident.
My duty was to listen almost every night by telephone or live at least two hours about Nicholas.
Quite boring, but sometimes I'm compassionate.
I knew EVERYTHING about this guy. Who he was talking to, which movie he was downloading, where he was going, with who and why.
Because love pain it's talkative. At least for women.
And I was forced by Anita to interpret his every gesture in a perspective that was favorable to her, such as:
his t-shirt are full of stains because unconsciously he wants to say he needs a woman, or
he was kissing this other lady only because with you would be something serious.

Until the day our friendship broke up.
She called me overexcited, like a mongoose was running up her trousers, anticipating some good new: "Can I pass by, I mean NOW?"
"I was going to sleep, it was a terrible day, this pipe blew up and..."
"Ok, thanks, I'm coming"
Because friendship between man and woman cannot in fact exist.
She arrived ten minutes later, waving the mobile as if it were the hero of the day, what did I say? Of the era.
"Look! he send me a message!"
But I could not look, because she decided it was much more effective if she read it directly, declaring like a Shakespearean actor: "Take off my skin! And I wont scream! But if you smash my heart, I promise to make you cry!", all the exclamation marks were added by her.
"I'm not sure about the meaning, but looks like he actually loves me!"
I didn't know who to tell her, so I simply did: "Onion"
"What?"
"It's a riddle...the answer is 'onion'..."
"It's not possible! Look! He's speaking about his heart, and.. and..."
"Anita, it's onion"

And I've never seen an onion to make someone cry more than then.

The Proffessionals

We had to select 15 villages to build the water supply systems, in Tibet.
Sorry, in the Tibetan Autonomous Region, part of the Great Republic of China.

Of course, and not because is China, first thing to do is to cooperate with the local authorities, so we were going around with a man from the District that was the photocopy of the Inspector Gadget.
The good feeling was immediate.

And so we passed the first week going around together, 10 people in the same Toyota Land Cruiser. Completely illegal, but we were with the Authority.
We were young and we still found funny to seat in the trunk like teenager on a Friday night when only one guy of the band had the driving licence.
Me, my expat fellow, Dawa the factotum, Diky the translator, another Diky and Jigme as social promoters, the Two Nymas (Nyma Big and Nyma small), Drudak the driver and Mr Gadget.

The aim was to visit possible villages with no water supply system, talk to the community to know if the people was interested in this kind of project, and then collect data, visit the spring if any and study the feasibility.

That day, after 4 hours driving, we arrived in this very very very isolated village up the mountains with a bunch of scattered colorful houses. we park and sit in the courtyard of the head of the village.

They start to offer us Chang. The home made barley beer, that Tibetan are not nonalcoholic and they can and do drink. And they are extremely welcoming hosts.
So, to show you appreciate their hospitality, you should drink not one but three cup of Chang.

Was a sunny and warm day, we enjoyed a lot sitting there, drinking Chang, waiting for the people to join the meeting. And when a new family arrived, three more cups of Chang for everybody.

Six hours later the courtyard was a clandestine casino, as the staff tough everybody how to play blackjack. Children were playing also, but with their own new invented rules, and the driver left our Government representative without a penny.
Everybody was so drunk and happy that we were forgetting to make the meeting. But at the end we did, even if I will never know what was told because I was helping the translator to reach the car while she, crying, was saying: "I'm too drunk to translate, now you gonna fire me!"

On our way back we stick on the raincoat of Gadget "Kick me".

By the way, since then we learned to call the village before coming and to give appointment for the meeting a couple of hours in advance.

At the end that village was selected, and the very day we opened the water supply system, an old lady came to me and asked me: "Can you give me a washing machine, now?"

goliardic games on our way back, that day. Gadget is the one on the right

fastest animal in Africa

Is not the cheetah.

The first cause of death, in the short term, for an expat, is car accident.

And it’s impressive how Tanzanian apply the pole pole (slowly slowly) philosophy to everything but driving.

They are never in a rush to finish a job, to cook, to give an answer, to walk or to respect an appointment, but when they are driving they cannot stand to lose time.

Driving these old crappy chariot imported second handed from China or Japan, they run as every moment of the life is not expendable and must be saved.

Freud would say is something related with sex or the father, in this case, the Mother Queen, or better, Nyerere.

Or maybe is because it’s not necessary to be a Masaai warrior to be taller than a Chinese and the seats in these cars are so tiny and uncomfortable that the driver wants to end this suffer, at least this one, as soon as possible.

But also I saw so many people suffering to obtain the most basic needs (a doctor, water, food) and at the same time acting like struggling was the only and normal way to reach them, that I honestly do not believe that the public transport driver do actually care about the passengers. Or themselves.

Otherwise I cannot explain why every, but really every day, I was in the Arusha-Moshi road, there was an accident. A bus in the river, another one down the bridge, one just jumped inside a family mud house. And everybody dead.

 The most fierce were the dala dala. Old Toyota Caravan with 25 Chinese shaped seats and as many standing room in four and an half square meters. Kind of private public transportation. One guy driving, another one hanging from the side door calling costumers and waving small bills in the hand.  Collencting old and fat mamas on the fly or men with baskets of live chickens. Space for everybody, for fifty shelling I bring you to Arusha in a blink of an eye.

And running like cheetahs, faster than cheetahs in those narrow and prick roads, overcoming everything and everybody  without decelerating a moment. And between dala dala was some kind of war: you are stopping to take this costumers, so I’ll overcome you to take your next stop costumers.

Of course there were no official stops.

Why they were driving so crazily? Just because they could.

Very late I came to know that the owners of the dala dala were policemen. Renting them to schizophrenic guys to run them. That’s why, even if driving like cocaine addicted, they were never stopped by the Tanzanian police, very lavish in receiving bribes for every nonexistent infraction.

But I have my personal theory: they like to overcome you, risking clearly their lives, because in their back in all the dala dala backs, was something written, and often a picture or a drawing. The meaning or the association of idea of those, was and still is an enigma.

 “Love is the answer”, with the picture of Ban Ki Moon next to one of Gheddafi.

“When I’m rich, you will be my bitch”, and a young girl with the burqa and the sigh of a prayer.

“Jesus is the answer”, for no mentioned question, but the picture of an American rapper

The poster of the 1956 Ten Commandments

And this one, the interpretation of which has ignited a long debate in the car: “zero to hero with god”.

In case the mentioned ‘god’ was intended to be the dala dala driver, we unanimously decided to overcome it. 

lesson 5: how to make friends (not all the projects smells good as water)

ok, ok...I've told you very bad things up to now.
But also that this is the best job ever.
And I don't mean "being an expat", I mean " building aqueducts, bringing water"
there are a lot of expats who implement project like "improving education quality though enhancing the capacity building of the head teachers", or (new from yesterday) "teaching to people who came out from 'social mobilizer' university how to be a real social mobilizer".
All this is good, almost all the projects at the end have some positive outputs, but all this people suffer from invidia penis when I say: "I opened the tap and water was flowing".
Nothing is better than water.
Try to imagine your life without water:
you have to carry a bucket of 20 liters of dirty water for 5 kilometers and then you have to wash your face, brush your teeth, rinse your clothes, drink, cook, shower and so on. AH! you really want to have more water next to home.
Anyway this is just to say that when you go first to a village, and you gather all the people around you, if your first sentence is "we would like to bring water" the all stand up making an ovation and they run to kill a goat to honor the honorable guest.
If you go and say "we would like to stop you cut the clitoris and sell your daughter for three cows", they will not kill any cow. Or, maybe the worst, is when you say something that sounds like: "We are here to teach you how to use better your territory". At the end you are a white coming with good shoes to tell them that their millennial culture sucks and you know how to make it better with few steps. It is not necessary to be particularly proud to get pissed off.

In Tanzania there were four or five project at the same time. I was running the water project and the Country Coordinator (a woman i would never to look alike, selfish and ridiculously careerist, in that small NGO we were working for) was leading a project of "Land Use Planning"...they were going in the Savannah with a GPS to mark borders between Masaai villages (and I wont tell you how many conflicts can arise for the territory) and the people was making sacrifices to chase them away.
But they loved the Water Project and the man who was leading it (my supervisor. I will tell you about him next week).
The same people who fled their meetings, were digging trenches eight hour a day when the pipes arrived.
One day there was this official ceremony in Ilikrumuni village, because the community finished to install the main line. They invited also Kate, the nasty Country Coordinator. I delivered the message reluctantly, and she didn't know whether to be pissed of by the prospect of spending a whole day with me or whether to be gay to have to possibility to show to the community the she was the boss.
When we arrived, the school class was decorated with flower, women were singing, men were wearing jackets, and tons of rare food was prepared for all of us. Rice, meat, potatoes, fried bananas, pilau, fresh fruits and vegetables.
After the speeches and the food, then they bring the goat, full, roasted underground, and we started to eat again.
I had my revenge: "You see Kate, for the Water Project they don't kill goat as sacrifice to chase us away. First time you eat one?"      

typical picture for report: children happy around the new tap. 

Bar Chatting

When I was young, I used to go to bars, and clubbing, sometimes.
It's something that almost all the expats do.
If you are not segregated in a remote rural area (as I was in Tajikistan, where was no possibility to commit any sins, even if you were tending to thoughts full of inventive), or on a Mission from God like Jake and Elwood, what you do on Friday night (and if you are very young, also on Thursday, Saturday and Sunday, sometimes also Wednesday and if happens a special occasion, you don't segregate yourself on Monday and Tuesday when there is a birthday or a Muslim bank holiday the day after) it's clubbing. Dressing like a prick, like in your hometown is not allowed. I'm talking about flower shirt and cigar or spotted miniskirt dresses with animalier applications. Expats live in a promiscuous world. Everybody is in need of superficial relationship to prove they still (or at least reached) the crest of the wave, and that is better to be exactly where they are instead of a Country with Social Security.To fill like Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, if poetry still do count.
I've never been particularly sexy, so, back from the field, taken a shower, dressed with a threadbare T shirt, I was subscribed to the pool table.
And anyway I've managed to have dozen of superficial affairs, enough to stop and mathematically think about the number of similar affairs people devoting to that was having just dressing like a predator.
Anyway, the expats working in cooperation are a small percentage comparing with the ones working in 'others'. The main difference is that the ones working in 'others' usually do not like to talk about it. In a certain way they feel ashamed, at least the smart ones. If talking to NGO people. Otherwise proud.
When you meet another expat in a bar, the conversation always starts whit: "What are you doing here" and "Since when", just to have some coordinates.
Let me tell you: the white African belonging to the second or third generation, the grandsons of the colonialist I mean, are the ones who less speak about themselves. They usually are rich, owner of thousand hectares land and they never worked one lonely day in their life.
"What I'm doing between Tanzania and Kenya...well...have you seen 'Out of Africa'? I'm the grandson of Robert Redford's character"
And that supposed to be a curriculum.
"I'm exporting bio-fuel -one container in three years- to Europe" ("And how many families had to produce Yatropha instead of wheat in the last three years to fill up your container?")
"My fathers owned this land, you know...They built the irrigation system with their own hands, the land belongs more to them than to the Tribes"
And other funny answers from Asia:
"I'm a professional poker web player, but being resident in Shanghai I pay less taxes", or
"I'm just traveling to find one of those", pointing at a whatever anonymous guy, meaning 'boyfriend'.
The best one, the most felt and sincere, was yesterday night, in Kathmandu, in this farewell party (full of children) in the Buddhist area where tourist dress and act like monks for three months up to three years. This lady, Lynda, studying Tibetan Philosophy, with three children from three different fathers, smoking a cigarette with me hiding from his Nepalese husband:
"I was born in here. At that time -she is around her thirties- you were hippy or junkie. My mother had a restaurant and she was hippy, so my father was junkie.
He got cough while trying to import drug in England and was convict to eight years in prison. because he finished two Diplomas in the first three years, he stayed in prison only four and an half years. I was four in that time, and a  friend of mine had the father working in Chile, and I was thinking mine was doing the same. Being somewhere else.
When he was released, he told me the all story.
And do you know what he told me?
'It's much more easy to get out from heroine than stop smoking cigarettes' "


   

The Tanzanian who took care of me

When it's raining in North Tanzania, you barely move.

Especially by car, especially in the Savanna.

Even if you know all the paths like your pockets, all the rocks, all the sandy areas, when is rainy season, even the most friendly corners become quicksand sucking in a lonely terrible instant half and more of your car leaving you with the all day busy.

Well, I've lived more than three years in the Masai steppe, so I've lived six rainy season, well, five, because the first year was very dry and Tanzania faced a tough shortage of food.

The engineer working in the project was Simon. The most committed and hard worker Tanzanian I've ever met. But of course he was no perfect. Like nobody is, and of course I'm not.

This is not the place to list what I think were Simon's defects, but the first thing he told me, when he met me was: "You are young (same age of him) and inexperienced (more years of experience of him in Cooperation), you cannot go around alone in this area (the Masai and Meru villages). So i'll take care of you    (sighing for the extra nanny work he was facing)".

Of course I was so offended and pissed of that the first thing I did was to take the car and go alone to see all the old projects and find small imperfections to complain later with Simon. Getting lost between acacias and stones.

After three and an half year of this life, we ended up loving each other and we almost cried when saying goodbye.

Anyway, at the beginning he was treating me like a lost puppy.

And once, after a heavy rainy night, we were going to see a spring together, but we were going with two different cars, because later I had a meeting with the District Authorities (I'll tell you then about their offices and charisma) while he was going on with some field works.

Driving along this path, at certain point he stopped the car with no apparent reason, and stayed.

I waited for a while, but he was not moving. So I drove out of the path to flank him and ask him what was wrong.

"Hey Simon"

"Hey"

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing I wanted to warn you not to go out of the path especially in this area because yesterday a truck get stuck all the day"

And so I was.

our working area in the mist

lesson four: choose your country, if you can

Ok. You decided the Project Manager you want to be, the house you would like to live in and your level of involvement.

Now you have to choose, if you are in the position to, your social activities rate.

If you are new, forget about South America or South East Asia. However good are your intentions, you do not deserve them. You must had work for at least ten years in difficult places before being enough in the system to beg for a job in Thailand or Costa Rica.

Unless you don’t apply for a mission in the middle of Cambodian forest, waking up at five for prayers.

If you are still thinking you are in a mission in the name if God, like the Blues Brothers, you can go everywhere, and you’ll be happy, completed and satisfied. Especially eating beetles and rice in a muddy corner of the world with no electricity.

If you are one of those coming from a country with more than 20% unemployment rate for people with master degree, PhD and fluency in five languages, well, if you get a job, just say ‘thanks’, wherever will be.

But, if you are still dreaming of choosing, here you are a lonely planet you’d never dreamed of:

-          Wherever is a UN mission with JBOs or UNVs, there is the party. Is the volunteers bringing it. They choose a bar as the ‘real-integrating-place’ and magically, it becomes the expat&goodlooking locals bar. This is, for example, Kenya: you can go in the slums during the day and in a japonese restaurant at seven ad feel satisfied.

-          If you prefer to interact with expats, go in the trouble places (Congo, Afghanistan, Pakistan and so on). You can close yourself –whites- in compounds and be happy to be isolated. And with a lonely bottle of bad wine you can make a party.

-          Also if you’d never had a chance to have a girlfriend in your home town (for whatever reason), so it’s better you go to one of this terrible places (South Sudan, Colombia). The fact that you are there, will increase your sex appeal, the choice is limited and you fill find a girl thinking you are not too bad.

-          If you are one of these bastards who are taking advance of being white to have the easy fuck...well you can go everywhere, but it’s better if you go to screw yourself, that I've met too much mulatto kids with no father.

-          If you are looking for your mate. For the life long, I mean, someone smart, adventurer like you, good worker and committed, sometimes drunk and sometimes philosopher,  you first have to deserve it, so go to work with all your spirit and you must believe on what you are doing. Otherwise you’ll only meet empty souls.

-          If you’d like to be Buddhist or committed in religious or human rights stuff, go to Tibet or –non plus ultra- Israel. But no  kidding. Do not go only to see if you are not prepared to wide open your eyes. No tourist allowed, everybody needs their dignity.

-          If you are stupid, you can go everywhere. After two weeks, you will be taking swaili lessons, dressing with the sari, going for dinner in the slums, putting flowers in your hair, stopping combing you, feeling like one of them. You are not one of them. That’s why they gave you a job. To give them something that makes them closer to one of you. If you do not understand it, you’ll be home as soon as your contract expires.

-           If you do not mind where they send you, and you do not feel the need to googleise your destination, well, that’s the last stage of you initiation. You go for work. Alone, eighteen hours by car from the first bar, no hospital, no English speakers, no electricity, no water. And you don’t mind. You are young, single and committed. As I was ten years ago.

-          If you have wife and children, unfortunately you start to have a shortlist, and all the countries with more requests are precluded. No Haiti, no Sudan, no Afghanistan and no Congo. Even if the 50% of the job is there. And so you will start again to work again for the minimum salary, because they know you MUST take that job exactly in THAT country (Tanzania, for example is not bad but not brilliant, Nepal is fine, and of course the Beautiful Countries). Like the NGOs were companies. Sometimes they are.

Tajikistan: water supply system in the Capital

My worst night ever

The mission in Tajikistan was, let's say, resizing.
Because of Olaf.
Olaf is not a handsome viking guy asking for raw meat for dinner, is the European Anti-Fraud Office, and sometimes, even if you are clean like a baby butt, it comes like a ride of Valkyries, scaring everybody to hell.

Anyway, there was this car which supposed to move from the Tajik to the new opened Afghan mission.
We drove up to the border. the Amu Darya river. A full day driving. We were in two cars, one to come back.
The border was crossed by a barge, active only up to 5 p.m.
We arrived at quarter to five, but the queue was long, so we found a place to stay in the night. In Dusti.
Dusti means 'friend'. How romantic.Recalling other times, when USSR was a powerful and then vociferous speaker of global brotherhood.
In fact there was a huge and decadent hotel, named 'Dusti', after the city or the ideology.
Completely empty and freezing. Not only for the winter Tajik climate average temperature.
Huge buildings, that Russians were not able to build bohemian flats, whit golden decoration and crumbling proletarian massive frescoes in the shadows, whit no more water in the copper pipes and only an arranged hanging yellow bulb to watch your steps.
Lysis and washed carpets, unpredictable roofs.
I remember a salon in the first floor so huge that the two person playing snooker so far there in the corner, under a exhausted bulb, looked small and indefinable like a dream of other times.
in the whole building, was only one room left for hospitality purposes. Filled with couches and sofas of different ages, styles and dimensions. So filled that you had no space to walk in it. You just left your shoes at the door and then started climbing and dodging though a soft sloppy cushion to a hard wood chip filled one.
That was our room.
An old woman brought us two blankets each, without feeling the necessity of a word, and plugged a old electrical stove.
It was freezing.
Some of the pillow were icy crunchy. The windows were so frozen that ready to break for a blow.
We were tired. So tired. and we just picked up a couch each and though the blankets over us.
Uh-oh! I have to pee.
Ok, let's think about something else.
Oh-no, I really have to pee.
And the latrine was outside in the courtyard. and the stairs were dark and more: abandoned. And the soil outside was so frozen that the steps were noising like a cicada in a grass field, and the latrine was...full.
Full. So full that the frozen poo mountain was almost collapsing all around like a Tim Burton sculpture. So full that I was wondering what will be of this people living there. Were they were going to poo in the next months.
I pee outside in courtyard. Was nobody, anyway, around. Russian emptiness. The one described in the Dostoevsky novels.
And then back to the room.
The head under the blankets, to not waste your human warmth, and trying to sleep.
Ah, my breath is worm. My feet are not shaking anymore. I feel better. I feel relaxed. Finally in bed.
Oh! I'm still shaking...wait! That's not me! What the hell! INTRUDERS!
A huge malnourished five KG rat was disturbed by my presence in HIS bed.
Holy Jez...but he decided to run away and find another place.
What the hell...but let's try to forget and sleep, let's think about a warn room, whit soft sofas and pillows, a good book and a glass of good red wine, classical music and a crackling fireplace...too smoky. Far to smoky. I can't breath!
The electrical stove, proved by the effort being plugged, was in fire.

What a terrible night in Dusti.

building large mosaic on the way. I think the subject is justin bieber

lesson three: select your privacy needs

For some mission, the NGO provide a 'mission house': all the expats are living together and this can be funny, if there are some teen volunteers, and less funny when you want to have some times to go around in underwear and read loudly old Rimbaud poems completely drunk.
This may happens whit good NGO's deeply rooted in the country, and also whit small NGO which cannot pay you a good salary but at least give you accommodation.

Sometimes you have a building or an apartment which is both office and house. This is good to sleep up to the very last minute, and very bad when on Sunday you have to finish a report and mechanic is repairing the car in the courtyard and he's popping in your office showing you greasy item that supposed to be broken breaks or who-cares-just-change-it, and in the meanwhile the others are fixing a dinner to celebrate some Hindu festival listening to Abba and playing whit flour.
And is very bad too when you are living with your Shostakovite head of mission who do not cares about any kind of social relationship because he's accomplishing a celestial mission.
And very bad when one of your colleagues has been working for some UN office and he's used to have cleaners wiping out every footprint. these guys really lost their path. They never cook, never care about who is using toilet after them, always finishing the Italian imported Parmesan, and at work they are sure they'have seen the light of wisdom while you are a Neanderthal as you'll always be.
This happens always if the NGO has enough project to have at least two expats.

Sometimes, especially for security reasons, there is a house or a compound for the office, the expats and  the local staff.
In this case everybody knows how much you are taking care of your personal hygiene, if you have a good relationship with your intestine, which kind of movie you like to see in bad. And forget about burp, farts and exciting secret love affairs.
This happens in those countries everybody must start from to have a curriculum. Nobody whit some curriculum wants to go there and so NGOs are giving assignment to unexperienced young. Even if these are the Countries in which more experience is needed: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Congo, Haiti and so on. Out of lonely planet circuits. In these cases, a good organisation use to give you come days of R&R before you burned out and start to shoot your colleagues.

Sometimes happens you have a house for your own. This may happens because:
1) You are the only expat
2) The rent are so cheap that you can afford it
3) You are planning to have an intimate relationship whit that girl of Oxfam you've met in the plane (and you'll end up with a beautiful chill out room full of dust and unused candles)
4) You are tired to live whit teen volunteers, ex UN pricks and you really love Rimbaud, especially when you are naked and drunk
In this case you are lucky if you are in Nepal (150 USD/month for a nice apartment), not so if you are in Angola (2,000 USD/month minimum to reach what in the western countries is considered minimum hygienic standards and add other 500 USD for the minimum required heavy armed security).

Somehow, whatever it will be, that will be your home sweet home.
And you will abandon it whit no regrets as soon as you finish your mission.
Whit a deep and satisfactory breath.

The most amazing house I've ever lived in: ginger bread style in Haiti. Sometimes we were 7 people. Excluding my one years old girl.

Lesson 2: choose your diet

After choosing the Project Manager you want to be, you have to choose your diet.
Because, for people without food, the best way to make you honor is to offer you food.

I've mostly met with goat, as the dead meat I told you about.
But also Tsampa, barley roasted flour mixed with butter tea to make sticky balls to relish, Plof rice with carrot and chickpeas cooked in goat fat or Fried Bananas.
And barrels of alcohol.
Tibetans dink Chang. Kind of barley beer, sour and sweet at the same time. And to prove the respect they have for you (the Water Bringer) they smear some home-made-remarkably-dirty butter over the edge of the cup. Well you get used to everything, even to greasy beer. The problem is you have to sip three times and then drink the whole cup. This ritual for each family.
And you do not care about the dirty butter in the edge of the cup, because the families use to keep the Chang in old engine oil bottles.
Tajik people are Muslim  Let's say that the women are obliged by the men to be more Muslim that the men are. Because women goes around chastely veiled, while men offer you bottles and bottles of vodka. And if are not able to drink it 'bottoms up', well, you are not so good as you pretend to be.
And Tanzanian, they offer you no alcohol, but they drink by their own, hiding the plastic bag mono dose of konyagi. No white is enough good to deserve it. Thanks God.
But they kill and flay a got almost for every meeting. They take the occasion to put together the community to cook as God commands. And in the meeting where food is foreseen, hundreds of people show up, and women prepare everything wonderfully, whit flowers, cloths, and washing hands facilities. And the men do speeches.
Never ending speeches which are translated with a 'He says Welcome'

The only place they never offer me food is Haiti.
They did not have at all.

a fine bottle of chang, grand reserve 2007

Jeff The Basta

Let me tell you about the Basta.

‘Basta’ in Italian means ‘Enough’, or ‘That’s it’, or ‘Stop it’.

He was the best box fighter ever. If you never heard about him is because the kind of boxing he was doing is not showed in the TV.

He was fighting for the Mafia.

This kind of old fashion Italian Mafia expatriated in the US some hundreds of years ago.

Those one who still like to speak Italian only while they are cooking.

He was a lost kid. Once. Then he became a lost man.

He found shelter in a boxing gym basement. And he hided there for a while. Like ten years.

And when he opened the door, well, he was the best fighter ever.

The fact is that for like ten years the only diversions he had were two: looking through the window, at the basement level, and so watching shoes and gaits, or looking though the keyhole: boxers.

And learning how to jump the rope watching inside his feelings, and fighting against his own shadow.

He saved my life continuously for more then ten years.

And then I dropped him.

Our story is quite complicated, but I’m willing to tell you in details.

Let’s start from the beginning.

I was still studying when I met him.

He was still trying to understand the world around him. But he gave up suddenly. Because being the best fighter ever was the rest of the world to understand him.

Anyway, Basta was not his real name, he just got it after the first fight.

All the fighters waited for the first match to have a name. It was their baptism.

No boxer was called with is name before the baptism. The first official fight. And the name was given by the crowd.

And because Basta was almost killing his opponent, the crowd started to say: ‘Enough!’, and ‘Stop it’...and because he was not stopping, then they tried in Italian: “Basta!”.

lesson one: choose the project manager

There are two types of project manager: the young and the old.

The young is normally enthusiastic and he's spurting positiveness from all pores. He wants to see, he wants to do.
The old is practical. Go straight to the target, being polite, but smashing stones while passing.

There are two types of project manager: the believer and the disillusioned.
The first one goes around with a halo of sanctity, because he's convinced he's saving those poor people, and that they will listen to him whatever he says. This kind do not last long.
The disillusioned knows that the majority of the beneficiaries do not give a shit of definition as 'gender' 'bottom to top approach', 'participatory development' and so on. He knows that when it's time they will go to harvest and nobody will attend the meeting on 'developing child friendly approach for the peace building education in the family environment'.

There are two types of project manager: the hyperactive and the lazy.
The first one is waking up at five in the morning, forcing the staff to do the same, to run to the field assisting to baseline interviews, not understanding a word of what his sleepy Community Expert is asking to the beneficiary. But he fells good.
The lazy like to arrive late in the office, while everybody is waiting for him to give assignment for the day. And he fells exploited if in the budget was not foreseen a lady to make him coffee.

There are two types of project manager: the one who knows and the one who feels.
The first one is update on whatever governmental new policy, all the guidebooks made by the UN, all the funds made available by a charity group of Norwegian grandmas.
The second one...has feelings.

There are two types of project manager: the one who, after twenty years, still wants to to a good job, sustainable and durable, who listen to the people and feels like he never end to learn, and the one who cannot find job at home because of the over-numbered unemployed people.

And two more kind: the one who start to go around without shoes, eating only rice and beans, dressing local jewelery, even marking the face such as the Masaai, making friends in the slums and be offended when called 'expat'; and the one who struggle to find the supermarket where the frozen turkey from US is trustworthy, drink imported spirits, invite other expat for xmass dinner, never buy a sock in the local market.

And two more types: the burned out, completely stresses and getting mad if the car need a break change or there is a strike in town, and the relaxed, almost alienated, for whom everything can be postponed, especially decisions, even the salary payment or the fire in the next room.

That's why, sometimes, finding a job, in the interviews, they ask you: Would you descibe yourself as a balance person?

something you cannot do in Europe. The expat is hugging, in a rare funny moment, maybe 1,000 euro in Tajik Somoni. Is not me in the picture