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

Another place

"Hey, where are you going?"
"Another Place"
...ah, ok, so...well, not so nice, you go to another place and you wont tell me...so you don't want me to join you...oh, ah, ok...I was thinking we were friends...

I was new in Lhasa, my English was poor, I was young.
I was alone.
I was living in an hotel. No foreigner is allowed to rent an apartment in Tibetan Autonomous Region (so called TAR).
In the same hotel, the Tashi Norta, was a group of Spanish. Volunteers.
Nice people, active, bad English also.
Cozy. They invited me for dinner.
After dinner they decided to go for 'una copa'.
Going clubbing, in Lhasa. Cool.
"Where are you going?"
"Another place"
"Well, so fuck you all", I though, but what I said sounded like "Ah, good, anyway I'm tired and... I have to call me ma and...dry my laundry with the hairdryer of the hotel..."
"Really?", they looked at me as a prick Mormon.

'Another Place' was the best bar ever. And it was in Lhasa.
One small entrance and then a tiny room with few couches or just Tibetan mattresses on the floor, old army wooden box as tables, candles, a yak stool stove fighting the Tibetan winter passing through the window's holes, and a box full of yak dry stools like breads.
And a flamenco CD was always playing, present of one of the Spanish.
The owner was a Chinese lady teaching English in the university, the waitress a young Tibetan teenager called 'La guapa'.
I've met there travelers around since more than five years by bike, by foot, by whoever care. English violinist and Mexican widows.
I challenged and won two Irish guys on who was able to drink more beer in that bar.
I've been watching pictures in a tourist camera and discover that, after the monks there was Alex Mc Dowell, Bono and Salma Hayek, discovering he was one of the best photographer ever.
I felt in love and I cried in that bar.

Part of the Chinese plan to delete Tibetan culture forever, is to raze to ground all old building in Tibet and build them again, shining new.
Also Another Place building.
Because I've lived in Lhasa more than two years and because Chinese build fast, I've the chance to see the new Another Place.
The owner and the Guapa were the same, and the mattresses and the stove. But the walls were white and straight. And bikers and backpackers, at that time were wiped out by the riots of 2008.
They added pineapple pizza in the menu, but something more was missing.

Now I'm not new in Lhasa anymore, if I'll have the chance to come back, my English is not Shakespearean yet but improved, and I'm not young anymore.
I've met the person I've married and whit whom I've made a baby in that bar.
Many things have changed, but the old Another Place stays the best bar ever. When is raining, when is snowing, when is springtime and when you are burned out.
But it's not existing anymore, like many and many and many other things in China.

This make me feel so old.