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