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