Archives de catégorie : Lifestyle

A bi-polar life

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Back in Freetown after another intense week with the family in Abidjan. I don’t think I’ll ever be used to this slightly schizophrenic life separated by a two hour flight. As soon as I get to Abidjan it’s all about my wife and baby. In Freetown, life largely revolves around work.

In the latter I have good internet, hot water, a spacious apartment. I survive on sardines, I exercise regularly, I don’t spend much, and I have a car. The opposite is true in Abidjan where we squeeze into a small studio, eat well, and the city is choc full of friends.

It’s actually difficult to imagine these world’s coming together, and it’ll be a radically new experience later in the year when they do, as Ebola fades.

Home is where the heart is

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You could make the case at the moment that although I’m physically in Freetown, I’m actually really living in Abidjan. For many reasons, that’s not a good situation to be in. I have some great colleagues here, but it’s hard to claim that I have a social life, much activity out of work, and much in the way of soul mates. My wife, my baby, my daughters, many of my friends are in Abidjan. Even my mum is there now for a week. When I go online almost all my contacts are in Abidjan. If there’s a car crash in Abidjan I’ll hear about it, but if there was a similar event in Freetown I would barely know. Every day I read my copy of Abidjan’s Frat Mat newspaper delivered to my inbox. In Freetown I’ve only ever once skimmed through a local paper. I couldn’t name a single government minister in Sierra Leone. In 12 months’ time hopefully my family will be here and I’ll have some sort of life. But for the moment, my heart and body are separated.

Looking back and forward

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Before looking forward to the coming year, it is of course important to look back. This might be boring for you, in which case skip this post, but for me it’s a useful exercise to reflect on my 2014 resolutions to see how I did.

The short round-up, posted as a comment on Facebook, runs as follows:
#my2014 The joys and sorrows of a birth (daughter), a death (father) and a wedding (brother). Travel to Afghanistan (2 weeks), Jordan (1 week), UK (3×1 week) and Ivory Coast (3×1 week). Changed job, organisation, profession and continent. Moved house twice. Finished reading the Bible, the Qu’ran and the Symposium. Ran a marathon. Didn’t write fiction, learn Arabic, master Lightroom & FCPX, lose weight or pray enough.

I started the year with the growing stress of facing unemployment at the end of the year when my department’s future looked uncertain. But in the end things worked out almost perfectly (both for me and my department). It’s important at this time to look back with gratitude at how worst fears weren’t realised (I guess they almost never are). There were significant amounts of travel, though not much within the Middle East patch, and a lot more time spent in Africa than envisaged.

If you went back through the past years you’d see that some resolutions are definitely easier than others. For instance, I’ve consistently met goals for saving and giving. Same for fitness/exercise, reading, academic study and blogging. But other elements appear in the resolutions list year-on-year without any progress being made – notably fiction/book writing, increased prayer times, writing music and improving my photo/video skills.

Less seriously I always seem to have ‘play Volleyball’ in there somewhere, which never happens. I even once gave my best friend a volleyball for Christmas but nothing came of it. Is there any reason to believe things will be different in future? Certainly blogging, reading and exercise have started well in Freetown. I think there are reasons for confidence that my photo/video skills will improve significantly this year, as I’m doing a lot more of it, making some investments in equipment, and using more of my free time for photo/video activities. I am writing more than usual (especially blogging) though whether this will ever translate to a book, I don’t know. I’m beginning to think I should stop stressing out about book writing.

Will 2015 be the year things finally settle down? Sadly this is unlikely at least in the first six months. My wife and new daughter are unlikely to be living with me in Freetown before the summer – perhaps they will never see the current home I have rented for us. At least work wise, I am on pretty safe ground now in terms of job security – I’m likely to grow a lot professionally and enjoy my time here. I’m a bit worried that the church I’m going to is not as good as previous ones, but the important thing I guess is that I can contribute. Exercise wise, I had thought of 2015 as a year to work on being stronger and slimmer, but I was recently attracted to the rather different goal of doing a triathlon in Assinie (Cote d’Ivoire) which would be fun for a number of reasons – jogging-wise I can already do the running section (10km) reasonably comfortably, and the swimming is fortunately only half of the usual Olympic distance (it’s 800m rather than 1.6km). The off-road cycling will be new, but that’s actually something I’m getting excited about. Cycling might be a good way to go – something one can do in later years, and a good way to see a lot of scenery. In my early teens I used to pour over Mountain Biking UK magazines, and now finally I could conceivably get a decent bike providing I can find a way to ship it out here. On the overall objectives, this year I’m trying to bring greater focus to my resolutions which come in five priority areas: CHURCH – WRITING – EXERCISE – PHOTO/VIDEO – FRIENDS.

Christmas far from family

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I had the horrifying thought yesterday that I haven’t spent a Christmas with my daughters since 2010. That’s worrying. This year was no exception. Here’s a look back on the last few Christmases.

25 December 2010 – I’d spent the previous couple of weeks in a hotel in Abidjan because of an intimidating phone call my wife received after one of my reports during what was the start of the Ivorian post-election crisis. I was sleeping in the office anyway because of the curfew, insecurity and an immense amount of work (I ended up doing 330+ separate news reports that month). The threat accelerated our plans to move house, which my industrious wife arranged during my absence. The BBC newsroom allowed me to have most of Christmas day off, and I traveled to our new house and had Christmas with the family. I can’t remember if I slept in my own bed that night.

25 December 2011 – My first holiday back in the UK since 2008. Work paid for my trip to spend Christmas with my parents. My wife and daughters stayed back in Abidjan and held a Christmas party for the family at our home, with 50 people sleeping there on Christmas Eve. That says more about how people were squeezed in than the size of the home.

25 December 2012 – I’d moved to a new job in Dubai the previous month, and my wife had stayed behind in Abidjan while the daughters finished school and I set-up our new life in the Middle East. Went to church in the morning, and then a British family invited me to their place for Christmas dinner, for which I will be forever grateful. In the evening I celebrated Christmas with a work colleague and her friends (I think everyone else was Muslim and had never celebrated Christmas before – they were confused by simple things like Christmas crackers).

25 December 2013 – My wife got her first visa for the UK, and we traveled back for two weeks to have a wonderful Christmas with my parents. It was poignant as the last Christmas we would enjoy together with my Dad.

25 December 2014 – My baby’s first Christmas and one month birthday. Wife and three daughters were together in Abidjan, I’m stuck in Freetown. Church in the morning, and then a dinner of sardines, boiled egg and instant noodles followed by custard creams. Worked in the afternoon and popped into the office in the evening, before finishing with a film.

25 December 2015…

On spending

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This may turn out similar to an earlier post, but I got my salary and a separation payment paid into my bank account in the last few days. And I started wondering what people do with all their money. It’s true that at the weekend I went on an online Amazon spending spree, which is easy to do when you have a bit of money, you’re bored and you’re far from almost any decent shops, but it didn’t come to a huge amount. Still I have a new camera on the way, even though I have a perfectly good camera with an amazing new lens (which won’t be compatible with the new camera I just bought).*

But really: I’m youngish, I have two daughters in higher education, I’ve had an expensive year with lots of travel, homes rented in various cities and of course a baby, and yet I don’t know how to spend my money. Why don’t I hear anyone else complain about such problems? I suspect that the most significant thing about my current situation is that I’m far from shopping, and more importantly, I’m only going to leave here in 3-4 years with the contents of a few suitcases so why buy more?

I think what a lot of people my age are doing is investing in buying homes, equipping homes and upgrading homes, whereas I don’t have as much as a tin opener to my name. They key thing is that I don’t have a mortgage, which probably means in 20 years’ time everyone my age (at least among Western friends) will be living in their own homes and I’ll be renting (though I do have a house in Abidjan). If the second expense is transport, as I’ve said earlier, in this sort of situation, a basic 4×4 does the trick. And of course life is pretty cheap. I eat almost the same meal each evening. My sporting activity comes from jogging (one set of expensive trainers per year) and circuits (free app on phone).

As an aside, one thing that I use my money for in recent years is work. As a journalist, I didn’t like the equipment I was given by the BBC so bought my own. Ditto for the camera. Even now, I’m taking pictures, video and interviews for work on equipment that is my own, often processing on my own personal computer. My philosophy is that we get paid well enough, and why let administrative procedures and lack of budgets at work stop you doing the best job on the best equipment you can?

The funny thing is that even though I’m working long hours including weekends, I have a fair bit of time as well. So, with some spare money and time what’s stopping me doing a lot more? Sadly the answer is probably laziness and cowardliness. What I should be doing is writing novels, hanging out with friends and doing photo shoots. The sad truth is that I’m not doing a huge amount with my time.

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*The idea behind the camera purchase is that there are now some really exciting sub $500 mirrorless cameras that are really small. My idea is that this will be a throw-around camera that I can use to hit the streets with, with the acceptable risk that it will get damaged or stolen one day. I’ve heard lots of other photographers say that these new cameras have released a new lease of creativity in their work. Watch this space.

Spending

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I recently came into a small amount of money – some hardship pay for the summer work in the Central African Republic that I didn’t realise was coming my way. So I now have an unexpected $4,500. It got me thinking about money. Growing up in Salford, Greater Manchester, sweets at the corner shop down the cobbled alley at the back of the house cost a penny. He-man plastic toys cost a couple of pounds. Ten pounds seemed like a most princely sum. It took a couple of weeks of pocket money to have a pound. I remember the scandalous tones used in the family to talk about another family who had celebrated the birthday of one of their children at Wimpey’s (a cheaper version of McDonald’s) where all the invites had been treated to a full meal plus cake. The rumoured cost was 30 pounds. I’ve spent the same amount on a single meal several times in the last year and not thought much about it.

For much of my life a hundred pounds seemed like a huge amount. In my teens I would dream of spending such vast sums on adolescent male dreams – progressively a computer (400 pounds for an Atari if I recall correctly), a mountain bike, a drum kit, an electric guitar, and then of course a car. If someone had given me a thousand pounds it would have felt like I’d won the lottery. I did holidays in Europe that cost 50 pounds (including the flight to Switzerland), raised a couple of hundred pounds for a life-changing couple of weeks in Romania, and dreamed of the mega-expensive Inter-Rail pass (about 300 pounds again if memory serves). A month travelling around the USA on Greyhound after two months as a camp counselor cost about $700 I think, with the bus ticket taking up around $400.

But at 34 (I say that deliberately because it sounds far younger than the soon-to-be-reached 35) what do you do with $4,500? How would you treat yourself? I have more than enough gadgets – I just need more dedicated time to use them. I already get plenty of exotic travel – my holidays are for seeing family and friends. A nice car doesn’t make much sense in Freetown, and I’m already buying a car. And anyway, what is the real difference between a basic car and a luxury one? I have enough clothes, and again, what do nice clothes give you, especially when you’re past wanting to impress anyone of the opposite sex except your wife and daughters?

So, I’ll probably give some to the church, some to my daughters to help pay their university fees and some to the investment account I have to buy some more shares, to one day buy a second house in Abidjan, which will help raise more money, and the $4,500 will probably be intact on my death and transferred by will to my children. After a while, you seem to just send your money to the bank and then the numbers on your annual statement change that little bit without it making an iota of difference to your life.

Living

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The funny thing is that when you arrive in a new place like this, you find yourself with huge amounts of start-up money in the bank, but a life that is lacking in the very basic things. All around me people with very low incomes are enjoying some of the great things in life – having your own place, living with your wife and children, a sense of home, an organised household, and a complete set-up. Whereas you with your fabulous wealth have to put up with being far from loved ones, living alone, and eating food from the can or instant noodles. You barely get a piece of fruit and veg, while the families all around you are enjoying all manner of fresh pineapples, ginger, papaya and oranges at near knock off prices. Your neighbours play with their children all evening, while the best you get is whatsapp. Hmmmm. Hopefully a transitional phase.

Room with a view

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In two fairly prosaic and insignificant ways, Dubai has changed me. Firstly for two years I lived in apartments with incredible views. This was especially the case in my first year – all bedrooms and the main lounge-kitchen living area had wrap around glass walls looking out from what was the top floor flat (39th) over the towers of Dubai and the tiny villas below. It was something that was constantly part of our life, although we never used the balcony for anything except drying clothes and impressing guests. The second factor is that I stayed in some incredible hotels in the UAE and around the region – hotels I would never pay to stay in myself, but luxurious and well put together.

Conclusion? When I got offered a free upgrade to the ‘executive suite’ last night in an up country Sierra Leonean hotel, it doesn’t mean much. And when landlords want you paying thousands of dollars more for a place that has ‘a view’ it doesn’t get me very excited. While all views are different, I kind of feel I’ve had my taste of that cake, and while it was special, I don’t need to pay again for the same ride.

Off to church

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Public gatherings are generally to be avoided in times of Ebola, but it’s Sunday so I thought I’d make my first stab at finding a church (which came at the expense of a beach and lobster invite from my expat friends). Many readers probably don’t share my beliefs, but let me tell you it can be a hard challenge finding a good church in West Africa, though finding any old church isn’t too tough. There’s even one quite close to my new house, and on Fridays they seem to have all night sessions with the PA system on 11.

In the west, you can hit Google and go through church websites, maybe even downloading a sermon or two. Here, you’re in the dark. So I went through some old student Christian networks and got a contact here who invited me to his church this morning. I remember meeting a Lebanese guy in Brazzaville (Congo) who told me that when you’re Lebanese you can turn up in any city in the world, and when you find your community they are more or less obligated to give you a job. Perhaps there are similarities – my contact picks me up from home, takes me to his church, takes me to visit his family in the city centre and then takes me to lunch back at his place – even though we’ve never met and don’t have any direct mutual friends. And of course, we get on very well.

A word on the church. It was on the Pentecostal side, but I still appreciated it. The choir were all in robes, that carried influences of the US south. The message dwelt on the death of a young member of the congregation who had died suddenly in his sleep during the week leaving a wife and two children. It was quite touching.

It was great to be out and about on a Sunday morning – the streets of Freetown were thronging with people heading to church in their best. So good to see life outside the restricted confines of the office. I even spotted two work colleagues in the congregation, including a member of my team. I think a lot of people are staying at home during the week because I saw a lot more life than I do Monday-Saturday. But church attendance numbers are down sharply as people do what they can to avoid Ebola. The hand washing water had run out when we arrived at the main entrance, but the key Ebola messages of avoiding human contact, washing hands, going to health services when sick and avoiding dead bodies were given from the pulpit. At one point in the service, a woman fainted. People weren’t sure what to do and the ushers didn’t have their latex gloves. Finally she was carried out – turned out she had had stomach problems and hadn’t been eating properly, but initially Ebola was in people’s minds.

Afterwards we stopped by a relative’s house in one of the old districts of Freetown. A baby girl had been born 7 days earlier, and it was now time for the naming ceremony. The house was full of relatives, and people placed cash on the baby’s belly. I was honoured to have doors opened so easily for me to see inside people’s families and homes.

GnTs and dancing in the Graham Greene house

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Yesterday, I mentioned my first invite to a friend’s place. Glad to say it was a huge amount of fun. My new friend actually only lives about 200m from my compound, in a huge family home overlooking the bay. Author Graham Greene reputedly stayed there back in the day – it was that sort of place. The host was hard at work in the kitchen putting together a shepherd’s pie. Starters was home-baked bread, with French brie hot off the plane from Dakar. The boast of the pantry was a head of broccoli (also from Dakar), which is treated as gold dust here (retail value 20 dollars). Another friend arrived to make a second dessert, and we munched, drank wine and GnTs, and tried not to talk about Ebola. There was even a guitar. The music was perfect – a mix of upbeat American pop and some jazz, with some old REM tracks thrown into the mix. We explored the house, played table tennis on the vast veranda, and set-up a regular rotation of card games, crazy dancing (just us five) and then table tennis.

It was a lot of fun. House parties are fun all over the world, so I don’t want to claim exclusive access to special evenings, but I do think there are levels of stress, exhaustion and tropical excitement here that lead to instant intimacy between people. Yes, in some ways it was one of those ‘expat in Africa’ nights. Even the simple pleasure of occasional human touches (innocent slamming hands on each either on the card deck etc) really met an amazing felt-need that particularly long-term people feel to touch again (ignoring the current Ebola advice).

The house was one of those special colonial residences you can find in Africa. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a (vast) book collection more closely alligned to my reading interests, and full of books I’d either read or listed as ‘to be read’. The house had the haunting aspect of being a much-loved family home, but without wife and kids who’d left back in July. It was full of memories and joy, and now the nostalgia of an amazing life on hold. Young children playing at hunting black mambas in the garden, long weekend nights with other families in the house followed by morning excursions to the beach. For those who knew the pre-Ebola days, it’s immensely sad. For those, like me, contemplating several years here, it’s a taste of what life could be like again soon.