In the Spring of 2002, I spent three months in Grenoble, France, trying to learn French through immersion. I didn’t make much progress (but I did read War and Peace). I have a memory of one evening when my Swedish and German student housemates invited me out to a friend’s house to watch a movie. That sounded like a great idea, and we walked over there. When we got there, the friend had a large collection of films downloaded on to a hard drive, though I immediately realised they were all illegal copies. Having something of a sensitive conscience, I made my excuses and said I didn’t feel comfortable with watching the films, so I would head back home. I honestly didn’t regret coming, it had been nice to see them, and it had been a good evening, so they shouldn’t feel bad about me leaving. I’m not sure if I succeeded.

I thought about that experience recently when I was reflecting on whether I’ve become softer on such issues. I have watched at least two pirated films since that time (and I grew up playing pirated computer games). But still, I’m pretty much the same person and I still struggle with these issues (not what is right and wrong, but the social awkwardness of expressing your views on such matters). As far as I can tell, I’m not judgemental about such things and I desperately don’t want to offend (one of my weaknesses) or sound superior, but I also don’t want to do things I’m not comfortable with. This leads to all sorts of funny work arounds which generally just leave me looking odd. A recent housemate said he had some great films on a USB stick and gave it to me to copy. Did I a) tell him ‘No I feel it’s wrong’ or b) copy the films and watch them, or c) copy the films, then immediately delete them, and make excuses when he asked me if I’d watched them. Of course the latter. For a recent tv series that we’d watched together he told me I could get the next series from a colleague at work. He kept asking me if I’d got them, and I said I hadn’t. I then bought the series on iTunes and watched them on my Mac. He didn’t really understand why I’d done this, and I just found it too awkward to explain.

It’s probably pretty obvious that I’m a very un-confrontational guy who doesn’t want to make others feel bad. That is a definite weakness, but something I struggle to fix. I prefer to look inexplicably weird than to seem judgmental.

At the end of the day though, I do think this issue is something of a blind spot in the circles I move in. Last summer I was shocked when an Ivorian aid worker friend returned from a trip back home with several new CDs, all of them pirated. Legal CDs with the Burida sticker on them only cost $6-$8 in Abidjan, hardly something that breaks the bank for an international aid worker. Last week in Abidjan, there was an outcry when the Independent Electoral Commission used someone’s Facebook photo on a billboard ad for voter registration without their permission. It was pretty outrageous, but then some of the same people will watch pirated US tv shows and not see that there’s a least some similar issues at play.

I don’t want to be one of these people who says ‘When I retire, that’s when I’ll live!’ The fact of the matter is that I greatly enjoy my life at the moment, aside from the temporary inconvenience of being separated from my family. I actually really enjoy my job and going into the office (which is why I do it pretty much seven days a week). But still I sometimes wonder what I would really like to do if life was just free time. I do still hope though that in a loose definition of ‘work’, work continues to long be a part of my life.

But if life was all free-time, here are a few things I’d like to be doing:
– Teaching others
– Spending time with the family
– Attending interesting events around the world; FESPACO, Word Alive, Sundance, music festivals, fashion/art events are some that spring to mind
– Photography – setting up a photo studio
– Produce interesting videos
– Writing including journalism
– Supporting the church
– Further study, or at least spending times in places like Oxford where there are always interesting lectures and events
– Sport
– Cooking (why not?)

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.

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.