THE ONE WITH THE BLACKOUT

Last Wednesday, while we were having dinner, all the lights suddenly went off. This is nothing extraordinary in Gabon. You can depend on power cuts more than on planes leaving as scheduled. We thus took our glasses of wine and positioned ourselved on the terrace to assess the situation. It was the usual: around a hundred metres on the one side and fifty on the other all the street lamps were off. Our location is quite unhappy - if anybody is to have a blackout, it's going to be us, just the tiny square of land occupied by our building and little more.

We were sipping our wine, rather relaxed, as we knew what was going to happen: in about twenty minutes the lights would be back on. We were thus very surprised when, after about twenty minutes, all the lights within our sight went... off. Now that was new. We observed the city buried in complete darkness. Spooky. We went to bed thinking the electricity would come back in the morning.

It didn't. The entire Thursday and the following night the whole city had no power. Most of the food in our fridge went bad in the heat. Computer and mobile batteries were uncharged. No light, no air-conditioning, no lift. For 36 hours.

The lack of electricity is uncomfortable but bearable. The real problem was of different nature: we live on the eighth floor, provided with water by an electric pump. When there is no power, we have no water. In this case, for 36 hours. It also means we must get down eight floors (on foot), fill whatever bottles we have with water and go up eight floors again. During this blackout we only did it once, luckily.

Positive sides? Well, romantic, candle-light suppers and a perfect excuse to read a book all day as no computer work could be done (I don't work at the school on Thursdays and Friday was a day off). Oh, and the fact that they fixed it before Saturday night, as we were originally told they would.

TIA.

PS. I wrote this entry at midday and the very moment I clicked "Publish Post", there was another blackout. African irony, I suppose.

For those of you who are not Friends fans (like us): sorry about the incomprehensible title.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

More often than not our conversations focus on a subject which fills me with, well yes, excitement, but also a great deal of anxiety: our future. And I do not mean our future as a couple in the sense of babies and such, I mean our post-Gabon life.

Until recently I was mainly preoccupied with my moving here, starting to work, getting used to African life... I didn't think about the next stage, the present was too big and overwhelming. On the other hand, it was rather clear to us that at the end of 2010 we would get back to Europe or at least leave Gabon - we don't see ourselves as the Kapuscinskis of Libreville, who decide to devote their lives to the exploration of the Black Continent. Ok then. Leave Africa. And do what?

I feel I want to study. I want to be at university again and re-discover the excitement of a new pen and a fresh notebook. You see, I've always been a bit nerdy that way and I used to immensely enjoy the academic life. Used to, before Spain, before the thesis breakdown, before the university became a burden. I'm ready to get back now and give it another try. I'm consdering cultural management and recycling myself professionally - I think I've done enough teaching.

For Jandro it's also quite complicated. What can you do after working for the EU in Africa? Entering the EU structures is anything but simple and for him, for technical reasons, it proves to be impossible within the next two years. As far as his plans and ideas are concerned, I don't feel entitled to discuss them. I will only say that finding his professional way in a post-Gabon world might be a tad difficult.

To sum up, we're trying to go step by step. First: choose a country. Galicia is not an option: there is no work and the universities are mediocre. Poland? We'd like to spend some time there but not just yet: I think it's easier to study abroad and find work in Poland than the other way round. At the moment we are considering Madrid (big city, work options for Jandro and a renowned MA in cultural management) or Brussels (that means studying in French for me but I'm boldly hoping I'll be fit for it by the end of next year).

Our future remains in the shape of a question mark, then. It's been this way for me for over two years now, ever since I left Poland. At first it used to scare me a lot - if there is no perspective of another academic year, what do I do? Then I thought it was a passing stage and things would get sorted out at some point, the anxiety would go away. Now I realise that it is nothing unusual. The insecurity and uncertainty are part of something extremely natural, upon which we all stumble in the end. The inevitable transformation of caterpillar into butterfly - adulthood.

ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES KASIA... HAPPY

I've been looking through my entries on this blog and I realised that I told you hardly anything about what I really do in Libreville. That is, apart from buying African fabrics and eating porcupines. I haven't written anything about my job.

As you can see in the picture (which now seems a tad creepy but I'll leave it for the lack of a better one), I work with children. I am the English teacher at Courte Echelle, a private elementary school in one of the better quartiers of Libreville. My students are mainly French, Gabonese and Libanese, aged from 3 to 10. I teach all the classes and consequently know all the children at school. This results in thousands of hellos every day and constant mind-breaking doubts when it comes to kids' names.

As you are perfectly aware, I'd never taught at a real school. I've done private lessons and language academies but this here, my friends, is something different. Here the children fall down and hurt themselves, they cry and fight and tell on their friends - and the teacher needs to react. Here you teach black children to respect white children and white chilren to respect black children. You're a role-model. Whatever you say or do might be copied and learned. Constant awareness, ladies and gentlemen!

Teaching "the little blonde heads" (as they were once referred to by someone) is not at all easy. They very often misbehave because they don't consider English a legitimate class. Even though now I speak enough French to communicate my anger (Je suis triste! Je suis fâché! Arrête!), I never use it (keeping them under the illusion that I speak no French seems to be working quite well) and thus it takes me hours to get through with my message. Any message, for that matter. But it's cute to hear them shout in shock Ha! Teacherrr! Vous parlez francais! whenever they accidentaly hear me say a word in their language.

My experience tells me children can be divided into several categories:
- smart and ambitious: they sit quietly, listen, know everything and want to learn; my favourite kind!
- smart and naughty: they misbehave but then answer any question with a huge smile and always know the answer; fantastic at distracting the less talented ones!
- smart and lazy: you know they could advance quickly but they just do nothing; frustrating!
- silly but motivated: they really want to impress but learn slowly; I also like these.
- troubled: learning disabilites, diseases, hyperactivity... you name it; they will drive you nuts but have an excuse.
- stupid and lazy: the worst kind; they do nothing in class, they don't study, they have attitude problems and, above all, they are simply stupid. Do I sound harsh and unfair? Spend a week at my school before you judge me.

I'm trying different things I'd never tried before. I teach songs. I tell stories. I try to reduce the amount of time spent on crafts (which with the very little ones is still considerable... but with twenty 5-year-olds can you blame me?). I prepare hundreds of flashcards and bingos. I do tests. I shout. I punish. I get depressed. I get elated. I get pictures and hugs and hellos and mynamesisjuliettes.

Every now and then I feel like quitting. Every now and then I feel quite proud of myself. Ups and downs, as in any job. I like most of the children and I get a lot of satisfaction when I see them advance. All in all, the balance is positive, although it is definitely not a job for life.

Today I've started English classes at the European Commission. For the record, it was not Jandro who recommended me, it was a former student. I'm very thrilled to work with adults again. They probably won't draw pictures for me but it's a relief to be understood without repeating everything five thousand times. And they don't share bathroom details with me. And they won't cry. Or hurt their knees.

All this put together plus my French classes (twice a week) plus a private Spanish class I give (once a week) keeps me pretty busy. A teacher full time. Better this than the gym-supermarket-lunch-dinner routine, I'm sure.

FRANCEVILLE

The city of Franceville turned out to be rather pleasant. It is spread on green hills, which is enough to make the place quite pretty. It has little to do with Libreville’s European air and white people are practically invisible (Roger told us that they didn’t mix). Here are a few things we thought were worth noting about the city.

Family ties

Franceville is the capital of the Haut-Ogooué province, and in its vicinity lies Bongoville, president Bongo’s native town. No wonder the president (both old and new) took a special liking to the area. Liking, it must be said, which is in every way mutual. The Bongo presidents, father and son, are omnipresent.

While the previous president took care of the city and roads (we were shocked as the roads were better than in Poland), the people did not hesitate to return the favour. This was the province which supported Ali Bongo in nearly 100%. Huge billboards still say Thank you Papa Omar and lament his death. Images of the late president are everywhere: hotels, restaurants, shops, T-shirts… Not to mention the huge statue we've seen somewhere in the city. It seems he was very much loved. Ali Bongo is slowly winning himself a similar place in peoples’ hearts. The village of Kessala was fully equipped in Ali’9 gadgets and displayed them quite proudly. The receptionist at our hotel had Ali on the screen of her mobile. Stickers and pictures are everywhere. Franceville is there for the Bongo family, no doubt about that.

Libanese steak

We found the city a bit more African than Libreville. The shops were completely different, the market beautiful and the restaurants shabby, cheap and good. Our last day we went to a place with a very wide choice of dishes and settled for chicken with fried banana (me) and steak with rice (Jandro). Jandro inquired about the type of meat and the young waiter stared at us blankly. What kind of meat is it?, Jandro repeated patiently and the boy finally answered: Libanese steak, sir. My persistent boyfriend did not, however, give up: Yes, but what kind of meat? Pork? Beef? The boy looked cornered: I do not know, sir. Libanese steak. I smiled because in my mind, having read too much Roald Dahl, I could already picture the waiter capturing a Libanese in order to make him into a steak. No worries, though. It was beef.

Down to the river
There was a river behind our hotel and on our last afternoon, given that we had nothing better to do, we sat on its green bank, reading. There were some benches (all of them occupied) and quite a lot of people around. At first they gave us strange looks but after a little while they just let us be. We observed them a little bit (being careful not to stare) and saw how many different activities can be carried out by the river. Some little boys were playing football (later, when it started to rain, they kept playing, covered in mud from head to toe). A man and a woman were taking a bath, their dark skin shiny from the soap. A girl was washing the dishes, dressed in tight shorts and a bikini top, flirting with a bunch of boys who were watching her. A guy was playing with his puppy (very uncommon sight in Africa, few people keep dogs). And then the rain came. The heavy, tropical rain. We took shelter in a little cafe on the river bank and were served by a waitress with real man-like chest hair. The children kept playing football. The girl kept washing the dishes. They all seemed rather happy.

GETTING TO KNOW EACH OTHER

Before going away to Franceville we consulted a travel agent's and found out that we would have to pay nearly 1 milion francs (almost 1500 euros) if we wanted them to organise our trip. Of course, this was out of the question and thus we were left with the only alternative: organise the trip alone. You'd think it's easy - you call up some people, book some hotels, talk to the guides... well, nothing is easy in Africa. However, we did tackle the challenge rather satisfactorily and met a few interesting people. I think they deserve a more detailed presentation.

Hilaire
Hilaire is the guide who picked us up at the train station and whom we'd contacted from Libreville. He works for the Eco-Museum of Franceville and can organise your stay in the area in the sense of giving you contacts and letting you know what you can do. He also works for an eco-turism organisation associated with WCS. The organisation is based in Kessala, a village not far away from Hilaire's birth place. Large numbers of elephants live near the village and thus Hilaire came up with the idea of making them a tourist attraction. It is important to make the villagers see that they can make money off the elephants, because this is the only way to stop poaching. Hilaire sees that Kessala needs to open up for tourists: maybe give them something to eat? Maybe show them some of their traditions? It is difficult to work with the villagers, as they don't really understand the idea of attracting tourists. They don't trust Hilaire and think they want to use them in some, as of yet unknown, way. The guides were thus rather mediocre and it was from Hilaire and not from them that I found out that elephants admired white women.

Papa Jerome and the Kessala village
Papa Jerome is the president of the eco-turism organisation and takes his role quite seriously. He let us camp by his house and took us for a walk in the evening, having put on what I assumed was his finest jacket. He is a little man and you have to at least smile when you see him put on his glasses to read a message on his mobile. After we came back from our elephant hike, we showed our pictures to the male representation of the village and they asked us to send them the pictures. We should send photos to them directly, mind you, because if we send them to Hilaire he will keep them for himself (I strongly believe they think Hilaire's Franceville house is crammed with pictures that he didn't share).
The village itself was quite an experience. It was startling to see tin huts with mud floors and mobile phones charging inside. Progress is everywhere, or maybe just bits and pieces of it. We asked why women spoke no French and were informed that they must get married instead of going to school. We thus asked about marriage and dowry and Papa Jerome told us that when a girl is twelve or so she is chosen a husband and then the trial period begins. When the man feels ready, he tells his fiance's parents that he wants her to live with him and they continue with the trial period until they are around twenty. The dowry consists of money, animals, food... whatever you have to spare. Having said all this, Papa Jerome looked at Jandro and asked: How much is the dowry chez vous? My boyfriend smiled and answered that he paid nothing for me. Jerome processed for a moment and concluded: Trial period. You can take her to live with you but you can still change your mind. Oh how safe it makes me feel!

Roger
We met Roger when we were looking for a taxi which could take us to Leconi (100 km away from Franceville). We negotiated the price and got into what turned out to be a death cab - he drove so fast and so dangerously that I thought we would crash on every turn. After a while he started chatting to Jandro (he requested that the gentleman sat in the front "for our security") and we found out several things about him. He is from Bongoville (the native town of president Bongo) but he travelled to Italy and France. He loves nature and hunting and thus he chose to settle in Gabon. He plays music. Roger was not only a driver, he actually turned out to be a very good guide. He stopped the car several times to show us pretty views and told us interesting things about the area. Then he took out his mobile and had us listen to a song recored by his band, Ngoss Brothers. The song was pretty good and sounded interesting (they sing in teke) and we asked if he could sell us a CD. When he picked us up from Leconi in the afternoon, the front seat of the cab was occupied by a guitar. He sold us a CD and took us to Bongoville, to see the bar he plays in. Then we went back to Franceville and had dinner together. He took us home and played Aisha for us. He promised to call us up when he came to Libreville.

I must say I really enjoyed this aspect of our trip. We were with real people, making chance acquaintances, getting to know Gabon a bit more. For five days we saw no white people. Libreville does feel rather European now.

THE WAITING TRIP

As you probably know, we took a little trip to Franceville in the south of Gabon. It was our third big African escapade and in many ways the most extreme one: as the travel agent's offer was way out of reach financially, we organised it all by ourselves. I have many things to tell and it will definitely take up more space than just one entry. I've thus tried to divide the events into chunks and I hereby offer you Part 1: The Waiting Trip.

On Wednesday evening we got on the train to Franceville. The Transgabonais is a big deal out here, as there is only one railway in Gabon. The trip lasts 12 hours and you go at night. Our experience shows that it's impossible to get there in less than 14 hours. Getting on a Gabonese train is surprisingly complicated. Every five minutes a voice with a fake French accent informs you about the boarding time. You must check in oversize luggage. Then there are three controls: policemen and train station officials (oh yes! there are train station officials!) control first your ticket, then your ID and then your ticket and your ID. Finally, you are allowed to get on the train. It's not bad but there are no beds, so it's not very comfy to travel by night. And the air-conditioning is set to 12 degrees, so, in spite of our polars and sleeping bags, we were simply cold. It didn't matter much though, we were ready for our adventure! We got off the train, showed our IDs yet again and were allowed out of the station.

We had called up a guide to meet us at the station and, shockingly, it all went well and he was there. It took only about an hour for the 4x4 car to show up too (do you now get the idea of why I called this "the waiting trip"? if not, read on, there's more) and we set off to Kessala, a tiny village in the wild. Originally we were going to camp by the river to go and see the elephants early in the morning. However, the moment we picked up our backpacks it started to rain (heavy tropical rain) and it continued throughout the whole afternoon. We were thus stuck in Kessala, waiting for the rain to stop, awkwardly sitting in the villagers' huts and listetning to teke, the local language of which we understood nothing. They ate our peanuts and offered no food in exchange. Terrified that they would also eat our precious cans of tuna (we did not have enough food to share with the whole village!), we retired to our minute tent to have the most uncomfortable dinner ever. The rain continued throughout the night but we were surprised to discover that our little chez nous remained dry.

Early in the morning we were going to set off to see the elephants. We were all ready at 5 am but it took one of the guides 30 minutes to show up ("I live far away"). We hiked through the jungle, got terribly wet and saw a big herd (is it?) of elephants bathe in the river, it was awesome! We got back to the village, were fed a local specialty (sandy African aubergine with a plate of manioc), promised to send photos through a thing called "the internet" and went away, escorted by three men, to meet the car that was going to pick us up at 10 am. Of course, he was not there. We called the driver and found out that his car had broken down and that he'd sent another one to meet us. He wasn't lying, only that the other driver showed up three hours later. We sat on the road with the three villagers, chatting, taking silly pictures and waiting for our boots to dry (they didn't throughout the whole trip). Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Finally, a pickup truck in a very bad condition arrived and we were ushered inside. We took the two seats in the front next to the driver, while the back was occupied by around twenty people, a lot of manioc, our backpacks and two smelly sacks of smoked wild hog. (I will get back to Kessala in a separate post.)

When we finally got to Franceville it was too late to do anything (we had planned another trip), so we just looked for a decent hotel, didn't find one in our price range, chose the smallest evil, left our stuff and had dinner with the guide that picked us up at the station. We chose a typical African maki (cheap, tasty and very shabby), where the very pregnant waitress totally checked out my boyfriend. The waiting for the chicken completed our waiting trip. We hoped things would take a more energetic turn the next day. Luckily, they did.


The top left picture was taken by Jandro.