Why I love travel, even if it hurts my spelling

It was early, but that didn't keep my phone from ringing.

"Oui, âllo?" I replied.

*incomprehensible*

"Oui, âllo?" I repeated.

*incomprehensible*

I just couldn't understand, so I hung up, with the consolation of a "Désolée."

My phone rang again.

"It's your brother!" came the exasperated voice. Ah! English. What a novel thought.

I'm amazed at how adaptable human beings are. After a few weeks making errors on my AZERTY French keyboard, which I have grown to despise, I decided to break out my laptop. The warm, comforting womb of the keyboard I have to come to know and love?

Hardly. Muddling through the AZERTY world of Abidjan has slowly and quietly retrained my fingers' instincts. As a result, the QWERTY keyboard has become to be quite the winding qwze, if you will.

Both these experiences remind me of the timeless French film l'Auberge Espagnole (if you haven't seen it, do yourself a favor and watch it). After spending a few months in Barcelona, the Frenchman dreams that he has lost his mother tongue and can only speak Spanish.

This is a common experience when you're in a new place. You want to take in and learn about this new culture and you gradually adapt to the speed of life, the gestures, the habits, the language.

But, whether you like it or not you are still different. For one, you identify with where you came from and you don't want to lose that part of yourself. Soccer's great and I'm loving getting my ass kicked and making a fool out of myself with the neighborhood kid but boy do I miss going to baseball games. You better believe my patriotism comes out, especially when Wednesday's game against Algeria comes along. You should've heard me waxing poetic about the resilience of American when we came back to tie and almost beat Slovenia after falling behind 2-0.

Second, even if you take up their language, you're still different because you have access to luxuries and safety nets that set you apart While I'm riding in a the shared taxis, if we get into an accident, my health insurance will evacuate me. The passenger next to me will most likely have to stand in line at an overcrowded hospital, if they can even afford it.

Still, what I love most about travelling is not the process dividing the world into the quaint things that are different than known universe I will return to. Think AZERTY vs. QWERTY, language or the transportation network of your destination.

Instead, it's experiencing the different answers to universal human questions that keeps me coming. What do we value? What are our priorities? How to we treat money? How do we treat the people we know? What about strangers? And perhaps most importantly, we're hungry, what culinary solution do we find?

The diverse world we live in has produced a lot of different answers to these questions, and I know, set aside the World Cup jingoism for a second, that we can learn a lot from each other.

I'm proud that people in the US apologize for being 5 minutes late, especially when there's important stuff to do. But, there is something to taking the time for the people around you, even if it means you'll show up elsewhere late. I can't count the number of times I've been running late for a class and crossed paths with a good friend I'd been wanting to sees for a long time. A smile, a handshake and a quick look at my watch and I was on my way. I'm not sure how proud I am of that and if that, and whether that really represents what I value.

Being out of my comfort zone in a place where time, keyboards and relationships are treated differently helps me question and reassess the home I think I know. One of my favorite quotes puts it better than I ever could:

We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. - T.S. Eliot

Exploring this world isn't just a matter of learning about others. It's about learning about ourselves.

What Makes a City Go 'Round

Tightly packed bullet trains in Kyoto, iPod-entranced New Yorkers crowding subway cars, Copenhagen bikers patiently waiting at a bicycle traffic light, solitary SUV drivers bumper-to-bumper on DC's beltway.

How people get around tells you a lot about a culture. After almost three weeks here, I'm still trying to get a handle on Abidjan's culture and transportation. I am partly to blame, since the iPhone/googlemaps/gps troika has caused my sense of direction to decay. But, Abidjan is complicated.

The city's layout is not what I, with all my biases, would consider successful urban planning or efficient market real estate imperatives. Instead, Abidjan is a behemoth unlike western big cities. There is no central downtown that gradual fades to a more and more sparsely populated periphery. Instead, Abidjan has multiple hubs that are quite far from one another, with empty lots, banana fields and slums (bidonvilles) strewn in between.

The transport too does not reflect sustained planning or private investment that often yields an underground system or decent bus system.

In Peace Corps lingo, the complex network that has evolved to meet the needs of the city's almost 4 million people is "high context" (on a bored night last summer in Togo I perused an old Peace Corp manual). It requires a knowledge of all the working parts and doesn't give you a safety net of low-context clues like crazy things called signs and maps. It is opaque and not too well suited for the tourist or dilletante. No bus maps, no fare meters, no stops.

Yet, what has emerged in the vacuum is not haphazard or disorganized; it has a rhyme and reason that I just need(ed) to figure out.

First there are the red taxis. These fit the standard taxi rubric, well sans meters, radios, windows and (somtimes) doors that work. Get in, tell them where you want to go and negotiate a fare. The fate of this negotiation rests on your ability to convince the driver how close the destination is ("ehh c'est pas loin...") versus his ability to play-up the severity of traffic ("mais il y a beaucoup d'embouteillages"). The learning curve isn't too tough here, I usually ask someone nearby how much a fare should cost and argue around that.

Then there are the yellow taxis (yes... like the Joni Mitchell song, except small). These cute little toyotas have fixed routes and are communal. Flag one down and hop in. While they cost about 1/4 as much as red taxis, there's a much steeper learning curve. The routes are only slighty mysterious: there are tons of different lines, but they largely follow major roads. The rates on the other hand are quite the enigma. Trips range from 150 to 350 CFA (33-66 cents), but somehow the drivers all know what you owe based on where you got on and got off. It's incredible how they all have internal meters for all the passengers, and they all work out the same price.

I use a less scientific method to figure out the rate: I give them a 500 CFA coin and see what kind of change I get.

One fascinating note about these is that they are 1) never over-filled like lots of African communal transit and 2) the front passenger must always wear the seatbelt. Initially I was surprised when the driver made sure I put a seatbelt on (for one I was shocked it even worked!) but it turns out these oddities are not for comfort or safety. Rather the driver is trying to reduce his risk of being extorted by a police office looking for an excuse to extract a bribe. The same thing I do by carrying around my passport!

Then there are Gbakas, large vans that seat 17 that remind me of the minibuses in South Africa. While I haven't had a chance to explore Gbakas, they are usually for longer trips to and from the outlying areas. They are pretty awesome as these white vehicles have become canvases for self-expression. Nike logos, American and Ivoirian flags, Koran and Bible quotes are all elegantly painted on these decaying vehicles. Pretty neat!

Finally, there are the large, dilapidated city buses. These come rarely and when you do see them they are often broken down by the side fo the road. On the plus side, they are dirt cheap. There aren't any of these in my neck of the woods so I haven't had the pleasure yet.

This system isn't for the faint of heart. Like the culture of this nation, there isn't a whole lot of planning, its not pretty and polished and is not immediately accessible to people outside the culture. But it works, and has evolved over the years into a pretty effective system given the economic and political constraints. Plus, if you ask, people are eager to help you figure it out.

Throughout the world, there are many different ways to get from point A to point B.

These journeys tell us as much about the world as where these folks are trying to go.

Match Nulle!

Great game for Cote d'Ivoire yesterday! 0-0 against Portugal and we played great! Team-work, great defense and even some Drogba, even though he wasn't in top form. Quelle surprise!

We've got a steep challenge against Brazil (ah!) on Sunday but that should be exciting!

Allez les Elephants!

What the World Cup could mean for Cote d'Ivoire

If you think soccer doesn't matter to politics, you must be American.

As the World Cup gets ready to kickoff today, the world is considering its potential larger geopolitical and economic impact. To some it's the country's coming out party as a global power. For others, the poverty and inequality are stirring reminders of challenges that remain. Regardless, people hope that the World Cup will do more than improve the ranking of Bafana Bafana, the South African National team.

In Cote d'Ivoire, from the countless kids playing soccer or jugging a ball on street corners , to taxis plastered with logos of Chelsea of Barcelona soccer teams, soccer is important, to say the least. It's also just about the one thing that brings this country together. There's hope that it can do so again and help the nation emerge from its ongoing political crisis.

There is a precedent for this hope. Soccer played a key role in ending its civil war and creating peace. My good friend Thomas Ginn brought this article to my attention which described how soccer, and particularly Cote d'Ivoire's omnipresent star, Didier Drogba, brought peace to Cote D'Ivoire. After an African Nations cup victory in 2006, Drogba and his teammates dropped to their knees and pleaded their fellow countrymen to stop fighting. Later that year when Drogba, a southerner, was crowned Footballer of the year, he began a nationwide tour in Bouaké, the capital of the rebel north. This act was only overshadowed by an African Nation's cup game against Madagascar that Drogba lobbied to have held in the north, against stiff security concerns. The 5-1 victory prompted celebrations that reverberated across the entire country.

The question of Ivoirian identity has has been used by polticians to divide the country by pitting ethnic group against ethnic group and "native" Ivoirians against the sons of immigrants who came to Cote d'Ivoire in the 60s and 70s. Facing this context, a sense of national identity has been elusive, as it has been throughout much of Africa. However, Cote d'Ivoire's national team, known as les Elephants, have been a "crucible of inter-ethnic contact and ... an irresistible symbol of unity and inclusion."

As the long-awaited World Cup begins, what are the prospects for soccer replicating this role and heliping Cote d'Ivoire get out of its current crisis?

Well, I first have to acknowlege that success will be incredibly difficult. Cote d'Ivoire is a good team, no doubt. It is filled with talented players playing with the world's best club teams. Yet, their team has not gelled as well as others. It also had a tough draw, as it is stuck in the "Group of Death" with Brazil and Portugal, two of the favorites to win, as well as perenially unlucky North Korea. Moreover, the injury of the Elephants captain, Drogba, in a friendly has cast a further shadow on their hopes. Thus, finishing in the top two of this group to progress to the next round would be a herculean achievement.

A recent allafrica.com article predicted that every single sub-saharan African team would make it to the second round - including South Africa - except for Cote d'Ivoire. Ouch.

However, the upside of this lot is that the bar is low. This is reflected in the pessimism I've encountered in every single person I've asked about the Elephants. I'm used to at least a patina of hope, yet I have found none. Yet, for this reason a draw - or dare I say a victory - against Brazil or Portugal would create incredible excitement. Getting out of group stage would be a miracle come true. Anything more would be transcendent.

What could this mean? Well I think success would have two huge impacts:

First, putting Cote D'Ivoire back in the international eye could provide an external push to move towards elections. This exposure would feature context stories that remind the world of Cote d'Ivoire's past success and the stumbling blocks to restoring this progress, creating pressure on the country's elites to break the stalemate.

Second, success would provide a brief opening for national unity, temporarily sidelining party/ethnic group interests. Increasing the salience a united Cote d'Ivoire would provide a focal point for civil society and party activists to pressure their leaders to think about the national interest and get elections moving.

The bar is low, the task is hard, but the beauty of the World Cup is that anything can happen.

Here's to the World Cup and it paving the way for a brighter future for Africa.

**Just came across this article in Foreign Policy talking about how soccer has been - and continues to be - divisive in the Middle East. I also like this line: "Soccer is one of the greatest, and most successful, acts of cultural imperialism the world has ever seen and provides the perfect mirror with which to view the region."

Words that Stick (Mots qui collent)

There are some words you learn in a new language that go in one ear and out the other. Perhaps the context or the usefulness might not be particularly compelling, perhaps we don't ever truly encode it, or maybe we just forget as we tend to as we (I?!) get older and older. For some reason I can't think of an example.

However, sometimes you learn a new word in a memorable context that irreversibly engraves the meaning in your mind.

Last Friday, I learned - and will not soon forget - that "crevaison" means flat tire.

We heard a muted "thunk!" as our work car was entering the highway on the way home from a conference at the National Assembly. The sound wasn't particularly loud, it was a rainy night and the thunk had to compete with the noise from all the muffler-free and honking cars around us. Nor was this sound abnormal, as a drive on the pot-hole filled streets of Abidjan isn't complete with a few dowen dips and thuds.

But, as a new sound, one perfectly synchonized with the turning wheels, emerged, we sensed that we had a problem.

The driver pulled under a bridge, as the darkness and rain continued to descend upon us. He sprung into action and got out the tools to change the tire. We scrambled to help, gathering rocks to steady the tires and, mostly, keeping out of the way. As a few random people hovered around us, we were slightly concerned for our safety, but all went well. My coworkers joked, or at least I hope they were kidding, that if someone were to come with a weapon, they would sacrifice "le blanc," i.e. the white guy, i.e. me.

Still, we were safe in numbers and it was actually a fun experience. I was lucky that this was my my first ever non-bicycle crévaison, or flat tire. Learning how to change a tire was actually pretty exciting, too. I actually remember thinking how excited I was for the next one.

However, that luck and that thought quickly changed as we were pulling away, tire successfully changed. The car rose up, thunked against the ground and we were on our way. But, quickly a new sound emerged, again in lock-step with our speed. Puzzled, we wondered if the new tire was a dud. It was not. When a friendly driver next to us point alarmedly at our tire and we pulled over to investigate it became clear.

Those rocks used so-effectiely to steady our car as the crévaison was repaired were equally effective in preventing our getaway. My hypothesis is that we forgot to remove them, and as the car came up and over the rock, the good back-tire became signficantly less-so. Merde!

With no spare tire remaining, tired and incredulous we pondered. Luckily, a colleague knew a nearby gas station. We got back in the car and literally burned rubber as we crawled along the slow lane of the highway with our "feux de détresse" on and cars and trucks whizzing by.

We got to the station which was fortunately still open, providing some welcome shelter and light. From there I was able to get a ride home and my colleagues called a friend who gave them rides as well as the car rested there for the night. Back-to-back flat tires. Not exactly what one looks forward to on a rainy saturday evening after a long day at a conference. I shouldn't have jinxed us.

Still, as I collapsed on my bed after this exhausting and far-from typical Friday night, I saw the silver linings of this memorable adventure. One of these certainly is that next time I have a crevaison, I will certainly know what to call it.

Oh the Smells. . .

Bienvenue en Cote D'Ivoire!

After a couple days in Cote D'Ivoire, things are swell! Met some interesting folks, had some great food and am speaking almost exlcusively French. For those of you that know me, you're aware that as far as I am concerned this is a pretty good combination! Still, trying to settle in and get aquainted with the daily life is a challenge, particularly transportation. But the family that has so graciously taken me in has been a big help. More on them later.

First, I want to talk about smells. There is something indescribeable about the West African air, but this won't stop me from trying.

The moment I entered town, my nose instantly transported me to Togo. The swollen, humid air enters your nose like soup. A deep breath is a struggle and leaves you feeling a few pounds heavier.

But this is only the first layer; the smell of humidity is the base on which a bittersweet odor follows.

First, the air is laced with the myriad wonderful smells of food being prepared by the side of the road. Women frying doughnut-like beignets. Aloco, plantains fried in deliciously spicy palm oil. Fish and chicken on the grill at maquis, or little restaurants.

Even as I commute to work at 7:30am, these smells cause my mind to drift to the next meal, or desparately search for an excuse to grab a quick bite ("I gotta ty that as put of this cultural experience, right?!") Since they say smell contributes to around 3/4 of taste, one sniff and I know I'm in for a treat. And boy am I ever, food will be the agenda for the next blog.

The delicate wafting of Cote D'Ivoire's culinary gifts is brought back to earth by the bitter, overpowering consequence of zero vehicule emmission standards. You can see the dark plumes leaving the tailpipes of run down trucks and vans, vintage Mercedes on their last legs as well as the yellow and orange taxis that paper the streets. Observing the hand-me-down vehicles from places where the burden of taking your car inspected is a perennial complaint (from me at least), creates an intellectual response concerning the respirtory and environmental effects.

Yet, it is not until you peek your head out a open car window searching for a brief reprieve from the morning heat and take in a breath of this filthy air that you feel it.

Gross, I know.

But, this bitterness is a part of the odor that reminds me of the wonderful part of the world that is West Africa. Perhaps its because the belching cars remind me of the irrepressible creativity and adaptability that let's Africans fix these metal skeltons that, for so many reasons, should be in a cube in a junk yard (see this Togo blog entry ).

Or perhaps, the smell of unburnt gasoline and all the -oxides entering my lungs is a price I'm willing to bear for a breath of fried plantains and the other incredible smells that taunt me until my next meal, or, often, excuse for a snack.