Waiting

Checked my pulse

Said all my prayers

Walked a thousand miles

Haven’t gone anywhere.

The table’s set

Change is gonna come

I’m a patient man

But it’s been too long.

Great lyrics. Music sucks though...too bad Our Lady Peace aren’t real musicians and weren’t able to put these lyrics to real music. I apologize to all those Our Lady Peace fans that I have offended by my last statement. You have my mother to blame for my blasphemously derogatory critique of heavy metal music...she used to bad mouth the Rolling Stones, so I can trash heavy metal all I want. Consider it the circle of life of trashing. However, if it’s any consolation to all you offended metalers, I sheepishly admit that on Thursday afternoon of this week, I found myself humming the lyrics to their song 'Waiting for Something to Happen'. Call me a closet heavy metalist, if that will make you feel better...

‘Waiting for something to happen’ would certainly be a good title for a documentary about Africa. That title epitomizes Africa. Waiting is a constant of Africa. At least it has been since our arrival last July. True that prior to being parachuted into this land of waiting, I was coming from a world of ‘instant’ where I used to get up in the morning, check and instantly reply to e-mails on my extreme high speed internet (ooh, I get excited just thinking about it...), drink my instant coffee, zap my instant oatmeal cereal in the micro-wave, and, before leaving for work, program my Shaw unit for that evening’s movies on demand. Although I was never one who liked to rush and that my time has always been a luxury that I have always been reluctant to surrender, it was inevitable that living in that ‘instant’ environment would deeply establish and anchor me into the ‘right now’ North American lifestyle. It is therefore understandable that immediately upon my arrival in Africa and going from the ‘instant’ lifestyle to the ‘waiting’ lifestyle, I started displaying symptoms of withdrawal (ie : rolling of eyes when attempting to download, banging the coffee table when power goes off just before the ending of a movie, kicking the oven door when you become impatient that your toast isn’t toasting fast enough in the morning, all of the above accompanied by swearing).

This past week especially, waiting reached its crescendo. It overshadowed everything we did and it seemed to consume every second of our days. Let it be known that, Thursday, December 2, 2010 will be duly noted in the annals of my personal history as the day that I waited.

Permit me to first preambulate my description of 2/12/10 with the following.

The second I set foot on Guinean soil, last May, I was taken aback by the overwhelming dysfunction of the world and the society that I had just stepped into. From the moment I got off that plane and stepped into Conakry’s Gbessia airport, I knew that I was in for a wild ride. Chaos reigned. Nothing worked. Nothing had worked for quite a while. I recall one of the first conversations I had with a member of the school board who had been here for the past 12 years. When welcoming me to my new community, he referred to Guinea as the ‘armpit’ of Africa. Great words of welcome.

However, as much as I was struck by the flagrant despair of this failed nation state, I was on the other hand surprised and impressed by the lack of despondency of its people considering that they were in, and had been for a long time, this national rut. It didn’t matter how bad things were, every Guinean national we met had hope and expected that eventually, everything would work out. One just had to persevere and...wait. Wait until the country had decent leadership. Wait until after the elections.

All of this waiting seemed to have crested on Thursday. The supreme court would finally confirm or refute the provisionary results of the presidential elections that had been announced two weeks ago. Although tension and anxiety were raised since these provisionary results were announced, Thursday, it had reached it peak. On the drive home from school that afternoon, there was more than the usual number of roadside accidents with people arguing and fighting. The army’s big guns were out in force (not everyday you see ground to air missile launchers alongside the road on your way home...still haven’t figured out what these guys intend to shoot down with their big toys). Bivan, our driver sage, who has been totally consumed by these elections, kept muttering, Tout l’monde a peur, tout l’monde a peur. The fear was that, once the supreme court made the announcement, the ‘winners’ would again celebrate, while the ‘losers’ would riot. A lot was at stake here, the future of the country, as well as the future of our school. Another riot would again postpone development. The country had been under marshall law for the past 18 months. No credible government for 18 months, no leadership, no development. Today, the supreme court would announce if Guinea had or had not succeeded in electing a credible president that would oversee the management of the country. Everyone waited...all day. We waited until 1AM the following morning...

However, I need to point out here that it would take more than mere presidential elections of a developing country on the brink of civil and tribal warfare to make me break out to the lyrics of a song by a band that I don’t particularly like...right? Let me explain.

That particular Thursday morning started off like usual, having to wait for someone. Like almost every morning, we had to wait for Victor, our temporary math and chemistry Cameroonian teacher, who by the way, I should mention, Madeleine finds extremely hunky and insists that we pick him up every morning even though it puts us out of our way and adds at least 10 minutes to our commute to school...sorry, I digress here...must be latent jealousy. So, what if Victor is half her age, and is always well dressed with these tight fitting shirts that display his humungous sculptured bulging biceps and rippling six-pack abdominals, and that he smells of this neat cologne, permeating the entire car with a fragrance that we very rarely experience here in this part of the world, and that he’s intelligent and eloquent, and answers all of Madeleine’s questions. The guy was late. And I had to wait.

Then, we get to school, and the generator all of a sudden, breaks down, and we have no electricity. Let’s keep in mind here that the rainy season has now officially ended, and that we are in between seasons, from the dry and hot to the dry and extremely hot. Forget the dry and hot, it is bloody hot. No electricity, no AC! So, we call a repairman, and ended up waiting for him to arrive, which he did three hours later because of all the traffic caused by all the people waiting for the election results.

Then, there was the weekly school newsletter, the one that I tend to be fairly anal about getting out there every Thursday afternoon. Had to wait all day for submissions by some kids and teachers. And then, waiting for word about ‘the apartment’. I had found an apartment on craiglist, the perfect place in the West-End of Vancouver where we could hang our coats in two weeks time when we would be home for Christmas. Still no reply from them; so I had to wait, wanting to check my e-mail, but I couldn’t because there’s no electricity and the internet isn’t working, and when the internet isn’t working, the grade 9 girls are even more silly and whiny than usual, if that can be, because they can’t check their Facebook. And then there’s Emmanuel and Eduardo, the two spanish kids from the Spanish Embassy. These are the kids that throw tantrums when we need to close the school down due to civil unrest in the streets of Conakry. It takes more than a few burning tires and errant Molotov cocktails to keep these kids away from their school. These two young Kindergarten and Grade 1 scholars are adamant about making every second of their school lives count, and they will not stand for anything getting in their way of spending as many of their waking hours at the school. Obviously, these kids are bored silly when at home and, every afternoon at dismissal, they refuse to go home. They’re usually the last ones to leave the school, and since the beginning of the year, Madeleine and I have been audience to the rather funny spectacle of these kids being chased around campus by their driver trying to round them up in the car. Madeleine and I have to wait around until all kids have left before we can call it a day. So that was the kind of day it was on Thursday...

Anyways, on Friday morning, although we still had to wait a few minutes for Madeleine’s sweet smelling Cameroonian eye-candy, when we got to school, the generator had been fixed, I checked my e-mail and we had our West-End apartment for Christmas, and the Republic of Guinea had a new president. No more waiting...but I’m still humming....

Tonight I see my own reflection

Staring back at me

Traveling with no direction

I follow faithfully

Faithfully.

Post Script : My daughter just phoned me from Saskatoon to inform me that Our Lady Peace is not a heavy metal band. They are alternative rock. I humbly stand corrected. I have already been forgiven for my misinformation blunder. "That's ok dad, it just shows that you're old". I've learned two things today:

1. The difference between heavy metal and rock alternative

2. My daughter reads my blog.