Bangoura's Red Bandaid

One more week under my belt...seven more before the curtain goes down on the first act of this Out of Africa saga (actually, 42 days, 33 school days...but then who’s counting?). Quite a week! William and Kate tied the knot, Syria is disintegrating, and the Canucks have gotten closer to the Stanley Cup.

My biggest accomplishment this week may not compete with everything else that’s happened around the world, but still, I’m pretty proud of what I've done. This week, I succeeded in raising (as in doubling) our maintenance staff’s contracted health benefits. Been waiting to do this for quite some time; as a matter of fact, ever since last September when I first found out the humiliating pittance we were dishing out to these workers. Never got around to changing it, until this week. Last Monday something happened that pushed me to act.

Bangoura (photo above, he’s the bald guy on the right, the one not wearing the yellow dress) is head of our maintenance crew. Every day when we drive through the gates of our campus, the maintenance crew is busy raking leaves and sprucing up the campus grounds in preparation to another typical Disneyesque day at the American International School of Conakry . Bangoura, wherever he may be on campus when we arrive, has always made it a point to come to the car and greet us with ‘Bonjour Patron, Bonjour Maman'. He’s always calls Madeleine Maman. We have been told that Maman is a term of endearment that one calls a lady that one supposedly holds in the highest of esteem. I find it cute....Madeleine doesn’t really know how she feels about it.

Bangoura doesn’t merely hold Madeleine in high esteem, he worships the ground she walks on. She is really up there with Mother Teresa. As a matter a fact, when he first greeted her the day we came back from Christmas vacations, he paid her the epitome of compliments that a man can give a woman...at least here in Africa. He told her that she had obviously taken very good care of herself during the Christmas break because she was well rounded. If my memory serves me right, he actually used the word ‘grosse’, but in a ‘cute‘ kind of way that only Bangoura could say and get away with it. Again, I thought it was cute. Madeleine, on the other hand, didn’t...and still doesn't. Anyways, back to last Monday....

Our car rolled past the gates and there, sitting on the ground picking up leaves is Bangoura. It was obvious that he wasn’t his usual enthusiastic hooray-maman-is-here-to-enlighten-and-grace-me-with-her-mere-presence self. He did not run to the car to greet us like he usually does. He just sat there and waved.

I walked up to him and noticed this gigantic red patch/bandaid on his bald head. One could not miss this red thing stuck to his head. I tactfully asked him ‘What the heck is that giant red patch on your head?’ It actually sounds more tactful in French. He informed me that he had tried to break up a fight at his neighbours' place the night before, and he got knocked on the head by someone with a 2 by 4. This poor guy got knocked out the night before, brought to a hospital, got his head sewn back together with 12 stitches, and was at work this morning picking up leaves. Unbelievable!

I was more disturbed and shaken by this then he seemed to be. Later in the day, when I had calmed down, I went to see him and asked these stupid questions that only dumb nerdy guys like myself would ask. ‘Did it hurt’, 'Was there a lot of blood’, 'For how long were you unconscious?' After all, this was the first time in my sheltered life that I had actually met a guy who had been knocked out of consciousness with a 2 by 4! Yes, Yes, 20 minutes, those were the answers to my stupid questions. Then I asked him why he was not at home recuperating from this, to which he answered, because he had to work. I ended up asking how much all of this had cost him. Ends up this little confrontation with the anonymous 2 by 4 had cost him a bit more than half of the annual medical benefits he was getting from the school. I left it at that, went home that evening, but could not get Bangoura out of my mind.

The following morning I called a meeting of all the maintenance crew. Sat down with them and had an informal chat about ‘things’...nothing in particular, just ‘things’. Asked them how ‘things’ were going. After a while, when they got used to talking with the big white guy with the tie, something they had never or rarely done in the past, we got around to talking about real ‘things’...like how they could barely make ends meet, that some of them had 15 members of their families living with them, that the price of a sac of rice has almost doubled in the past 6 months, that their rent had also doubled since last year, and so forth. Like I said, real ‘things’.

In the end, they did seem to all say that, regardless of the many challenges that they were having, there were a lot of people outside those gates that were much worst off than them, and that they were thankful that they had a job. I then asked them to think of one thing that they could ask me to change in there working conditions, what would that one thing be. Health benefits, it was unanimous. They all agreed that they could not afford to get sick or injured with the health benefits that the school was offering them in their contracts. Even if they did manage to get their kids to see a doctor, they could not follow up on the prescribed medicine because they could not afford it.

Needless to say, it was a sobering meeting, if not disturbing. They left, thanking me for calling a meeting. I promised them that I would see what could be done to make their lives a bit better, and safer. I immediately sat down with the school’s business manager, crunched a few numbers, and voilà, in no time, it was done...and it didn’t even hurt.

So, my bride may not have walked down the aisle of Westminster Abbey with 2 billion people watching, and I may not have scored the winning overtime goal bringing my team to the Stanley Cup finals, but I’m still very proud of what I have accomplished this week.