Sand in my Couscous

I’ve been working very hard these days trying to hire an English teacher for next year. Been at it since February. I’ve looked closely at 50 resumés, phoned at least a dozen potential candidates, checked out numerous references, and actually offered three people contracts. Strike three...I'm out. All three have refused my offers, one even before I had made the offer. Frustrating, to say the least.

I put in a lot of time interviewing complete strangers. And at this point in my life, being sociable with strangers is not my forte. Come to think of it, I don't think it ever was. Therefore, those of you who know me are undoubtedly very much aware of my antisocial, hermitic, cloistered monk-like tendencies (its a Lemoine thing) and can surely empathize with me and my pain while I engage in the excruciating 'getting to know strangers' drudgery that is the hiring process.

Besides, I figure that, at my age, I've met all the people I’ll ever want to meet. According to my daughter, who told me this 10 years ago, my time to meet new people was over. Granted, she told me this at a time in her life when she was metamorphosing from an irrational hormone infested teen-aged girl into a slightly older but still irrational young woman, you know, that ugly send-them-far-away-to-boarding-school-really-really-far-way-out-in-Nunuvut age (you know the age...anywhere between 13 and 17). I remember it well. I was about to begin the Atkins diet so that I could drop a few pounds and 'look good’ when she blurted out in all of her 15 year old distorted wisdom “Why would you want to look good Dad, you’re already old and married....”. Trouble is, she had a point. In any case, ugly, old, married or not,... if I were to never ever meet anyone ‘new’ again for the rest of my life, I would probably be ok with that. At this point, I figure that people who I don’t know annoy me even more than the people I know. Anyways, back to my hiring debacle.

I admit that I take a bit of comfort in knowing that these people who rejected my job offers did not do so because they didn’t like my face. All interviews were done over the phone. Perhaps that was the problem...the mere sound of my crackling voice over my cell phone (excuse me, the sweet young thing at the other end of the line would say, could you repeat your question again...you're breaking up....) could hardly compete with a face-to-face interview where I could entice and dazzle them with my natural wit and charm. I think not.

However, perhaps it was something I said about life in Conakry that they didn’t like. Like, perhaps I should not talk so much about traffic, pollution, poverty, potholes, dirty water, corruption, burning tires, curfews, and malitov cocktails, you know, all the colourful and fun stuff that we noticed at the beginning of our sejour here in Fantasyhell, and which, after a year, doesn’t really faze us anymore.

That could very well be it; there are things I should not talk about when I'm interviewing potential candidates. Like, so what if you can’t get a decent cup of coffee anywhere on the continent unless you make it yourself? And so what if you can’t go outside during the day for more than two minutes without sweating profusely, as in like-a-pig, before fainting with dehydration? And so what if your TV program you’re watching gets interrupted all the time by these godforsaken power outages? Come to think of it, I’ve not only begun to get used to power outages, sometimes I've even begun to find them...fun. For example, a power outage while having a shower..., now there a ‘petit plaisir’ that I would not have discovered had it not been for Conakry. Showering in the dark...you should try it. Reminds me of the joke about the Priest, the Rabbi, and the Evangelist Minister who were were having a meeting at a communal bath in Bangkok and...nah, never mind.

Anyways, I guess next time I go fishing for teachers, there are things that I should not talk about. Let them discover the sweltering heat of the place for themselves once they get here, or the irritative blowing sand of the harmattan...ah yes, one of life in subsaharan Africa's little pleasures... discovering sand in every nook and cranny of your body (how on earth did sand get there???) at the end of your day. You find sand everywhere, even in your food. Sand in your couscous...now there's something to write home about.