The French Connection

“A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it.” - Albert Einstein

 

The travel begins

The busyness of our November-December schedules abruptly came to an end as we packed our bags and headed out the door for a quick two-week trip to the US. It didn’t begin well as the taxi company mistakenly sent a small car to pick us up (rather than the van that was booked). As we stood in the evening rain, clock ticking, uncertainty about the Nairobi traffic jams awaiting us, we decided on the clown car option and stuffed ourselves and suitcases inside the best we could and off we went.

It turned out to be a minor inconvenience, but it was unnecessary. Unfortunately, it would not be the last of this journey.

We eventually caught our midnight flight to Paris. As much as I love the city, I detest flying through its airport.

Nearing midnight and waiting to board in Nairobi.

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Interestingly, I had begun a blog entry a couple months ago about how the French, generally speaking, are not great at organizing things. I realize that I have French friends that both disagree and agree with this. But it’s my perspective. I have spent enough time in France and working with French institutions to see how this plays out. I think what happens is that you have bureaucracies that make sense to insiders and, if you are accustomed to them, you don’t question them. Seeing them as an outsider can sometimes provide a helpful perspective. 

The blog was initiated by the chaotically organized parent-teacher meetings a couple months ago. Before I was able to finish it, our recent episode at Charles de Gaulle Airport (CDG) in December brilliantly captured the essence of what I was going to say. So before recounting the dramas traveling through Paris, let me digress and set the stage with my original rant.

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The education system

I'll start with the French school system. Here is a list of the first five grades of primary school: CP, CE1, CE2, CM1 and CM2. Numbering from one to five just isn’t clear enough apparently. I realize that the desire is to provide more clarity as to what each level represents, but in most countries that's implied in the number. Anyway, that's not the biggest issue. From CM2, the numbering proceeds in reverse. From CM2 you are in 6^th, then 5^th, 4^th, 3^rd, 2^nd, 1^st and finally T (terminale). Again, if you grew up with the system, you don’t really question it. It’s obvious that advancing in your education means that number 1 is followed by the number 2, unless you are in secondary school when the number one 1 is preceded by 2.

Then there was the parent-teacher meetings. In addition to the comically unrealistic 7-minute sessions, the process began by providing parents with a document listing the rooms where the teacher will be. Another document provided the schedule of all the appointments. Why combine/simplify the information when you can make a scavenger hunt out of something that everyone is taking time out of their schedules to do. 

There are so many small things that come up where you think, this is a different way of thinking.

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CDG

If you’ve traveled through Paris-Charles de Gaulle airport, then I don’t really need to say anything more. You’re already aware. If you haven’t, give yourself some time if you are transferring there.

It starts out easy enough. You have three terminals: 1, 2 and 3. Most of the action happens in terminal 2, which is subdivided as 2A through 2G. But that’s where things start to get a bit crazy.

For example, 2B, 2D and 2F are in the same building. A weary traveler would think that they could take their rollie on a short walk from terminal 2A to terminal 2B. Nope. 2A, 2C and 2E are in a separate building. 2G is off on its own in yet another building. Terminal 2E for some reason has K gates (not 2K, just K) and there are some gates in two other buildings called L and M. Where do the labels K, L and M come from? No one knows. Why are they located between 2E and 2G? I have asked French friends these questions and they either shrug their shoulders or laugh or both. But if the departures board says you are leaving from a K gate for example, there is no intuitive way to know that it will be in 2E.

I assume that it’s like Las Vegas where they intentionally design things to be confusing to make you so tired of trying to find the exit, you stop and rest up at the craps table. Maybe CDG is trying to make it so complicated that you give up, miss your connecting flight, buy expensive food and stay in a hotel.

These are not obscure examples. This is the country’s school system. It is the country’s main airport. These are prominent institutions. And I have loads of other examples.

* * *

Back to our travels...

I joked about this with my family while we were navigating our way though CDG after arriving there from Nairobi. Silly me. The airport would soon take its revenge.

After meeting up with a friend of ours for a cappuccino and a croissant in our departure terminal, we made our way to the boarding area. The gate didn’t have a jet bridge so we painstakingly, and slowly, boarded buses to get to the airplane. It does seem odd that they wouldn’t be set up better for a major flight from France to the US but who am I to complain.

The bus dropped us off at a stairwell which would allow us to climb up to a jet bridge and board the plane. While we were making our way down the aisle to our seats, we heard the flight attendant announce that the plane we were boarding was heading to Boston. We were heading to Detroit. Chaos ensued. The bus had taken about 50 passengers to the wrong plane.

Confused, we were told to disembark but we weren’t allowed to leave the bridge. Stuck in limbo, we stood and waited for more information. At this point, all hope of making our connecting flight in Detroit was dashed.

We were tired due to lack of sleep during the previous night flight and as the wait went on and on (with no place to sit), Kinaya broke down in tears. Airport staff kept talking on their radios, but no information was forthcoming. Thankfully, their conversations were in French so I could track what was being said. They seemed to be as confused as we were.

The longest I've ever been stuck on a jet bridge.

Eventually another bus came to retrieve us. We made our way back down the stairs with our carry-ons and squeezed into a single bus. We were then told the brutal news that we would need to be taken back to the terminal, rather than our airplane, and be subjected to security all over again given international aviation rules regarding passengers who have disembarked from an aircraft.

I don’t fully understand the rule since we had just gone through security and, though we walked onto the airplane, we hadn’t traveled on it. We boarded for less than two minutes and we hadn’t even sat down. Technically, we did disembark though. The disorganization of CDG was comical, though no one was laughing.

Eventually the bus began moving. I was sick to my stomach at the thought of heading back to the terminal and going through security all over again, after all the delays and mess so far. It’s that feeling of helplessness when you’re subjected to the consequences of peoples’ ineptitude and you can’t do anything about it. This may have been the worst treatment my wife and I have experienced since we had to spend the night on the floor of the airport in Amsterdam in December 2010 (while Priya was pregnant). To be fair, in Amsterdam there was snow.

After driving for about two minutes, the bus stopped. We didn’t move for some time and I began to wonder if someone was making a decision about whether we would indeed need to return to the terminal or if they felt that we had been punished enough and they were going to take us straight to our airplane. Apparently I wasn’t the only one. Rather than turning left towards the terminal, the bus made a right turn and a somewhat muted cheer could be heard as we believed that we were finally heading to the aircraft.

Our assumption was correct and soon we were finally boarding the correct plane. We filed past all of the angry and frustrated passengers who had been sitting and waiting this whole time for our group to eventually find our way to the plane. I don’t blame them. I would be angry if I were them, though I wasn’t sure how much they were told about what had happened to us.

* * *

The flight was pleasantly uneventful. Initially, my Delta app showed that we were automatically re-booked on a flight the next morning, which meant we would need to spend the night in Detroit. I had mixed feelings about that. While I didn’t want to waste a night in a hotel given how short out vacation would be, I also knew that we were going to be exhausted and a bed, sooner rather than later, was also appealing. Over the course of the flight, I noticed on the app that our flight changed again to a “new” flight late that evening. The good news was that we would likely make it to Louisville without needing a hotel. The bad news was that we would have yet another flight and a long layover in Detroit waiting for it.

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I love France. It’s an amazing country where I have had many, many fond memories. You just can’t be good at everything.  

The Home Stretch Before the Holidays

The following is a rapid recap of some odds and ends that transpired before the holidays:

School fair

Every year, the French school has what they call a “fair” (kermesse) on one of the last Saturdays prior to the holidays. It’s not a bad event and I think we’ve attended each year since we’ve had children in the school. It consists of various ethnic food stands, games for kids and a few vendors selling things. Parents don’t have a lot of opportunities to meet during the school term so this provides a nice way to do so. Unlike American gatherings of this kind, beer and wine are served (quite French) and probably explains why these events are well attended. When I kids were younger, they usually needed parents around and ended the day covered in smeared face paint and bellies full of sweets. Nowadays, they scurry off with some pocket money and friends and we don’t see them until it’s time to go home. 

 

Ndolo

One cool side event this year was a fencing demonstration by the Kenyan (raised in Germany) Olympic fencer Alexandra Ndolo. Though I’ve been around the sport off and on (it was one of the physical education activities at the school where I taught in Switzerland), I admittedly understand very little. Ndolo’s event was aimed at educating children about the sport. She was amazing with the kids, giving kids time to spar with her as she taught them one by one. It’s great that the school hosted the event and I might have learned something myself.

My money is on the person on the right.

Movies

Friends of ours from our building wrote/produced a movie over the past year or so called Christmas Run. Like fencing, creating a movie is something I don’t know much about. Though I think it was a great experience overall for them, it sounds as though it has been arduous at times. It was shot in Tanzania and I guess some of the actors were a bit difficult to work with at times. Then there was the editing and, given that it had somewhat of a Christmas theme, it took everything they had to get it in theaters in time for the holiday season. They’ve been working for years to promote the African film industry, but they didn’t seem to get the support from the local theaters as they had hoped. It’s hard to compete with blockbuster films, even when promoting local East African talent. I felt bad for them as they faced obstacle after obstacle. In the end, they pulled it off and learned a lot. We went to see it prior to the holidays and it was pretty good (though I confess to being not much of a romcom fan).

I was also invited to the Danish embassy for a showing of film more related to my work. It's called the Girl from Mogadishu and based on a true story of a woman's (Ifrah) dramatic upbringing in Mogadishu, experiencing female genital mutilation (FGM), making her way as an adolescent to Ireland as a refugee and becoming a global advocate for girls in the fight against FGM. It's a sobering story and, being a girl dad, I found it gut wrenching at times. We have a project on reducing FGM and child marriage and we are partnering with the organization that this woman founded. So it was particularly interesting for me to learn more about her story. She was present at the showing and I had a long chat with her beforehand. She's an amazing woman and I'm hoping that we can expand our partnership going forward. 

Ifrah on the left and my colleague Shukri on the right.

Holidays

We also fit in a nice Thanksgiving party at a friend’s house. Having resided outside the US for three decades, I’ve celebrated it from time to time but not always. But it’s a good opportunity to bring people together, whether they’re from the US or not.

An example of Western influence in Africa. December in Nairobi is the beginning of the hottest time of the year. No one in their right mind would dress like that, even if you do like tacky Christmas clothing.

We also put up modest Christmas decorations around the beginning of December. Even though we would be traveling for a couple weeks, we thought it would be worthwhile to get into the holiday spirit.

One of the last things I did prior to heading to the US was attend a Christmas function at the Swedish embassy. The celebration is called Santa Lucia or Lussekattsdagen and traditionally takes place on December 13. It's celebrated in many countries but the Swedes seem to have "owned" the event more than most. I had some Swedish colleagues when I worked in Switzerland many years ago and that was my initial exposure to the holiday. The observance commemorates Lucia of Syracuse, an early-fourth-century virgin martyr under the Diocletianic Persecution (persecution of Christians under the Roman Empire). Interestingly, neither Saint Lucy nor the persecutions were affiliated with Sweden - a detail shared by the ambassador in her opening remarks to kick off the event. It was simply that early Christian missionaries who came to Scandinavia brought the faith, and the event, with them. Given that the Swedes are generally a very secular people, it's possible that an event honoring someone who dedicated her life to aiding the persecuted has less religious baggage than one honoring the birth of Christ. 

The elaborate event involves youth in white robes singing Swedish carols and lots of Swedish food, including a special baked bun called Lussekatt made with saffron. Usually there is someone who represents St. Lucy in a white robe with a crown of candles. Seems to me like a precarious outfit given the dripping hot wax and the potential fire hazard. Nonetheless, it was a beautiful event and I hope to get invited back next year.

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I'll bet you didn't see this on your way to work this morning...

Nairobi in November

Some catching up to do. 

With all the time that I was spending in Mogadishu in November and early December, I nonetheless was able to catch a number of events in Nairobi as well. This is the time of year where things pick up and there is often a delicate balancing act when prioritizing what you do. For example, last week there were parent-teacher meetings. I try to attend them as much as I can but often they happen when I am traveling. This time I was in Nairobi, but I had some conflicting meetings. One meeting was scheduled exactly in the middle of the time that we were to be bouncing from meeting to meeting, one teacher at a time. The school unrealistically sets these things up a bit like speed-dating. Seven minutes per meeting. Obviously, it would require some serious discipline to pull this off in reality, both on the part of the teacher and the visiting parents. Neither possess such discipline and the result is chaos. It's the repeated fantasy that this might work out at some point that bugs me.

Retreat

I attended a men’s retreat in November. It took place in a hotel/conference facility outside of Nairobi. I’ve been to this place several times and, even though it’s not far from the city, it feels very different. It’s nestled in the midst of tea plantations and, at 2,240 meters (7,280 feet) its altitude makes it considerably cooler than Nairobi. In fact, in the evening it can get cold, even this time of year as we are entering “summer’ in the southern hemisphere.

A Bit about the Location

In 1914, a farm began in the green hills of Tigoni. A place infamously known as “nothing but mist,” Tigoni was a sanctuary for vibrant wildlife and dazzling forests. Progressing from its beginnings as a farm, wartime getaway and golf course into an environmentally-aware hotel and conference centre, Brackenhurst has spent over a hundred years reconnecting with the tremendous beauty of its natural surroundings. Known as “Three Trees Farm” due to the three large muna trees left standing on the property, Brackenhurst was begun with the intention of creating a coffee farm. However, with the start of World War One, the owners of the farm soon found themselves providing holidays for battle-weary British soldiers. This marked the beginning of Brackenhurst’s heritage as a centre for hospitality. Surviving several decades, an earthquake, and a well-concealed leopard, Brackenhurst Hotel was bought by the Baptist Mission of Kenya in 1964. It began to use its beautiful grounds for team-building, conferencing, and adventuring. In 2001, Brackenhurst developed a strong relationship with Plants For Life, an NGO focusing on environmental conservation. As a result, a vast indigenous forest grew on Brackenhurst soil for the first time since 1914. The forest provides a habitat for the restoration of some of the natural wildlife that once abounded in Tigoni.

The first evening we had a bonfire under the stars. As we were chatting, we herd the cracking of what sounded like a tree falling. There was no wind or rain, just a tree deciding that it was time to call it a life. On my way back to my room, I walked past the damage. The compound has several buildings, parking areas, etc. What was amazing was that, though it grazed the side of a building, there was no major damage.

before

after

The other interesting thing was the efficiency with which the staff were able to clean it up the next morning. And most of the chopping was done by machete. Within a couple of hours, you never would have known it happened except for the light-yellow shredded trunk left behind.

Something About Mary

On the first afternoon, I was sitting in the main building doing some emails and a woman wearing a Kenya track suit was sitting one table away from me. I’m not an expert in track suits but this looked like the real deal and she was sporting some high-end running shoes. She also had a bit of an entourage and it led me to think she might be someone of importance. A Kenyan friend of mine said he wasn’t sure but thought that she was an Olympic runner. Kenya has no shortage of those so I wanted to see if I could figure out who she was. Sure enough, after some searching, I figured out that it was Mary Moraa, Kenya’s amazing 800-meter star. She won the bronze medal in Paris and I remembered that we watched her run in the qualifier and in the final last August (in between chores at my parents’ place).

I texted my family and my daughter (who is a big fan) urged me to get an autograph for her. I’m not keen on bothering famous people and I didn’t have a pen on me, but I thought I would maybe see about getting a selfie with her (for the sake of my 11-year-old). By the time I finished texting, she had disappeared. I wasn’t sure where they went, but I thought that I would see her later in the weekend. I know she was still around because her name was on a reserved table in the dining room that evening. Alas, I never saw her after that.