Reintegration

We used to talk about it in Dar—what it would be like when we went back. Went home. What overload we’ll feel, we said! Shopping malls, anything you want, stuff everywhere, expensive jewelry, perfume, crowded restaurants.

We thought it would be unsettling, unnerving, shocking even. But in so many ways it’s not shocking.

You just go back.

***

Landed at Heathrow at 4:45 p.m. on a Wednesday. Zipped through immigration, followed the helpful signs to baggage claim, picked up a trolley for my bags, grabbed a coffee at Costa, and some money at the ATM (there were three to choose from). Used the toilet, then followed the signs to the bus stop, made it just in time for the 5:30 to Oxford.

It was rush hour and the motorway was bustling but moving steadily. Out the window, the hills were soft and green and dotted with sheep. A church steeple shone in the pale yellow sun. Tidy little cars drove down tidy little roads. Ten hours earlier I’d been with Frank, my taxi driver and friend in Dar, driving up the airport road in the sweaty crush of rush hour traffic, guys streaming by the window selling bananas and water.

Of course, I thought. Of course I am back and this is how it is.

I waited for the shock, the smack, but my mind was as flat as the window I was pressed up against.

Set out the next morning, grabbed a coffee and walked down Cornmarket street. Stopped in at Boots and walked down the lotion isle, the shampoo isle, flipped through some magazines. Tried on a sweater at Topshop. Kept walking. Felt listless. It started to rain, so I ducked in to a bookstore, sat down at a table in the café, and looked around at all the people sipping lattes, nibbling on cookies and cakes, talking, and I started to cry.

***

I was happy with less. The struggle we have in the West—with consumption, with the ability, now back again, to gratify any desire, any time, any place, is crushing, crushing in the sense that I sometimes feel so helpless against it.

But there’s another, subtler struggle that keeps burning long after you’ve forgotten what it’s like to eat less and spend less and live, mostly happily, with less.

***

It’s 6pm on a Thursday in Washington, DC, where I’ve settled now some three months out of Africa. My colleague, an old development hand, is packing her bag to go home, putting on a woolen cap to guard against the January chill.

—Terrible out isn't it, I say, while a dark spatter of rain hits the window.

—Yes, she says. I can't wait to get out of here.

She tells me she’s leaving for Bali soon, to wait out the winter. She’s lived overseas for most of her career and misses the field. Life is better over there, she says.

I ask her: why do you think it is better?

I want her to explain it, to explain away the awfulness I’ve felt since I’ve been back, the longing to return.

I hadn’t wanted to leave Africa. I’d realized this gradually during my last few months living on the continent. But things were set, and when I stood on the rooftop in Dar and looked out over the city the night before flying out, I felt a sort of inevitability about it. And a strange sense of loss.

A month later I was back in Washington, walking down K Street on my wait to a meeting, when I noticed my finger: the thin silver band I had bought in Swaziland was gone.

I’d found it at a little shop just outside Mbabane. It was small—two very thin silver bands, one rough, the other polished, fused together. To me, it was perfect. I don’t wear jewelry, but when I saw it, I wanted to seize it, as if I’d finally found some little scrap that fit me. I would look down at it all the time, turn it round and round on my finger.

I ran in my high heels back to the World Bank, to the bathroom where I thought I left it while I was washing my hands, but it wasn’t there. So I ran to the reception and told them I had lost something. I was out of breath, my face was red, and I spoke in the unnatural voice that comes when you are trying to hold back tears.

The woman manning the phones sat up in her chair and asked: Have you gone back to the bathroom and looked for it?

—Yes, I said.

She frowned a little, straightening her navy blue blazer. Have you gone to lost and found?

—Yes. And now there were tears streaming down my face.

She gave her colleague an uncomfortable sideways glance. Sorry, she said. Was it your wedding ring?

—No, I said, choking out the words. But it was precious to me. I can never replace it. I have to get it back.

We searched and searched—the security folks, the people who work in the cafeteria, everyone. But it was gone.

***

I remember sitting around an outdoor fire one night in Lusaka with some expat aid workers. The evening was wearing thin, and while people murmured quietly and stared into their glasses, I watched the fire.

A friend, sitting directly across from me, broke the quiet murmur: Lindsay, he said, what’s your favorite thing about Zambia?

All eyes on me. “The expats,” I said. They laughed quietly.

He pressed on, no really, what is it about this place that made you want to come back?

I said: the space.

***

A friend of mine spent two years in Mauritania. One night in DC, over a dinner of hotdogs and red wine (if you know me then you understand how typical this is), I tell him how hard it is to be back, how unhappy I am, and unhappy I am at myself for feeling unhappy.

—What was it like for you, when you came back, I ask him?

—Everything seemed banal, he said, circumscribed.

I tell him I feel the same way but then point out the irony. I complained all the time when I lived in Dar: “And you? Life here—boring and banal? You lived in a village in rural Mauritania.”

He laughed: “Yeah, I was bored all the time there. But just being there was enough. Just going through the motions was interesting.”

He tells me about being at a party one night and thinking that every conversation was meaningless. “I felt like everyone needed to be shaken out of the routines they were living in. It was hard. And I had a hard time connecting. It was like there were people everywhere, but they were just passing each other.”

It was like what my colleague, now in Bali, eventually told me on that cold January night: “There’s too much stuff here. Over there, we were a part of each other’s lives.”

***

I guess the longing for Africa comes from a combination of these things. I liked having fewer choices; I was happy when I had less stuff.

I liked how involved friends were in each others lives, almost as if we were family. I liked how we saw each other all the time, stayed at each other’s houses, the sense of camaraderie, the way we felt bound together by shared experience, like refugees in a foreign land.

And I liked the sense of freedom, the vastness of the landscape, like staring out across the ocean. I liked getting on planes every other week, hopping between countries as if they were metro stops. And meeting new people who did the same thing, floating out there in space and time.

I’ve spent a lot of time looking back.

But the truth is, being expats in excruciatingly poor countries cannot be the only way to live like that, that is, to live with less stuff, to live together, and to be free. There has to be a way to make that real where ever we are.

The Trouble With Rwanda

“We are hypnotised by the 1994 genocide, and oblivious to the atrocities of a regime we regard as exemplary. Aid, we say, must be conditional on good governance—but post-genocide government is an exception. … Democracy is a precondition of peace—but not in a post-genocidal state. Justice, truth and reconciliation heal—but not the wounds of exterminatory hatred. The invasion and plunder of eastern Congo are criminal—but not when they’re carried out by genocide survivors.”

This is Stephen W. Smith, a journalist who was Africa editor of Libération and Le Monde who covered Rwanda for nearly two decades, writing in the London Review of Books. His piece is an elegant and unnervingly detailed look at snapshots of events from 1992 to more recent days. It raises many troubling questions about the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RFP), and Paul Kagame himself.

There have always been questions about who was involved in the downing of former President Habyarimana’s jet in 1994, which sparked the genocide, but what about the various tallies and reports of reprisal killings after the RFP took power, which have been documented but largely ignored. Smith’s investigation estimates that more than 100,000 Hutus were murdered during the RFP’s first year in power, but he also cites the work of Robert Gersony, a UNHCR consultant, who estimated that “between 25,000 and 40,000 persons were killed during the first 100 days of RPF rule. The Gersony report—in fact just briefing notes—was leaked to the press. Under intense pressure from Kigali and its allies, the UNHCR went on the record denying its existence.”

Or how about what happened in 1996, when the Rwandan army dispersed the Hutu camps in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (then Zaire). Of the 300,000 or so who fled deeper into the DRC, nearly two-thirds died over the next six months, according to a field study by Médecins Sans Frontières. Says Smith: “The UNHCR spoke of ‘crimes against humanity’, but, again, there was hardly any response. Twelve years later, in August 2010, a fresh investigation by the UN put the number killed at ‘probably in the several tens of thousands.’”

Or how about the murder in Nairobi in 1998 of Seth Sendashonga, who joined the RPF in 1991, as the only eminent Hutu-turned-rebel who was not a defector from the Habyarimana regime. Sendashonga became Kagame’s minister of the interior, but when Kagame failed to respond to his 700 letters documenting RFP abuses and reprisals, he resigned and went into exile. He was killed when gunmen armed with AK-47 assault rifles opened fire on his car during rush hour, soon before he was scheduled to testify before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

There have been other murders. Like that of the vice president of Rwanda’s Democratic Green Party, who lobbied against the country’s admission to the Commonwealth, citing the regime’s gross human rights violations, and was found decapitated near Butare last year.

We could also talk about Kagame’s Soviet style popularity in elections, or the regime’s suppression of the media and civil society.

Why do these stories seldom feature, or when they do, disappear like smoke?

***

This is not the part of Rwanda that we—people who work in development—spend our time thinking about. When we think about Rwanda, we think of a shining star in Africa, of the extraordinary leadership and stunning progress since 1994.

This is how The Economist describes it:

“The discarded plastic bottles and bags that pollute almost every other country on the continent are nowhere to be seen… The tarred roads are usually in good shape; speed limits are actually enforced, by smart traffic police who fill out paperwork in exchange for a statutory fine rather than shaking you down for a bribe. Transparency International, an anti-corruption watchdog, rates Rwanda as one of the more honest countries in Africa. The World Bank says it is fastest-improving as a place to do business. Hotels in the capital, Kigali, brim with Westerners attending conferences. Paul Kagame, the president who has overseen all this, is a darling of the aid-giving world. Western governments and prominent religious leaders have hailed him as the sort of man in whom to put their faith—and money.”

Money indeed. Rwanda is a heavily aid-dependent country, having received massive increases in official development assistance (ODA) since 2003. In 2009/10 net official ODA stood at nearly US$1 billion. Neighboring Burundi, which is just as poor, has a similar history of violence among the same ethnic groups, received about half that. Almost 40 percent of this aid is provided in the form of budget support, a vote of confidence in the government—indeed, all of Norway’s aid is provided that way, and the majority of the UK’s aid is.

Rwanda is what we wish other countries could be. A donor darling, growing rapidly, determined. There is a kind of wide-eyed lore about the place. Everywhere you go—from Dakar to Abuja, to Addis, to Dar es Salaam and Lusaka, people say: have you heard about Rwanda?

And leaders from the West line up to be friends. I was in Rwanda in 2009 and remember bumping repeatedly into Tony Blair in the lobby of the Serena hotel, where I was staying. I asked the hotel staff about it. They shrugged—he’s here all the time. He and Kagame are great friends.

***

Smith’s essay is not the first time someone has written about these troubling questions. It is not as if people in power—whether in politics or in the aid business—don’t know a lot of this stuff.

What is stunning, stupefying even, is how all of it is barely a blip on the radar.

The first question is: why?

The next question is: when the development community looks back 15 years from now, what we will think about our collective silence on these issues? Will we say, yes, supporting the regime was the right thing to do during a fragile period of recovery. Or will and see our cravenness to confront these issue as a mere extension of our complicity (through silence and inaction) in violence and injustice in Rwanda before the genocide?

***

“‘Rwanda…is a one-party authoritarian state, controlled by President Kagame through a small clique of Tutsi military officers and civilian cadres of the RPF from behind the scenes. The majority Hutu community remains excluded from a meaningful share of political power. State institutions are as effective as they are repressive. The government relies on severe repression to maintain its hold on power … Rwanda is less free today than it was prior to the genocide. … Civil society is less free … The media is less free. The Rwanda government is more repressive than the one that it overthrew.’

This is not the preamble to a new Hutu manifesto but an excerpt from the ‘Rwanda Briefing’ published last year by four senior figures in the Kagame regime who’ve now fled abroad [one survived an attempt on his life when a commando opened fire on him last June in Johannesburg, where he now lives in exile].

The authors of the ‘Rwanda Briefing’ may not be trustworthy advocates of freedom and democracy, or paragons of ethnic inclusiveness, but they describe a system they’re familiar with and a leader they know well. To his many Western admirers they have this to say: ‘President Kagame is a very polarising figure. His policies continue to divide Rwandan society along the lines of ethnicity and to fuel conflict. The likelihood of a recurrence of violent conflict, including even the possibility of genocide, is very high.’”

--From Smith’s essay

*The former secretary general of the RPF Theogene Rudasingwa; his brother Gerald Gahima, one-time prosecutor general and vice-president of the Rwandan Supreme Court; the erstwhile chief of external security services Colonel Patrick Karegeya; and General Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa, the ex-chief of staff of the Rwandan army. Nyamwasa survived an attempt the his life last June; the South African authorities laid the blame with the government in Kigali.

An Old City (Dispatches from Jerusalem)

We’ll start at the entrance to Ben Gurion Airport where my Palestinian taxi driver is pulled over and told to get my things and get out of the car. I’m worried. I tell the young man with the machine gun who pulled us over that my flight leaves soon. I don’t want to be late.

He takes my passport and mobile phone. “This is not JFK,” he says tapping his gun. “I am not your friend.”

The taxi driver and I wait outside in the cold dark for 45 minutes while the young men with their machine guns stroll around us, talking to each other and staring. The taxi driver takes twitchy drags on three cigarettes, and tells me quietly, carefully, with sideways glances, that a few weeks ago his company had sent him to Tel Aviv to fetch someone from the airport, but security had detained him for so long that the customer decided to take another cab and the whole trip had been for nothing.

Once inside the airport, my passport now flagged, I’m stopped four times, my bags thoroughly searched each time. Why did you come here, I’m asked? Who did you visit? What does he do? Did you meet his friends? Where did you eat? Did you take their email addresses? Where do you work and why and for how long? And when I show signs of irritation, they say: maybe if you are nice, we will help you.

Back outside, waiting to get into the airport, I talk to one of the guys detaining us. Where were you born, I ask? Here, he says. How old are you? Twenty eight. I tell him I travel to countries all over the world and nothing like this has ever happened.

—Other countries are not Israel, he says.

***

His name is Sandrouni and he owns the Armenian Ceramic Center, a cheerful shop of brightly painted pottery near the New Gate in the Old City in East Jerusalem. On the morning I stop in, it’s sunny and warm and he has the doors open to the street where some boys are kicking a soccer ball.

Sandrouni has dark hair, small dark eyes and looks like a large unmade bed in a slightly tattered sweater and pants. He offers me a cup of Nescafe and tells me about his business: the split from his brothers years ago after a disagreement, his new shop outside the Armenian Quarter. When I tell him I’m part Armenian, he gives me a discount on the pottery and insists on taking me on a tour of the Armenian quarter of the Old City, specifically the Armenian convent, which is closed to the public and is where the majority of the Armenians in the quarter live.

We see the school, the library, the priests’ quarters. And on our way out, he points down an alleyway to his home.

—That’s my house, he says. My brother lives next door and my other brother lives next door to him.

—But I thought you didn’t speak, I say.

He seems confused: Of course we don’t.

***

The Old City is a labyrinth of winding alleys and staircases and darkly lit passageways. In a residential quarter, lights are strung overhead between two apartments, and thin metal piping frames an ancient wooden door, while electrical wire crawls up the side of walls and over archways.

The bazaar near Damascus Gate is always bustling with tourists and locals crowded around carts of fresh bread and falafel. Old ladies sit on the sidewalk with baskets of herbs while children dart between then, running up the steps, past three Israeli soldiers sitting in the shade with enormous guns on their shoulders.

***

The land is beautiful here, though. Outside the walls of the old city are wave after wave of rocky hills dotted with olive trees and cypruses. The air smells of chamomile and thyme and orange, and the cathedral bells ring out against a skyline dotted with minarets, steeples, domes.

I’m walking up Hebron road in the midafternoon, taking in the tranquility, when I see it suddenly in the distance: the wall. Massive. Towering. Totally out of proportion with everything else, it cuts across those lovely hills like a malicious knife.

And then there are the checkpoints, the watchtowers, the identity cards.

It’s reminiscent of another time, another place.

***

I know people who have come to Jerusalem on spiritual pilgrimages, and having grown up in the church, I waited to see if some revelation would touch me in this holy city. But in my short visit, holiness was not the dominate feeling.

Jerusalem could be a place where, side by side, the three faiths express what they have it in them at their best to be, which is a message of peace and redemption and love. Jerusalem could be an expression of that. But in so many ways it is not. Instead, these communities are like the Sandrouni brothers: side by side but not speaking. Walled off from each other, separated.

The city could be about peace, but mostly it is about guns and intimidation and humiliation.

***

It’s early evening and I’m heading back to my hotel. The sky is a fading pinkish purple, and two old men are sitting on the side of wall, smoking cigarettes and talking quietly. I pause to look across the road, to the Mount of Olives—which is actually just a big white graveyard that overlooks another graveyard on the side of the street where I’m standing.

Then in through the old city, down a stoney street, past a church where the last few tourists are filtering out; they smile as I pass. Then I bump into an old Palestinian man closing up the shop of his I’d visited a few days before—he’d made me lemon juice and we had tried to talk, which was difficult since he had no teeth and knew little English, and I, little Arabic. He says he’s going home so we walk together a while.

Then we part ways and I make my way up a dark, narrow staircase, which leads to the gate where I will exit the city. There’s no one around—it’s quiet as a cathedral. Then I hear footsteps coming up quickly behind me, and I turn a little, keen not to seem nervous. It’s just two kids, though, who brush easily past me.

Keep walking, when the older one looks back at me, and that’s when I notice he has a machine gun over his shoulder. He keeps eyeing me and suddenly the air is filled with menace. These confined spaces, that big black gun. And so when he turns around and isn’t looking I dart down a narrow alleyway, out of sight.

What Do You Really Believe About Development? (Go Home and See...)

Mexico City, six months ago….

It’s been one week now: my sister and brother-in-law, and his mom and my mom, and their German Sheppard Lila, and me, in a tiny three-bedroom house in Mexico City waiting for my sister’s baby to be born.

We thought the baby would come earlier, but it’s in the wrong position and the doctor will have to induce labor in a little less than a week.

So we’ve settled into a routine to pass the time. During the day, when my brother-in-law is working, we run errands, clean the house, do laundry, and plan the evening meal. My brother-in-law’s mom has baked several pies. My mom does crossword puzzles. I work. My sister naps. Then it’s dinner time, and we gather around the dining room table and pass the food and talk a little before clearing it all away and going to bed.

Being with my family is like being suspended in time. My work, my friends—my life—feel as far away as the moon. When I think about them it’s as if I’m way out in the water, straining to see land, drifting farther and farther from the shore.

***

Each day is like an episode of Survivor, except instead of running around a tropical island in bathing suits, we're dodging the conversational land mines that accompany overly long family visits:

On the highway, on our way to the mall, my sister goes on about how bad traffic is in Mexico. There are no rules here, she shakes her head. People cut you off and run red lights.

—I know what you mean, I say. In Dar, taxis sometimes drive on the sidewalk (where there is sidewalk) or even on the beach to get around traffic.

—Fine! You win, your life is harder than mine!

Or I’m shopping for clothes with my mom and she asks what size I wear. When I tell her, she says: that’s the same size I wear.

—I’m not you mom, don’t you get that!

BOOM

***

My mom and I are not close. Relations were badly severed when she left my dad when I was 13, but that separation was only a more intense version of how my parents had always lived. Alone together.

Sometimes I look at my mom, her face gray and drawn, trying so hard to get people to like her, and I feel exasperation and pity. Conversations are always strained. If I say anything that is even slightly funny she laughs hysterically. I cringe.

At lunch at the mall, my sister conceives of a way for us three to bond: she vents about a difficult co-worker. Surely this is an innocuous topic, free from the undercurrents laden in so many others.

—She’s so intense, my sister says! So domineering!

She throws the words out like crumbs to pigeons, expecting us to gather round and feast happily together. But instead of joining in, my mom timidly defends her:

—Well, if I had the kind of life she has had, I might be the same way.

When we get up to pay the bill and my mom is facing the cash register with her back to me, I study her. She’s trying her best with Spanish. She looks small and vulnerable.

Sometimes I feel so much love for her that it almost breaks my heart.

California, six months later…

The pier in Ocean Beach, the little hippy enclave on the edge of San Diego where I grew up, is the longest in California. Walk down and back and you will have walked a mile.

On the morning I'm there, it is, like always, dotted with Filipino fisherman, their lines hanging down into the water like Christmas lights strung over a balcony. A pair of gray and white seagulls are crying and flapping their wings as they fight over some escaped fish bait, and three pelicans are skimming the surface of the water, a salty spray on their bellies. Beyond, a fishing trawler is making her way in.

My dad used to take me here when I was a little girl. Those were the days before he lost his job and my mom, before the tide of depression nearly drowned him and he packed his bags and left San Diego as if his life depended on, which it probably did.

I remember squinting my eyes against the salty wind while he pointed to some islands shimmering on the horizon; poking at the sea anemones growing like flowers out of the crevices of the tide pools below the pier; trying not to slip on the cold, mossy rocks.

***

It's early evening at my grandmother's house, where my dad, sister, brother-in-law, and little niece and I have pitched our tents for the Christmas holiday.

My dad is out back smoking a cigar and talking in a monologue, the way he always has. He is doing better now and I'm glad for it—there are few things more frightening to a child than to see their parents unhappy—but still. He barely knows us, I think to myself as I pick at some chips and salsa and watch while my sister changes Isabela's diaper.

The really hard memories go underground. A house full of people, but so little is said. When we do talk, it’s like I'm back at the tide pools: trying to keep my balance. Tiptoeing, like a cat through cactus.

Then I hear something outside: a subtle inflection in my dad’s voice. My stomach flips upside down. It’s the same inflection in my own voice. Sometimes, I sound just like him.

A friend told me once how unsettling it is, to go home and realize how different you are from your family. But the even more unsettling thing is when you realize how much you are the same.

***

We gather in the living room and say goodbye to my dad, who must be up at 4 a.m. to catch his flight back to Seattle. He hugs my sister, my grandmother, squeezes little Isabela. Then it’s my turn, so I hug him lightly and say it was good to see him.

—I sure do love you, kid, he says, and for a moment I think I see a flash of pain cross his face.

I want to tell him that I love him too, that all of it—all the stuff—is okay. Instead though, I promise to get up in the morning to say goodbye. You shouldn't have to leave alone, I say.

But when I hear him shuffling out with his suitcase the next morning, I stay in my room, hidden beneath the covers.

***

Sometimes I wonder if our business—the development business—is futile. And at no time do I wonder this more than when I am with my family, when I am home. Not because I'm reminded that my family is crazy and will probably never change but because I'm reminded that I'm crazy, and that changing your life—changing stale, self-defeating habits, breaking out of the wreckage of the past, starting over—is really, really hard.

And development? Changing other peoples’ lives? How can we ever expect to make even the smallest dent when it’s all most of us can do to keep our own heads above water?

Mexico City, on the eve of my niece’s birth…

The night is hot and very still. Inside the small, square dining room, a single light bulb hanging above us, the family has gathered to play cards. There’s a dog barking in the alley outside, and like some distant, desolate music, the sound cuts through the heavy air between us.

My sister deals. We hold our cards like fans against our chests and stare back at each other like river boat gamblers. We’re trying not to let each other see what’s behind the little walls we’ve created. We’re trying to guess what each other is hiding. We’re trying to win.

A few rounds go by and I’m losing terribly. My sister leans back, sighs heavily and puts her hand on her belly. She wishes little Isabela (the baby) would turn. Doesn’t she know she can’t get out through the side? Her husband puts his hand on her belly and in an exaggerated southern drawl says: well, she’s not the smartest girl.

And then like a crack in an ice covered pond, like a door blown slightly ajar by the wind, we start to laugh. Just a little at first, but then hugely, generously, rubbing our eyes.

And for a moment, the shadows disappear.

***

See, I am doing a new thing. Now it springs up -- do you not perceive it?
Isaiah 43:19

If You’re Ever In Juba... (A Patchwork Restaurant Guide for Travelers in Africa, West Africa Edition)

See the original guide, with recommendations for Bujumbura, Dar es Salaam, Nairobi, Addis, and of course, Juba, here.

Monrovia

The aid business is booming in Liberia, a country recovering (remarkably well, many say) from fourteen years of civil war. As with any aid boom capital, Monrovia is overrun by expats, and if there’s one thing expats do well, it’s gather for evenings out after long, exhausting days fighting poverty.

The restaurants in this list may be wazungu mainstays (said my spindly old taxi driver one night on our way to Rozi’s, his phone ringing off the hook: “it’s a busy night for white people”), but they’re good. And if you’re ever in Monrovia, be sure to check them out.

Tides: Tides is a newish bar/restaurant on the waterfront in Mamba Point. The entrance is up a badly lit stairwell in what looks like an abandoned building, but do not be deterred: upstairs is a sweeping wooden deck and comfy couches—the perfect place to sip a gin and tonic and watch the sun go down. One tiny caveat: 100-or-so feet down the beach is a slum. You know the scene: low-lying crush of cardboard and tin, piles of trash, kids playing football in the dusk. When the sun goes down, the slum disappears, swallowed up by the dark. The drinks at Tides are good, but with the other (i.e., non expat) reality of Monrovia in your face, they can be a little difficult to swallow.

The Palm: This open, breezy rooftop restaurant is a sharp contrast to the hot mugginess of the dusty streets below. A great place to unwind—good pizza and beer—to the sound of ABBA in the background (what is it about ABBA in Africa?).

Mamba Point Hotel: The Rick’s Café of Monrovia, it’s like a transit lounge, where aid workers mix with business types, hard-to-place security guys, and wealthy locals. The deck overlooks the ocean, and framed by palm trees, it’s like a scene out of a movie: a tropical paradise. With a great selection of Lebanese dishes, pizza, Indian, and sushi, the Mamba Point restaurant is good spot for long, meandering, wine-soaked dinners.

Rozi’s: This cute restaurant in Sinkor serves a variety of dishes best described as Liberian-international fusion (pretty vague, I know). I recommend eating in the garden.

The Lounge at Roberts International Airport: If you are forced to leave Monrovia, I recommend grabbing a Club beer in the airport lounge. Surrounded by plastic-covered tables and chairs and enormous fake sunflowers, it’s an ideal spot to recap your trip and wait out the inevitable storm always passing over the airport. Even better when in the company of secret agent Pavignani if you can manage to nab him.

Dakar

What is one of the best things about USAID missions to the field? Per diems, of course. Per diems are what made it possible for my colleague and I to sample some of Dakar’s fantastic (and fantastically expensive) restaurants.

Let me say that this city is not like other cities on the continent where I’ve worked. Tree-lined avenues, charming apartment buildings with balconies draped in bougainvillea, women in skinny jeans and high heels (a bit too fancy for this hippy, I’ll be honest). Dakar feels like Paris (although I’ve never been to Paris). So go, and enjoy—and if you make it before December 30, you’re in time to catch the World Festival of Black Arts and Cultures. Attendees include none other than that beloved Libyan man of the people, Muammar Gaddafi.

Radisson Blu Hotel, restaurant and seaside lounge: This sleek hotel, halfway between centre ville and the towering Monument to the African Renaissance (which is, incidentally, right across the street from a small, humble graveyard) oozes hip: there is an atrium and infinity pool, and the décor is an urbane mix of whites and grays. Munch poolside (but steer clear of the complimentary olives—they are doused in mustard and orange, a truly disgusting combo) or check out the restaurant next door, which has a fine fish selection and wine list. The lamb is also excellent.

Restaurant La Calebasse in Mamelles: On the top floor above an African Art shop, the Calebasse restaurant is a nice mix of local fare (Yassa fish anyone?) and French-ish food. The terrace is breezy and spacious, and the ambiance wonderful, thanks to the musician who strummed quietly on his kora while we ate. The sound is hypnotic, mysterious, like walking down a narrow path in a market you’ve never been to, like light reflecting in crystal. Good food, wine, music and art. A lovely way to spend an evening out.

La Lagoon 1: A friend who lives in Dakar (a French friend who lives in Dakar) told me upon arrival that this was his favorite restaurant and it’s not hard to see why. Nestled on the beach not far from President Wade’s house, this is a restaurant on stilts that juts out over the water. The fish and wine are great, but be sure to sit outside: indoors it’s an over-the-top nautical theme, with air conditioning blasting.

Chez Loutcha: For some Cape Verdean fare check out this cozy restaurant in Centre Ville. The plates are enormous—enough for two or three people—and the atmosphere, decidedly low-key. SO low key in fact that you may have trouble getting the servers to pay attention to you, and when they finally do, it is reluctantly, eyes glaring. Tough love at Chez Loutcha.

Terrou-Bi Terrace Restaurant: A good treat, but as with all the upmarket beachside hotel restaurants, this place will cost you. The fish was good and the service excellent.

A Home-Cooked Meal at Chez Camara: Better than any restaurant, this dinner at the home of a Ministry of Health colleague was the culinary (and social) highlight of the trip. The Camaras served couscous smothered in gravy, with chicken, carrots, raisins and nuts, a traditional dish to celebrate Tamkharit, the Islamic new year. (Incidentally, this was also the evening of the Senegalese version of Halloween, where children march through their neighborhoods, beating tin drums, in search of goodies or money.)

Sitting on the floor of the Camara's living room, their children, nieces, nephews, sisters, uncles and other unidentified family members playing and talking in the room next door, our host showed us photos from a trip to Illinois, joked with his wife of ten years about who really runs the household, and explained that he does the work he does because of a belief, deep down, that he is responsible for other people, that we are all responsible for each other. I guess that included us, his guests. When we entered the house, he spread his arms wide and said: You are welcome. You are home.

The lights went out about midway through the evening meal and the house went pitch black. It was ok, though—there were voices of family all around.