Where We Are Now

I used to read The Irish Times ‘Generation Emigration’  (http://www.irishtimes.com/blogs/generationemigration/) online each day when it first started up a few months back.  Recently, for lots of reasons, I haven’t been checking it as often.  However, I spent a few hours the other day catching up on what I had missed.  An article written by a guy called Jonathan Drennan on the 5th of May, entitled ‘Remembering Where We Came From But Embracing Where We Are Now’ (http://www.irishtimes.com/blogs/generationemigration/2012/05/05/remembering-where-we-came-from-but-embracing-where-we-are-now/) got my attention.

He states that his article is addressed at young people (like me!).  People ‘who find themselves in what should be the most exciting times of their lives abroad’.  He says ‘we should be embracing the opportunities that emigration offers us rather than wistfully yearning for the past in Ireland.’  He continues to say, in his experience as an emigrant, that he finds Irish people are ‘incapable of living in the present’ and that by seeking out home comforts while abroad we are ‘languishing in the past’.  He says we 'let ourselves down' and that we often 'neglect the positives of...new surroundings' and this, he claims, is preventing us from living in the present. However, I think he’s somewhat missing the point.  

Firstly, why should being abroad be so exciting?  Surely everyone’s experience is individual and personal.  Being abroad certainly can be some of the most exciting times of your life, but I don’t think it’s right to say it should be.  

Secondly, and of his own admission, Jonathan was lucky. He got a job, and therefore he is not ‘languishing in the past’.  He has a present to be concerned with, and a worry free (foreseeable) future too.  How lucky.  He is happy. He is being kept busy and he is not being held back by a lack of opportunity.  Others however, are not as lucky as he admits to being.  Others do not have a secure job.  Or even a job at all, many are still searching for employment.  More emigrants still, do not have the luxury, as Jonathan does, of being an hour away from home.  

I am also one of the lucky ones.  I am living and working in South Korea and have been, happily so, for the last seven months.  However, I am one of the people Jonathan talks about who seek out home comforts while away and I get tea bags sent over by my mother.  They are a small and treasured slice of home while away.  They are relished.  They are used sparingly.  They are only offered to the closest of friends, ones who will appreciate them, because when they run out I cannot simply buy more, or travel home at the nearest convenient date and get more.  They have to be sent and this can take several weeks.  Several weeks without teabags can be a difficult time for all involved!  

As far as suggesting that this has me ‘languishing in the past’ is a bit of a joke.  I very much live in the present.  Korean’s aren’t great at understanding other cultures, so here, more than many other countries, you really have to get involved, it’s up to you to understand them.  That requires effort and integration, which in turn requires living in the now.  

Maybe the people who pine for home, the ones Jonathon cannot understand, the ones he feels are ‘hopelessly reminiscing about times that never were’ at home, have not been as lucky as he and I.  Maybe they are in London without a good job, without any security.  Maybe they have young sisters or brothers, nieces or nephews at home who they are missing greatly.  Maybe they have a sick grandparent or parent at home.  Or perhaps, they have been as lucky as Jonathan, but the guilt they feel for leaving loved ones behind, loved ones who perhaps have not been as lucky, is too much to bear sometimes.  It is possible also, that the people who Jonathon meets on a daily basis in London, are not ‘yearning for the past in Ireland’ but simply the present.  A present that is unattainable for many.

Maybe the hopeless ‘reminiscing about times that never were’ is a desire to one day have these times, at home.  Jonathan says he is used to moving about.  His childhood was spent between Belfast and Dublin.  Lots of children don’t move about with their families which may result in their home roots running deeper.  They may experience a greater sense of discomfort somewhere else.  They may take longer to settle into a new place.  Or they may simply not like change, especially change that is forced upon them.

As I said earlier, I have been living in South Korea for seven months now.  I miss my family, particularly my nieces and nephews, hugely.  I will be very excited when I get a chance to go home and visit.  However, I am also very excited to be here.  I frequently hear myself say how lucky I am to be here, to have a job, to be able to save some money, to be living in such a new and challenging society.  I get tea bags sent to me and I savour them.  I do not think of Ireland with rose tinted glasses, I do not wish I was there all year round.  However, I try to understand those who do, and I try to sympathise with them.  Being away from home gives you the opportunity to meet lots of new people, from all walks of life.  You learn that there are many different ways to think about things.  Maybe Jonathon should show more empathy and understanding to the people he criticises for wishing they were at home.

Hatred at Hatari Lodge

I was talking to a friend of mine last week.  He’s Tanzanian.  I met him in October 2009 when I left Ireland to go and work in Shu’mata Camp in Northern Tanzania, tracking and monitoring the elephants that live in the Maasai Steppe.  I never got to Shu’mata.  When I arrived in Tanzania, the camp was still under construction.  I had been made aware of this prior to departure but I was told by the owners, Jörg and Marlies Gabriel, that it would only be a matter of weeks before it was up and running, and in the mean-time I could settle into life in Tanzania, in their more salubrious Hatari Lodge.

I landed at Kilimanjaro International Airport on the 1st of October, my birthday, and was met by a guy called Clinton, a local who was one of the driver guides working at Hatari Lodge at the time.  He was a really friendly guy and we chatted away on the hour or so drive back to Hatari.  The sun was shinning and I was delighted to be so far away from home about to embark on a new adventure.  When we got to the lodge there was a herd of giraffe scattered around it, chomping down on the acacia trees, and a little family of warthogs running about the place, totally unbothered by the human presence.  I could get used to this, was what I thought to myself.  Clinton pushed me in the direction of the office to announce my arrival and I remember thinking it strange that he didn’t come in himself.  Looking back though, I fully understand why.  I was greeted very quickly by both Jörg and Marlies, before they dove back to their desks and buried their heads once more.  It was about 3:30 pm and I was more or less left to my own devices.  I wasn’t shown to where I’d be staying so I couldn’t unpack or even just off-load my bags.  It was quite a strange welcome. Had it not been for the stunning setting, I would’ve been a bit put out, but given the spectacular scenery, I was quite content to just sit down and take it all in.

It was after 9pm when I was finally brought to my new home.  It was a small house, known as the yellow house, in the neighbouring village of Momella, and it was where I would be living with the other European members of staff:  A German girl called Nicci, who was acting as the stand in manager at the time; an English girl, Kate, who was teaching in a school that had recently been opened by the Gabriel family and another German girl, Marianne, who’s parents had some connection to the Gabriels and was there for a six month volunteering stint.  At 24, I was the eldest in the house.  When I asked where the rest of the staff lived I was given woolly answers.  The rest of the staff were all local Tanzanian men and women, and it later transpired that they all lived in what was known as the ‘staff quarters’.  It was very cramped and the facilities were poor.  The yellow house was streets ahead.  Nobody could, or would, tell me why we were segregated like that.

I was told to have a lie-in the next day and walk into work when I woke up.  I arrived about 10:30 and went to the office to present myself for duty!  I met Jörg as he was coming out of the office and greeted him with a cherpy ‘Good Morning’.  I can still recall the reply I got as if it was yesterday.  Seriously, and without a hint of irony or joviality, he snarled ‘You can’t be serious! The day is half over at this stage’.  I was totally taken aback, mumbled something in reply and tried to forget it.  What a lovely friendly start!

Things only got worse.  Most mornings my alarm went off 6am, earlier if guests were arriving or departing before then, and I was at the lodge from 6:30 'til between 11 and 12 at night.  I had no designated breaks or down time.  Neither did anyone else. Everyone worked these crazy hours with no days off.  I was told I'd have a week off after my three month trial if all went well, until then there'd be nothing in the way of free time.  My job seemed to be to shout orders at the Tanzanians.  Marlies told me to copy her tone of voice when talking to ‘them’.  They were not to be trusted to do a good job and needed to be watched carefully. I’d say there were about 30 local people working there between the kitchen staff, the chambermaids and the waiters.  From the get go they were always very friendly and I used to love chatting to them, getting to know them and learning about their culture and traditions.  I didn’t know what I was supposed to be doing half the time, I was given no instruction except the odd barked order from Nicci, so I always sought the opinion of the waiters.  This was a ‘no-no’ in Marlies book.  All interaction was discouraged.  Chatting?  Absolutely not.  Having a beer together after work? Only if you want to be out on your ear.  

Lunch for ‘us’, the owners and the European staff, was served by ‘them’, the local staff, in the dining room. ‘They’ ate in a separate building altogether, out the back of the kitchen.  Often Marlies would bellow from her seat at the chef, telling him that the food was horrible and that he should have known that she wouldn’t want to eat this ‘rubbish’.  All the meals served to us and to the guests at dinner time, were German.  Jörg was German, Marlies German-Namibian.  The cookbooks that the Tanzanian, Swahili-speaking chef was meant to use were written in German!

Amongst other things, one of my main duties was to guard the key to the dry store.  This was the room that all the food was kept in.  Johnny, the chef, needed frequent access to it but he had to call on me when he did.  He was required to sign out the ingredients he wanted, and then show how he’d used them in the kitchen.  This was to stop stealing.  As a European, who had just arrived to Tanzania, never mind Hatari, this was a job that I loathed.  I would often ‘forget’ and leave the key with him, trusting and knowing that he wouldn’t abuse it.  Another job was to follow the chambermaids about, checking up on their work.  If there was anything amiss, I was not to fix it myself, but to stand at the doorway and bellow until one of them appeared and fixed the problem.  Problems ranged from a rug being 2cm off centre to a drip of water in a handbasin that hadn’t been wiped dry!

Hatari Lodge is an example of what good marketing can do for you.  Marlies, the driving force behind its marketing, knew (and I suppose still knows) exactly what her potential guests were looking for.  Hatari attracts mainly German tourists, and wealthy, well educated Germans at that.  The majority of the guests I encountered during my time there, were well aware that the money they were spending on a three week safari holiday, taking in all that Tanzania has to offer, with private cars and plenty of game drives, is more than a local will earn in a year.  Because of this awareness, they all seemed to have put a great deal of effort into choosing their tour operators and accommodations, knowing that their choices would have an impact on the local communities.  

In order to be considered by this type of holiday-maker,  Marlies and Jörg appear to have set up the Momella Foundation, which encompasses eight community projects aimed at giving something back to the local community.  One of these, Mama Momella, is an initiative set up to help generate income for the local women through seam-stressing.  They are provided with sewing machines and the clothes they make are sold in the Lodge.  This all sounds great, except of the forty odd dollars that a skirt is sold for, only just over one dollar goes to the woman who made it.  This was not information that I was meant to have access too.  The Shu’mata Elephant Patrol, another of these eight projects, and the one that I was there to work on, didn’t exist.  Watoto Momella, was however in operation, and that was where Kate worked as a teacher. More than that, I do not know.  Gathering information on any of the other projects was difficult. However, having these projects advertised on the Hatari website, as well as displayed in each room, makes for good marketing and helps to generate business, especially in today’s world where people are becoming that bit more aware and conscious that their choices and actions have effects and repercussions far beyond the obvious.

I left on the 20th of October, 20 days after I arrived.  Even that was fraught with problems. Leaving was not just a case of picking up my belongings and walking away.  We were miles away from Arusha, the nearest big town.  We were miles away from the nearest main road.  There was a bus from Momella that went every morning, but it went through Arusha National Park and as a non-national, you needed a permit to be allowed though.  These permits had to be pre-arranged.  In order to get one, you had to get to the park gate.  That was also miles away.  Therefore, not only did I need Jörg and Marlies to let me leave, I needed them to help me to leave.  

I spoke to Jörg, the slightly lesser of two evils.  I first enquired about the opening of the Shu’mata Camp. Jörg and Marlies were off to Germany for a holiday in a few weeks and wouldn’t be back until nearly Christmas.  I was told it would be opened after that.  So, not weeks after my arrival, months after.  I could nearly have put up with the place a bit longer, especially if Jörg and Marlies were going to be away, if there had been any elephants that I could observe and learn about, but there are none in the region near Hatari.  I told Jörg that I found the atmosphere in the lodge to be stifling and unacceptably racist.  I told him I had wanted to come to Tanzania to see elephants, not to work for a German Neo-Colonialist, eat German food and listen to stories of how great the German’s who’d lived in the area had been.  He said he appreciated my honesty and would arrange a permit for me so that I could leave.  I was pleasantly surprised with how it had all gone.  Walking away from him that afternoon, I was delighted.  I was smiling for the first time in days. Until then, I hadn’t realised quite how much the place was getting in on me.  I had made the right decision.

I was due to leave on a Tuesday morning with the truck that went into Arusha for supplies each week.  Jörg said he'd arrange my permit.  However, on Monday night back at the yellow house, Nicci asked if I had my permit.  When I told her Jörg was sorting it out she shouted at me not to be so stupid and that of course he wasn't going to arrange it for me and least of all, pay for it.  Then she said I'd better not delay the truck in the morning and stormed off to her room.  I was left frantically trying to pack and wondering if I'd ever be out of this hell hole.  Luckily, and by total coincidence, Kate’s mum was coming to visit the next day and I was able to grab a lift to Arusha with her.

After I left, I heard that as soon as I told Jörg I wanted to leave, Marlies told all the other staff not to let me use the phone or the computers to help me plan my onward journey.  She told the staff that I had been fired because I was trying to instigate an affair with her husband. Nothing could have been further from the truth!

I have now heard of over 30 others, some I know from my time there and some that I don’t, both locals and Europeans, who have fled the place in a similar fashion to me, all reporting mistreatment and severe racism as their reasons for leaving.  The friend I mentioned at the beginning, is one of the lucky ones.  He is a trained wildlife guide and mountaineer.  He is brimming with enthusiasm and refused to let these nasty people bring him down.  He left Hatari some time ago and is now in the final stages of starting his own company. His website is due to go live any day now.  However, there are many others still there. They are still suffering under the oppressive command of Marlies and Jörg Gabriel, but with virtually no other employment in the area, they stick it out in order to be close to their families.

Having fun with the parents!

Warm Weather Pit Stop on the Way Home from Work!

Last night was the first warm evening of the season.  The days have been in the 20's but the nights have been dropping right down.  Last night though, came out of work at 8:45 and it was still 20° - lovely!


So we decided to stop for a bit of a people watch at our friendly little café!

Burgers, Chocolate and Scrabble - What a Sunday

 Woke up a little tired and emotional last Sunday but the sun was shining so we dragged ourselves out of bed.  Where to go though was a problem.  The problem was based on food.  Feeling a little over boozed and under nourished, the regular dose of kimchi and rice just wasn’t going to cut it.  There-in lies the problem.  Where to go in Daejeon to get something to eat if you don’t want Korean food.  We had three options:  Stroll to Gung Dong or Dunsan-Dong and hopefully find somewhere satisfactory or jump the subway to Eunnangdong and similarly keep our fingers crossed.  We ruled Dunsan out quickly enough, comparing it to a Temple Bar of sorts.  Eunhang-Dong was next to go for fear that the hunger grumps would get us after a half an hour on the subway.  To Gung-Dong it was without much hope that we’d find something totally satisfactory.

The River on a Nice Sunny Day

As I said though, it was a lovely day, there was a slight nip in the air but the sun was shinning and there were plenty of people out and about, strolling along the river bank.  After crossing the river and coming up to the road just at the edge of Gung-Dong, Nick let out a little yelp ‘Play Burger! What’s that?’  That’s a burger joint in Dunsan I remember hearing good things about is what it is! ‘Yes! Let’s go!’  Delighted with ourselves, we were too excited to wait for the green man to cross the road and ran across to various stares and the odd car horn beep!

After such initial excitement, opening the door of Play Burger and going in, could have been a massive disappointment but it wasn’t.  It was like we’d just stepped out of South Korea and into a cosmopolitan European city cafe.  Very Exciting!  The first such place we’ve been in since we’ve been here, which incidentally is almost exactly four months now.  The menu was just burgers, not that you’d expect much else given the name of the place.  No explanations, just the names of each one in an altogether too cool for school minimalist menu, but with lovely friendly prices to boot!  The menu said they were committed to using the freshest of produce and that everything was made in-house and judging by what we were presented with they weren’t lying!  I don’t think either of us spoke for about fifteen minutes apart from the old yelp or exclamation of joy!  A burger too big to pick up, crammed with goodies, a massive green salad, a couple of hash browns and a re-fillable drink all for just over a fiver! 

 Nick Lookin' Chuffed With Himself!

The Best Burger in Korea

After eating and drinking our fill we headed off in search of a coffee, feeling pretty content with life!  Little did we know the day was going to get better!  We found this tiny little cafe with kitch decor and a bit of a French feel to it.  I ordered a hot chocolate not really feeling like a caffeine hit and my god was I glad I did when it came.  It was a cup of melted chocolate with a little jug of steamed milk to add to it.  I was tempted to leave the milk out of it altogether!

 The Spoon Was As Delighted As I Was!

I Put Nicks Spoon into My Chocolate Too So He Could Join the Fun! 

We were trying to think of what we’d do next, eating and drinking had been well and truely ticked at this stage which made thinking of something a bit difficult.  I had a vague memory of someone telling me about a cafe near by there where you could sit and play board games so we headed off in search of said place.  We found it, but it was shut.  Done and dusted, never to open again.  Big sad face.  A spanner in our almost perfect day.  Until we turned around and saw it across the street.  Delighted once more, off we went hoping we’d find a game of scrabble, in English and not Hangul.  We did!  I ordered a couple of drinks, Nick went off in search of the facilities, we snagged the game of scrabble and plonked ourselves down at a table.  Next thing I knew, Nick was saying he was hungry and it was 8pm!  What a day!    

Serious Scrabble Face!

Skiing in Pyeongchang

The Ski Season in Phoenix Park officially ended last weekend.  As a result, there were some pretty good deals to be hand.  A company called Adventure Korea was offering transport to and from Seoul, accommodation just off piste, lift pass and equipment rental all for 70,000won (about50euro).  Although it hasn't snowed all that much this winter, Pyeongchang, the area where Phoenix Park is, is due to host the Winter Olympics in 2018 so we figured the snow'd have to be half decent!  We booked the KTX, or fast train, for Friday night at 10, thinking we'd be up to Seoul by 11, find somewhere to stay and then meet up with the group the next morning.

Pyeongchang as seen from a cable car

We'd had a bit of a rough day in work, Fridays in general are never that nice, so when the train came and there was someone in one of our seats we weren't too shy about waking him up and telling him to clear off.  We caused a bit of a commotion, and the man didn't budge.  A ticket inspecter came along though so we thought he'd sort the eejit out for us.  Turns out, we were the eejits.  We were on the wrong train!  It was still going to Seoul though, just going there a bit slower, so it was almost midnight when we arrived, without a notion of where we might stay.  We had planned to stay in a jjimjilbang, but neither of us having been to one yet, we decided that we'd try and find a cheap love motel instead.  We found one without too much hassle and just as I sat down on the bed I realised that I hadn't a notion as to where we were meant to be meeting the group the next morning!  I had to ring a friend in Daejeon to get her to look it up.  With panic number two over I was out like a light.

I'd set the alarm before going to sleep but got woken by a text message.  Who the hell is texting me before half six in the morning I wondered.  The answer was nobody.  It wasn't half six.  It was ten past eight.  Forty mins AFTER the meeting time.  I had somehow managed to set the alarm for 8:45.  Brilliant!  Panic number three!  I've never seen either of us get up and dressed and out the door so quickly!  We jumped a taxi to the bus station and bought a ticket to Pyeongchang, then belted across the road to a PC Bang (internet cafe) to look up the phone number of the guy we were meant to meet and tell him we were chasing them!  Got it, legged it back to the bus station with about 5 minutes to spare and finally let out a massive sigh of relief!

After a particularly wobbly start, everything else went as smoothly as you'd hope for.  We arrived, met the guy, dumped our stuff in our room, got our pass and gear and jumped into a cable car.  The day had been pretty overcast up to that point, it even tried to snow a few times but as we got to the top of the mountain the sun came out.  It was so nice to be back in the mountains on a pair of skis.  I really want to do another ski season, being there just gave me the thirst for blood!

The view from the top

Acting the eejit

Nick stylin' it

The lift passes are structured in a slightly odd way.  There are morning ones, afternoon ones, and two night time ones.  Ours went from 12:30pm to 4:30pm and from 6:00pm to 11:00pm but there was another one you could get from 11:00pm to 02:00am.  I couldn't believe the number of headbangers out on the slopes 'til that time.  I suppose if you do work like a lunatic and that's the only chance you get to hit the slopes you would, still seems a bit crazy to me though.

Night Skiing

This should read 'Play Hard, Drink Hard, Smoke Hard, but only after you've worked hard too'!

The slopes were dominated by boarders.  There were very few skiers to be seen.  And the get up on the lot of them was crazy.  Ski slopes can be fashion shows at the best of times but this was something else.  Everything was brand new and all designer.  They seemed to treat their boards quite carelessly, and it seems on purpose.  There's an overwhelming sense of being 'too cool for school' about the place.  Although I suppose if you work like a lunatic, splashing out on new snowboarding kit probably seems like a very worthwhile expense.

Nick desperating searching through his phrase book to chat up one such boarder!

Anyway...got on the slopes and got back into the swing of things fairly quickly.  Had a brilliant day despite my boots being the smallest, most uncomfortable pair in the world and my ski's never having been edged or waxed!  Filled up on a load of sundubu jigae, hit the sauna to ease the aches, had a few beers and fell asleep feeling pretty content with the world!!

Smallest Ski Boots in the World...barely came past my ankle!

2012: The Year Of Joseph Kony's Demise?

I came across this video (http://vimeo.com/37119711) on Facebook a few days ago. Since then it's been shared and re-shared a mind boggling number of times.  Before I’d watched it, The LRA, or Lord’s Resistance Army, was an organistation that rang very distant bells in my mind, nothing more.  Who they were, or what they did I couldn’t’ve told you.  As for Joseph Kony, the leader of the organisation, my response would’ve been ‘Joseph who?’.

After watching it, I cannot believe that I wasn’t aware of Kony’s existance.  All well and good recognising the organisations name, but not knowing the name of the person or people behind said organisation leaves you a little bit on the ignorant side of things!  Invisible Children, the people behind the above video, state that Kony’s rebel war is the longest running war in Africa.  A war that forces children, known as night commuters, to travel from their homes each night to the relative safety of a town, to avoid being kidnapped by Kony’s cronies.  And I hadn’t heard of him.  Embassing?  Disgraceful?  A typical westerner with a disbelieving what-difference-can-I-make attitude?  All of the above?

Watch the video.  It's half an hour.  Its powerful.  Its moving. Watch it and then decide for yourself whether you should pledge your support to Invisible Children or not. There are always two sides to every story.

If you want the other side, you could start here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/reality-check-with-polly-curtis/2012/mar/08/kony-2012-what-s-the-story

http://www.hugoodoherty.com/2012/03/08/a-hypothetical-kony-2012-situation-success/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=KLVY5jBnD-E

Valentines Day

These chocolates were on my desk when we got into work yesterday.  Valentines Day pressies from the boss!
It seems to be a pretty big deal in Korea.  All the kids in school kept saying to us on Tuesday 'Valentine Day tomorrow teacher!'.  In South Korea, and in Japan as well as far as I'm aware, it's traditional for the girls to give the boys chocolates so lots of Nicks students yesterday asked him if I'd given him any!