#repat

brain:

brain: “You wanna say the same stuff over and over again just because you think it’s funny?

When I moved away (twice), people would make comments that I admit, at the time, boosted me a little. “Wow, you’re so brave to move to a country where you barely know anyone, all by yourself.” That didn’t scare me, that excited me. It just pumped me up.

There were days and nights where I cried. Hard. In Prague, during that awkward phase where the company-paid temporary apartment was gone but my shipment from the US hadn’t arrived yet, and my local paychecks hadn’t started coming in, there was a solid month where I slept in my new but empty apartment on the cold hard floor, using a tablecloth that a previous tenant had left behind as a blanket. (Yes, I washed it, sickos.)  It was that phase of “I don’t want to buy anything because I there are several blankets in my container,” and also, “I have 300 Czech crowns left in my bank account, so I should probably use them for food.”  That was a shitty month.

In Rio, there was a period at the beginning when, not only did cariocas make plans with me and not show up (I later learned and embraced that this is just part of the local culture), but I was also without my shipment and everything that could possibly go wrong with an apartment did. One night after work, when my phone wasn’t charged and I was sleeping on a single mattress on the floor (upgrade since Prague though, hey-oh!) with a pile of my own clothes as a pillow, my walls started to leak water and my electricity stopped working. There had been a storm that day and I thought it was the whole building, until I opened my door and saw under the other apartment doors that everyone else was fine. 

Those were hard times, man. I had those moments of, “Why did I come here?” and wanting to give up and go home. But they were fleeting blips on the timeline of two amazing experiences. Experiences that today, I look back on with pure fondness - even those bad moments, because I smile when I realize I got through them.

But coming back...

Coming back should have been easy, right? Back to my old house, to my family, to my old friends, to my old colleagues, to my same job. How could that be hard? Well, something I knew on a superficial level but never allowed to sink in was that life didn’t stop while I was gone.

My old lunch crew had bonded for four years, and all of them either got married, had kids, had multiple kids, or left the company. I had expected not to be up to speed on every aspect of their lives; I hadn’t expected not to be invited anymore.

My best friend and I skyped at least weekly the whole time I was gone. I had expected that we would both be busier now; I hadn’t expected that I would be able to count on one hand the number of times I saw her in person over 5 months.

I had expected to feel different for having lived abroad; I hadn’t expected to feel like a ghost.

This article, and others like it, explain that feeling pretty well. 

I find that initiating change is really helping me through it. Discovering what actually matters to me, and I’m taking steps toward that now. I realized that I have way too much stuff and I’ve decided to go minimalist, for one. Not one of those that you see on documentaries whose house is just a room and a single chair, but in the sense that I want everything in my home to have a purpose, even if that purpose is just making me happy.

For example, when I went to Costa Rica for work, I was on my own for a whole weekend. I decided to take a city bus to this artsy town about an hour outside of San José, and I got there just by asking around and relying on the kindness of locals (note: Ticos are VERY kind.)  When I arrived, I found a shop that had gorgeous wood carvings, decorations, from these incredible woods that I’d never seen before. One was purple - naturally purple! - and I found a gorgeous bowl. The kind you’d set on your coffee table. And I try to keep my souvenirs to a minimum, but I just knew that bowl had to go home with me. I went on to have an amazing day - I met a taxi driver at a little bar who offered to take me on a scenic drive and then back to the bus station for a really low price, just because he wanted to practice his English and loved to show off his country. He stopped along the way for me to take pictures, to see a beautiful church, to see a little waterfall. We didn’t keep in touch but he was just a kind local that I’ll always remember. So when I see that bowl, I think of him, of that day, of that feeling of navigating a new country all alone, and the satisfaction I felt when I plopped into bed at the end of that day. I’m not getting rid of that bowl.

But the crappy lavender-scented candle that I got as a grab bag gift at some party I hadn’t wanted to go to anyway? The one I keep holding on to despite the fact that I’m not really a candle person, just because “it’s good and I shouldn’t throw it away”? That needs to go.

I always dreamed of having blue walls. I’m going to paint my walls blue. 

And damnit, I’m going to make myself happy, because nobody else is going to. (No offense to my husband. Of course he makes me happy. Swoon swoon, heart heart.)

Anyway, this got kind of random, but my main point was this: being a “repat” is harder than being an expat ever was. 

Lets’s face it. Everyone has their favorite items in the kitchen cupboard that you always turn to, but what happens when you move overseas to a place like Senegal? Senegal is full of fresh markets and food being sold right outside. The weather is always perfect for it. Fresh fruits and vegetables, hot, steamy French binays right out the fryer. Don’t get me wrong, I love Senegalese food, especially the lack of preservatives in their foods, but I found that some days I was missing some of my American favorites.

So what do you do when you want something that is not readily available in the grocery store? Well.... you sit down to your nearest computer or smart device and look up the up the recipe. What if all the items are not readily available? Be creative and find substitutes.

What I have found is Senegal offers everything we have in America, we just have to make it from scratch. So bring your food processor, blender, and toaster oven (you may want to bake some small things).

Some of my personal favorites are grits and peanut butter, Peanut butter is fairly easy and cheap to make here. For heavens sake, peanuts are grown in Senegal. Grind up some peanuts, add a little oil, honey or sugar and wha-laa. There you have it! Fresh peanut butter, no preservatives, made to your liking. What about grits you ask? Well, I have recently found that grits are just ground up corn. So we buy a bag of corn from the local store below my apartment, send it to the grinder, and boil, boil, boil it. It takes a little longer, but with a little butter and salt, it is delightful!

My personal favorite is Reese cups, however, a little homemade peanut butter topped with chocolate spread does the trick every single time.

If you ever find that you just can’t find what you are looking for (which is highly unlikely) just have a friend send or bring it to you from the states. Americans are always coming over to Senegal!

New Post has been published on http://www.therakyatpost.com/uncategorized/2015/01/08/cafe-neo-aims-africas-starbucks/

Cafe Neo aims to be Africa's Starbucks

LAGOS, Jan 8:

Men in suits order takeaway cappuccinos at the counter. A trendy young crowd occupies comfortable sofas, armed with laptops for a brain-storming session over cafe lattes, frappuccinos and soft jazz.

The morning scene wouldn’t raise an eyebrow in New York,  London or Paris but cafe culture is a new phenomenon in Nigeria’s biggest city, where until recently finding a decent espresso was a battle.

The bright young things and senior managers were in Cafe Neo, on Victoria Island in Lagos, which has been specifically designed to cater to the tastes of “repats”.

Ngozi Dozie and his brother Chijoke created the chain with returning Nigerians in mind, in the full knowledge that years spent abroad alter views, tastes and expectations.

Now the brothers hope to conquer Africa’s major cities with 100% African coffee before giants of the business such as Starbucks try to capture the market.

“The demand (in Lagos) is very high. There’s a significant minority of people who love coffee and want to drink coffee but haven’t had access to coffee,” said Ngozi.

The “significant minority” have studied and worked abroad, coming back in their thousands from the US or Europe as austerity measures kicked in after the global financial crisis.

While they were away, Nigeria – already Africa’s most populous nation with some 170 million people – became the continent’s leading economy – and a country ripe with opportunity.

With economic growth has come an emerging middle class, which has increased six-fold to 4.1 million households between 2000 and 2014, according to a recent study by Standard Bank.

A number of US chains such as KFC and Domino’s Pizza are already in Nigeria and increasingly popular, despite the astronomical costs of running a business in the country.

Poor or non-existent infrastructure forces businesses to rely on huge electricity generators to keep the lights on when the public supply goes off, sometimes for up to 12 hours a day.

The brothers’ idea is to first conquer the Nigerian market before Starbucks, which has more than 20,000 cafes in 65 countries across the globe but none in sub-Saharan Africa.

Ngozi Dozie is not yet 40 and is himself a “repat”. Before embarking on the business venture, he knew friends who would bring back bags of coffee from the US.

He said he was inspired by India, where Cafe Coffee Day has largely cornered the market, despite the increasing presence of international chains such as Britain’s Costa Coffee or Starbucks.

“India is a fantastic example with Cafe Coffee Day,” he explained. “We aim at something similar.

“We’re starting young right now and our aim is to grow as such that yes, Starbucks may come, but we want to be the choice of Nigerians, because there’s that affinity with something that comes from here, in Africa.”

Neo has three cafes currently in Lagos and two others are scheduled to open early this year.

There is another outlet in Kigali. All the cafes only serve 100% Rwandan arabica, which has become one of its main selling points.

The chain is hoping to branch out across Africa and expects to have between 20 and 30 cafes in Lagos alone within the next four years.

“Neo, in Tswana, the language in Botswana, means ‘gift’, and of course it also means ‘new’ in Latin,” said Dozie.

“So, it’s a new way… a new approach to coffee,  a new approach where we, as Africans, drink the coffee that we produce, that’s been a gift for us, as opposed to exporting it and importing sub-grade coffee.”

Africa’s main coffee producers such as Ethiopia, Uganda and Rwanda currently export most of their products to the US and Europe.

Kayitana John Bosco was brought over to Nigeria from Rwanda to train locals on how to make a proper coffee at Cafe Neo — and said it was time for a change.

“Our first coffee tree was planted in 1904,” he said of his homeland. “We’ve been producing coffee for more than a century. But brewing, the consumption… it’s really still down.

“I visited a coffee farmer in 2007. That old man had been doing coffee farming for 20 years, but he didn’t know the taste of it.