Story #4: Move to Africa

Story #4:  Move to Africa
By Arman

When my father announced we were all moving to Africa, we were all shocked. We had been living in Bangkok, Thailand for so long, it didn’t seem like 6 years had passed since we had moved from Canada, where I had been born 13 years prior, in Winnipeg, Manitoba.  At the time my father had progressively worked for Indian Affairs and Parks Canada and with the Canadian Air Force as a civilian engineer.   

All that changed when my father received a mid-level offer to start as an officer with the United Nations Economic And Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP). I was six; my sister Sabrina was one or two.  After six years and numerous international tours, based from Thailand, we had diversified our international portfolio.   

My mother loved Bangkok, as we were only a few hours away by plane from my grandparents in Chittagong, Bangladesh.   We had been seeing them each year - either we would go visit them or they would visit us.  Bangkok at the time was just emerging  into the metropolitan hub for Asia and the Pacific it was destined to become.   One person I knew once described Bangkok as “Capitalism gone wild”.

I don’t think any of us was too eager to move to Africa.   Life had become too comfortable in Bangkok.  We had moved locally once after the initial move from Canada to Thailand - from soi 18 to soi 12; closer to the International school (ISB), where I had grown from grade one to six.   So close, we would walk each day.

 My sister Sabrina was entrenched in kindergarten with a solid group of her friends, and my mother had her upscale circle of friends (usually diplomatic wives) and kept busy managing our household, our social life with Purabi, among other organizations we belonged to.   Purabi was the social orgazation linking Bangladeshi expatriate families living in Bangkok;   There were cultural shows, kids and even adults doing plays, dances and songs.  Its membership included the big boss of ESCAP, Mr. Kibria, who later became Finance minister.
As a rambunctious kid, I remember running around in his house during a Purabi social event.   He had arranged to have waiters carrying silver trays with drinks and hors d'oeuvres.
I ran into one of these busboys and got a cut on my cheek, I wear till today - 3 stitches.   3 of many as life went on in the life of Arman.   I recall, Mr. Kibria scolding me as I was lying at the hospital after stitches,  thinking “I’ve suffered for my folly… give me a break… Sir”.

But we had more pleasant memories / experiences than otherwise.
We all had our friends and community.   We also maintained links to our Canadian heritage - we visited the embassy for social events like Christmas, Canada Day, and Easter.  I went through Boy Scouts training,  which was a little different than the Beaver Scouts I’d started in Canada,  but I made sure I earned every badge I could.

Living in the villa we were at, just before we left, we had access to three different pools in the neighbourhood.   I earned my swimming badge at the Siam Villa apartment pool.

Abba had then just recently come back from Africa.   He had gone to South Africa and Namibia and a few other countries as part of a UN team to monitor their elections.  I had been so afraid of him going… the UN had issued him a bulletproof jacket and a helmet because the last team the UN had sent had been bombed.   Fear! - That was what affected my mindset at the time.   It wasn’t too far off from what we were going to face.

Abba was climbing up the ranks of the UN and had just been offered a Director position in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.  Africa was just so far from everything we were used to.  Bangkok was home.

We would travel every other year around the world to visit Canada and en route, visit our extended family and sometimes 5 other countries we’d pass through on the way to Canada and 5 more on the way back.   Thailand was almost completely around the globe from Winnipeg and each year or two years, we had home leave and thus several amazing world tours as we spanned different countries and my father aimed further at his goal of spanning six continents.

Ethiopia at the time was perspectively remote - off Centre and away from everything for us and seemed a different world.   Canada and Bangladesh were in opposite directions and for our home leave, we would travel to Canada through Europe, rather than east to Bangladesh.  

However, since Ethiopia was a hardship station, we would therein be travelling every year, rather than once every two.   We used our time in Canada to stock up for a year and ship necessary goods - like toilet paper, rice crispies and Kraft dinner, among other things.

In  1991, Ethiopia was ruled by a communist social Marxist government led by its dictator, Mengistu.  For 20 years, it had been embroiled in civil war leading to years of famine, that were highlighted in the USA for Africa campaign, We Are the world.

For my father, it was a step up to senior UN Officer.  For the rest of us, we were taking a step back.  This difference became more important later in my life and may have played a factor into how things turned out.  I, personally was so afraid to go..  all my friends thought Ethiopia was a desert full of starving people who would say “food food food” when I’d be parachuted down out of the plane like a care package.  


Some people were pretty dumb back then in those times and in sixth grade. - We weren’t woke.  Plus,  I was more often bullied prior to grade six,  being a little chubby and not being distinctly charming, although having made distinction academically.   I was firmly planted in the nerd category and subject often to chides and jokes by the cooler kids.   I was happy in what I was and didn’t really feel any desire to be or for anything but to maintain the course.

When I was in sixth grade,  my best friend was Tarique and a close second was Sukhbir.   They were boys living in the apartment across from our villa.  We listened to Phil Collin’s singing “A Groovy Kind of Love” so many times,   Just cause we were boys hanging out, talking about our respective crushes, who most likely had no idea.  We were very close, our pack of friends, meeting every day. All that changed.  I never had contact with Sukhbir again,  and Tarique was sporadic in his emails back and forth.   We didn’t even get back in touch till much later.

I had always had two lives while in Bangkok:   Me at school and me at home.   I was academically inclined at school, earning whatever distinctions were available, but not as able to compete athletically with the bigger, stronger boys. At home, I was athletic and more inclined to physically exert in activities like biking, skateboarding, swimming or roller skating.   I had a fixed routine I followed, including out of house time (exploration or activities)  and homework, and dinner with the family every day.  


Africa


When we arrived in Africa,  even the flight in terrified me.   I saw below what seemed like an interminable expanse of desert and remembered my un-woke friends’ comments.   Then we crossed a mountain range and entered Addis Ababa.  

Addis Ababa means new flower in Amharic,  the Ethiopian national language.  The city is situated at 2,440 m above sea-level on a plateau surrounded by hills and mountains. Addis Ababa is Ethiopia's largest city and its administrative and communications centre.  

When we flew over the mountains and hills onto the plateau, all I saw was green.   So beautiful and so strange that a plateau of green goodness would be nestled on top of mountains and hills like a flower or a jewel.

Ethiopia had the potential to be the breadbasket for all of Africa.   The emperor who had it built was savvy and his line was revered as the Lion of Judea and even worshipped by Rastafarian’s, who maintained a community in Ethiopia and lauded Haile Selassie in Jamaica through Bob Marley’s music and espoused Rasta doctrine.

Addis was chosen as capital because the emperor at the time wanted a capital, safe from invasion- where soldiers posted along the hills would have advance warning of any advancing enemy.

Once I arrived in Addis with my family, we were met at the airport by an official from the UN who arranged transportation to our new home - the National Hotel- where we would stay for years until we found a suitable house to move to.

The National Hotel was a few minutes walk from Africa Hall - the United Nations centre of activities for all their operations.  It was also next to a beautiful garden between us and the Ghion hotel, where we would often go for swims and walks later on.  For upper scale dining and weekends, th Hilton was 10 minutes away and it showcased the strong Italian and emerging western influences beginning to grow.

At the time we arrived,  I was glad not to be received as food,  but I was nervous about my new school- meeting friends?  I turned 13 and my father, mother and sister Sabrina, who was 7, helped me celebrate at the restaurant near the lobby of the hotel.  I remember we ate Hungarian goulash,  which was a new food to me, but not bad and considering my increasing appetite, I was chowing down and increasing my lean muscle mass.   

Although I was feeling down because I missed my old life, I was resolved to enter my new life on a strong foot. I explored the surroundings as much as I could, often going for long hikes or exploring shallow riverbeds.   I didn’t make many friends yet, but my father assured me when school started, there would be a whole new Community.  One of the few friends we met were a Pakistani family who lived in our building and had a daughter about my age named Sarwat and a son about Sabrina’s age named Ali.   We used to socialize as families quite often and as kids, we used to hang out almost every day.

Our suite on the hotel‘s 5th floor covered 1/3 of the entire level - had three bedrooms, two bathrooms and a huge living/dining room and a kitchen.   The entrance foyer was so spacious, I often played soccer with my kid sister there.

As I had always had two lives while in Bangkok, I tried to reconcile myself to start seventh grade as a new person.   All summer, I exercised relentlessly with the new energy I suppose the age demographic at the time afforded me.   I lifted weights, did pushups, sit ups and went for morning runs and afternoon walks around the laps of garden that surrounded us.

I truly started to bloom in the new flower and by the time school started, several things happened that changed our family dynamic.   As I got stronger and met more people in the surrounding area, my social skills concepts evolved.  I met new friends, in particular Andreas and Bashar, who was the son of the Iraqi ambassador.    We would meet and go for a few laps’ walk.

On the other hand, Sabrina tested so high in her school admissions tests, the school The International Community School (ICS) suggested she skip a grade and go straight into grade 2.  Although she would be younger than all the other students, they felt and convinced my parents that she would thrive more, overcome social hurdles and accomplish more by being challenged.   Time reveals what we didn’t know then, but from my perspective,  it put her on a solid path and brought more balance to our respective lives.   Although I had initially been shocked they wanted Sabrina to skip a grade and not me;   When I started grade 7;  I was glad to enter where I was and become/progress to be a bigger fish in a smaller pond.

This game of adjustment is one we play many times in our lives;   As we face new challenges, accomplishments and cross milestones.   I’d become a teenager in Thailand,  thinking I’d learn how to be cool someday and maybe in Ethiopia start a new cool life, not knowing what that means.   But when I started at ICS,  I had grown a few inches, packed on some solid work-out buff- and developed confidence through developing friendships, I learned I could learn how to define cool, not just be cool.

I started 7th grade and immediately developed a crush on a cute Yugoslavian girl named Emira.   As was my practice at the time, she had no idea of my feelings for her;  and it seemed later on, nor did I of hers for me.

I learned later on that she had had a crush on me because of my confidence in class and how I tackled problems and issues that arose.   Yet,  I didn’t know how to talk to girls.   I had little experience and little confidence in this emerging arena that was about to be home front and Center of my life, unexpectedly.

By the time Emira learned “officially” about my crush on her, I’d made several failed efforts to communicate with her through coded notes, innuendo, talking to all her friends, and suggestions.  By the time I crashed through upon realization, like Frankenstein on a pumpkin patch, the whole school knew of my crush and yet, I kept fooling myself,  thinking she didn’t know;   Because in my mind, if she did, she would respond and things would get easier.  But she was comfortably in the friend zone.

She did respond eventually, after I even talked with some of my teachers, Mr. Anthony and Ms. Slawson on the best way I could  approach a girl I  have a crush on.  Their advice was stellar- my actions probably less than.    They told me just tell her.   

I asked for her phone number and started a friendship with Emira, wherein we would talk as friends about schoolwork and other things, but neither of us revealed our hidden crush on each other with each other, had no expectations and would remain willfully blind, although the whole school knew.   We became good friends.   But she always knew I liked her more than she liked me.   That was the thing that bothered me.  We were entrapped in the twilight friend zone - nothing more.

I had crossed the Indian Ocean to come to an African country and meet perhaps my first love: a little Bosnian girl who was top of our class.   One day in school, our teachers were discussing the honour roll and when it would be revealed.   Our class had a discussion without the teachers about who would be on top.   Emira commented to me then and during our daily phone calls, that she knew it would be either her or me.   

I told her we would make a good high school couple, if she wanted to be my girlfriend.   She didn’t respond as I’d hoped - she said I’m not charming; and it became a competition that neither of us could win.  I resolved to work on my personality, language and charm.   You could say, she was among those who cast a spark that ignited a firework of motivation in me.

By this time, I’d spent a lot of time on my own working out, making friends and increasingly on the phone.   In addition to Emira, I’d formed friendships with many of the guys and more than a few girls in our grade and even some older boys and girls had started to notice me, because I wasn’t the typical demographic.   I wasn’t black or white- I’m brown.  There were also a significant number of Arabs in our class, made up of children of the diplomatic and business community of upper echelon Addis Ababa.

 Emira’s best friend was the daughter of one of the teachers in our school, Rebekah.    Sheis half Ethiopian and half American.   Ato Negash was not our teacher yet, but he would be eventually be our science teacher in a few years and although a sizeable amount of the boys in school had a crush on her, they kept distance, because of her father. I asked her to teach me charm.   And we enjoyed many phone discussions as friends developing conversation skills and developing areas I could improve.  

In my moment of darkness and loneliness from perceived rejection,  I called my new best friend, Rebekah.    She hadn’t been very happy in her friendship with Emira and she and I had developed a spirited friendly relationship helping each other in schoolwork and just getting to know each other;   Me with a view to influencing Emira;   But that was a goal that was never reached and a peak that was never to have been achieved for various reasons.

Emira once told me I was not charming.   She told me, the mystery of not knowing me fueled her crush but learning what I was like through daily interaction revealed me to be boring.   I had asked her,  “what is not boring”;  she responded “someone dangerous?”.

I told her “I don’t want to be dangerous.   I’d rather be a nice guy guy even if I finish last.   However,  as had become practice, I’d call Rebekah after my call with Emira and ask her how I could become more dangerous

Of course, after the question was put in perspective, it sounded silly and after time puts everything into perspective. It becomes more bizarre. ;  The whole ecperience became charm school of feeling with extremes- two girls who were best friends, dealing with a guy who had intermittent emotions for both of them.

In many ways, I learned how to balance different sides of myself by our conversations and my friendships with others in our community.   I was increasingly on the phone to talk with friends, review class notes and plan things.   My mother would chide me for having so many different girls calling me.   All in all,  the transition to Africa had been smooth if not painless.    Our experiences would soon escalate, but I’ll save that for the next chapter/story.