suggzy

A little more for you.

Oh dear, it’s been two, and nearly three whole months!

Such is life – and a busy life it’s been indeed. Allow me to explain myself:

Since last I battered out an update for you on life, I have seen off my Desert Cough, dropped in on Ethiopia, charmed Ghana in wildly inappropriate dress, been to the UK three times, and Beirut and Istanbul once each. I have had four job interviews and come second, twice. Pah. Although, I am now writing at the point of shifting off to the UK again next week, for a final crack at securing the future before my time here in the sandpit concludes, so who knows what’s going to happen next, eh? Still inclined to be positive, although spending the rest of the weekend learning about tertiary education in Ireland and the Netherlands isn’t one’s fundamental plan for the enjoyment of the weekend downtime. Still, BeIN Sports is showing the Test Match, so there’s some background enjoyment to be had.

I have run a load more miles (412 and counting, as I type), finalised my Summer Holiday (five South American countries? Yes please), watched a great load of the World Cup football and, sort of after no time at all, begun to plan my return to Blighty. A few weeks ago this involved me in an evening meeting with the splendid Mr Mao, who will be taking care of shipping my nugatory possessions back to the parentals’ place in the South East. He found all my jokes funny, was doubled-up with amusement at the modesty of my possessions (“two mugs?? Really?!”), and frankly it was so odd but enjoyable having the rarity of a guest on the property that I almost asked him to stay for dinner.

As this goes up, it’s only seven weeks to go until I hand over my keys and this adventure has a line drawn under it. Mixed feelings about that. It was always a time-limited  gig, and I am sure my wife and dog will be at least relatively pleased to see me swan back into their lives. I miss them awfully, some days. Happily SWK and I are going to have a quick week of late-Summer Sun in Cyprus as I begin my journey back, so that will be lovely. However it would be nice if I wasn’t coming up to the finishing line when it is as utterly and ridiculously hot as it is right now, over here. Of course, I’m not a complete idiot – I always knew that life over here would probably see me cope without any thermals, but truly, the Summer is a nasty nasty joke of a thing. In some ways, 117 degrees Fahrenheit is actually liveable, when the humidity is at zero. Its’s just plan hot. If making for a trip outside, don’t hang about, try not to get the bald patch singed, and the job’s a good ‘un.

But now, as the Creator’s little joke, it’s getting humid as well. And plenty humid at that. The air is turning to a pulverising, oxygen-free swimming pool, coated with dust, and it’s bloody knackering doing anything other than typing or mooching about in air-con. The weekly trip to Carrefour is something one has to coax oneself into doing – 117 becomes 127 and more. Quietly starving to death seems like a better option than going out there, into that. The disappointing consequence of all of this is that my last few weeks, other than for my holiday, will be spent pretty much exclusively indoors, much like Morrissey writing to his buck-toothed girl in Luxembourg. Before he got a bit Brexity and racist, anyway. No more strolling up and down the Corniche at the weekend. No more forays to the Souq. It’s Just Too Hot. Cabin Fever reigns, here in #2304.

Moan moan moan.

Yes, it’s been busy, but it’s been ace, and there’s more fun stuff to come as I rattle round South America in a few weeks. At least I can do so in the firm knowledge that even if someone uploads a bucket of Yellow Fever over me, I’ll not be catching it. No indeed, for I have a lifelong inoculation against it now, don’t you know? Oh yes. Yes indeed. Mine for the generous price of £109, for a drop of fluid less than that which goes in the tank of my e-cigarette. Still, whatever. I gather Yellow Fever does kill some people, so better to be safe than sorry. Except, really, when I went into the Yellow Fever zone it was only a day or two after the jab, and as such the Live Virus (for it is that) was not in my system yet. I had happy visions of it lighting up like Eddie from the 80’s Ready Brek adverts..

..but it’s not proved to be the case. A shame, as it would have saved on the lighting bills, and been handy in the event of a power-cut.

I had the jab in preparation for a recruiting trip to Ghana, which no doubt I will come back to at some point in the future. It was a fine trip, done in the fine company of a new friend. And it was successful trip. However, despite being armed with my Yellow Fever Certificate, it didn’t begin that smoothly when I entered the country, instructed, as I had been, to get a visa on arrival. Yours for a bargain price, oh venerable international delegate, it said – or something like that, anyway.

Ethiopian Airways deposited me first on the fringes of a field in Addis Ababa, in the later hours of the morning of the day I travelled to Ghana. I was due to change planes, which was a relief, as the first flight had largely consisted on Ethiopians sleeping on me, which and whatever seat I attempted to use. What didn’t happen, that warm morning, was any entry to the airport (a collection of buildings in the far off distance). Indeed, to my surprise, we were rather left to it, us passengers. No bus, no barked directions. All a bit DIY, compared to landing in, say, Austria or the United States, where a false move lands you in trouble, as we have seen.

After a while, I thought I would take in the scenery, and went for a little stroll. I meandered into the fields, wandered over to some thoroughly bored bovines, and took some pictures of some rusting farm machinery, and had a cheeky drag on my e-cigarette. I decided, then and there, that I was technically in Ethiopia, and it was going on the list. Customs and Borders are just annoying human constructs – cows and combines are the stuff of real life. And so, I mentally ticked it off, and added it to the ever-growing list on my mobile. If one day this becomes a more structured look back on the life of one who claims to have visited all countries of the world (an unlikely set of circumstances, although I have now set my heart on 100), then there can be some manner of investigation of The Rules.

Quickly, it became quite hot. To my lasting amusement, the only way of getting out of the Sun was to seek shelter from it underneath the plane that had delivered me into this land of poorly-organised aviation and half-hearted livestock. I sat by my hand luggage for some time, chatted to my fellow passengers (unperturbed and evidently used to all of this) and awaited news. It came, in the end, in the form of a rather urgent bus. It felt as if the penny had dropped, back at the depot, and that it might be best for everyone if we were filtered onto a few other flights. We were zoomed around the airfield, and soon enough I was prodded up some steps, some papers were torn and photos scrutinised, and we were on our way once again. A quieter flight, on a nicer plane. Sleep followed, and soon we were barreling West, over the likes of Togo and Benin.

Back to it, then, on landing in Accra. I knew a few basics from my reading, and Sarah the First’s tales of her life there, volunteering, at the turn of the century. She had managed to perform with distinction, had slaughtered a goat and caught malaria twice. In all honesty I was hoping for a quieter time, modest local colour, and not exhausting too much energy, as I was due to try and charm an interview panel in Liverpool the following week.

So in we scuttled, and it was off to Visa on Arrival with me. The familiar parade of armed soldiers that seems to follow me wherever I go, and no real sense of what was going on in any way. I picked the likeliest queue I could find, got given a form to fill in and was sent away. The form was badly photocopied – much like the sort one got at school on which to fill in the answers to a French listening comprehension test (LC – or ‘Elsie’ as my friend Simon used to write on his paper). I filed into another queue, deposited my form and with it everything I felt that the huge, gregarious-seeming fellow on the desk might want to pour over to establish the truth behind my tale. I was told to wait, and I waited.

In the end, not for too long. I was told to join another queue, and there at the end of it was a cashier holding my prize, neatly gummed into a distant page of my passport. He brought us quickly to the matter of my fee:

“That is $75 dollahs please, Missah Cox” he rumbled at me, most beautifully (I kid myself I have a deep voice and a cool accent – I don’t – Ghanaian officials win this one every time).

“Super – thanks very much” I came back, and proffered our flexible friend.

“No credit cards friend – only cash here”.

“Ah” said I. “Awfully sorry – I’m without cash… is there an ATM nearby that I could use to pay in Cedi?” I asked.

My chum the other side of the glass was a bit dumbfounded by all this. He pulled out a calculator the size of a 60’s typewriter, and established what I would need to pay.

“No cash machines this side of passport control, Missah Cox. I will keep your papers – you explain to them you need to get through and get the money, then we will talk again”.

There seemed, on the face of it, to be some failures of logic in all of this, but I figured I had lived 44+ years with plenty of those, so would just give it my best charm and bumble and we’d see how things went.

And they went pretty well. Okay, yes, I was captured on a thermal imaging camera, and had to do an amount of explaining to a lady on a car hire desk who took a sudden interest in me, and I just talked to the man on passport for so long and in such a convoluted manner about my present predicament that eventually he glazed over and waved me through. Evidently a nearby soldier hat witnessed my illegal entry into Ghana, as he spotted me head from there to the cash machine (thank the Lord that was working), and then felt it best that he escort me back through the border at the tip of his firearm. So a steady 6.5/10 by my normal sorts of standards. This was no Belarus.

I got back to the cash desk, waved off the armed guard, and the chap there seemed pleased if not surprised that I had evaded custody. The exchange of money for legitimacy followed, and I was free to do business in Ghana. And business I did – which I will follow-up on in detail at a later date, probably in a little number called ‘The Storm and The Suit’, I should imagine.

For now, though, let’s talk about my commute, shall we?

I will no doubt have mentioned that when I am not in the occasional Uber, my life is one of taking the bus to and from work. It’s organised by American Universities nearby, and presents a nice predictable way of getting to and from Trade, largely without event and at only modest outlay. I start and finish pretty early, often with a couple of colleagues from my office, living elsewhere in my building (called Somerset – so very fittingly for Qatar).

Generally one gets the smaller bus, of a morning. Something of a tin can, which requires an amount of folding oneself into when it is filled with boffins (they’re all off ‘researching’ on their three-month Summer holidays, right now). However it is air-conditioned and piloted well by a man called Chris. In the afternoon, a far larger vehicle rounds the corner at Georgetown Building, in the hands of a fine fellow called, wonderfully, Cosmos. Here, us patrons can spread out rather more, and the conversations generally grow more lively.

In the early days, I didn’t feel much like talking – which is rather unlike me. I settled into Doha life pretty well, and was not unhappy, at all – I just felt a little ‘out’ of things, as other folks jabbered along to one-another, and friendships continued that had been formed a fair time before my arrival. Instead I listened and observed, in-between bouts of tinkering with my ‘phone, or reading my book. I bided my time, and enjoyed listening to the variable accents on display, and hearing stories of time served in the country – one colleague would often regale us with tales of his daily 5.00am McDonalds breakfast, and then insist on pointing out the location where one could buy “the best Shawrma in the Damned City!” His wife, a comparatively calm and quiet lady, sat through repetitions of this. A fellow from Oklahoma, is the Venerable Dr J. He lists his principal enjoyments in life as Higher Education and Redneck Culture. It is he who astounded us one day with tales of the Rattlesnake Roundup, in his neck (red, assuredly) of the woods, where hundreds of the offenders are, well, ‘rounded-up’ then slaughtered, cooked, chopped into pieces and eaten off cocktail sticks, much in the manner of cubes of pineapple and cheese. I was inwardly dying of laughter at this, others turned rather green. Dr J has the most molasses-like voice. A genuine draaaawwwwl. He appears to have had many cases of excitable misadventure in his life (he hauled some poor unfortunate out of his car, after only weeks in the country, following some manner of motoring incident – that’s really not the done thing in these here parts). A few months ago, he and Mrs J were headed for Ireland, as he was pursuing some manner of claim to heritage from there, and spoke (to me) with enthusiasm about the prospect of finding himself involved in a “traditional pub brawl”. There was a period of time where his wife was not talking to him and the rest of us found it difficult to look at him, when he took the option of a haircut that just left a sort of heat-exhausted raccoon in the top middle of his head, and a sparse amount of stubble across the rest of it. That was a while growing out – he switched to a baseball cap for a while, no doubt under mild but stern instruction.

So yes, life throws us together, we happy bus people. Disagreements are few, happily. There is one chap who can get himself into discursive scrapes with folk, and you’ll be delighted to hear it’s not me. Dr M hails from Austria. I don’t want to be unreasonably mean to the fellow, but his principal failing is an inability to take the hint that folks don’t want to get involved in an intense conversation about the minutiae of the subject of his choice at 7.00am. At essence, he is an agreeable cove, and means well, but he has grilled me on my future plans one too many times, as I was still wiping the sleep from my eyes. On my next trip back from the UK I am treating myself to a decent replacement set of headphones…  I can justify this as my gift to myself on the closing in of the end of my contract, but the fact they feature noise cancellation is far from an accident, I can assure.ere

Who else do we have aboard? Well now, this Summer there was a brief appearance from The Sleeper – one of those folk that gets aboard a bus and is driving them on home in little more than moments. Morning, evening, makes no difference. Back goes the seat and he gives thunder, to plenty of sniggers. Recently there appeared The Lilliputians; a teeny pair of young marrieds who’re clearly working at two different institutions. They maintain a studied silence of a morning. One can see clearly that Dr M is just dying to ‘break’ them, but to no avail, as yet.

Lovely Mary D, too. I often have a jabber with her on the morning ride, when she’s here rather than swanning ‘round Chicago. A lady of the most charming ditz – the conversations are varied and amusing. A former paper editor, she has the unerring habit of starting the day with one of the tall, slender cans of Diet Coke that get sold here, with a straw poking out of the top. She slurps from the straw, and looks up over it intently at one whilst one is talking. It has the most splendid coquettish charm, does that look. I always feel like I am on a date with her at a burger joint somewhere, in about 1972.

Life changed, so splendidly, the day we met The Colonel.

On warm afternoon there was suddenly a big presence aboard the West Bay flyer. Dressed like he was off to a wedding – all waistcoat and pocket squares, he was. Defying the heat – a toothy grin and a silver buzz cut, and another purring ‘Merkin accent. Bless him – he’s back in a few weeks and I can’t wait to chat. To all the world, the famous purveyor of KFC had thrown off the quiet of the grave, and taken up an academic posting in the Middle East. He wasn’t the spit of Col. Sanders, but the association was there. One could observe him carefully making his early friendships with folk, learning names and carefully sussing out who everyone was. On one occasion the bus pulled up at his residence, and he appeared after a day of strolling ‘round getting to know the place. He’d ditched the suit, and resembled an unlikely Avril Lavigne tribute, in black Sk8ter Boi shorts, a check shirt, converse and band t-shirt. And this at 60! Irresistible presence that he is, he topped even that after coming back from a visit to Oman with a suite of Muslim Taqiyah hats, which he wore for a while (with the full suit), to keep the heat off:

Life throws some wonderful people at you, and My Buddy Greg is one of them. He’s just schooled in the art of conversation – we cover all sorts, at the start and the end of the working day, and I have missed the banter over the Summer period. It is a friendship that will endure, I am sure.

So that’s the bus. And that’s (some of) the gang.

I’ve missed so many things I should tell you about, but they’re all stored upstairs for future deployment. I might try and put together a Top Ten Moments piece, at some stage, if only to fill in the many gaps (George and the Porsche, dune bashing, my life as an importer of aftershave, and photographing camels at fifty miles per hour all need some sort of treatment), but for the moment I need to actually focus on the many events of the coming few weeks. No point having stories to tell if you have no job to pay for trips to go off and collect more, now is there? What I will be doing for sure, is taking copious notes from the new shores of Argentina, Paraguay, Chile, Brazil and Uruguay. I can’t believe there won’t be some tales to tell after I bumble around there for a couple of weeks. Even if it’s just a review of many, many steakhouses.

But more there shall be. Enjoy yourselves, everyone. I know I am!