Self-Absorbed in Dundas (aka “Fundas”)

The word vainglorious is appearing evermore frequently in the press these days. Ego-tripping has always been prominent in the rich world but seems to have surpassed the tipping point in 2007. Perhaps this trend is rooted in the kind of self-glorification Facebook propagates. I bit the bullet and joined this evil self-promoting empire the other week. For me, the choice was actually a no-brainer as I have been guilty to the extreme of vainglory these past few years. The market for post-graduate academic and policy research consulting work demands that I project an image of success. As a grad student with contingent, flexible and part-time jobs on the horizon, this drive to brand myself a winner has sometimes been overwhelming. I am quite certain that my occasional obsession with this aspect of the biz pisses my colleagues off to some extent, if not my academic overlords, non-professional acquaintances and even my friends. With Facebook, the latest incarnation of my fixation, I made the choice to dive in not simply for the personal connectivity that it can enable. Making use of the site seemed also to be a good opportunity to create a few “backwards linkages” in my network. My thinking at the time was that some of the people that I had fallen apart from over many years of increasingly instrumental or career-oriented networking might be tempted to check out what I was up to. In hindsight, this rationale reeks of an individualism gone horribly wrong. That being said, I won’t be closing down my account anytime soon. I’ll leave it to others to decide whether this is an instance of cognitive dissonance or of Facebook’s increasingly insurmountable cultural “hegemony.” It’s likely a little bit of both….

The “culture” of self-centricity in this place is at the forefront of my mind these days due to the fact that it was quite absent during my time in Sénégal. Social living with Keba Faty’s wonderful family and his French expat researcher guests enabled me to approach life in an entirely new way. There is no place in his extended household for “gaining wealth and forgetting all but self.” Back when I was a treeplanter in Northern Ontario’s massive clear cuts I had previously lived a communal life. However, the nature of that dirty job – i.e. bending over for 8 cents per tree again and again to get my piece of the limited “pie” before someone else did – reinforced my selfishness. In Dakar I felt connected to those around me at a higher level. Gone were the barriers to community thrown up by suburbia and its fleet of so-called “private” gas guzzling transport containers. In their place was a teeming market where the sights and the scents drew my attention to the fact time and again that we are all in the same boat. French colonial heritage might also have had something to do with my experience. It was my first time living for an extended period with people who have grown together outside of what can be called the “Anglo-American” sphere of influence and individuality.

I worry these days about the extent to which North Americans are individualized and privatized. I am not sure if it is healthy that the solution to nearly every social or ecological ill on offer in the popular press seems to be market-based or rooted in the idea that people have to get busy helping themselves. I am getting fed up with hearing about the micro-level, peripheral successes of self-aggrandizing philanthropic entrepreneurs or “philanthropreneurs”, as The New York Times has dubbed them. The fact that the onus is being put on North American citizens to alter their consumption habits in order to save the planet, rather than on rent-seeking, non-innovative corporations that are supplying the public with outdated technologies such as the internal combustion engine, is also continual source of frustration. The need for substantive global level collective efforts to implement regulatory ideas about the global economy and the biosphere that have been floated for decades and that could very well advance the principles of global equality and intergenerational equity has never been starker. Yet the media continues to foster the notion that the star power of Oprah, Bono and Bill Gates is making more than a marginal difference. They have sung the praises of the latest Nobel Peace Prize winning “solution” for poor people across the South – that they should jump into debt through obtaining micro-finance in order to eventually climb the “ladder” out of poverty – at a time when there appears to be no end in sight to the astronomical levels of personal indebtedness amongst ostensibly “rich” consumers in the United States. The market for information is saturated with stories about the world that have been framed in a similar manner. Maybe someday more people will become aware of the limits of the current orgy of individualism. For example, the absurdity of excess individualism might become apparent when media “consumers” are implored to sponsor individual penguins atop of melting icebergs in order to facilitate their relocation via corporate-sponsored carbon neutral yachts to CFC-free cold storage pens at private “climate refugee” reserves. Or not. Financial types often point out the necessity and desirability of this pervasive force. As an individual, I agree with them. But I also believe that it must be balanced, as Karl Polanyi pointed decades ago in The Great Transformation, with an equally dominant community orientation. So, where’s the balance? I’m still trying to find it….

Hard Landing

Leaving Senegal was much more difficult than I had anticipated. I spent my final evening in Dakar on a great three hour ocean view dinner date with Tina GASSAMA, one of my officemates at ENDA Diapol. While watching the sun set over the Atlantic and conversing in French we walked along the beach until a man seated near a dilapidated gate demanded to know where we were going. He looked me in the eye and explained that we had to turn around, as the rest of the beach was “property of Club Med.” I asked him if he told the hungry local sheep the same thing whenever they mistakenly venture on to the hallowed grounds of the global elite. I got the sense that my sarcastic words were somewhat lost in translation. We beat a hasty retreat to a fantastic restaurant and I proceeded to learn a little bit about what life is like for an Islamic woman holding down a research job while pursuing her Masters degree in development economics and helping to look after the everyday needs of her four brothers.

Back at Keba’s place I collected my baggage and deposited a few more things with his family, including the remains of my medical kit and a cell phone. Several family members had come down with malaria during the previous weeks and I implored Keba to invest in new mosquito nets. Saying my goodbyes I realized how lucky I was to have been immersed in the French language and in Senegalese culture with such happy people. On the street with all of my things they literally had to push me into the waiting taxi.

Having confirmed my flight twelve hours earlier I was worry-free, and as I walked through the typically sketchy scene at the airport on my way to the check in I was counting down the hours to the sushi dinner that awaited me in Toronto. After handing over my travel documents and turning up the volume on the Toure Kunda track I was listening to, the supervisor tapped me on the shoulder and informed me that I did not have the required documentation. Despite the fact that my name and seat number were already in the system and confirmed, he explained that he needed to have my paper-based ticket in his hands before he would let me board the plane. I only had a flight receipt, itinerary and confirmation in the system. After asking him to telephone South African Airways (SAA) Dakar downtown office, and being told that that was my responsibility, my blood pressure went up a notch.

As we walked back through security to the SAA airport office he pointed to a pay phone and told me I had better hurry or risk missing the flight. With no one available at the Dakar office to assist me on the phone – it was 12:30am on Sunday morning – I walked into the airport office and asked if there was anyone that could help me to get on the plane. I was notified that I would have to buy an entirely new ticket to Washington, and then purchase my onward journey from Washington to Toronto after my arrival at Dulles. They refused outright to call anyone at SAA on my behalf. At that point I lost my cool and in return received a lecture regarding customer service and how the concept only applies to those that do not resort to exasperated language. Relenting, I told them that I would purchase the new ticket and for some unknown reason I was advised that I could only obtain it through the Air Senegal International office next door. The people staffing that office subsequently swiped my credit card and issued me what I thought was the ticket.

Returning to the check in I was told that Air Senegal had only printed my boarding pass and that SAA still needed to see that I had in fact made the purchase. Once again I found myself outside of security imploring the Air Senegal staff to hurry while listening to the SAA Supervisor harangue me about my language. Just after they handed me the ‘real’ ticket and I observed that it was strangely dated the 25th of June rather than the correct date of 24 June, the Supervisor picked up his radio and instructed his team to close the flight. I bolted for the check in. Upon arrival I was told by numerous people to “come back again.” And then, having no other option available, I began to grovel in earnest. In French I explained to the Supervisor how he was most certainly right and that I was the dumbest rookie traveler South and West of the Sahara. I think he liked the self-deprecation, as before I knew it, I was on the tarmac watching the stairs being backed up to the plane and its sealed door being reopened a full hour after the flight had been scheduled to depart. Relieved to be in my seat I contemplated the many lessons that I could learn from this experience (such as the lingering importance of paper in an era of digital reservation systems) and wondered if the whole event had simply been an elaborate scam or if there were other reasons beyond my own stupidity it had been so physically difficult to leave Africa this time.

After shelling out at Dulles for the home stretch I arrived in Toronto ready for an amazing Bloor Street sushi experience. During my time in Dar es Salaam I did not make it to Tanzania’s sushi bar and I similarly avoided a Kigali restaurant that offered sushi to patrons that were able to give “twenty-four hours notice” of their intention to consume raw fish. I should have known something was up on Bloor when the white tuna I ordered resembled the colours of the pink and brown tones in my wardrobe. Recovering in Collingwood from the welcome back bad fish the next evening, I found myself amazed yet again at the scale of life here. One of my former students recently referred to this as our “big Canadian lifestyle.” I was slightly overwhelmed by the ordinary.

Things were basically non-stop culture shock this past week as I set up my office at the University and my living space in Dundas. While finishing up the former task I stopped into the Institute office at McMaster to hand in an envelope containing receipts from my research-related expenses that had been sealed and stowed in my luggage since April. Inside that envelope Sara Mayo, the Institute’s Administrative Coordinator, found my glossy and unused paper-based SAA ticket. Someday soon, perhaps I will be able to make use of the absent minded professor excuse….

I pushed on to Ottawa for a few meetings at The North-South Institute and caught up with a few friends. My misadventures with transportation systems continued Thursday as I headed back to Toronto on a 6pm train that made it only as far as Belleville before having to reverse back to Kingston as the tracks were blocked. Twelve hours later the bus I was traveling on came to a stop at Union Station. Most people I conversed with that night told me that the strategy of blocking railways and roads to raise awareness about the plight of Canada’s aboriginal peoples – the reason for our lengthy delay – was misguided. One of my seatmates asserted that Canada’s First Nations people do not experience “real poverty like Africans do.” It was a tough a night. Although it was a long first week back in Canada, I am still smiling.

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The North-South Institute has posted a number of these writings on their site: http://northsouthinstitute.wordpress.com/tag/africa/