People dad predicted me a “difficult” return. But actually, what do they mean by “difficult”?
Fridays are my oxygen bubbles.
Before leaving a year in Africa to share the life of local populations, it had me accused ‘return is going to be hard, you’ll see ‘. On my return, I was told “not too difficult to return? “Difficult”? What lies behind this word? People who were concerned were not the answer, just the feeling. Like me elsewhere. I was just waiting to see what would be so “hard”.
My back was rather pleasant. Moment with the family while she had been confronted to the disease during my absence. Idyllic moment at the time to integrate a tiny House that my family had installed me during my absence. Leave family, friends, places of life, habits and comfort is not clear. Know that I will have a place where to put my business on my return helped me a lot to take the plunge.
And then the weeks are passed. 18 months ago I was gone despite tendinitis very disabling to the left abductor. The pain has not left me the year, limiting my ability. I’ve integrated it among travel constraints. Upon my return, it was necessary to take the subject seriously. The tendinitis was in fact a double herniated disc. Under powerful painkiller, I then started to live what each called a “hard return”.
Despite that, I consider myself very lucky. Thanks to a cousin who played an important role in my life lately, I encounter an editor who immediately agreed to work on the testimony of my African trip. Neither my cousin nor I thought that this meeting is a contract, commitments and a graphic novel. I feel an effect of African magic where the best comes from the unexpected.
My Fridays are so devoted to the work on the graphic novel or… not at all. In fact, they represent my area of freedom. My space time I mean. The most difficult returning from a change of scenery also important that I could live, is to return to the Western time system. “Now that you have realized your dream, what are you going do?”. “This is what you did, but where you see you in five years? ” “Tonton, what is your profession? ” As many question to which I cannot not respond; to which I must not respond. Otherwise, all my efforts to get out the head of the water would be in vain. Therefore, find strategies to intercept. Find the right answers that aren’t too ‘it takes really the head after a year of vacation. «Holidays» I have as much trouble to hear this word associated with my year to hear people tell me their two week trip where they so felt remove. I don’t want anyone, I feel just shift. And that’s perhaps the answer to the word “difficult”.
The worst feeling of lag is daily from Monday to Thursday. The days where I am so not free. At the request of one of my former teachers to whom I owe much, I agree to work for its laboratory. He worked for many years on technologies that it would like to enhance in the corporate world. In other words, it’s my life ‘ to front ‘. After a PhD I created an innovative company. The links with the laboratories were important. As a company, I was able to do effective recovery. For this work, I was asked to be on the side of the laboratory and to encourage businesses to contract. Unfortunately, this mission I projected in the middle of all that I wanted to leave from. Individualism, use of technology for the purpose of strengthening the system of consumption… By signing my contract, I had the impression to take 6 months in prison. I wasn’t wrong.
Find television and the media environment is also a challenge. I return at the time of the worst wave of bombing the France has ever known in our contemporary era. Media are given some to heart joy. The evening even attacks, is talk of witnesses. What can say other that “it’s terrible”? Radio and TV channels, it turns the same messages in loop ‘horror’, ‘disaster ‘. Political life deals us a demonstration of the poverty of their commitment towards the France. “Who had the responsibility to put a plot in concrete on the promenade des anglais? ” The battle between a logically exceeded Government and certainly all offending local politicians wrong person. Each retrieves the facts to their conveniences. Prevents real social debate to focus on the personal ambitions in the anticipation of the next election.
No, I can not hear that the french people are resilient. Not now. The latest events are hard, unacceptable. This is no doubt. But, despite this we are still a carefree country. Obviously, this is not a competition to say which is the more oppressed or more to complain about. But as long as we are not aware of how lucky we are to live in our environment, we will have difficulties to face.
Finally, what is ‘difficult’ is perhaps the sense of vacuum. Vacuum activities that have meaning. Meaningless simply. My return to the African tribe is expected soon. I have an appetite strengthened for to feel me alive. Discover and other ways of life. Meet peoples or communities subjected to challenges that seem to me impossible to meet. By 2017, my involvement in a humanitarian NGO is ‘bold’ or ‘startling’ as you told me. I can’t see myself doing anything else. My commitment is to a relentless logic; that the meaning of ‘globalisation’ should be, it means that privileged people can assist humbly poor peoples.
