To Dose or not to Dose(1/2)

Another friend in America. Another late night call.

We’d met when we were both teaching English in Paris over 20 years ago. When the Paris years ended, M went back to the States and studied Post-Conflict Reconstruction (or similar) at M.I.T. , working for various NGOs in Sudan and Kenya and eventually working for The International Rescue Committee in the Democratic Republic of Congo on his graduation.

I, for my part, went back to London and…carried on teaching English, my little fledgling dream of being a writer wrapped in a doily in my pocket. As his CV and resume grew, my friend worked up the ranks and soon landed a plum job with the U.S. government, still in his beloved Africa, this time in the Ivory Coast, then back to Kenya and finally in the jihadi-badlands of Niger.

In his later years, it really was bodyguards, armoured-vehicle escorts and Ferrero Rocher in the ambassador’s residence. For me, it was still photocopiers and lesson plans, though by now I’d published one short story, written one massive novel, was some way through my second and had had three children. There was some dissonance; we’d both been adventuresome dreamers and journeymen in Paris. The difference? He’d had a plan & I had not. So, now he was releasing millions of dollars of international aid to fund the construction of a sewer system in Kenya’s bidonvilles, and I was being told there was unexpected item in bagging area by a disembodied robot in Sainsbury’s Local on Bristol’s Gloucester Rd on my cycle home from class in the rain (no machine-gun toting out-riders flanking me)

Turned out, though, from our call, that we had more in common than I realised.