Helsinki – Brussels – Casablanca – Dakar

Editor's note: the text was written on Tuesday the 30th, but I was too busy or out of internet connection until now to publish it...so here it goes:

I am writing this text in Casablanca while waiting for a transfer flight to take me to my final destination, Dakar. The airport is one long hall with a light-green roof, pretty cool modernistic windows, Arabic hits as background music. Most of the people here are either heading back to Europe or continuing to the Middle East, or Western and Central African destinations such as Senegal. A lot of men with long robes and beards, and a lot of very stylish women with high heels and veils. The airport has the usual selection of souvenir and tax free shops – and a Zara store with an almost too friendly service ("soyez la bienvenue! let me take your clothes to the dressing room already!") where I went for some final shopping.


The airport of Casablanca.

Royal Air Maroc was also the cheapest airline for flying to Dakar from Europe, but so far I have only been pleasantly surprised. The food was extremely tasty when compared to the European airlines. RAM has bad reputation for luggage being delayed, but after seeing all the African mamas with their half a dozen huge bagages at the Brussels airport, I'm not that surprised anymore that some of them are lost on the way.

I passed by Brussels last night and had a very nice get-together reunion with some of the old EuropeAid stagiaires, and some of the new ones. It actually felt like I had not left Brussels at all in the meantime because it was all so familiar...and while I was in Finland, it felt like it had been ages since I left Brussels.


Former and new EuropeAid stagiaires having some Belgian beers in Bonneffoi.

Tonight I will be again in a totally different kind of an environment of which I will continue to write about here, but for more work-related scout/development things I will discuss in a new blog only in Finnish (and Google translate really sucks with Finnish language, sorry about that for non-Finns!) : http://woomalista.wordpress.com.

My month in Finland was extremely nice, although now I remember all the things I was supposed to do during those few weeks. However, it was still well spent. I had a graduation party together with my sister for some of our nearby relatives in Varkaus, and for that I made two binded copies of my Master's thesis. I went for a special place for binding in Helsinki, one of the two that were mentioned on the ad pages of the University of Helsinki student's calendar. What an odd experience! I already began to think that the place was closed down since it was not visible to the street, but then I found it in the inner yard of the building, with a sign probably dating from the 1950s.

There was another door in the hallway with a sign ”please enter”. The (presumed) owner was in there with a customer, half-buried in the middle of dusty books, papers and covers. Yet he was in no way a bookworm, but one of the most talkative persons I have ever met. He spoke to me about wells in Africa, about his brother's friend who had gotten married with a South African and had bought an island somewhere, about the worsening quality of the current paper material and how people don't care about books anymore...basically he did not stop talking for half an hour or so when I finally managed to escape his little binding factory. This whole thing was repeated when I went to retrieve the binded copies of my thesis, only with different topics such as Senegal, languages, Karelia and the weather outside. In the end I got my two copies with bright red covers and golden writing, just as I asked them.

Another quirky encounter in Helsinki took place last Saturday when I remembered that I had not bought any chocolate eggs for prospective little witches that might visit on the morning of Palm Sunday (Finnish tradition, children dressed as witches, going from house to house, wishing good luck with colourfully decorated branches and getting chocolate eggs, candies or money for present). So I stopped in a little corner shop (kiosk) that Otto had previously described as ”the weirdest shop he has ever been to”, selling everything from porn videos to toys, basic food stuff and always having coffee on sale, only 80 cents per cup.

When I entered the shop to see whether they would have some chocolate eggs, the (presumed) owner jumped up hastily from the coffee table, ran to the counter and eyed me suspiciously. I looked at their candy selection and saw some full Kinder eggs next to some of the inside surprises wrapped again in Kinder folio paper. I enquired the price, to which he replied: ”you know, there's a surprise inside them”. Me: ”Ehm, yes, but how much are they?”. Him: ”You can have the three of them that are left for €1,50”. Me, thinking that it's below the usual selling price, tried to see the best before date but was distracted for having the urge to leave as soon as possible – he was not really scary or anything, but the shop just smelled strongly like hair that has been un-washed for a few weeks. I paid the eggs swiftly with a perplexed look on my face and tried not to burst laughing when leaving the shop. His communication skills were the exact opposite of the owner of the book-binding shop – Finnish people truly are more diverse than what the clichéd picture makes us believe. It makes me wonder what exactly is meant by ”Finnish ways of doing” or ”Finnish culture” that those strongly opposing immigration refer to, but that is a whole other topic.

As for the Kinder eggs: they were, indeed, four months old. Luckily there were no children ringing the doorbell on Sunday morning and we ended up eating the somewhat dry, odd-tasting eggs ourselves.

Now it is time to get on the plane for Dakar - will continue later!