CURRENT MISSION

Always discover more

ABOUT ME

I think I should write this with the first characteristics coming to my mind that could describe me: curious, eager to discover always new things/ places/ ways of life/ people’s stories…, often intrigued and impressed by other people’s every day or life projects, and trying to do more and more what I feel like doing on a particular moment and not to overthink every action.

PHILOSOPHY

Don’t (always) trust your first instinct, as well as orientation feelings – very often wrong for me! So still keep on being very open that a first opinion on one person may differ totally a few days later; and that is also what makes the beauty of life – cannot be (entirely) expected and planned!

Other main ideal way of life: don’t be scared – as soon as you have the means, just try out things you want to do!

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

I unfortunately cannot say that I have been very active so far. I heard about this project one or two years ago, vaguely hearing about the CS meetings, which at first seemed to me some kind of closed circles. Then I got to hear more about the whole idea, meeting other people, having this opportunity to either be the traveler surfing on others’ couches or hosting the world in your own house to make you travel when you are ‘stuck’ in one place. I honestly found it an amazing idea, full of solidarity, trust in other people and interest in meeting other people and cultures; a way to feel like we are one big world community, before being of different nationalities, cultures, gender, …
So I really have this plan to host people one day, to make other countries come to me and make me travel from my own sofa while hearing other people’s stories. However, up to now I haven’t been able to do so, but for what I think is a good reason: I’ve been travelling and working in several African countries for the past 2 years, not having any stable place where I would stay at and could host people. I also did not use an official CSfer place yet, other than those of my friends of course, as working as an aid worker is not necessarily the easiest to combine with surfing on couches. But I have definitely been mattress surfing at unofficial CSfers in rural communities in Liberia for instance – great hosts, sure that if they could be connected to that network they would have great references!

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

From the official CS community, it is yet to come and I’m looking forward to starting it, maybe in my coming nearly 2 months trip to the US and Mexico!!

Interests

* Wandering around, keeping all my senses open, and ready to be surprised/ amazed/ choked/…
* Music – can’t spend a single day without listening to music. It accompanies my moods, not necessarily setting them but often reinforcing them. And I love sharing/ exchanging music discoveries with friends.
* Reading – novels, newspapers especially the ones reflecting other countries’ points of views and perspectives.
* Also love any kind of cultural events in general; from film festivals to music festivals to exhibitions, story-telling events, or rituals/ habits from different countries.
* Hiking, biking, and in general discovering new sports.
* Professional: education projects in developing countries, and in particular education related to peace-building in post-conflict contexts
* And last but not least: languages – learning at least basics is so powerful to connect with people, and I find it fascinating to understand languages’ evolution according to people’s use.

• singing
• beauty
• music festivals
• festivals
• film festivals
• education
• running
• clothing
• reading
• tv
• traveling
• music
• cycling
• hiking
• hunting
• surfing
• skiing
• sports
• soccer
• olympics
• track and field
• teaching
• languages

Music, Movies, and Books

Music – relatively diverse; my today playlist included Tiken Jah Fakoli, Rodriguez, Little monsters and men, Thomas Fersen, Salif Keita, Edward Sharpe and the magnetic zeros.

Movies – mostly realistic movies, and often arthouse movies, talking about life stories, i.e. combining laugh and drama. I guess I prefer movies to which to a certain extent I can relate to, or learn things from – which may be why I prefer realistic movies over science fiction, or ones full of explosions and crazy actions.

Books – well, kind of similar to my preference for movies. To give you an idea, I am reading ‘American Darling’ of Russel Banks at the moment and I love it; learning about Liberia, and about radical movements during the 70s in the US, and at the same time, relaxing by following a novel story.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

There are amazing things you can see when you travel, but also when you spend a bit of time somewhere and randomly discover astonishing situations… just taking a very recent example: I’ve been living in Liberia for 6 months now, and the other day when coming back from a field trip, we first stopped at the house of a colleague in one of the districts of the capital city, Monrovia. Like most of the districts of Monrovia, there is no electricity there. If you want light you have several options; the main ones are: buy a Chinese light with batteries that you need to buy every couple of weeks, use candles, or run a small generator with fuel. That’s this last option that my colleague chose for that night; a bit earlier in the car, I heard him saying on the phone: “put on the generator tonight”, probably to one member of his family. But I did not imagine what I saw when arriving to his house: 15 to 20 persons were gathering in the yard in front of the house (houses are not delimited like ours often in the western world; here the yard in front of your house is also your neighbours’ yard, …), watching the Winter Olympic Games on TV, without sound. Everyone, from children to women to oldpas and mas, seemed captivated. It was the first time I could watch the winter games and I can tell you it was the most amazing place to watch them. It was also the first time I saw the biathlon with cross country skiing and the skiers stopping on the side of the track after running like crazy, in order to take their gun as quickly as they could and shoot, before continuing their run. What a crazy sport I thought. And I looked at one child, trying to imagine what kind of image he could have of the Western world, while staring at this screen that showed snow, white people covered up to their nose with thick clothes, and spending their time running replacing their feet by long sticks and then shooting for leisure. All this with only the noise of the running generator and neighboring music radios, but no actual sound from the event they were watching.
Apart from the beauty of the randomness of the situation, and this kind of cultural curiosity, I loved the fact that my colleague was putting his TV outside so that many people could come, watch it and share that moment together. He later told me; when I was a kid, I had a neighbor who did this and I used to love it; so as soon as I got the means to do it myself, I bought a TV and I ran the generator for football games or other events that people can come watch together.

Teach, Learn, Share

I think I can learn more than I can teach, about anything that you would like to share and that you are interested or passionate about. On my side, I can share my experiences in the different countries where I’ve been living and of course my passions, especially sharing music discoveries, and why not playing some/ singing some. I can also teach lots of words and sentences in French, quite a lot in English, fewer in Spanish, and a maximum of 20 words in Dutch, Kinyarwanda/ Kirundi, Kpelle and Liberian English – all of them could be useful at some point in life, (especially if you get convinced of going to one of these countries I’d talk to you about ;))

Countries I’ve Visited

Belgium, Germany, Greece, Italy, South Africa, Spain, Tanzania, Uganda, United Kingdom

Countries I’ve Lived In

Burundi, France, Liberia, Netherlands, Rwanda