From the frying pan into the fire

Life moves on and one day you wake up to find yourself living on a different continent. In a city of contrast where oil meets diamonds, Africa meets South America, slums meet construction sites, happily dancing local youth meet perverted middle-aged white men, polio cripples and begging war veterans meet salsa bars and out of the box thinking is no longer a soft skill, but a vital survival tactic.

Yes, you're reading correctly, my almost three years of living 'la vita bella in Italia' are over. Now everything is covered in red dust, traffic is an unimaginable nightmare (whoever complains about traffic in Italy is welcome to visit and change their mind), mosquito bites kill, the office toilets have been without water for two weeks, there are land-mines next to the beaches and people shitting in the streets. No kidding. Despite this and the fact that I can never go anywhere alone, and that fresh fruit and dairy is hard, very hard to find, after almost two weeks in my newly adopted probably-10-million-inhabitants-but-no-way-to-be-sure-hometown, I've come to decide that I like it. So far.

Because other than danger, there is also hope round every corner. And for every bad intention, there are at least 10 smiles on the faces of children (there are many!) growing up in a country that is recovering rather than deteriorating. And where the traditional music and the dances and the noises in the street echo something positive... a certain kind of magic. The same magic that, in fact, I think, Europe should be more careful not to lose...