Vive le Dash

My Godfather is an amazing man. I have found myself in foreign lands under strange roofs a few times in my life and it is never particularly easy. This man has gone above and beyond in the making you feel at home and supported department. So when mentioning that he had to get a car across the Netherlands to his brother, Ashley and I were eager to offer our help. A way to repay a little bit of his kindness and see the sights along the way? Perfect. Besides, the Netherlands isn't exactly a big country and Google maps said it would only be a 2 hour drive! Perhaps I should have added a little weight to my godfather's hesitation to just hand me the keys and let me jump on the road. The vehicle in question turned out to be an electric utility van, but so what? This is Europe and I had already noticed the charging stations at every gas station along the highway. Evening December 21st: We pick up the car  and, with what I assumed was an excess of caution, drove it to a nearby charging ...

 For no good reason it has been wayyyyyyyyy too long since our last update, but here we are. Our 2020 year in review: All the way back in January, when Covid was around but not yet a serious concern for me, I started my second semester of school. After all our Christmas gallivanting around Europe it was nice to be back in Nice and to see all of my classmates. We were still able to take a couple trips in early 2020, one to Bordeaux and a very quick weekend in London. Within days of coming back from London, France shut down and my University closed. You were no longer permitted to leave your house except for groceries or to go to a pharmacy. If you did leave your house, you had to wear a mask the entire time and carry around a hand written note swearing you were being a good, considerate citizen to the republic of France. The risk of not following these rules was a 500 € fine. Nice distributed 2 mask to anyone living there and patrolled the streets with police and (supposedly) d...

 Fall break vacation! Ashley had a week off from school so we had our first European frolic. Even better, we met up with friends who were traveling too. Europe is very easy to travel by train or plane, but since we only recently arrived with Koki, we do not really have a lot of options to leave her behind. And while she’s allowed on local/regional trains, she’s not allowed on the Eurostar trains and apparently not on any trains in Spain (WTF, Spain?). So we rented a car. I will probably need to write a whole post on just driving in Europe, but I am actually getting pretty good at it (spoiler: avoid cities). The best part about a car is of course the freedom to go wherever whenever you want.  Barcelona was our first stop to meet up with Michael and Natalie. Spain is only 4 and a half hours from Nice and Barcelona only a couple hours beyond that. Since we had limited time that overlapped with them, we shot straight there and skipped over all those beautiful French cities b...

I think it time for me to write a blog post. Mostly since I’m procrastinating my criminal risk paper. 😇 I feel the need to walk you through a typical week for me since in general my program is so different from an undergraduate program or even a typical master’s program.  And, despite what my Instagram looks like, I am not on vacation.  A little background on my program.  I am in Nice, France in an English-speaking Global MBA at EDHEC that is scheduled for 10 months with potential to be extended IF my final project is an internship and IF that internship is longer than 2 months.  EDHEC’s global MBA really focuses on accepting a diverse student population. My current class has about 85 students from roughly 30 different nationalities. I am also part of the consulting club and the women in leadership club. What a lovely building... that I view from the inside all day My schedule is supposed to be class from 9 am – 4:30 pm with an hour and 15 min lunch break.  In ...

I love my dog Koki way too much. It actually is strange to me how attached to her I am. I grew up with dogs and of course loved having them, but Koki is MY dog. Ashley and I raised her from a puppy. We spent time training her, socializing her with other dogs and people, and even took her to school. Like I really love this dog. But my love PALES in comparison to Ashley’s. If Ash had to choose between me and the dog, she would not hesitate on picking the pup. When it came to researching ways to get Koki to France, Ashley had to leave that to me. You see, if you start researching how to move a dog abroad, lots of sites  such as the Humane Society  recommend that you do not fly dogs–particularly in cargo–because, sometimes, they do not make it and it was stressing Ashley out. Well, Koki is 50 lbs and cannot fly in the cabin anywhere. Unless we decided to send her by boat (which you can do luxury style for 4k) or charter a flight (as low as 10k by one service!), she was going to h...

It’s been a hell of a year. Ash had just started at NIH, we moved to Rockville, we did a ton of traveling including to three of our friends’ weddings and a couple trips abroad, Ashley got accepted into grad school, I got promoted, we got MARRIED with our own amazing wedding, and now, to top it all off, we’ve moved to Nice, France for her MBA! It’s been a crazy, BUSY ride. Working at Deloitte was a great experience. I had an amazing team of smart, dedicated, and truly wonderful people. I learned a whole lot about consulting and working with clients using everything I know or could think of with data to solve problems. I probably learned more than I’d care to admit, mostly through osmosis, about process improvements, communication, change management, and–dare I say it–project management (I mostly learned to stay away from that!). That’s what happens when you are around smart people all day. And I guess now I know more than ever about workforce strategy and management. I did try to stick...

I filled a lot of paper writing about my time in Africa.  Considering I've only managed to write in my journal a handful of times in the three months I've been back (yes, three damn months) I was quite impressed with my work.  Look! Seems like a lot, yes?  Well I was just reading Paul Theroux's The Great Railway Bazaar.  He took a six month trek and he filled out six notebooks just like those!  Way to take the wind out of my sails… But what, anyway, do I intend on doing with these tomes?  First I plan on typing them up.  I know, I know: why not type them up to begin with?  There is something much more intimate putting pen to paper.  You feel like you really created something.  Take a picture and impress me with anything you wrote on your computer.  When I write I use ink, because there is no taking back a thought after it has been born.  Plus typing them all up is to relive them.  Walk down memory lane. ...

Number one question since I've returned: What is the best thing about being back in America?  I always answer food…  I don't even want to talk about food, but saying food just makes me smile and think of how delicious it is here.  In Africa I sometimes wouldn't eat just because food was difficult to come by.  You had to make it or find someone to make it for you and it would be the same food you've had every, single, damn day.  Why bother? A close second is how easy everything is here.  If you want food, you go to your kitchen.  There is food there; I promise.  Even if you think there isn't, there is.  Maybe it's in a can or just some rice or pasta, but you have food.  If you managed to really fuck up your grocery shopping, you can go do that with ease.  Or stop at one of a billion types of restaurants.  OR, and I just discovered this, you can use an app on your phone to pay someone to shop for you!  They'll do your g...

Ladies and Gentlemen, let me be the first to welcome you to the next step in internet pleasure... THE DALEVERSE I wanted to say hello world.  But you aren't the world.  No, you are a select few who have decided that you enjoy listening to me talk.  You have somehow found me, Dale, and fallen into my orbit. Congratulations on whatever good decisions in life brought you here. Is it colder in America or what? I enjoyed writing my blog so I'm just going to crack on.  In honor of my loosely titled  daledoesafrica.blogspot.com , I have managed an even more all-encompassing title. Mostly so that I never have to change it again. For the moment, I am loosely based in the state of North Carolina.  Bouncing between my father's house, my mother's, or my brother's.  So far in the past two months, I've visited Boston twice (for a pretty girl), West Virginia (for a pretty boy... and some snowboarding), and Washington D.C. (for a number of pretty peop...

I'm back.  The vast majority of you likely know that from facebook or the like.  I hope you enjoyed this adventure.  I wanted to entertain you. I think I've done at least that.  I hope too that you learned something.  I wanted you to have a glimpse of what it is to live in Cameroon.  In Africa.  As Americans a lot of what we have comes from the news or commercials begging for dollars.  The news shows war and the commercials show poverty, but there is so much more.  I hope your ideas about Africa were broadened.  Leaving Mbakaou was hard.  I wasn't prepared for it.  I was prepared to leave my country, my friends, my family.  Prepared to learn a new language, a culture, a lifestyle.  I knew working in harsh conditions and in an unknown environment would be hard.  And trying to make friends with so many differences between us could never be easy.  But all that was survivable.  Even failure in those th...

What follows is likely the most important news you will hear in coming months.  Possibly years.  Or even your lives (depending on how central a part I am and how little else you have gong on).  I officially finish my Peace Corps service on October 24th, 2014 .  That's right, ladies and gents, I'm coming home! Now, I don't actually have a flight back yet.  Sure they'd book it for me, but they told me they'd give me two grand and let me do it myself.  Gotta be able to get back for less than that, right? It's been a good service.  Lots of ups and downs.  I'm currently writing a draft of a document summarizing it all.  Apparently this document will stay on record with the US Government "as long as the Union stands".  Kind of intimidating, specially as my once clear mastery of the English language has diminished over my long sojourn here.  (I misspelled three words in that last sentence!)  I'm super ready to go home, see fr...

This is just a bunch of pictures of the people of Mbakaou. Djaro Beupere which just means chief father-in-law.  Mostly because he asks me when I'm coming to pick up my wife from him every time I see him.  Also he's one of the two chiefs. Getting a shave.  These are some of my friends I sit with every day.  The man in the chair in the back is the Imam. Some of the guys I hang out with by the call box where I buy credit for my phone and never call you with it. My buddy Kajiri.  He's decided I know enough Fulfulde (I don't) and keeps trying to teach me Houssa.  Behind his is the main drag into town. Caitlin visiting me with her friend Joe who came all the way from the Extreme North.  In front of our grand village plaza.  Looks better when there is actually an event of some kind. My back courtyard with my friend Assa. The Prince of Mbakaou, none other than Alhadji Awal.  My best bud.  This is actually in Tibati,...