The Bristol Club

I recall these times when I did not know what to make with my life. The sole solution was to leave home and go to another place in another country. I chose England to speak English. I ended up in Bristol working in a hotel, the Arno’s Manor Hotel on

Bath Road

.

After that experience, I went to study at Bristol University a Master’s Degree in International Development. My next step was to start my professional occupation in the developing world. Now I am in Ghana and get to travel around West Africa.

But more than that, I began a long journey inside myself. That also impacts on the outside. I remembered what a lady at the University of Brussels (1999-2003) told me. I was with a roommate, Elvire of Cameroon’s origin, at the gym when we met the person. She talked to us about her brother. When he was a child he got through a kind of trauma because his parents used to put him on the toilet and wait for him to defecate. After a while, his intestines had gone down and they had to operate him. We all go through some kind of trauma and there is each time an opportunity for change to the better.

The lady said she knew how to tell the future of someone – sort of fortune teller – by looking at the person’s face. She did it with me and saw that I would be traveling a lot but in a small space, which she compared to be a car. This story I only remembered it last year while traveling in a tro-tro towards Mole Park in Northern Ghana.

This year I believe that the transport means is futile for some journeys. Most meaningful is the travel process inside me and what stimulates it. Of course, I still like traveling by road and sightseeing but without the inspiration from inside and outside, spurred by others and the world surrounding me, I would not be able to connect to the essential: life and love that feeds thoughts.

Why am I entitling this post ‘Bristol Club’? It is because I recently met a Ghanaian, Nii – meaning king, who just came back from Bristol. I think we are on the same wavelength. So were some people I made friends with in Bristol: among them, Pascal, Andrew. All men… In Accra, there is also Gigi – only woman so far – to make me think in a different way and who value me enough to make me feel good. I learn with them.

Last night, I met Christina through Nii: a pretty Spanish young woman who spent time in Bristol and took the city as her home. She plans to go back for New Year. She now teaches at the University of Ghana. The world is small and wherever you go you can feel the same as at home. Of course, I do not often find living far from Belgium easy but I would not give up the opportunity I have to know better myself and others because of these difficulties. And I will not probably feel better if I went back to my old routine because I have moved on since then. I believe I changed. I started working and living alone. I am in the process of building my life on a solid basis which is different from material and breakable because it is inner and spiritual.