On April 7, 2016, at 6:45 p.m. local time, flight SN 273 landed at Montréal’s Pierre-Elliott-Trudeau International Airport after leaving Lomé on April 6, 2016 and stopping over in Brussels. I was on that plane.
I had taken a leave of absence from my former employer, at the time Togo’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Cooperation and African Integration, just as I returned from a training course in India. Very fine years, very fine experiences, and the foreshadowing of a less radiant future took nothing away from the charm and the pleasure of having lived them.
My landing point in Canada was the apartment of two Togolese friends — to whom I remain grateful, Diane and Chantal A. — whom I had met in Senegal, in Lasalle, Montréal. One of them, Chantal, came to fetch me at the airport and we went back to their place by bus and metro. That is where the adventure, my adventure, began in Canada.
Let me tell you five (5) anecdotes that marked my arrival in Canada:
• My encounter with the word “poutine” : Those close to me know that I am very friendly and very open. So already on the plane I was chatting with the man in the seat next to mine:
- Is this the first time you have come to Canada? he said.
- Yes, the first. I am delighted to be arriving.
- That’s great! Do you know poutine?
- Poutine? President Poutine, yes, but poutine — what is that?
- Haha! It is a dish made of french fries topped with cheese curds and smothered in a hot brown gravy. It is very popular in Québec.
- Oh really!? I think I am going to like that. (I am a fanatic for culinary discovery.)
- You are going to like Canada in general. It is a beautiful country with a fine quality of life.
• My encounter with Canadian snow : I remember that on April 8, the day after my arrival on Canadian soil, it was still snowing. So I opened the window of the bedroom I was staying in to touch that highly enigmatic and faraway snow with my own fingers. I said to myself, “So this is snow!”. I crumbled it between my fingertips to feel its texture. A chilly little wind was blowing.
• My encounter with the Canadian bank : As a brand-new arrival, I had to open a bank account, since that is one of the first formalities. I was at the bank with my friend Chantal. Once all the paperwork was done, a credit card had to be taken out. Here is my exchange with the RBC (Royal Bank of Canada) advisor:
- What was your annual salary in your country?
- (I took the time to work out the conversion on my phone before answering her) I earned 5,000 Canadian dollars.
- No, sir, I am asking about your annual salary. Not your monthly one.
- (My turn to answer, a little embarrassed) Yes, madam. I am talking about the annual income as well.
- (With a faint smile, more compassionate than mocking, she concluded) All right, sir, I just wanted to be sure we were talking about the same thing.
• My encounter with Canadian cooking : Two weeks after my arrival, I started a job as a donor recruiter for Doctors Without Borders. We took our breaks in restaurants around the city, depending on where we were working. During one of those breaks, my team leader and I sat down and ordered breakfast. Martial and the waitress:
- Sir, what will you have?
- An omelette with some bread.
- All right. For the omelette, how do you want the eggs?
- Uh! How, how? (To me, an omelette is beaten eggs cooked in a pan. Full stop!)
- Okay! Do you want the eggs poached, baked, sunny side up or scrambled?
- (In my head I was saying: Wow! Wow! Wow! You are going to stop that right now!! Haha! But regaining my composure) I just want a “normal” omelette.
- Scrambled eggs, then?
- Yes, madam.
- Thank you! And which bread do you want?
- Just bread. What kinds do you have?
- Brown bread, whole wheat bread, white bread or farmhouse bread.
- (Oh Lord!! Where have I landed?) White bread, please.
- Thank you! Nothing to drink?
- Just orange juice. (I was afraid she would start again: freshly squeezed, from concentrate, and so on.)
• My encounter with Canadian beer : Still in that same job, some Friday evenings we held an activity called “team beer,” which consisted of sharing a few drinks with colleagues before going our separate ways on the Friday. Again with my supervisor, one Friday evening, at the bar, we are served beers. The waitress uncaps my beer. I take a tissue, I wipe the rim of the bottle — a very common practice in West Africa — and I drink my beer. It was really good. We order a second round. Same scenario. The following exchange ensues:
- In your country, are the bottles reused?, my supervisor asks me.
- Yes, why?
- I noticed that both times the waitress brought the beers, you cleaned them before drinking.
- Yes, sometimes there is grime on the rim of the bottles, so I wipe them before drinking.
- I see. Here, though, the bottles are destroyed, recycled, and new ones are made every time. So there is no reason for them not to be clean.
- Oh, okay! Good to know.
- Yes, I say so because both times you cleaned your bottle, the waitress looked at you with astonishment. It is as though you were sending the message that the bar is unclean.
- Oops… (Things move fast here!)
Today I can say that things do indeed move fast here, and each of these anecdotes has strengthened a trait of the personality I have today.
The poutine story taught me that words as I know them will not necessarily point to the same realities in Canada. The snow story made me realize that the things you see far off today will one day be within your reach and will no longer even mean anything to you. Today I live alongside snow without noticing the fascination it was the object of at the beginning. The bank story made me hope for annual incomes well beyond 5,000 dollars, reassuring me, by that fact alone, that if a better income was my ambition in Canada, it would soon be satisfied. The account of Canadian cooking clearly taught me that you have to be precise in life. You have to say exactly what you want, and in the most pointed way possible. Every word points to a diversity of realities. Let us be precise. The encounter with Canadian beer showed me that I was going to live in a clean country, that we continually have other people’s eyes upon us and, finally, that what we do naturally and with no ill intent can wound someone else — like that poor waitress, made uneasy by my concern for cleanliness.
And you — what special, memorable or astonishing thing did you live through when you arrived in Canada, in France, in Belgium, in the United States, in Switzerland or elsewhere?
M. Z.
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