My first love and 6-year-long engagement ended when I was 23. Every breath was unbearable. Existing, just felt impossible. There was no other certainty left in my life but the fact that I would not survive this.
Helsinki was not large enough for me and my memories. I had to get away, anywhere and right now if I intended to breathe again someday. At my university I noticed a job ad – for the World Bank, a project in Tanzania. The distance felt appropriate. But, requirements were a Ph.D. track, work experience from here to the skies, diplomat potential… I hadn’t even finished my Master’s.
Through some magic, I got the job.
Our team traveled in overcrowded local busses filled with people, goats, chickens - even the roofs were packed - all around a country where nothing functioned, trying to conduct business interviews. Running water, electricity, phone, some form of transportation… Everything was up to chance. Except for the mosquitos spreading malaria. Those were guaranteed.
One morning, in a town called Tanga, I took off with professor Okoso-Amaa to conduct an interview with one of the most prominent business leaders of the country. We found a taxi that worked. Until midway to the middle of nowhere – it no longer did. In the ruthless 40-degree sun we made our way towards what we hoped would be the correct destination. Okoso-Amaa claimed to know a shortcut. At that point I was willing to believe in angels.
We made our way through a field, all the vegetation was higher than us and so dense we couldn’t really see anything. My shoe fell apart and I got cuts to my hands but we made it. At the factory they served us cold Coca Cola. A moment’s salvation.
During the interview I asked why the staff turnover at the company was so high. The director answered that there were so many snakes in the fields where they worked, aggressive black mambas, that people died on the fields constantly. Right where we’d found our shortcut.
When the interview ended the director offered to take us back to our hotels. There was no other possible transportation. But my woman’s intuition screamed at me to refuse this offer… The man had paced around me throughout the four-hour-long interview and accidentally brushed my hair, my back, leaned against me… All too close, all too constant. Not at all acceptable in that cultural context. Deep inside I knew this man was a snake. Still, I thought I might have a better chance against him than against the snakes in the fields surrounding us.
During the car ride one black mamba rested in the middle of the road. Cursing, our driver speeded and drove over it. For that moment I thought that maybe accepting this ride wasn’t such a terrible idea after all. We dropped Okoso-Amaa at his hotel and continued to mine in silence. The director didn’t stop at the reception, he curved to the back of our hotel behind some large trees. There I knew for a fact I was in serious trouble. Struggling to hold my voice and my gaze steady I asked how I could pay him for the ride. ‘I’ll take my payment in kind’ he answered with a smile I’ll never forget.
As he attacked me I tried to push and tear my door open. It didn’t open from the inside. Something in me realized. He’d intentionally put me to the front seat I couldn’t get out of, Okoso-Amaa in the back where the doors had opened. This was planned, calculated, the way he pinned me down told me this wasn’t his first violent outburst. For a moment my panic disappeared and rage came to my rescue. NO! NO NO NO NO! I shouted as loud as I could. He froze for a decisive moment – with my nails I tore down the window, kicking him off me, crawled out the window. Ran. No looking back.
The receptionist’s jaw dropped as I tried (for some reason) pass by coolly. I saw myself in the mirror behind her. Hair and clothes torn, a nasty bleeding cut on my throat. One shoe was missing. My eyes had the look of a wild animal. I didn’t recognize myself.
All of me shaking I got to our room. Safety. Our two assistants and my boss were battling a power cut but everything stopped when I entered. My boss – by that time he was also a friend to me - came to hold me and gently yet firmly made me tell what had happened. Even within my shock I was impressed by his response. He sat me on our sofa, wrapped a blanket around me, wiped my tears. Then, with eyes blazing fire, his voice coldest I’d ever heard he called the Dar es Salaam headquarters of that company. And that time, the phone line actually worked.
‘A World Bank consultant has been attacked by your employee’, he told the Managing Director. ‘This will be an international incident’. (I was no consultant, only a project assistant, still a student).
My boss was a Frenchman, they oftentimes have temper and confidence. He sure had plenty of both. He threatened the Managing Director of this family run company with everything starting with trade embargoes to an international court of law. The man at the other end of the line begged for forgiveness for who turned out to be his son-in-law… My boss said the only way to avoid an international scandal would be an apology from my attacker, subject to me accepting this apology.
I was so young, exhausted, felt very much alone in a strange country. I accepted the apology, didn’t have strength for anything else. I did tell them to make sure that this wouldn’t happen to other women within this man’s reach, but how could I know that would be the case? I will never know.
My boss and I went to the hotel bar, we both ordered a glass of whiskey. We talked. About life. About love. About misogyny. About love and surviving the ending of it. I told him that as I was fighting off this disgusting serpent I for the first time felt like I could actually breathe freely. That brief moment was about survival and it took that much for my mind to snap out of my own personal misery. Even that was a relief. Strangely my boss understood. He was only 7 yrs older than I - we both had lived, loved, lost with very similar intensity.
Then came the bitter betrayal. A member of our team joined us and bluntly told me none of this nonsense, any of this trouble would have occurred had I just stayed at our hotel, safely doing ‘women’s tasks’. He was my colleague. He was my professor also.
I should have acted. Said something. This wasn’t my fault. I’d only done my job. I did it to the highest professional standards, and under very difficult conditions. Yet not one word came out. I went to my room, curled up on the floor and cried. Tears of anger, disappointment, disillusionment.
That same afternoon I went out and did another interview. Nobody else was available so I had to go alone. My boss told me not to but I needed to prove this professor of mine wrong. Most importantly, I needed to prove myself. When I stepped into that taxi I’d found on the street, with two strange men inside - the driver and his friend - my heart pounded so hard they had to hear it.
I did it anyway.
And, these two men were very kind and friendly with me. They must have noticed that I checked whether the door opened from the inside. Rolled down the window before we headed off. Kept my hand on the door handle all the time. Looked… I must have looked scared. Just because they were men and I was alone in a car with them. And, I realized that I was guilty of the same kind of prejudice my colleague had placed on me.
He told me I could be a hazard to our project as I was a woman and put myself in harm’s way by doing a man’s job. And for my turn – here my whole body was shivering of fear with these two perfectly sweet men – just because they were men.
Tanzania taught me so much.
Serpents, be it humans or snakes, don’t matter so very much in the end. Even if your clothes get torn and you get some bruises – your heart can survive. Love is yet another thing.
In Tanzania, I faced many, many disasters. This is just a one in our series of catastrophes, death threats, illnesses. Still, amidst all that I could not actively mourn my own life. There was no time or space for my very own wallowing. It was my salvation. Actually did me so much good.
When we returned to Finland my sorrow hit me in the face like a wet damp cloth. Unchanged, utterly suffocating. I decided to head to another end of the world again.
Within two months I got a job in India and left again. Escapism? Oh yes. But it worked when nothing else did. When finally I came home I felt a little bit like myself again, momentarily at least.
My greatest lesson in all that, however, was the realization that I’d experienced a love so strong it took the edges of the world, my worst fears, snakes and nightmares to even for a moment forget my first great love.
That is something to forever be grateful for.
