in, in Canada, we have this expression, a come from away. I'm sure I'm not the only one, and I hope that some people listening will feel that same sense of self and place that you immediately don't want to be. Oh, let's go look at what's in the grocery shops. if I lived here, maybe I'd like to live in this apartment block, and I would. I think, "Well, what would it be like to live in this one?" and, "Oh, this.
It might sound pathetic, but I actually stop by the apartment blocks, I look in the lobby. But walking down the streets, what I consciously do is I walk the streets, I go to the grocery store. I'd never been to Brazil before, and I talk about it as being the tingle of the first time, the fact that, no matter how far and wide you travel, going to Brazil, eating Brazilian food for the first time and going, "Oh, this food is so good," walking, bare feet, on Copacabana Beach. My last trip before speaking to you was to Brazil. '" And, to this day, that is how I approach it. And, after a few weeks of traveling, my two colleagues said to me, "Lyse, everywhere we go, no matter if it's a small village, a town, or a city, without exception, you end up saying, 'Oh, wow, I really like this place. I had to learn on the job, and then here I am, many decades on, I'm still working for the BBC still, and still, I wake up every day and think, "Wow, I'm so lucky." After the placement finished, I was with two other volunteers, and we traveled to the north of Ivory Coast and we went then to the Sahel, to what was then, at the time, Upper Volta, which later became Burkina Faso and Mali and Senegal. And I joke, when I talk about it, I say the, the clouds opened and God descended and He says, "Give this girl from Canada, this young woman from Canada, a job." And, for better or worse, I was thrown into it. I took a calculated risk, but I happened to be in the Ivory Coast when the BBC was setting up its first ever West Africa office in Abidjan, in the capital.Īnd there I was, wrong accent, an accent from Canada, wrong CV, in fact, no CV at all, everything wrong about it. I made my own fortune," and I suppose that was it. And I'm told that we're not supposed to use this phrase now, especially women, we shouldn't say, "Well, it was right place, right time." We should say, "Well, I made my own luck. And, to this day, I think that, for journalism too, you have to go right down into the heat and in the dust.Īfter I finished my three months at the school, I wanted to stay on, and I had made it very clear from the start that I wanted, more than anything else in the world, a young, I guess, 22 years old at the time, I wanted to be a journalist, so I started freelancing. And, for me, that was the first time when I really threw myself into something which was different from my own and I got to see it at firsthand. There were all many different kinds of beliefs and cultures. It was, uh, a Muslim society, my first time living in a Muslim society, but there was also Christianity. I started in the heat and the dust, living in a school, living in the community, living according to the rhythms of that community, really getting to know. They figured I came from a part of Canada which is bilingual so that I spoke some French, which I did, but I was not fluent at the time.Īnd, to this day, that I say I'm really glad I started in a village. And one thing led to another, and I got sent to Ivory Coast. It was meant to be kind of an exchange program. I went to do my master's degree in Toronto, the University of Toronto, and it was there that I joined a volunteer organization called Canadian Crossroads International, which offered three-month volunteer assignments for young Canadians. And I, I left this very small town and went to the center of Canada to go to Queen's University for my bachelor's degree, and which, to this day, I say was the biggest culture shock of all for me, to go from a very small town to a part of Canada where I was exposed to people from much more elite backgrounds than myself. How do all stories begin? Once upon a time, not so long ago, in fact, very long time ago, I was born on the eastern shores of Canada, on the Atlantic, the rocky Atlantic shores, in a very small town, a very small town, very simple lives where people's lives were governed by a sense of what was right and wrong, about belief in God, in the church, had some kind of faith. LD: Well, let me try to tell a very long story in a very short way. LA: I want to begin with the fact that you started your life in Canada and you have a Canadian background, and I'm interested to know how you got from Canada to now.
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