It's not that easy to be a digital nomad in West Africa
We will hardly face greater difficulties than the ones we currently face
First, I apologize for the delay in mailing this Friday's newsletter. This was an unusual week for me.
Today's edition is special. I invited Wesley Faraó Klimpel, from Sem Chaves, to share the stories he and his wife, Patricia Pamplona, are experiencing in West Africa. I hope this is the first of many collaborations from this couple.
I've known Mateus for many years, and, during this time, we have shared workstations, work complaints, professional aspirations, and, more recently, the desire to work from anywhere in the world. Unfortunately, I don't have good experiences to share in this regard.
Six months ago, my wife and I embarked on an ambitious project of traveling around the world. To fully embrace our youth - in other words, being willing to endure misfortunes - we started our journey in West Africa.
In these six months, we realized that the digital nomad concept is not as widely spread as we thought. My wife, who started teaching Portuguese and French, has experienced this firsthand.
We have stayed in several expensive hotels where the Wi-Fi was either terrible in the room or nonexistent. And mind you, this happened in a place where the daily rate was $116. And why not Airbnb?
We also tried Airbnb, and the experience was no less agonizing. In the last one, the listing mentioned a generator as an improvement. It was there, but getting the building's staff to turn it on was a struggle since the power frequently went out.
That's when we discovered the reason for the surge protectors scattered around the rooms: during the power outages and subsequent comebacks, both of our laptop chargers crashed.
Imagine the despair of someone who relies on their device for work and, even more importantly, to apply for visas online.
To show that we tried various alternatives, we stayed at the homes of three different people in different countries, and yet we still faced power and internet problems. All of them were European or Brazilian expatriates who usually have different standards regarding these amenities.
The easiest solution, but not any less expensive, is to rely on cafes. And both of us, being coffee enthusiasts, love this option.
However, even in trendy places, it is common for the server to say they don't have internet - or it's only for staff - or they bring the bill as soon as we take the last sip of coffee.
Of course, we have had great experiences in the past months at cafes in countries like Ivory Coast, Ghana, and Cameroon.
Unfortunately, the combination of coffee + internet + service tends to coincide with places managed by people from Europe or the Middle East. One of the best environments I frequented was a Lebanese family's café in Benin, which also resulted in a higher bill.
I'm glad these problems teach us to always have plans B and C for potential issues. And, more than that, they put things into perspective: we will hardly face greater difficulties than the ones we currently face.
And no, I don't regret leaving a job that was making me unhappy and embarking on this journey around the world through Africa.
Now I am truly living, and, more importantly, these experiences are priceless, even the unsuccessful ones as a digital nomad.
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Such an important piece to read and contemplate, the need to reliable internet connection and infrastructure is real. Thanks for sharing.