Five Countries a Year

Dear Janet,

I want to tell you about the challenge I gave myself after you were gone. Since 2023, I have made myself visit at least five different countries every year. When I say it quickly it sounds like a holiday plan. For me it became something more serious: a way of insisting to myself that life was still meant to be experienced.

You know how I get. Left to my own habits, I will work for six months straight and call it living. So I made a rule. Five countries a year. Some trips are for business, some are for exploring, and some start as business trips and quietly become holidays the moment the last meeting ends. I am an international investor and entrepreneur, so travel has become both personal and professional for me. But between you and me, some of it is simply a promise I made to keep myself curious.

Let me tell you about some of the places I have loved so far.

Accra was one of the easiest places I have ever travelled. The energy hits you gently, the people are warm, the food is generous, and the business conversations happen with a naturalness that puts you at ease. I remember thinking that I could live there and be very comfortable. And very well fed.

Guangzhou is a different animal entirely. It is manufacturing, scale and food all happening at the same time, at full volume. I went looking for one thing and left thinking about ten businesses I could start. That city does not let your brain rest. I would sit down to dinner and find myself calculating shipping costs between courses. You would have had to confiscate my notebook.

Cape Town is the opposite problem. It is so beautiful that it makes you want to slow down, even when your head is full of business. I would sit somewhere with a view and pretend I was relaxing while mentally drafting plans. At least the scenery made the procrastination look elegant.

Dubai is the city where everything seems possible, which is both its charm and its slightly ridiculous side. The scale, the ambition, the convenience. Someone once told me nothing is impossible in Dubai, and I believe them, mostly because I saw things there I still cannot explain. It is a fun place to be ambitious, and an even better place to accidentally spend more on coffee than you planned.

Kampala always feels familiar. There is something about East Africa that can make you feel at home even when you are technically in another country. The people, the food, the energy. I arrive and my shoulders drop before my brain has finished noting that I am abroad.

Abidjan was a discovery. A big, stylish, energetic city, and my first real experience finding my way around a Francophone African city. I relied on observation, patience and whatever French I could put together, and I enjoyed it enormously. There is something about ordering lunch successfully in another language that makes a man feel far more accomplished than he deserves.

Addis Ababa surprised me in a way I am still processing. Ethiopia has a longstanding culinary tradition of eating raw meat, and people do it with total confidence. I sat there looking at my plate, wondering whether everyone in the room had received a memo that I had somehow missed. Clearly my definition of fresh and the Ethiopian definition of fresh needed a meeting. To be clear, the joke is entirely on me. It is a proud tradition with experience and skill behind it, and I was simply not prepared for it.

Zanzibar is the place where I feel I should stop checking emails for a few hours, and where I usually fail. The beaches, the food, the sea. Whether I am there for business or for travel, the island keeps suggesting that I relax, and I keep negotiating with it. I have never won that negotiation for more than a day.

Kigali is the city that makes you notice your surroundings. Clean, orderly, calm. You find yourself walking slower and behaving better, as if the city itself were quietly holding you to a standard. I find that impressive, and I find it calming.

And then there was Douala. I will be honest with you, because I promised you honesty. Sometimes you visit a place and simply do not connect with the experience in the same way you did elsewhere. That was my visit to Douala. Nothing terrible happened. The city just did not open itself to me on that particular trip, and I did not manage to open myself to it. That is part of travelling, and it would be unfair of me to judge a whole city on one visit. I only mention it because not every trip can be a love story.

Now I must tell you about Europe, because this is my favourite story. I once had a visa application denied. Among the concerns raised was that, as a single father, there were questions about whether I would return home. Whether I might, and I want you to picture my face here, leave my daughter behind.

Janet. Me. The man who arranges his whole life around school runs. The authorities looked at a single father raising his daughter and somehow concluded that I might disappear to Europe and abandon her. I understand that visa officers have a job to do, and that they make decisions based on the papers in front of them. But from where I was sitting, the conclusion felt so far from my reality that I could only laugh. I have never felt less likely to abandon anybody in my life.

That experience taught me something, though. Travelling has taught me that I enjoy discovering places for myself rather than relying on other people's opinions. Some places I expected to love surprised me. Some places I expected to be difficult turned out to be wonderful. Some places were great for business but were not my favourite personal experience. And some places simply made me want to go home. That is part of the fun.

So that is the challenge, and this is why I keep it. Five countries a year reminds me that life is still meant to be experienced. I am trying to live, to explore, to build businesses, to meet people and to see the world, while still carrying the life and the dreams we once imagined together. I am not replacing anything, Janet. I am just refusing to stop.

I am still collecting countries, stories and experiences. Some of them are ridiculous, and I wish you were here to laugh at those ones with me. You always laughed at the right moments.

With all my love,

Brian.