...and now for something completely different.

Kibokoni Hotel, Malindi

2009-05-09T06:25:00.001-07:00

After 3 weeks of generous hospitality staying rent free and with luxurious exclusivity of cousin Julia's in-laws holiday home, Zawadi House we decided to move out. We had decided to remain in Malindi and do some free consultancy at a local orphanage/school/hospital that we found just around the corner and realised that for us to appreciate the community a bit more we'd have to venture out of the safe and cosseted environment that is Zawadi House. Zawadi House is a beautiful 3 bedroomed traditionally styled Kenyan building with a towering pointed roof thatched with palm throng tiles. Ventilation is achieved with gaping roofed openings in the sides of the roof a little like dormer window without the glass, frames or structure - actually not very much like dormer windows at all but very picturesque all the same. There are two floors, both open plan and both with an inordinate amount of sitting/lounging apparatus. I estimated that there was arse space for approximately 54 people, not including the bedrooms. We were getting in to the habit of watching the National Geographic channel on the satellite TV every night and while I will sorely miss the thrice weekly episodes of "Monkey Thieves" (worth the whole subscription I am sure) we decided to look for a place with more independence and lower walls. Besides, we were beginning to feel that we were getting under Peter the houseboy's feet as we were clearly interfering with his nightly soccer fix on the satellite TV.

So after talking to a few of the locals and laughing hysterically at the prices of other self catering places on offer we jumped at the chance of seeing a small apartment just down the road in a complex called Kibokoni Hotel. It was actually Peter the houseboy that found the place for us, only hours after we had dropped the hint that we might be moving out! Malindi is a small town but the convenient location of Kibokoni Hotel was just perfect - only a 5 minute walk from where we were working and the staff seemed friendly enough. When we were shown around by a slim woman in nothing but a bikini and a towel, everything seemed OK to me. Everything seemed to be in the right places, well proportioned and pretty tidy over all - and the apartment wasn't too bad either so we took it. We ended up paying about 40% over the going rate and foolishly agreed to pay 2 months in advance - something we were to truly regret only days after moving in. The interior decor of the place was ropey (tangerine and pistachio?) but pretty spacious and outside the place was in state of typical disrepair. Bizarrely, there were a number of reproduction early 19th century paintings of English fox hunting scenes on the wall and a set of Russian dolls covered in dust on a shelf in the kitchen. There was enough seating for at least a dozen people which judging by our social life in Kenya up to that point in time seemed about 10 spaces too much.

Televisions in Africa are still quite rare. Their scarcity is generally compensated for by being always on and set permanently at full volume. The two TVs at Hotel Kibokoni, one in the open bar area and one by the pool, are no exception. "AfricaMagic" seems to be the favourite channel which shows shitty soap operas made with a shaky camcorder and very bad actors who constantly shout at each other in Swahili and cry a lot. All stories seem to centre on money problems and or infidelity along with a few witch doctors thrown in for good measure. If we're lucky we get a bit of National Geographic, but never any Monkey Thieves.

Once we had paid two months up front the pleasantries ended and we are treated like anyone else in this country - isn't that what we wanted? Yes but...
The kitchen was pitifully poorly equipped, the TV we were promised finally got connected a week later but only showed what was being watched in the bar - yes you've guessed it, witch doctors and shouting black people. The bed also took a week to be installed properly as it was missing a correctly fitting mosquito net and the swimming pool has gone green. To top it all the gas ran out after a few days and after being told that all the bills were inluded in the rent we were told to go the the petrol station to get ourselves a new cannister if we wanted to carry on using the cooker. We were sharing the appartment with 3 or 4 geckos and thousands of ants and the locked interior door to the next appartment was warped so badly that we quickly became intimately acquainted with our neighbours lifestyle, music taste and bowel movements. The Landlady from Hell, Marcie (a true She-Devil, if ever I met one), sacked Dominic the member of staff that tried to warn us that she was trying to con us when we mentioned the gas bottle episode as some kind of demonstration of who has the power round here. She fixes you with a don't **** with me stare when we make the slightest complaint although she did begrudgingly agree to pay for the new regulator that we had to buy for her own bloody gas cooker.

The only person working at the Hotel that actually seemed to do anything was Amissi, the general gofer and maintenance man. We would regularly hear his name being shrieked across the hotel as he had instructions randomly thrown at him throughout his 11 hour days. He never seemed to complain, always greeted you with a smile and a cheerful "Jambo" and was usually dripping with sweat. I suppose working for the She-Devil, you would have to be a certain type of person, and Amissi clearly needed the two pounds a day that she paid him. It was Amissi who ended up inheriting a lot of our cast offs, which he seemed to greatly appreciate and would hurriedly squirrel them away before the She-Devil spotted him with anything.

So, over the 7 - 8 weeks that we stayed in the Kibokoni Hotel, we slowly but oh so surely fell out with the owner and her partner, Sam. The gas bottle was the first problem, then our repeated requests for the bed to be fixed, the TV scam, the murky green swimming pool (picture was "before", didn't get a chance for the "after" - the broken pot is cemented on to the edge of the pool), refusal to fix lights that stopped working in the appartment ("but they were working fine when you took the place"), constant lack of water as they wouldn't refill the tank until somebody asked (we were always the somebody) but as we got to know our fellow inmates we learned that it clearly wasn't personal. One girl, a Kenyan that was working at another NGO in Malindi had ended up paying 3 months in advance and had since been told by "the management" that she would now have to contribute to the electricity bills, would have to pay to have her rubbish taken out of her room, and would have to pay if she used the pool or watched the public bar TV that was permanently switched on anyway. She was too scared to complain as she could not afford to get kicked out. She also said that most of the other residents were in the same position, but there was nothing anyone could do without having to bribe officials for any kind of support.

The last straw came unexpectedly and brought an abrupt end to our stay at this salubrious residence. One evening, we returned to the hotel after dark in a tuk-tuk. Unfortunately, we managed to leave the key to our appartment in the tuk-tuk so we were locked out. When we asked Sam, the She-Devil's 6 foot 9 partner for assistance (by this time she had stopped talking to us entirely) there was a complete absence of even a hint of giving the remotest of a shit. Not only that, but it turned out that the last residents had lost their key also and we had therefore been given the spare. Sam sat there and with out the slightest irony made us the generous offer of a special rate on another room. When we told him that we were not prepared to pay for another room on the basis that it was his responsibility to keep a spare key, he told us that we would have to spend the night under the stars. He also told us that we would have to sort out a locksmith in the morning if we wanted to get back in to our room - thanks for the advice Sam, nice one.
In the end, Peter the Zawadi House Houseboy came to the rescue and put us up for the night. In the morning he helped us find a locksmith and we were back in the appartment before 8:15. Our hosts didn't surface until 9.30.
In the local bar that evening, we shared our story with a few of the locals and the unequivocal advice was to go to the tourist police and report the incident, which I did. Actually, the police were surprisingly interested in the issue and promised to look into it - the officer I spoke to ending the conversation with a request for me to send him a Man Utd shirt from the UK when I got back.

It all came to a head the following night - yet again, there was no water as they hadn't bothered refilling the tank, it was a hot and sticky night and I needed a shower. I went into the bar area to tell Sam. As soon as he saw me, he leapt up and immediately started shouting at me about ruining his reputation around Malindi. Apparently he'd heard about our visit to the local bar and he was not happy. The last thing I remember doing was launching into some rant about paying rent and having rights and firmly standing my ground as he loomed over me. I didn't see the first blow coming, and to be honest it was the last thing I was expecting. He then slapped me in the head again as I was scurrying around trying to get the hell out of there while the She-Devil herself did her best to block my escape. In the end, it was Jessica the diminuitive barmaid who grabbed his arm and let me get some distance and a few words in edgeways.
So to cut a long and rather tedious story short, I called the Police, they came, Sam and the She-Devil denied everything and the witnesses said they saw nothing. The Police left, telling us all to go down to the station in the morning. The following morning we moved out, I got an apology from a sober Sam and I dropped the charges knowing that I'd never be able to afford the bribes to see justice done anyway.
A couple of days later we caught the train from Mombasa to Nairobi and as we passed through one of the Game Reserves we accidentally threw the last remaining key to the appartment out of the carriage window.

I never thought that our last couple of days in Kenya would turn out like an episode of one of those crappy soap operas on AfricaMagic.On the bright side, it gave me a fascinating insight into how things work in small towns in Kenya and how quickly news travels. It's the law of the jungle - if you have money you have influence. If you are bigger than someone you fall out with, you hit them. If you want European standards of service, you find a European run Hotel - suddenly it dawned on me why all the white tourists stayed locked up behind the thick white washed walls of their private residences. With people like Sam and the She-Devil towards the top end of the food chain, why the Hell would you want to venture out anyway?

Volunteering at Rainbow

2009-04-28T05:50:00.001-07:00

Wednesday 29th April will be our last day of volunteer work in Africa. Here is a quick summary of the main activities we have been concentrating on since we have been here at Rainbow. In our experience of small NGOs in Africa, Rainbow is well above average in terms of successful achievement of its objective (Hospital, School and Orphanage). The work we have been doing has been to try and further streamline already functioning processes to try to incorporate some 'tried and tested' commercial work practices.

Construction Project - 2 Extra Classrooms

When we arrived this project had been suspended. It had spent the total budget originally estimated and provided by the Italian sponsors (approx £12000). The sponsors were confused how the budget had been spent and the classes were incomplete. The estimate of a further £2000 had been given to complete the job.

Our initial task was to plough through all the receipts that had been spent to date and verify the total expenditure. We then needed to verify the new quotation. This was done by a thorough review with the foreman and the structural engineer. By planning the materials for each individual task we estimated that the cost to finish the job would actually be another £5000. This was the budget requested after we had obtained all materials quotations and secured the lowest prices on each item. This was signed off by the Italian sponsors. We then needed to plan the tasks and materials purchases according to the budget availability plan.

Throughout the build the time and materials were tracked.

Our biggest challenge was employee responsibility. The original estimates were given to the charity in order that the construction team would win the business. Because there is no formal operating contract here, if the build is not completed on time or the original materials estimate is incorrect, the construction team does not care. Given the complexity of the relationships in the tight communities, firing or the threat of is not an option. The charity will lose out and there is no real leverage on the builders. To avoid any difficult conversations, the builders would rather lie about

deliverables knowing there will be little or no consequence to them when we discover they are very wrong. Above left, the classrooms approx 3 weeks after we arrived. Above right, the classrooms just before we left (2 weeks before completion).

School Fees Administration

When we arrived, the school children that were sponsored received subsidised tuition. All pupils made a form of payment to the school for lessons (approx £4 per month for non-sponsored children, £2 for sponsored). As the record sheets for payments were all paper based, it was impossible to track payments and debts. In order to implement a computer based tracker for the fees we first needed to improve the spreadsheet skills of the two administrators.

Following this we developed with them a tracker for the fees. We discovered that the school was approximately £7000 in debt to unpaid school fees. After further investigation it was discovered that some of these children had left the school and their due fees were still being falsely recorded as due. Therefore the debt was much lower than first thought. The parents of the offending children were followed up and the majority of the outstanding debt was collected. However, this process had actually uncovered another couple of issues with the overall system. It was possible for children to leave the school without the management's knowledge; it was possible for some children to start school without ever paying fees or being tracked and it was possible for children to have large debt for months or years without being followed up. Improvements to this process in the following section.

The main difficulty with this activity was that we do not realise in our daily lives how much we know about IT and take for granted. When trying to teach someone the fundamentals of computers, it is difficult to step back in to the shoes of someone who does not use or understand the fundamentals.

School Admissions Process

The above issues were identified with the fees process along with others for admission: it was possible for children to be mixed up if they have the same names and it is possible for children to change their names. Therefore we realised it was necessary to implement an admission number process. This would be used for the administration of the child while they are attending the school.

Along with the head teachers and administration staff we digitised the student photos with new admission numbers included; created new admission/sponsorship forms to reflect the new process; created a communications process for feedback to the Italian sponsors and reinforced several school processes and policies.

New Photo Format with ID included

Hospital Digitisation

Before we arrived, all the patient records and drug stocktaking was paper based. The charity had expressed a desire to computerise the records and stock system for ease of operation.

The initial stage of this was again to train the main operative in the fundamentals of Word; excel and computers in general. These new skills were then used together to formulate a process for recording patient treatments and the stock system for the hospital.

Picture below of Dee (the founder of Rainbow) with her adopted son Harry. He has foetal alcohol syndrome which means he has numerous physical and mental problems, the most obvious of which being his arms.

To the far right in the picture below is a pupil who was housed at the orphanage and schooled at Rainbow. She has moved on to secondary school and is in first position in her year. Her friends are admiring her exam results.

I Love Zanzibar!

2009-04-28T05:22:00.001-07:00

Over the Easter week, we decided to do a bit of tourism/travelling and have a break from the volunteering. To be honest, Malindi has been getting us down a bit. There is nothing more depressing than an empty tourist village. It is like a ghost town. With not many tourists around the locals are more miserable with the reduction in opportunity to make some money. Malindi is not extreme enough to be exciting, but not comfortable enough to be like home.........how can I be content in a place that sells bars of Galaxy chocolate, but at 70p each and a pack of 500g butter at £5?

We loved Zanzibar! From a tourism point of view, it had everything we look for in a place to go. When we arrived immediately the people were friendly, and although we got the odd hawker shouting "my friend, my friend" the hassle was not to the extreme that you get in Malindi.

On the first evening when enjoying a cold drink in the "Mercury bar" on the harbour all the local children gathered at the harbour wall.For 2 hours, one after the other the children frantically threw themselves in to the water as if they had never been swimming. It was such a joyous sight of pure fun. They reminded me of lemmings, flinging themselves in to the turquoise water and with no hesitation between they would get straight out and perform the very same immediately after. Never tiring.

We stayed in a backpackers hotel (Princess Salme) with very friendly staff and a lot of charm. This was another advantage of Zanzibar in that there were very luxurious places to suit big budgets and charming places like our hotel to suit a smaller budget (approx £16 per night for 2 incl. breakfast). On the first morning after our lovely breakfast on the roof terrace we joined a spice tour. The spice tour was arranged by the hotel and we joined a young couple of trainee doctors from our hotel. After a bit of conversation we discovered that they were from Leamington Spa as well. How funny - we had not spoken to another English person for nearly our entire time in Africa and then we met two from our home town. The spice tour was excellent fun and great value.

There is a gorgeous night food market around the square near "Africa Hotel" where the barbequed food is laid out traditionally but with a slight tourist edge (in that it is all in one place and a large selection).Unfortunately it was low season and we noticed along with the fact that no locals were eating there but that a lot of food was being packed away for the next night after being cooked. Edd had eaten some prawns which he immediately thought were bad and stopped eating.......but he still got the inevitable food poisoning. Poor Edd. He was in bed for the next day with a high temperature, the shivers and aches and pains. It does seem that it is always the same anywhere that is set up for 'passers through' rather than locals. There were however selections of yummy chocolate pancakes and other delights that were cooked fresh and totally safe.

After a couple of days we headed north.We didn't manage to find out about a public bus in time, so we took the tourist's minibus paying approx £6 each. For the journey back we found the locals bus which was only £2 each and was much more fun! In Nungwi on the north tip there are perfect white sandy beaches and pale turquoise seas. Lying on the beach all day isn't really for Edd and I so we went on a snorkelling trip instead. The trip went in one of the traditional Dhow sailing boats. It was beautiful. The fish and coral we saw on Mwembe island were better than the diving we did in Watamu. It was just beautiful, and so much less palava than diving :-)

On our sailing boat we met 3 great people. 2 Europeans and a girl from Burundi. Both the Europeans were working for NGOs in Burundi and all had come to Zanzibar for the week to chill out. We had a great laugh with them and the single guy was particularly enjoying being on the boat with 9 very attractive young nurses from Denmark sunning themselves as we sailed.

Considering we had all been in Africa for a while and how important it is for us to make our finite supply of cash stretch....none of us fancied paying tourist prices for our evening meal twice in a row (approx £13, when we had had a scrummy lunch of local dishes for £1.20 the day before). So we persuaded one of the Dhow's crew to source us some squid and octopus and cook us the food himself. We was very happy to earn a healthy surprise bonus like this. We sat there by candle light on the beach waiting until 9:15pm for our food to arrive, beginning to believe that as usual we had made the mistake of paying up front and he had 'done a runner'. But what a lovely surprise it was when he turned up after all with a sumptuously spiced meal. Maybe there is some hope after all on this Continent!

Anybody considering a week in the sun should seriously consider Zanzibar. You can live nearly as cheaply as you want (if you're prepared for local's canteens and backpacking accommodation) or as luxuriously. There is beautiful beaches, culture, activities (sailing, fishing, diving, spice tours) and friendly people. Flying to Dar from London should be straight forward also. Being in Africa, it provides the slightly more adventurous edge than the Med which also means a complete lack of chavs! And there are wild monkeys - need I say more?

See the Monkey whisperer above. Don't get too comfortable David Attenborough!

Not another boat trip!

2009-04-25T06:02:00.001-07:00

For the Easter week, Edd and I travelled to Zanzibar in Tanzania. It can take 1 day on the coach (if you don't stay overnight in Mombasa) and 1/2 day on the boat. The coach was quite an experience, but that's another story.

At the boat desk in Dar, we found out we had to pay three times the price for our ticket as nationals do. We felt a little bitter about this considering we were paying in the same currency as everybody else and sitting in the same seats as everyone else. Imagine if we implemented this triple fee policy for foreigners in England - do you think people would have a problem with it?

We were advised to get on to the boat 1.5 hours before we left to "secure our seat". The journey was a similar story to the Zig/Dakar ferry, except that it was only 3 hours and during the day. Africans just don't have the same concept of personal space as us. Edd and I sat on a row of 4 looking back at the sea, taking up 2 of the seats but hoping we might have the 4 seats to ourselves. A woman opposite had lain across 3 seats and was pretending to be in deep sleep as her personal land grabbing strategy. Therefore the next woman to come along placed her chicken under my seat, herself next to me (bashing me as she sat) and her child on the next seat. Every minute of the journey the woman pushed harder and harder on my left side as she squirmed and shoved a continuous stream of toffees in to her child's mouth. I held firm and tried to maintain control of my single seat staring with determination at the sea hoping not to get seasick this time.

20 minutes in to the journey I noticed the woman quickly pass her child to another woman opposite who was a complete stranger to her. The woman was very smartly dressed in a red dress but she willingly took the child in a natural maternal embrace. I was momentarily confused by this and then soon after my puzzlement was answered. The woman to my left then started throwing up in to a plastic bag only inches from my own face. She did this with such loud retching noises that the whole boat became aware, even above the roar of the engine. In fact it sounded more like the sound of a throaty motor bike than an actual female being sick! What is the problem with just being a little more discrete about these things?

The orphaned child, slightly alarmed but calm, watched her mother, blinking as she sat patiently on the guardian woman's lap. The woman to my left continued to throw up every 20 minutes then for the entirety of the journey. In between gags, she then of course was able to lie down on the TWO seats she had now been able to secure. Mmmmm, A bit too convenient I thought! I had by this point became slightly less persistent about resisting her ground creep as before for fear of being covered in vomit.

What surprised me the most was that the mother to my left was perfectly comfortable with the inconvenience she had bestowed on the woman in the red dress. She confidently left the lady with the baby for 2 hours, with no apparent sign of apology or gratitude for the help. In between her puking fits, she would pass more African doughnuts or toffees to the contented child. The red woman would smile awkwardly as she was obliged to unnecessarily feed the child more and more, increasing greatly the likelihood that her smart red dress would be covered in greasy baby goo.

At the end of these two hours this patient woman firmly passed the little child back to the mother to once again take responsibility for the child. I have no doubt that most other passengers on the boat felt some compassion for her obvious malaise, but she really had pushed the tolerance to the limit. At this point I then felt a tap on my leg. The woman picked up her child, and plonked her on my lap and lay down again to get comfortable. No words were spoken. It was obviously my turn to play baby sitter. I placed the child straight down on the seat next to me. Not because she wasn't a little sweetie, but because I wasn't going to have this woman take advantage of me too. The child sat there quite happily apart from the odd sharp kick of its leg into her mother's bum, in her own vain attempt at grabbing her mother's attention once again. This disturbed complaisant woman's two seated sleep. I enjoyed that :-)

We arrived, and then this crazy man redressed himself in his electric blue socks. Just what one needs in 35 degrees c of heat! He completed the activity while staring at me with a deranged grin the entire time.

Well, after 7 months in Africa I have learnt a saying amongst ex-pats which applies in this scenario."I'm surprised I'm still surprised".

My Mercury Mecca

2009-04-25T05:45:00.001-07:00

So, after a torturous 3 day journey from Malindi via Mombasa and Dar Es Salam (Tanzania) we finally set foot on the hallowed ground that is Zanzibar - birthplace of Farrokh Bulsara otherwise known as the late, and very very great, Freddie Mercury. Now, don’t get me wrong – I am not obsessed with the guy, it’s just that he was a very good friend to me throughout my teenage years and someone I will never forget. I’ve never really seen the point of pilgrimages, but you can’t knock something until you’ve tried it so, in the name of religious empathy, I decided to give it a try. It would be just like being a Muslim – except without the prayer cap. Er, and the abstinence I suppose. And I suppose there was less probability of getting crushed too.

The final leg of the journey was a 4 hour ferry crossing from the main land. As we were "foreigners", we were expected to pay $20 - about twice the going rate for the locals which pissed us right off before we even got on the boat. Having to deal with loud vomiting, squawking chickens and fat Muslim women trying to slowly nudge you off your seat for the whole of the trip was probably slightly more annoying still, yet the thought of being merely hours away from completing my own personal once in a lifetime pilgrimage stopped me from getting too uptight about it all. Soz on the other hand, was ready to start throwing burkas over board before we were half way there.

Once we had checked in to a very basic but friendly guest house (The Princess Salme if anyone’s interested), we made a b-line for "Mercury’s", the bar on the beachfront dedicated to my hero and apparently full of memorabilia and trivia about the man himself. Well, in typical African style, the reality was nothing like the promise and other than a couple of black and white posters and a few faded and blistering photos there really wasn't much to differentiate the place from anywhere else on the seafront. Quietly disappointed, yet forever my upbeat positive self, I asked the barman what exactly they thought they were playing at. It turns out that they only called the place Mercury's after lots of teary looking Europeans suddenly started turning up on the boat from the mainland sometime in the early nineties asking directions to where some bloke called Freddie Mercury was born. Not many people on Zanzibar had ever heard of this Freddie bwahna but not wanting to miss out on a valuable opportunity to attract custom, the enterprising proprietors of the bar promptly renamed the place. The barman also confessed that he really didn't rate the music that much and much preferred traditional Swahili but failing that he's generally happy with a bit of hip hop. Tourists were always giving him Queen CDs which although he has always politely accepted he never bothered playing. After a cold beer, I got to the point and asked directions to Freddie Mercury's home. He bluffed an answer which turned out to be completely wrong and we left in search of Mecca.

It wasn't long before we happened across a shop selling all the usual East African tat that every other tourist shop in East Africa sells, and of course the wife insisted on investigating further - just in case there was something inside that she hadn't seen in the 50 plus other African tat shops we've already shuffled around over the past few weeks. As I loitered outside making small talk with the security guards, I noticed that the building was called Mercury House - surely not another cynical attempt to cash in on the sacred memory of dear Farad! Actually, it turned out that that Sozzle had accidentally found the building after all, so, on this occasion, I was happy to go in and help with a bit of browsing. The sleepy looking staff in the place shrugged enigmatically when I asked if it really was the birthplace of Freddie Mercury, although there was hardly a reference to the man inside the place and not a single patent leather hat with a chain across the front to be seen.

It wasn't until after I had made Sozzle take a photo of me having a pee in a toilet in the house, that it dawned on me that the building was way too modern to have been Freddie's home and that we were probably just at the same address.

A hundred yards up the street we came across a photography shop full of black and white prints of visiting dignitaries and ex presidents which looked like something dating back to the 1950s. Inside was a wiry middle aged, Indian looking man with a big moustache (slightly Freddiesque to be fair) who lent over the counter chain smoking while he nonchalantly surveyed the street outside through narrowed eyes. I recognised the place from a documentary made on Freddie's life so went inside feeling quite excited. After 30 seconds or so of looking at interesting (but not Freddie-related) black and white prints I asked the chain smoker why I recognised his shop from the documentary and he explained that the film makers had interviewed him about the Bulsara family a few years ago as his father had taken the very first photograph of Freddie as a baby when he was only 6 months old. Again, he really didn't see what the big deal was about the man - after all, he had never returned to Zanzibar since being sent to school in India as a seven year old. Two or three passport sized prints of the photo were under the glass of the ash covered counter in front of me and he explained that a larger print was kicking around somewhere but he had put it away due to the amount of sad white tourists that would come into his shop just to look at it. What is it they say about when opportunity knocks?!

How very odd, I agreed, still it takes all sorts I suppose. Clearing my throat, I took a deep breath and asked if I could perhaps buy one off his photos myself. Eventually I left with a print of a photograph that his father had taken of the street from outside the shop some time in the 1950's, possibly around the time of Freddie Mercury's birth. In the photograph the original building still stands, the house where Freddie was born and lived - modest and understated, just like my hero. It's the one with the black car outside it...

Did I feel complete now that my pilgrimage was over? Did I consider myself a more worthy fan? Would I endure 72 hours of public transport and crap hotels for something I believed in ever again? Probably not. Can’t see myself converting to Islam either.

Hook, Line and Sinker

2009-04-19T12:16:00.001-07:00

This story should have been written back at the beginning of our trip. It has taken us this long because the embarrassment at our own stupidity would have turned the story in to a bitter rant about how nasty Africa is. But this basically turned out to be our most valuable (costly only really to our pride), initiation course for Africa. I think it is pretty funny to be able to laugh at now that we are not smarting about it any longer!
So, I don’t know if you remember our story about the expensive 5 second taxi ride we had in Dakar on our arrival. I had never been afraid to arrive in a country before. I can honestly say that back in September last year when we touched down in Senegal, being a slightly, but not completely naive traveller and having watched way too many scary films about Africa like “Shooting Dogs”and “The Last King of Scotland”, I was petrified. We were the only honkies on the plane and surrounded by actual Africans who mercilessly stared at me with with no intention of relieving my fear, which they could obviously smell, by reciprocating the smile I’d just nervously given, seeming to rather prefer to make me wonder........this was probably the most scared I have been on this trip. The second sudden culture shock was when well dressed, plump African woman in her stiletto heals struggled to carry her small hand luggage from the cabin lest she may break her long red fingernails. Edd eager to make a connection with this strange nations inhabitants picked up the case for her. She briefly looked at Edd with some disdain and carried on walking quite normally as if to say ‘well you took your time didn’t you?’ As we walked all the way to the terminal building the lady made no attempt to take the bag back from Edd and in fact when he did manage to persuade he to once again take ownership of her own baggage in the queue for immigration, she begrudgingly took the bag with no acknowledgement of thanks. She may as well have tutted, much was her disapproval at the inconvenience once again! In my head the words “Shiiiiiiiit. I really need to harden up here. We’re not in Leamington Spa anymore Dorothy”. The taxi ride was the third domino to go down in the inevitable line to our demise.
On the second night in Dakar, we had moved to a cheaper hotel, which was on the beach (if you can call it that) at the airport end of town. Not nice. The night before we had been so traumatised by how green we were feeling and clearly outwardly projecting like a beacon for all to see, that we decided to go to a safe looking restaurant to hide away and ended up shedding even more cash for the privilege. That night when the electricity power cut we decided to be a little braver and go for a walk to find a more wallet friendly, and slightly more challenging place to eat. We found a dingy little restaurant on the beach adjacent to the hotel. A lone French man called Bruno was sitting drinking Pastis in the dark. He was very 'sympatique' but a bit of a loser. He was full of advice....... and Pernod. He was a painter. "What style?" "I paint houses, well buildings - you know, walls and stuff" "Why are you here?" "I love the African way of life" And also being permanently drunk I guess. The light bulb constantly varied in brightness with the fluctuating power supply, as did the man's interest in making conversation. He was pretty cagey about his origins but seemed very proud of his paperwork and the fact that you could buy yourself anything in Dakar. Knowing what I know now, potentially this is true throughout the whole of Africa!
So, we order some food - after having asked what it would cost of course. The friendly waiter who is mates with Frenchman has to run off to buy the food and drinks. Eventually, we eat after waiting for an hour and a half talking to Bruno the piss head painter.
Following the meal, a young Senegalese man arrives and in the dim light of a 40 watt light bulb we recognise him from our hotel earlier today. Red cap and blood shot eyes. He’d said “ca va” to us as we were checking in and confirmed that he was the pool cleaner. He was playing with his MP3 player. "Yo my man". Lots of smiles and friendly hand slaps. He also said he had been the guy from the beach the night before offering to barbeque some fish for us. I had through gritted teeth grunted to Edd that there was no way i was having barbequed fish in the dark on the first night when I couldn't see who was cooking it, let alone what I was eating and I was scared enough as it was. So, we already knew this man....he was already our “brother” in the true African sense of the word!
Then Snoop Dog arrives and introduces himself as Baba-ke. He speaks English very well (everyone else only speaks French) so we enjoy relaxing and talking to him. We hear about the 4 pelicans in the village Oscar, mama, and blah blah blah. They go out with the fishermen every other day throughout the week and spot the fish for them. There is a 600 year old tree that is very sacred. All the elders gather round the tree to make important decisions and even the president of Senegal comes to visit the tree [at least] twice a year. Baba-ke tells us that he is in the running to make the council maybe next year. Sam red cap concurs with lots of "yeah, mons". To be fair, the guy is clearly quite intelligent and has an excellent command of the English language. We bask in the enjoyment of being allowed to be friendly to some Africans at last......and who want to talk back to us! He's observant too. He has already noticed that our wedding rings match and he spotted us arriving earlier that day. The fact that we probably looked like CP3O and R2D2 in the scene when they are bickering in the desert about whether to shell out another 62.5 pence to take a taxi or not must have made us stand out even more than the average green/white man. We continue with an hour or so of more conversation and we share a couple of beers. We get offered a tour of the village and personal introductions to the pelicans but as its half eleven at night we politely decline.
"So, you like the fishing?" Babba says. "Oh we really don't have the time, I'm afraid my good man, we have to catch a boat to Ziguanchor tomorrow, so we need to leave at 4 PM, we'll be travelling around for the next 12 months you know, it's all jolly exciting isn't it" Edd replies. "No problem mon, lets go and do hafa day, no problem mon" He pointed to his white boat on the beach which we could just make out. We didn't discuss the possibility between ourselves, but we could tell we were both thinking that it would be a nice little adventure. And how are nice little treats ever going ton happen on this 'year out' if we don't say "yes" once in a while?
Negotiation ensued, discussions between Baba-ke and Sam ensue. Sam asked me if I could a fix the little strap on his very light weight MP3 player. I tried and didn't manage it. We agreed to a 3 hour session and a price, but they were to keep the fish - this was checked 3 -- 4 times during the conversation of course. We even tried to push it out to a 2 o'clock finish but it was pointed out that that would be too late for us to enjoy our lunch on the beach (Baba-ke would arrange for his sister to come and cook our fish for us on the very same BBQ that we had seen our fish cooked upon that very evening. "You just pay for de drinks, mon. We keep the rest of the fish though, yeah mon"
So as we are leaving, Baba suggests we pay half up front to purchase fuel and water for the morning and being the nice polite Brits that we are (well I am, anyway) we hand over 10,000 CFAs as a deposit for tomorrow's fishing trip. Baba writes out a receipt. "Don't let me down Baba-ke, I'm trusting you now"... with a not so serious smile on Edd’s friendly face as he speaks. “Yeah mon”.
The next morning there is a filthy storm brewing. And Edd and I joke about how they probably won't turn up because the weather is bad. But sure enough, just after 10, a red cap is bobbing around outside looking hopeful. Despite the bad weather he says that we will be going out in 30 mins or so, as it is sure to pass. Just as predicted, it clears up within half an hour. We sit on a bench with Sam waiting for Baba a little surprised that he is so late. But we are comforted that we can see that the boat is all set up with rods and equipment.
Conversation on our wooden bench between Sam, Edd and I becomes stilted. All three of us look patiently at the horizon through squinted eyes and when Sam breaks the ice with a suggestion that the boys go off and get some water for the trip, Edd jumps at the chance to help. I offer to come too and Sam insists that I sit, relax and wait for Baba. Sam buys the water with Edd at the local shack shop(with money from his own pocket) and passes Edd the water. Sam then remembers that we need bait (sardines). As Baba took the last 10k for fuel Sam asks for the second 10K payment from Edd and enthusiastically disappears down a shanty town alley........................................................................

15 minutes pass.

Like the closing scene in the usual suspects….all the clues inexorably fell in to place

Some other people start loading in to the boat that was supposedly set up for us. We go over and ask whose boat it is and they say its theirs. With hurt looks on our faces we look at each other as the realization dawns.

1)    Baba never turned up because he already had his 10k
2)    Sam is not coming back but he turned up because he still had his 10k to secure – no wonder he looked so hopeful
3)    Sam’s MP3 player was fake….I hadn’t questioned why it was so light, why didn’t I look at it closer? But it was to make him look subconsciously like the kind of bloke with enough money to have one and the kind of bloke who didn't need your money
4)    Sam didn’t work at the hotel – he must have just been hanging around in it to see what came down in the last shower
5)    Baba had been so observant about our wedding rings because he had been piecing our spending potential together and how much capitol he could screw us for
6)    Everyone gets the “we would like to invite you to come and see our pelicans” story, the villagers tell us it is a common symbiotic story for the scam
7)    The insistence on them being able to keep the fish we’d caught and the other lengthy details of the deal added to the validity of the deal
8)   We the victims were split up when the last 10k was extracted, which means there could be no chance of conferring about whether or not we should hand over the next sum, especially when they had seen evidence that the wife was a bit tight on the spending front

In so many ways, the whole charade was quite beautiful and we almost have to respect them for their efforts.

Several locals volunteered to find out where they where as they were known as the local heroin users – "they will already be shooting up right now" we managed to understand in our limited French. They all pretended to look concerned, but taking to their mates in Olaf (Senegalese language) they seemed to be having a much too jovial conversation to be discussing our plight from a sympathetic stand point.

So we felt utterly stripped bare. How could we have been so stupid? It felt like the whole world was watching this game show called “How not to do it!” The hilarious reality TV show where Edd and Sozzle do Africa and have their trousers dropped because they are fools!

The lesson: Never give anyone in Africa money until you have got what it is you are paying for…..And this valuable lesson luckily only cost us around 30 quid….a lot more in pride! Our sense of worldliness was instantly sculptured to a more humble size. And you’ll be pleased to know, we are now even more frugal than when we left the UK, if that is even physically possible!

Social Interaction

2009-03-28T07:32:00.001-07:00

We have spent the past 4 weeks working for "Rainbow Community Care" which is a school, hospital and orphanage built on the outskirts of a popular tourist town on the coast of Kenya called Malindi. Malindi is full of Italians. In fact, you hear more Italian here than you would on the streets of Rome in the summer. All Kenyans with any kind of involvement with the tourist industry here speak Italian and many of them speak it better than they speak English. Considering that most lessons at school are in English, it's easy to see where the priorities lie. Everyone that approaches you here starts with an "amico" which rapidly turns to a "my friend" as soon as they realise you are not Italian - and once the formalities are over its straight down to business.

The business of most people that work the streets of the touristy centre of town is either prostitution or ripping you off. The latter activity is performed with varying levels of subtlety and effectiveness but generally speaking the two signs to look out for are; firstly - they initiate the conversation, and secondly they lie. As for the prostitutes, I am yet to learn if they are also in the habit of ripping people off and unfortunately Sozzle won't allow me to conduct any primary research of my own. Incidentally, I have been informed on good authority however that they command fees that range from "300 Bob" to 30,000 which is about 3 to 300 quid. The labourers on the school block we are managing at the moment get paid 250 per day so as you can imagine, those of the oldest profession here are pretty far up the food chain. And yes, before you ask - they are also a damn sight better looking than our labourers. We have enjoyed a couple of pleasant conversations with some of these girls in one of the local "piano bars", who once resigned to the fact that we're not potential customers are happy to chat away to you for most of the evening provided nothing better turns up and even they even lie a little less after a while. It's common knowledge round here that Naomi Cambell (she's a super model married to a Formula 1 boss, Mum) used to frequent the same club and according to one of the girls, on the occasions that she did, the local prossies would greet her entrance with exactly the same disdain reserved for any other tall black attractive outsider from Nairobi that fancied her chances making a bit of quick cash in the provinces.

At the beginning of our stay here, it was mildly amusing to have people desperately trying to convince us that they really were studying law in "Sunderland, England" and that therefore we really should exchange numbers and be friends (the charade eventually falls apart when they don't know what their postcode is). Now, however, it's all becoming just a little bit tedious. We still try to keep an open mind however, and now and again there is a glimmer of hope in the void that is our social life here - thank God for prostitutes!

The not so secret Millionaire-Part 2

2009-03-28T07:29:00.001-07:00

Edd and I have been volunteering at a community project in Kenya for 1 month now. The project includes an Orphanage, hospital and School. The Orphanage homes 80 children and the School currently educates 900+ children. The project is sponsored primarily by Italians allowing the sponsored children the benefit of the project for free. An amazing couple including; a woman from Tyneside and her Kenyan husband set this place up 15 years ago and has devoted her entire life to it.

As with any organisation it has it's little organisational issues and last week we asked one of the staff at the Orphanage home to list the problems she thought needed addressing. Along with an essay about the gossip surrounding the founders of the project and their alleged involvement with Witch Doctors, stapled to the back of the sheets we received the below letter as I have copied it out. Obviously her identity will remain anonymous, but her written word illustrates quite nicely what I have been trying to describe. How we are perceived. I wonder what 'Jim'll fix it' would have replied back with! For reference 1000Ksh is approx £10/10EUROs

Mr and Mrs Edward

I have been trying to get you for the last few days but it seems you are busy.
Now after you go through the Problems of this home Please see my Personal Problems too.

I need your assistance very much if it is Possible and Please dont tell the directors because I may even be chased out of the Compound, because what I heard is that workers are not allowed to ask or borrow anything from the visitors who come here especially the whites. (Europeans)

But this Problem has really, Stressed me alot. am not settled. and if you will help me by tomorrow I will travel home to kilifi at 2.00pm

This is what i need

7,000Kshs to pay dept for my mother: this is what it is, my mother joined the Kenya Women finance trust and December last year she took a loan Worth 50,000 to buy a Plot. She is Supposed to send 5,400Kshs every month. She is jobless, I have a sister who is a ERIGI teachers college Kakamega, 6 of them are in Primary level. I am the only one working. so out of my salary 8,000 I have to divide it _______Kse rent for the room am leaving in, home and college. last month my mother did not send that money to the KWFT She was sick and I went to see her and I used that money for her hospitel bill and food.
Now the money is needed and she was to pay since last week no means. are u capable of helping me?
Please help.

Also my sister at College need 6,000Kshs school fees where will I get all this amount of money?
In the house I don't have food I dont have even a coin I take all my meals in the home before I go to sleep. you can make shopping for me if you wish.

Your negative response will be highly appreciated by me. and the family at large.
Your welcomed to my family to pprove what am telling you or in my room at Serengett.

Thanks Very Much

THINGS I NEED
4kg Maize flour
1big Hairfood Nice & Lovely (yellow)
5kg Rice (pishori)
2kg Sugar
1kg OMO
1+1 Shampoo & Conditioner
1big lotion - Nivea
1big fair & lovely (Cream)
3 bars Bathing Soap (imperial lether)
2pkts 2in1 Always
1big Colgate
1big Valon
3litres Cooking oil
3 rolls Tissue
1median Salt
1kg Blueband
2kg Wimbi
1kg Tealeaves
2pkts Supaget
2kgs Ngano -wheatflour
1big Royco
5litres Paraffin (Kerosine)

INCLUSIVE IS:
1) A BED. I only have the matress but I dont have a bed. and bed sheets. (4x6)

Whiplash Safaris Ltd

2009-03-28T07:25:00.001-07:00

After 2 weeks of doing very little here in Malindi, Kenya, and having passed a very pleasant week with Mum and Max in Maryam and David's house we thought we had better get off or arses and either find some work or do something other than watch the National Geographic channel and CNN all day. So after trapsing around 3 or 4 identical looking offices selling identical looking safari packages and then the usual protracted negotiations (why don't they just give you the "best price" at the beginning and save everyone a lot of time?) we plumbed for 2 days and a night in the Tsavo East game reserve, home of the famous maneaters of Kenya. Well, they're famous here anyway - and technically the lions are actually descendants of a pride of lions that ate a few dozen railway workers about 100 years ago. That said, I thought it still sounded like an ideal place to send, sorry, take the wife...
So off we trekked in a beaten up Nissan minibus at a ridiculous speed along a dirt road out of Malindi, North West towards the Tsavo game reserves. We clattered along at around 50 mph, the driver deftly riding the ridges at the edges of the deepest ruts in the road and strategically avoiding the larger potholes. He'd clearly driven the route a thousand times already and had decided to ease the boredom by scaring the living daylights out of his passengers. The other passengers in the minibus were a two brace of aged Italians who, while very friendly and jolly, were bouncing around at such a rate that visions of flying colostomy bags convinced us to stay at safe distance at the back of the bus. Everyone in Malindi is Italian, even the Africans sometimes. You are more likely to receive Ciao as a greeting than Jambo, and many of the locals speak Italian better than English. There are Italian restaurants everywhere and sometimes it's easier to get a cappuccino than a cup of mango juice. Apparently lots of Mafiosi types escaped from Italy to Malindi back in the 60s and the Kenyan government refused to send them back to face justice at home. Considering the amount of cash that they were obviously prepared to invest in the place, it's easy to understand Kenya's tolerant policy, whatever the source of the funds. Nowadays of course, there are far fewer overtly sinister types around, although it's not difficult to spot the odd gangster mumbling gruff orders to some minion after a large plate of pasta arrabiata at a low key street café or bar. The Malindi region is now facing the consequences by having to deal with the Italian interpretation of their fiscal policies and refusal to pay taxes.
But anyway, back to the safari - the kindly Italians in our group were not the sort of people that would leave a horse's head under anyone's duvet, in fact they would be more likely to leave you a pony in the garden as a birthday surprise. They were half blind, pretty unstable on their feet but clearly enjoying their retirement and making the most of it by "doing Africa", presumably before it's too late. They were good company, laughed at each other's jokes, put a brave face on nearly having their liver spots bounced off and didn't once ask for a toilet break. I can only assume that the colostomy bags had stayed intact after all.
Once at the park, there was a brief stop outside the gate at "Crocodile Bay" - a tourist trap and one last opportunity to but carvings and other tat before entering the park. After resisting the usual pressure selling from the ubiquitous stalls, we feigned surprise after being led down to the waters edge and presented with a selection of very lazy and very fat crocs that had patently never had to catch a meal in their lives. "Guides" appeared from all directions with assorted pieces of dead goat, that I presume even they wouldn't eat, which for our amusement, were thrown with theatrically hammed up caution to "Obama", the biggest and most obese of the crocs. If the disgusting offering fell more than 6 inches from it's snout, the beast clearly couldn't be arsed with it so despite the earnest warnings of the feeders we didn't really feel particularly nervous as we stood less that 3-4 meters away. All 4 of the crocodiles we could see had been given names, and I asked what they used to call Obama before the American election results. "Mac" came the immediate reply.

The wife, Obama and another crocodile. (Soz is the one in the middle)

Once our driver had paid for the entrance ticket, (about 50 Euros for the whole bus for 24 hours which I think works out slightly less than Longleat Safari Park), we took off into the park at a similar pace to our journey there, rattling past signs requesting that we respect the 40 Kmh speed limit which disappeared in a cloud of dust a second later. We had been told by the driver that if we wanted to see anything interesting, we had better keep our eyes open and not forget to look in the branches of trees if we were hoping to see any leopards - which, he assured us was extremely unlikely anyway. So on that optimistic note, I grabbed my trusty binoculars and stood up, sticking my head out of the open roof hatch like some kind of Panzer Tank Commander and narrowing my eyes against the flying dust stoically assumed the position of spotter. It must have been at least 5 minutes before I was forced to sit back down. Nostrils caked in the rich red dust of the Tsavo plains and eye sockets bruised from trying to hold the binoculars steady, I realised that if we were going to motor around this place for the next 24 hours, I might as well get comfy and "go with the flow" - hakuna matata and all that...

Gheee, we're on safari!

For the rest of the day we raced along the roads of the parks, and between multiple sightings of Buffalo, Warthogs and Impala, our driver would slam on the brakes at random intervals and stare attentively at a patch of foliage of undergrowth for 30 seconds, like Crocodile Dundee, suck air through gritted teeth and then tear off again without saying a word. Our fellow passengers seemed very understanding and took full responsibility for not seeing anything on these occasions and made of comments about how their eyes weren't what they used to be and did anyone know which direction the were supposed to be looking in. One of the old Italian wives, bless her, on sighting anything dark in colour and larger than a Warthog would exclaim "ELEFANTI!" and clap excitedly. Her understanding husband would gently correct her most of the time, quietly suggesting that maybe they were actually buffalo and that yes, it is hard to tell when they are nearly 30 feet away. When she mistook a rocky outcrop for yet more "ELEFANTI" he gave up and resorted to the Italian equivalent of "yes dear" for the rest of the journey. My lasting memory of the couple will be of when we pulled up beside a group of 7 or 8 ostriches who were pecking about at the side of the road. They looked like a bunch of cabaret dancers, all legs and immodest feathery coverings over their backsides. Long eyelashes were batted at us as they regarded us with their heads turned side on for a better view and I was stunned to see that most of them were at least as tall as the bus. They must have been no more than 6 feet away from us and clearly couldn't care less by the way they strolled along so peacefully. "Ostriches? What ostriches?" Was all the elephant spotter could say and at that point I gave up lending her the binoculars.

Bird watching

We saw the disappearing rear ends of most of the "big five" that day. On the rare occasions that our rally style arrival did not startle the animals into flight we were treated to the odd 30 seconds of seeing giraffes and elephants eating rather than escaping and by the end of the first day after suggesting to Colin McCrae more than once that we slow down a bit, I had well and truly established myself as the difficult customer at the back of the bus who "was here to actually see the animals as opposed to ticking a few boxes".

ELEFANTI!!!!

As we neared the exit towards the end of the day, the sight of a cluster of 13 identical minibuses bristling with camera touting tourists let us know that we were approaching something interesting. Sure enough, once we had picked our way through the gridlock and taken position amongst the herd of other Nissans we were treated to the sight of 4 - 5 lionesses babysitting a pair of the cutest cubs I have ever seen. Sozzle went completely gooey and started making some very odd noises, and for the second time in only a few months seemed to exhibit vaguely maternal instincts. To be fair, these cubs were pretty special - they were clearly siblings and very close as they sat in the shade together virtually on top of each other watching the spectacle of all the different minibuses jossling for position on the track in front of them. They even did a couple of yawns for us, to the elation of our Italian companions and much to the relief of our driver who visibly relaxed safe in the knowledge that he had just secured himself his tip for the day.
That night we stayed at Voi Lodge on the edge of the park where we were able to see elephants in the distance from our balcony as the sun went down. We sat in the bar after dinner watching the waterhole and we heard lions roaring in the distance. Apparently a lion's roar can be heard up to 5 miles away by the human ear so they may well have been some distance away. Nevertheless it was still quite thrilling to feel as if we were in the wilderness and relatively close to nature. We reflected a while on what it must have been like for the railway workers sleeping under the stars in the open air listening to the roars in the distance wondering which one of them was going to be picked off that night. Maybe next time, we'll do the camping safari thing - sounds like fun and is probably more exciting that watching the sun go down from an air conditioned room. The sunset is one I'll always remember though, and I'd recommend some kind of safari experience to anyone, though if you go for something cheap and cheerful, be sure to take a your neck brace.

Boredom

2009-03-23T05:46:00.001-07:00

Yes this may be the blog you have been waiting for. I'm sure most of you will be reading this blog for no reason other than the fact that you love us and you want to breathe our highs and lows along with us. There may be however a handful of others out there (you know who you are) who are reading just hoping for that little inkling of suggestion that our year out is not an endless white knuckle ride of interesting and enlightening experiences. Perhaps secretly hoping that some mishap (not too serious of course) will occur and the daily monotony of your personal rat race is temporarily interrupted by the thought that having an African adventure, or similar (that everyone periodically flirts with the fantasy of having) isn't really what its cracked up to be after all. Then you can sit back in your office chair feeling satisfied and safe with the security that your lot provides.

So this one’s for you and hopefully it will make you smile.................

So when embarking on the planning of 1 year away from the UK; working and living in AFREEEEKA - I never anticipated the magnitude of eternal boredom which we would have to endure. I think it must be the 'travellers' unspoken truth. When Edd and I got engaged in 2005, our lives went in to complete overdrive. Edd had the MBA to do, we got married, I started a new job and we refurbished and extended our new home together. In those 2 stress overload years we yearned and prayed for a day to ourselves, to think, potter or just to do nothing. It is such a shame that for that period we couldn’t have slowly charged our overload capacitors up with all the stress to be slowly discharged later over our relaxing year away. I wish now that I could still appreciate doing far less, but it probably only lasted for 1 month. Being born of Giles/Randall stock I am completely incapable of relaxing and feel totally unfulfilled if I have no purpose or job. This break really has made me realise that one of my purposes in life is to have purpose. Shock horror, I like to work! Without it, my mojo is just nonexistent.

The worst time for us is the evenings. In Biombo I suppose it was worse because there was only one hour of electricity. But here in Kenya, with electricity, its actually not too much different. The choices for evening entertainment are really only to a) sit drinking your savings away in bars, continually being hawked by trinket sellers and prostitutes or b) sit at home watching about the wildlife in Kenya on a Kenyan TV. Ironic really! Its just not safe to go for a stroll along muggers beach. We do have quite a good portfolio of random encounters and experiences, but of course you can't experience true life as 1/3 of the world’s population live unless you are a born again Christian do gooder who doesn't mind regularly getting boils the size of planets on your body or worms in your feet by living in a mud hut and putting yourself through utter misery (relatively speaking) for the good of true empathy. Given that this is not how we are accustomed to living, the pain of adjusting to this would be far greater than the pain experienced by those living like this every day. The same goes for the boredom factor. Given that the benchmark has always been like this, then relatively speaking it is not boring is it?

Being an ex-pat in Africa is lonely. We had dreams of coming here and building powerful and or spontaneous friendships with all types of people in this land which sometimes seems like another planet. But we now realise, in most cases, to be as honest as I can be, this is just not possible. There is a huge social barrier between us, whether you want to acknowledge it or not. No matter how long you have lived here you will be seen as a white man and the majority of potential friendships have no real hope of a natural formation. With very few exceptions - everyone has a hidden agenda.

'I'm going slightly mad' by Freddie Mercury regularly goes round and around in my head. Everything in my world then moves in time to the song. I go madder and madder. There is nowhere to go, no one to really talk to no radio, no Internet, no TV, no looking forward to meal times with a nice glass of wine, no nice hot shower or bath, no Lindt chocolate (thank you Bridget for sending us some - you might have just saved my life). When I discovered my little MP3 player in my luggage in Biombo and I hadn't listened to music for 3 months, I was in heaven. I lay down on our hut step with the sun and the breeze on my face and listened to my music. It was such a stimulation of my hibernating senses that I could physically feel the endorphins flowing in waves through my body as the music changed. It was so powerful. I realised that never again would I take for granted the little things in my little Leamington life, like: walking in to the supermarket and being able to pick whatever I want. Never again will I moan because I couldn't park right outside the house and I had to carry my shopping bags (with everything I wanted in them) 50m down the road.

I always imagined that given all the time in the world, natural beauty, natural resources and sunshine, my artistic flair would blossom and I’d be creating art from little pieces of the surrounding environment. Yeah right, think again Picasso. When you are not stimulated and you only have your own naval to contemplate, then it is really hard to create from nothing (except a head full of manic Freddie).

You can tell the monotony and coping with it is an intrinsic part of the African culture. In Biombo we would hear drums which went on forever in the same rhythm. Amazingly never missing the beat because your body parts have fallen asleep with utter boredom. Here somewhere not too far from the hotel there is an incessant whistler. He has a 5 second tune which he whistles over and over again. Never tiring. Never stopping. Never losing enthusiasm. I have heard this same whistler on 5 different days now - with the same tune. I look up from my laptop every now and again with a searching frown. I wonder 'WTF' he is playing at. Its almost as if the whistling and drumming echo the endless drone of life as it continues, unchanged from day to day........that’s the empathetic reality I convince myself of and it just about prevents me from leaping the fence to find the whistler and strangle him!

So yes, in between our 'once in lifetime' experiences, there is a LOT of staring in to space, wondering what more we could do for adventure and self actualisation. But how would it be possible to define ‘once in a lifetime experiences’ without a realistically calibrated personal benchmark?

Disclaimer - Anyone who has the propensity to be culturally sensitive, please don’t assume I am intent on casting thoughtless judgments about people. All I am doing is making observations and comparing them to my expectations. I could not presume to know enough information about a person to make judgment on their resultant behaviour as a product of their environment and life to date. But if anyone has comments on my observations - I would be so very interested to hear them.

SJCK-L

Bye Bye Biombo

2009-03-11T05:34:00.001-07:00

The Leaving Party
1 week before we left Biombo, everyone began asking what we were going to give them when we went. After we had managed to accept that this was just the way it was going to be - we started to respond by saying we were giving a leaving party. This news was enthusiastically received.

Due to popular demand, and down right peer pressure actually, we purchased a whole live goat, for the not so bargain price of around £60. So our leaving party banquet was tied up inside the camp for a few days. She wasn’t entirely happy about this and made it known by her continual sad crying sounds. At night she was safely locked away in the kitchen. Edd thought it would have been a better idea to leave her tied up by the fence as bait for the Hyenas and then we could have our own private safari outside our camp. The team didn’t agree. They named the goat "Sarah" and were very protective of her. I was not entirely sure if that was a compliment or insult, especially as they were all so keen to slaughter her. But I don’t think it will be very constructive to dwell on the potential meaning behind that particular personification.

Everyone was foaming at the mouth at the thought of feasting on this plentiful helping of meat. All members of the surrounding villages would spend hours staring through the fence at the Goat with the glint of goaticide in their eyes. Without taking their eyes from the goat and slurring their words on the accumulating saliva, they would ask when exactly they would be eating Sarah. If it seems like I am dwelling far too much on the party food and not the other events surrounding the party, this is because for all the locals, the only thing that mattered was the meat they were about to receive. Nothing else DID matter!

The day of the party came. Much talk had been had about who the chosen butcher would be. This ritual was surrounded in much bravado and honour. Poor old Sarah met her end. Sonia (victor’s wife) took her 3yr old daughter (Eta) along to watch along with several others, and Sarah was cut up on the stone slab of the Orphanage septic tank (like Aslan). While everyone was so transfixed by the carving, no one noticed that Eta had picked up one of the bloody razors from the slab and managed to chop the tiny tips of two of her fingers off. But never mind, there would be goat to eat in the evening!

The long winded preparation attracted a lot of uncharacteristic help from those not normally caught associating themselves too closely with 'work'. Before long it was easy to see that this was a team building thing, but the underlying advantage seemed to be that it 'bagsied' you first dibs on the “best bits” and a guaranteed place at first sitting.

At dinner time we were carefully portioned helpings by our oh so helpful team members. As we all ate in the dark, chewing on gristle, bone and whatever else……both Edd and I managed to hold ourselves back from the irresistible second helping. We had said that we then wanted all the locals be let through the fence to eat afterwards as we had promised them. When they were allowed in in a football hooligan style surge forwards they began to descend on the left overs. Considering how much food there had been, we noticed there didn't seem to be much going around, but left the food management to the team for fair division. There were also a lot of locals looking cross and moaning about not getting enough fruit juice or goat. Having seen how much there had been we assumed (perhaps naively) that they were just being greedy

Anyway, it transpired that there had been a lot of controversy surrounding the eating of this Goat. The next day we learnt that one of the most enthusiastic carvers, Batista, one of the builders (who is Hard works biggest foe), had his own private little party with Sarah around the back of the building before the food was served to the masses. He devoured most of the 'best bits' (including the poo tube, which I accidentally stumbled across them cleaning and preparing - yuk) and sent that which he couldn’t eat home to his extended family via a ‘runner’. Just after we had heard this pitiful tale of wrong doing by one of the team members, spoken with much indignation at the injustice of it all, Edd stumbled across this individual along with rest of the team (who had left Batista out of the regroup) having a second sitting at 10:30am the next day. They were huddled around the pot at mid morning, stuffing their greedy faces. Instead of dividing it amongst the rest of the village the night before they had stashed the booty for themselves the next day. We were very disappointed with them all and it unfortunately altered slightly our established perception of their community spirit, although I suppose as Joey said, its only natural human behaviour.

Saying Goodbye
Between the party and our leaving day we visited a few people, giving out a few of the hundreds of requested photos and saying goodbyes. As the time to our departure got closer and closer sadly more and more encounters became increasingly false. People who had hardly spoken to us throughout the whole 4 months would show an enthusiastic interest in when we were going (I can't imaging why), unlike ever before in conversation with us. This followed quickly by "so when you go what are you going to give me?". Sometimes this was accompanied by business ideas or family sob stories and how difficult it was to get a loan in GB. Yes yes yes, this is all true, but the way to help people is really not to give financial hand outs. You see, it is actually incredibly difficult to help people in the way they need to be helped rather than in the way they think they need or want to be helped. A carving on the wall in the orphanage we are now working in in Kenya summarises perfectly what we believe our experiences have been so far. Obviously we are not alone. "People really need help, but they may fight or attack you back after you help. Help them anyway". Yeah right, easier said than done!

After the dozenth personal cashew wine fund donation request and the inevitable disappointment of it all had died an exhausted death in us, we decided to try and keep a very low profile on the last day. We were going to try and preserve our memories of people as they were and as we worked with them rather than remembering how at the end, what seemed most important was what handouts we were going to give. You see, we were the 4th set of volunteers in this remote village trabanka. Their definition of us 'volunteers' had been defined by their experience of volunteers past. It seems that the volunteers before were mostly returning straight to Europe and had no need of clothing (perhaps they left naked) or any other item they had, including money.....so they must have given it all away. Eeva and Herve, given you were the first i'd be very interested to hear your take on this. Naturally the locals think this is the custom, try to persuade us of this too and get their bagsy in for their chosen item of Sarah and Edu's apparently superfluous and extravagant luggage materials. On the other hand there were a few people who really surprised us with their genuine warmth and kind words of regret that we were going. One of the builders, Tome, who we named Obama because he was the local political/community spokesman, came with outstretched arms on the last day. He presented us with a beautiful piece of woven fabric. He said it is given between friends. We were so shocked and moved that he had had this present made for us by his friend. And it was so unexpected. Other heartfelt good byes came from Victor (the houseman and our good friend-family photo right), without whose company we would never have survived our time in Biombo, and Lelu and Olivio the other builders. Mostly other people we had felt close to hid behind the "when will you come again" and "we'll see you in 3 years then" cop out. But it’s easier isn't it than making the process more painful than it has to be? Painful for perhaps being truly sad or painful perhaps for being utterly false. Either way...'goodbyes forever' are usually awkward. Or is it just me?

Orange-pant family leaving photo left, with baby Edu.

In Guinea Bissau a unique black/white relationship has formed. Because there are nearly zero tourists 99.9% of white people (when we were there only 3 Brits) in Guinea are NGO workers or volunteers. The Guineans are being raised on the most extreme strain of this culture of the whites as a bottomless resource. To be honest, In Kenya, it is easy to see the developed difference. The people here are a lot more used to seeing white people (Mzungo) who are just tourists. They are not necessarily there to help anyone....so the requests for "give me this give me that" and far fewer. Yes this is all very easy for me to say being one of the lucky "haves" in the land of the "have nots", but I believe the negative effect this particular sub product of the process "African development" is being very overlooked.

In the last week we had tried to keep our distance from Femia a little so leaving wouldn’t be so painful. Although I couldn't resist making her a little school bag from a scrap piece of material I had left from sewing the Orphanage door curtain. She hung out with us on the last day, longer than usual until dusk. When the time she got up and said she was going..the same as she always did. She knew it was the last time but I don't think she knew how she was supposed to act. I tried to give her a hug and she laughed at me like I was some stupid fool and slouched off tittering and dragging her jelly shoes in the dirt with her new school bag flung over her shoulder. As she left I turned away from Edd so he couldn’t see my eyes welling up and said "so, then Femia was gone". Having prepared ourselves for the inevitably indifferent goodbye, I couldn't possibly allow myself to be disappointed. Expecting not to see anyone else now it was dark we ate our last meal, lovingly prepared by Victor.

Later on in the dark, at around 9pm, we heard a little "bon noite" come from the other side of the fence. We responded and asked who it was and the response came: "Femia". We both looked at each other and smiled. Over at the fence was Femia, her older brother and his friend. All three were wrapped in blankets, their huge white eyes twinkling at us in the moonlight through the fence. They sporadically slapped their bare skin to combat the midgies they called "melga". This was only the second time Femia had visited us after dark in the whole 4 months. They seemed to have adopted sad looking faces as the realization had hit them then maybe they would miss Sarah and Edu and they wouldn't see them anymore. I don't think they were acting either and they didn't even ask for anything, except our phone number and to know when we would be back. It was such a touching little gesture, these three little people venturing out in the cold (relatively speaking) and dark to come and see us for the last time with no ulterior motive. Actually, it finally made a change and restored our faith once more just in time for our departure. Today's children are tomorrow's future. If someone were to ask me what initiatives I would support in Africa now, I would without a doubt say 'education of children'. They really do provide unspoilt fresh hope for the future.

The Experience Overall
Ignoring the inevitable final begging requests for stuff, it was amazing how our experience turned around. Initially during the pain of trying to come to terms with the difficulty of adjusting to African culture with a European attitude and the lifestyle experience in the jungle; we sometimes failed to see how we would be able to come out of the other side with total empathy for the personalities that their lives had developed for them. However, quite the opposite occurred. Instead it was the African's we ended up understanding and loving while at the same time being denied the expected support and solace by our own European brothers. We have not described how we eventually agreed to disagree with the charity management over how the charity was fundamentally run. We did not think that a one sided ranting session on the blog would be a fair and adult approach to the situation, no matter how virtuous we felt ourselves. We have however certainly learnt a lot about the common phenomena that is the “small private NGO” in Africa and its impact/value (or not) to the community.

But in terms of our experience, nothing could have been much more intense than living in the jungle, with only 1-2 hours of electricity a day and having to learn a completely foreign language just to communicate on a basic level with people who had; and always would live there for their entire lives and in effect, would know nothing else. I think it will be hard to find anything as personally challenging as that again.

We are in Kenya now. Life doesn’t feel like such a challenge so blog material has slowed a little. Electricity is almost 24hr, running water and with English as the colonial language, communication is a far less frustrating experience. Initially when we arrived, we thought we would pass through quickly to head for a more desolate nation. However it doesn't take long to see that just around the corner are thousands of children who need food education, and a stable home base. Considering Kenya has long been the famous safari destination that it is, you would be surprised to see the poverty that still surrounds its people.

By Soz

"We are Lepers"

2009-02-21T05:13:00.001-08:00

For those of you who found Edd’s foot infestation story of Edd's particularly disturbing, I'd sit this one out too.

The Becoming

Day 1

So as I mentioned in my previous blog, on the day we left Biombo, swellings started to form on both sides of my face. By the time the evening came the two swellings (one just below the left side of my mouth on my chin and the other just below by jaw line on the other side) formed 2 enormous heads. They very quickly started to look like rather enormous spots, unrivalled by any I had had in the past. At this point, still believing I had had a serious hormonal imbalance this month I tried to go to work on them in the loo on the boat. This was before I started throwing up. The activity was completely unsatisfying and unsuccessfully. I couldn't sleep – they too were painful

Day 2

By the time the end of the boat trip came they had turned in to what can only be described as gigantic boils (or carbuncles as Edd would say). Protruding approx 2cm from the surface of the skin at the peaks and covering a round area of approx 5cm in circumference around. The surrounding area being bright red and the top having a mixture of scab and bright white pussy head (approx 1cm round)

On leaving the boat I used my bandanna to cover the legions. I couldn’t bear the thought of being looked at, especially in the close quarters of the passenger queues to leave the ship.

As soon as we arrived in Dakar, we headed to the chemist to get some antibiotic cream. The chemists winced in a disgusted way when they saw my face and agreed antibiotic cream may help after cleaning the area well.

Back in the hotel I tried once again to extricate some of the poison, but to no avail. Again, they were too painful to sleep even after a dose of Ibuprofen..

Day 3

We flew 8hrs to Addis Ababa. I could feel the movement of the poison inside the boils moving around with the changing air pressure of the cabin. I had wondered if they might explode and cover the entire cabin in some budget film style custard ooze. They were so very painful

I made the transition from my bandanna to my larger white scarf as the area to hide needed more coverage

The legions grew larger to approx 3-4cm protruding from my face. The puss started to oozing from the sides of the scabby heads like molten magma from a volcano. All this time we had no access to our luggage so I had no more pain killers and there had been no chemist. I had been pretty brave and jovial about the whole experience until we got to the hotel in Addis Ababa. We tried again to extricate some fluid with hot presses. It had absolutely no effect at all other than to slightly alleviate the pressure of the stretched skin. I had a bit of a tantrum at this point. The lumps were so huge that they looked like giant horns growing from the bottom half of my face. I could see the look on people's faces if my scarf accidentally slipped below them and they caught a glimpse. It was a look of fear and horror with wide eyes and even a slight jerk backwards was sometimes obvious. I could also see the same look in my loyal and loving husband's eyes. He would never admit it, but I could sense that he was seriously worried I might stay like that and I couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if they did. The thought of our family seeing me the next day in Kenya and my issue taking over everyone’s holiday was filling me with utter disappointment and dread.

Day 4

We arrive in Nairobi. It was an emotional reunion for Edd and I. Not least because we had missed them a lot in the last 4.5 months and had an emotional ending to the charity work, but also because of the worry of my hideous face. I warn everyone I have an infection on my face. Asking if I they were ready to see it I pulled the scarf below my chin. It reminded me of the film Ben Hur when Mirum and Teasa announce "we are lepers" and they pull their scarves from their faces to reveal the boils and legions caused by leprosy on the bottom half of their faces. But there was no valley of the lepers for me to hide in. We discussed going to the doctor. but as we were flying to Malindi first thing in the morning we all agreed to start on the penicillin Edd's mum had brought with her.

Day 5

Fly to Malindi continue with cream and penicillin.

We decided to try another hot press and extrication. It was unsuccessful again. Pleasantly after the scab was removed from the left boil it now formed a large droplet of puss every 20 minutes of so, which had to be wiped away. Like s tap with a worn washer. It this hadn't happened to me I would never have believed it. I wanted to take photos to remember the magnitude of it, but Edd didn’t agree so I don’t have any visuals for you I’m afraid!

Day 6

The lumps were going nowhere. We decide to go to the hospital in Malindi. I had a feeling of dread that: a) They wouldn't know what it was or b) It would need referral to a specialist c) It would cost us a new mortgage d) There was nothing that could be done and the lumps would heal over permanently like this.

We quickly get to see an authoritative Kenyan doctor who explains the following:

'You have two abscesses. You would call them boils. We have them a lot here and yours are actually very small (I found it very hard to imagine how they could get any bigger considering they were both the size of planets by now) The infection has come from the bacteria stappholoicci (which is on everyone) and entered through a small wound on your skin. The infection is too deep to be fixed with cream and the penicillin is not strong enough cure it. The reason the basic penicillin is ineffective here because penicillin is available to everyone in Africa without prescription. Everyone takes them which makes the bacteria that has adapted here immune to the penicillin treatment. Therefore we need to use a different antibiotic treatment. What we need to do is get the puss out and then treat you with antibiotics'. I wondered how he would extract it as I tried to explain I had already attempted to extricate it several times. His confident reply was 'we will just gently squeeze it out.’ It sounded so easy so I tried to relax.

We went in to the surgery room, Joey came with me. Her motherly instinct insisted that she came and supportingly held my hand throughout the process (and perhaps a little morbid curiosity as well). The doctor adorned his new sterile rubber gloves and prepared some iodine soaked cloths.

His big hands then advanced towards be and he clamped the first boil between the two cloths, shifted his weight to get his whole body strength behind and squeezed with all his might. I'm afraid at this point I was incredibly overcome with the pain and the shock of the force he was using that I blubbed and found it difficult to control. He continued to push with a large amount of force until all the mass was extracted. I think he might have been fibbing when he said that we would "gently push the puss out". Just before he began the second one, which was larger and had two “cavities”, apparently, I with a shaky voice asked if he didn't have any anaesthetic he could use. He said it didn't usually work very well on areas where there was puss, but gave me the injection anyway. For the second one I managed to compose myself a little more. It was definitely less excruciating. I don't know if it was actually less painful area or the anaesthetic had worked. Joey continued to provide support, encouragement and a running commentary about the spectacular operation. She said that enough puss came out to fill nearly an entire egg cup. It was also a very viscous pale mass, like blancmange. After the poison was out, the doctor then filled a needleless syringe with saline solution. I guessed what he was going to do before he did but was praying that it wasn't going to be the case. I closed my eyes and he then proceeded to fill the empty pockets in my face (where thee puss had been) with the saline contents of the syringe. As the pockets filled up and unfilled the pockets were cleaned out. He did this 4 times on each side. This was also excruciating. When this part of the traumatic process had finished I looked at Joey and her face was dripping with sweat. I suddenly realized that is must have been nearly as traumatic for my poor mother in law as it had been for me. The whole gruelling process had taken around 45 minutes.

Anyway positively, when we left the hospital, my face was almost entirely back to the original shape. It was incredible. I have 2 plasters over the wounds which are leaking the last dregs of the saline solution from inside. We have instructions for the concoction of antibiotics to take and the whole visit including drugs only cost around £44.

Edd admitted afterwards that he had seen everyone staring at me. You could even see the huge lumps through the white scarf and they were the largest carbuncles he had ever seen.

We were all elated after being told that there should be no permanent scarring and that I was able to leave the hospital looking considerably better than when I walked in.

After that we all thought we deserved a good gin and tonic!

Perhaps it is a good thing for everyone to experience feeling utterly repulsive and hideous to to the outside world at some point in their lives. Perhaps it can go towards giving you a sense of empathy for some others who have more permanent disfigurements.

It is incredible to think how serious a problem can be caused from bacteria on your own body!

Thank you Edd, Joey, Max and Ade's parents for all the support and encouragement throughout the horrific experience.

How not to travel in style

2009-02-12T03:49:00.001-08:00

Thursday 5th Feb - by Sozzle
I am writing this blog because there is no way on earth we are going to get any sleep tonight....

So we have left Biombo. We said goodbye to the charity driver Manuel and the construction manager Lelu (who wanted to see us off). As we were saying our heartfelt thank you's I noticed Lelu's eyes welling slightly and mine did the same. I think I was partly sad for leaving our new found friends, and partly that we were again stepping off the Adventure cliff in to the unknown....

We were really looking forward to our private cabin on the Ziguinchor-Dakar ferry, which we had on the way over. Hot shower, bed, privacy to watch a film on our little lappy in our own little world. So you can imagine our utter sense of disappointment when we were told there were none left. This was said with a rather patronising look and exclamation that "you need to book up to a month in advance if you want a cabin". Hmmf, last time we booked the day before......but to be fair it was the rainy season and noone seemed very interested in "finding themselves" on malaria coast! Now being the dry season a lot more Brancos are obviously interested in being ripped off in corrupt Senegal, and the obligatory middle aged European woman with their fit hunky black gigolos. Not that I am making judgements of course. One must always remain open minded. Perhaps they are just friends.......who are very very close!

So for the bargain price of nearly 50quid for the two of us, we get to sit upright in a chair for 16 hours straight

We find our seats and from the beginning it is fun fun fun. The children behind us are...little oiks. It seems(from my very limited experience so far) that rich Guineans are not so strict with the discipline of their children. In Biombo, the most commonly used method of child crowd control involved a large stick. When a crime had been committed the parent/guardian of the crowd would look at the offenders then look calmly and sadistically at the nearest branch. Very precisely break off the branch and proceed to pick the leaves off the branch one by one. By this time the children have generally started to calm down, but the adult continues to stare with malicious intent at the children as they create the weapon of mass destruction. If this hasn't already reduced and them all to obedient angels by this time, which is sometimes the case, then the thrashing that follows quickly afterwards and the rounding up like a herd of cattle, generally does the trick.

So clearly the little darlings behind us had not been exposed to the same tried and tested discipline tactics. Imagine a 2 year old sitting behind you, kicking with all his might in to the back of your chair and his mother not batting an eye lid. Every now and again she might make some passing comment that perhaps, in his own time, he should think about stopping that. You can also tell that even if she did suddenly muster the backbone to be authoritative about it, she has already totally lost the power over this devil child. Good luck to her for the next 13 years. This two year old continues to kick my chair and as he can see the two disapproving Brits in front of him getting more and more infuriated by what he thinks are hilarious antics.........he does it more and more. Next I feel something hard against my head. Oh, the lovely young man is driving his toy truck through my hair. How novel! And yes its also hilarious trying to pick my pockets when I am not looking. Please excuse me my sides are splitting. See pic.

We take a break from the seats and go outside where we can eat. To make the journey even more uncomfortable for me personally, I have been struck by some random neck rash and swollen face thing. Not only do I look like Quasimodo, but I am having trouble stuffing my face with the french stick and brie that we purchased in Ziguanchor for our picnic dinner, before we left. Now that is painful! No I am not going to satisfy your morbid curiosity with a photo, but you can imagine it to be as you like. It would have to happen 3 days before we meet Edd's mother in Kenya. She's going to think I've contracted some rare form of African Elephantitis.

Wine and cheese session over and we are settled back in to our aeroplane style seats for the night. Not long in to the journey; the lady directly behind Edd starts to throw up. In true african style, very publicly hurling in to a plastic bag and theatrically gathering the remnants of her last meal in her spit towards the end of each heave and thrusting it out in loud gobbing noises.You can actually hear the solidity as it flies. The film "the exorcist" springs to mind for some reason. See picture of puker no:1 behind Edd.

The woman directly in front of us then decided to switch on her snazzy Laptop and play her own music out loud in the cabin for everyone's enjoyment. How thoughtful of her! It managed to compete so well with the television blaring at full blast and the sick noises from behind. Hello? Doesn't anyone else care about this blatant lack of respect for her fellow passengers. The answer I am looking for is: clearly not! Max I'm sure you'll be with me on this one. Here she is, later asleep. Clearly nothing can be a distraction to everyone else in the room who is concentrating on the cheesy french soap opera on the television.

The torture continues.......

The woman behind Edd next to puker no:1 has decided to take up the sleeping location on the floor next to Edd across his leg space. She periodically spasms her feet in to his. His legs are so cramped up in front of him trying to avoid his involuntary game of footsie. At the same time the old woman on my right, who is actually quite polite, but can't help but fell a little resentment as she has stolen our only opportunity at lying out flat on the seats, lies down thrusting her scarf covered head in to my hip as she occupies the row's spare chair.

During an expedition to the toilet, Edd reports that he stumbled over a body in the corridor. It was lying against a smashed dinner plate and in a puddle of his own vomit. As the other passengers calmly step over him Edd decides to check his pulse. He is still alive and breathing it seems. Thanks Continental for sending Edd on that first aid course. It means he can now walk away from a comatose body with a clear conscience, after informing the ship's crew of course.

Back at base and we both feel a cold wet sensation quickly saturating our warm dry socks from the floor. Yes, thanks must go again to the little poppets sitting behind us for tipping out their bottle of water.

Old woman on my right hip now snores loudly. Laptop music player woman has just run in to the corridor to be the second to be tagged in the game of puke horror. Things are looking good for some quality beauty sleep.

I had to give up there. It is the next day now......

To conclude our night on the boat, which I might add was officially the worst nights sleep of my life, the television you will be aghast to hear stayed at full blast until 2am. There was nowhere quiet to go and sleep - it was like a television torture chamber. Earlier at around 3 in the afternoon, for the viewers pleasure they were showing some gratuitous sex scenes. The show then changed to some type of mud hut soap opera which everyone was finding utterly hilarious.

At around midnight I started feeling a bit queasy, as more and more people joined the pukers club. The boat was rocking up and down a bit to be fair but it wasn't the worst I've known. But of the 50 or so people in the room around 6 or so had joined the club. The television continued to shout at me, sometimes in Senegalise Olaf and sometimes in French. When the detailed visuals of a goat sacrifice was now being displayed in all its glory on the screen; the old woman's head jabbed in to my hip and the horrific scenes on television I had trouble reminding myself that I hadn't just stepped in to the Clockwork Orange. It was around this point that I was also reluctantly forced in to joining the ever increasingly popular pukers club. Perhaps that all that Brie and wine wasn't such a good idea on a journey like this? It certainly wasn't so tasty the second time around.

The boat arrived at 6am in Dakar. My face swelling is getting worse and seems to be some kind of deep infection on both sides of my face. I must have picked up at some point in the final stages of our stay in Biombo. It might have something to do with the fact that we had no water again for 4 days in the last week. But on the bright side, I am using my bandanna to cover up the bottom half of my face so as not to make the children cry when they see me. It also gives me a chance to unleash my secret weapon. This anti-social face covering thing seems to deter people from continuing to hassle me in the street. With my mum's voice from my childhood resounding in my head ("if looks could kill I'd be dead already") I adopt the most sinister death stare I can muster looking over the top of my lower face mask (as sinister as it can be when its red with daisies on!). It must have looked ominous enough though....because they backed away in fear.

Lesson learnt: whatever you do, do no travel on the Ziguinchor/Dakar ferry without a cabin bed.

Month 4 on the Project

2009-02-06T10:44:00.001-08:00

Our objective is complete - the orphanage is finished and it looks fantastic. Now it waits for the children.....

Last month - final stages; cleaning and finishing only

Week 13

Orphanage Build

*Cleaning

*Child proof painting

*Installation of WCs

*Tiling Bathroom

Tourist Village

*Prevention of sand ingress in to bathroom block

*Add switching capability to tourist village for water pump

Week 14

Orphanage Build

*Windows - concrete blocks and mosquito netting

*Completion of bathroom tiling (all tiles used were previously donated to the project)

*Bathroom painting

Week 15

Orphanage Build

*Closing of the Fosse

*Preparing and varnishing wood wood throughout building

*Painting of bunk beds

*Bedroom curtain and rail

Week 16

Orphanage Build

*Front and rear gates

*Final touches painting and cleaning

Great job Lelu, Tome, Olivio and Batista!

Back to Dakar

2009-02-03T10:29:00.000-08:00

Next Thursday, if all goes well, we will be catching the boat from Ziguinchor and making the overnight trip back to Dakar. Dakar did not make it into our top ten favourite places to get stranded in on the way down here, and to be honest, we're really not looking forward to going back. Dakar, capital city of Senegal and home to the most miserable Africans that we have encountered so far. The people of Guinea Bissau can't stand 'em. This might be something to do with the fact that the Senegalese fought on the wrong side during the war of independence all those years ago or alternatively could be down to their reputation for being hard and conscientious workers. There are quite a few Senegalese in Bissau, who seem to be able to secure the best jobs as they are generally better educated. Me? I'm with the Guineans on this one. The only people that showed the vaguest interest in us in Dakar were beggars and taxi drivers and virtually nobody cracked a smile the whole time we were there. There was one exception, however. Well a few exceptions, I suppose...
On the way down here, we had flown into Dakar from Casablanca and had planned to "jouer par l'oreille", as my linguistically challenged father would say, from there. I suppose we should have seen it coming, but we were immediately surrounded by "helpful" taxi drivers and "guides" on our tentative exit from the arrivals hall, eyes blinking in the African sun and weighed down with overfilled rucksacks. There is no tourist information available at Dakar airport when you arrive, just cross looking soldiers with machine guns. If you try and request any information from them they stare at you through mirrored aviator sunglasses until you cower back and apologise for the disturbance. Basically, you are completely exposed to the pack of laughing hyenas that occupy the airport taxi rank smoking cigarettes or dozing as they wait for the next herd of tourists to pass by. With no local knowledge and no hotel reservation, all you can really do is brace yourself and throw yourself in and think of Valhalla. There is always a bit of a feeding frenzy at the beginning, but within a few minutes, the alpha male of the group has usually made the first contact and will avidly defend the prey against potential suitors often with the assistance of a number of the other pack members, often juveniles, by surrounding the intrepid travellers and herding them towards a more secluded spot nearer to the crowded watering hole close by. Once at the ATM, the hapless victims are bated with offers of "verygoodprice" money exchange, accommodation and taxi rides. As the targets inevitably begin to tire, the more aggressive individuals of the pack will begin to nip at any exposed or undefended limbs or pockets and the yelps of excitement begin to increase as the travellers remove wallets from bumbags as they approach the ATM and withdraw some local currency. In the end, the kill is swift, relatively painless but utterly undignified. An extortionate price is agreed for a ride in a taxi for an undisclosed distance, luggage is wrestled from the travellers death grip and carried to the waiting car, the near lifeless bodies of it's owners are bundled into the back seats and as their pathetic bleating fades into the distance and precious cash begins to flow from the gaping wound that is their broken resolve. The unsuccessful remainder of the pack stare longingly at the disappearing quarry salivating with envy and panting in the sun. Before long however, the pack will regroup, and scenting the air, will sense the pending arrival of another plane. The dozing older drivers will open one eye, lazily wave the odd fly away as they glance at the arrivals board while the youngsters of the group jostle for position and nip at each other as the excitement dies down and once again calm returns to the arrivals hall.
So, that is how we ended up paying 5,000 CFA (about 7 quid at the time) for a 3 minute taxi ride from the airport to a hotel just around the corner that should have cost 500 CFA. They even asked for a tip. On checking in, we were told that the maximum fare for anywhere in Dakar is 3,000 CFA and were scolded by the hotel owner for being so trusting. Hello?!?! We had tried to ask other drivers for a better price as we were marched off to the car, but all the other drivers shrunk back at the guttural noises made by our captor warning them to stay out of it.

If anyone reading this ever has the misfortune of flying into Dakar in the future, book a hotel, any hotel, and get them to send a driver.

Some interesting questions

2009-01-27T04:57:00.001-08:00

We recently received an email from Nathan (a friend, MBA colleague and constant distraction through at least half of my modules) with a number of interesting questions (in italics) from his children that I thought I might try and answer through the blog. So, Luke and Grace, the following blog entry is for you but thank you for asking because a lot of other people might have been wanting to ask the same questions!

Grace says ":) Is it always sunny there?, What do you eat?, How do you make the food there?, and finally I wish you came back to play and make popcorn (You have smiley faces).
Now then, I'll start with the weather; when we first arrived it was around the end of the rainy season so actually it was still a bit wet. It rained every night for the first couple of weeks and there were big thunderstorms with lots of lightening, wind and, of course, very noisy thunder. One night, the thunder was so loud it woke us up and I nearly jumped out of bed with fright! Sozzle thought that was very funny and told everyone we met about it for weeks afterwards. The rain stopped about 3 months ago though, and then yes - it was always sunny and very hot. We had to wear lots of sun cream and special potions to stop the mosquitos biting us every night. Now, it's also windy however, so there is a lot of sand and dust blowing around and at night it gets very very cold. It is the winter here but the sun still comes out and it gets warm for most of the day. There are less mosquitos around now as well, so that's good.

What do we eat? Fish mostly, and lots of enormous prawns. Sometimes we have oysters (Daddy will explain what they are and might even tell you what "aphrodisiac" means, but probably not until you are quite a bit older). Even the children eat raw oysters which they have floating around in a bowl of water like massive grey bogies. You have to hook them out with two fingers or you can't pick them up because they are so slimy. Yum. Because we live by a river near the sea, all these things are brought to us by people walking past. Most of the fish and prawns are still alive when they are given to us because people don't have fridges and freezers to keep things fresh. When we get meat it's a bit like trying to eat a wellington boot, so we don't have it very often. We eat a lot of a big fruit called papaya and lots of bananas because that's what the people here grow. The children here don't get sweets like in England. Instead they wait for the Cabasera trees (which are very big and very old, see pic below) to start dropping their fruit. The fruit are big hard pods which they smash on a rock to open and inside there is a kind of sweet tangy sherbert that covers big seeds and the kids go mad for it. They suck all the sherbert of them then spit the seeds out. It's quite funny to see them because they like to put as many in their mouths as possible whenever they have the chance.
Here are some photos to help you get a better idea...

We are very lucky because we have a man here who looks after us and cooks for us but usually people cook rice and fish on fires outside their houses (which are made from mud). Yes, we will be coming back and we will make popcorn again if we can afford to buy the ingredients.

Luke says" You look a bit browner than you were. Ed you have funnier hair than you used to have and Sozzle I want you to come back with Ed (don't stay forever).
Yes, I probably do look a bit browner now. This might be something to do with the layer of dirt that I am permanently covered with. The people here can't believe how white we are and often try and pull the the moles off my skin. Yes, my hair is even funnier now and is likely to be absolutely hilarious by the time we come back.

Luke also asks: What are the children's names?, how hot is it?, did you make your own house?, and do you make lots for other people, and what do you drink?
The here names are not like English names, but here are some examples: Girls: Pikinina, Vanya, Femia, Joia, Antonetta, Aquilina Boys: Naka, Romijero, Nua, Ismail, Eliseo, Bruno, Herculano, Socrates and there are now a couple of boys called Edu, after me. It is quite hot, about as hot as the hottest days at home. We did not make our own house but everyone else does here. We have only "made" one house here and that will be for the orphans in a few years time when the organisation we have worked for here finally gets it's comeuppance and the state of the people reclaim the land. We drink water. And beer sometimes...

Why the ear?

2009-01-27T04:47:00.001-08:00

One of our very first visits to Bandhim market in Bissau without our local protection in the form of our good friend and trusty man servant, Victor; was interesting. Attempting to look like we absolutely knew what we were doing, I took the lead as we strided in single file. Smiling awkwardly politely as I prise ridigely determined fingers, calloused and thickened by the years of graft; from my weedy Branco arms as I pass. Amiga! Amiga! Staring straight ahead, but always alert, I spotted a rather odd looking man. The narrow path through the madding crowd was already carved out for us and there was no room to manouver. I could see I was going to pass straight by the freaky one. He had either drunk half the entire country's crop of cashew wine for this year or the poor man just wasn't right. As he advanced towards me he raised his left hand and extended his index finger to point straight at me. I knew it. I looked away, trying to give the impression I wasn't petrified he was about to accost me and give me some unintelligible lecture about his poverty and need to get off his head. As he passed by me I found out what my fate would be.

He firmly poked me in the ear.

He carried on walking

Edd had realised that something odd had just happened, but too bemused to say anything else as I walked I sanguinely announced that I had just been poked in the ear. As you do. We carried on walking without looking back. I felt ridiculous and really exposed as a foreigner. Not a single on looker made any suggestion that they might make a move to intervene had the incident been damaging. Perhaps this freaky one is locally known as a harmless looney or perhaps we were nobody special to anyone. Just two new Brancos on the scene.

Our trip to the fruit and veg stalls that day was equally traumatic. Without being certain you are not being overcharged or pickpocketed while hands are flying for you in all directions, it is a very sweaty experience. What is even worse is that we entered a slightly different section of the market on this occasion to the previous time and the old sellers spotted that we had gone astray and proceeded to abuse us for switching vendors.

This was in the first month.

Now in our fourth month, our trip yesterday to the market was different. We pulled up outside the corner of the market. Our friends on the regularly frequented wine and beer stall greeted us immediately with warm smiley faces. They announce to other potential suitors that we are “their clients” and lay off! Our usual order of wine and beer is brought to the vehicle and loaded without us having to exert ourselves in anyway.

I am very disappointed with my failure to overcome my need for a glass of red wine everyday; even in the jungle in Africa. I was hoping to reach some sort of utopia with myself and to achieve contentment without the aid of alcohol whilst staring out over the mangroves, breathing in the African air and euphoric in the equilibrated experience. Ohmmmmmmmmmm.........Who am I trying to fool here? I'm clearly wasn't designed with that kind of intrinsic purity.

Our trip through the fruit and vegetable section is now an easy stress free process. They know that, we know the prices; they know, we can buy from whoever we fancy on each occasion; they know when we say we have it in Biombo already, to stop the pestering.

We return to the vehicle. Just as we are embarking a large lorry pulls up just past us and clips a back corner of the charity truck. Considering every single vehicle here is completely destroyed (except for the NGO's and the cocaine drug dealers cars) I know we had both been been quietly smug and surprised that we hadn't had a single incident ourselves with another vehicle (apart from the first week, when we didn't realise it was only us who were allowed to drive the truck, the employees took it for a "practice" drive. When it came back none of them could understand how the enormous dents had appeared in the bumper and above the wheel arch. Must have been that voodoo magic again) . Anyway, typical really, two weeks before we leave. So we went around to the back of the truck and the driver who was looking very sheepish and petrified, had already been surrounded by our friends the beer and wine merchants. Edd and I looked at each other and seemed to both silently come to the same conclusion: that asking for insurance details or some cash to repair the damage would be completely futile. Edd shook the prisoners hand as a sign that he could be released. The human fortress dispersed and the man was free.

Could this change in attitude towards the protection of the Brancos be attributed to

a) The fact that ear poker was never any threat

b) We are now somebody to someone

c) The power of beer and wine?

You know my answer ;-)

Update on Femia by Sozzle

2009-01-23T07:30:00.001-08:00

In memory of Sasha Love.

Femia loves drawing pictures. However, due I suppose to the lack of external information and stimulus, she always draws the same picture of her mud house as right. It has palm trees and cashew trees outside. The cashew trees are depicted as the shape of a single cashew nut (rather than the tree). She always uses as many colours as possible to paint her house. Its quite a strong statement really about her all brown mud house! Maybe this is how she would wish it to be, or maybe she does actually see it as her happy house of many colours. Although I am inclined to think the former. Until this photo was taken she has always borrowed Vanya's pencils (evil little witch girl who featured in a previous blog). But here in the picture to the left, she has just received her own set of coloured pencils, a sharpener, ruler, pen and pencil case to hold them all in. The morning after the 100th birthday 'Party in the field' in Westbury Sub-mendip, a little package full of these items plus some colouring books and other stationary, were left on the doorstep. A little note inside said "please take me the Africa". A little while later we realised it must have been Sasha who left the anonymous package. The picture to the left is Femia drawing her house and colouring in with the colouring pencils. Before she was given the pencils, bizarrely Femia didn't even know the name for the colour yellow. It made her a very happy girl to be able to be the lender of the stationary rather than always the borrower. Anyway, the kind little package left by Sasha made its way to Africa and has made a significant difference to a little girls life.

This is a picture of the inside of Femia's exercise book. We have been periodically asking to see what she has been doing at school to ascertain what, if anything, she is learning. We recently decided to sit down and do some maths with her. It wasn't long in to the lesson that we realised she did not know the names of the symbols, + - / x =, let alone what you do with them (she is 8). It was a bit hard to continue with the maths lesson at that point. Also it became more and more apparent that she can't understand most of the letters she is writing in her book. All she appears to be doing is copying squiggles from the teacher's blackboard. Remember, this is a PAID school. It is supposed to be in another league to the state school. Imagine how bad that must be...

Femias first project target to achieve with her newly found 'Branco' sponsors, was going to school. Fair enough. We haven't had any other kids breaking the door down to go to school. Her very latest project can be recounted using the following dialogue:

Sozzle: "Hello Femia, how are you doing?"

Femia: "Well"

Sozzle: "Did you go to school today?"

Femia: "Yes. I drew a picture of a radio. Can I have some medicine for my scabby leg?"

Edd: "Femia, today you want medicine, yesterday you wanted popcorn and before it was exercise books and pens" [Femia interrupts putting her hand up as if to halt the conversation right there]

Femia: No no. Eduuuu I don't want medicine, books, pens, popcorn..... I just want to come to Ingleterra with you and Sarah. [Edd and Sozzle now have shocked looks on their faces]

Sozzle: But if you came to England you would never see your mum or dad again

Femia: Mum said that doesn't matter because I would see Edu and Sarah. She wants you to take me [Edd and Sozzle's eyes nearly pop out]

And no, I am not harbouring some secret obsession with the fantasy of adopting Femia and taking her to England to give her some kind of opportunity and self fulfillment. And even if I had, I would never say it out loud, she did first! Obviously it would never work, but there's no harm in day dreaming is there?!

This is Femia after she had nits [left]. When the children get nits here, their parents don't go to the local chemist to pick up some nit shampoo. The child gets all his/her hair cut off. Boy or girl. I have seen one instance of an adult getting the little blighters also, but she came and asked us if we could spray our fly and insect killer in to her hair. Femia's got new hair now though. It was brought for her for the Christmas festas. Here she is with her friend Samantha very excited about the Christmas party.

Don't underestimate the little things you can do. Those actions impact and affect people in ways you may not realise or have the chance to understand. Even in the middle of the jungle in Africa.

Sasha and her family are in our thoughts. Her kindness and concern for others will be remembered.

Sozzle on Hitching

2009-01-17T10:31:00.001-08:00

Joy Rides

There is a very strange culture that has developed around hitchhiking in Guinea Bissau. Given the complete lack of relative wealth in this country, obviously vehicles are very few and far between. So as a volunteer it would make perfect sense to collect people walking for long distances and allow them passage in the rear of the pick up truck. Written like that it looks so simple, but in reality this hitching is complicated business. What I mean is, a joy ride in the car is so sought after by everyone that it is hard to tell who is actually travelling somewhere. Most people on hearing the car rush out to try and get a ride waving frantically and shouting "boolayer" (give me a lift).

The best example of this we have had was a group of lads. They seemed to have been out all night at the local party around Christmas. They leapt in the back of he truck as we trundled past, picked up the empty water containers and proceeded to drum on them. They all sung and clapped and drummed very happily and tunefully. They jeered at onlookers who were seemingly jealous of the joyride they had managed to steal. So caught up in their music and glee that it wasn't until we had driven around 30 miles (half way to Bissau) that they banged on the side of the truck. One of them laughing hysterically asked when we were going to start heading back. We told them we were going to Bissau and were not heading back until the evening. All of them now laughing hysterically at the realisation that the Brancos were not actually just joyriding around for show to eventually return to the village, disembarked and started their 30 mile walk home, past all the people they had been jeering at.

Invisible Passengers

Sometimes when you have to stop to meet someone's half cousin twice removed, you turn your back for a second and someone's grandmother has snuck on to the back seat behind you. You have never met them before. Unless you say "bon dia" they will stare stoically through you concentrating hard on the road ahead hoping you might not notice them. Then proceed to have unnecessarily loud conversations with your other passengers as soon as you set off.

Obligatory Favours

On several occasions we have been stopped by armed military or police and actually told we will be giving their friends a lift. And inside the vehicle. Considering they have big guns on these occasions we found it possible to force a partially willing smile. This happened a lot on our road trip to Gambia. One man we had to take for 100miles and the whole trip is only 200! Another policeman who got in to the car started playing music for himself on his mobile phone speaker. So I switched on the car radio and turned up our own happy jiggly African music extra LOUD.

The Small Print

When a Biomboan asks you for a lift to Bissau, prepare yourself for the hidden meaning in the untranslatable text. the request made never fully explains what is actually intended. For example, 'Can I get a lift with you to Bissau?' translated in to Biomboan actually means the following: 1) Can I come to Bissau? 2) Can my cousin, her sister and my grandmother come also? 3) Can you drop my cousins sister at the doctors? 4) Can we also transport 4 troughs of chilli peppers to sell at the market? 5) Can my grandmother buy 3 bags of rice on the way 6) Can you also meet me at a certain place at a certain time (after you have finished all your errands for the charity) to take me home again? 7) Can you also be responsible for providing me with some water and bread, because even though I am an adult and I know I am going to the city for a whole day I have no intention of bringing my own supplies to keep me going because I know the Brancos will have brought some.

Car Games

The kids are the most desperate for rides. In fact it is quite scary how unaware they are of the potential dangers of a moving vehicle coming in to contact with a little brown body. We have had to keep numbers limited and make everyone sit down. It still doesn't stop them hurling themselves at the back of the truck in the desperate competition to leap in while we are driving along. All of this came to a head on one occasion when we had been back and forth to the police station all morning (another story). On dropping an adolescent off at his stop, a hoard of the more savage little terrorists came running out. I was in the back this time. Some made it in and others got left behind. But I didn't do a good job of shouting loud enough to control the onslaught. Just at the point when I told Edd to "go go go quick" one little boy (William) who had succeeded, decided to stand up and look unsympathetically at his unsuccessful rivals when the forward jerk of the truck sent him face first out of the truck and on to the ground. He got up straight away (because African kids are seriously hardy), crying a bit obviously obviously with blood running down his face. In sheer panic I bellowed at all the kids to get out and called to Edd for some expert special kid attention. By this time an old woman (presumed to be his grandmother) had run out, smacked him hard and seemed to be giving his a damn good telling off for messing around. Edd picked William up and wiped off the blood. It seemed that he only had a little cut on his lip and it looked a lot worse than it was. William seemed very grateful to be rescued from his scary grandmother and clung to Edd like a limpit, burying his snotty dusty and bloody face in his chest while he sobbed. The car games that we were prepared to tolerate changed after this.

It certainly took a while to accept and relax in to the hitching culture. There usually isn't an ask, a please or thank you or even an acknowledgement of you as a driver. Unless you protest otherwise, you would end up forever more as a public service, a dumb mannequin there to arrest the taxi when a violent slapping of the side of the vehicle is heard. This can be as frequently as every 50 yds outside each and every house. But after a while, its easy to see that it is only if you don't make the effort to change the way it works (rather than ranting about it), you make it worse for yourself and people to follow. So setting simple rules seems to be the way forward and fingers crossed we seem to be understand and more respected for it. I think this is more a people thing than and African thing....but perhaps here in this environment, everything is exaggerated!

Sozzle on Biombo life

2009-01-17T10:28:00.001-08:00

Who needs rice when you've got bass?

After 3 months here, we felt like we had broken through the next invisible barrier on the road of acceptance by the local community. We are not seen as potential finance so much now but friends that you can have a laugh with.

On New Years Eve, we invited some nice ex-pats (Spanish, Swiss and Dutch) to come and join us in Biombo to celebrate the New Year. At around 11pm we decided to investigate the loud bassy party we could hear not so far away. It was at the house of 2 people who work on he project. When we arrived, it was pretty surreal because they had set up a miniature generator which was running a light bulb and a massive sound system with very impressive speakers. In the middle of the jungle outside a mud hut! I think it is a question off priorities really. Sometimes these people cannot afford enough rice, and yet when it comes to party time - nothing will stand in the way!

All of the females at the party were dancing very very energetically (the men looking on quite seriously), the majority of them completely sober. The odd few had perhaps had a few sips of cashew wine, but usually if you offer anyone beer here they say that they would prefer fruit juice (it is a real luxury). So we came armed with a large bottle of fruit juice ["Sumo" in creole]. They really go crazy for some fruit juice and some music. They must have danced continuously for around 6 hours. They are so fit and energetic and happy to be having a party, it really puts us Europeans to shame.

So Edd and I joined in the dancing, which caused much much hilarity and excitement. There seems to be a general consensus here that white men can't dance. Hmmm I wonder how they got that idea? So it made Edd and I really proud that everyone was dancing with us (especially considering the lack of street cred a dancing "branco" has) and making our friends welcome. It really confirmed to us that they liked having us around.

Grubs up

At meal times, the entire family will sit around one large plate in the dark. The meal usually consists of fish and rice. Instead of sorting the meat from the bones on the plate like a European would do, they put the entire section of the food on the plate in to their mouth, whether it is fish tail, gills e.t.c. Anything that cannot be crunched up and eaten gets extracted out as clean as a whistle. Its incredible to watch and see how brave they are with their meals. To the right is a pic of Femia and her brother Nooah pounding their rice so the husks can be separated out. To the left is Femia's older sister sifting the husks off the rice by allowing the wind to blow them off the heavier grains.

Minor Illness

You would think that here the Africans would be unphased by the odd head cold. And that the familiar dramatically pathetic expressions men make in the UK when they have "man flu" would be far removed from the reaction to the same here. Well, that's where you are wrong. They are really just as pathetic when it comes to these common viruses. Men and women. But there is a very good reason for this. Here, young people and old people die -completely out of the blue. Their relatives never know why and after they are dead never try to find out why. They don't see the point of investigating when it won't bring them back. So they never know the reason the person died. When the question is posed "How did they die?", the answer is always the same - "Don't know, they were ill" and this is always said as if that was totally obvious, and what a ridiculous question to ask.

Sense of pride

Everyone goes crazy for the camera here. When I say crazy, I mean psychotic! 99% of people we have come across when holding our camera demands to have their photo taken. They will then assume their location and pose in the most serious and ridiculous way. This is why they all look so serious in our photos. They take it very seriously. Never mind that immediately before and after the picture was taken, they were roaring with laughter. For the photo we must be deadly serious. Sometimes they will remove their beautiful African head scarf and wrap and put on their (what they think is smart) shell suit jacket. They will then demand to see the photo. Then walk away satisfied. What is even odder is that a very very small percent of those people then go on to ask you when you are going to print it out to give to them. The vast majority are simply content that they are captured in the best looking pose they could have mustered, forever in your camera. Some of their favourite poses will involve borrowing sunglasses. See the Aquilina below posing in Edd's sunglasses.

This frenzied behaviour I think somehow accompanies the sense of pride they feel. During the day children enjoy pant life as we have heard from Edd's post. [Edd's name is Edu here by the way because 1 syllable names are not well received so Edd has always been called "Edu"] They are filthy dirty and generally the adults are too. However, at dusk the ritual body washing takes place every day and they emerge in immaculate outfits. I really do mean immaculate. Their whites are whiter than white. Daz eat your heart out. In a house where everything is made of mud, and your clothes are washed in cold water - I really don't understand. I can't get my clothes clean at all. I think they must use some sort of magic.

Also, when the kids are messing around in nothing but pants during the day, their parents will not allow them to get in the car with us and travel away from the immediate community. When children or adults travel anywhere - hospital, market, e.t.c they must always be in their smartest outfit. I can remember a friend from work saying to me before I left "you'll just have to get used to being generally dirtier then normal". And to be honest, I am, and I have got used to it. But I am far dirtier than the locals and on many an occasion they have pointed at some mud or a stain on my person and said "dirty".....with a very disapproving face. On the very day that Milanka was to give birth to the prodigal son "Edu", Milanka pointed to my less than smooth legs and said "too much hair. Do you want hair there?" I was amazed - and slightly embarrassed. But couldn't find the vocabulary to explain that "if only I had my Epilator and some electricity it would be much easier to keep on top of the hair situation........". So I settled for wildly exaggerating the truth that in England it is so cold all the Brancos have to grow more hair to keep warm. She seemed to understand - but I still get the impression i'm bringing the standard of Biombo down! Note to self: when out in public with the locals ensure clean clothes and shaven legs.

Edu No:2

Since the dramatic birth of Edu junior, a second baby has been born in the local area. The mother works part-time for the project. I expect that because we were so delighted about the first Edu baby being named after Edd that the second mother also thought Edu seemed like the perfect name. And Edd didn't even deliver this one! If we don't leave Biombo soon there will be a whole generation of Edu's. I'm a bit worried that someone will give birth to a girl and they won't call it Sarah. I'll never hear the end of it!

Gross

2009-01-12T10:53:00.001-08:00

I've purposely entitled this entry "Gross" in an effort to forewarn the more squeamish of readers that this one's a bit of a yucky one. There are no photos either...

So, as you've all probably worked out already, we tend to spend our days in a permanent state of filthiness. The midday heat has you sweating like a fat bloke on the dance floor and with everything being so dusty the wind covers you in a fine brown powder that most bottle blondes would pay a fortune for in their local tanning studio. Not quite as permanent, but you get the picture. The other source of general scum and skidmarkesque smears about our person is the 2 foot terrorists that insist on attaching themselves to you as soon as you're spotted. These kids are absolutely filthy as of about 8.30 AM and somehow get filthier as the day wears on. Luckily for the Mums here, usually they only have to wash a pair of pants at the end of the day - and the kids seem pretty well trained on that front too. When working in the orphanage you get covered in paint or cement dust, if you are in the kitchen it's oil and gloopy rice starch, and if you've ventured down to the water's edge that day then you're wearing ankle socks of grey mud.

The water in the showers comes from the well. The well wasn't drilled far enough from the mangrove so the water has a high salt and mineral content and is no good for drinking. Or washing come to that. And it's cold. And it dribbles from the shower head with similar enthusiasm that most of the locals have towards work. Put it this way, you wouldn't make a Herbal Essence shampoo advert here. Showers are brief, to the point, and pretty in effective.

So, with a constant layer of grime and sweat between us and the outside world, you tend to harden up a bit and let go of the old ways and your addiction to personal hygiene - you have no choice here. It's like being a teenager all over again. [Sozzle: Edd if you think this is an excuse for the disgusting story you are about to tell, its not. Speak for yourself you grubby little urchin!]

So, having gone barefoot and living with permanently dirty feet (as close to "going native" as I hope to get), for a few weeks, I wasn't surprised when, a few days ago, a dull throb on the bottom of my foot indicated perhaps yet another thorn that needed removing. Only thing was, I didn't remember stepping on any particularly recently... As the ache was coming from the joint between the big toe and the ball of my left foot it had started to get quite sore to walk on, so stuffing it into Sozzle's lap as she sat opposite me at the breakfast table the other morning, I demanded that she gave her wounded soldier a bit of attention.

"There seems to be some kind of bore hole" said my darling wife, jokingly. "I expect something has burrowed in and made a nest".

Laughing, she continued the examination, taking the opportunity to give the swollen area a good squeeze in an effort to shift whatever was in my foot. Eventually, some "strange black fluid, like old blood" leaked out and she lost interest. I hobbled around for the rest of the day although the throbbing had subsided somewhat. Her witticism about the bore hole thing did play on my mind however, and the following night, my the swelling continued to throb, I might even go as far as to say that it was almost pulsating - breathing even.

So, the following afternoon I readied myself with a sterilised needle, tweezers and a bottle of iodine and set to work. I was intrigued to find out what I had stepped on as indeed, on closer inspection there did seem to be a small round hole in the fold between my toe and my foot which normally would be filled with the blunt end of a thorn. How odd. I battled on, the skin being hard and leathery from nearly 3 shoeless months and after a while I could make something out 2 or 3 millimetres past the opening. It looked like a tiny translucent dome, perfectly ensconced in a tunnel the flesh of my foot. However much pressure I put on the surrounding areas, however, there was absolutely no budging it, so I reached for the tweezers and went in with excavational intent. As soon as I managed to nip the foreign body with the end of the tweezers, while simultaneously applying pressure on the surrounding flesh "it" gave way and out it popped.

Looking back, I don't know what made me want to heave the most; the bursting of the maggot itself and subsequent appearance of it's disheveled opaque skin on the end of the tweezers, or the way the egg sac popped out immediately afterwards, alarmingly larger than the hole it emerged from, also rupturing as it did smearing the skin around the wound with clusters of tiny white egg cases.

Needless to say, Sozzle was fascinated by the whole thing and reacted indifferently to my theatrics as I lay back on the seat, eyes rolling and gasping for air. She surveyed the gruesome scene and immediately decided that the whole thing needed to go into boiling water, "or better still, we'll cauterise it."

This got me upright again, and the nausea immediately passed. I decided not to let Florence Nightingale heat up any branding irons and opted instead of lots of iodine and an Elastoplast.

I'm pretty sure that the eviction was comprehensive, and the hole on my foot has healed over nicely now. I do not wander around in bare feet anymore and we have both become meticulous in the cleansing and checking of the soles of our feet. There are no odd feelings around the affected area, which is reassuring but I can't help wondering if maybe just one or two eggs may have remained. And what if they were carried off to another part of my body? And didn't something similar happen to some woman in America that was found dead with her insides full of baby crayfish or something?

It's enough to make your skin crawl. Isn't it?

[Sozzle: By the way,in the first month of arriving in Biombo I had Malaria...which was rubbish! Just so everyone knows. And Edd was actually complaining that he didn't have a similarly dramatic illness to tell everyone about. But now he thinks he's topped the hotspot on the 'illness and scabby infestations' chart. Well I think I might let him have that one!]

Month 3 Project Report

2009-01-06T10:42:00.001-08:00

Week 9

Orphanage Build

*First fix plumbing bathroom

*Rendered the cess pit (fosse)

*Tiled outside veranda seating area

Agriculture Project

*Irrigation

*Maintenance

*Transplantation

Week 10

Orphanage Build

*Continuation of first plumbing fix bathroom

*First plumbing fix kitchen

*Made true all door ways

*Built internal walls inside bathroom

Agriculture Project

*The wall of knowledge

Information on leaf shapes, planting distances and transplantation

Week 11

Orphanage Build

*Creation of tablets for Fosse

*Creation of an tiling of kitchen work surfaces

*Under coat of paint throughout

Agriculture Project

*Harvesting of the first fruit (Pepina – cucumber) and ceremonial eating

*Vending of first batch of cucumbers to Kere

Tourist Village

*Shell decorations in the restaurant and central seating area

*Electricity and lighting in the central seating area

Week 12

Orphanage Build

*Replaced bathroom and ripost doors

*Completed veranda tiling

*Part built bath/shower and sink structures in the bathroom

Tourist Village

*Shells around all bungalows and restaurant to help prevent sand ingress

*Improvement to basin area in the shower block

Special delivery

2009-01-06T04:37:00.001-08:00

It's dark. You're driving a 4X4 along an unmade dusty track, the terrain is so bad that you are forced to slip the clutch to keep the engine running and you constantly search for solid ground to keep essential momentum. You hit another rut, didn't see that one coming, the vehicle lurches uncontrollably to the left but immediately rights itself with violent indignation and the centre post whacks you on the side of the head. Actually, it catches you just at the top of the ear giving you a sharp stabbing pain to accompany the dull throbbing that will remain with you for the next 30 seconds. That smarts, you rub it and then examine your fingertips for signs of blood. No one else in the car even notices, not even your wife. Typical - just because one of the passengers is having contractions with increasing frequency and panting like a greyhound everyone else is focused on her. Your wife is calmly reassuring - "Breathe... In, out, in, out", You stare straight ahead and wonder how that is supposed to make your ear feel better.

This was the scene on Tuesday night, the day before New Year's Eve 2008. We were racing to hospital with a pregnant woman in the back seat of the 4X4 driving as fast as possible while at the same time trying to bounce as little as possible. Not easy, especially with a sore ear.

Milanka was one of the first Mums we met here in Biombo. We had witnessed her from a safe distance giving an almighty bollocking to a group of 5 or 6 kids who had been hitting her boy and had ultimately sent him home in tears. As her son is no other than Scabhead Orange-Pants himself, you can imagine that he must have taken quite a beating to be that upset. She was already heavy with child at six months but this hadn't stopped her putting the fear of God into the local scallywags and sending them all packing with their tails between their skinny little legs. When we saw her the next day and actually saw her face for the first time we were amazed to see how shy she was in reality, possessing the same cheeky grin as her kids and the same habit of looking at you from an angle at you with her head turned slightly to one side. Like most of the young Mums round here, the father of her kids is working away somewhere in another country so she fends for three of them gathering oysters from the mangroves and wading out up to her armpits to sling a fishing net out into the muddy water. I saw her doing this only 3 or 4 weeks ago, and he same evening she came and sat in the camp and refused to move until we'd bought her bucket of oysters - despite the fact we had plenty already. Butter wouldn't melt and all that. Scabhead (known locally as Naka) and his sister Zanetti (the one that used to bend over backwards all the time) are among the very few kids that never pester us to give them anything and although they are undoubtedly the naughtiest, and I know that you are not supposed to have favourites and all that - but it's absolutely impossible to keep a straight face when the are purposely winding you up. Naka is endearingly protective of his little sister who is forever getting them both into hot water and Zanetti repays his loyalty with adoring gazes and hysterical laughter at the briefest crossing of his eyes or the slightest tickle. The pair of them are always filthy during the day but are usually spotless and somehow in clean clothes by 6.30 every night.

So, when I heard the shallow breaths outside the door of our hut at 7.15 the a couple of nights ago I swung the door open thinking I was about to send one of the little sods off with flea in his/her ear. Instead, I was greeted by the sight of Milanka bent double with a pained look on her face and panic in her eyes that could only mean one thing. By the time we had bundled her into the car and she was already beginning to hyperventilate so as we pulled out of the camp I was in no doubt that we were going to have cover the 2 miles of track to the nearest hospital pretty damned quickly.

As it was already dark, the usual pigs, goats and chickens were safely locked away, although we did get flagged down by most of the local lads who by now had heard that something was up and had decided that they couldn't miss out on the ride. One of Milanka's friends, Isabel, jumped into the back seat with and stoically stared ahead in silence while Milanka writhed in pain next to her. Eventually Sozzle persuaded her to hold Milanka's hand, although looking back, i don't know who looked more uncomfortable of the two, as it soon became obvious that hand holding is clearly not part of the culture here.

We'd probably only been driving for 5 minutes when the normally silent Milanka started making noises. It was a kind of rapid squeaking grunting sound made through gritted teeth and pursed lips. My eyes left the road ahead for a split second - long enough to see Milanka leaning over at 45 degrees, eyes rolling in a face covered in sweat and with Isabel's hand in her fist about to be crushed beyond all recognition. Bizarrely, I was reminded of that joke about the old man in the nursing home who constantly gets propped up by more pillows every time he starts leaning to one side, the punch-line was something about the nurses being lovely except that they won't let you have a good fart. Just then, Sozzle gravely announced that "her contractions seem to be getting rather close together". Bemused, and between gears, I asked how the hell she knew that, to which she replied "It's the squeaking - she's only just finished the last lot." Personally, I wasn't counting but I suppose it was about then that I started wondering if we were going to make it.

Every time we hit a brief stretch of flat track I put my foot down and tore along at speeds I'd normally feel way too guilty to drive at, which was great until I had to brake so hard for the next rut, rock, tree stump or root that the truck started to feel like the rear wheels were bouncing along behind us. Needless to say, the lads on the back of the truck loved it and cheered us on hoping we'd go even faster whilst managing to somehow simultaneously show off to anyone they knew along the way by making as much noise as possible, standing up and only ducking for the lowest branches of the cashew trees that lined our route through the forest. When we finally broke through to the nearest village, we flew through the centre (a large patch of sand with a 600 year old tree in the middle of it) with the horn blaring and with a cloud of dust behind us. It was all very Hollywood and I admit that I particularly enjoyed making people leap out of the way in all directions. All that was missing was a hay barn to crash through and a few escaping chickens and the scene would have been complete. For once, Sozzle was not telling me to to slow down either, which was even better . In fact, she had gone very quiet indeed, and when I looked over my shoulder into the back seat with the intention of giving a cheeky Dukes of Hazard style wink, I could see why. Milanka was squatting on the rear seat.

As luck would have it, we had by this point arrived right outside the hospital gates. Good news. Once the gate was open, we saw that the land that the hospital had been built on had obviously not faired well in the rainy season and had been eroded away into yet more massive ruts. bad news. At this point one of the lads who had hitched a ride in the back ambled off the back of the truck and sauntered towards the gate. Sozzle then decided that she could "actually smell baby" and decided to hit the fast forward. By this point Milanka was still squatting on the back seat and the side of her face was against the roof of the car so Soz jumped out and barked (in perfect Creole) at the idling youth "Hurry! Baby come now" Milanka was now shaking although every muscle in her body seemed tensed rigid and the tight black skin of her neck and shoulders glistened with sweat in the dim glow of the interior light. Sozzle helped her stay on the seat and I put the car into four wheel drive and hoped for the best. We lurched and bounced the last 20 meters to the hospital building, with the lads on the back somehow managing to hold on and I leaned on the horn.

I remember thinking how bizarre it was that the place was so dark and seemed completely deserted - and then seconds later I remembered where I was and realised that there is no electricity here. Doh. After the drive, I was feeling pretty pleased with myself, and Sozzle could see that I thought my work was done, so with great presence of mind she leapt out of the truck and went in search of a doctor with Isabel. I turned round in the driver's seat and decided to try and reassure Milanka who now had her head between her knees and was groaning quietly to herself. When she looked up at me, the poor girl had a look of absolute dread in her eyes and as she frowned apologetically there was a noise from the shadows between her legs that sounded a bit like the noise a wet shirt makes when dropped on the floor.

She froze, I froze. We looked at each other then stared at the slimy grey creature on the car seat between us. Shit, where's that bloody doctor?! Why are it's legs at such funny angles? Isn't the umbilical chord whiter than normal, I thought it was supposed to be more red than that? Why isn't the thing moving?

Actually, nobody was moving. Milanka was frozen solid, still in the squatting position; I was leaning over the front seats with wondering what to do, and the baby was lying there in a crumpled heap like something the butcher my throw in for you on a Saturday afternoon. The sploosh of the afterbirth brought me back to reality and I decided that I ought to at least untangle the thing and remove that umbilical chord from around it's neck. I reached down and scooped the little body up, which instantly started waving its arms about and arching it's back. There was a tiny little chest that seemed to be going up and down and the legs straightened out immediately. There was also quite a substantial willy and a pretty impressive set of cohones. These were good signs, but no noise. I vaguely remembered something about smacking bottoms and in the absence of Social Services I gave the little bleeder a couple of sharp taps.

Moments later, there was a little cough, a spluttering squeak and he started to cry. I think that noise was one of the most beautiful sounds I'll ever hear. Milanka, still paralyzed, looked relieved but slightly distant. I tried to hand her the new arrival but she was clearly having trouble moving and seemed adamant not to get the seat any dirtier. A nurse appeared at the car window, took one look at the three of us, nodded reassuringly and disappeared back into the darkness. I, so to speak, was left holding the baby.

Eventually, everything calmed down, forceps and scissors flashed in the moonlight and baby was whisked away wrapped in what looked like a filthy tea towel. Sozzle and I gently coaxed Milanka out of the car, while trying to convince her that the ectoplasm all over the back seat really wasn't an issue and the reassuring nurse took over.

When we got home, we noticed we'd been out for no more than half an hour - and dinner was on the table. Victor was interested but unphased by our story and we relived the events for the rest of the evening. We couldn't believe how quick the whole process had been, nor how lucky we were that it had all passed so smoothly. Words can't describe the feelings of joy, relief and awe we had...

A next day, after we had eventually made up with Zanetti, Milanka's 3 year old, we carted her and her brother off to hospital to visit. Zanetti finally came round to the idea of having a little brother once she realised that she'd be getting her Mum back the next day and Naka particularly enjoyed looking for taps to leave running. Zanetti seemed to have forgiven me by now which was a relief, and Milanka was calm and well.

3 days after the birth, on January 2nd, Milanka came to the camp. Forever economical with words, she handed me a fresh papaya, told me it was mine, and told me she'd named the baby after me - Edu Orange-Pants.

Do they know its Christmas time?

2008-12-22T06:39:00.001-08:00

Don't take this too seriously....................

No Edd is not Bob Geldof, but he does love the kids. Everyone say arrrrrrrrrrrr.......

Apologies to the speakers of the Queen's English who object to "XMAS", but it was a budget thing :-)

In this little part of Africa they certainly know its Christmas. Present giving isn't a tradition, but most of the female population of Biombo have spent the majority of their month's earnings on some new hair and they have 3 days of solid "Feshta" partying lined up. They really know how to go large!

Happy Christmas everyone! We are thinking of you all over there and really craving some mince pies and brandy butter.

Lots of love Edd and Sozzle xxxx

Our Fishing Trip

2008-12-22T06:33:00.001-08:00

"I'm sorry, I thought you said you had AIDS for a moment just then. Oh you did, sorry, er oh dear... Does it hurt?" Actually, it didn't go exactly like that, but when our fishing partner randomly came out with the explanation for why he had not been very active for the last 8 months I honestly thought that either my French or his English had just got us into a frightful mess of misunderstood acronyms. "Oui, c'est SIDA, you say EEDS, yes?" I instantly regretted asking him on embarking the boat if the bandaged sores on his lower legs were shark bites (he didn't get it), and simultaneously floundered like a gasping fish out of water for something to say. We'd been bobbing around for a good or hour or so wondering who was going to have a stab at some conversation, and I had long since exhausted my interesting fishing anecdotes. Soz had already trumped my "I used to make my own trout flies you know" with her bloody shark dragging the boat story so I'd clammed up by then.
"Bummer", I said inappropriately, wincing at the possible inference of what I had just said.
The three of us stared at whatever we could find to stare at. He at the horizon, Sozzle at the fishing equipment in the bottom of the boat that she had suddenly found quite intriguing, and me at the bottle of water we had all been sharing that day. Damn, er look at something else... His dressings, no, his pallid complexion no, er, how about the same horizon? No, this is silly - let's just cut to the chase.
So I asked the 53 year old Frenchman, and proud father or two strapping young men how "it" happened. I thought it was perfectly reasonable considering he'd come out with the statement completely unprompted - so presumably he didn't have issues about talking about it. We'd been out fishing for an hour or so the night before and had eaten dinner at the same table but other than the children he'd already mentioned and the fact that he was a French national record holder for fishing something particularly impressive, I really knew very little about him. I was about to learn a lot, and the frankness and patience with which he told us his story will be remembered always.
He told us he'd caught the virus 24 years ago while travelling in the US. He and 3 friends had been hanging out in a famous park in San Francisco that I've never heard of, where life was easy, there were no police and flower power seemed to live on. The 4 friends met some friendly Americans and since they were young, adventurous and without a care in the world they thought they'd try cocaine for the first time. They snorted it, licked it, smoked it and eventually injected it with the group that they'd met that same day. I asked him how he could be so sure that it was then that he caught the virus and with a wry smile he told me that apart from "ze one who did not like ze needles", all the others were already dead.
Knowing that he had two sons in their late teens, I had to ask the obvious question - so how did he end up having kids?!. Actually, it turns out that you can have perfectly healthy children if you are careful and if your partner is in good health. I won't go into the details, as this blog is not a reliable source of this kind of information, but in reality he was happy to be alive, was living each day as it came and was enjoying a successful career as an Accountant for 3 different companies. For 3 months of the year he lives on an island in Guinea Bissau with no mosquitoes, clean water and as little contact with outside germs and viruses as possible and so far he seems to be getting away with it.
Once I'd started asking questions, we all relaxed into the fishing trip and although we didn't actually catch anything that afternoon, Soz and I learned a hell of a lot about the virus that everyone fears but knows out but know very little about. Forever the optimist, I offered the observation that at least he seemed to be enjoying his life and had led a pretty interesting one so far. Continuing the upbeat note, he pointed out that although the last course of drugs had knocked him out for the past 8 months, at least they seemed to got rid of his Hepatitis A! How we laughed as I coughed and choked on my last swig of the water.

Oh, back to the fishing - as we caught nothing from the boat, the next day I rose at dawn, kissed my wife on the forehead like they do in the movies and went fishing on my own. As I stood on a rocky outcrop by a beach of white sand with the sunrise in front of me reflecting off a mirror calm sea, I pondered the life we left back home and came to the conclusion that being a volunteer do gooder really ain't that bad after all. Fishing, like life I suppose, is all about being in the right place at the right time. When the water 2 or 3 meters ahead of me momentarily started to boil with the thrashing of fins and escaping smallfry I finally got the feeling that it was my turn to be lucky. Something big had come into the shallows on a feeding frenzy and everything went mental. My lure was only a couple of feet away from the action and on a direct path towards the assault so as I gingerly swept my rod over my shoulder I got that familiar feeling of Kenny-Levick confidence that I simply couldn't lose. That feeling is normally followed by abject disappointment, so you can imagine my surprise when the tip of my rod suddenly plunged hellwards and the reel started screaming something like Chief Brody's in the first Jaws movie. I held on tight and watched the V of the beast's bow wave race off into the distance. It didn't take me long to assume a manly stance with the rod bent double as I leaned back towards the island. To be honest, I didn't know what else to do but I guessed that it probably looked pretty cool. Then I shouted "FISH!" as loud as I could, hoping that somebody would be up and about and would back me up when I told Sozzle about the power of this thing but luckily it was Sozzle herself that came to my aid. She stood behind me and clapped for a while but considering it took 45 minutes to land the thing she did well to hang around until the bitter end. When I finally landed the fish, it turned out that the lure had been ripped apart and that there was only one of the 6 hooks in the (9.8Kg, that's big that is) Karang's mouth so it turned out I'd been even luckier than I thought.
A couple of hours later I managed to catch another much smaller Karang with a lure that I made myself from a Coca Cola can. That really showed the fishing anoraks, ha ha. The plan is to come up with a design that the locals here can easily reproduce and then sell to all the rich sports fishermen that come through Biombo - captive market and all that.
The fishing trip was my birthday treat from Sozzle and I loved it. Thanks Wife, you're the best. XXX

Incidentally, said wife also managed to catch a dirty great Baracuda the night before trawling off the back of another boat, even though it wasn't actually her birthday... Humph.

Things that go bang in the night

2008-12-17T07:50:00.001-08:00

Well, we came here for adventure and new experiences, and last night we certainly got our money's worth. I've never been woken by the sound of automatic gunfire and screaming black men before, and despite her upbringing and numerous summers spent with her father in New Zealand, neither had Sozzle.

So, at exactly 5AM this morning, we found ourselves lying in the dark hoping our mosquito net might at least slow down the odd stray bullet. We had, after all, forked out the extra few quid for a specially impregnated version "for added protection from flying pests", so in the worse case scenario I might at least be able to negotiate a partial refund. I had been sleeping soundly, dreaming about 50" TV screens, curry nights and being able to communicate without acting out every other word, when all hell broke loose. The first 3 or 4 shots must have been about 100 yards from our hut and my first thought was that it must have been fireworks, then we heard a man shout, and then another and then more voices joined in followed by another rapid succession of gun shots thankfully from further away. This meant that either the gunman/men were moving off or somebody was returning fire. The shouts did not sound particularly friendly so something was definitely going awry and with a bolt of adrenalin to my sleepy brain and the vague memory of the last attempt on the Presidents life, I announced with feigned confidence to Sozzle that it had to be "another effing coup". A few seconds later, it dawned on me that the president lives about 60 miles away in the capital and that in reality, Biombo is in the arse end of nowhere and would be the last place they'd waste bullets on. This thought would have helped be breathe easier, had Sozzle loosened her grip, but in the grey light of the full moon I could see from the look on her face that there was no way I was going to be shifting from my place between her and the open window. Bless her, she does make me feel needed sometimes.

Once everything had calmed down and I had heard enough people run past our hut to be sure I'd be at the back of the crowd, I convinced Soz to release her vice like grip went out to have a damned good nose and to stand with my hands on my hips with the chattering masses. As it was a full moon last night, it was clear enough to see lots of people running down towards the rice field by the mangroves next to the camp waving machetes above their heads and making as much noise as possible. It reminded me of the last time a wildcat had tried to make off with one of the local pigs and the whole village went mental trying to scare it off so I began to get the feeling that it may have something to do with livestock.

An excited group of wide eyed teenagers explained that it was actually pirates that had caused the fracas. Yes, that's right - pirates. They had come in to the mangrove on a boat, spent the night sneaking into the village to round up any cattle they could find (a few of the better off families have one each, tied up outside their hut after dark) and had been caught herding the final 2 of a complete rustle of 9. The fact that they were carrying AK-47s didn't seem to perturb the owners, and nor did the fact that last year someone was killed chasing his stolen cow, and with the familiar collective irresponsibility we are now getting used to, everyone had run down in to the mud after the herd and the escaping thieves.

Some of the villagers were out searching the mangroves for the following 4 or 5 hours and Tome, one of labour labourers, used the episode as an excuse to be very late for work as one of the people that nearly lost a cow was one of his neighbours. When he did finally turn up, he was covered in mud, was still brandishing a machete and seemed to be only just coming down from his adrenalin fuelled kamikaze mission. I thought it best not to make too much of a point about the couple of hours of the morning he'd missed on that particular occasion...

Month 2 on the Project

2008-12-01T06:37:00.001-08:00

Week 5

Orphanage Build

*Construction of seating area for kids on veranda

*Digging of cess pit

Agriculture Project

*Insecticide application

*Irrigation

Tourist Village

*Improved lighting in tourist restaurant to address insect problem and lighting ambiance

Week 6

Orphanage Build

*Dug cess pit

*Created ventilation windows in kitchen

*Rendered veranda seating area

Tourist Village

*Continued painting

*Creation of soak away for kitchen waste

*Gardening/weeding

Week 7

Orphanage Build

*Rendered all internal walls

Tourist Village

*Painting inside all bungalows completed

*Feasibility study of "Pic Isle" for possible tourist revenue

Week 8

Orphanage Build

*Finished fabricating cess bricks

*Built internal cess structure

Agriculture Project

*Irrigation

*Improvement of fence to prevent temptation and ingress of large bovine intruders

Tourist Village

*Prepared for and hosted important visit for 10 European tour operators

Take me to the beach [out of reach], radio edit

2008-12-01T06:29:00.001-08:00

So, as a way of generating some much needed revenue for the NGO we now call home, we have decided to look into organising some day trips from our base at Biombo. The problem with the "Tourist Village" is, well, there are rarely any paying guests. In fact, the only people that really seem to be enjoying the holiday atmosphere is a few of the staff.

That said, we are told that there have been up to 100 guests in a single year, all staying for one night only and paying 65 Euros a night. These guests are on their way to Kéré, (for fishing trips run by Laurent, the owner of the island and the son-in-law of the founder of the charity) which means that as they have usually flown into Bissau at some unearthly hour, they need to stay at Biombo in order for the boat to pick them up in the morning. All the revenue received from these guests stays within the charity. The charity gets money, Laurent's guests get taken care of - it's a win-win situation.

So, in a nutshell; we have a resource sitting here doing nothing for 5 out of 7 days a week carrying a not insignificant overhead (by local standards) and a load of ex-pats, and other European NGO workers less than 2 hours away in the capital of Bissau. There is really very little to do here in Guinea Bissau other than to pay a fortune to go to one of the excusive (and very beautiful) islands off the coast for a weekend which involves a 2 hour boat ride and muchos deniaro (that's money) to get there. Hence, when we heard the locals talking of "the most beautiful beach in Guinea Bissau" that had been cut off from the mainland since the war and was therefore deserted, we were very interested to find out more.

Having done a bit of homework, we were told that the beach, known as "Picle" was either about 30 minutes away by sea or about 3 hours wading through 2 feet of mud after an hours trek through the jungle and mangroves. We opted for the boat. The beach was apparently frequented years ago by Bissau's movers and shapers in the early 90s, and people used to take tents and stay the whole weekend as it was so comfortable in the sea breeze and relative peace and quiet. Nowadays the only visitors are the odd canoe-ful visiting one of the sacred trees for a ceremony or two and a few monkeys who have been enjoying the lack of humans and have taken over the place. Monkeys? Sounds like a winner to me!

As we couldn't wait for one of Laurent's boats to have a spare afternoon available, we decided to charter a boat from a surly and quite pungent fisherman who after a slow negotiation, reluctantly agreed to earn 2 weeks wages in one day of work (15K CFA). Needless to say, when we turned up at the agreed time he was nowhere to be found and by the time we did find him he'd decided to go off that afternoon and do something else with his bloody dug out tree trunk. In his defence, he did react pretty well to my barely hidden disappointment and quickly found a alternative pirogue and pilot and we were sorted.

The trip to the beach went well, once we had climbed into the canoe after sinking up to our knees in the mud of the mangroves. Not pretty, very stinky but quite funny in a whose idea was this anyway kind of a way... Victor, our faithful self-appointed manservant, could hardly contain his excitement and bounded off to the front of the boat to feel the sea air on his shaven head and as he held our coolbox close to his chest. Victor had confessed to us a few days earlier as he stared at the palm trees on the horizon, that in the 2 years that he had been in Biombo he had always yearned to make the trip to Picle to see if the stories were true.

Sure enough, on our arrival, the place was deserted. This could have been something to do with the treacherous approach which after our ungainly disembarkation, involved climbing between sharp volcanic rock formations as the waves washed around our legs threatening to off with our all terrain sandals. Once ashore, on the rocky outcrop that we were assured was the only safe place to bring the boat in, we headed off in search of "the Beach" (out of reach) picking our way between the rocks and the odd patch of soft sand. The crew led the way, Soz and I followed, and Victor bounded along the track we were taken with undying enthusiasm and the eagerness of a spaniel on a Sunday afternoon in the park.

Eventually we found the beach. A massive expanse of wet sand, separated from those bastard rocks we were still clinging onto by a 2 metre stretch of black quicksand. Once through the slop and, once again, filthy from the knees down we adopted our usual Kenny-Levick stance with hands on hips, and a quizzical look on our faces and we politely asked if our guides were having a laugh. One of them certainly was, as being about 14 years old had decided to take advantage of the first wide open space and no jungle he'd ever seen and ran off into the distance towards a flock of flamingoes that looked like they'd had one too many hot washes. They did fly off in quite a spectacular fashion however, although the effort seemd to get the better of them and they landed about 50 yards further down what was beginning to look alarmingly similar to Western Super Mare without the Pikeys.

So, razor sharp rocks, quick sand, and a wet beach at the end of it with nowhere to sit and a mangrove swamp as it's backdrop. Bummer. The photo above shows the best and the worst features of the place - big gay birds and the kind of mud you could easily lose a party of school children in. It was about then that we finally accepted that we were not on to the winner we had hoped for.

It was while we were exploring the jungle behind the rocky landing point that we came across an idyllically picturesque clearing at the base of a thousand year old tree. Wisps of smoke from small fires floated through the trees and the midday sun threw hazy shafts of light through the canopy. In the cool of the half light between the trees, a group of people sat around waiting while a separate gaggle of wise looking and well fed middle aged women huddled around the entrails of a dead chicken. From the look of the spatters of red running down their shins, it looked like we had only just missed the first sacrifice of the day...

We were welcomed with friendly faces and invitations to sit down and relax, as apparently the more people you have at these ceremonies the more effective they are. We were asked not to take photographs of the clearing itself, although a few of the congregation stepped out of the main throng and insisted on having their picture taken anyway. As well as half a dozen nervous looking chickens, there were also a couple of pigs in attendance. One of them, probably not more than six months old, was tied to a tree stump by one of his hind legs, though this did not stop him having a damned good root around the forest floor for a last meal of nuts and berries. He actually seemed to be quite enjoying his day out and was clearly completely oblivious to his fate. Eventually, after all the chicken had ended up in the steaming cauldron (yes, really) the pig was dragged forward and presented to the ladies. All he really seemed bothered about was that he hadn't quite finished his lunch, until he saw the flash of the knife blade. At that point the little fella went completely ga-ga and appeared to come up with all sorts of excuses for why he really ought not to be sacrificed on that particular day. Nobody was listening, bless him, and to be fair the end was pretty quick.

Half an hour later, we were politely refusing lumps of boiled pork straight from the pot, as the wise old women made sure everyone at the ceremony got rice and meat and a swig of palm wine to wash it all down. We did try the wine, and to be honest, it wasn't bad - but having seen the whole process and knowing that the meat was hardly cooked anyway, we kind of woosed out when it came to solids.

On the way back to the boat we saw some properly wild monkeys, who amused us for half an hour as they drew straws for who would cone down the tree first for a closer look. They were hilarious, with the younger ones letting curiosity get the better of them and their mothers and aunties scolding them from behind.

When we finally got back to the muddy trench from which we'd launched and we disembarked, we discovered that one of the crew had stolen our compact binoculars while we were on the way back. Nobody would admit it, although I was assured by one of them that whoever was lying about it, be it me or them, they would die because that's how it works in Guinea Bissau. That made me feel much better.

...stop press - we have heard of another beach where the sands are whiter, dry and long. The boat trip is a bit longer, but we're going to investigate anyway. Wait, just a minute, I can see something on the horizon! Pass me the binoc... Bollocks.

Pant life

2008-12-01T06:20:00.001-08:00

For some time now I have been observing the lifestyle of the children of Biombo, making mental notes and inevitable comparisons with children in the UK. You can't help it, and to be honest, it's the kids here that keep us sane and that give us the only real social interaction and conversation that we get with the locals. Apart from the incessant requests for sweets or pens, the children are far more patient when listening to our pitiful attempts at Creole, help us to fill in the gaps when we stumble through sentences and never try to sell us anything. While it is unusual to get more than a "Bon dia cum é" (Hello, how's things? - rhetorical question obviously) from the adults here, the kids will come racing out of the trees and undergrowth when they see us while excitedly shrieking "BRANCO!" at the top of their voices and hurling themselves at our legs, waist or upperbody depending on the height of whatever they find to hurl themselves from.

If the little darlings manage to get a good hand or foothold as they fly through the air at you, the normal procedure is to then hang on with vice like grip to your hair, ears or clothing while alternating between sticking their tongue out at their less successful rivals and staring adoringly into your eyes as if butter wouldn't melt in their mouths. Persuading them to let go is a bit like trying to pull cat hairs off a nylon pullover as while you are focused on levering one small person from one part of your body, another is busy launching itself from a nearby bending sapling giving you just enough time to brace yourself as the sun is blotted out by a flurry of brown skin, white teeth and a dog-eared pair of brightly coloured pants.

They love their pants. In fact, they don't wear anything else. Literally. Actually, I am exaggerating slightly, as now and again, one of them will have the remnants of a T-shirt over his or her head and shoulder serving no apparent purpose other than perhaps a bit of decoration. No, what they are clearly happiest in, if they really must wear any clothes at all, is a nice pair of bright orange pants. The benefits are many; they are cool, nor are they too hot, your Mum can wash them and your body a lot easier than a set of clothes and you have less to get caught up in undergrowth and trees as you leap out at "Edu" and "Sai-ar", as they try to creep back to camp. All this, and if you ever need a wee, you just whip it out and tell your pals to stand back.

It seems that spending the day in nothing but a pair of threadbare briefs, also affords a certain amount of indestructibility to the wearer. I've seen 4 year olds fall out of trees, trip up and somersault down dusty tracks and get dropped on their heads by older brothers and not once have I witnessed any wailing. Zainetti, pictured above, is Scabhead Orange-Pants' little sister. She is 3. She smiles a lot and has a bizarre but very cute habit of holding on to the fence and leaning back as far as she can. Usually, she manages to get a good view of everything behind her, which makes her grin even more. A couple of weeks ago, something distracted her as she was doing her usual trick while we were trying to communicate with some older kids and she accidentally let go. Somehow, she managed to flip all the way over and face planted into the sand behind her. She quite literally backflipped landing face first closely followed by her belly. I don't know who was more shocked, her or me, but as I was on the other side of the fence their was nothing I could do. Expecting the worst, I braced myself - only to see her happily squirm around in the dirt until she could get back on her feet to the sound of muffled giggles. Once she was up, still grinning, she let the other children slap he in the face as they tried to remove the sand from her eyes and eventually she stopped chewing the dirt in her mouth and started spitting it out with her dribble. All of this, she found hilarious.

The only time in nearly 2 months here I have seen a child cry, was when Vanya, the seven year old she devil, was on the receiving end of a damn good thrashing from a very pissed off woman who had clearly had enough of her cheek. Although the woman wasn't Vanya's Mum, nobody batted an eyelid and despite the theatrical writhing around in the dirt and cacophonic sobbing the little shit didn't seem to be bleeding so we didn't step in.

I have started referring to the collective behaviour, treatment, lifestyle, and apparent group norms that the children exhibit, as "Pantlife". The term seems appropriate considering that during daylight hours (except for the 3 1/2 hours they spend at school each morning), every child between the age of 3 and 10 lives, plays, fights and sleeps in a solitary pair of pants.

Another trait of pantlife is the wearing of scabs, preferably with two or three flies occupying the coveted real estate. For the first 4 weeks of our stay here, one particularly hyperactive 5 year old boy, who for obvious reasons we have come to know as "Scabhead Orange-Pants" had a weeping sore on the back of his head that was apparently caused by somebody hurling a rock at him. Having got to know him and having seen the speed that he tears off into the undergrowth with a mischievous grin on his face so many times, I can understand both why it happened and why they only managed a glancing blow. Anyway, back to the scab. It never seemed to show any signs of improvement and we desperately wanted to apply a plaster or dressing as it eventually reached the size of ten pence piece, yet on closer inspection there was no sign of infection and he was clearly quite happy with the state of it, flies and all. The wound suddenly shrunk back and healed over last week, leaving behind it a small crater of shiny new skin on his clean shaven skull. It struck me, thinking about the flies and the dirt that had caked the sore and the distress that it had caused us (and only us), that scabs, sores and flies are probably an essential part of growing up here and that in the 3-4 weeks that his skull spent exposed to the elements, Scabhead Orange-Pants was likely to have built up immunity to more diseases than all the 300 quid's worth of vaccinations we paid for prior to leaving the UK. I'll spare you the analogy of giving ineffective aid to Africa rather than leaving them to it for another time, and for when I've developed the argument into a more intelligent rant.

Pantlife rules. Soz won't let me buy a pair of orange pants as she says they only look good on black skin - and to be fair the physique of the average 5 year old puts my mozzarella belly to shame. I am determined to adopt the Pantlife for the remainder of our stay here however, as finally I am beginning to understand why my Dad spends his summers in the south of France in a pair of skimpy briefs and a pair of petrol station sunglasses - mine won't be purple though. I'll let you know how it goes and will give you a few more accounts of adventures and the characters in Pantlife over the coming weeks...

This is William, his pants are green.

The (not so) secret Millionaire

2008-11-15T07:49:00.001-08:00

Edd wants you to know that he did not write this.

If you have ever seen this television program, you will know what I mean when I say:- imagine how the people would behave around them if they knew the Millionaire was who he was.

Its taken me a while to tackle writing anything about our real experience of life in Africa. To be honest it is such a rollercoaster of emotions that you have to be quick to catch the ascending leg or a few seconds around the corner the (dodgy) African car is taking you straight back down again at an alarming rate! Understand this this is only how I feel today - tomorrow it will be different.

During our first week in Guinea Bissau we were pretty down in the dumps and wondering what on earth we had let ourselves in for. Our experiences in Senegal had done a good job of dampening the travelling honeymoon. Our passage through the country left us £280 lighter and the local thieves relatively rich. Most of which we discovered a few days later was taken from our locked hotel (recommended in the lonely planet) room and disguised well to avoid arousing immediate suspicion.

Weeks 2 and 3 in GB we took slowly, by observing people. We gave out a few pens and sweets to the children in the village. We tried staying detached until we understood how people worked. Taken at face value and through no particular fault of their own, Europeans are seen as walking ATMs. Relative Millionaires. The white people come along (who the locals already know are primed with the best intentions), the black people ask for stuff and we give them stuff. We create the preconceptions! "Branco" is screeched from a far....(whitie) 'give me pens', 'give me an exercise book', 'give me your watch', 'give me some money'.

The locals honestly believe that we are so rich (even relative to our own country) that any stuff is totally disposable and if they ask for it first, its quite likely they will get it. Sometimes if asking doesn't work then applying some artistic licence to the truth is also perfectly acceptable.

But, as you can see here, what I am doing is comparing Africans to Europeans and you can't! There are so many qualities they have that we don't....

It seems to be the Europeans who are stressing about how poor the infrastructure is or how their potential for self sufficiency is so under realised. But the average Guinea Bissauan doesn't really seem to care and I would say are generally happier than us Brits. Don't get me wrong, there is a lot to do here but when you read that Guinea Bissau is the third poorest country in the world you don't expect to find the country like this.

So, why are we trying to force the European worries on these otherwise2 happy individuals? Pardon me for being quite Carey Bradshaw about this blog - feel free to slate me as you like - but I won't listen because YOU'RE NOT HERE MAN! ;-)

Today a nice Portuguese man (working for the red cross) summed up our agreed thinking with the analogy "Why are we trying to make them take the train that we are on. Maybe it is best for them to just choose their own train. Is Europe so perfect and are the people really so blissfully happy?"

So, we have a favourite little girl, she is called Femia. She is the girl on the left above. Her friend on the right, Vanya, is an evil witch girl, who behaves like a spoilt brat (how is that even possible in Africa?) but the lengths she goes to to be spiteful are hilariously funny. Femia had endless patience with our Creole and helped us through our sentences instead of laughing hysterically (although I think I would have too). All her friends went to the private school up the road which she used to go to. She was taken out this year because her parents couldn't afford the fees and they were waiting for the state school to open (and the teachers to eventually turn up one day too). So Femia would walk around during school time (7-11am) looking very sorry for herself.

We discussed all the implications of "fixing it for her" for days and days. What impact would it have on the family? Would all the other kids come the next day claiming that their parents have now taken them out of school? Would the parents then take Femia out of school and demand the fees back from the school instead - leaving Femia the victim? Is it ok to pick one just because she is a little angel? Would we leave them in the lurch for the subsequent years tuition fees? After all the discussion we decided to go ahead with great caution. On this day her 20 year old sister happened to come asking for a pen for school (we had never met her before). We laughed off the idea of a 20 year old in school and she responded with a knowing cheeky grin. We told her that in the morning we would take our friend Femia to school with her friends and then finish - no more asking.

A few hours later we heard Femia singing like all her Christmases had come at once. She spotted Edd and I and came running over. She tentatively said "are we going to school tomorrow..." and waited for a nod from Edd. With the response she was looking for she shrieked with laughter and danced around. We had never seen her so excited, let alone anyone being so excited about going to school. It was such an amazing feeling and perhaps too self indulgent on our part. She danced and jumped up and down for the rest pf the evening and no amount of Vanya trying to dampen her fireworks would succeed.

The next day we turned up in the car outside the cluster of mud huts where she and her friends live. Femia came out again as if to check it was really us and we were actually going to school. She then ran back towards her home to grab her exercise book and pencil. We were relieved she had a work book, if she hadn't we would have put her in a difficult position. One of our other favourites, Scabhead Orange-pants also ran out to jump in the back of the truck to go to school and his mum came running behind him.....because today he had forgotten to put his trousers on for school. He is below

Anyway we took all the kids down the road to school and enrolled Femia for the year. Our school mission was successful and no such repercussions. What a brilliant thing to have had the opportunity to do.

The same evening, quite late, we had a visit from Femia and her cousin Antoneta (who is 14). We would normally never get a visit after dark from the kids. Femia had a very sad look on her face and as we approached the fence Antoneta said in creole "Femia needs an exercise book. You have taken her to school and now she needs an exercise book." I looked at Femia and said "Femia, you have one we saw it this morning". Femia looked down and sadly shook her head. Antoneta then asked how much we had paid for the school and then had a last ditch attempt at asking for an exercise book.

Edd and I walked away heeling really hurt that our little friend had lied to us. We felt sure she had been put up to it because it wasn't her style. But we then realised that we needed to get over our own selfish feelings and that it really wasn't supposed to be for us - it was for Femia.

...a bit about the project!

2008-11-15T07:47:00.001-08:00

It has been bugging us for a couple of weeks now that we have posted nothing so far about the project itself and the work we are doing here. In fact, reading this blog you could be forgiven for thinking that we are actually having quite a good time and we'd hate for anyone to be thinking that!

On our arrival things here were, well, rather chaotic. It has taken us a few weeks to get to grips with the "African way" of doing things and we have lost count of the number of times that we have been reminded that "this is Africa". We have recently sent a report back to one of our major donors, so to save a bit of time we have done a bit of a cut and paste job....

Overall objectives:

1. Convert ex-pat house in to working orphanage block ready to receive Children in January.

2. Training phase for Agriculture Project. Community project aiming to increase the competitive advantage of the locals by training them to grow and cultivate other vegetable varieties.

3. Preparation of tourist village for the first season’s tourists after the rainy season

Week 1

Orphanage Conversion

· Completed 3 external walls of kitchen extension

· Built window supports for front Kitchen window

· ½ walls for repository

· Repaired Biombo road in preparation to receive sand delivery lorry

· Reviewed plans and made adjustment to bathroom facilities

Figure 1- Kitchen Extension

Figure 2- Repository Wall

Agriculture Project

· Cleared site area

· Measured and marked out beds and pathways

Week 2

Orphanage Conversion

· Completion of internal walls (including new bedroom door)

· Demolition of new kitchen entrance

· Transfer of kitchen window to exterior wall

· Fabrication of 200 standard bricks (@ approx 110 per day)

Figure 2- Internal Wall and main door to bedrooms

Figure 3 - Steel support structure on repost wall

Figure 4 -Lelu creating the steel supports manually

Agriculture Project

· Continuation of bed and walkway preparation

Week 3

Orphanage Conversion

· Demolition of existing doorways (2 positions to be changed)

· Demolition of new door way

· Rebuilt brickwork on 3 doorways

· Fabricated 150 small size bricks (for internal bathroom walls and external veranda walls; approx 80 per day)

Agriculture Project

· Adding manure to the soil

· Planting seeds

· Creating fence around site (to protect against animal damage)

· Cleaning the overlooking palm trees (to stop damage from falling debris and blocking of sunlight)

Figure 7 - Cleaning the overlooking palms

Figure 8 - Mixing the "strumo" in to the beds

Week 4

Orphanage Conversion

· Fabricated 260 Fosse Bricks (@ approx 80per day)

· Brought up new bathroom floor

· Made true all 6 doorways

· Channeling for first fix electricity

· External veranda walls for toddler security

Figure 9 - Standard bricks and fosse bricks (foreground)

Figure 10 - Veranda wall structure fabrication

Agriculture Project

· Germination of 1^st plants

· Revision for exam

· Exam (2days) + presentation of certificates

Figure 11 – Verbal exam being witnessed by Edd

Figure 12 - Aquilina, Isabel, Antoneta, Imiliana and Jaozinho (instructor) behind first germination

Tourist Village

· Preparation for arrival of first tourists/journalists

o Repainted all whitewash and red floors

o Tidied garden

o Repaired Broken mosquito mesh on bungalows

Figure 13 - Tourist village, central seating area and rear of kitchen after new paint job

...so, what you wanna do?

2008-10-27T08:34:00.001-07:00

Week 1 Biombo - Ending 9/10/08

...I dunno, what you wanna do? First few days at the project have been hard work. Not hard work in terms of activity but hard in terms of trying to find something to do. As things at HQ were so hectic when we arrived, there was no time for a proper briefing and we were dispatched with the instructions to acclimatise ourselves at the project and relax a little after our journey. Unfortunately, after being off work and doing sweet Fanny Adams for 4 weeks, bizarrely, we are actually quite desperate to get our teeth into something. After 48 hours behind the fence, we've met lots of kids, squelched around in the Mangrove mud and tried to converse in Creole. We might as well have tried to talk to the vultures that hang around just outside of the camp fence.

The problem is, Victor (runs the kitchen and provides us with food and constant witterings, salt of the earth and all that but clearly a couple of grapes short of the full fruit basket if you know what I mean - in a nice way of course) is absolutely convinced that with our delicate white man constitutions we will contract cholera within seconds of leaving the camp. When we ask him questions like "what's down that lane", or "can we walk down river" the answer is always the same, a grave and hushed "il y aura la maladie, c'est pas bon." They had the sickness down there, it's no good...

Bless him and all that but, I didn't think you could get cholera by just being in the vicinity. Saying that - thought it best to double check with the good Dottoressa first though....

That said - the camp itself is quite idyllic. We've been allocated a private hut, and it's the one closest to the shower and toilet block which makes it almost en suite.

The huts were built as part of the plan to have tourists here to support the funding of the orphanage - but, I don't know if you've heard already, apparently there is some kind of financial crisis going on and guess what? Yep - no tourists.

The journey to Biombo

2008-10-27T08:29:00.001-07:00

2/10/08

The following morning, once we had sorted out our Visas (40,000 CFA for 6 months in Guinea Bissau, with the bonus of multiple re-entry to Senegal - hold me back) we went back to the main petrol station and immediately bumped into Manuel, the charity's driver who had stopped to ask directions to our hotel.

On the way out of Senegal - we went through 4 different checkpoints showing our documents each time and having our names and nationalities recorded in well thumbed ledgers. Each checkpoint was manned by either men with guns and sunglasses, bored officials in white short sleeved shirts, and/or dogs and sheep. A couple of hours after leaving Senegal and entering the Republic of Guinea Bissau, we arrived at the home of La Dottoressa Maria Grazia and her beautiful and recently built clinic.

As we were already running late, there was very little time to catch up with the Dottoressa, and she quickly got to the point about what to worry about and what not to worry about at Biombo - where the project is located.

Things not to worry about:

People - everyone is very friendly in Biombo
Money - they don't steal in Biombo
Transport - we are to take and keep the 4X4 while we are there

Things to think about:

Cholera - Biombo was one of the worst hit areas during the recent outbreak. Don't eat anything outside of the project unless straight from a very hot oven, no sharing of water, wash hands before eating or handling food... Er, OK.

Malaria - take your drugs, don't get bitten; especially between 11PM and 2AM because then you get brain malaria and that's the serious one. The serious one?!

A couple of hours later, we'd left what little tarmac there is in Guinea Bissau far behind us and we were bouncing down a dirt track in the 4X4 in the dark. It was at this point that things started to get exciting. Having been on the Jungle Track at Land Rover, we both had a pretty good idea of "off road terrain", but there is something special about driving into the unknown , through actual swamp and having cashew tree branches regularly slapping against the windscreen. From the angles that the Defender 90 ahead of us was reaching, it was clear that the track to the project had not faired well over the past 3 months of rainy season, but we both had silly grins on our faces and enormously enjoyed the last 30 minutes of the trip. I lost count of the number of times I thought we were going to get stuck and was completely gutted to find out on our arrival that we hadn't even engaged 4 wheel drive...

...I understand that this thing is going to get pretty boring without a few pictures along the way so here is a picture of a couple of black dudes and a fat honky with man boobs trying to make the road a bit more passable a few days later.

Ziguinchor - Senegalese border town

2008-10-27T08:26:00.001-07:00

1/10/08

As we arrived in Ziguinchor on the final day of Ramadan, it was a public holiday and clearly, the only thing on people's minds was the long awaited partying that was to take place that evening. As a result, we were going nowhere but thankfully the charity had promised to send a driver in the charity's truck to come and pick us up from Zig the following day. There was therefore little else to do other than to party with the locals and kick back for 24 hours - it's a hard life. The night, as usual, turned out to be full of new situations, with much of it spent reminding the local Casanova(s) that just because I had turned away from my wife for two minutes it did not actually mean she was available and interested in going off somewhere quieter for a while. I'll blog that night's events another time.

That evening, we met up with a couple of young Frenchies who were passing through and were staying in our Hotel as it was the only one mentioned in the Lonely Planet. They were nice people - Ludo was a very well meaning earnest kind of chap with an African parent and had clearly dedicated the past few years of his life growing dreadlocks and saving enough money for his trip to Africa. He "lurrved" the people in Zig and had involuntarily built up quite an entourage of new friends. His travel companion was a very sweaty fat French girl called Beatrice who seemed to be finding the whole experience a little overwhelming and had a healthy distrust of all the drunken Africans that had latched on to Ludo. She didn't have much to say for herself until she lost her sandal in a muddy puddle the way home and 6 weeks of frustration with trying to get around West Africa came flooding out. We had just got back from a wild goose chase involving a couple of rip off taxi rides into the middle of nowhere with Ludo's new pals in search of a "drumming party" that never materialised, it was 1AM and it was still hot as hell. The taxis in Zig, as in Dakar, are all 20 year old Peugeot or Renault estates that look like stock cars with loops of electrical flex for door handles and seating that slides around the interior of the car. I don't think we saw a single one without a cracked windscreen and more than a couple seemed to be limping along with barely 3 or 4 inches ground clearance below the engine or one corner of the car.

The next morning, Beatrice told us that she had changed her plans to go up country overland in one of the crowded mini buses that bounce along the muddy tracks that link the towns down here and had opted instead for the air conditioned ferry back to Dakar on which we had arrived the previous day. I told her I thought that was by far the best plan and sat back and waited for our driver to arrive with the 4X4...

The wrong way round

2008-10-12T05:58:00.000-07:00

So, as a VERY special treat, it was agreed that we would hire a motorbike and go for an adventurous expedition into the mountains that separate Marrakech from the south of the country and the Sahara desert.

On the first afternoon, we made it as far as some very pretty waterfalls at a place called Setti Fatma, which was about 60 km outside of Marrakech up in the mountains at the end of a road that winds through villages walnut trees and pastures. On the way we stopped to buy a couple of bananas that turned out to be more , expensive than Leamington's Chavsda, but it was fun and some toothless old geezer with more hair than Saddam Hussein when the yanks finally caught him offered me "50,000 camels for the wife". I asked him if a Honda was out of the question and the discussion ended there. Actually, it didn't - he then tried desperately to sell us some random bits of tat until we roared off on the bike with far more use of the throttle than was strictly necessary.

After climbing up the gorge at Setti Fama to see all seven of the falls (the last two actually involved a bit of vertical rock face scaling which came about when we called our guides bluff after a half hour trek to only the third. We were still wearing big heavy walking boots as we'd arrived on the bike and although our feet were a little hot, the sight of other tourists slipping out of their flip flops and sling backs on the way down the narrow stony footpath made us glad to be "the sensible ones, for once" as Sozzle put it at the time. Sadly, it was at this point that the handy little digital camera we had gave up the ghost, so no pics for a while now...

We left Setti Fama after our trek with plenty of time to spare as the map seemed to indicate that the next leg of the trip should have been about 2 hours, yeah right - provided you don't take any wrong turns...

We hadn't planned to end up in a ski resort, well at least not on this trip. I don't think there are many places as surreal as a ski resort in North Africa, out of season and especially in the rain. Basically, after narrowly missing a herd of goats for the 4th time and after getting past the tree line and pretty much as high as you can get in Morocco we ran out of road. We pulled over and walked into a café as we were cold and wet from the drizzle on the way up through the hair pins. On ordering 2 coffees we were presented with a bill for six quid - that can't be right my good man, I told the bored looking waiter who immediately pointed out the prices on the menu - same as the bill. He should have just pointed to the rusty old ski lift on the other side of the car park. We'd not noticed it due to it blending in perfectly with the red rock the mountainous back drop. Oh well, the world over, the sun will rise in the morning and set at night, and in any given cafe in any given ski resort you will pay silly money for a luke warm coffee served to you by a miserable waiter. As it was getting late, and the town was a truly desolate place with depressing architecture and nothing but the odd piece of tumble weed rolling past we pressed on, swerving (just enough, very bored of it all now) to avoid someone running towards us with a tray of knick-knacks shouting "my friend, my friend".

The bored waiter in the rip off mountain restaurant had given us some vague directions for how to get down from the resort and on to our originally planned route, and judging by the map (another bad move) it seemed that we were only about 5 km past our turning. Something we did not realise was that the mappers must have run out of "winding road ink" on the day they drew our map and had decided to indicate a 18km stretch of hairpins with a single straight dash. After 5km we took a left turn onto a gravel track. A gravel track that rapidly deteriorated into a muddy track cut into the side of the mountain. The track then became 2 muddy ruts - tyre tracks between outcrops of rock and mounds of earth. To our left was the mountain, to our right the ground dropped away into the valley. The bike seemed to be coping fine as finally the knobbly tyres that had been so noisy on the tarmac really came into their own and kept us firmly planted on the track. Once I was finally forced to ride standing up to keep the bike upright, I started to listen to the satnav device on the back of the bike. She had been shrieking "make a u-turn" for at least the last kilometre or so, but unfortunately by that time the ruts had become so deep that there was not a chance in hell I was going too be able to turn around - and she was mad enough already so the last thing we needed was to drop the bloody thing.

It was as we rounded the next rocky outcrop that we spotted the white truck. It did strike us as strange, although it was with mixed feelings that we approached the vehicle as by this time we felt pretty far from civilisation. It turned out that the truck was full of swarthy looking "men of the land", all filthy, pretty hungry and clearly intrigued to have bumped into us on the side of a mountain in the middle of nowhere. Of the ten of them, two seemed to be able to speak limited French - the gang leader (who they all pointed at when I asked if the track went anywhere), and one bloke who clearly had designs on my sandals which were strapped to the grab handles of the bike - either that or he had his eye on Sozzle. As the leader seemed very keen that we go no further and the rest of them appeared to be salivating, I thought that now was a good time to accept defeat and do a u-turn. As I was turning the bike around, having off-loaded Sozzle to make the manoeuvre easier, the other French speaker kept encouraging me to edge a little further backwards as the rear wheel approached the cliff edge. If he hadn't been staring so attentively at my sandals, I'd have been more inclined to listen to him. Instead, I deftly completed a 12 point turn involving a lot of grunting and tip toes, told Soz to get on "and now", and we shot off the way we came around the same point that one of the gang had started to slowly open and close a rather sinister looking pair of pliers.

It only took us about 10 minutes to get back onto the road after that, and for once, Soz didn't seem to mind me using the bike's power to get us back along the mountain path. She wasn't too impressed by the bumps though as unfortunately the engine was too loud by this time for me to tell her when to stand up. She managed to stay clinging on though, and was still there when I checked when we arrived at the junction with the road which was an enormous relief. On the way back down the twisting mountain road, the heavens opened and as we were at such a high altitude we got proper, cold, pin prick rain. Soz didn't complain, bless her, and after asking a bunch of shepherds directions (they all pointed down the mountain, the way the crow flies) we got going again - and in the right direction. Oh, and then it started raining...

We then continued along our route through hairpins, avoiding goats, a frog, patches of missing road, landslides, and even a few randoms with too many fingers who couldn't read a map or even recognise their own village.

It took us about 3 hours to get to the next tiny mountain town that might have somewhere to stay. Riding through the dark, everything seeming closed and deserted, until we asked some teenagers sharing a cigarette under a tree in the dark if they knew anywhere we could stop for the night. One of them, smirking slightly, walked about ten yards up the road and banged on a big steel door, had a very brief exchange in Arabic with a voice from the other side and before we knew it we had found one of the nicest B&Bs you can imagine. Not cheap, but it was a friendly place with great home cooked, home grown food - with, of course, the obligatory Tagine de Poulet as the main course.

Next morning, after a good night's sleep we, committed the cardinal sin of failing to check our tyres before setting off. With a soft front tyre, we hit a pothole too hard which made quite a bang and I nearly lost Sozzle from the back. Luckily, we were only 3 km from the next village where we stopped, fuelled up, got tyre "fixed" - which involved beating the rim back into shape with a hammer, and then beating the rim with two hammers when that didn't work. As is usual for Morocco, we had lots of spitting spectators.

20 Km later, we are at the top of a mountain, not another vehicle in sight, and believe me, we can see a long way - with a flat tyre. The "repair" hadn't worked so as a last resort we used the emergency canister of magic foam to reinflate the tyre one last time. This got us to the next sign of life - workmen fixing the road, no luck in finding a pump though. So after a lot of scowling and standing with our hand on our hips we decided to battle on until we could find either a pump or a phone or the tyre fell off. Incredibly, we had the best bit of luck we could have asked for and after only 3km we came a across a couple of guys from Nottingham in their early 40s on brand new BMWs and more gear on them then your average BMW dealership. Thanks Allah for mid-life crisis. Their extensive range of equipment included a compressor which the guy was clearly relishing the opportunity to use. Along with the magic foam sealing the puncture and with a wing and a prayer, we continued on and the tyre remained inflated for another 60Km, phew!

Eventually we arrived in the town of Taroudant which had been recommended to us by the BMW boys, along with a good tip off about a hotel in the main square that would sell you beer and wine as long as you stayed round the back out of sight... With the image of an ice cold beer in my head I decided that this would be a good place to thought it might be a good place to see if I could get the tyre fixed. After taking a wrong turn in a very crowded marketplace, we accidentally rode bike right in to a tile shop, as it's all open air - it's easier than you probably think, and to be fair the owner didn't seem to mind. In fact he didn't even try to sell us anything.

I then spent the rest of the afternoon with a couple of very helpful and well meaning lads called Aziz and "Rastaman" who helped me trek round various mechanics who all seemed to work out of their front rooms and although they were very enthusiastic about helping, did not seem to have a 12 mm allen key among them. Poor Soz had to sit in a cafe all afternoon watching the world go by, but did manage to spot a goat being carried around on it's owners shoulders "with it's ears flapping and clearly enjoying the view". You see , it's all very well riding around North Africa on a posh looking modern bike that everyone stares at, until you break the bloody thing. Had I been on a ratty little Chinese copy moped then it would have been fixed in 5 minutes, but unfortunately for us - these people were simply not set up for "smart bikes" (Mum will understand that reference). With a bit of ingenuity and with me covering my eyes the wheel was eventually removed and two punctures and the valve were mended. With the crisis over and evening approaching I gave my two helpers a bit of cash and a lift back to their homes on the back of the bike. They loved it, although Rastaman nearly disappeared off the back in a flurry of dreadlocks as I accelerated a bit hard for the benefit of his mates just as he was trying to look cool by not holding on. Sorry Rastaman!

Thee hotel insisted on us parking the back in the rear of the place, which meant that I had to ride the bike through the hotel itself, which we followed with a well earned beer...

Goodbye Dakar, hello Ziguinchor

2008-10-01T04:52:00.000-07:00

Yesterday afternoon, we boarded the illustrious Aline Sitou Diatta. We'd managed to buy tickets the day before and had treated ourselves to a private two berth cabin for the grand total of 61,000 CFA (about 76 quid). The boat travels overnight and takes us all the way from Dakar to Ziguinchor, effectively bypassing the Gambia entirely and depositing us very close to the Senegal/Guinea Bissau border. It's a very new boat (apparently the last one sunk and every one drowned) and the all the crew are clearly very proud to be on the ship with immaculate uniforms and very professional attitudes.

I don't know how much the passengers without cabins had paid, but they were crammed into rows and rows of coach seats in the main cabin in front of 2 huge LCD TV screens which permanently displayed one of the 2 channels available on the ship. As we embarked they were showing French premier league football, and as we queued to get off this morning they were showing big and beautiful African women in their poshest frocks dancing energetically to remixed traditional music with lots of spinning disco lights. Whether it was football or the dancing girls, everyone seemed to be quite enthralled.

Parting shot of lovely Dakar

On the back of the boat, on what is almost the top deck, is a bar selling tea/coffee with slices of cake or rum and coke. Before we set off, many of the passengers congregated in the area and as the sun went down and everyone ate cake, chatted or drunk rum while eagerly awaiting our departure. 3 hours later, we left pretty much on time and the dirty yellow lights of Dakar slowly disappeared into the distance. The atmosphere on the boat was jovial, most people said Hello when passing although we found it almost impossible to make eye contact with any of the handful of other white people on the boat. There were 2 - 3 young couples (French) serenely wandering the decks together refusing to share their own private adventure with anyone else, unless they were indigenous to the continent, and there were a few middle aged well healed overweight women with a little too much floaty clothing definitely too many bracelets (also French) enjoying lots of attention from at least one young hunky black toy boy each. We even recognised a Spanish woman who had been staying in the same hotel as us in Dakar and still with the same gigolo. I beamed a smile of recognition at her as she was having her neck stroked by her companion on the top deck, but she didn't seem in a very friendly mood. Sozzle went for a walk later and found the gigolo in the bar, hammered on Special Flag and rum and being a lot more friendly now that he'd got rid of his ~~boss~~, sorry, lady friend, for the night.

Once out to sea, we retired to the cabin to try and learn a bit of Creole and to have private cheese and wine party with some VERY runny Camembert and some South African Shiraz we bought in a mini market on the way to the port. Sozzle needed cheering up a bit after the Dakar experience, and stinky cheese seemed to do the trick.

Unfortunately for us, the only people that smiled at us in Dakar, were the people trying to drop our trousers. I don't know whether it's a growing resent towards the steady stream of business travellers and tourists that go through the city or whether it's simply due to the painfully apparent wealth gap in Dakar, but the people seem to stoically go about their lives with a plodding resignation and total lack of joy that makes you wonder how the hell they carry on. In shops, bars and hotels you get no eye contact, smiles or communication - outside in the street the only warmth you receive from people is part of a sales pitch or a scam. Sad, sad Dakar.

On our arrival in Zig, we squinted out of the cabin window at 10.30 AM and were greeted by the sight of a dozen or so frolicking dolphins who were showing off to everybody on the port side as the ship slowly manoeuvred into dock. They were taking advantage of the confusion that the ship's hull was creating in the aquatic underworld and picking off fish as they swam away from the metal hulk. Being the natural performers that they are, we were treated to a few set pieces of synchronised swimming and breaching - very exciting to watch and absolutely impossible to catch on camera.

As soon as we stepped through the gate from the arrivals area of the dock, we were mobbed by children after sweets and lads offering their help. The problem is, after the Dakar experience, we are still smarting and have decided to adopt the blanket policy of trusting nobody until we get to the orphanage. This did not stop a dude called Zahle attaching himself to us, and despite us ignoring him walked with us for about 10 minutes into town. At one point, I decided to be completely straight up with him and explained that we really weren't in the market for anything he was working round to offer us and that while we may look like easy targets, he should consider the fact that we had just spent 2 days in Dakar so think again Sunny Jim. Without the slightest air of malice or offence, he just shrugged and said that the people here are different, and do we need a hotel? At this point, we are standing on a muddy rutted track with massive pools of stagnant water stretching from edge to edge at some points, everything is closed (bloody Ramadan) and we really need to find the consulate for a visa and a telephone to contact the charity. We have our rucksacks on our backs and are already soaked in sweat so I told him I would do him a deal - help us out and I'll give him free English lessons, or at least at a very good price my friend. Within the next quarter of an hour he'd shown us the consulate (yes, you guessed it - closed for Ramadan), helped translate when a very kind random offered to lend us his mobile to call Guinea Bissau (could Zig really be so different to Dakar?) and walked us to a hotel he knew. OK, the hotel's not exactly competitive based on what I have learned since checking in and we seem to be the only guests but we've had nothing but smiles and greetings from virtually everyone we've come across since including one very cool 9 year old boy who just high fived us on the way past without even saying a word.

Although the roads and the buildings are even more decrepit down here, the people are so much warmer and things are looking up. Tomorrow we get to Biombo and the project and we can't wait.

Feeling hot, hot, hot

2008-09-29T08:12:00.000-07:00

We're in Dakar now and the adventure continues. We've not had much access to the web for a couple of days so I have some more posts to upload when I get a chance - hopefully within the next couple of days...
Dakar feels about 38 - 40 and we are both, quite literally, dripping wet. We got well and trully shafted at the airport yesterday by a very friendly chap called Marmaduke and his pals. Luckily it was only on the cost of a taxi ride but it all got a little bit intimidating at one point. Ten times the normal rate is a bit excessive, but then considering that Sozzle had died my hair ginger the day before (with Henna from some wizard on a market in southern Morocco), I guess we were probably asking for it. It's very difficult to keep eye contact and remain authoritative when they are transfixed on your barnet. On the bright side, we both got out of the situation unscathed and only six quid lighter - you do hear about far worse experiences straight off the plane.
Anyway - we've booked our ferry tickets to Ziguanchor and have woossed out and opted for a private cabin for 2. What we will actually get is anyone's guess. The trip down to the port was quite a mission, we leaned about a code that the taxi drivers keep that prevents you from playing them off against each other. It's really very effective, although you do feel royally shafted has they all gabble on to each other and completely destroy your bargaining position. I wish we had done that (more) in the automotive industry! I'm sure they all split the difference aftetr the dirty deal has been done.
Sad news about my little camera - it's knackered. It managed to survive my stag do, the building site that was 23 Rosefield Street and various parties, yet the rich red sand of the Sahara has proved too much. It now makes horrible crunching noises when I switch it on and all the still shots have horizontal stripes across them. The cost of a replacement over here would actually be considerably more than at home - something that further highlights the massive gap between the haves and have nots.

Will write some more about Dakar when I'm not sitting in a puddle of my own sweat.

Ba benen yone!

Sarah Sahara..........

2008-09-24T15:02:00.001-07:00

23 Sept 08

Ok my turn to waffle randomly about this holiday/pre-Guinea Bissau excursion.

Last night and this morning were the most fantastic adventures of the trip so far and must be one of the most magical experiences of my life to date.

Having started to regret getting a minibus tour of the Moroccan south, and remembering that we hated driving around constantly, stopping at the tourist restaurants and mixing with the same coach loads of other tourists at every stoop....our tour suddenly got better.

On our first night in the Sahara (where the Berber named "Mohammed" named me "Sarah Sahara"), we had seen lightening flashing in the mountains around the desert. It turns out that this had caused massive flash flooding on the route of our next day's tour. Big portions of the road had been washed away and the route was simply blocked by an enormous river that was not there the day before. So after declining the offer Hussein (our driver/guide) made of giving up and going back to the previous town where we could all pay extra for a hotel room...we attempted to go the special alternative route. This involved racing across rocky terrain in a minibus. The two people sitting on in the back having worked for or supplied for Land Rover, whilst finding it VERY exciting, were looking at each other and the landscape and the speed....and agreeing that not even Land Rovers are driven at those speeds, in that heat on that terrain on test drives. We felt sure that the van would get a flat and roll. I am still so amazed that it survived.

We were due to sleep our second night in a tent last night just in the edge of the Sahara. When we arrived at the holding bay(a funky mud/sand built fortress), before the camel ride to the desert tent, there was a sandstorm which meant we couldn't go to the tent then. After dinner the winds had calmed to a feather like breeze and we were offered the option to go to the tent or sleep on the roof of the fortress looking at the stars in the Sahara and then go for a camel ride at 5am to catch the sunrise over the sand dunes. It was an easy choice!

We were given a mattress and a blanket to take on to the roof (made of mud and bamboo canes). You could see the footprints of the people overhead when sitting below in the main room. Anyway - My lack of extensive vocabulary means I will not do the description justice to try and describe how simple and how perfect the experience was. But picture this......... feeling really comfortable, a cool breeze sifting through the warm air, no clouds, no light bulbs, the distant sound of Ramadan celebratory drums and staring up at the the night sky over the Sahara as you drift off to sleep with your best friend's hand in yours.....can you imagine it?

The feeling I get having been a tourist here for just 1 week, worries me. It seems that the substrate of interaction is fragile and the tiniest of a misunderstanding can cause this substrate to crack. The weakened break spits out a tiny amount of boiling lava leaving the bulk to brew and bubble underground. If you know what I am on about I'd be interested to hear your take.

Smuggles the tortoise

2008-09-24T14:59:00.000-07:00

Last night we met one of our most interesting single serving friends of the trip so far. Let's call him Tom. Despite being utterly Welsh, and quite ginger he was great company and already a seasoned visitor to Marrakesh. Despite this, he did manage to order a small fish instead of a small drink during the meal we shared in the square (poisson vs. boisson - you get the picture), and confessed to us all immediately that he had done exactly the same thing last time he was here. He was very funny about it though, saying that on the bright side, at least he knew now that he hadn't been scammed. On that note, it's all too easy to start assuming everyone is "out to get you" here, however the people on the whole are really very friendly and many genuinely want to help you out if they can. If you don't want to buy anything from the stall holders or if you walk away from an unsuccessful negotiation they regularly send you away with the Arab blessing of "farrgh-khew", which while I don't really understand seems to be said with absolute sincerity.

Anyway, back to our friend Tom. During that day, it turns out that Tom had made a purchase. He had got a very good deal on a selection of goods which included a few bags of pungent herbs and spices, a Moroccan lamp shade, a teapot and a baby tortoise. Apparently baby tortoises cost upwards of "eighty bloody quid" in Cardiff and Tom was taking this souvenir back for his three year old. The plan was to carry the reptile back to Blighty in his underpants. No, seriously - that was the plan. Apparently, Tom had it on very good authority that when Tortoises are placed in a dark, warm environment they are inclined to enter a semi-hibernating state and are quite happy to sleep until, presumably, the spring. So Tom's plan was to fly home the next morning with the creature down his trousers. Which way up the unlucky stowaway was to travel was a grey area, as was the issue of toilet arrangements for "Smuggles" as he had already been christened. One of Tom's fellow travellers, Fiona, was quite preoccupied about the "poo" issue, and was also aware that Tom was not in the habit of wearing underwear anyway (from another story about an embarrassing situation during a traditional Hammam massage session) but when raising it with Tom was told "do you really think I'd be doing this if I'd thought it through?!"

When we finally said good bye at the end of the night and I wished Tom the best of luck with Smuggles, he gave us half a litre of Rum, having realised that the allowance is only 200 cl of liquids, and he had no luggage to check in. Aah, manna from heaven - nice one Tom. I really hope he got away with it, I think he probably did, and I hope he carries on with the same approach to life. From other things we learned from him, he's already running a successful business and is one of those people that will always get the most out of life and frankly, if you saw the conditions that the animals are kept in on the market I think you'd agree that 3 hours trapped in a Welshman's Y-fronts will be a small price to pay for freedom and a long happy life in the valleys.

Day 2 in Marrakesh and it’s bloody raining.

2008-09-18T06:03:00.000-07:00

Sept 18th

Well at least the rain is warmer than what we’re used to. We discovered last night why our bargain room was so cheap. No hot water and the noise outside in the street goes on until 3AM. It’s bizarre, the locals all come out to play at around midnight and ride around on mopeds shouting a lot for hours. And they all seem to be stone cold sober! Getting a nice cold beer last night felt like trying to score hard drugs. Now, a bit of hashish or maybe even a few prescription sleeping pills wouldn’t have been a problem, but mention Gin & Tonic and you are made to feel like you ought to have signed some kind of offenders register on entry into the country. Saying that, we did manage to find a place serving fantastic Mojitos at about 6 quid a hit, with a really cool and laid back atmosphere and funky but tasteful decor. The food was pretty crappy though, although we were able to drink a nice cold bottle of Moroccan Rosé with it which seemed to make everything OK. The place is called Café Arabe and is just north of the main square. Easy enough to find although you have to navigate your way through the labyrinth that is the main market area on yo

ur way, so stay focussed and keep thinking about those Mojitos.

Today is a bit wet. In fact, it’s horrible out there. We are now ensconced in a really chilled out Brasserie called the Brasserie Orientale very close to the Palace and despite just having a very powerful Moroccan coffee, Sozzle is taking advantage of the low level seating and subdued lighting and is sound asleep. As a result, she can’t see the cockroach navigating it’s way around her sandals. Outside, the locals are taking advantage of the free water and are busy with chamois leathers cleaning their precious mopeds. It’s only the Europeans who seem to have had their spirits dampened, and anywhere with a roof is doing a roaring trade. The lads on their scooters still race around at break neck speed, they just squint a bit more.

Despite letting the bank know that we were going away, the first transaction we made in Morocco set alarm bells ringing and our cards were frozen for the rest of the day. Nice one Alliance & Leicester, very helpful. Soz eventually managed to get through to them this morning, and as I fed a very hungry payphone, Soz answered various security questions about her inside leg measurement and first pet’s birthday until A&L eventually allowed us access to our funds again. We then went to the market and celebrated by buying a small leather bag (camel leather, I am promised) for the little laptop we have brought with us. Soz has already christened it “Edd’s Manbag”, and says I look even more like an Indiana Jones wannabe now. Looking forward now to buying a whip.

During lunch we realised that our watches were still set an hour ahead, due to misinformation provided to us by the Sleazyjet pilot on our arrival at the airport on Wednesday. This explains why we have managed to get in to everywhere before the main rush, and probably means the hullabaloo outside our bedroom window will calm down an hour earlier tonight. Lunch was a delicious Tajine of chicken – a kind of conical casserole dish that is cooked over charcoal while a plume of steam emerges from an opening in the top. We ate in a small place slightly off the beaten track and paid about two thirds the cost of eating in the main square, and were treated to the sight of Moroccan flatbread being made while we waited for our food. No beer though.

....I think that they call it al fresco.

2008-09-18T04:45:00.000-07:00

By night, the main square in the centre of Marrakesh is transformed into a mass of makeshift eateries. These are all identical stalls, selling much the same choice of food with the same high pressure selling techniques employed everywhere else on the in the marketplace. A select few specialise in sheep’s head, laid out in all it’s glory along with the eyes still intact – presumably to see you through the night. You cannot walk past the area without being accosted by the waiters, who have managed to learn a few choice phrases in English such as; “Lovely Jublee”, “Dogs Bollocks”, and "Jamie Oliver". What people don’t realise is that what you are then given to eat could quite easily be mistaken for one of the above mentioned items, and I am not referring to the lovable faux cockney chef with a penchant for hoodies, olive oil drizzling and chicken liberation. Anyway, if you ever go don’t expect anything too delicious - but enjoy the spectacle, eat cheaply and share a few jokes with fellow diners and you’ll certainly enjoy the evening.

Our hotel in Marakesh

2008-09-17T15:45:00.000-07:00

You'll find the best value in the noisiest parts of town... Our room is £15 per night and is well cool.

Here's a picture of me glowering at some kids minding their own business playing in the street outside.

The Marrakech Express

2008-09-17T15:42:00.000-07:00

On arrival at Gatwick, we had a breakfast of a cup of tea and a Bloody Mary. Actually, Soz had all the tea so I was left with the BM. Soz noted that it was the first time we had ever been early for a flight, she doesn’t share my approach to “Just-in-time” self delivery. Where’s the fun in sitting around relaxing before a flight? I mean, we hardly broke a sweat! Felt very odd. Had only one shitwheresmyphone spasm today – just after the X-ray machines. Soz not amused.
We’re now in Marrakech, it’s hot, noisy, very crowded and smells funny. Fantastic. We’ve been for a reccy already and fended off the hawkers by telling them that we are only in the market for magic carpets. Unsurprisingly, it wasn’t long before one off them, with hushed tones and only a slightly shifty look about him, told me he knew exactly where I could procure one. I told him Easyjet was probably still cheaper and he got the message.
We had a slightly alarming moment when Sozzle was accosted by someone in a Burkha brandishing a rather large syringe. Sensing our alarm, and pulling the scarf from her face the assailant assured us, “ees OK, I am woman” in broken English. OK, but you are still holding a syringe full of something very nasty looking to my Wife’s wrist. Then, in literally as long as it has taken you to read this paragraph, a tattoo in Henna had appeared on Sozzle’s forearm. Fatima, having introduced herself by now, then wished us well and told us that the tattoo was “a gift from me for the festival” and disappeared into the crowd. The squiggle she left on Sozzle’s arm is quite pretty and innocuous, however I couldn’t help wondering if it might actually be some sort of tag enabling us to be identified/targeted later this evening for the next lot of scammers. Soz laughed this off until the burning sensation started getting a bit too uncomfortable for her liking…

Family photo - Missie, Grandy, Nickie and us

2008-09-17T15:37:00.000-07:00

Thanks for the hospitality M&G, and thanks to Nickie for the lift to the station. Thank also to Missie for the good luck card, and no - we won't "do any silly dares". I'll be too busy looking out for the gorillas.

So, why DID Sozzle's bag break?

2008-09-17T15:35:00.000-07:00

...answers on a postcard please. Don't ask me where to address it to though.

Our last day in the UK

2008-09-17T15:15:00.001-07:00

Tuesday Sept 16th

Today we packed our bags properly for the first time, and had a very quick trial run. One of the clips on Sozzle’s brand new bag turned out to be broken already which was a bit of a blow, but it was not too late to fix, thanks be to Allah. Other than that, it’s a great piece of kit – looks like a normal holdall, but has shoulder straps that are secreted away in the base of the bag. The idea is that we will not look quite so much like “backpackers” on our travels, although how she is going to disguise the red faced sweaty blond bloke who will end up carrying the thing, I really don’t know. The nice people who supplied the bag at www.tacticalkit.com (think that’s right) agreed to refund me anyway so as it was an easy enough fix, I’m not complaining! Nice one Alison, and thanks.

Sozzle’s Mum came over to see us off and dropped us at the train station, thanks Nickie. My nice new “rugged looking” watch then broke at London Bridge when I was manhandling the rucksack onto my back, thanks Casio. Still works though, just looks less nice and rugged which is OK as it clearly isn’t.

Having found our way to Angel, in that London, we were finally able to meet Laura Scaramella. Laura is warm, intelligent, speaks Japanese, English, Italian, and probably a number of other languages she was too modest to mention and was a wonderful hostess. Eeva and Hervé came over and joined us for a wonderful risotto cooked by Laura’s own fair hand and a lovely evening was had by all. Laura was pivotal in securing donations amounting to over €20K for “L’isola che c’é” and it was a real pleasure to meet her at last. Especially as it will be these funds that will support the next phase of the build – the build that we will be working on! Don’t worry Laura, your money’s safe with us! Now then, where did I put those home cinema plans I drew up for the orphanage?
After supper at Laura’s (Grazie mille, ti abbiamo trovato simpaticissima), we were honoured with a lift across London in Eeva’s posh new Mini Cooper, which just about had room for our two rucksacks in the boot. It was even dry weather, and we saw a few of the sights as we clattered along the streets of London. Thanks for everything guys, for all the good advice and especially the night’s accommodation. You want to get your electrical system looked at though, there were some very strange things happening with your lights at 3.20AM this morning!
On the ten minute walk to the bus stop, we saw three foxes. We also saw two foxes that Missie has befriended the day before. That means that we saw more foxes than policemen in the 24 hours up until arriving at the airport.

I left my wallet in El Secundo!

2008-09-17T15:15:00.000-07:00

Doh. First boo-boo of the trip. "We" managed to leave my wallet in the back of Minty's car. In Bristol. Unfortunately, this was only discovered on our arrival in Kent. Fortunately, Minty was an absolute star and saved the day by sending it recorded delivery and it arrived at Sozzle’s Grandparents house at ten to eight the next morning. Phew. On the bright side, I’ll certainly be more careful in the future. Mind you, I said that after the time I emptied my tray of MacDonalds left-overs (along with my wallet) into a bin in Turin in 1992. Must have been time for another reminder…
Anyway, thanks Minty – you certainly saved our bacon. Ironic I suppose, considering I am writing this most in a Muslin country right in the middle of Ramadan-a-ding-dong.
Went to Argos and bought watches – as I have just posted my mobile back to the office and now have no idea what time of day it is. I’m hoping that the “shitwheresmyphone” spasms I keep having where my hands quickly pat all pockets in rapid succession will pass soon. Got an out doorsey type watch that looks nice an low key but durable with a good noisy Velcro strap so I can hear the robbing bastards trying to steal it.
Had a lovely afternoon/evening with Missie and Grandy. As I haven’t shaved for some time, Missie is concerned that the Gorillas might mistake me for one of their own and carry me off into the jungle. Sozzle seemed quite amused at the thought of me becoming some Silverback’s bitch. Now there’s an idea for a reality TV show that might get some attention.

Ground rush

2008-09-15T02:54:00.000-07:00

Well, it all suddenly happened. The day came when we had to have the house immaculate, all our crap boxed up and ourselves out of the house. Just to rub it in, the sun actually came out on Saturday, as we were feverishly cleaning and scrubbing inside the house and bathed the decking (beautifully curved, double eliptical don't you know) in sunshine for what felt like the first time this summer. I can't believe that after two years of hard graft on the place, we have finally finished it. And then we moved out.

Soz was more emotional than me about leaving the house. But then, she's a girl and I'm a big hairy man with no feelings or sensitivity. Actually, I'm pretty chuffed with the place and feel quite proud that people want to live in it. Soz is paranoid that the place will get wrecked, I know the place is solid and when we come back we'll be able to bring it back to it's former glory with a bit of paint and yet more elbow grease. I just hope the projector screen survives. :-/ It still feels like we only managed to watch a film on it half a dozen times!

So, we have rammed poor Karen's loft with boxes (thx Karen!!!) and we have taken two car loads of "stuff" to The Old Vicarage (Thanks Mum and Max). We stayed at Mum's on Saturday night, had a lovely supper and drank lots of wine. We keep telling ourselves that we're allowed to drink lots of wine "while we can", even though as unemployed people, we really ought to stick to Special Brew. We're now at the Cohen's in Bristol seeing M,M,M,M,M and M. The latest M is an adorable 3 month old black lab puppy, Soz is definitely in love.

We saw Nick and Faye's new baby last night, Theo. He's certainly got a pair of lungs on him. Soz decidely not broody.

6 weeks to go...

2008-07-30T14:45:00.000-07:00

Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time! Having spent hours cross examining Eeva and Herve' about their experiences in Guinea Bissau working at the charity "L'Associazione L'isola che c'é" and having completed work on our home to bring it to a rentable standard we have finally tendered our resignations. Gulp.

We are yet to start marketing the house, so there is a certain amount of nervousness felt as if the place does not rent, we are going to find ourselves with a substantial mortgage to pay and no salary. Hmmm, so Sozzle's boss was right, we must be mad.