peacemaker gypsy

Rain and random thoughts

• Two days ago I sent the next to last draft of the overdue and large piece of work to Geneva and just now I have sent the blankety blank book/large paper to Lynne.  My reward is to have a swim.

• Or in my case, watch the first rain we have had in the week that I have been here, come pouring down; complete the the requisite thunder and lightening that goes with a tropical storm.

• I was reading here about small children and buffet breakfasts and remembered when Nat and her boys (aged 3 and 18 months at the time) came to visit in Kenya.  We went to Mombasa (as you do) and stayed in a dear little bungalow quite a way from the main buildings (we we had two kids see - away from every other guest in the place).  One morning Josh swung out of the bungalow with a "I'm outa here guys" (an unfortunate phrase picked up from his grandmother) and disappeared.  By the time we left (it seemed 30 seconds later) he was nowhere to be found.  Panic stricken we did the whole search every pool (and every bungalow had a private plunge pool) and stretch of beach and finally ended up at the main building and the breakfast buffet.  And there was Josh with a hovering waiter (complete with napkin over his arm) pointing to the array and saying "that and that ... and that" and having his plate filled accordingly.  I have watched plenty of other kids since at other breakfast buffets and they all do the same thing ... pig out on the glorious variety of a breakfast not cooked or made at home.

• The Senagalese women are easily some of the most stylish women around.  Genetically they are blessed with long lean frames and gorgeous cheekbones but the style is all their own.  Talk about feeling old and pathetic!

• Last night we raced up to the roof to watch the sky at sunset (didn't actually see the sun set for clouds - but a great sky) and across the road (cause we could see over their wall) is a sort of squatters' village (they are builders on all the half-finished houses all around).  But last night there are dozens of them.  Apparently it was a wedding (odd really as people don't usually get married during Ramadan) ... but there she was ... the bride with an opaque white veil covering her whole head and most of her body being piggy-backed in and then dropped rather unceremoniously onto a mat.  We thought it was a bit rude to look for too long but... there are wedding traditions and then there are wedding traditions.

• The pool in which I can swim when it is not raining and I have finished my work is six strokes long (and no pushing off from the end) it is predictably exhausting doing all that turning.

• Now it has stopped raining but it is a chilly 28degrees - to swim or not to swim?

 

Sting in the tail

The last leg (Ghana to Senegal) I had to book through my little Longchamps bag. 

I forgot to remove the camera. 

Now I do not have a camera anymore - but I still have the bag it was placed in.  It is one thing to lose the camer ... and quite another to lose the 60 odd photos that I had never managed to download.

The Bill Gate sign will have to wait.

It helps to be old and helpless

It was more than time for the R&R.  So ... in spite of years of peace education where I teach people that making assumptions is a really bad way to solve problems because it usually means more problems; I thought that I should leave the travel people to organise the travel and off I went to a workshop. 

But I am not entirely stupid so I called the office from the workshop and asked whether I was booked on the chopper to go across to the airport (20 minutes in the old Russian gunship helicopter; 45 minutes on the hovercraft if it is running ... which it wasn't; five hours on the ferry [also not running] or 7 hours by car).  Of course I am not booked.  Small flurry of activity where people promise tickets over the phone and off I go to the helipad.

Where I am told that my ticket is not there - hence I am not on the flight across the estuary.  More flurries of activity with me being old and helpless on the sidelines and lots of young Salones running around to help me by making phone calls etc.  Then I am on the flight.

Get to Lungi whereupon I am told that as I have no visa for Dakar I cannot get on the flight (and I wouldn't care but I ASKED about a visa and was told I didn't need one).  More old and helpless act, more Salones running around and phoning and checking passports and then ...seeing that I work for UNICEF I can go ... on the strength of my ID card and work visa for SLe which says UNICEF.

Get to Accra where I am told ... you guessed it ... I cannot go on the next flight because I don't have a visa  - more of the same O&H except that this time the terribly helpful people are from Ghana and eventually I have the blessing of the Consular official from Senegal and I finally land in Dakar at 0330. 

Whereupon, predictably, I am told that I cannot be there because .. yep .. no visa.  More O&H helped a bit this time by some severely glistening eyes (more fatigue than tears but who cares) and eventually I am outside  where a million terribly helpful Senegalese offer their phones for me to ring my friends who are picking me up and give me chairs to sit on while I wait in the pre-dawn muggy heat.

Now I am here with friends who have not changed a bit in the 3-4 years since I have seen them (except their son who is older and bigger), there is a pool for cooling off, there is great  company, good food, great advice (still have this writing to complete) and a bed with a mattress (as opposed to the 3-inches-of-foam-masquerading-as-a-mattress I have in the villa).

And all because everybody in Africa dyes their hair so that I appear incredibly old and helpless and the culture here still has the terribly quaint notion of helping old people.  And people wonder why I love Africa (I would never have got away with all of that at home).

Half-way

I am just past the half-way mark ... celebrated by being sick and sleeping a lot as a result.  Still nerarly finished two of the three pieces of work.  Well finished enough to be called drafts.  The rains are slowly diminishing, the R&R is put off until next week and the six training workshops have been deemed a success.

But for the first time in my life, not a day goes by that I don't wish that I was home.  Setting up a proper home and then leaving it was perhaps not the smartest move psychologically and emotionally.  Funny how you know all of this stuff for others but are so blind to it when it comes to self.  Oh well ... half way or to put it another way the glass is ... hmm half empty or half full?

Signs .. of the times

"If you pe pe here I cut" (my all-time favourite - painted on a wall in Liberia when I first saw it but popping up on numerous walls here in Freetown.

"Warning! Bad dog" - meaning vicious not naughty but every time I see it I crack up

"Great like the great Bill Gate of the United State" painted on the side of a tiny one-person wooden booth that sells little packets of washing powder ... vision is everything.

And then there are the official signs:
 "Flaming Bible Church": presumably not to do with the everlasting fire and brimstone (although you never know)

"Randy's Ice-cream Parlour": would you take your kids there for ice-cream? 

FIB (First National Bank) - what a brilliant acronym for a bank ... would I lie to you?? (No but perhaps a small fib wouldn't be so bad).

Oh and that nervous breakdown I was promised?  Now been delivered.  I am off to Dakar tomorrow to recover and see an old friend.