I’m aware that my blog posts feature a lot about public transport and my weekends, and make very little reference to work. Mainly because I don’t really know where to start. But I promise I’m not just here making cultural faux pas after cultural faux pas, I really am going to work every day. Suffice to say that I’m definitely busy. Busier than I ever thought I would be, given VSO tell you to prepare yourself to spend the first few months observing as much as you can, and getting to know the organisation you’re working for. Not so for me! But I’m enjoying it, it’s keeping me quiet (ish!) and I’m also learning a huge amount.
But what exactly have I been doing since I got here? I spent the first few weeks trying to learn about the charity I’m working for as quickly as possible, and trying to get up to speed with their current projects. I was able to go to numerous workshops and meetings, which really helped me to try and understand the context I’m working in. The charity doesn’t just work in HIV and AIDs, and does a huge amount of community based work with vulnerable groups and individuals on health, education and good governance issues.
I went to a workshop during my first few weeks, which was attended by all the community based organisations in the area who are working on gender and HIV and AIDs related issues. The aim of the workshop was to discuss the challenges being faced by the organisations when working with women in the community, particularly on HIV and AIDs issues. Some statistics. 58% of all people living with HIV and AIDs in Nigeria are female. 28% of women have experienced physical violence. 46% of young women marry before the age of 18. 23% of young women begin child bearing between the ages of 10-19. This meeting was a real eye opener to some of the practices that go on and contribute to these statistics. For example in one local community from the 10th – 17th October each year they have a ‘free sex week’. The name says it all really. For one week anyone in the community is free to have sex with whomever they choose (whether this involved that person consenting was not covered in the meeting). But the implications for HIV and AIDs transmission are terrifying. Religion is very important here. You can pretty much find a church on any road you go to. What this means in terms of HIV and AIDs is that because of the strong religious beliefs, people do not feel able to be open about their sexual orientation, and cannot seek the help and advice that they need. Transmission rates are therefore very high. Similarly, young girls that get pregnant are not able to access the services they need for fear of the repercussions. Backstreet abortions are rife. This meeting was being held to discuss how services could be improved for women, and how they could be given a voice. And what happened? It was supposed to be an open discussion forum, but every time a woman spoke, the facilitator (a male member of staff from a local community based organisation) insisted that the next speaker was a man. So if 3 women were sat waiting to speak, they had to wait until a man had spoken before taking their turn. This was done in the name of ‘gender equality’ but what it really highlights is that if these are the beliefs of some of the organisations involved in working with these issues, any change is going to be a long time coming. Organisations can do all the work in the world to work with women, and to try and help to educate them on their rights, but unless work is also undertaken with men to try and address some of the deeply embedded cultural beliefs, gender equality will not happen.
So what else have I been doing. I’ve run my first training session for all staff at the charity on monitoring and evaluation. As people who know me will appreciate, I was terrified. Standing up and speaking in front of people is not my favourite activity. My voice shakes and I go a lovely red colour as soon as I start to speak. But it actually went okay. Watch this space, I might just overcome my public speaking phobia over the next few months. I’ll be running more training sessions in coming weeks on putting together a monitoring and evaluation workplan, project management, and budgeting (not my strong point, as the staff of Warehouse, Topshop and the Royal Yacht in Jersey will be able to confirm, but I’ll give it my best shot).
As well as monitoring and evaluation, I’ve been helping with human resources policies, and putting together numerous funding proposals. Neither of which I have a huge amount of experience in, but it’s amazing how helpful google (and previous colleagues, you know who you are!) can be.
I’m lucky that I work in an open plan office, and my colleagues are really friendly and approachable, so I’ve settled in much faster than I was expecting to. I actually wake up and look forward to going to work in the morning. A strange concept, but one that I could grow accustomed to. How I’ll be spending the next few months will be dictated by what projects the charity starts next, as we are in the process of applying for funds for new projects. But if the past few months have been anything to go by, I definitely won’t be bored, so bring it on!
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Monday, May 23, 2011
This is getting serious. Good old Celine strikes again.
As my sister would happily confirm, my taste in music was fairly suspect before I even came out here, but this country is doing BAD things and taking it even further down the Cheesy Music Path of No Return. In the past week I have caught myself merrily singing along to the following at full volume as I’ve either been walking down the road, in the office, or sat in taxis:
• Chris de Burgh – Lady in red
• Shania Twain – Still the one
• Celine Dion – Think twice
• LeAnn Rimes – Can’t fight the moonlight
• Aerosmith – Don’t want to miss a thing
• Chris Isaak – Wicked game
• Sade – By your side
And this is only three months in. I’ll be a lost cause in 9 months time. I’ll need to go through some sort of reintegration therapy when I get home to make sure I don’t continually embarrass myself (and anyone else that happens to have the misfortune of being around me). Sitting in a taxi full of strangers and singing at full volume probably isn’t considered quite as socially acceptable at home.
I’ve developed another bad habit since being here. I’ve found myself answering to almost anything. My name is used so infrequently that I seem to have started responding to just about whatever greeting is directed at me. This is generally bakara, oyibo, Power, white girl or Jenny (some people seem to get easily confused despite us looking fairly different). The best one is a man I pass every morning as I walk up the road to my office, who is absolutely convinced I am French. I have no idea why. I haven’t encountered a single French person since arriving here, so it’s not as though every white person he has seen before me can have been French. I have tried speaking to him in English, but he won’t buy it. So every morning without fail he shouts ‘Bonjour Mademoiselle’. I’m tempted to try and learn a complicated French phrase to use in response, just to see if he can actually speak French. However, I do also have some limits. I have so far refused to answer to: baby, baby girl, sugar, honey, my love, white meat, angel, and princess. Most of these frequently come from Creepy Photo Taking Man, who seems absolutely and completely unable to interpret social cues. If he wasn’t so irritating I would find it amusing. The other morning he ambushed me walking to work and told me he had something for me. “I’m not interested, I have asked you to leave me alone.” To which he explained that I would most definitely be very interested in this. He had written me a poem. Now, as I’ve mentioned before, my standards have slipped slightly in recent months. If he had offered me a bar of dairy milk, a bottle of rose, Maxfactor More Lashes mascara or macaroni cheese, then maybe, just maybe I would have paused for a split second. But a poem? He’s obviously decided that the stalkerish tendencies of taking my photo without consent weren’t working, so he’s moved onto some more ‘charming’ methods.
Another amazing week in terms of post. Claire and Scott, you win the prize for the most amusing parcel content, it was brilliant. And Miss Pitman, I’m loving the means of communication via the good old-fashioned medium of a letter. I will definitely be writing back, I’m just slightly embarrassed that your beautiful writing paper makes my crumpled, mud splattered, sweat coated, 50 Naira lined paper look slightly substandard. So when you receive a dodgy looking piece of mail, just try and remember it’s the thought that counts. The best part about the post this week was that both things arrived at my office. Only a matter of days after they had been stamped as having arrived in Calabar. No endless trips to the post office, no random men telling me to collect my treasure, just good old post being delivered to the address it was sent to.
Since arriving here I have been told more times than I can count that if I want to eat anything other than tomatoes, avocados and onions (my staple diet) I need to go to Marian Market on a Thursday. And since arriving, I have never made it there on a Thursday before it shut. But last Thursday I was on a mission. I left work on time, and actually managed to get there before it closed. And boy was it worth it. I saw things I haven’t seen for months. Green peppers. Spring onions. Potatoes. It was amazing. The only downside is the journey to get to Marian Market. From my office it’s just one bus ride away, however the buses that run this route are renowned. And not in a good way. One of my colleagues won’t get in them. Death trap were two words he used, amongst others. The bus I got on Thursday was the worst yet. I actually have no idea how it was running. I was put in the front seat, as the conductor seemed to think I’d prefer to sit there. I didn’t have the heart to explain that I would much prefer to be at the very back of the bus, surrounded by numerous other people who all block my view out of the windscreen, meaning I’m saved from having to see impending death as we go crashing over speed bump after speed bump, which really made it feel like the front of the bus was going to separate from the back of the bus. Eyes screwed shut is definitely the only way to endure those bus journeys. The one saving grace is that the buses are in such an awful state that they can’t actually go at any speed, and in fact spend most of the journey coasting down the hill with the engines turned off. So unless someone was to come crashing into us, or the bus was to set alight, I always tell myself I’d be able to jump out before impact given we’d never be going very fast. Unless the 6 other people I was sharing a seat with prevented me from moving of course. Anyway, for a green pepper and some spring onions, it was worth it.
My diet isn’t the best, and so it was probably only a matter of time before I started to feel the effects of it. So last week, feeling a little listless, and fed up with losing my hair, I went to a pharmacy on a hunt for some vitamins. I’ve given up trying to get all the nutrients I need from the food that I can easily buy here, it just isn’t possible! Before I’d even said a word, the pharmacist took one look at me and said, “This is what you need” whilst putting some cod liver oil capsules on the counter in front of me. I had to try and explain that really, they weren’t what I needed, but if she had some multivitamins with extra iron, then I’d definitely be interested. I was told the other day that beer and marmite contain Vitamin B12, which is good for healthy hair. I find this confusing, as in theory I should be looking like a Pantene model right now. I never drank beer at home, but now it’s one of my main sources of nutrients. Similarly, I have never eaten so much marmite in all my life. And yet will my hair stop falling out? No. On the plus side, my hairy hobbit feet are definitely still flourishing beautifully, and so perhaps all the B12 is just heading straight there rather than up to my head. Either way, this isn’t a good country to be in when you feel a little under par. I asked my colleague which pharmacy to go to, and when she asked why, I explained I wanted some vitamins. “Yes” she said, “The circles under your eyes have really got worse. They are really very dark now.” Given I avoid looking in the mirror unless absolutely necessary, I had managed not to notice this new development. But I can just chalk it up as another addition to the ‘how unattractive can I possibly end up looking’ list. A friend from home (Mr Phelps, consider this your claim to fame!) also helped to boost my self-confidence the other day. He explained that he was slightly concerned that I was doing irreparable damage to my appearance, and that when I got home I’d never quite go back to being the same as I was before I left. Much like someone who breaks their leg and it never quite heals in the same way is how he explained it. So he thoughtfully confirmed that he would be moving his attentions on to my sister, and would therefore be rejecting me, like a donor body sometimes rejects a transplanted heart. So there you go. VSO tell you to be flexible and adaptable. I think I’m going to suggest that ‘thick skin’ should also be added to their key selection dimensions. But whilst some comments make me feel like Stig of the Dump, there are other people who say something so completely obscure that I literally don’t know how to respond. Like the lady who stopped me whilst I was buying bread this week and asked me if she could have my eyelashes. Given that for obvious reasons I will no longer be able to sell my hair to the lady who wanted to buy that a few weeks ago, perhaps eyelash selling is something I should be considering.
• Chris de Burgh – Lady in red
• Shania Twain – Still the one
• Celine Dion – Think twice
• LeAnn Rimes – Can’t fight the moonlight
• Aerosmith – Don’t want to miss a thing
• Chris Isaak – Wicked game
• Sade – By your side
And this is only three months in. I’ll be a lost cause in 9 months time. I’ll need to go through some sort of reintegration therapy when I get home to make sure I don’t continually embarrass myself (and anyone else that happens to have the misfortune of being around me). Sitting in a taxi full of strangers and singing at full volume probably isn’t considered quite as socially acceptable at home.
I’ve developed another bad habit since being here. I’ve found myself answering to almost anything. My name is used so infrequently that I seem to have started responding to just about whatever greeting is directed at me. This is generally bakara, oyibo, Power, white girl or Jenny (some people seem to get easily confused despite us looking fairly different). The best one is a man I pass every morning as I walk up the road to my office, who is absolutely convinced I am French. I have no idea why. I haven’t encountered a single French person since arriving here, so it’s not as though every white person he has seen before me can have been French. I have tried speaking to him in English, but he won’t buy it. So every morning without fail he shouts ‘Bonjour Mademoiselle’. I’m tempted to try and learn a complicated French phrase to use in response, just to see if he can actually speak French. However, I do also have some limits. I have so far refused to answer to: baby, baby girl, sugar, honey, my love, white meat, angel, and princess. Most of these frequently come from Creepy Photo Taking Man, who seems absolutely and completely unable to interpret social cues. If he wasn’t so irritating I would find it amusing. The other morning he ambushed me walking to work and told me he had something for me. “I’m not interested, I have asked you to leave me alone.” To which he explained that I would most definitely be very interested in this. He had written me a poem. Now, as I’ve mentioned before, my standards have slipped slightly in recent months. If he had offered me a bar of dairy milk, a bottle of rose, Maxfactor More Lashes mascara or macaroni cheese, then maybe, just maybe I would have paused for a split second. But a poem? He’s obviously decided that the stalkerish tendencies of taking my photo without consent weren’t working, so he’s moved onto some more ‘charming’ methods.
Another amazing week in terms of post. Claire and Scott, you win the prize for the most amusing parcel content, it was brilliant. And Miss Pitman, I’m loving the means of communication via the good old-fashioned medium of a letter. I will definitely be writing back, I’m just slightly embarrassed that your beautiful writing paper makes my crumpled, mud splattered, sweat coated, 50 Naira lined paper look slightly substandard. So when you receive a dodgy looking piece of mail, just try and remember it’s the thought that counts. The best part about the post this week was that both things arrived at my office. Only a matter of days after they had been stamped as having arrived in Calabar. No endless trips to the post office, no random men telling me to collect my treasure, just good old post being delivered to the address it was sent to.
Since arriving here I have been told more times than I can count that if I want to eat anything other than tomatoes, avocados and onions (my staple diet) I need to go to Marian Market on a Thursday. And since arriving, I have never made it there on a Thursday before it shut. But last Thursday I was on a mission. I left work on time, and actually managed to get there before it closed. And boy was it worth it. I saw things I haven’t seen for months. Green peppers. Spring onions. Potatoes. It was amazing. The only downside is the journey to get to Marian Market. From my office it’s just one bus ride away, however the buses that run this route are renowned. And not in a good way. One of my colleagues won’t get in them. Death trap were two words he used, amongst others. The bus I got on Thursday was the worst yet. I actually have no idea how it was running. I was put in the front seat, as the conductor seemed to think I’d prefer to sit there. I didn’t have the heart to explain that I would much prefer to be at the very back of the bus, surrounded by numerous other people who all block my view out of the windscreen, meaning I’m saved from having to see impending death as we go crashing over speed bump after speed bump, which really made it feel like the front of the bus was going to separate from the back of the bus. Eyes screwed shut is definitely the only way to endure those bus journeys. The one saving grace is that the buses are in such an awful state that they can’t actually go at any speed, and in fact spend most of the journey coasting down the hill with the engines turned off. So unless someone was to come crashing into us, or the bus was to set alight, I always tell myself I’d be able to jump out before impact given we’d never be going very fast. Unless the 6 other people I was sharing a seat with prevented me from moving of course. Anyway, for a green pepper and some spring onions, it was worth it.
My diet isn’t the best, and so it was probably only a matter of time before I started to feel the effects of it. So last week, feeling a little listless, and fed up with losing my hair, I went to a pharmacy on a hunt for some vitamins. I’ve given up trying to get all the nutrients I need from the food that I can easily buy here, it just isn’t possible! Before I’d even said a word, the pharmacist took one look at me and said, “This is what you need” whilst putting some cod liver oil capsules on the counter in front of me. I had to try and explain that really, they weren’t what I needed, but if she had some multivitamins with extra iron, then I’d definitely be interested. I was told the other day that beer and marmite contain Vitamin B12, which is good for healthy hair. I find this confusing, as in theory I should be looking like a Pantene model right now. I never drank beer at home, but now it’s one of my main sources of nutrients. Similarly, I have never eaten so much marmite in all my life. And yet will my hair stop falling out? No. On the plus side, my hairy hobbit feet are definitely still flourishing beautifully, and so perhaps all the B12 is just heading straight there rather than up to my head. Either way, this isn’t a good country to be in when you feel a little under par. I asked my colleague which pharmacy to go to, and when she asked why, I explained I wanted some vitamins. “Yes” she said, “The circles under your eyes have really got worse. They are really very dark now.” Given I avoid looking in the mirror unless absolutely necessary, I had managed not to notice this new development. But I can just chalk it up as another addition to the ‘how unattractive can I possibly end up looking’ list. A friend from home (Mr Phelps, consider this your claim to fame!) also helped to boost my self-confidence the other day. He explained that he was slightly concerned that I was doing irreparable damage to my appearance, and that when I got home I’d never quite go back to being the same as I was before I left. Much like someone who breaks their leg and it never quite heals in the same way is how he explained it. So he thoughtfully confirmed that he would be moving his attentions on to my sister, and would therefore be rejecting me, like a donor body sometimes rejects a transplanted heart. So there you go. VSO tell you to be flexible and adaptable. I think I’m going to suggest that ‘thick skin’ should also be added to their key selection dimensions. But whilst some comments make me feel like Stig of the Dump, there are other people who say something so completely obscure that I literally don’t know how to respond. Like the lady who stopped me whilst I was buying bread this week and asked me if she could have my eyelashes. Given that for obvious reasons I will no longer be able to sell my hair to the lady who wanted to buy that a few weeks ago, perhaps eyelash selling is something I should be considering.
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Wahala, wahala, wahala*...
This happened a good few weeks ago now, but I was initially too angry to write about it without risking saying something that could have potentially resulted in me being sent home. I realise my posts often make it sound like I’m not taking things very seriously out here. But sometimes that’s just my strange way of dealing with things. There’s also a limit to how much I can put on here, knowing it’s a public forum.
But anyway, a few weeks ago I woke up to shouting at about 5am. I didn’t think much of it initially. Sleeping here is a nightmare and there’s always something weird going on in the middle of the night around My Squat that disrupts my sleep (I have some very strange neighbours). But then I woke up enough to realise what was actually going on. My Squat is a ground floor room, which has a window out onto the side alley of the compound where people normally park their cars. Only on this particular morning it was being used as some sort of punching ground. The people who run the compound I live in aren’t the nicest. The overall compound is owned by someone who doesn’t actually live in the building, but they seem to leave the day-to-day running of the property to their cousins/brothers/sisters and their boyfriends/girlfriends. There are about 7 or 8 men and women in their late twenties who all live in this compound, and all seem to be related to the owner, and therefore seem to consider themselves in charge. Of what, I’m not quite sure, given we never have any water or electricity, and the communal areas haven’t been cleaned since it was built about 10 years ago. But anyway. On this particular morning these 7 or 8 people were all taking it in turns to whip a man outside my bedroom window. It took me a while to understand what they were doing and why, because they kept switching to a local dialect, but the general gist was that this man had ‘stolen’ from one of the women. 500 Naira (£2). The man they were flogging was quite a lot older than all of them, and probably in his late 50s or early 60s. What really really made me sick to my stomach was the way they were doing it. They were all laughing, and joking with one another about whose turn it would be next. I really didn’t know what to do. There is no generic number for emergency services here. I’ll never forget half jokingly asking my colleague what I do if I set My Squat alight when I try to use my gas stove, and all he said was, “Pray that a fire engine is passing your road at the time.” I knew I couldn’t go outside, I’d had enough conversations with colleagues to know that I wouldn’t have been able to stop them, and would have probably just made the situation even worse. So feeling like the world’s biggest coward, I stayed in my room until they had finished, and I had calmed down enough to be able to face my neighbours without saying something that I would have regretted, given I have to live here for the next however many months. When I got to work and told my colleagues they said that the man was lucky, and in many other areas he’d have been put in tyres and burnt alive. ‘That’s just the way it is here” was the general gist.
Ironically, one of the people from my compound who was involved in this owes me 2,000 Naira. I gave it to him stupidly on my first day in My Squat, so he could get a plumber to fix my kitchen sink. The plumber never came, and he keeps telling me my ‘money is coming’. Similarly when I first moved in a day rarely went by when one of these people didn’t come knocking on my door and asking for money for one thing or another. The excuses varied, but it was always something to do with ‘property maintenance’: money to buy fuel to pump water; an electricity bill, despite my electricity being included in the rental payment; money for a new water pump.
I knew I would be likely to encounter situations like this. I also know it happens frequently in the schools here, which is one reason why I’m very glad I haven’t come here as a teacher. But it doesn’t make witnessing it any easier. Especially when I can’t do anything other than sit in my room like an absolute coward and try and pretend it’s not happening. I now have the number of a local policeman, as my landlady brought him round so I could get his number a couple of weeks ago after there had been another incident down the road from My Squat. But I still don’t know what I could achieve by ringing him if I was faced with the same situation again. Another thing that surprised me was that the people who were involved were all young. I think I had naively and ignorantly assumed that whilst I knew it happened, perhaps it was a practice that was being kept alive by the older generations, or by people in institutions, such as schools. But no, it’s commonplace amongst the younger generations as well, and is readily accepted as the way to deal with crime here at the community level. Meaning it’ll be even longer before any of these practices ever start to change. Not in my lifetime, anyway.
*Wahala is Pidgin English for trouble/bother
But anyway, a few weeks ago I woke up to shouting at about 5am. I didn’t think much of it initially. Sleeping here is a nightmare and there’s always something weird going on in the middle of the night around My Squat that disrupts my sleep (I have some very strange neighbours). But then I woke up enough to realise what was actually going on. My Squat is a ground floor room, which has a window out onto the side alley of the compound where people normally park their cars. Only on this particular morning it was being used as some sort of punching ground. The people who run the compound I live in aren’t the nicest. The overall compound is owned by someone who doesn’t actually live in the building, but they seem to leave the day-to-day running of the property to their cousins/brothers/sisters and their boyfriends/girlfriends. There are about 7 or 8 men and women in their late twenties who all live in this compound, and all seem to be related to the owner, and therefore seem to consider themselves in charge. Of what, I’m not quite sure, given we never have any water or electricity, and the communal areas haven’t been cleaned since it was built about 10 years ago. But anyway. On this particular morning these 7 or 8 people were all taking it in turns to whip a man outside my bedroom window. It took me a while to understand what they were doing and why, because they kept switching to a local dialect, but the general gist was that this man had ‘stolen’ from one of the women. 500 Naira (£2). The man they were flogging was quite a lot older than all of them, and probably in his late 50s or early 60s. What really really made me sick to my stomach was the way they were doing it. They were all laughing, and joking with one another about whose turn it would be next. I really didn’t know what to do. There is no generic number for emergency services here. I’ll never forget half jokingly asking my colleague what I do if I set My Squat alight when I try to use my gas stove, and all he said was, “Pray that a fire engine is passing your road at the time.” I knew I couldn’t go outside, I’d had enough conversations with colleagues to know that I wouldn’t have been able to stop them, and would have probably just made the situation even worse. So feeling like the world’s biggest coward, I stayed in my room until they had finished, and I had calmed down enough to be able to face my neighbours without saying something that I would have regretted, given I have to live here for the next however many months. When I got to work and told my colleagues they said that the man was lucky, and in many other areas he’d have been put in tyres and burnt alive. ‘That’s just the way it is here” was the general gist.
Ironically, one of the people from my compound who was involved in this owes me 2,000 Naira. I gave it to him stupidly on my first day in My Squat, so he could get a plumber to fix my kitchen sink. The plumber never came, and he keeps telling me my ‘money is coming’. Similarly when I first moved in a day rarely went by when one of these people didn’t come knocking on my door and asking for money for one thing or another. The excuses varied, but it was always something to do with ‘property maintenance’: money to buy fuel to pump water; an electricity bill, despite my electricity being included in the rental payment; money for a new water pump.
I knew I would be likely to encounter situations like this. I also know it happens frequently in the schools here, which is one reason why I’m very glad I haven’t come here as a teacher. But it doesn’t make witnessing it any easier. Especially when I can’t do anything other than sit in my room like an absolute coward and try and pretend it’s not happening. I now have the number of a local policeman, as my landlady brought him round so I could get his number a couple of weeks ago after there had been another incident down the road from My Squat. But I still don’t know what I could achieve by ringing him if I was faced with the same situation again. Another thing that surprised me was that the people who were involved were all young. I think I had naively and ignorantly assumed that whilst I knew it happened, perhaps it was a practice that was being kept alive by the older generations, or by people in institutions, such as schools. But no, it’s commonplace amongst the younger generations as well, and is readily accepted as the way to deal with crime here at the community level. Meaning it’ll be even longer before any of these practices ever start to change. Not in my lifetime, anyway.
*Wahala is Pidgin English for trouble/bother
Sunday, May 15, 2011
A boat a bike and a bus. And a whole lot more waffle
Trying to do tourist type things here just isn’t easy. Last weekend we were meant to be going on a trip to the jungle to stay in one of the monkey sanctuaries for the weekend, but the cost was out of our budget this month. So we decided to do something else that was recommended in the guidebook, and take a boat trip up the river to a place called Creek Town. The guidebook said that the boats left every day at 12.00pm. So off we went to try and find the boat. Now, despite Calabar being on the edge of the river, actually getting to the water has turned into Mission Impossible. We have tried several times. The last time we did manage to get down to the water’s edge, but it involved climbing down a very steep incline and trespassing on the Navy Base, and when they saw us taking a photo a big scary man started running towards us and shouting at us and we thought we might end up getting shot so we left very quickly. Saturday’s excursion started off with the same challenges. We did manage to find our way down to the river, but trying to find the place where the boats left from was slightly beyond us. After a 40 minute walk in the midday sun we asked someone, who told us we needed to turn around and go back in the direction we had come from. But just as we were about to do that we heard gunshots coming from that direction. So we decided that perhaps the boat trip wasn’t worth risking a gunshot wound for, and carried on walking in the wrong direction. After a cold drink and 20 minutes in the shade we decided to give it another go, and got a tricycle to take us to the place where the boats went from. And then it got a bit simpler, because sure enough after a 20 minute wait we were in a boat. And even had life jackets. The trip up the river was lovely, with the riverbanks surrounded by jungle on either side. I could almost pretend I was in a Bond film. Until I looked around me and saw I was sharing a 2 person seat with 4 people and was traveling in something little larger than a canoe with sewage filled river water splashing up into my eyes. But still, we’d got our boat. Once we got to Creek Town we bumped into another VSO who is based 30 minutes away in a little village, and offered to show us around there. So we jumped on the back of motorbikes and off we went again. A slightly cramped and very hot bus journey home a few hours later completed our adventure. It was great getting out of Calabar for the day and going somewhere quieter and more remote. Whilst I don’t think I’d survive a placement in a rural village, it was definitely nice to have a break from the constant noise and chaos that seems to surround life here.
The rainy season is finally starting. I woke up the other morning and knew something wasn’t right, but couldn’t work out what. It took me about 10 seconds to work out I felt cold for the first time in 3 months. I also rocked a great look on the way to work. It was raining, but I didn’t feel brave enough to bring out the wellies just yet, so I put on my hiking boots instead. With a pair of narrow legged suit trousers. I sometimes wonder if I’m serving any purpose here other than providing a constant source of amusement to everyone around me. The rain is causing some logistical issues though. I have no choice but to walk the 30 minutes up and down the hill each day to get to the main road to get public transport to and from work. And several times in the past week it has chosen to rain at just the time I was walking. Given I have to carry my laptop to and from work every day, I can see this ending badly. Another slight challenge is that every time it rains the mobile phone networks stop working. I have 3 different sim cards with 3 different networks (this is normal here, I'm not just being very odd!), and not one of them will work whilst it's raining. The rainy seasons lasts until October.
We had a slight challenge at work last week. The office assistant was going on 2 weeks leave, and before he left he put down a whole lot of rat poison. Presumably knowing he wouldn’t be around to have to try and locate the corpses. So we opened the doors to the office on Tuesday morning and it smelt like a morgue. And could the rat(s) be found? Oh no. So I spent the day trying not to breath because it felt like my lungs would burn from the dead rat aroma. We finally found one half melted rat at about 4pm, but that didn’t get rid of the smell so I started to wonder if I’d been sat surrounded by the smell for so long that it was just coming from me.
The Parcel Treasure Hunt continued this week. I got another slip of paper through at work telling me to go and collect another parcel. So off I skipped to the post office. A 20 minute walk in the midday heat. Doesn’t sound much, but it also involves walking along the one road in the city that I do my very best to avoid because little children line the sides of the road and cling on to me whenever I walk past begging for money, whilst their parents just sit and watch their children walk into the path of oncoming traffic. I feel like an absolute monster every time I walk down the road because they create such a scene hanging off me and I just have to keep telling them to turn round and go back to their parents. My colleagues have told me in no uncertain terms not to give them money because it all just goes to their parents and they wouldn’t see any benefit from it. So monster that I am, I carry on walking and try not to cry because I just want to pick them up and buy them something to eat and make sure they’re safe. So I arrived at the post office and went to the dodgy cage filled room, this time prepared with my torch from the start. But my parcel wasn’t there. They had ‘found’ a car and had just gone to deliver it to the delivery address, but now I wouldn’t be able to get it until the next day, because they wouldn’t give it to anyone but me, and obviously I wasn’t at my office – I was at the post office. So why did they bring me a card telling me to come and collect it if they were planning on delivering it? Because they hadn’t known they would be able to find a vehicle. So off I went to the post office again the next day. And guess what? They had taken my parcel to be delivered again, despite the man telling me he would keep it at the post office. BUT then I got back to the office slightly grumpy and 10 minutes later the post car turned up with not one, but TWO parcels. Debs, Claire and Mike Phelps, you’re amazing. I now have lots of lovely things to eat, lots of books to read, a magazine, new music to listen to, shampoo and conditioner, and the best thing in the world – rubber gloves. I can’t find them anywhere here and I always want to scrub my hands with bleach after I’ve cleaned My Squat with bare hands. So thank you lovely people, you turned a pretty bad day at work into a great one.
Some other highlights this week:
• We made a Betty Crocker cake mix, and despite it being the first time the oven we used had been turned on in a long time, and not having a cake tin or icing, it was amazing. Especially with the icecream we had it with that survived a 20 minute walk/taxi journey in the heat.
• Getting to know two other british people who live in Calabar. They’ve both been here quite a lot longer than we have, so are fountains of knowledge.
• Discovering fried yam. I have finally found some food I can eat when we go out in the evenings, rather than just sitting and watching everyone else around me eat.
• Finally getting my gas canister refilled. It was an interesting experiment to see how long I could last without having any means of cooking or boiling water to drink, but it’s definitely a relief to have it refilled. Although it’s such a hassle getting it done (walking for 30 minutes carrying a 7kg gas canister, getting a public taxi to the gas place, waiting 30 minutes for it to be refilled and praying no one nearby lights a match, getting a taxi back and carrying a now much heavier gas canister back down my hill for 30 minutes) that I will definitely be rationing it even more than I was before.
Some bad bits:
• Having to eat fish. I was bought the dreaded bean cake again, and once again I asked if it was vegetarian and was once again told it was. I cut into it and all this flaky white stinking fish fell out of it, but it’s so rude to refuse food here that I just had to eat the whole thing whilst trying not to gag. I had to hide the fact that I had to make a pretty hasty run to the sink afterwards though, because my stomach just didn’t want to keep that down. Fish and me are never going to be friends.
• A creepy man on my road who has somehow managed to find out my name and thinks we should be ‘best friends’. I was walking home from work one night this week and he ran up to me and started taking my photo on his mobile phone. I was not impressed to say the least, and asked him what he thought he was doing. He wanted my photo to put on his facebook. No thank you. After asking him more times than I can count to stop it, I had to get a bit meaner and use some phrases I’d prefer not to have to use again. Living here is a constant test of assertiveness. And for someone like me who struggles with being assertive, it’s a challenge at times. I thought he’d have got the message (there was really no room for misunderstanding what I said to him) but he still insists on trying to talk to me whenever I walk past. It’s the first time the Sam Death Glare has failed. I’ll have to find some new tactics. Which may possibly involve throwing his phone in the gutter next time.
The rainy season is finally starting. I woke up the other morning and knew something wasn’t right, but couldn’t work out what. It took me about 10 seconds to work out I felt cold for the first time in 3 months. I also rocked a great look on the way to work. It was raining, but I didn’t feel brave enough to bring out the wellies just yet, so I put on my hiking boots instead. With a pair of narrow legged suit trousers. I sometimes wonder if I’m serving any purpose here other than providing a constant source of amusement to everyone around me. The rain is causing some logistical issues though. I have no choice but to walk the 30 minutes up and down the hill each day to get to the main road to get public transport to and from work. And several times in the past week it has chosen to rain at just the time I was walking. Given I have to carry my laptop to and from work every day, I can see this ending badly. Another slight challenge is that every time it rains the mobile phone networks stop working. I have 3 different sim cards with 3 different networks (this is normal here, I'm not just being very odd!), and not one of them will work whilst it's raining. The rainy seasons lasts until October.
We had a slight challenge at work last week. The office assistant was going on 2 weeks leave, and before he left he put down a whole lot of rat poison. Presumably knowing he wouldn’t be around to have to try and locate the corpses. So we opened the doors to the office on Tuesday morning and it smelt like a morgue. And could the rat(s) be found? Oh no. So I spent the day trying not to breath because it felt like my lungs would burn from the dead rat aroma. We finally found one half melted rat at about 4pm, but that didn’t get rid of the smell so I started to wonder if I’d been sat surrounded by the smell for so long that it was just coming from me.
The Parcel Treasure Hunt continued this week. I got another slip of paper through at work telling me to go and collect another parcel. So off I skipped to the post office. A 20 minute walk in the midday heat. Doesn’t sound much, but it also involves walking along the one road in the city that I do my very best to avoid because little children line the sides of the road and cling on to me whenever I walk past begging for money, whilst their parents just sit and watch their children walk into the path of oncoming traffic. I feel like an absolute monster every time I walk down the road because they create such a scene hanging off me and I just have to keep telling them to turn round and go back to their parents. My colleagues have told me in no uncertain terms not to give them money because it all just goes to their parents and they wouldn’t see any benefit from it. So monster that I am, I carry on walking and try not to cry because I just want to pick them up and buy them something to eat and make sure they’re safe. So I arrived at the post office and went to the dodgy cage filled room, this time prepared with my torch from the start. But my parcel wasn’t there. They had ‘found’ a car and had just gone to deliver it to the delivery address, but now I wouldn’t be able to get it until the next day, because they wouldn’t give it to anyone but me, and obviously I wasn’t at my office – I was at the post office. So why did they bring me a card telling me to come and collect it if they were planning on delivering it? Because they hadn’t known they would be able to find a vehicle. So off I went to the post office again the next day. And guess what? They had taken my parcel to be delivered again, despite the man telling me he would keep it at the post office. BUT then I got back to the office slightly grumpy and 10 minutes later the post car turned up with not one, but TWO parcels. Debs, Claire and Mike Phelps, you’re amazing. I now have lots of lovely things to eat, lots of books to read, a magazine, new music to listen to, shampoo and conditioner, and the best thing in the world – rubber gloves. I can’t find them anywhere here and I always want to scrub my hands with bleach after I’ve cleaned My Squat with bare hands. So thank you lovely people, you turned a pretty bad day at work into a great one.
Some other highlights this week:
• We made a Betty Crocker cake mix, and despite it being the first time the oven we used had been turned on in a long time, and not having a cake tin or icing, it was amazing. Especially with the icecream we had it with that survived a 20 minute walk/taxi journey in the heat.
• Getting to know two other british people who live in Calabar. They’ve both been here quite a lot longer than we have, so are fountains of knowledge.
• Discovering fried yam. I have finally found some food I can eat when we go out in the evenings, rather than just sitting and watching everyone else around me eat.
• Finally getting my gas canister refilled. It was an interesting experiment to see how long I could last without having any means of cooking or boiling water to drink, but it’s definitely a relief to have it refilled. Although it’s such a hassle getting it done (walking for 30 minutes carrying a 7kg gas canister, getting a public taxi to the gas place, waiting 30 minutes for it to be refilled and praying no one nearby lights a match, getting a taxi back and carrying a now much heavier gas canister back down my hill for 30 minutes) that I will definitely be rationing it even more than I was before.
Some bad bits:
• Having to eat fish. I was bought the dreaded bean cake again, and once again I asked if it was vegetarian and was once again told it was. I cut into it and all this flaky white stinking fish fell out of it, but it’s so rude to refuse food here that I just had to eat the whole thing whilst trying not to gag. I had to hide the fact that I had to make a pretty hasty run to the sink afterwards though, because my stomach just didn’t want to keep that down. Fish and me are never going to be friends.
• A creepy man on my road who has somehow managed to find out my name and thinks we should be ‘best friends’. I was walking home from work one night this week and he ran up to me and started taking my photo on his mobile phone. I was not impressed to say the least, and asked him what he thought he was doing. He wanted my photo to put on his facebook. No thank you. After asking him more times than I can count to stop it, I had to get a bit meaner and use some phrases I’d prefer not to have to use again. Living here is a constant test of assertiveness. And for someone like me who struggles with being assertive, it’s a challenge at times. I thought he’d have got the message (there was really no room for misunderstanding what I said to him) but he still insists on trying to talk to me whenever I walk past. It’s the first time the Sam Death Glare has failed. I’ll have to find some new tactics. Which may possibly involve throwing his phone in the gutter next time.
Friday, May 6, 2011
You've depleted, your body dey go
Is something I get told fairly frequently. But now it’s not just my weight that is depleting. The VSO Health Handbook says:
Hair loss is a common complaint of female volunteers, whether they are taking antimalarial drugs or not. Usually it is hard to identify a specific cause, and it may be due to the change in environment, a new diet, general stress, lack of sleep and changes in the menstrual cycle.
I read this before I left and decided to file it away with all the other things labelled ‘I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it’. The time has come to cross that bridge. My hair shedding now rivals that of my cats when they malt their winter coats. A particularly grim daily task is unclogging my shower to remove the hair I’ve shed that morning. And sweeping my floor and having to remove handful after handful of hair from the broom. I have no idea what’s causing it. I don’t feel stressed. Or I didn’t until I started to lose my hair. Thankfully the heat and humidity does such unforgiving things to it that I just tie it up wet each morning and forget about it until the next day. What’s particularly unfair is that it’s only the hair on my head that is suffering this fate. I wouldn’t mind so much if my leg hair decided to follow along the same lines given how difficult it is to buy razor blades here, but sadly life’s not that kind. On the plus side, I’m living in the Land of the Wig. Women here change their hair on a weekly basis, meaning I frequently don’t recognise people because one day they’ll have a really short bob and the next they’ll walk into work with long curly hair down to their waist.
Another joyful development this week is that I have become a honey pot for crazy. When I was in the post office a man painted from head to toe in white chalk walked up to me and started grabbing at me and shrieking. The post office manager had to run out from behind the counter and drag him off me. Then I was stood on a main road with Jenny trying to flag down a cab and a crazy man with crazy hair, no shoes and a big stick walked up behind me, smacked me across the ass (am I allowed to say ass on my blog?!) very very hard and shouted ‘May God strike you down’ in my face before running off. I had an impressive handprint for a couple of days.
AND my last moan! I got very frustrated yesterday. I was trying to book flights to Abuja, but I couldn’t find the flight times I wanted on the website, so went to the airport to investigate. I walked up to the man behind a desk that was clearly labelled ‘Ticket Sales Information” and asked if he could give me information on flight times from Calabar to Abuja.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Have you not seen the signs that are ALL over the airport?” He asked as if I was the most stupid person he had come across for quite some time.
“Which signs?”
With a seriously fed up sigh he stood up from his chair and pointed at an A4 sign across the other side of the airport, which was typed with what could only have been size 8 font. And guess what. The airport is closing. For 2 months. Essential maintenance apparently. Brilliant.
So I asked if he could help me with flights from the next nearest airport. No.
“Why? You’re stood behind the desk that says Ticket Sales Information.”
But he refused to give me any useful information and said I’d have to call the customer call centre number.
So I left the airport even more confused than when I first arrived. Whilst the website wasn’t showing the flight times I wanted, it was still showing flights going to and from the airport during the next 2 months. I could have quite easily booked the flights online only to turn up to the airport and find out it was shut. And my frustrations didn’t lift following a phonecall to the customer call centre. They were completely unable to tell me when the airport would be reopening. I told them the date I wanted to fly back from Abuja to Calabar and they told me to call again 2 days before that date to see if the airport would be open again or not. Given I’m someone who likes to forward plan, and given that the flights are very expensive and have to be paid for in cash at either the airport or at one of the banks listed on the airline’s website, this isn’t something I can do with two days notice.
So I gave up and I am very glad it is Friday and nearly time for beer. Another volunteer has come to Calabar to stay for the weekend so I’m looking forward to doing some tourist type things (I use the term ‘tourist’ very loosely. The above example with the flights demonstrates that the tourism industry here isn’t yet booming).
Hair loss is a common complaint of female volunteers, whether they are taking antimalarial drugs or not. Usually it is hard to identify a specific cause, and it may be due to the change in environment, a new diet, general stress, lack of sleep and changes in the menstrual cycle.
I read this before I left and decided to file it away with all the other things labelled ‘I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it’. The time has come to cross that bridge. My hair shedding now rivals that of my cats when they malt their winter coats. A particularly grim daily task is unclogging my shower to remove the hair I’ve shed that morning. And sweeping my floor and having to remove handful after handful of hair from the broom. I have no idea what’s causing it. I don’t feel stressed. Or I didn’t until I started to lose my hair. Thankfully the heat and humidity does such unforgiving things to it that I just tie it up wet each morning and forget about it until the next day. What’s particularly unfair is that it’s only the hair on my head that is suffering this fate. I wouldn’t mind so much if my leg hair decided to follow along the same lines given how difficult it is to buy razor blades here, but sadly life’s not that kind. On the plus side, I’m living in the Land of the Wig. Women here change their hair on a weekly basis, meaning I frequently don’t recognise people because one day they’ll have a really short bob and the next they’ll walk into work with long curly hair down to their waist.
Another joyful development this week is that I have become a honey pot for crazy. When I was in the post office a man painted from head to toe in white chalk walked up to me and started grabbing at me and shrieking. The post office manager had to run out from behind the counter and drag him off me. Then I was stood on a main road with Jenny trying to flag down a cab and a crazy man with crazy hair, no shoes and a big stick walked up behind me, smacked me across the ass (am I allowed to say ass on my blog?!) very very hard and shouted ‘May God strike you down’ in my face before running off. I had an impressive handprint for a couple of days.
AND my last moan! I got very frustrated yesterday. I was trying to book flights to Abuja, but I couldn’t find the flight times I wanted on the website, so went to the airport to investigate. I walked up to the man behind a desk that was clearly labelled ‘Ticket Sales Information” and asked if he could give me information on flight times from Calabar to Abuja.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Have you not seen the signs that are ALL over the airport?” He asked as if I was the most stupid person he had come across for quite some time.
“Which signs?”
With a seriously fed up sigh he stood up from his chair and pointed at an A4 sign across the other side of the airport, which was typed with what could only have been size 8 font. And guess what. The airport is closing. For 2 months. Essential maintenance apparently. Brilliant.
So I asked if he could help me with flights from the next nearest airport. No.
“Why? You’re stood behind the desk that says Ticket Sales Information.”
But he refused to give me any useful information and said I’d have to call the customer call centre number.
So I left the airport even more confused than when I first arrived. Whilst the website wasn’t showing the flight times I wanted, it was still showing flights going to and from the airport during the next 2 months. I could have quite easily booked the flights online only to turn up to the airport and find out it was shut. And my frustrations didn’t lift following a phonecall to the customer call centre. They were completely unable to tell me when the airport would be reopening. I told them the date I wanted to fly back from Abuja to Calabar and they told me to call again 2 days before that date to see if the airport would be open again or not. Given I’m someone who likes to forward plan, and given that the flights are very expensive and have to be paid for in cash at either the airport or at one of the banks listed on the airline’s website, this isn’t something I can do with two days notice.
So I gave up and I am very glad it is Friday and nearly time for beer. Another volunteer has come to Calabar to stay for the weekend so I’m looking forward to doing some tourist type things (I use the term ‘tourist’ very loosely. The above example with the flights demonstrates that the tourism industry here isn’t yet booming).
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Act like a lady, think like a man...
… Was the title of a book I saw in the supermarket the other day. It amused me endlessly so I decided to steal it as the title for this blog post. I would have bought it because I have little doubt I would have loved reading it, but it would have cost me 3 days living allowance so I couldn’t really justify not eating for 3 days to cover the cost of it.
On the subject of books, I was walking home the other night when a man walked past me carrying a stack of Oxford English Dictionaries on his head. He must have been carrying over 20 books, the pile was almost taller than he was and must have weighed a tonne. But what really amused me was that as he walked past me he shouted, “Bakara, firewood for sale – buy some firewood?” Made me chuckle.
I received another parcel last week, thank you Catherine! The process to collect the parcel was somewhat different to what I’m used to at home though. A man walked into my office on Friday morning and handed me a slip of paper telling me to ‘go and collect my treasure’. I was thoroughly confused, as I had no idea who this man was, or what he was talking about. But then I turned the slip of paper over and saw that ‘Calabar Post Office’ had been handwritten on the top of it. I drove my colleagues mad all morning fidgeting and jumping up and down until 12pm came and I could excuse myself for lunch. Once I got to the post office I was led down a very dark and narrow corridor and into an even darker room. I had to get my torch out of my bag just to be able to see my hand in front of my face. Walking into dark rooms with strange men isn’t really something I try to do very often, but I really wanted my parcel so I just hovered by the door and shone the torch at him in the hope it would help speed up the process if he could actually see what he was doing. The room had 4 cages in it, and inside each cage was an ancient looking locked cupboard. He went through all four cupboards and didn’t seem to be getting any closer to locating my parcel. I asked if there was a problem but got told ‘no wahala’ so I tried to be patient for a bit longer. On his second check of all four cupboards he finally found my parcel. But I then had to pay a ‘handling fee’. I said that I didn’t understand why because the sender had paid all the necessary postage to have it delivered to my office. It hadn’t been delivered to my office, I had to come and collect it, and then I had to pay an extra fee on top of that? Yes was the answer. I asked him to put my parcel down and stop ‘handling’ it in the hope it would lower the fee, but no. I’ll take someone with me next time to see if there really is a ‘handling fee’ whenever you collect any parcel, or whether it was just another one of the many ‘you’re foreign and so we’re going to charge you any amount of money we possibly can’ charges that I’ve encountered since arriving here. But none of that mattered, because I had my parcel! I pretty much skipped back to my office.
Then the week got even better because I found a gym I can go to that doesn’t cost extortionate amounts of money. The word ‘gym’ might be a stretch of the imagination, but it does have a running machine AND air conditioning, so that’s enough for me. The room is also so small that there’s a limit to how many people could fit in it at any one time to stare at me. The one down side is that there is a full-length mirror directly in front of the running machine. Not good at the best of times, but especially not here, where I avoid reflective surfaces at all costs. My reflection is terrifying. But if it means I can run in relative peace, it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.
Then the final highlight of the week was opening the bottle of rose wine I bought when I first got here. Jenny has a rare luxury – a fridge – and so the wine was even cold. It was worth waiting 3 months for.
On the subject of books, I was walking home the other night when a man walked past me carrying a stack of Oxford English Dictionaries on his head. He must have been carrying over 20 books, the pile was almost taller than he was and must have weighed a tonne. But what really amused me was that as he walked past me he shouted, “Bakara, firewood for sale – buy some firewood?” Made me chuckle.
I received another parcel last week, thank you Catherine! The process to collect the parcel was somewhat different to what I’m used to at home though. A man walked into my office on Friday morning and handed me a slip of paper telling me to ‘go and collect my treasure’. I was thoroughly confused, as I had no idea who this man was, or what he was talking about. But then I turned the slip of paper over and saw that ‘Calabar Post Office’ had been handwritten on the top of it. I drove my colleagues mad all morning fidgeting and jumping up and down until 12pm came and I could excuse myself for lunch. Once I got to the post office I was led down a very dark and narrow corridor and into an even darker room. I had to get my torch out of my bag just to be able to see my hand in front of my face. Walking into dark rooms with strange men isn’t really something I try to do very often, but I really wanted my parcel so I just hovered by the door and shone the torch at him in the hope it would help speed up the process if he could actually see what he was doing. The room had 4 cages in it, and inside each cage was an ancient looking locked cupboard. He went through all four cupboards and didn’t seem to be getting any closer to locating my parcel. I asked if there was a problem but got told ‘no wahala’ so I tried to be patient for a bit longer. On his second check of all four cupboards he finally found my parcel. But I then had to pay a ‘handling fee’. I said that I didn’t understand why because the sender had paid all the necessary postage to have it delivered to my office. It hadn’t been delivered to my office, I had to come and collect it, and then I had to pay an extra fee on top of that? Yes was the answer. I asked him to put my parcel down and stop ‘handling’ it in the hope it would lower the fee, but no. I’ll take someone with me next time to see if there really is a ‘handling fee’ whenever you collect any parcel, or whether it was just another one of the many ‘you’re foreign and so we’re going to charge you any amount of money we possibly can’ charges that I’ve encountered since arriving here. But none of that mattered, because I had my parcel! I pretty much skipped back to my office.
Then the week got even better because I found a gym I can go to that doesn’t cost extortionate amounts of money. The word ‘gym’ might be a stretch of the imagination, but it does have a running machine AND air conditioning, so that’s enough for me. The room is also so small that there’s a limit to how many people could fit in it at any one time to stare at me. The one down side is that there is a full-length mirror directly in front of the running machine. Not good at the best of times, but especially not here, where I avoid reflective surfaces at all costs. My reflection is terrifying. But if it means I can run in relative peace, it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.
Then the final highlight of the week was opening the bottle of rose wine I bought when I first got here. Jenny has a rare luxury – a fridge – and so the wine was even cold. It was worth waiting 3 months for.
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