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.