Candles and Dongles

I’ve never gone through so many candles! These constant power cuts have turned me into a proper Florence Nightingale or maybe more of a ‘Wee Willy Winkie’ wandering around the house like someone from a bygone age. As for dongles, I can hear you asking, no they are not something that you might find on the shelves of an Ann Summers shop, they are devices that you can plug into your laptop that allows you to access the internet from the comfort of your own home. It’s truly magic, modern technology, what will they think of next? They’ll be telling me that they’ve laid off all the carrier pigeons. Anyway, for somebody who according to my dear hubby is in charge of the purse that never opens has splashed out and bought one so I have been surfing the web from my own kitchen table.


Also braved my first haircut and true to form I didn’t go to the mega expensive western salons in the tourist area but nipped around the corner to the local ‘beauty salon’. I don’t think they really knew what to make of me but the decision was to tackle my wig with barbers clippers. I feared the worst! In the end after nearly each single hair was individually cut I walked out with a quite acceptable Junie Rob cut. At least I don’t make the kids cry anymore, well not the older ones!

New wig and friendly croc

This certainly is a young country. There are millions of kiddie winks everywhere. Quite the opposite to the UK’s aging population. Most of them at some stage of the day seem to pop their faces up to my mosquito screen on the door to check out the new ‘toubab’ and what strange things she might be up to in that house all on her own. I have tried a story reading session with some of the local clan, which they loved. Just looking at all the colourful pictures was mesmerising. Trying to get them to turn the pages carefully was a little more difficult. After visiting the local school with Mr Touray I can see why they appreciated the book. The classrooms were worse than I had anticipated. Very little furniture, holes in the floor, walls and roof and such a lack of colour. Where do you start? Well let’s look on the bright side, they’ll soon be speaking English with a Cumbrian accent.

The better off kids take in their own furniture

Turned into a tourist again on Sunday and visited the capital, Banjul, for the first time. Took lots of pics went up Arch 22 and viewed the River Gambia from afar. After lots of confrontations with bumsters we finished our day watching the fishermen bringing in their catches and then got totally confused as the fish were despatched to the shore and quickly sold to waiting punters. How they keep track of who gets paid for what I will never know but I’m sure that they have their fingers on the pulse. We also visited the local croc pool which is a bit of a tourist attraction but the crocs are fed well enough not to want to whizz around and take your arm off. No I didn’t really feel like a female version of Steve Erwin.

June’s tip for the week – If there is no toilet paper and you have no tissues to hand DO NOT use mosquito wipes!

One of the fishing fleet

The catch coming in

Arch 22 in Banjul

Also attended my first staff meeting and met the new crew, everybody was very nice but there’s no chance that I’ll remember all the names. I’ll blame the heat rather than age for addling my brain. I will never complain again about long staff meetings, this one lasted five hours. Mind you we did have lots to talk about the last point was whether or not the guys should be allowed to take more than one wife to the staff picnic. I think the answer was no or if they did they had to pay extra. Well I knew it was going to be different!