You know that you are in for a hard day when your first thought on getting out of bed is “how long until siesta?’’The cold that has been threatening Sue for a few days came on with a vengeance. I didn’t realise that you could catch colds in Africa! My stomach is playing up again, […]
Went into the fields with Emile this morning, he showed us how to plant cocoa and bananas. Given the pleasure that the end products have given me, it is rather nice to see their production. So far we haven’t been able to find chocolate in Vavoua, this could be a major problem if it continues. […]
Worked with Emile for an hour, progress at this stage is so slow, it can get discouraging very quickly. We still have all sorts of trouble trying to say “hello’’. Going out for a walk into the village is a necessity for language practice but with hundreds of kids following us the thing rapidly turns […]
Church at nine o’clock scheduled to last till eleven thirty, two and a half hours of solid Kouya is a daunting prospect. In the end things turned out somewhat differently, half way through the service a terrific rainstorm began and water came straight in through the walls of the building, which resembles a garden shed. […]
No, this isnt a word referring to smells, but to a mix of English and Polish which the Daily Telegraph says has sprung up on the streets of London and is now gaining ground in Poland. Just as French and English combined to form Franglais, the Polish have their own linguistic cocktail: Ponglish. The slang […]
At least when you are on your own, you don’t have a little boy waking you up in the morning demanding milk! What do you have for breakfast in the absence of corn flakes? Porridge! What else? Quaker oats can be bought anywhere here, Americans eat them cold with milk and raisins, we however have […]
Into Vavoua this morning to get some gas and paraffin. While I was lugging two dirty great canisters around my sandal decided to fall apart, terrific! I got to the place where they sell gas and left my stuff there and limped off to find a cobbler. The job was done very quickly, for the […]
Spent most of the day trying to get the house looking less like a building site and more like a home. Emile and Gilbert are both convinced that I am incapable of doing anything, … every time I put my hand to a job, they come and take it over from me. I’m left wandering […]
I was cold in bed last night, a new experience for me in Africa, made me quite homesick. A note for future reference, rechargeable batteries are a waste of time and energy, I put a fully charged set into my torch last night and the thing went and died on me in less than half […]
Over the next few weeks, I’ll be posting some excerpts from the diary I kept when we first moved out into Kouya country exactly 20 years ago. I hope you will find it interesting. The day started rather inauspiciously, good for parasites but not too good for Homo sapiens , I had been bitten badly […]