Saint-Louis

It's over a week into the Christmas break and I'm just starting to get
down to work. Yesterday I arrived back at BCS after four days away in
Saint-Louis in the north of Senegal.

Saint-Louis is a unique place in many ways. The French developed it
heavily as one of their major centres of business due to its position at
the mouth of the Senegal river and close to the border between Senegal
and Mauritania. It's a very odd place geographically. It is split into
three parts, two of which are islands. From the first part of the town
on the mainland you cross a bridge onto the first of the two islands,
long and thin running parallel to the coast. This first island is the
main tourist centre and retains the most of the old French colonial
style. The second island is parallel to the first and a similar shape
but further out to sea. It is this island which was once joined to the
long strip of land where I stayed a few weeks ago for the men's weekend.

We travelled up on Monday, walking the 2km from the school to Sindia and
catching a minibus into Thies for just 60p each plus £1 for our
collective baggage. From Thies we sought similar transport up to
Saint-Louis. A group of white people in the gare-routiere soon attracts
a crowd and we had many people offering ridiculous fares to Saint-Louis
in their taxis. Eventually a guy came and asked where we were going and
offered us seats in his minibus at £2.50 each plus the usual £1 baggage
charge. We took it and soon found ourselves seated in a fairly empty
medium sized minibus waiting for it to fill up with other passengers.
When we eventually set off, after not too long a wait, the journey was a
fairly comfortable one considering the circumstances and we arrived in
Saint-Louis somewhere between one and two o'clock in the afternoon. A
taxi took us from Saint-Louis gare-routiere to our hotel without any
problems.

The hotel was a nice one. We were in the cheapest rooms which were dingy
but adequate including en-suite facilities and a continental breakfast
in the mornings at the bar/restaurant. After getting thoroughly confused
with the hostess about what board we were on and the price we would end
up paying we settled ourselves in the restaurant for a late lunch. We
all had the hotel's speciality omlette which was very tasty and very
filling and subsequently retired to our rooms for a siesta.

In general the week included lots of siestas, walking around the town
looking for restaurants, and eating great food. It was great to get away
and do nothing! On Wednesday morning we made an excursion to Parc de
Dioudj, one of the national parks, where they've created a wetland
habitat to attract all kinds of native West-African birds. We were
picked up by our guide at 7am from the hotel and made the 70km trip to
Dioudj by taxi where we drove into the heart of the park and took a one
hour cruise on the main lake in a pirogue (narrow wooden boat). Tracey
and I took about 300 photo between us. We saw loads of birds and even
some baby crocodiles. Hopefully I'll get on ADSL again before the end of
the holidays and upload some of the pictures.

We decided to cut our break short due to the Muslim festival of Tabaski
today which would have made travelling impossible so we paid up at the
hotel yesterday morning and made our way again to the gare-routiere.
This time we caught a proper car-rapide. If you don't know what one is
then imagine an old mercedes sprinter minibus, older than me, which
looks like it will fall apart after ten metres. The interior is fitted
with bench seats and it is crammed full with over fourty people. The
roof is often laden with luggage piled high, including at this time of
year sheep and goats (live). We were the only white people on the
vehicle, not surprisingly, and doubtless quite a novelty to many of our
fellow passengers as you don't get many 'toubabs' on car-rapides. Public
transport was very busy yesterday as everyone was travelling home for
tabaski. The guy next to me was trying out his English and I found out
he lives in Dakar and was going home for tabaski too.

When we got to Thies we stopped at Les Delices for a bite to eat and a
seat with a little more leg and bottom room which didn't vibrate. I
nipped in to the little supermarket for some groceries and left Ruth and
Tracey to relax with a soft drink. Being so close to home we were able
to relax a little and look forward to putting our feet up. Little did we
know what our next leg of the journey would bring.

Outside Les Delices we tried to hail a taxi. The drivers never know
Kiniabour but I tried it anyway and explained where it was. The first
guy wouldn't go lower than 11,000 and we were aiming for 6,000 so we let
him go. The guard outside the restaurant politely inquired where we
wanted to go and ho much the previous driver had asked for. He then
offered to negotiate a taxi for us for the price we wanted so we took up
his kind offer. The next car he stopped bargained hard and wouldn't come
down except when another taxi pulled-in in front of him ready to offer
us a ride. They settled on 7,000 and we shrugged our shoulders and said
OK, thinking of getting home. As the guy pulled away he asked what price
the guard had told us and I confirmed the 7,000 which he didn't seem too
happy about. At the end of the road there's a junction; this is where
things went funny. The driver took an unusual turning and proceeded in
what felt to me like the wrong direction. I tried to quiet my misgivings
and decided to wait and see where he went next. A little up the road he
pulled in at a petrol station to top up, at which I thought 'ok, maybe
he just knows the guy at this station or something, now he'll turn
round'. He didn't turn. The next junction approached and I saw a
signpost for Dakar to the right which confirmed my internal compass,
'please turn here' I thought... he didn't. According to signs we were
now headed towards Diourbel and I knew that wasn't right so, encouraged
by noises from behind me, I tried to subtly hint at our destination but
unsure of how to go about this, both linguistically and culturally, all
I could say was "Do you know Kiniabour?" and "I've never taken this
route to Kiniabour before!", neither of which provoked a response. Time
went on and we all grew more and more tense and eventually we arrived at
a village called Thienaba at which point the driver made a comment about
there being two places called Thienaba and this was one of them and the
other was just up the road. I was a little puzzled but didn't know what
to say other than to agree with him. When he reached the second Thienaba
he pulled over and asked where we wanted to be set down. Finally we
realised what was going on. Somewhere between our communication with the
guard and the guard's communication with our driver some wires had got
crossed and our driver thought we wanted to go to Thienaba, a place we'd
never heard of before and a region we'd never visited. A long and
draining discussion ensued between myself and our driver which I don't
have the energy to recount but, in short, we realised the error made and
spent some time despairing and asking each other what would happen next.
We settled that he would have to drive us to Kiniabour (should we be
able to find it - he had no idea even how to get to Popenguine) and we
would have to pay him extra for the trouble. Most unsatisfactory for us
who had hoped to be home by then recovering from a long day on the road.
He made protestations all the way back to Thies and seemed to be in a
foul mood for the remainder of our journey which also affected his
driving. The extra price negotiation was awkward. There were long
periods of silence where he would ask how much we would pay him and we
would sit there thinking it over and lamenting our situation. He wanted
too much, of course, and came up with all the reasons under the sun why
we should give him more than we wanted to. Ruth wanted to get home,
Tracey felt he was taking advantage of us and I felt sorry for him (and
vastly inadequate to communicate effectively in response to his
arguments). Eventually we paid him 14,000 which no-one was really happy
with but I don't think anyone could be happy after that experience. We
stopped and unloaded at the gate just so that the school guard was
around should we need someone on our side and walked back down the track
we started off on three days earlier.

Two Wives In Three Days

Term is finally over and I'm currently in Dakar for a couple of days, chilling out at the guesthouse.

Wednesday was the end of term and it started in the morning with the Christmas production, 'Are We Nearly There Yet?'. After lots of last minute stress and anxiety radiating from Alison and Ruth, the key players in the whole affair, it went off very well and the kids gave one of their best performances yet. It was a very full morning with not just the play but also some carol singing, the new school choir, two mini-plays written by the top-seniors and a performance by newly named 'Linko', a band formed by the Kingfisher dorm boys. I played drums for
the band which I enjoyed very much. The drum kit had been borrowed from someone in Dakar, a friend of the Gomez boys who are the main musical force behind the band. The name came from the drum kit. They thought they'd look more professional if the name matched the kit and seeing as
the bass drum skin says 'linko' on the front then that had to be the band name (at least for that one gig anyway). I've never heard of linko as a drum kit manufacturer, probably because it was a nasty drum kit (the bass drum pedal was particularly bizarre).

I also finally bought a djembe (african drum) on Wednesday. The guys from Malika Monkeys were there with their wide selection of wood and metal craft (http://malikamonkeys.blogspot.com/) and after trying all the drums they had with them I settled on one of the middle sized models. While I was browsing the stall there were others too looking at the various products and I was chatting to Michelle, the woman I was filling in for last year as ICT teacher, about the pens which she was
considering buying. When I then went to Herma, the stall owner, to enquire about the drum she asked me about what I do at the school and for some reason made the assumption that Michelle (38) and I were married, that was wife number one. To add to the amusement I then had to borrow some cash from my new wife to pay for the drum.

On Wednesday evening we went out for our end of term staff meal. It was really nice especially to have more kids around this time. The MacLaren
family have just joined the staff, the kids having been boarders for the past few years. They had been working in the Gambia but now they felt that God was directing them to move to BCS as staff members. We also had a few other school families around who had been unable to get flights home that day and so we were a very large group. I think the staff kids especially appreciated having more kids around.

On Thursday I came into Dakar with Michelle, Alison and her son Josh.
They were wanting to do some shopping and I wanted to go to the British embassy Christmas party and use the Internet. Yesterday morning we went to the airport to pick up a Christmas parcel for Josh which had got stuck in customs. It was quite an ordeal. First we had to meet a man who
would take us through the whole process, he would charge a fee of £25 but we couldn't do it without him. Finding him was not easy. We were told to go to the customs area and give him a call. When we got there we tried to follow the instructions but couldn't quite work out where we
were supposed to be. We called the guy and he said to look for Air France. Not fully understanding his instructions we headed back to the arrivals area where there was an Air France booth and waited there for a few minutes. He subsequently called us again and we both got thoroughly confused as we were evidently both at Air France bit couldn't find each other. Eventually the guy worked out where we were and told us to ask for 'fret baggage'. We asked a guard outside and he sent someone with us to show us the way. It was in the same directio we'd initially tried but further along. When we finally met Matar, our contact, he led us round
the back of a warehouse to some very cramped offices where we had to get some paperwork. The first papers cost us £22 each and there were two of them. After this we were led back outside to one of many little containers which was converted into a small office. Here Matar proceeded
to calculate the next charges payable. It was at this point we realised something was wrong. The two papers we had just paid for described different packages, one of which was Josh's Christmas presents, worth £130, the other was something entirely different, worth £611! On closer
inspection we realised it was the school order placed at the end of last term which, due to some administrative error, had been shipped out to Senegal instead of to the WEC UK headquarters as usual. Who knows how long this stuff had been sat there as it had no contact telephone number
on it so they couldn't let us know it was waiting for collection. Not knowing what to do next we called the administrators at the guesthouse to ask for advice. They suggested we pick up the school order while we were there, saving another trip at a later date however the fees for
this package would come to over £300 (44% customs plus a standard charge of £110 for a large package). As we didn't have this kind of money on us it was suggested that one of the guards from the guesthouse come out to meet us on his scooter with the extra cash and so I, as the only bloke, was given the task of waiting outside for him. It took him about half an hour to reach the airport however once he got there he was in the same situation as we had been. He had no clue where we were and my French was inadequate to accurately explain to him how to find us and so after 20 minutes of phone calls between him, me and the guesthouse I eventually had to go and find him at arrivals. He was very good humoured about it all and I didn't get sunburnt so I can now look back on it and smile. We exchanged the money in a very shady and secretive way (much to my amusement) and he headed off back to his scooter. When the others got back with Matar they told me of what they'd witnessed in the caged room where the parcels were held. They'd been simply told to 'find their parcels' in a room stacked full of all sorts of packages and luggage
with no apparent order to anything and the packages had then been subsequently hacked open by an over enthusiastic knife wielding customs worker who then suggested he might receive some cash for taping them back together so well.

The ordeal ended with a farcical attempt to find a taxi to get the stuff back to the guesthouse. The first two taxi drivers Matar found for us wouldn't go below 10,000 cfa when the normal price from the airport to the guesthouse with baggage is only 4,000. Eventually Matar convinced one of the customs guys to take us in his van for 5,000 cfa (~£5) and somehow I managed to direct him to the right place.

I didn't gain any wives at the airport but goodness knows the assumptions which the people there made about me with two women and one child.

Last night we went to the British embassy. Michelle managed to sneak in despite being a yank. It was a lovely evening and most of it was spent as a BCS clique in a corner with Lesley and her parents and the Rodda family whose son Charlton is a weekly boarder. We sang carols and the Roddas gave a performance of 'The Twelve Days of Christmas - Senegalese
style' which they'd written the day before. It included, in order, a goat on a bush taxi, two mangos, three guinea hens, four ballophones, five Biskrem, six cobras spitting, seven donkeys braying, eight vendors walking, nine parrots squawking, ten ... (I can't remember the rest but
it was very amusing if you've lived in rural Senegal). Somehow Charlton and Josh were persuaded to sing the first verse of 'Once In Royal David's City' on their own and Josh, rather amusingly, started singing the tune for 'Hark The Herald Angels Sing' by mistake (a mistake I'd made the other way round a few weeks earlier). After the singing the ambassadors wife came over to us BCS people and thanked us for singing so loudly and participating so well and in particular commented on my son's contribution. So now I am also apparently married to Alison and have a twelve year old son!

Today's a lazy day at the guesthouse. We go back to BCS this evening at six o'clock. In the meantime I plan to look up some recipes for things I want to cook this holiday.

G.O.R.

It's a week ago now but I've been meaning to write about it all week so
here it is.

Last weekend I went up north to near Saint-Louis for G.O.R. (Guys On
Retreat a.k.a. the hairy men's weekend). On Friday morning a small group
of us left the school in Jens's Renault estate. We were 6: Jens,
Johannes, Tobi, Josh, myself and Jonathan, parent of some of our day
students. We were sent off with a tupperware box full of burgers and
chips by Jonathan's wife Wendy and Jens's wife Coni after morning break.
I should have been teaching period four but I had scheduled a test and
so it was simple enough to get someone to cover for me, although I got
complaints on Monday when the kids complained I hadn't warned them about
it (it was supposed to be a surprise test but word had got out when some
of them started questioning me one lesson so they suspected it was
coming but weren't sure when).

The drive up to Saint-Louis is about four hours and we stopped en-route
in Louga to meet up with some of the other guys who were meeting for
lunch in a restaurant there. We had of course already enjoyed our
burgers and chips, precariously passed between the three rows of seating
in the car. The school kitchen had been very gracious to us in starting
lunch preparation early so that we wouldn't miss out on what the rest of
the school were getting for lunch (burgers and chips is very rare, it's
rice 75% of the time).

We arrived at our final meeting point mid afternoon where we had to get
a small boat (a pirogue) out to the island where we were staying. It
took too boat loads to get all of us and our luggage across, there were
about 34 of us from all over Senegal. At Saint-Louis the Senegal river
meets the sea but just before it does it makes a bit of a dog leg which
has created a kind of peninsula about 15km long and probably between
300m and 1km wide for the majority of its length. Due to problems with
flooding the river was engineered to go straight out to sea by basically
cutting through this peninsula at the end and making it into an island.
It is this island on which the campement is situated where we spent our
weekend.

I was a little apprehensive before the weekend about spending a weekend
with so many Americans. I've never had any male American friends and
have a bit of a stereotype about them, especially Christians. I was very
glad to have my stereotype shattered as I realised they were actually
quite normal and I was able to get on very well with them.

The actual retreat started with putting us in teams for a competition
which would last the rest of Friday and most of Saturday. At this point
I was again worried by the thought of macho Americans in competition,
especially when I heard the first event would be a group tally of
sit-ups, press-ups and pull-ups. My fears were however allayed when I
met my team who were half from the UK and nearly all geeks in some way
or other. Despite this we did manage to get ourselves into the
competitive mindset and soon set to work on the physical challenge and
also the mental challenge of a sudoku, word search and anagrams.
Strangely enough we actually came out with a massive lead after the
first events, mainly due to a lot of sit-ups. One member, Jonathan,
happened to be a strange breed of athletic geek and did 150 sit-ups, the
most done by anyone, and I somehow managed to push myself to 100,
although I felt it for the next four days every time I got up, sat down
or walked anywhere.

Each team was given a flag which they had to decorate. Our flag was
white and so we decided to call ourselves 'No Surrender!' and decorated
our white flag with a variation on the no-smoking sign containing an
upturned dove of peace holding an olive branch.

As guys on retreat we mainly indulged in two things, competition and
meat. The food at the campement was excellent. Each evening we dined on
a three course meal followed by attaya (Senegalese tea), according to
our waiters, who announced so very dramatically after each meal, the tea
was as follows: "le premier est amer comme la mort, le deuxieme est doux
comme la vie et le troisieme est mielleux comme l'amour" (trans. - "the
first is bitter like death, the second, sweet like life, the third,
honeyed like love"). In fact the attaya was weak compared to what it
should be, probably for the tourists' palate (toubab-attaya). On
Saturday they prepared a barbeque for us with prawns, beef, chicken,
fish, sausages and baked potatoes and on Sunday they roasted two sheep
over a fire and made a broth from it served with couscous.

The other parts of the competition were frisbee cricket, golf and
rubbish collecting (I nearly wrote 'trash' there...). We did well with
the frisbee and not so well at the golf whilst being middle of the road
in trash collecting (some groups picked up concrete and scrap metal
giving them an unfair advantage weight-wise). At the end of the Saturday
afternoon we were still in the lead but only by one point and so it all
came down to the last event, the team song. There were fifty bonus
points on offer for the best team song and we didn't want to lose.
Thankfully we had some very talented lyricists and musicians on our team
and after three hours of brainstorming we had a song to beat all songs
(Eurovision here we come). The songs were performed after tea that night
and I was worried that people wouldn't vote for us, seeing as we were
winning, but people were fair and we ran away with it by a large margin.

I'm still surprised that I was part of a winning team on a weekend for
hairy men.

The Sunday was a more reflective time and we sang together in the
morning and shared communion. One of the guys shared with us about a
part of what biblical manhood is about. We also had a very encouraging
time together on Saturday night after the songs when we had a bonfire
and people shared testimony of what God had been doing in them over the
weekend and over the year. It was great to spend time with other
Christian men, enjoying being men together and enjoying being Christians
together. The fact that we were all missionaries was an extra bonus.

I'm sad that I shall not be here next year for the next one.

A Full Week

There have been several days this week about which I might have written
a fairly interesting blog but unfortunately it seems to be only now, on
a quieter less interesting day, that I find the time.

I guess I should start with last weekend. Last weekend was the 2nd
annual BCS Olympics, this time the Winter Olympics. For those who've
been following the blog for a while you my remember my comments about
last year's and how successful it was. I think there are still photos on
Flickr from last year. This years was very different. In an attempt to
keep it fresh it was themed a winter games and the events were all
changed in some form, most being completely new. The changes worked and
those kids who'd been a bit skeptical about a second olympics were, by
the end of the weekend, enjoying themselves along with the rest. For me
it was a very different weekend from last year, what with Saturday now
being my day off. Last year I'd spent the whole weekend behind my camera
and taken hundreds of photos. This year I had a lie in and leisurely
made my way along to a few events throughout the course of the Saturday.
On Sunday we went to the beach as a whole school where we had the final
event of the olympics, a tug-o-war, and we ate burgers and homemade
crisps for tea. It was a great beach trip; the tug-o-war was a lot of
fun and the staff got to join in too, making mincemeat of the students,
the water was refreshing but not too cold and the food was great. Upon
our return from the beach the weekend was finished with the official
closing ceremony in the chapel together with the awards and medals for
each event and the whole competition.

After the olympic closing ceremony I spent the rest of the evening
seting up the chapel for my assembly the next morning. It took quite
some time due to the complicated nature of my plans (which can be read
about in my last entry).

Tuesday night was one of those on which I would have liked to write.
Having been wanting to get a haircut ever since crazy hair day and
wanting someone different to try this time I had, in a moment of
madness, agreed to let our two year 9 girls do it. After some badgering
they finally made time for me and it was agreed that I would go to
Falcon dorm early Tuesday evening to meet my hairdressers. When I got
there Maartje was busy playing cards and didn't want to leave so it was
left up to Nolly to do the deed. I took a stool out to the veranda
whilst Nolly went to Auntie Lucie, the dorm-mum, for scissors and a
comb. Nolly, who had previously been all confidence and excitement now
seemed to be a little apprehensive and even nervous about the task at
hand. After some reassurance that her life was not at risk if it didn't
turn out well she decided to get on with it and made the first snip.
After a very short while she started to enjoy herself and was back to
her previous excitement. Unfortunately for me her excitement seemed to
have blinded her as to the goal of the haircut and her actions started
to get increasingly erratic and giggly. At the first point at which she
thought she might have finished I went inside to find a mirror, getting
some rather shocked looks from those in the dorm lounge. When I found
the mirror I realised why. She had made a reasonable start on the sides
but the top was untouched and the fringe had been cut to a rather
ridiculous length making me look, as Adam put it, like a monk. We
returned outside and I instructed Nolly to get rid of the fringe and cut
the top to a reasonable length to match the sides. Unfortunately she
didn't manage this very well and now one side of my fringe looks like
someone attacked me with some clippers whilst the other is still a
little long. The top is actually ok but there's a curly tuft at the
back. The worst part however was when she suddenly decided that the
areas at the sides of my forehead were not in keeping with my receding
hairline and consequentially attempted to erase them; needless to say it
didn't work and looks ridiculous. So now I'm stuck with hair 'a la
Noelle' until further notice. I wore a hat to French class that night
and a wig to breakfast the next morning.

Yesterday I twisted my ankle playing football (for the third time at BCS
- twisting an ankle that is, I play football regularly) so today I've
been hobbling around and trying to keep my foot up as much as possible
to stop the swelling. It's getting better and I spent the afternoon in
the workshop making a second attempt at a bass drum pedal for the
scrap-drum-kit I've been intending to make for over year. It went very
well and once the glue dries I should be able to see if it will work;
then I need to find an old bicycle wheel for the drum.

The dorm late night activity tonight is one of those
run-around-in-the-dark wide games so I think I'll be watching a movie
with some other teachers, my ankle being as it is. I should go and send
these e-mails now as I'm getting hungry.

An Ambitious Assembly

It's Monday morning period three. This morning was the morning of my
first ever school assembly, something I've been preparing for for a
number of weeks now.

Having completely forgotten to prepare a prayer meeting I was supposed
to lead earlier in the term I was determined not to have the same
embarrassment with my slot on the assembly rota. So much so that I
timetabled a whole week of year 7 classes to prepare it. Year 7 were
very pleased to be involved as they'd not done an assembly yet this year
and used to get lots of chances to do them as juniors.

We tried to do a TV game show style science quiz where the audience had
to answer questions to gain points for their team. The stage was set up
like a TV studio with fancy lighting and we'd made a slide show
presentation on the computer with all the questions on. We had a host, a
glamorous assistant, a camera man, an interrupting furry animal, a sound
effects and computer operator and a correspondent to interview the
audience. I was the voice-over man hiding at the back and controlling
the sound desk (well used with a music bed, four microphones, the sound
effects and, my favourite invention, the buzzer.

The buzzer was a 2D cutout in the shape of the interrupting furry animal
which, when hit, would play music. It was a simple push-to-make switch
in the signal path of my mp3 player which was playing snippits of such
music as YMCA, Song 2 (Blur), Dance of The Sugar Plumb Fairy, The
Beegees, and guitar solos from Pink Floyd and Dave Skipper.
Unfortunately I couldn't get the swiss yodelling or the Top Gun theme
from Adam in time.

Well it was all going swimmingly until my computer crashed.
Unfortunately it struggles to run slide show presentations and decided
that along with playing the music bed too this was a bit too much effort
so early in the morning. I was very disappointed and we had to improvise
a little and cut things short but it seems everyone enjoyed themselves
and several teachers commented on the concept and the work which had
gone into it. All the kids want to take the buzzer home!

I need to go and teach year 8 now, less fun.

A Long Day

This blog entry is dedicated to Tammy Nicholson (Nolly will be
pleased...), sorry for taking away your lifeline for so long :o)

Today has been a long one, I knew it would be before it started. In fact
this week so far has had that kind of feel about it. It seems that no
matter how well prepared I thought I was for this week's lessons, when
it comes to the night before and I give my plans the once-over I
invariably end up kicking myself for my stupidity in forgetting to do
some major thing needed for the next day's lesson.

On Tuesdays I normally just teach for three periods in the morning but
today some of the staff had to go to Thies for health checks (something
to do with ID cards I think) and I was expecting to teach double DT with
year 8 this afternoon. Thankfully some lessons were rearranged and I
only had them for period six but it was still a drag. After school I had
two half hour music lessons, one of which was particularly trying and
then this evening we had adult French class.

After tea I tried to crack on with the last bits for tomorrow before
French. Having satisfied myself that I was fairly ready apart from one
class I decided to evaluate some possible teaching videos on 'energy'
for the IGCSE class, five minutes into which I was disrupted by Coralie
who had come to ask if I was coming to French. I hadn't fully heard the
announcement at lunch time and therefore was unaware of the earlier than
usual start and didn't have a clue as to the location. It was good that
she came looking for me.

We watched 'Les Choristes', a French film, at the Moltons house. It's a
very good film and highly recommended although the English subtitles
distracted me, I would have preferred them in French but the disc didn't
have them. I wasn't expecting to watch the whole thing in one sitting
but we did, hence the very late night now. After the film finished I
returned to the video room to continue watching my science videos. I had
to stop at 10:15ish for fear that I would get locked in and so went to
do a bit of photocopying before coming home.

Having done my photocopying and arrived home I realised that I'd been
looking at the wrong lesson plan all along and I didn't need to copy
those pages for tomorrow's lesson. Actually I should have copied a
different book and I should also have tried and prepared three short
demonstrations on pressure in liquids and hydraulics. At this point I'm
in sore need of something to release the building tension and so I
decided to eat a piece of flapjack, only to discover that I should have
finished it last week as it's now dry and not very nice!

Thankfully I have now done all that desperately needs doing tonight
(save putting two documents on memory stick to be printed first thing
tomorrow - I write that by way of a reminder to myself) and I can relax
a little by venting my frustrations at my computer keyboard whilst
listening to music at fairly loud volume on my headphones (it's late and
Johannes has turned in, otherwise it'd be the speakers and maybe lights
out too).

Just yesterday I read a devotional thought based on Matthew 6:34. I've
found it so true so far this week that God gives us just enough
resources for our daily requirements. Often it's tempting to try to do
things in our own strength but I've seen this week just how lost I'd be
if I did. Let's hope I can put it into practice as I prepare for leading
this Sunday's service, an area where I find it all too easy to rest on
my own experience and abilities.

Now I need to sleep (after this song...)

Mid-Term Break

It's a pleasantly cool early evening as I sit here in the setting sun of
Dakar on the roof of the WEC guesthouse.

Half a term has passed but it seems like more. It's been lots of fun and
lots of changes. I feel like I've been really busy so far this term. The
new job definitely has a higher workload at the moment and it's been
taking its toll recently.

It's been great today to be able to relax here in Dakar and do very
little. We went out to the supermarket this morning, the most European
part of Senegal, a moderately sized supermarket with air conditioning
recently rebranded under the French chain 'Casino'. The rest of the day
I've been reading and using the Internet.

Work's been going fairly well recently and I'm feeling on top of things
as far as the preparation goes although I'm aware of many areas in which
I need to improve in the classroom. I had a meeting with Bob & Dee the
other day, the school coordinators, to check up on how things are going.
Bob's my teaching mentor and he came in to observe me during period two
yesterday. Rather amusingly I had booked the school video room for the
wrong day thinking that it must be Friday seeing as it as the last day
of school for the week and there was another class already in there when
we trooped off half way through the lesson to watch something.

It's just a small group of us in Dakar this time round. Adam, Jaclyn and
Tracey are here with me. Adam and Jaclyn are spending most of their time
wedding planning online and Tracey is similarly making the most of the
ADSL with hours of skype and chat to friends and family.

We're going out for some food in a minute so I should probably pack up
and get ready. I uploaded some photos last night and will be putting out
my next monthly update in the next few days: http://andrewdavies.ls26.org.uk

Hopefully I'll find more time and inspiration for blogging in the coming
weeks after the recent lull.

A Happy Planning Coincidence

This must be the first blog entry I've written in over three weeks.
Life's been very busy here. At the moment I'm working every evening from
Monday to Thursday as well as a French class and my staff fellowship
group once a week.

I've been constantly chasing my ideal lesson planning target of being a
whole week ahead of myself i.e. working on lesson plans for the
following week whilst teaching lessons prepared the previous week. It's
been tiring and often unenjoyable but this week I've found myself int he
very happy position of having all of my lessons planned for this current
week and being a substantial way into next week's planning. This is
through no merit of my own but by sheer coincidence as this week's
lesson have been mainly end-of-unit summaries/questions and tests,
requiring less preparation, and next week I have three fewer lessons to
teach due to the Friday being part of the mid-term break.

All the tests have now been sat and marked and I've subsequently
realised a few gaps in my teaching which is a little discouraging. I
have however been making very good progress time-wise and am ahead of
schedule in all the year groups so I can afford to take time later in
the term to fill in the gaps.

I've been making flapjack tonight whilst doing lesson prep. In the
process I realised my kitchen scales are completely useless when I
placed a 200g pack of butter on them only to read a value of 10g back.
It's a good job I weighed the sugar exactly when I bought it from the
school kitchen and the oats came in handily sized and weighted packs. I
had to guess the golden syrup but I've made it enough times before to
make a reasonable estimate I think. It feels strange talking about
'weight' in such an inexact and incorrect manner now that I'm a science
teacher, especially having just taught a unit on gravity to year 9.

Hopefully my planning will continue to go well and I'll be able to take
the whole weekend off work. I could do with some real rest and I'm not
down to perform any duties on Sunday. Even more than that I hope that
I'll be in a position in a week's time to be able to go away for
mid-term break without having to worry at all about the next week's
lessons. I still need to book accommodation for the weekend off; I think
I'll be going to the WEC guesthouse in Dakar as it's cheap and has ADSL.
I'm not a big fan of Dakar shopping so I'll probably just chill at the
guesthouse and enjoy ice cream and fast Internet access.

A Long Monday

Mondays used to go so quickly when it was my day off. Today's been
unusually long though. I've been on lock-up and generator duty today
which means I had to unlock the main school buildings at six o'clock
this morning and I have to lock up again at about 10:30 tonight.

Having got up so early I went to the 6:15 prayer meeting and then came
home again to finish the getting up process and brew a pot of tea before
breakfast in the dining hall.

I used my grapefruit marmalade. It tastes fantastic but unfortunately
didn't even remotely set and therefore eating it is a balancing act
trying to stop it running of the bread. There are 30 jars of it so I
think I might need to buy some pectin or gelatine and try to rectify the
problem or else find another use for it (an interesting dessert for
Sunday lunch maybe!?)

School was good this morning. My problem class, year 8, has been going
much better for the last two lessons.

Afternoons are a bit funny at the moment. My day's very disjointed as my
teaching's usually over by lunch and then siesta onwards is spent at
home trying to plan and prepare lessons. The afternoons can be very long
and not always productive and there's no clear finishing time at the end
of school when you're at home.

The good news is that by staying in tonight I've bought myself time for
the rest of the week. I have only two more lessons to prepare for the
coming week (both on Friday) and so I can hopefully much make bigger
inroads into next week's planning before the weekend. I should also be
able to start devoting more time to the maintenance side of my
responsibilities in the afternoons.

I spent a good half hour this evening just listening to music. I made
the mistake of choosing one of my favourite most relaxing and absorbing
tracks for the start of my evening's playlist and then spent the next 30
minutes just sitting in the soft glow of my lamp letting my favourite
tracks wash over me and enjoying some satisfying resonance somewhere
inside my gut from my little subwoofer.

Whilst enjoying the music I was dwelling on the pleasure which such
things can bring and the levels on which it satisfies. I had the joyous
revelation that even though I don't expect to see most of my favourite
bands and musicians in heaven I can look forward to a sound which
satisfies on an even deeper level, combining all that is so powerful
throughout the history of human music making and redeeming and
perfecting it in the presence of the perfect and glorious God who even
now I'm lost for words to describe as I'd like to.

Now the work is done for the night and I'm onto hot chocolate and Neil
Young. Probably a bit of a strum on the guitar too before I go lock up
and give the keys to Adam who will be on duty for the rest of the week.

Grapefruit Marmalade

The first full school week is over and it's finally my day off again.

It's been a very busy week this week. I've ended up working every
evening to keep up with lesson prep and I have a lot to do tomorrow
before next week starts.

My target at the moment is to get into a routine where all of the coming
week's lessons are prepared before the Monday morning and I can use the
bulk of my prep time during the week to prepare for the following week.
If I can achieve this I think it will lighten my load at the end of the
week, Friday night and Sunday afternoon. I still have to work out how
the maintenance side of things fits together though; theoretically I
should be using a fair amount of my afternoon time to work on
maintenance of electronic equipment, computers and the telephone system.

I had my old quiet time group round for tea last night, Tristan, Katie,
Immanuella and Deborah. We had lots of fun and ate Penguin bars an
played 'cheat'. It was lovely to have them here and they didn't want to
leave at the end and implored me to have them round again soon. I
definitely will but I need to be careful to invite other kids at other
times so as not to develop any sense of 'Uncle Andrew's favourites'.

Today I'm making grapefruit marmalade. It's something I planned to do
since the end of last year. We had grapefruit jam here at school at the
start of last year and I ate it every morning at breakfast but not
everyone liked it and when it ran out they didn't seem especially keen
to make any more any time soon as it had taken so long to finish that
last batch.

I know there were several people who were quite keen on the jam and I
thought that maybe if I made some myself I could use it as birthday
presents for quite a large number of people and also enjoy it myself.

I've never made marmalade from scratch before so I'm a little anxious to
see how it turns out. I'm working from quantities scribbled from my
mum's recipe book at home but I've not got any instructions. I made some
orange marmalade in the summer but that was from 'Mamade' where you are
given the fruit, already reduced down, and you just add water and sugar
and boil it up together.

One worry is that the sugar we get here in Senegal behaves very
different to that which I'm used to at home. Probably because it's from
cane and not beet and I'm not sure how refined it is. The main
difference I've noticed is that it's sweeter and it doesn't melt so
easily. Not a great combination for marmalade making.

It took me an hour and a half to cut the three kilos of grapefruit this
morning and my knife hand is still feeling a little numb nearly three
hours later. I realised later that I could have saved myself a lot of
time and discomfort when I spied the grater in the cupboard and thought
back to the never ending task of cutting the peel into fine strips. A
lesson learned for next time at least.

I bought twice as many grapefruit as I needed by mistake (I had the
wrong number in my head and didn't bother to check it) so I'm doubling
the quantities and shall probably end up with over twenty jars of
marmalade! I do hope it's edible :os

Must go stir it again!

First Day Off

It's been a busy first week and I'd intended to write much earlier than
this but at least now it's my first day off and I have a little time (or
at least I've taken a little time).

My first week teaching science has gone well. I've found that all my
lesson plans were a little too long so far. I probably forgot how long
it takes to do some things over the summer. Science lessons are very
different to teach from ICT ones too. Everyone tells me that's the
better way round for things to be though. I'm not worried about falling
behind schedule yet as the lessons planned would have finished the first
units ahead of schedule anyway.

I still have a lot of prep to do for next week but I think I'll be fine.
I'm trying to keep my Saturday day off as a work free day of rest as
Sundays here often involve duties which can take up a large part of the day.

The kids are settling in well and the new staff seem to be doing equally
well. I just went for a walk around the compound and dropped by the
dorms; Saturday was proceeding as normal, few kids in the dorm lounges,
some complaining of boredom but generally everyone's doing what they
normally would have done last year and is happy doing it.

It is a bit strange not being in the dorm. I do miss being there with
the kids and just enjoying their company and conversation. I could
easily go and hang out there but I think this is a very important time
for the kids' development of relationships with the new staff and to be
honest I've not really had much time to go and sit in a dorm lounge anyway.

Tomorrow's our first church service of the school year and I'm involved
in leading. Not too much pressure as I'm mainly playing bass but I might
be telling a short parable too if I can find something suitable.

It's rained a lot this week.

5:1 Senegal

I've just woken up from a little Sunday afternoon snooze on the couch to
find rain outside yet again. It seems to be raining more frequently now,
we had a really noisy storm yesterday morning with thunderclaps right
overhead.

Hopefully it'll clear up in 20 minutes or so as we are all s'posed to be
going to the beach this afternoon.

We were going to go yesterday but some other plans started to be made
for alternative uses of a Saturday afternoon. One of these plans
involved a trip to Dakar to watch Senegal play Burkina Faso in a
qualification match for the 'African Nations Cup', to be held early next
year.

A group of nine of us went in with the school minibus, picking up four
more at the WEC guesthouse in Dakar.

Tickets for Senegalese international football seem to be fairly easy to
get hold of in comparison to international football back home. We paid
£2 each for ours and sat on concrete steps with numbers to mark each
alloted space but we could have paid just £1 and stood in the terraces.
There aren't many proper seats but if we'd wanted them it would have
only set us back £10 a piece.

Getting into the ground was somewhat more difficult. Whilst we were
allocated gate numbers on our tickets we were still made to queue
outside the stadium walls regardless of where we were sat. After walking
around the stadium and hopping from queue to queue in the hope of
getting in quicker we finally settled on a fairly short looking queue by
the entrance for the terraces where we were assured we could enter with
our £2 tickets.

Eventually we got through the stadium walls and also through our proper
gate to our seating area where we settled down, just in time to see the
teams walking out onto the pitch.

We were sat next to a very large and noisy drum group and a guy with
dual air horns charged by a large metal lever which he was pumping away
on, also very noisy. The atmosphere was great but I was surprised not to
have ringing in my ears that night because it was so loud (for some
reason I chose to leave my earplugs in England for my second year here).

The pre-match crowd antics were fairly standard for a European game, a
mexican wave a few times round the stadium and the familiar chant of
'ole ole ole ole'.

We had a fairly decent view, looking out across a corner of the pitch.
For the first half Senegal were shooting towards us and it seemed like
the crowd's cheering always went up a notch when the ball came to
El-Hadj Diouf in the final third of the field.

Senegal were definitely in control for the first twenty minutes which
culminated in the first goal after about 15 minutes. For the rest of the
second half they seemed to lose the plot a little and Burkina got an
equaliser looking likely to score again if it weren't for the half time
whistle (which we had no chance of hearing thanks to the drum group
beside us).

After the half time break things were back as they should be, Senegal
dominant, scoring again after ten or fifteen minutes and continuing to
attack throughout the rest of the game giving us the final score of
Senegal five, Burina Faso one.

After the game we made our way through the jubilant crowds back to the
minibus and headed back the the guesthouse and then LGM for food and ice
cream.

We finally arrived back at school at around 11:30pm.

Rain

It's raining!

That's not so unusual for this time of year but this summer has been
quite a dry one so far. And it's not just raining, it's torrential, the
only kind which really counts here.

We've just had a talk from Wally Seck, on of the locals from Kinniabour
who has a little English and German too. He was talking to us about
Sereer culture and village life. It was very interesting.

I think I'm one of a very small number who braved the rain and ran to
check their windows. If you leave your windows open during heavy rain
you can end up with some very soggy belongings.

Johannes has just come home, also looking wet but not as wet as I was.

I've not got anything timetabled this afternoon so I think I'll continue
to work on the school amplifier in the chapel. It's been an ongoing
project since term one last year. I finally diagnosed the cause (I hope
correctly) last Easter and the parts needed were ordered then but have
only just found their way here to the school. I started on it yesterday
and initial signs were promising (at least the fuse didn't blow with the
new component as it did with the old).

Another reason for working in the school-block is that Ruth said she
would be doing a dance in the primary wing. Whether she was serious or
not remains to be seen but it's intriguing nonetheless.

My pot of tea looks nearly brewed. I'm taking advantage of the cool that
the rain brings to drink a hot drink in comfort. So far I've not drunk
tea in the dining room but only in people's houses, perhaps I'm still
affected mentally by my experiences of dining room tea this time last year.

Time for a spot of tea and maybe a ginger nut.

Full House

As predicted my house has changed in an instant; it's no longer 'mine',
it's 'ours'. My new housemate Johannes arrived yesterday night at about
11:30.

He's a year older than I thought (19) and seems a very nice chap. His
English is not great but he makes a good effort and can hold a
conversation fairly well.

He seems very happy to sit in the lounge and make small talk which has
been nice.

Not being the worlds greatest conversationalist myself I sometimes worry
about my own first impression on occasions such as this. Although
they're not so important in the long run they can have a big effect on
relationships for a good few months (depending on how memorable the
impression is).

I remember last year it took me quite some time to realise a
subconscious spirit of competition between myself and Adam (entirely one
way). Because we were the only single men on site I felt that everything
I did would be measured against him, especially with me being the new guy.

I hope I can avoid such silliness this year and develop healthy
relationships with all the new staff quickly, as well as improving
relationships with existing staff.

I'm conscious that even after just a few days I still feel a little like
Johannes is moving into 'my' house. I hope that he can feel at home and
make the house his own. I've deliberately tried not to move too much of
my stuff into the lounge and I've not done any decorating of any sort.
Hopefully we can find something to put up though as the lounge is quite
bare!

I'm also wondering how to approach ownership of food and other such
items. So far I've tried to communicate a freedom to use anything
Johannes finds in the kitchen but this may need adjusting once he's had
a chance to stock up and once we see how our lifestyles fit together.

We will be keeping very different hours once term starts anyway as he
will be in the dorms and I shan't be.

A Safe But Wet Arrival

I'm now very pleased to be writing from my new room here at BCS.

I'm not so pleased to say that I'm writing on battery power as we've
just had a power cut.

The plane finally landed in Dakar at about 1:45 local time last night.
We were delayed a total of 11 hours I think.

The good thing was that we met the De Souzas at Lisbon airport and there
was quite a crowd of us in the minibus on the way home.

I finally got to bed at 4:30 and slept surprisingly well considering the
new bed and the humidity.

The humidity was (and is) very noticeable but thankfully it's been
fairly cool so far.

It turns out the rains never properly started here over the summer.
There were only two storms of note. There's hope that things are really
kicking in now though as we drove through a very impressive storm last
night and there's been heavy rain this lunchtime followed by rumblings
and threatening skies right now.

Last night was a big one. I stepped out of the van to try and see how
wet Lesley's suitcase was getting on the roof-rack and when I got back
in the van it was like I'd jumped into a swimming pool fully clothed
(fun!). There was cool lightning too. Every so often our surroundings
would light up and we'd see the sillhouettes of baobabs on the horizon
against the bright white sky.

I've spent this morning trying to get my room into order but I'm finding
it very sweaty work. In fact I just broke into a forehead sweat brushing
my teeth! It's quite fun really, I'm enjoying the novelty at the moment
and I got used to it last year so it doesn't bother me (although Ruth
and Tracey were amused by my shininess at lunch).

I found out at lunch time that I'm now officially a full time teacher.
That will mean no dorm duties and a Saturday day off. I'm disappointed
in a sense that I won't be in the dorm officially but I'll definitely
hang out there when I can and I plan to be as available as possible in
the first few days to help the Eagle kids settle in with new dorm
parents and dorm helpers (whilst trying not to tread on their toes).

I had thought initially that I'd like to be a full time teacher this
year but as time went on I realised I really wanted to stay in the dorm
too. It'll be interesting to see how the two roles compare (although
comparison of jobs is impossible here really and a fairly fruitless and
even divisive exercise at times). It will mean I have the house to
myself a lot at times which will be nice.

I should go now before I use too much battery as I'm not sure when power
will return (it's too expensive to run the generator when so few people
are on site and no real work is being done).

Brussels Airport - again!

A year later and I'm back here again. For slightly longer than expected this time though.

All was running smoothly. Lesley and I had seats together from Birmingham to Brussels and were patiently awaiting boarding for our onward flight to Dakar when we heard the dreaded announcement (actually only Lesley heard it as I was in the toilets). Our flight had been cancelled!

Apparently they'd discovered problems with the landing gear on the plane that was to carry us and it was not safe to fly.

Passengers for Dakar and Monrovia were split up and taken away for further information, in three languages of course, English being the final with the smallest audience (us and one American man).

We were told that they had found a solution to take us all on to Dakar. We would be flying on to Lisbon and then from there on to Dakar with TAP. The connecting flight is at 1700, we received this information at 1000.

Boarding passes were taken in and meal vouchers were handed out with the instructions to meet again at 1300 so we trundled off to find something to amuse ourselves for two hours before eating lunch.

At 1300 we were given new boarding cards for our onward flights and told to proceed to terminal A where we could pick up another snack voucher at the Brussels Airlines desk.

As the day has gone on we've been gradually descending into some kind of state just above sleepwalking. I tried to wake Lesley up by challenging her to a sudoku race using a puzzle on the back of a freebie magazine but once I'd won she seemed to lose any wits she had gained by the exercise and quickly started to flag again.

Having just awoken from a short semi-snooze we're about to locate our new gate number where we'll be hopefully boarding in half an hour or so.

We should arrive in Dakar at 0100 tonight all being well. It's a shame not to arrive at school in the daylight but the upside is we no longer need to worry about fitting both our luggage into a taxi as Bob is coming in with the minibus to pick up the De Souzas (new staff) who will be on our TAP flight.

Should really move now, Lesley's looking bored/impatient.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends...

Less than 24 hrs left in the UK!

For the last few weeks I've been looking forward to getting back to work, especially as I've been running out of things left to do on my little list. Now as it approaches more immediately I'm starting to realise more of the challenge of what lies ahead.

In one sense a year is a short time. Definitely as I look back on the last one I can see that it was not long enough and I feel the need to go back BCS for a while longer; but as I look ahead a year suddenly seems a much longer period of time. A long time before I return home and see friends again. A long time before another cup of tea with real milk!

I must devote some time today to drinking tea and making loud musical noise on various instruments.

One of the things which has been most on my mind recently about the next year is how our new team will fit together. It takes such a long time to really feel comfortable and efficient as a team. Only last term was I starting to notice that about some of the team relationships at school
and now many of those team members are gone and new ones on the way.

The first meeting with all the new staff will be strange. It's good that they will have mostly met each other first at the orientation course at UK HQ. I know that was a great comfort to me when I arrived last year; to see familiar faces at the first coffee break.

I'm not sure whether to brave a cup of tea this time around remembering the dire consequences last year. Luckily I have a few days before that particular coffee break to gauge my overall sweatiness and decide whether it's wise or not. (for context to these comments see my blog
from August 30th last year)

I should really start packing I guess. There are a lot of things I want to take that I mustn't forget. I probably will forget something but hopefully nothing major.

I'll leave the house just after midnight tonight heading to Birmingham airport arriving at the school hopefully between six an seven tomorrow evening (just in time to watch the football if it's on anywhere or listen to it otherwise).

Teen Camp

I returned home today from WEC Teen Camp where I've been for the past week.

For those that don't know, Teen Camp is a Christian holiday under canvas with a mission focus for teenagers between 13 and 18. I used to go regularly in my teenage years; from 1997 to 2000.

This was my second year as a tent leader, my first being the summer of 2005. We had a great week down in Charmouth, a sleepy Dorset beach town.

The weather was great for the majority of the week and I took all the opportunities I could to enjoy the English sea (a little colder than Popenguine though). We also went to Exmouth for 'trip day' where I made the most of the traditional seaside resort and treated myself to ice-cream, fish & chips and a cup of tea.

I was a tent leader in the second oldest boys village which meant guys aged 15 and 16. This isn't an agegroup I've had much experience with at BCS seeing as we only had one 15yr old and three 16yr olds and I was working in the youngest dorm. I was a little worried when I first met my campers. Three of the four in my tent struck me immediately as being from a very different social grouping to myself. They were the trendy kids who thought themselves 'hard', wore jewellery and listened to music I can't stand; or at least those were my immediate thoughts.

It's so difficult not to judge on appearances or to let first impressions affect long term interaction. I was however taught a lesson as these boys proceeded to surprise me with their respect and better than expected behaviour. They were by no means angels but they were also by no means the scallies I mistook them for.

I was very encouraged during the week to observe one of them in particular spending time reading his bible at night and obviously chewing over what he was hearing. In terms of group discussion and sharing, my tent remained fairly quiet all week but changes in other areas and their attitudes at the end of the week gave me hope that God was at work in these young men.

I very much enjoyed being part of the camp family and it was great to meet up with some folks who I'd not seen for a few years. There were also a lot of new leaders there this year and many of them have expressed a desire to return next year and obviously enjoyed themselves which is great. Just like at BCS, continuity is also very important for WEC Camps. If a leader is a regular and is known to the kids then they are often given greater respect and the campers feel able to be much more open about their relationship with God and the issues in their lives.

I'm now exhausted having hung around on site to help with the initial packing up process and then travelled to New Wine festival to spend the night in a tiny tent there before the long drive up north today.

Travel Day

Well, I'm now sat in Rothwell, West Yorkshire, UK connected to luxurious broaband internet having consumed multiple cups of tea with REAL MILK!

It's been a long day but I'm finally home in England starting to contemplate the next five weeks without BCS.

Travel was a mixed bag. Yesterday's trip into Dakar was a long one, traffic was horrible and I got sunburn on my right arm from the sun coming through the open car window (my brother informs me it's known as 'trukker's arm'). When we finally arrived in Dakar it was nearly three o'clock and we were pretty hungry so we went for some food. A handy hint: when eating out with girls who are ordering big plates there is no need to buy one's own food, I couldn't finish all the leftovers I was offered.

Having tried and failed to fall asleep in front of a movie at the WEC guesthouse Lesley and I departed at 6:30 in a taxi to the airport. Departures at Dakar airport was new for me, although much less scary than arrivals had been ten months previously. We fought off people wanting to get us trolleys and carry our luggage and change our money and managed to check in quickly and easily despite technical problems with the link between the luggage scales and the luggage tag printing doodah (overcome using a walkie-talkie).

Free of our bags we retired upstairs to the restaurant where we decided we weren't hungry yet and shared a large bottle of mineral water over conversation themed with summer activities and reunions with friends and family.

Duty free shopping at Dakar airport is surprisingly (or maybe not so) like any other place in the world. The only difference being that the large perfume and alcohol shops are neighboured by small boutiques crammed full of every Senegalese craft item available on the streets of Dakar; dresses, shoes, drums, silverware, paintings, t-shirts, sculpture, the usual.

As we awaited boarding some suspicious looking Brits crept up behind us trying to frighten us. We thought we'd left Ruth and Tracey behind at the guesthouse but here they were, ready to check into their flight leaving an hour later. It sounded like they'd had an interesting taxi ride to the airport but we had all made it and were ready to leave the ground.

The flight was quite a good one, we made good time and had no disturbances. They fed us a main meal at about 11:00 GMT and breakfast at about 3:00 GMT, by which time we were nearly in Brussels. I joined Lesley after breakfast to enquire if she'd had any sleep and whether she'd been sick yet (she wasn't feeling too well) and we landed in Brussels shortly afterwards at 5:30 local time (GMT+2).

Brussels airport is nice and not too big. We killed some time walking the length of the terminal (a long straight building with departure/arrival gates along the edges), at the end of which was a beautiful view of the sunrise over some trees and a church spire (and a monstrous control tower).

We parted here as I continued on to Gatwick and Lesley caught a connecting flight to Brum.

The Gatwick flight also gave me breakfast to my surprise. In fact I was one of only two economy passengers served a complementary breakfast; the perks of a long journey I guess.

In a slight daze and trying to work out whether I needed my jumper, I eventually made it through gatwick airport to collect my bags and meet Mum at the arrivals point.

From there it was on to Ipswich to drop in on my granny recovering from a hip operation in hospital and then the long drive back to Leeds.

I slept for only an hour or so in the car. Waking up and wondering if I'd dreamt my year at BCS and realising that I was doing the classic gap-year returnee trick of talking continuosly at my mum about things she knew nothing about and meant nothing to her. It was good to get that out of the system a bit before I bore friends to death when we meet. It'll still be hard though.

Must go to bed now, I'll try and cover the emotional side of reentry in a few days time 'cos I need to gather my thoughts a bit or I'll ramble forever and say nothing worth reading.

A Twisted Ankle

It's Sunday night and I'm sat in my lounge with my left foot up on a pile of cushions. In my first proper game of football in weeks this afternoon I twisted my ankle badly trying to keep a lost cause ball from running out for a throw. I gained us roughly 4m defensively and put myself on the sidelines for the rest of the game.

I'm now bandaged up and I've got a crutch to help me get around. Hopefully it'll be better in a day or so.

We had a barbecue for tea tonight. One of the families from the Gambia had brought up the best part of a pig with them at mid term break as a gift for the school. Tonight we ate it in kebab form with a great Korean marinade.

It's been a nice weekend. Yesterday I went with one of the teams of kids to Kiniabour for 'Saturday jobs' where we did some more digging at the kindergarten project. When I returned to school I had my debriefing for the year with Bob & Dee and we went through the evaluation form they send off to WEC UK together. It was very encouraging. It was also good to chat a bit more about next year and my role.

On that subject, I found out this week that I'll definitely be teaching science next year. In the first term it'll be just key stage 4 (IGCSE - 14-16 yrs) and in terms two and three I'll teach KS3 too (11-14 yrs). I'll still be a general helper which means I'll have a full time dorm role too, probably in Eagle dorm again, especially as we'll have new inexperienced dorm parents for term one.

Last night was a 'dorm movie', we watched 'High School Musical' with just the Eagle kids in the dorm lounge. It was very cheesy but amusing in places (although utterly cringeworthy in others).

Church this morning was good and for the adult ministry time we heard from Jim & Paula Hanes, missionaries from Louga, up north, who are here on orientation with their kids, Amanda & Aaron who will be joining the school as full boarders from September. It was really interesting to hear first hand about how evangelism works amongst the Wolof people and the work that the team in Louga are doing.

Ulrike pointed out tonight that tomorrow is my last day off this year and asked how I'd spend it. I hadn't realised and doubt I'll do anything unusual. I'm actually very tired, I've not slept enough the last few nights.

Hopefully I'll be able to enjoy my day off despite my probable lack of mobility.

Writing about last night's film reminded me of Friday night when I watched 'Short Circuit' with some other staff. I can't have seen the film in the last ten years but I must have watched it tens of times as a child. It was great to see it again and similarly many of the other Brits have equally fond memories of the film. I saw much more adult humour which I'd missed as a child and some great malapropisms from Ben, the asian character. One of the most memorable lines though was one my brother and I would often quote after watching it: "Hey laser lips, your mother was a snow-blower"; I still don't
get it though. Now I need to track down the sequel, I remember that one being even cooler.

Weekend Away & First Goodbyes

I had intended to write this morning about the junior weekend-away just passed but I can't help but first express some of the emotion of this day and the general atmosphere on the school compound.

Today is the 25th of June, the date parents were given as the only possible early leaving date before the end of term.

I got up for assembly this morning as it was the final chance to say goodbye to the four children leaving permanently today.

Among those leaving was one of my closest friends among the children, Florence Da Costa. Florence is half Brasilian, half French. She started at the school at the beginning of this year with very little English and firmly attached herself to me as her favourite uncle. Her family are leaving the field and settling in France where Florence hopes to attend a bilingual school so that she can continue to improve her English (which is very good now).

The other three leavers are the Kray girls, one of the families which are a big part of BCS modern day history. Terissa, the oldest student in the school, is one of a very small number remaining who knows all three BCS sites. I was closest to the youngest, Sarah, who was in my dorm.

Some people were very tearful this morning, many of the older kids have been through this more times than they can remember. Saying goodbye is one of the major features of a boarding school like this and often people have to accept that they will never see their closest friends again; people who they share their entire lives with for two thirds of the year. The Krays will return to Australia, not exactly nearby for a holiday.

In general there is a sombre mood this morning as those still here realise their own impending departure, many for the long term.

So, onto lighter matters:

The weekend-away was a great success. We started on Friday night with a 'squash night' (sleep-over) in the dorm lounge. All the juniors, including day students & staff kids, were packed into Eagle lounge, the floor covered in mattresses. We watched 'March of the Penguins' on a big screen I'd made on one wall out of bed sheets. Whilst some were a bit apprehensive at the thought of a documentary I think everyone enjoyed it in the end. Jacqui and I slept in the lounge with the kids and tried to keep discipline and ensure
that we all got some sleep. Whilst I didn't sleep fantastically the kids were actually immmaculately behaved considering the excitement level. I think I will get a shock if I ever work with kids again in the UK; I take for granted how good these kids actually are even when they're not so good.

On Saturday morning we ate a quick breakfast and then loaded our mattresses and bags onto the waiting car-rapide which we accordingly bundled into and headed off for Malicka. Malicka is not far from Dakar and we made good time on the road.

On arrival we unloaded the car-rapide and proceeded to erect our accomodation for the night. We had eight tents and I was in a single man one by myself. Some of them took a little time to work out but we got them all up reasonably quickly and they all lasted the night.

Once we were settled in the kids started to get impatient for the swimming pool and so for the rest of the morning we spent most of our time in and around the small pool there.

The place where we were staying is the base of a percussion making and metalwork ministry run by a Dutch woman named Herma. She has a beautiful compound with lots of greenery, a small swimming pool and a small basketball/tennis court. She employs a lot of local staff both in the drum workshop and around the compound to do gardening and cooking.

We were supplied with a lovely bowl-meal lunch cooked by some of Herma's ladies. I'm not sure what it was but it was a bit like the Wolof rice we eat at school regularly. Meat and rice with no sauce but plenty of oil to keep it from being dry. There were several types of meat including one rather funny tasting one I'd never experienced before which the kids told me was probably some kind of giant snail. A little rubbery and very pungent.

After lunch we had our usual siesta. In tents this proved to be rather warm. Especially as the humidity is now pretty much back. As I lay in my tent I was producing puddles of sweat where my arms were in contact with the ground sheet. From the look of my arms and chest I would estimate somwhere between one and two large beads of sweat per square centimetre on my upper body and the formation of some kind of trickle running down somwhere different every few seconds. Needless to say I got no sleep and niether did the kids. After an hour and a quarter of this enforced sauna we pronounced it officially 'end of siesta' and the pool rota started up again. The kids were very happy to spend all afternoon in the pool, something they don't get much of usually. Some of them played a little cricket, Katie losing the ball over the wall three times, the last time for good.

In the evening we had a BBQ and tried to fight off the flies and then we sang a few songs together before the kids retired to their tents for the night. Once the kids were in bed and prayed-with Heiko, Doro, Jacqui and myself snuck back to the pool for a spot of night-time swimming. Very relaxing.

On Sunday morning we got up early and packed up, having breakfast surrounded by flies once more. The car-rapide arrived a little early and so we loaded up, sang a song together, prayed, thanked Herma and then hit the road.

We were back at school by 10:30 which was great. Now we just had to clear up the dorm lounge from Friday night and get the tents up again in the chapel to dry out.

My afternoon was spent in bed and in the kitchen.

My Quiet Time Kids

Here are the kids I do evening bible study with, taken this morning:

Left to right: Tristan Molton, Vinicius Camera, Deborah Meribole, Immanuella Yisa, Florence Da Costa & Katie Gibson

Centre Stage

It's Wednesday afternoon and I'm supervising the end of a R.E. exam for Chris who has gone to Mbour to take the juniors for swimming lessons.

I've spent the best part of the morning preparing the chapel for Centre Stage tonight. I was planning to do a post-concert blog but I now find myself at a loose end so I've decided to make it a before and after.

I've been looking forward to tonight for some time. Largely because afterwards I'll be able to cut my nails again on my right hand. I've been trying to revive some of my old A-level guitar pieces and I'm feeling fairly pleased with them despite some hiccups in my practice half an hour ago.

It's been tough practicing them. The nice guitar I was playing on returned to its owner a couple of weeks ago and since then I've been playing on one the worst specimens I've ever seen which I was given by Lesley when she threw it out. When I've been in the dorm I sometimes play on a poor 3/4 size instrument there.

Dirk-Jan suggested that I may find myself with a few classical guitar students next term and raised the idea of buying a couple of instruments for the school whilst back in the UK.

Tonight also is the premiere of the short film we made in film club last half term. It's been a nightmare trying to edit it but it's finally finished. It's a really girly story, reflecting the members of the club. Set in times of castles etc; a queen has a baby but fears the baby may be under threat from 'The Phantom' whose hand in marriage she rejected some time ago. The Phantom promised revenge and so the Queen sends her newborn daughter with a sled driver to be raised in the forest. The Phantom hears of the child and searches for her, finally finding her 15 years later. He overhears her talking to a bird about her terrible plight and feels guilt and other such emotions. His heart changed by what he has heard, he reveals himself to the Princess and asks for her hand in marriage. She accepts, they marry and we all live happily ever after... nearly as bad as some of the films I've seen here this year.

Well it's now the day after the concert. Quite a relief really.

It was a cool atmosphere. We had quite a large audience for an optional activity including some parents of daily and weekly boarders.

The concert started with some recorded pieces from year 7 music class. For the last few weeks they've been collecting sounds from around the school site and U.Chris put them together into some sort of musical arrangement, kind of in the style of 'musique concrete'. The first piece, 'People', was a bit rough around the edges and too long but the second, 'Places' was far more interesting and was received fairly well considering its limited appeal. More class work was then followed by individuals and small groups on recorder, voice and piano. I was the final act of the first half however before me was a mystery guest. He was a guest of the Jins and was just here for that evening but had asked if he might perform. I was a little nervous as he too was a classical guitarist. He played two pieces very well and although they were maybe not quite of the same difficulty as mine he played them much better than I did. Yet another lesson learnt in pride perhaps.
Upon talking to this guy afterwards it turns out he's studying music in an American university and will be performing the Bach Lute Suite (of which I played a piece) in his junior recital.

My nails are now all short again which makes typing this much easier! It's still a bit of a novelty having short nails again. I intend to make the most of my enjoyment of it by playing the bass sometime today; it's no fun playing bass with long nails, it sounds and feels bad.

This weekend is the special weekend away for the kids. I've just remembered I have to make a packing list and a swimming pool rota today. It will be the final weekend for Florence and for the Kray family. Florence is already feeling a little sad and has spent much more time with me than normal the last few days. She's one of the children I'm closest to and I will miss her. She is moving to France with her family (French mother, Brasilian father) and will be starting at a French/English bilingual school. She had almost no English when she started here back in September. The Krays have been here a long time; Terissa is the oldest student in the school, Megan was one of the kids baptised last week and Sarah has been one of my Eagle dorm girls this year. They are returning to Australia where the girls have had a hard time previously during furloughs. Please pray for them all and the friends they leave behind.

A Week of Many Birthdays

There have been a couple of things this week which I would have liked to have devoted an entire entry to however, as usual, life here has been to busy to allow it.

As you may know, this weekend was my 24th birthday, an occasion worthy of comment of course, but also earlier in the week I made my second visit to the British ambassador's residence for another birthday.

On Thursday I was accompanied by Ruth, Tracey, Lesley, Dee and Sue in a 'sept place' taxi into Dakar. We had been invited by the new ambassador to join the annual celebration of the Queen's birthday. It was a rather larger affair than the Christmas do. All the other ambassadors had been invited and we were rubbing noses with UN officials and such. The ambassador made a short address in English and French (his French is not great, he was quite obviously reciting a memorised speech which didn't sound very natural). There was also a short speech from a Senegalese government official whose English was much better than our guy's French, the highlights being "we've been working hardly..." and his finishing words, "God save the Queen, God save Abdoulaye Wade" to the literal sense of which I gave a hearty 'Amen' (Wade is the recently re-elected Senegalese president).

The main highlight of the evening, besides the company in which I went, had to be the food. It was a buffet, the first table you saw containing seven varieties of English cheese! Tintern with chives, Stilton, Stilton with apricot, Wensleydale with cranberries, Keen's farm unpasturised Cheddar, Pilgrim's Choice mature Cheddar, and some other blue whose name tag had blown away in the evening sea breeze. Also on that table was smoked salmon, cold sliced steak and little folded ham crepes and olives on cocktail sticks. This was my favourite table. All the cheese we usually get is Edam and we rarely get to eat it on its own. Also throughout the evening there were waiters serving assorted finger food of varied origin and barbecues serving meat kebabs of different sorts. I spent most of my time talking to the others from the mission community but towards the end of the evening I got into a conversation (or rather was spectator to a conversation) with a very excitable Senegalese man from the UN drugs and crime department who wanted to tell us all about his very intersting work and the terrible socioeconomic state of Guinea Bissau. Luckily Nathan, who I was standing with at the time, has a little more knowledge of the situation than me and was able to sustain the conversation.

The taxi ride home was long but more pleasant than the journey there as I was no longer paranoid about sweating through my best shirt however my waistcoat is now distinctly crumpled having been sat on for an hour and a half.

I look forward to my next opportunity to dress up for 'Centre Stage', the school's annual concert on Wednesday night.

So, onto the second birthday.

On Friday night I'd been up very late preparing the exam papers and mark schemes for this week's annual senior exams. Consequentially I actually forgot that it was my birthday the next day and didn't realise until shortly after entering the shower the next morning. BCS birthdays start with candles at breakfast and someone praying for you before the dininghall is filled with the tuneful (or not so in this case) sounds of 'Happy birthday to you'. I enjoyed the morning despite working. I went with a group of kids down to Kiniabour for 'Saturday jobs' where we helped put in some drainage for the new kindergarten which the school raised money for last year. In the afternoon I was unfortunately quite tired after my late night on Friday and felt that I wasn't able to enjoy my party as much as I should have. I had a joint party with Chris who is exactly a year older than me (and is already married with two children!). After our party we had a meeting about next weekend which will be the junior weekend away. The evening late-night activity was an outdoor game involving running and water which I sat out of, joining the old people on the sidelines talking about various issues of going home and coming back and buying guitars for the school.

It's lunch time now so I shall have to leave it there. I'll try and write about centre stage before the end of the school week.

D-day plus one

Mid-term break is nearly over. In fact it's already finished for most, I'm just lucky to have my day off on a Monday.

I've had a really relaxing weekend.

I went away with seven other Trekkers and we spent the weekend in nearby Saly. I didn't do much, but that was the whole idea.

One of the best parts was being with friends. I was reminded of Luke's description of the early church in Acts 2:44 "all who believed were together and had all things in common". There was definitely an atmosphere of community and sharing. People were very generous particularly in respect to food and money and no-one expected anything in return. A glimpse of Christian community at its best. The love of Christ in the lives of others can be more refreshing than weeks spent by the swimming pool.

I cooked bolognese for us all on the first night which I enjoyed very much (despite forgetting to buy garlic) and we had a lovely evening dining al fresco and enjoying conversation and card games.

The whole weekend was in some part (for me at least) dominated by thoughts of my impending deadline. Sunday night was the date I had set by which I must have made a decision about whether to stay on at BCS for a secind year.

It's been a difficult desicion in some way but easy in others.

Those who know me well will be well familiar with my indecisiveness. This was part of the reason for setting a deadline. For some time I have felt that I would like to stay but I wanted to be sure that this was God's best for me and to take time to examine the motives behind my feelings.

Having now done these things I am pleased to announce that I will be returning here in August for the next school year.

It is still not certain what my role will be so please pray for the school leadership team that they would be given wisdom as to how to best use me. There are also many practical details which will need to be addressed in the coming months.

This morning we had a special baptism service at Popenguine beach and five BCS students were baptised. We did it at the end of mid-term break so that the parents could come more easily. It was a great service, great to hear the testimony of these five young people and to see them responding in obedience to God's call.

We just had lunch and Bob asked me to announce my decision to the rest of the school so now everyone knows, that'll save any confusion or rumour I hope (although it seems that WEC Trek UK already thought I was staying, not the first time I've heard that sort of rumour getting around HQ mistakenly).

Must go and send all the e-mails I've written now and try and get some siesta.

Mid-Term Break, Here We Come!

It's Tuesday and, as usual this term, I'm in the dorm after school. It's very quiet on Tuesday afternoons; Chris & Brianna have their day off and Jacqui and most of the kids are at various after school clubs.

The kids get to choose two different clubs for the term, one for each half. This week is the start of the second half.

All of the clubs meet on Tuesdays except for mine which will meet tomorrow and so the only people not at clubs today are me and those in my club. That means Tristan, Sung-Hwi and I. Sung-Hwi is in Egret, the Korean dorm, and Tristan lives with his parents, the school coordinators, but he's here in Eagle playing playstation right now.

With just the two of us here it gives me a chance to get some bits and pieces done when I would normally be unable to do anything productive.

My club will be making electronic music. I planned out a rough schedule for the weeks on Sunday and I'm quite looking forward to it.

I found some great free software which I plan to use. It's an audio/midi sequencer/recording package called Reaper and so far I've been very impressed with it.

I've been pretty tired today. I made the classic mistake of pressing 'off' instead of 'snooze' on my alarm this morning and was ten minutes late in waking up the Eagle boys having got up in quite a rush.

One of the school computers went down yesterday. I found out when a student tried to use it in one of my classes this morning. I then spent the next hour or so trying to resurrect it but to no avail so siesta was spent reinstalling the entire operating system and standard set of classroom software. It's now up and running again but it was previously used to connect the whole classroom to the internet which will take a bit more work to sort out.

I'm very much looking forward to mid-term-break this weekend. Just two more days of school left now. I hope I can rest well. I'm sharing a house with 8 others for the weekend which could mean difficulty finding peace and quiet in the house but there should be plenty of space elsewhere to relax and get some time out. I'm going to the same place I went to for the first mid-term-break, hopefully I'll avoid sunburn this time.

Mid-term-break also means decision time about whether or not I come back here in August. You can expect a post on Monday with the news.

Computer Shopping

Today is one of those rare occasions when I get to spent some time on a decemt internet connection and so I'm actually writing this online.

I'm in Dakar today, having come in to buy a new computer for the school computer classroom.

Jonno, the headteacher, has been saying to me for a while that there was enough money in the ICT budget to buy another one and that we should consider it. Now that it's getting towards the end of the year and we're thinking about the next, in particular with knowledge of expected class sizes, we've decided to go ahead and buy one.

I came in with Jens and Heiko who have gone on into town to do more school shopping while I'm here at the guesthouse.

The computer shop is just round the corner and so at 10 o'clock, after some internet surfing, I meandered round to the shop to see what I could find.

I was a little nervous as I hadn't had a French conversation in a while and didn't know how to ask for half the stuff I needed. Upon announcing my purpose of buying a computer I was shown two grubby looking relics on the counter, not what I'd expected. After clarifying that I'd like a new machine I was ushered over to a pretty looking out-of-the-box Compaq machine which I knew was out of our league. At this point I worried a little, not really understanding the sales assistant who was nevertheless very good to me.

He seemed to be saying that I could specify a custom machine which they would then build, or at least that's what I assumed he was saying, the obvious thing for him to say at that point. I was relieved that there was a third option but simultaneously worried as we'd intended to take something home today. I tried to explain to the man that if I could buy the parts then I could build it myself later, getting stuck on the verb for building, if only I'd chosen assemble, the translation is much more obvious.

The stock was rather limited, one case choice, one processor (twice as fast as I needed), pretty much everything was better than I needed which worried me about the eventual total bill.

The sales assisitant had a little English and we enjoyed the farcical pointing and describing trying to establish which components we were talking about. I learnt some new vocabulary and so did he.

When we'd finally got together all the items on my never ending shopping list he said he had to go somewhere to get the hard disk and would be back in ten minutes. While I paid at the kiosk he donned his moped helmet and dissappeared ou the door. I sat by the counter listening to bizarre and apparently humourous Senegalese radio and watching customers come and go.

When he came back about twenty minutes later we took the pile of stuff outside and he hailed a taxi. Upon realising I had no change I asked one of the guys in the shop to change my 10,000 cfa note, he shortly came back saying that they couldn't change it and so the first sales assistant and I persauded the second that where I was staying was close enough to walk. As I picked up some bits I watched in not total surprise as the first guy got the moped and tried to get himself and a 17" CRT monitor on it. I was a little wary but Africans behave like this all the time so I decided to trust him. As we set off walking the monitor fell off the moped to the floor producing shouts from the neighbouring shop owner which I didn't understand. Seemingly unperturbed the guy got back on the bike with the box and started off again, this time with more caution.

In a minutes time we were back at the guesthouse, the men surprised that it actually was as close as I had said (things like time and distance are often exaggerated in Senegal). The moped riding sales assistant was anxious to check that the screen was in tact and so we brought it inside and plugged it in. It was fine much to all of our relief I'm sure.

I'm now waiting for Jens and Heiko to return so we can go home. I've since taken advantage of the small supermarket and the ice-cream parlour round the corner but I'm now getting rather peckish not having had any lunch.

A Week of 3 Themes

I don't think I've been on-line since Monday las week, that feels like a long time. Rather silly really considering I sent an urgent e-mail regarding return flights on that occasion.

It's been a long week.

On Monday afternoon I went to the beach in Saly with Fran & Jacqui. It was great to get away from the school for a while and the sea was lovely where we went; very calm and almost warm but still refreshing. Having missed tea in the dining room I cooked for myself when I got back which I enjoyed very much having not done it for while now.

There have been several ongoing themes this week. First there's Neil Young. Chris got 'Heart of Gold' the DVD from Amazon last week and I borrowed it on Monday. I watched the main disc that day and the special features disc today and have had the songs in my head a lot throughout the week (he's in my headphones right now). It's made me miss my guitar a lot.

I have a mental list of things to bring with me should I return next year, the first three are my acoustic guitar, my bass guitar and my 2.1 speaker system. Clothes are a luxury I can do without if need be.

The second theme has been DIRT. DIRT stands for Dance International Revival Troop, it's a fictional group formed by myself and other staff members for 'skit night' later in the term. We'll be performing an internationally flavoured medley of dances including morris dancing, line dancing, ballet, riverdance and of course YMCA and 'Superman' by Black Lace.
Reherasals are going well but we've a lot to do in a short time.

Thirdly, I've been teaching myself braille. Tomorrow night's weekend activity is called 'You Guess!', it's a kind of version of the TV gameshow 'You Bet' which is apparently very big in Germany (Betten Das). I entered a bet that I could teach myself braille and correctly read a collection of six letter words chosen by the organisers. It all started one evening when myself and two others were bored and had a braille labelled pill box to hand and decided to try and learn the letters on it. I was able to do it much more easily than the others so I thought I'd try the whole alphabet. I spent all siesta today thumbing flashcards I'd made and I now know the whole alphabet by heart. I just need something in braille to read now.

It's Friday today and it's nice to have a free evening at the end of the teaching week although I would have liked to have been out tonight as a group have gone to a restaurant in Thies to celebrate Lesley's birthday but I had to work in the dorm. That's just a fact of life here. That kind of socialising is difficult between dorm staff and teaching staff as dorm staff are working during all the teachers' time off.

I made four swords today after school. David and Chan-Hwi asked me to help them make some and tomorrow I'll make shields. I'm a little worried that someone'll get hurt by my craftsmanship though (if you can call it that). One's already broken...