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.
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