England vs USA

The first England game of the world cup was upon us and excitement was in the air.  Everyone went red and white crazy and headed down to the British High Commission to watch the match. We also invited the peace corps just to liven things up a bit and soon the party was in full swing! My personal highlight of the evening was spotting a bottle of Magners behind the bar! First cider in 10 months... lush! So after feeling rather sorry for Green and yelling in all the right places we hung out with our feet in the pool until late. Roll on world cup 2010!

St Louis Jazz Festival 2010!

Day trip to top of Senegal (Podor... border with Mauritania)

Youth hostel... streets of St Louis... random goats... too much shopping!

On the road... coffee in Dakar... bridge to St Louis...

Saint Louis Jazz Festival

OK so it is official... I have fallen in love with Senegal. For the past 4 months or so I have been talking to anyone who will listen about the legendary Jazz Festival held annually on the Island of St Louis, Northern Senegal. Jazz musicians from all over the world come to perform at the festival and many other bands come to play for free in the numerous bars across the island.   On the road...   On Wednesday 19th May 2010, I met Rachel (fellow VSO from Australia) and Katie (a peace corp from the States) in Barra ready to start our St Louis adventure! We managed to get a lift as far as Dakar with two girls; Paulina (Polish volunteer for the UN) and Adrianna (volunteer for the EU from Spain). The ride was relatively painless although with the occasional need to drive off road due to the state of the tarmac, sand trucks spilling their load as they pass, slight clutch issues half way there and a sudden panicky hunt for fuel, it was not without challenge! We finally got to Dakar about 7-8 hours later and had an early night after finding food, ready for the next leg of the journey tomorrow.   After meeting Marielle and her friend Lois from The Netherlands, we all decided to travel up to St Louis together. So we found a car and to our amazement the road was tarmac all the way! We got there by 2pm, dropped Marielle and Lois at their hotel and then headed for the youth hostel I had booked. The hostel was great! It looked like a set straight out of the film Mamma Mia! (You can imagine the singing that went on after a few glasses of wine... childish really...)   The Island was beautiful and full to the brim with crumbling French colonial buildings, art galleries, craft shops, jazz bars and restaurants. We were in heaven!   So here are the highlights of the festival:   ·         Dancing in a crowded bar to a Senegalese band with a didgeridoo player! ·         Finding my favourite band (that I saw in Gambia when Dad was visiting) and dancing the night away... ·         Eating pizza... how I love pizza... ·         Shopping in the craft markets ·         Discovering the dirt cheap bags of wine (I have photographic evidence) ·         Meeting Sophie (from Belgium who was volunteering in Senegal) AJ from Australia (Rachel was in here element!), a girl from France (have always been bad with names!), Jo from England (the only other English person I saw all weekend!) and Patricia from Spain (volunteering in healthcare with Jo in The Gambia) ·         Going on a day trip with Marielle and Lois (see photos) to see the 'real' Senegal away from the pizza and bags of wine. We travelled to the very top of the country and at one point could see Mauritania on the other side of the river. The biggest achievement was surviving a walk around Podor village in 50 ⁰c heat! I will never moan about being cold again... well not for a while anyway! ·         Watching the Jazz Orchestra from Germany do their thing! ·         Going to Mass in the cathedral on Sunday to witness the best gospel choir I have ever seen (who were visiting from Dakar for the weekend) sing 'Oh Happy Day' at the end of the service while we all danced at the front of the church (Matt and Cat – you would have loved it! Very Sister Act 2!!) ·         Eating more pizza... did I mention how much I love pizza?.. ·         Watching a great African Jazz band, a unique Spanish group and the main man himself (on all the posters) Pharoah Sanders from the US (officially the coolest man I have ever seen!)   On the last night we got home at 2:30am and got up (with significant difficulty) at 5:00am to meet some other peace corps we had bumped into while eating pizza, Jo, Patricia and Adrianna at the Garage. As there were ten of us wanting to get across the border into Gambia in one day we managed to hire a gelli gelli for ourselves and started the long journey home. We made it to Barra in about 10 hours and I got back to Kerewan in 11 and a half hours. All those sweaty hours in a gelli gelli were so worth it and I would do it all again tomorrow!

An unwelcome guest

After a long, sweaty, tiring journey back to Kerewan, I finally arrived at my door, desperately in need of a wash and a big glass of water. Now I know I will never be a contender for the world's tidiest house competition but even I was shocked at the sight that greeted me as I entered. The contents of my bin had been scattered haphazardly around my room, in my chest of drawers and under the bed. There was a funny smell and as I looked closer I realised that whatever had made the mess had also been kind enough to leave little 'presents' all over the place. How nice.  I was too tired to do much at first so I wandered into my bedroom to put my clothes away. As I opened a drawer, there was a quick shuffle and I saw something dart further into the drawer taking yet more contents of my bin with it.  I felt like I had been transported into a Tom and Jerry cartoon as I found myself screaming from the top of the nearest chair. I was not expecting myself to react in this way and therefore stood frozen on the chair for a few minutes while I gathered my thoughts.  I eventually came to the conclusion that I was in fact a lot bigger than the creature inside my drawer and consequently was being a bit of a wimp. I jumped down decisively and began to take out the drawers, one by one, to clean.   It was during this cleaning mission that I discovered Paul's tube of Orabase. It is apparently the best at getting rid of mouth ulcers so I borrowed it, even though it was his last tube from England and could not be bought out here. I was paranoid that I was going to lose it so had left it on the top of my desk. It was now in the bottom drawer. Devoured. This was bad enough until I realised, after a little internet research on my phone, that not only was it the best stuff ever created but it was now the best stuff ever created to be discontinued in the UK, America, Canada and Australia since August 2009 and was consequently the topic of many forums causing worldwide outrage... Bo*****s!   Not in the best of moods I dumped my stuff and decided to just go to bed. Maybe it will not seem so bad when I wake up in the morning. Unfortunately I didn't wake up with this realisation because I never went to sleep. One metre from my bed was the most frustrating scratching sound coming from inside my chest of drawers. I could just about cope with the noise while the fan was still on but when the electricity went off at 2am, the combination of the heat and the noise began to blur the edges of reality slightly. In an attempt to make the noise seem less threatening, I began to imagine a little mouse in a blue baseball cap (not sure why he had a cap??) making a house out of the wood shavings he was oh so carefully gathering from the drawer. This calmed me for about 20 minutes and then I came to my senses. My next strategy was one of attack. Shoes, flip flops, bags and anything else lying near my bed went hurtling in a mad frenzy towards the chest of drawers. This silenced him for about a minute and then he would continue.   When light finally came and sanity had returned, I decided to open all the drawers and deal with this once and for all! Many frightened rat leaps and involuntary screams later; I finally managed to get him out of the chest of drawers, only to discover that his latest meal had been my clothes. I then spent the whole day cleaning and was quite pleased with myself at the end of the day. The house was looking fab and there had been no sign of the rat (or Percy as I had recently named him). Maybe I had scared him off. Night came and I heard a little commotion in the kitchen but not in my bedroom so I slept a bit better.   The evening of the next day, while innocently making a cup of tea, Percy jumped out of my cooking drawer. That was it! As much as it pains a feminist like myself to admit, I could no longer cope with this on my own... I needed a man. I called my landlord in a panic and he rushed back from work to charge around my house with a torch. I had tried to use my humane trap, had tried to talk sense into the rat (lack of sleep can do that to you) but enough was enough. For someone who finds it hard to kill a mosquito without a bucket load of guilt it was a huge step for me to agree that the time had come to use the trap.  My landlord set it up and just as he had said goodnight and closed my door I heard the sound that filled my heart with dread and hope all at the same time.   SNAP!   A bit of scuffling.   Then silence.   Beautiful silence.   He looked so peaceful when we picked him up that... 1.       I am convinced he has gone to rat heaven where there is plenty of precious Orabase to eat. (this thought helps me to sleep at night... oh and the lack of scratching noises doesn't do a bad job either)  2.       I was compelled to take a photo and now I can share it with you.   Bless you Percy wherever you are...