Giant Tortoise Wee on Foot Incident

Well, hello and Happy New Year. Rather embarrassingly, the nuns woke me up by carousing late into the night on New Year’s Eve, when I was trying to get some well-earned sleep. They are so badly behaved and look, they drink beer too:

On Christmas Day they were very sweet. I gave them all crackers (Christmas, not Jacob’s) and a Cadbury’s selection box and they nearly died of excitement. They shrieked with laughter and did that African noise of exuberance that sounds like an alarm clock in the back of the throat combined with singing a top C. Then they combined the two gifts by putting their cracker hats on (on top of veils) and popping a chocolate bar in the front, like a large and precious jewel. Bless.

My Christmas was wonderful. I spent it with Sharon and Fred in the sun at their hotel, after a Christmas Eve night out with my friends Cynthia and Dan. I am ashamed to say that C&D took me to an Irish Pub, where I thought it was a good idea to re-enact the PA Christmas party of a few years ago by making a bra out of two Christmas hats:

But I know that will have made Jane Fowler, PA bra-making partner, very happy. Anyway, I had LOADS of presents and cards from super generous family pals and family who made it to the postbox and coughed up vast fortunes for the stamps. I was a very lucky girl. As you can see here:

Then Sharon and Fred and I went to Zanzibar. We saw giant tortoises. Here I am with some of my new slow-moving friends. I was standing in that strange way because there was a big stream of tortoise wee heading for my foot and Fred was taking ages to “set up the shot” (as if, laughing at my discomfort more like).

We swam with dolphins. Or rather, we hung in the water while the dolphins zoomed past us at about 1,000,000,000 mph. It was so extraordinary that I was just burbling incoherently into my snorkel mask and hanging onto Fred in amazement. Then we lazed around all day except for dragging ourselves to the lovely outdoor massage table. You can see here how difficult my life as an impoverished volunteer is:

Sneef, Sharon and Fred had to go home on New Year’s Day and I had to go back to work. I spent two days at the school working in a team (ie issuing instructions) to clean out the horrible, dark, cobwebby, junk-filled library to turn it into a pleasant, sunny, story-book filled room where children might actually want to learn to read. The library was absolutely packed with inappropriate and randomly ordered books. We burned about a thousand. I know this sounds like Fahrenheit 451, and I did have a bit of a pang about the ethics of it all, but African school libraries are, I fear, a dumping ground for European books that are no use whatsoever to the children. I give you (for primary school pupils who know very little English, remember:)

“The Mentally Retarded in Sweden”
“The prostitute in Afircan Literature”
“Mexican peasants in a changing world”
“Kim Il Sung: Master of Leadership”
“Town and Revolution: Soviet Architecture and City Planning”

…and I hope you will forgive my dictatorish and anti-intellectual behaviour.


Here is a a gloomy BW picture of how horrible the library used to look.

and a photo of an enticing corner after the clear-out. PA people, note the globe – a gift from you!

So now I am sitting here oozing sweat, as usual, and awaiting tomorrow’s arrival of my next set of pals, Rosie and Steve/Hooch. I am really excited about seeing them and all the presents they are promising me. We are going elephant tracking together, if we can keep quiet for long enough.

Now, a few of you have asked for more noooos about Hot Date. I didn’t think this through before, because obviously, if I had, I’d have realised that there’d come a point where it would be mean to be writing about someone without telling them. Duh. And as he is nice enough to have agreed to get up at 5.30am to collect R&H from the airport tomorrow, even if he is going to wear a horrible, horrible baseball cap and didn’t bring me back a huge blood diamond from Sierra Leone, I feel the time has come to shut my big mouth. Until I can’t resist spilling everything, of course….