After the flood

I was so stupid to be praying for rain. It brings one big advantage, which is that not being so unbearably hot means I can sleep at night. And I suppose it’s nice for the little people that their crops grow. But – my social life is horribly curtailed! The roads are utterly impassable because most of Dar is built on swamp land and the tropical rains don’t drain away. It is like being in a huge lukewarm power shower, with lots of additional mud. It took my friend four hours to get home last night and the journey is only six kilometres. I had to miss choir and swimming yesterday. Today I am meant to go to a Mama Masai evening (like a Tupperware party but with pointlessly and excessively beaded items) and I am going to bloody walk. It’s only four miles and I am sure my then five-year old aunt and grandmother used to do that eight times a day during the war to work in the munitions factory or something (that’s what I seem to remember hearing, normally accompanied by a not unreasonable comment about how easy my life was at that point) and frankly I can do it too, accompanied by my iPod. As all I’ve done this afternoon is lie on my bed eating peanuts and reading Clive James, it’ll be good for me. Also, the torrential rain has not dissuaded the convent's neighbours from lighting their usual fires to burn their stinky rubbish (there is no rubbish collection here). In fact, it's made the smoke worse and I am feeling very slightly queasy thinking about what I am inhaling. So it'll be good to clear my lungs by, er, walking past four miles of identical bonfires.


Easter has rocked. Being a bit of a martyr, I had let myself get tired to the point of being irritable at the end of term, and couldn’t shake off a headache and the remnants of my last cold. Friends here invited me to come away to a posh beach hotel for two nights, and although my first thought was “Oh no, I am far too tight to spend money on that” I realised that actually, £50 a night for full board in a luxury lodge was very reasonable. And it was amazing! The food was properly good: non-rubbery calamari, lime tart, home-made bread to add to the butter I was stuffing down my throat (the nuns only have vile Blueband margarine) and NICE house wine. We went kayaking on the little lagoon and I was so rubbish that I crashed into literally every obstacle, even when it was a fallen tree sticking up in the middle of the lagoon with loads of room on either side. The only time I went straight was when I didn’t paddle and the wind blew me. But I snorkelled without drowning and went for three walks and did my French homework and made lots of lists about how I felt about coming home, so I felt very happy that I’d managed to defeat their evil plan to make me relax totally.


Everything came with a cover made of woven matting, even the flasks with morning tea and coffee, and the bug spray. I was fully expecting them to come round with plaster of Paris and a breathing straw to take a mould of my face for my woven death mask.

Here you can see me with my morning tea just delivered by a lovely lackey (note woven cover) and also in a rare moment of lying down doing nothing.














I cropped out the others so that you can see me better.



Easter was lovely. On the Friday night I went to a local bar to hear some live music. I heard about half of it, as I was dropping in and out of sleep most of time. the chairs were so comfortable and was after 11pm. I was invited to spend Easter Saturday and Sunday lunch with some US diplomat friends. Although I don’t know them very well, and felt as though I was making polite conversation most of the time, it was so blissful to sleep in an air-conditioned room in a proper bed. They put me in their “Americana” room, which meant there was a big Stars and Stripes quilt, ditto towels, “do not disturb” sign on the door and all the pictures were Americana antiques. It was quite endearing really. They displayed commendable dedication to getting through their diplomat duty-free drinks allowance, and freshened my drink so often that I actually had to turn it down rather than have the bottle gently placed out of my reach. On the Sunday night I met other friends for sundowners overlooking the Indian Ocean. There was a couple there who had seen me on holiday in Zanzibar, although I’d been too busy catching up with Sharon and Fred to notice them (oops). They thought that I looked like Jerry Hall and sounded like Rachel Weiss. Glorious! Although the other way round might have been very slightly more flattering. We all ended the evening singing raucously (everyone but me) and choirishly (me) to one of those “Pop Songs Made Really Easy and all in the Key of C” books until we’d exhausted the Amarula, which is the local equivalent of Bailey’s and just as deceptively alcoholic, and I had to retire to bed. I had given to my people until it hurt.



I may have mentioned before that at the school, people compliment me and defer to me far more than I deserve. Last week, I moved up one level from “God sent you to us, Lucy”. Matilda (who, as you know, loves Jizzus) came upon me snivelling sadly after a particularly unpleasant row with a particularly unpleasant local businessman who hadn’t done what he said he would for the school. She thought for a moment and then announced “You are like Jesus on the cross, Lucy, suffering for others”. I think Easter is always a good time to be reminded of one’s similarities to the risen Lord, especially when it involves no more physical discomfort than a slight sickness owing to eating too much Green&Black chocolate egg posted by none other than Jane Fowler.

Lovely Jane made me aware of my real status by emailing to say that her dad, with whom I once went sailing very ineptly, “demonstrated the substantially larger toilet facilities on his new boat by sitting on the toilet, stretching out his arms as if reading a newspaper, and saying 'this will give Lucy plenty of room'. Ah, how are the mighty fallen.

I leave you with a lovely symbol of hope, renewal and appalling traffic jams.