The Shocking Return

Despite the post date on this piece this is my belated post from October (post South Africa)

At 10pm on a Saturday we stepped off our Air Mauritania plane feeling quite relieved to have survived the flight down from Dakar - it may have been a short journey but in a tiny Mauritanian propeller plane it felt a lot longer than 20 minutes. We were greeted at home by a very excited Slobs and a house that had electric current running though everything, including the water…  now I know I’ve said our house has had a many minor problems but this was new. After being shocked by everything we touched I finally convinced Zack that we should go to a hotel. Having excess electricity running through the house was not fun (especially when I had two major essays due) but I’m not going to lie… four nights at Coco Ocean was awesome! Zack had to get up and go to work every day but having minimal internet connection I had no choice but to relax by the pool and read magazines (we are very grateful for our subscriptions to Vogue and National Geographic). By the end of the week they had pretty much fixed the problem, we still occasionally get shocked by the shower but I try not to think about that too much.

By this time I was way behind in my course so the rest of October was consumed by catching up on my work and preparing for our Halloween party. When we first moved to Gambia we decided we would host a party to get to know people in the area better … and let’s be honest, we were trying to win over new friends by supplying them with free booze! As the party drew nearer I started to get a little bit worried, we had been meeting people at lots of events but how many people were actually going to come to our party? Luckily there was a big Dewali party at a local Indian restaurant the night before where we ran into lots of people we knew (and made new friends) all of which were invited and actually came! So in the end we had about 40 people and I think everyone had a good time - the punch I made helped that along. The highlight would have to be the Halloween piñatas we made, they were a hit!

So with only the occasional electric shock the rest of October and the start of November passed by quickly. I somehow managed to complete all my assignments and finished out the year with pretty good marks. Previous excitements and those little Gambian idiosyncrasies  such as haggling over fabric prices, bumster encounters, avoiding crazy taxi drivers and seeing people riding pushbikes carrying a 10 foot poles and ladders (it happens more that you would think) are beginning to become daily life - Oh who am I kidding those things are always interesting (and frustrating). I think we could spend 5 years here and still be surprised by crazy occurrences every week. Finally, I am happy to report that the weather is finally starting to cool down (slightly). It hardly ever rains and the humidity has dropped significantly - don’t get me wrong it’s still really hot but at least I feel as though I can go outside again.