Admittedly I wrote this a wee while back and then forgot to post it so here is is now!

Once again I'm having a visitor, or stranger as we say here, (oh so popular) so me and Barbara and another volunteer friend and her stranger have been touring about the country. After a night out sampling the joy and amazing cultural experience that is Aquarius Nightclub (this is a rather amusing place, only somehow good if your with a bunch of friends and drunk and after creating gossip in my life it is clearly too small a place!) we hit the beach for a day then zoomed, or rather slowly motored, our way up country. The journey was a long, cramped and dirty one, wearing a white t-shirt was not necessarily my best decision. We spent the time staying with different volunteers I'm friends with up there, so a nice cheapy holiday.

Think I've written plenty about up-country before so I'm going to concentrate on new experiences up there. One evening we headed to a Zimba show, local entertainment/travelling drama group type thing. Although a large part of the entertainment involves audience participation, in fact it was a slightly scary experience. There were two guys dressed up, kinda representing lions – they were scary – and one guy providing the comedy dressed as a woman, the whole thing was set to a back ground of drumming and dancing. So to start with they were looking for kids who had sneaked in without buying a ticket, if so they were pulled out to the front and generally terrified until someone went to pay for them to be freed, periodically this went on throughout the show. It was at this point we realised participation was going to be an essential element to the day. Only minutes after stating that I really needed a child sitting on my knee to save me from involvement the man dressed as a woman was in front of me dancing away with his skirt round his waist, I didn't know where to look, everyone was howling with laughter then he sat on top of me, jumped up and ran away. I was somehow startled – but hoping that was it for me, no such luck. The dancing and public humiliation of children continued until it was decided that audience members should be in the dancing so they were pulled up at random by the 'loins' and the woman, as previously explained in this blog dancing is something people learn from childhood and I'm not sure it is ever possible to get it right as an uncoordinated toubab. So needless to say when the man/woman came over to take me up I was less than impressed, the crowd were gutting themselves laughing, there was nothing for it but to try! Charlie later told me that she had suggested either Barbara or Louise come and save me from the experience alone but both turned out to be exceptionally busy taking photos, anyway, they got their turn as not one of us was let off the hook! At least after that we were confident our turn had been fully taken, so as the children continued to be scared one ended up jumping on my knee in a moment of panic to get away from the zimba (all too late to save me from involvement thought), in the end the lions were tamed and we all returned home before it got dark.

We took the scenic route back from up-country, which invovled me eating my first mango of the season, which was a great joy to consume, woohoo for mango season again!

Spent the weekend at a music festival in a town called Kartong. A lot more dancing was involved but it turns out when I've had a wee bit much to drink I actually believe I can dance to the drumming and kora music. Its fun though cos when the music starts people run up to the middle in pairs to start dancing, spent most of the night running back and forth up to the dancing area, noone stays there between songs. Camped at Kartong for a couple of nights so it was a relief to get back last night and wash the sand off, the sea had been our bath so we were somehow dirty. Discovered dirt was still coming off me this morning, think I'm maybe a bit minging sometimes, but without hot water it is not easy! So that's the first week of Barbara's holiday and I'll let you know of any more excitement we get up to, although I have returned to work this week, sometimes its got to be done!