Lots of painting

The walls are now "chalk stone", the ceiling is "brilliant white" and the skirting and doors are still a mess...

More painting progress

Mel arrives and is enslaved up a ladder painting the vaulted ceiling

We now have a kitchen... in boxes

Back home

Am now back home from the leones... but a couple of funny photos...

Monkey and Dog curl up together at the Country Side Hotel in Bo, Sierra Leone. I'm not really into animals but this monkey with a very long tail does look quite cute snuggled up with a surprisingly un-mangy dog!


A rather old (DFID funded) sign. I just love the "Condom Tours Safe Journey" bus...
The newish chopper that takes us to and from the airport in under 10 minutes! It has a good safety record... so far!
Back home... back to DIY... which shade of white shall we choose for the kitchen?
This Thurs and Fri are kitchen painting, then this weekend is our kitchen fitting experiment! Soooo this time next week it should look a lot more like a room... I hope!
Lavender and Rosemary make the place seem slightly less like a building site... we also have strawberries, thyme and sage and some "tumbling toms" and sweet peas (from the Urb Farm) which need to go into a hanging basket.
Ta da... the oven of glory hath arrived. It is a thing of great beauty and wonder... especially when one has been deprived of an oven for the last 4 months. The only sad thing is that one door is slightly scratched. Fortunately it can be changed without too much pain, so the kitchen fitting project can go ahead as planned this weekend, and Rangemaster will come out next week and change the door!

Bo, Sierra Leone

Am sitting here in Bo, with ear plugs in, but still finding it hard to concentrate as there is a huge speaker system right next to my bedroom, which is warming up for tonight’s wedding reception, which will be held on the forecourt right in front of my room, and which starts at 10pm!

Ho hum.

Yesterday was a long hot day travelling round and visiting projects. Sometimes with my job it is easier not to think too much about the individuals behind the poverty that you see everywhere, however yesterday there were lots of little things that really bothered me...

The teenage boy who was a war amputee, one of 9 children, whose father had recently died, and who had to drop out of secondary school as he could no longer afford the fees for uniform, books etc.

The little girl who had fallen over and badly hurt her shoulder, but had received no medical treatment for 2 weeks as her parents thought the traditional healer/ witch doctor could heal her by “bringing out her bones” with a strange poultice. We ended up taking her to an MSF clinic, where although she was sharing a bed with 2 other very sick munchkins, she at least had a chance of getting better.

The school children with no text books and no writing materials (paper/pens), patiently reciting random English phrases down from a blackboard.

The + 10 and 11 year olds who wanted to be a doctors/ nurses/ the president, but whose “mid term test” consisted of drawing a) a football pitch and b) a school. Their teacher was then giving them % grades based on how good the drawings were.

The highly educated Project Manager who told me in all seriousness and with absolute belief about an FGM/C ritual where one of the initiates turned into a snake and dragged the initiator off into a swamp, before disappearing into the bush never to be seen again. The initiator lived to tell the tale and went on local radio to do so. Apparently belief in “shape shifting” is very common in SL, but it is really scary when someone you know well, and who is intelligent, well travelled, well educated etc. etc. is telling you this kind of story… in the dark!

On a slightly more amusing note I visited a preschool where the children recited “fee fi fo fum I smell the blood of an Englishman, be he alive or be he dead I’m going to grind his bones into bread”… I found this hilarious, but I don’t think anyone else got the irony that I am an “English woman” and that a whole bunch of 3 and 4 year olds were happily suggesting grinding my bones to make bread...

My office!

Escaped to Sierra Leone for a bit of tropical sunshine. The office has temporarily moved, as the old one, which was actually a new building, was apparently about to fall down/ was sinking into a marsh... eeeek. Whilst the new new office is renovated everyone is working in a small house... higgledepigldy sitting on top of each other. Fortunately the verandas catch the breeze and are not so busy... a nice place to work... and look down on Freetown!

View up the hill... towards the huge US embassy and EC Delegation

View from the office veranda, down over Freetown and out to sea... in the haze somewhere is the airport, which you have to then get a dodgy boat/ chopper from to get over to this side!

Candy floss and keeping clean...

Ant has been having some trouble with punctures and his baby - Brompty the Brompton Bike. As a result he has bought some Kevlar tyres - hoping never to have to repair a puncture again! Here he is with Brompty... and some clinical gloves. He is so clean. It makes me smile. If this was my bike I would be covered with grease, oil and dirt at this point, and would have probably put my hands on the wall, my face, the sofa etc... creating a messy disaster of one sort or another... the thought of gloves would not have most likely occurred. Must learn from the master of cleanliness.

Ant enjoys candyfloss at Weymouth.

A lovely sunny afternoon was had at the beach. We even saw people having donkey rides, which brought back memories of riding Joe Soap (that legendary Weymouth donkey) as a child. Alas you had to be under 7stone to be allowed on a donkey... so we couldn't have a go.Groo and Gramps in their Easter Sunday best, sitting on the bench, waiting for ice cream.

Boiler is gone (thank goodness for the Victorians and their fire places!) By the end of this week plastering should be finished and then all the builders will need to do is the concrete floor and skirting boards. Leaving us to tackle painting, tiling, flooring and kitchen fitting over the May bank holiday weekend. What fun!
Easter "Red Velvet" cupcakes. They were very red... and very nice. Amazing what feats can be achieved with a combination microwave and an abandoned ancient Kenwood chef we found in our celarette when we moved in! Related to my earlier comments about comparisons in approaches to cleanliness, I should note that in the making of these cupcakes, although I did remember to wear an apron, I managed to get red cupcake mixture on the computer, desk, carpet etc. It will be good when we actually have a kitchen and don't have to use the desk as a kitchen work surface! Fortunately I managed to get most of the mess sorted out before Ant returned from doing the shopping... so he was saved from too much trauma.