I should have stood up

On Valentine’s Day I wrote about a breakfast. I was in Kuntaur, the town with the highest number of children per woman and terrible unemployment, poverty, disease, education and need. Once a thriving industrial hub and party town, Kuntaur now limps along for the few pennies raised from hippo spotting boat trips. The fences are rusted corrugate heaps loosely held together. The roads are rutted mud paths blown across with sand.

There are a few government buildings, the local area council and a department of agriculture complex. As usual the officers are male and the busiest part of any day is when “travel expenses” are handed out after meetings for people who probably came along in the prepaid luxury of a government or NGO pick up truck.

Kuntaur, like the rest of The Gambia also has very high rates of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). FGM has been in the news here in the UK, with pledges against it from the government urged on by female members of the cabinet taking an issue of violent child, gender and sexual abuse seriously and right to the top of the political agenda for a few moments. As seems to happen regularly, from immigration cases to stories raised in parliament, the Girl summit included another tale with a Gambian link. This time it was Jaha Dukureh, an activist in America originally from The Gambia. Despite this growing prominence of Gambian women fighting on the international stage and locally The Gambia still has no effective laws against FGM. Some claim it would drive the practice underground, but then good policing is the answer, just like when Gambia became a base for policing the abolition of the African slave trade.

But I went to Kuntaur as a tourist. I wanted to see a hippopotamus. Whilst I went overseas to work and to see how systems operate and to help develop projects, spotting a hippo in the wild was one of the three “gap year traveller” style things I really, really wanted to do in The Gambia. I travelled with another VSO volunteer and his girl friend. She had worked at the Kuntaur agriculture office before and booked us rooms overnight. The staff were delighted, more do when they learned I could speak some of the local language. We played with the children. We were treated to an amazing breakfast. During which a man came in and shared tea with us.

He’d been the driver taking the local girls to be circumcised by the river. I went quiet, my instinct to shout, my training and the habitual gender norms of being a woman commanding me to be “polite” to my hosts and understanding of another culture, my language too weak to have the argument. My training was wrong. I knew what he had done and what they were talking about. I should have stood up and refused to break bread with someone who breaks children and women. Like Jaha I should have stood up.

A bike ride

The office day drew to a close. I took off the cardigan I wear to combat the air conditioning, put on the jeans I wear to combat ripping my clothes on my gear cogs, and left the office. Despite yesterday’s storm, the fresh feel to the air had dissipated and I was hit by a dry gust of hot air as I left the foyer. The sunlight stung my eyes. I was feeling crotchety and irritable. So, because my gran always tells me to be kind to myself, I went on a bike ride.

There’s a nearby brook that babbles a winding route and nearly connects home to work. However the path involves a cut through a ginnel. For a few nights I’ve sought that ginnel out in a wandering way, inevitably looping around and back to the start of my detour without a glimpse of the brook. Today I cheated. I consulted the internet. Five minutes after strapping on my helmet I was under the railway bridge and on my way to the path to the romantic ideals of summer like a dog in a detective cartoon.

An old Nepalese couple stood on the concrete bridge over the brook, watching the currents eddying over the rooks below. As I passed behind them the sound changed, a consistent rough scratching as my tyres ran smoothly across the municipal gravel pathway. The sour tang of stinging nettles filled the air, each breath demanding that the tension in my soul release itself to make room for summer.

The route is full of meandering curves, perfect for cycling and inducing an unconscious lingering pace. Alone in the solitude of a perfect summer’s evening I rode up to the wooden bridge that gently bows over the brook. At my sauntering speed I could see bubbles bursting calmly on the brown water and the violent green fronds of weeds mellowed by their gentle wafting through the umber brook. A slight hiatus then the momentum of the downward sweep of the bridge pushed me onwards.

Through the shaded loops of gravelly path, passing forks leading to routes as yet unexplored, I cycled on, heart lightened and once again curious about the world. I was surprised to come across the local park seemingly too soon so cycled past. A large group of older people sat in the evening sun as behind them two boys stood in the stream on stepping stone rocks, casting stones into the water as if casting themselves into a 1950’s reading book.

A squirrel bobbed past, intent on some cheerful business, and I came across wild raspberries and blackberries. I stopped for refreshment, the bittersweet bubbles of blackberries bursting, challenging the eater to a game of tart or treat roulette.

Back through another ginnel and home, irritation of the day rinsed away so I can return to problem solving. As I swept cleanly into my street I passed a neighbour. “I should get my bike out”, he said.

I replied, “Yes, it’s lovely. It does make the trip home a lot longer though”.

A trip to the shops down memory lane

Having decided on Wednesday to have a bacon butty for Saturday lunch I took care during my Friday lunch break trip to buy lunch to pick up some bacon. I’ve now become used popping to the huge sainsburys near my office, used to choosing what I fancy for lunch. At first when I came back such a trip would’ve troubled me and I spent several weeks restricting my level of choice to soup rather than the pick and mix variety we have become used to in the UK.

However my shopping trip was inadequate and today dawned with the realisation that I finished the bread from my freezer two weeks ago. So, as on so many Gambian mornings, l popped on my African skirt and a vest and wandered to the corner shop. As I entered the shutters were down on some windows, a half open look supporting the visual look expected for the local reputation of the area. Inside was a tight rabbit warren of shelves packed with jumbled coloured tins and bright biscuit packets.

At first I panicked a little wondering where the bread might be, until I found it round a corner, prices on yellow rectangular stickers on the shelf below. After juggling the whole meal/white choice I double checked the coins I had and picked up a can on pop for a sunny day treat too. I turned around and suddenly remembered that I lived for a year from just this kind of shop. I spotted canned mushrooms, a special import in The Gambia that I only bought once for my New Year’s party. I’d had to walk to the big shop for them. That’s essentially where I was, the expat supermarket at traffic light corner. The same shop smart in The Gambia and yet here in a poor corner of the affluent south east boarded up and an emergency resource for a poorly prepared promised bacon butty. The pop was even the same price, no difference reflecting local average income.

I walked home drinking my pop, no longer saving it until I could wash the lid/use a glass to avoid the risk of Weill’s disease I would have worried about six months ago. Once again the pavements, stubbly grass verges and clean toes came into focus, not as a treat just as something different.

Hey lady, you walk like a champion.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been walking around in a reasonably relaxed mood. I’m getting used to jumping on a train into London. I’m no longer surprised by pavements. I have an umbrella and sunglasses in my bag and pack lighter clothes and a scarf for the weekend in case of sudden changes in the weather. Wandering around, working out my way, solving problems on my own has become normal once again.

Then today I suddenly realised I haven’t been asked out for three months. That is not in itself remarkable; it’s simply not British culture to ask our every woman you see alone. But it was a regular occurrence in The Gambia. And by regular I mean daily if not hourly.

Among my fellow volunteers I developed a bit of a reputation for being queen of the brush off. As I do in the UK I refuse to be chatted up by a racist. So, as happened weekly, when someone begged to talk to me because he wanted a “white wife” I’d ask if he thought white women were better than black. If he said yes I’d calmly tell him that his view is racist and ask him to leave my company as I don’t speak to racists. This generally resulted in a bit of resistance but usually worked eventually. It didn’t help that we lived in an area known globally for sex tourism.

The streets in The Gambia are a male domain. There are women around, especially in the tourist areas, but generally they would be working rather than strolling. The constant catcalls could become very annoying, the “need” to be walked home because I lived in a no-go area meant I always made sure I had at least a taxi fare left, and made friends in choir. Long beach walks in solitude or with a friend were impossible. And the constant threat of attack or harassment became a background hum to my movements.

There were however highlights. Occasionally a passing guy would forget to shout a comment, then add a quick “hi boss lady, can I talk to you?” in a distracted, almost irritable way as if harassing me was a considerable inconvenience but had to be done. They usually made me laugh. And just sometimes it felt nice to share the humanity of the streets. Once the passing “I love you” shouted from a van as I walked in the rain did fit my mood. And the delight of finding out how or why I spoke Wolof made me complicit with taxi drivers when other passengers started bad mouthing me or got an essential watermelon discount.

Overall it’s good to talk. But nice to be seen once again as just a normal person with an unremarkable but equal right to stand on a train platform considering the change of the weather.

Keep Gambia Tidy

The Gambia could be a beautiful country. The sienna sand, tall beige reeds, grasses rustling. I love driving through the country, there are areas that look like English parkland dotted with huge majestic trees, lush mango and cashew groves where mid green leaves give the occasional flash of burnt umber, amber and scarlet, waterlogged fields hemmed by tall palm trees giving a high five to the sky.  It is, famously, a paradise for birds. Green and yellow bee-eaters dart over water, yellow and ochre weavers create their fruit like nests in hanging branches, tiny dusty aubergine and blue speckled doves waddle across fields.  But it is so messy.

It is over a year since I arrived in Gambia. When I left the plane there was a smell. It is the smell of rotting rubbish decomposing in the sun, though I only learned that later. Yesterday as I walked home I noticed that the dumped rubbish stretches the whole way around the path. Most of it doesn’t look new.  Walking past the bigger piles, with vultures and goats picking through them, you have to hold your breath. It is disgusting.

There’s a lovely lane through the garden outside my house. It would be the most idyllic walk to work but at the corner you have to tread carefully through reams of bags and trash. Why? When I arrived I tried to work out where to take my rubbish. It turns out there is a skip 20 minutes’ walk away that is sometimes cleared.  My landlord didn’t want to throw my bag in with his when he drove down there so, as a pedestrian, I looked for another way. Eventually I paid a man D25 (about 50p) a week to add my one bag of rubbish to his load. I hope and assume it is actually thrown in the right place.

There are many reasons there is so much litter here. The baskets and shopping bags that used to accompany every market trip are now discarded in favour of black plastic. There are the very cheap black plastic bags everything comes wrapped in, giving privacy to shoppers in compounds where everyone is expected to share but usually only lasting one trip. Some things, like plastic bottles, are heavily reused, but when the water comes in sachets, the empty plastic is thrown on the floor. This comes from the practice at home where it will be swept up later but there is no one to do that in the street. There are no real accessible public bins, no public waste collection and, even after a national Set Settal (Operation Clean Up) where the country stops every last Saturday morning of the month to clean, the resulting waste lies uncollected until it simply returns to being debris in the street until next time. There’s a lot of “stick” and not a lot of “carrot”. My little walk to work is an ideal spot for dropping rubbish unseen by any one collecting fines for those “illegally dumping”. People keep their houses clean but the country outside suffers as the infrastructure to keep it clean and tidy is lacking. Until that comes, alongside a change in the pride people have in their country, The Gambia  will be like a beautiful country, but with a bag over its head.

What to do next

Over the past few years of my career questioning I have heard “find your passion and do that” or “do what you love and you’ll love what you do” many times. Yesterday it occurred to me that that was all very well but there is a) a question of money so it’s a pretty elitist mantra and b) it conflicts with my knowledge that once you start being paid for something you used to do, it loses its charm unless you are being paid. It also implies that you should only have one love and that it’s a waste of time if you are not making money from it. My instincts are more towards the polymath, the things I love include practising writing in different styles, arguing effectively on behalf of other people, sharing food and knowing how to host people, painting and experimenting with different media, and trying to find the elements I love in activities that are new.  I’d like to enjoy what I do at work, I know I need to see a social value and vocation in my work, but I don’t want to go home and have nothing else in my life that I love.

Before I came to The Gambia, a friend told me she thought I’d never come home, that I have found my vocation. That is partly true. One day I was sat in the back of a pick-up and suddenly I knew what I wanted to do next. But what I also found is that I need a new set of skills and training to add the value I want to add.  And so I will go back to university in September. However, the end of my placement is due in March. This gives me six months to fill.

A few weeks ago this question of what to do next was filling every waking moment.  Do I try to stay? Do I stay but with a different partner where my skills are more in line with their plans? Do I book a backpacking tour around the world? Do I get a job and save hard for the austerity of a student life?

I was asked to stay in my placement. A new manager started meaning there are much greater opportunities to make a change to the practices and performance of the institution. It was a tempting offer; my own space to live in, a hot country that I now know, a small income, nice friends, real work to do. But the life of a volunteer is a little like a stone falling through a lake. The ripples spread out into the partners and future, but for the stone you just quickly pass through and then rest on a muddy floor. All you can see is tiny changes close to you, not the wider change your work will lead to. The model works but, with a new partnership it is a frustrating experience to break the stagnant water. After  a lot of soul searching, it turns out that I am tired and would like the comforts of home for at least a few weeks. I turned down the offer to stay, in the knowledge that the ripples I started will still be moving when I’ve gone.

And so I decided what is could do best is to concentrate on leaving The Gambia well. Say goodbye to those I love here, spend time appreciating the many joys of this country, and take advantage of the time I have left. I can watch the sunset over a tropical ocean, I can drink a beer in a yard under a canopy thick with stars, I can dance to African music and laugh with children. When I get home I don’t know what I will do. I do know that my slippers are under a bed at my Mum’s house. And I do know that, at least for a short while, I have a comfortable bed there. When I am home, when I am truly finished in The Gambia, then I will decide how to fill my precious six-month break. Until then, my thoughts are on the opportunities in this moment, on finding what I love here in these last few weeks.

A dinner party

One day during induction one of the female volunteers called me over and said “This country can get a bit much at times. Sometimes we just meet for tea and female company”. It was like that day in a film about school days where the popular girls agree to let the glasses (and in this case ridiculous sunhat) wearing new girl into the clique.  Soon it became a gathering of European women, a weekly refuge from the male dominated environments we work and live in and a moment to stop looking out for every possible cultural faux pas.

As is the way with volunteers, women have come and gone from our little band but still, generally weekly and at least once a month, we try to meet up for a night of what has come to be known as European Women’s Forum. In our time we have pooled our resources to buy a bottle of wine or two, drunk tea and eaten biscuits while chatting into the small hours, shared files and photos across our hard drives. We had a Christmas party with treats sent by Helen, a returned EWF. We decorated a bar with posters and balloons for Janneke’s  leaving do. And this week two members, Nicola and Ellie, celebrated their birthdays plus I had a Christmas pudding that needed eating. So we had a dinner at my house.

Originally I thought, “I’ll just steam the pudding” then decided that was far too dull. Then I thought a light noodle soup would suffice. But no, my friends have long lamented the lack of a roast dinner so, though I can’t do that, I opted for a lemon chicken pot roast with cubed chips as roast potatoes.  We had no wine but everyone turned up having had tough days and wanted to share stories over tea and water so that was perfect. Ellie also came with cheese and biscuits and a box of frosting that was left over from her weekend birthday party. An excellent alternative to brandy butter, it was added to the menu.

I kept tasting the chicken and it was incredibly bitter. However, with a dash of mustard and sugar at the end it perked up. At that moment all the lights went out. We sat in the dark with candles and peered at our plates. We chatted about how much chicken should be eaten off the bone (most bones were picked clean), we shared stories of the day, and we swapped concerns and observations on our lives here. At least with no power you could see the blue flames licking up the burning pudding as I brought it in. By the end we had over eaten and talked for hours. Stresses were washed away with the dirty plates, and we knew more about each other. Birthdays were marked and friendship was marked too. I think everyone went away feeling happy and full. It was everything that our EWF is there for.

Gratitude in Gambia

Over the past few weeks I have noticed I am tallying what I won’t miss. I won’t miss the litter. I won’t miss the terrible roads. I won’t miss the begging taught to infants.  I am looking forward to a change of beer options, to being with old friends and family, to a reliable power supply, sprung mattress and showers at the temperature I choose.  And yet it has been said by the wise and seldom listened to that the key to happiness is gratitude.  Every moment is a gift, and within every moment is an opportunity to be grasped, with another one usually around the corner if you choose not to grasp it. And most moments are joyful, though there are moments of torment that still contain the opportunities to be brave, to tackle and injustice, to find a new path or to offer comfort. David Steindl –Rast makes this very point in his TED talk and it inspired me to stop counting negatives and to think, what am I grateful for?

When I left the UK, many of my friends were being given the gift of new life and a new family, I know of at least nine people who have children born within the last year. I however was given the gift of coming to The Gambia. And within that, like learning how to parent, are so many opportunities to be grateful for. Firstly is the people, regular readers will know of my friendships within the Gambian community, my choir friends, my friends of choir friends, my fellow VSOs. Some of these people I will never see again but we have shared some wonderful times this year. Through them I have learnt how to find a tasty liver or omelette butty late at night, what rice pudding with peanuts tastes like (nice), how to speak a language I didn’t even know existed two years ago. These people are wonderful. Those who I am friends with are kind hearted and generous, have huge concern and empathy and have shown me so much care. We have had joyful moments, on Friday as the sun set the power came back so we danced in Mardu’s house and laughed with each other.  I have looked at my watch at reggae festivals and realised it’s nearly five am and yet I still seem to be dancing in a field in heels and a summer dress, when at 11 I was falling asleep watching a concert. And just this morning the small children in my compound rushed to shake my hand as I left for work, well greeted for the day ahead.

Now it’s colder overnight every morning I choose whether or not to be brave and have a cool shower or to be nesh and wash in the evening. I can challenge myself to leave the house without cash and manage. The moments where there is no bread for breakfast have meant I learned to make Scotch pancakes and when there is I can be grateful for the cheerful bakery that opened on my own street to sell hot bread baguettes for 10p. I’m grateful for the head torch that means I can read and all the many VSOs who’ve left books in the office library which mean I’m never short of reading material. I have learned how to budget hard and how to stick to my limits without too much stress through living on the allowance. And to appreciate that, however hard I find it, like I was in the UK I’m still in the middle classes of this society and some people are struggling so much more and so much longer than I ever am.

When I started here it was a challenge to leave the house, knowing how many men on the street would bother me and not take “no, go away” for an answer. There’s an opportunity there too, to engage in conversation, some of which are pleasant, to learn to stand up for myself and not passively accept unwanted hassle. And so I am grateful for what I’ve learned even if I could do without so much practice of the new skills. The idea of a day without being bothered is still very appealing. And for every foolish man asking for my “nice name” there’s a woman selling breakfast butties, a child shaking hands, a stranger offering a lift in kindness, or a van that will wait for me as I walk in the hot sun to counteract them.

When I am home will I forget how much of a joy it is to have water not only at your beck and call but also at the temperature you want? Will I forget to be grateful or relieved every time I turn on a light switch? Will I pause outside my new workplace and be grateful that I know that I will not be molested or mauled or treated as a second class citizen because of my gender and age? Will I remember that poverty strips away the opportunities that people have, the opportunities they should be given in every moment, and that though those who are living in poverty might be able to be happy in a moment that their choices are so curtailed that their lives and dreams can never be fulfilled? Will I forget the pressure they feel to show that they are managing, that poverty is not stripping away their dignity and ability to treat their friends and family well? Will I forget the efforts made to hide the shame of poverty? And will I forget that these people who are my friends who I have had a wonderful life with?

Hungry for change

Two weeks ago Oxfam published an index about food. Specifically the data ranks countries in terms of the ability to get enough to eat. It covers having enough, affordability, food quality and diabetes and obesity. The data can be reached via this link: http://www.oxfam.org.uk/what-we-do/good-enough-to-eat

Gambia comes out badly. In the chart it is four sectors away from the bottom, with the affordability of food being the most challenging indicator. This is not surprising.  Gambia, particularly the rural areas rely on subsistence farming. Over sixty per cent of the population is below the overall poverty line, and forty per cent are below the food poverty line. The World Bank says that  “if income security were defined to mean a safety margin of more than 25 per cent above the poverty line, less than a quarter of the population could be classified as being in a non-precarious position.”[1]  There has been a hungry season in Gambia for many years, as food supplies are strictly rationed for the last two months of before the harvest and, in good years, that will see a family though. In bad years such as 2012 when the groundnut harvest failed and other crops had very low yields, this rationing is pushed to extremes with meals skipped and what is left being very small.

Here, women usually take responsibility for horticulture in gardens growing vegetables such as tomatoes, aubergine, cabbage, onions, potatoes and lettuce. They are also often responsible for growing rice and other grains. They are over fifty per cent of The Gambia’s agricultural labour force.  And last week I was able to learn about how they are trying to cope not only with hunger but also increase their economic and influencing power.

Mariama and Hajateneng told me about their women’s cooperatives; groups which work together to run project work, farm and tend communal garden. They told me that these gardens enhance their diets but also give them an income which means that their children can go to school. Without the efforts of the women, education for their children would not happen. Hajateneng showed me her group’s bank book, a vital savings plan in a community which would otherwise lack access to banking services and which makes sure they can sustain their gardens. Mariama told me about some training she’d attended in Dakar at which she bought seeds and transformed the way her village planted so that there is now food throughout the year, not just six months. It is such small actions that form development and show not only why it takes time but also why it is worth it.

These two women have a vision. They want all the women of their region, the most remote and often ignored region of the country, to form a federation of cooperatives. This will mean they can raise more funds, support projects with larger amounts and increase the food supply in their region. They hold themselves accountable and promote transparency, honesty and cooperation. They also said “we have learned about human rights and advocacy. So we know we need a bigger voice. When we are a federation the government and civil society will have to listen to us”.  With support and information these women and those who follow them can and will end hunger in the region. They don’t need leaders, in a very male dominated society they are leading themselves. They are inspirational.

Also Hajateneng said they need a taller fence on the orchard to stop the animals getting in. If anyone can help please let me know and I’ll pass on your details.

[1]http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTPOVERTY/EXTPA/0,,contentMDK:20204377~menuPK:435735~pagePK:148956~piPK:216618~theSitePK:430367~isCURL:Y,00.html. Accessed 28.1.2014I

Happy New Year

If anything is a festival of ‘hoping the sun comes up tomorrow’ it is New Year. The date is merely the passage of time as we mark it. And it can be wonderful but it is also without a doubt the holiday that people complaint the most about. It’s expensive and ultimately a bit pointless for many people I know, freezing ankles and thighs in a wet or slushy city in the middle of the night with a full bus meaning an expensive taxi is the only option. I have never really been in that school, for starters I long ago realised that the pound payment for the cloakroom was a cheap price for a warm coat at the end of a night out in Manchester. And that there are much better ways to spend New Year.

My family, like many I know in the North of England, join Scotland in the tradition of first footing. At the end of the old year someone (or everyone) will leave the house, preferably by the back door. And the first foot in the front door after midnight will be by a person carrying a tray of symbols of things you wish for the home that year; coal for warmth, a candle for light, bread for food, money for, well, money, and whisky for good cheer. However, over the past years I have introduced this idea to a number of very blank looking friends. And this year was no exception.

For six months I have had the urge to cook Coq au Vin, so took the opportunity to invite fellow VSOs for dinner. As midnight approached we set up first footing and left the tray outside the house. We headed to the roof and watched the fireworks around the bay. We shared fizzy wine and grape juice with each other and my neighbours then headed inside and brought with us warmth (not hugely necessary), food (definitely necessary), light (even for a night or two would be nice), money (well, there is a volunteer allowance), and good cheer (fine, we have that sorted).  We sat up chatting and drinking red wine from cartons until after the call to morning prayer. I fell into bed, and, as I’d used the board from the base as a table extension, I promptly fell straight through and spent the next few hours in denial that I was at a seventy degree angle.

   

The next day is a big day for the Christian community here. Many of my church friends were amazed that I see it as a purely secular holiday and hadn’t spent the night in church. But Mathias wanted to take me to see the masquerades in Banjul the following day. In our new his-n-hers outfits we headed into the capital. The masquerades are run by hunting societies. There are a number of these and some do still go hunting. It’s a largely Christian tradition, so the hunting season closes for Lent. They also have displays in which they build costumes to represent their mastery over wild beasts, usually stuffed heads shipped from Europe and America as taxidermy goes out of fashion. The excitement seems to be in seeing new animals and there is a great honour in being the first person to wear a head. The competition element is who can get the most unusual head.

     

The streets of Banjul are crowded, have open gutters and are grey and dirty, with very few maintained road surfaces. The crowds on New Year’s Day were extreme, pushing the unwary into a sewer or over a kerb without fear, especially if a masquerade, kids setting off fire crackers or man waving a flare was in the way. We found friends who invited us for lunch, oysters which I normally skip on avoiding illness grounds.  We ten re-braved the crowds, watching a few strange apparitions wearing armour made of shells, an armadillo and horns topped with a headdress of a dead animal or horns wandering past dancing in white socks. There are three speeds of dance and the rest of the society beats drums and clappers or weaves around the masquerade, one with a pipe.  It is in a way interesting, like being a t a rush bearing and in a similar way to visiting a zoo in terms of people seeing exotic animals. I was the only person in the crowd near me to identify the polar bear.

But I was tired and seeing another stuffed animal head with a man dancing underneath it starts to wane after a few hours, as well as my legs starting to complain that they had already spent the night trying to climb a mattress so sitting would be good. Plus, trying to leave Banjul at night is, like on any new year, the fight for an overpriced taxi whilst wishing a night bus will pass. I watched the fireworks as we fought the crowd and waited for a taxi who thought D200 (about £4 but also about a day’s income for me) was a reasonable price for a seven mile journey. The fireworks were lovely. And then we went home, and found that I had put my bed back together. This time when I fell into it I didn’t fall through.