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?

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.

Do they know it’s Christmas?

In mid-November I updated my iPod to start playing Christmas tunes, at first occasionally popping up on shuffle but then with a dedicated playlist. I have often heard “oh, it doesn’t feel like Christmas when it’s warm” from those who’ve spent it abroad and wondered if that was true. Does it really take a robin bob-bob-bobbin through the snow to feel like Christmas? Certain charity pop songs have it that, what with poverty, “the burning sun” and the “bitter sting of tears” it is particularly difficult to appreciate the season of goodwill in a very poor African country. As my birthday falls on Christmas Eve experimenting with the presence of the Christmas spirit was a bit of a high risk gamble but we can but try.

When people say “it doesn’t feel like Christmas” they mean the atmosphere. So what makes Christmas?

Religion

Though for not all, Christmas is first and foremost a religious feast. Even some of those who wouldn’t dream of making church a feature of a normal Sunday morning think getting to a church at Christmas is part of the season. Of course, my church prepared in the way prescribed under canon law, and the practice of Advent with purple and pink candles lit around a wreath each week, sermons about preparation and meetings about the liturgical accuracy of various elements.  For years I have celebrated my birthday on 23rd (Birthday Eve) so that friends and family can attend the vigil Mass. This year I had to shut down my birthday party early so that Mags and I could get to church in time for carols.  We were at church from 9 until 1am. Decorations had been added, the crib was out and weirdly contained a stuffed donkey, a camel with a missing leg and models of various shapes so that “baby” Jesus was over twice as big as his mother. Religious Christmas was fully ticked.

Music

For me, like many of my friends, as a life-long chorister music is essential. My sister Katharine will generally sleep an extra five hours on Christmas day after a month in which her five choirs are all performing to the best of their abilities, often with three concerts in a day. New music is learnt and descants are polished until they sparkle. And so, was there music? Well yes. In September as ever I was learning a few new Christmas tunes, singing “waaw, tey la Noel” (“yes, today is Christmas”) into the humid rainy season air. I myself was teaching “Gaudete” and “The Angel Gabriel” and allocating solos and pointing out the music in the book for “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” which had, until then, been passed on by ear.  I had a visitor to the choir and had to wear the dreaded asobi again, managing to give Mags a shorter version which made her feel like Sister Mary Roberts, the novice in Sister Act.  There was the predictable last minute switching of a solo and the under-prepared soprano ‘star’ messing it up to be out sung by me with the correct pitches in the choral sections.  The addition of a competing soloist row definitely made it Christmassy music wise.

Family

Christmas is a time of friends and family and it is this that is obviously the hardest to make up for when away from home. I luckily had a sister to stay, bringing traditions and presents from afar, like the original gifts symbols of something intangible about who I am to them and they are to me.  We opened gifts on Christmas morning, sang along to the Muppet Christmas Carol and ate bacon butties. It was ever thus. Yet even without Mags, I had the family spirit around me. I had been invited for Christmas lunch in October, I had small stocking like gifts for those who have cared for me this year, sweets and balloons, reading books and colouring pencils for the children and cake, photos and wine for the adults. We visited the Assine family, ate there, then rushed to the original invitation with Auntie Cor, ate again (oh yes, we ate too much in seasonal style) then on to the Mendys for a quick greeting. We missed the VSO party because it was in the afternoon and we had too many families to visit, and instead we went to a traditional Christmas day masquerade. Eventually we got home and, with our first glass of wine of the day, skyped Dad and Katharine and had a stilted chat. There was so much family that too many were missed (Gran and Grandad, Mum, Irene, this especially means you). So far, so Christmassy.

Parties

I love parties at Christmas. Everyone is looking forward to them and in the mood for some good cheer. Christmas parties almost organise themselves. And my birthday is amongst the best.  For years I have had a dinner with select friends but my 30^th topped that off in spectacular style. I wanted a change so had a house party. Mum sent a Birthday present of cash to pay for food and drink, and a new dress. Mags toiled in the kitchen, Natalie circulated and pitched in, I meandered around feeling glamorous.  So many people came and I was thrilled. By Boxing Day another party was in full flow, this time a beach BBQ. We played touch rugby and swam in the sea before breaking off some cake, pouring a good whisky and watching the sunset as green phosphorescence lit up the ocean waves.

Decorations

Do they know it’s Christmas? I think the power bill of my local supermarket must have doubled. It’s covered in lights, there’s tinsel on every surface and every window I covered with plastic friezes of Father Christmas and snowmen and stars and trees. Every Christian house you visit has balloons on the ceiling, foil garlands hanging overhead and shining baubles around the place. Decorations are not a problem. Mine seem very tame in comparison, despite one VSO who was amazed at seeing tinsel on my dining table. Even the VSO Christmas party had a tree and various shiny things, collected by VSOs gone by to add festive cheer.

Weather

Ok, so it is hot and sandy and you can go out without a coat. But if the cold, rainy or snowy weather that makes you want to be inside in the warm was the only thing that made Christmas it’d be Christmas in Manchester on at least 178 days every year. And this year we got to swim in the sea, is there a better Christmas present?

Christmas is what you make it. If you see it as a festival of hope and light in a dark world, why would your poverty stop you celebrating? Poverty doesn’t stop people being human, though it severely and cripplingly limits how you can express that humanity. For one day, your faith says “there is something different” and, for Catholics at least, people should be working to make that difference every day.  But to wish well for others, to save what you have and do something to mark a time that is special to you through your faith or family, everyone knows what that is. And it’s not the weather that stops it feeling like Christmas, it’s forgetting how to hope and work for the best, not being happy that you are alive, and failing to celebrate being human together.  None of that was missing in my Christmas. But knowing that another Christmas is here, with the promise of change for a more equal society but that it’s a promise still unfulfilled from last year, well, that is what makes us try to make a difference every day.

* Thanks to Natalie Smith for a few of the photos

Oh, you have a stranger

My sister Margaret has had a rather adventurous year. Alongside her usual growing achievements at work and glamorous city centre life, she spent a quarter of the year travelling South America, leaping rusted engines, climbing ancient treks and dancing the night away in . And yet, clearly, this was not enough.  My sister was coming for Christmas. And so I entered December with a growing level of excitement, booked leave and, on a day without any power, made a plan so that we didn’t waste the time without sight-seeing.

As I booked the taxi I was surprised that church friends wanted to come to the airport to greet her, I’d planned a quiet reunion and slower entry into Gambian society. But come along they did. Mags came through the gate and I was overjoyed to see a face that I have known almost all my life. A quirk of the Gambian English teaching leads visitors to be referred to as strangers. So here was my “stranger”, a person who I helped to name and who knows things about me that I probably don’t even know myself. We had technically already celebrated Christmas together in July and part of the challenge of this year for me was to be away from home for the festive season.  But Margaret knows how to make an event work, how to create a celebration, and obviously we have so many shared traditions.  She was laden with bags and parcels, including unopened crisps from her in flight picnic which she immediately donated to a grateful sister.

We got home and had a night of chicken salad and white wine. Mags was a bit shocked by the requirement to say grace before meals, and the way of being almost dismissive about the food being served; the lads with us continued to play on their phones and camera while we sat down to eat. And through her eyes I could see that it is an odd contrast. I have already ensured every grace I say thanks those people involved in the growth and preparation of the food, not just God. But this was the first small sign that Margaret would bring much more than crisps, her perspective would add an important element of reflection and consideration to a society that I missed when I started due to the need to integrate. Not only that, but she gave me a good excuse to see everything I would otherwise miss.

We started with Christmas decorations, getting a few twigs to act as a tree, adding lights and baubles. There were paper chains and hanging decorations and of course snowflakes everywhere, tartan in deference to the hot climate. Presents from home appeared under the twigs, and an angel who looks like me apparently. But this was a tropical Christmas and the next day was filled with watching a crocodile lumber back into the sun less than a metre from our feet, with haggling at the fish market and wandering the sandy streets. We spent a day at Serrekunda market, which is far too long, and I got us caught up on a hunt for fabric which took us into the depths of the meat market where Mags had to batter flies away from her face and back onto the piles of brains.  We met Gambian friends and were invited for mbahal (a kind of rice studded with nuts and beans and laced with oil), we held a birthday party for me which included baking a pineapple cake on top of the gas ring. And, from a different meal,  I got food poisoning leading to Mags having to eat the ice cream pudding of our posh meal out in the local clinic.

              

My stranger made Christmas. I almost cried when the liquorice allsorts came out, I had jam from my best friend for my birthday breakfast, we set off screaming rocket balloons to amuse children and ate stollen for breakfast (“was it a gift?” “no, it was stollen”). A hamper of treats to last the rest of my stay was produced, and we watched the Boxing Day sun set over a tropical ocean while drinking a whisky. But most importantly my sister was here. She talked sense and cast her eye over how I am fairing. She said I seemed very frustrated, and helped me think through a few challenges around leaving. The day after she left I woke up in the morning with a pit of emptiness. “Margaret went home” I thought, “she isn’t here”.  But I was grateful she had come. I had become unknown to myself, too busy adapting and coping to think and feel and react to what is happening around me. My sister had left, but it was never her who was the stranger, it was me. It just took a visitor to see that clearly.

                                                       

Tobaski

Warning: this post contains images of slaughter and animal sacrifice

Ninety per cent of the Gambian population is Muslim, mainly Sunni. Most of my colleagues and people meet pray five times a day. I am woken in the morning by a call to prayer and plan workshops and programme to take account of prayer times. I’m used to people explaining their family tree by saying “my brother, same father and mother” or “my sister, from the same father different mother” or talking about their co-wives. I enter shops and work places saying “salaam alacum” and am careful not to stand on prayer mats with shoes on.  

So, when Eid al Adha, commonly known here as Tobaski, occurs the whole country prepares. Tobaski commemorates the Koranic story (also appearing in the Bible, although in a slightly different form) of when Abraham had such faith in God that he was going to sacrifice his own son. At the last moment, God sent a ram instead. Therefore, Muslims who can afford it should sacrifice a ram to remind themselves of how much less God is asking of them than he asked of Abraham in being willing to sacrifice his child. If a ram isn’t affordable other animals can be killed but, as my landlord said, “a ram is number one.” And so, for weeks there have been rams for sale around the Kombos. Westfield, outside my church in particular, has been packed with heaving sheep, braying loudly and wandering about, gradually having initials painted on to their sides. The cheapest ram is about D6,000 (around £120) which in a poor country where around 60 percent of the population are below the international poverty line it is a very prohibitive cost for many. I did ask if a group of houses could come together to slaughter as we would for a ram roast in northern villages,  but apparently this isn’t allowed under the religion. Instead a third of the meat should be given to those who couldn’t afford their own. Still, I always feel sensitive to the shame caused by being poor and the efforts and sacrifices people will make to hide their poverty and I had the uncomfortable feeling that this doctrine wasn’t really helping.

Tobaski was announced to be on Tuesday 15^th as expected, but reliant on moon sightings in Saudi Arabia for confirmation.  On the morning I took the excuse for a lie in and dosed in the cool breeze wafting over my bed, listening to the prayers roll out across the praying fields. There was a short period of silence, some braying and then another period of silence, occasionally broken by the clash of a knife sharpening against a stone.  I showered and dressed into my parish feast dress, after all this is also a feast and like at Christmas, everyone would be in their finery.

I headed outside and watched my compound family butchering the two rams they had bought. There was a strange mix of efficient butchery and what looked like uncontrolled hacking as the shoulders were removed and the carcass was skinned neatly yet the spine was bashed with a machete. The intestines were sorted for what is edible, traditionally as in deer hunting the liver is eaten first, some of the waste was buried and some simply thrown on a nearby trash heap. It seemed strange that the new skins weren’t kept or turned into leather somehow, apparently in the past they’ve all been collected and sold to Italian shoemakers. Finally the head was skinned to be kept with the hooves to make head and foot soup at a later date.  “Have you ever seen anything like this before?” my landlord Seikou asked repeatedly. I replied  that of course I grew up near a butcher’s shop and have seen many animals butchered but admittedly, never on a patch of concrete in my back garden.

A feast definitely requires a neat house so I then took the time to tidy round, and delivered salibo to my compound family in the form of a box of biscuits and some sweets and cash for the children. Salibo appears to be a little like stockings at Christmas, or trick or treat at Halloween. Ideally the children go round from house to house, greet the elder man of the house and hope he’ll give them a delasi. Having taken a bit of advice I gave my offering straight to the mother Binta so that she could share it as she saw fit.  Later, in the street, I was basically mobbed by the children I often play with and handed out a delasi and a couple of sweets to them all. The ones who remembered my name and were polite got the slightly better deal.  My compound brought me a plate of raw meat, which I had promised the share with my cleaner who couldn’t afford a ram, then later a steaming dish of domoda (spicy peanut stew with rice) made from the animals killed behind my bedroom.

I had the delightful Asha staying with me. Asha was a public health expert volunteering upcountry who was in the Kombos preparing to go home and, as a devout married Muslim, she prefers our largely female secure house to the shared house option.  Asha is funny and interesting, happy to explain and answer my almost rude levels of questioning about her faith and upbringing. She made sure I ate properly every day, naturally and unobtrusively checking I am actually looking after myself. She also took me round the corner to a friend’s compound wear we ate ram that tasted like spicy lamb shanks and was amazingly tender. I was stuffed full, and glad for the meat to supplement a diet that is becoming quite meagre.

And in that spirit I then headed over to find some of the other VSOs who were enjoying a barbeque at Joe’s. My salibo at that stage was red wine in cartons, which was much more appreciated than a box of biscuits. Plus it was actually as drinkable as the only bottled wine we can afford and a bit cheaper which counts as a good discovery. We drank, listened to music, ate grilled prawns and pork. It was the least hallal ending to what had otherwise been a trip into a real Muslim feast.

Parish Feast

1^st October is the feast of St. Therese of Lieseux, the 19^th Century French nun after whom our church is named. Therefore on the 6^th we celebrated our parish feast.  Ours is the biggest parish in the diocese and we have four choirs which came together to provide the music. We have been practising for weeks. The whole parish was similarly preparing, there was an asobe for sale, a particular fabric so that all parishioners could have clothes made out of the same material. There were requests for auction goods and volunteer to sell food at the party which would follow after the service. The service itself was held in the school playground rather than the church to accommodate the numbers attending.

I woke in the morning and donned my asobe. Having put heels on for the occasion I took a taxi. Getting a car can be tricky but as one rounded the corner the passengers, dressed in the same fabric as me, called the driver to stop and I was given a seat. I followed my co-worshippers in to the school yard and found the choir. Many were excited that I had worn the fabric and I received compliments of “I like your style”.  As the list of intentions were read I listened carefully, waiting to see if my intention had been added. Unfortunately not, as a prayer to celebrate my grandparent’s diamond (60^th) wedding anniversary. It was added to Thursday’s intentions instead, the actual day of their anniversary but not a mass I could attend. I said a little prayer anyway and thought about the family party taking place 3000 miles away.

On the front row of the choir I had the TV camera in my face. I already know people watch to see if I can say the words when I’m singing (I should hope so, we were practising every day for a month!) The mass wound on, a sermon was said, the children presented a play about the life of St Therese, offertory gifts were brought, banners and dancers added to the processions. It lasted four and a half hours.  The only sour note was a very long collection in which various people were brought to the front to be awarded “someone [e.g. couple, grandfather, mother] of the day” certificates. This is a fundraising ruse to ask the congregation to “support” them by adding a donation to the pot on the altar. I am not a big fan of the church collections anyway, especially from such a poor community and the after mass party was clearly going to raise significant funds in a way that is familiar to any community group in the world. Yet this “people of the day” element lasted for over an hour, with the congregation being chastised to give more and more, in the middle of Mass.

After the service I sat with the Mendy family, who remind me of my own in many ways. They had brought a picnic of fish and rice, some wine and were creating a big family table. As their adopted daughter I shared the meal and the wine, played with the children and joked with the extended family. Later I sat with the choristers and ate pork soup which was a very tasty stew with a hint of without the beans. As the bar ran dry I decided to head home, picking up another taxi. When I first came to Africa there was an idea of what a mass might be like. The feast certainly outdid expectations.