les Davey de France

from the Saint Matthew Passion :

Good Friday is a working day like any other. Well I say that, but because Easter Monday is a public holiday that means that the traffic on Good Friday evening is even worse than usual. For this reason, and with memories of services scheduled for 6pm which started very late because half the folk were stuck in traffic jams, the Good Friday service was scheduled for 8pm till 9pm. There was quite a good turn-out - I think the later time probably helped a lot ! - and we finished just a little after 9 to reflect the fact that we started just a little after 8. Afterwards we scuttled out having missed the optimum 9:20 tram that connects with a nice bus that gets you home just about about an hour later. We hopped on the first tram that came, when ... Catastrophe ! The tram had to wait for the firemen to come because someone had been taken ill on the tram. Good distance vision enabled us to see the person taken ill. It looked to us like the kind of illness you get from excessive co...

There were four different circumstances in which we ate : 1) in the training centre, where good local food was prepared and served carefully. The local food includes a lot of fish and rice. One meal contained tripe. Pity my colleague asked because I generally operate on the "if you don't know what it is don't worry about it" principle. 2) in restaurants, chosen because they cater for white folk. Sometimes the food was very good. Sometimes it was OK. Generally it was western-style (grilled local fish came with chips or sauté potatoes, for example, or there were dishes like coq au vin, etc...) One restaurant was great fun, run by someone left over from colonial times, it was Rick's bar in Casablanca, it really was. 3) in the hotel where we stayed, the food was atrocious. No, really, it was ghastly. The breakfasts were OK - just bread and jam, but the evening meal was awful. If I ever go back there's no way I'll eat that again. I'd rather buy a bunc...

OK. It is important to stay as healthy as possible. So a couple of weeks ago I went to see the doctor and we discussed malaria, yellow fever, etc. etc. I came away with some anti-diarrhoea pills (he made me accept them) and jabs for tetanus, diptheria and polio. For malaria, seeing it was the dry season when they are fewer and less active I proposed to use anti-mosquito preparations and take malaria medication if I had any sign of fever. Next stop the pharmacy. I bought a BIG bottle of spray on factor 50+ sunscreen. I bought some anti-mosquito spray you put on your clothes and some you put on your skin. I also got some smelly inhalation oil because the little critters don't like strong smells. Then the next thing to consider is the heat. For that you drink bottled water, and lots of it. At times more than 3 litres a day. Then there's the general bugs. One problem is that the water is drinkable but has different microbes in than we are used to, so it will give you the ru...