Hot Half-Term

It's felt like a long three weeks mostly away from the office. First a major meeting by the senior managers of my organisation which descended on Dakar and kept our local office on its uppers for a couple of weeks. Then a trip out of town to see some of our project work in Kaolack and Kaffrine Regions, thence to a major sub-regional training centre which we've led on developing in The Gambia.

It was a good trip, albeit seemingly spent more in people's offices talking to them about how things were going rather than actually seeing stuff actually 'on the ground' (though as was later explained by our project manager, most of that isn't really taking place yet until infrastructure and trained personnel are in place). So, a very insightful trip to various hospital offices from Kaolack, to Kaffrine, to Koungeul, thence to Nioro du Rip, taking in various clinical building projects that are nearing completion. Well, we sure clocked up them miles, so thank gawd the road has improved somewhat since I passed through the same region almost precisely a year ago. Kaolack was hot in the late afternoon when we arrived, and served as our base for the next two days. Can't really get the measure of the place other than it is a busy town, with impressively large piles of groundnuts and salt stocked near to the inland port on the great, wide estuarine creek which stretches out to the south of the town. The heat theme continued for the next few days, with Koungeul and Nioro finding us having roasting discussions beneath the sun in the hospital compounds; and no shortage of snakes sunbathing on the tarmac on the road back to Kaolack.

To get to Banjul in The Gambia, we struck south towards the Keur Ayib / Farafenni border crossing. We were at the tail-end of the rainy season (l'hivernage) and this area is noticeably more forested than in the region we'd been in further north, especially in what pass for shallow river valleys. But the remaining presence of the rain made itself more felt as we crossed the Bolong Bao....

Justify this title!

This is Dakar. The most westerly point in mainland Africa - la Pointe des Almadies - is just 2kms from here. And the most westerly point in the great landmass that is Asia, Europe, and Africa. So if the Americas are 'West', then we are 'East'; and if we are East, then this is as far west as you can get without getting very wet or, if you're really stubborn, drowning.

It's bloody hot tonight; the rainy season - as brief as it is - is fading out and so all we are left with are nights of heat, humidity, and still air. And just to make everyone really comfortable, we're in the midst of our second powercut of the day. But a large bottle of Castel Beer, left in the depths of the freezer until tooth-achingly cold, makes things just that bit more civilised. In the background, the hum of the neighbours generators and the barking of dogs, the bleating of sheep kept in pens on the terraced roofs, blissfully unaware of what Tabaski will mean for them (a bad day for herbivores and vegetarians).

Hard to imagine we've already been in Senegal over a year now....