Not an average Monday

Today I decided I’m going to get a move on with ‘making a difference’. So I sat and wrote a communications strategy proposal and worked all through lunch and kept writing until I finished it. This will primarily involve setting up a blog that will keep donors and potential volunteers informed, whilst keeping the homepage dynamic and feed into the microfinance field. Then there will be a good old-fashioned newsletter with a modern edge as a hand-out to clients to keep them up to date with company news and new products and to create some level of rapport between staff and clients. I thanked Youtube for its up-to-date marketing tutorials that included seminars from non-profit organisations.

It was very quiet in the office, with only the hum of deep thought and keyboards clicking. At one point James, who was employed to chase up and monitor loan defaulters, turned to me and said in earnest, “Fiona, do you believe in mermaids?” Entirely baffled as to the context in which he was talking and wondering whether the question could at all be a serious one, I waited for him to continue… “Because, I’ve seen this video on Youtube, and they look real”, he turned his computer so I could see, and sure enough in large on the screen were women in the sea with long scaly and quite beautiful blue fish tails.

On the way home, Isaac took me to see a tailor to have some trousers made, and I flicked through some fading 80s magazines to select the style I wanted and was properly measured. I got in from work to discover Troels hitting a rat to death in the bathroom with a frying pan. I asked him if he wanted to go for a swim with me, which he did, so we took a taxi to Labardi beach and swam until the sun went down and the moon came up to replace it. Then we went to one of the beach bars for a cocktail. After about ten minutes, it was pretty obvious that they didn’t actually have any of the ingredients for the pina coladas to hand and had embarked on some kind of mission out of a desire for our tourist cedis. Meanwhile I was getting viciously attacked by violent vampire mosquitos that could fly against the sea wind and had teeth when they bit into you, so we decided to leave.  Back at the pad we collected Leonard and Sonja the American Peace Corps volunteer, and headed to the Senegalese Italian restaurant for the opening night.

Through the glass front, the ice-cream parlour has bright lights where you can sit and order frozen desserts like banana split, waffles, torta cioccolato and dolce mattone. And the outdoor section was mood-lit with the glow of the wood-burning oven and low lighting, where stood two of our now very tired Senegalese flatmates, Matar and Moussar. I had an amazing pizza with imported goodies- olives, artichoke, parma harm and oyster mushrooms- and considered how being in Africa really wasn’t as cheap as I thought it was going to be.

The gelato was piled high, with pieces of fruit and clumps of chocolate next to each tray to indicate freshness. Dark chocolate with a consistency thick like fudge and similarly tended to white chocolate that had to be tasted alone in order to get the delicacy of its flavour. There was sharp passion fruit and also pistachio that was subtly rich and nutty. The tiramisu had a light sprinkling of cocoa powder across the top of its white peaks and decorated with a few lady fingers. There were things I didn’t understand like the Moringa leaf, non-descriptive names like Marron and Gift, and less commonly found flavours such as ginger and bitter chocolate. The crème caramel oozed a dark reddish brown sweet liquid and the fragola contained strawberry seeds in the icy pink sorbet.