self preservation

Sanity at least partly restored after our weekend away, where we were spoiled rotten, drank plenty of beer and aired our mutual frustrations of the work situation so far.


Thursday evening started early and we had a lovely salad, cheese cake and rum cake courtesy of the Peace Corps, who were still sitting around at 10.30 despite our yawns and lack of conversation! Early start on Friday and we were in a 'Sept Place' on our way to Janjangbureh by 9.00. Arrived by 11.00 and dropped our stuff off in the Forestry Commission Lodge where Liz and Pete had arranged for us to stay. Idyllic spot on the river, plenty of trees and insect noise in contrast to the desert scrub appearance of Soma. Found sleeping a little difficult though with the number of insects around and woke regularly to shine my torch around the room! Had a really lovely weekend and took full advantage of being cooked for, complete with chocolate spread, condensed milk and banana pancakes on Easter Sunday! Had a really touristy visit to Janjangbureh 'monkey' camp, which was cool – am trying to upload the video onto facebook, but may be still here at midnight!

View from the back of the 'sept place', there are 4 more passengers you can't see!

Monkeys!

I think we all agreed that we're finding the whole experience quite difficult at the moment. Individually, each aspect is perfectly tolerable, but in combination it can get quite depressing. We could cope with the complete lack of anything to do in the evenings and rubbish food, if we were actually doing anything at work, but we're not – and that's hard.

On reflection - for any eagle eyed re-readers - I have edited this post. Draw your own conclusions to that!

Any views expressed are my own and are not representative of VSO.