Pinney Posts

...painting was a very, very nice Korean restaurant. One of the things about being newly arrived is negotiating your everyday needs.  Everything is being negotiated by foot at present.  This draws a walkable circle around where you live.  We are concentrically discovering what we need.  Cheese is walkable, vegetables are walkable, fresh bread.  Nice places to go for a meal or drinks, walkable.  The small wild area for walks.  Once we have exhausted this circle, we need to get bikes. Other staff have bought cars off other leaving teachers.  There seems to be a pool of them in our parking area.  I don't feel trapped in my circle yet but this could be a consideration at some point.  Then the circles get vast.  The traffic has a bit more of a rhythm now.  Drivers we know have said that driving is not too bad as you cannot move quickly, therefore, few accidents.  If you get stopped by the police, which is frequent, just accept ...

 ...the first thing we knew was a woman came charging through the school security gates a meter in front of us shrieking.  Maybe we would've stepped into their path had she not done this.  She had left her bike in the road and legged it!  The cows were then chased by a small boy, obviously trying to retrieve them.  Guards, lady, stall keepers, us-all shrieking with laughter.  No doubt the small boy wasn't laughing.  He'd also lost his flip flops. Another teacher had fended off a billy goat attack this past week too.  She had the presence of mind for a matador approach and used her jacket to side step.  He came round for another butt and she shrieked for some local security guards to help her.  The billy was wrestled off somewhere  and the security guards now consider her worthy of the full morning dialogue.   We say hello to everyone.  It is considered good manners and recognises that you are in the same space at the ...

 ...before adding water to the home filter.  We didn't, and both felt like we were slowly swimming through mud for a couple of days.  Also, the stuff labelled 'vegetable wash' is what you need for washing all your veg and fruit. Really?  Not just un boiled filtered water?  I'm usually pretty careful and peel what I can and scrub the rest.  No real harm done and I am avoiding salads in restaurants too.   The food.  We can buy basic ingredients, as I would in the UK.  Only, the fruit and veg tastes so much better.  Farms are small production and sun ripened stuff is just yummier.  Mangoes and avocadoes are gigantic and watermelon drips sweetly down each arm with every bite.  Hopefully we will find the local bakery tomorrow.   The local bread is baguettes!  Former French colony.  Just to prove it-I made ratatouille for dinner tonight. Government controlled flour and bread is something that we have seen bef...

 ...on my pillow.  It beggars belief how much wadding they'd got stuffed in there but after days of waking up with a crick in my neck, I carried out a delicate scalpel job and extracted handfuls of unwanted goo, re stitching the wound (it'll barely scar!).   Sleep in a very hot climate becomes obsessive.  A delicate mix of aircon/bedding/timing.  We have possibly blown it for tonight already by falling for over an hours afternoon kip on the sofa.  Lulled in by the hum of the fan. We have small geckos running around our apartment.  We mentioned that they were cute at which point we were told that they will easily grow to over a foot and can become an infestation if left unchecked.  They carve out an existence in the damp inside the aircons.  That is canny animal adaptation right there.  The little guys can stay for now. Every place has it's rhythm.  The way people move, the sounds of the birds, the sway of the traffic.  Hav...

  The day began with what is becoming our routine morning swim: From the pool we can leisurely look at the birds coming and going including the Beautiful Sunbird, yes that is its real name. Africa doesn’t have hummingbirds, but it does have nectar dependent sunbirds instead. The pink pigeons we saw yesterday are called Laughing Doves 😊   Beautiful Sunbird - eBird No, I didn’t take this picture but what a beautiful bird to see feeding from a banana flower. Talking of which, two petals uncurled today revealing the nectar containing flowerets underneath. We live in area know as Zone du Bois, Zone of the Forest and so there are lots of trees offering welcome shade as we walk around. This morning we walked ten minutes north of our home and after paying 200 CFA each we entered the forest/jungle called Parc Bangr Weogo. (There’s about 780 CFA (pronounced seefas) to a pound but to keep the maths a bit easier I call it 750). And under the green canopy it was cool. ...

 We've had some people saying they couldn't add a comment. To do so, press add comment and then press skip when it asks you to name your blog. Then you add your name and you're ready to add a comment. 

 So we've had requests for photos.  Look closely and you'll see vultures on top of the tower. Chloe is very impressed. This is on our way to school.  We go swimming early morning and early evening. The girls and I bought Sarah a palm tree for her last birthday and it looks like they delivered it here as it never arrived in Bootle.   This is on our way to school. It's not busy with mostly motorbikes and a few cars. At the end of this road there is more of a main road and the school is just off that one. The area we live is quiet. It's called Zone du bois which literally means forest zone or zone of the wood.  This our exact location on google maps: 12.385306293372462, -1.4869466215132292 If you use satellite view you will see the pool next to our house and if you zoom out you'll see a large green square in the bottom left which is the location of our school.  We kind of chicane our way along quiet streets to our school.  This looks a bit weird but ...

 ...there were no rats.  All is going to be good. The journey was as expected, long, cramped and noisy.  I have no idea why I sleep so well on planes but this is what I did between films.  The surprise was the Turkish in flight catering.  Not bad!  The landing at BF was abrupt and wobbly.  We were later told that the runway is short and perhaps not ideal for the larger planes.  Take off should be interesting. Then things started to feel familiar.  Africa, huge continent but there was the dust again, the heat and the relaxed attitude.  One of my favourite emails pre trip was the one that said 'when you arrive at BF, if you do not have the money to pay for the visa, they will write you a permission slip to go outside of the airport and use the ATM.'  Can you imagine this at Heathrow?  Human I'd call it.  Relaxed and human.  People really are capable of arriving somewhere without the money for a visa. The visa process wa...

 It is possible that I have just created a blogging platform.  I say possible as I can't even get my Garmin to tell the right time.  Bit of a techno idiot.  Anyway, after this, I will send links to everyone who requested to follow our journey.  If this works, I will learn to add pictures this coming week! Right now we are pre flight.  Sat in our hotel, all packed and taking our time.  Just watching the Commonwealth Games and the expression on the face of the athlete just awarded the gold.  Somewhere between pride and tears.  It is truly moving.  Not sure my face reads like that.  We are on the verge of a great adventure and I think my face reads calm/tired.  Kind of 'not moving anywhere'. We are really pleased/excited to be doing this.  It will be amazing.  When asked recently, I don't think we have been exactly giving off a 'we are so excited' vibe.  Experience means that approaching this without too many pre co...