Changes

There is a definite feeling of change in the air.

We are galloping into rainy season now, and temperatures are soaring. Yesterday was 66% humidity which gave a ‘real feel’ temperature of 38 degrees. It’s starting to feel like it did when we first arrived – your skin feels damp, and you have the sensation that every drop of moisture in your body is evaporating into the atmosphere. The pace of life is starting to slow, almost imperceptibly; if you look carefully you realise people are walking that little bit more slowly, resting for longer in the shade of a tree. The storms have been tremendous, always at night so far, but rumbling around for hours. First you see the lightening, flashing and illuminating the sky. Next comes the wind, building and building until you either see a sheet of rain coming your way, or hear the steady drops on the zinc roof, getting harder and harder until you can’t hear anything over the noise. Some of the thunder claps are loud enough to make you jump out of your skin, especially if you are just drifting off to sleep, and yet the storms are oddly comforting – the rain and the ceiling fan join in a kind of white noise that is helping me to sleep through the 5am call to prayer.

The scenery is changing around us; the trees are coming to life and getting ready for the rain. It’s like they have had a few sips, and are now preparing for a long drink. Everything is already starting to look a little bit greener, there are more birds (which have amazing colours and markings), and butterflies are flying around that are the size of your palm. 

So far the rain isn’t having much of an impact on the sandy roadsides, the ground is still firm and the puddles dry up quickly, but it won’t be long before it gets harder to walk around without losing your shoes to the mud and sand! And the rain has already brought illness; I and most of my friends and colleagues have had stomach bugs and ‘fresh cold’ over the last few weeks, as our bodies adjust to the heat and the new bugs in the air.

A praying mantis that I shared
my shower with this morning

Ramadan is imminent, which is also adding to the sense of change. As of Tuesday the ladies selling food on the sides of the road will pack up their stalls. Amina, my friend who sells me tapalapa in the morning says she will stop selling from Tuesday until after Koriteh – around the 7^th or 8^th of August. She asked me if I would try fasting, and I said I might try for one day – but as soon as I said it I wanted to back track… the not eating part sounds ok, but the thought of not drinking – especially in this heat – fills me with mild panic! She said that she will fast, and explained that she spends most of Ramadan sleeping under a tree too tired to move far from her compound. I rely on Amina and her food to get me through the day. I buy half a tapalapa on the way to work and that fills me up until I get home in the evening (nothing quite as filling as a bean baguette!) so during Ramadan I am going to have to remember to take something to work with me in the mornings! It has been said that during Ramadan more money is spent on food than at any other time of year, but more food is wasted – you go to the market and buy everything you have craved to eat during the day, but if you want to get a good night’s sleep there aren’t enough hours in the night to eat everything you have bought.

And one of the biggest changes, which hasn’t quite sunk in yet, is that Helen leaves tonight. Her ten month placement has sped by and it is time for her to return back to her life in the UK. I know that she is ready to leave in many respects – the pull of nice, clean, well-staffed hospitals, clothes shops that you don’t have to haggle in, restaurants where you can buy any style of food you like, pavements that you can walk on in high heels…. I know she will enjoy being back in the UK but she will miss the friends that she made here, and they will all miss her very much. It’s a transient community that we live in, but Helen has been a constant for me even before we left for The Gambia. We did our pre-departure training together - bonded over wine at Harborne Hall - and I knew as soon as we found out we were going to the same place that we were going to have a great time together. So, I shall be very sad to say farewell, but glad to have shared the good times with her since we arrived in September.