Festive Travels 2
Trip Start
Sep 08, 2006
1
22
24
Trip End
??? ??, 2007
Banjul,
Gambia
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
I had a wonderful time at home spending time with family and friends. I ran around like a headless chicken and didn't get to see everyone I would like to, or enough time with the people I did see. I was repeatedly touched at the efforts lots of people went to, to meet up with me despite the face I have been absent for the last 16 months, and have in the interim, let's face it, been a rubbish correspondent.
I did some really cool stuff. There were moments (when I was at a concert in the Millennium Dome for example, wandering around modern art exhibitions, or supping afternoon tea in front of a roaring fire in a stately home - that's RIGHT people, I AM a lady of culture and sophistication) that my mind would just splinter and I found it impossible to reconcile being there with being in The Gambia only a few days earlier
Tightly run ship
. Hot showers, proper milk, MTV, fresh mushrooms and constant electricity access helped ease the trauma. I brought some lovely clothes over from the Gambia. Beautiful African prints, personally designed and turned into outfits for me by my own tailor. I did wear them whilst back in the UK - not that anyone saw them, because it was so frickin cold I had to wear 20 layers of clothes on top. Style be damned, my main concern was hyperthermia and I mostly staggered about in an eclectic collection of garments begged borrowed and stolen from my nearest and dearest. Exactly how peculiar I looked became apparent when I was sat on the steps of a luxurious hotel in Covent Garden (which thanks to a generous friend was my accommodation for the night) and someone came and pressed a pound coin into my hand. I was outraged, yes, but not enough to give back the money.
Being back was in some ways unsettling. Many things have changed whilst I have been away. My friends have bought houses, climbed career ladders, established nest eggs, got married, started families... I, on the other hand, have no permanence whatsoever. I freeload in a rented house, work in an absorbing but temporary job, have a group of friends who will one by one peel off back to their different corners of the world, I have about ten dalasis in my bank account, and I often don't feel much more than a child myself
Now we are Grown Ups
. I love my life at the moment and actually quite like this feeling, of freedom and possibility. But I recognise that at some point it will probably have to come to an end. That most likely I will one day return home and start doing some of that proper grown-up stuff. God forbid. This is a mildly alarming reality and not one I'm ready to face just now. So to those of you that were asking "when are you coming back?", the answer is 'not just now'. Soon. It has nothing to do with how much I love and miss you guys back home, so please don't forget about me. I just have a few more sunsets to watch, and Wolof swear words to memorise and bumsters to wind up first...
