louiseinlimbo

I so enjoyed my walk this morning, from Wapping where I’m staying to Old Street where I had a task to do.  As usual (I've been here for a week and out nearly every day), I was happy to go down little side streets and alleyways when there appeared to be something to see, whether a stone carving on an old church, or a modern mural.  & I got a bit lost a couple of times, partly due to the many new buildings, parks and traffic flows since I lived here, and partly just due to my fading memory of what is where.  So the walk took me a while, even though I by-passed attractions such as Petticoat Lane and Spitalfields market.  Again, as on other days when I’ve walked somewhere, I pondered over a return to live here.  I could still take holidays to see new parts of the world, including slightly longer trips during the winter months to escape the cold, but I could also enjoy all the delights of this amazing city as well as having a stable base with my ‘stuff’ around me. Then I spent the a

The timing of my international flight was not great – five days after the weekly WWF-chartered Cessna flight to Bangui.   So I had to pay for five nights in a hotel in Bangui.   But, on the bright side, some time to transition out of life in the forest and back into life in the 21 st century.   Except that Bangui is hardly in the 21 st century. But first I should go back to the local flight, which captured another aspect of life in the forest – the dangers that lurk there for those who still live a hunter-gatherer lifestyle.   There were three guests from the Lodge ending their visit, but we had two other passengers on the plane: a mother accompanying her teenage daughter to the capital to get to a hospital that could fix her broken leg.   Broken by a charging elephant in the forest the previous day, whilst they were foraging for fruit.   I suspect neither of them had even been in a car before, with both throwing up during what was a totally straightforward flight without any turbu

                                                         My contributions to the functioning of the Lodge, in my role of volunteer, have been extremely varied over the nearly six months I have been here.   I was taken on to provide accounting advice and input, but as the owners had said they’d like me here before we’d actually worked out what I would do, I suppose I should always have expected some flexibility. I wrote before about my ‘work’ with the young white-bellied pangolin they were caring for (far more interesting and rewarding than auditing their accounting system!), and certain other rotated jobs such as clearing the table at weekends (when there are fewer staff) and switching off the generator at night.   I’ve also washed dishes, removed a mouse nest from a mattress, helped to bring in washing from the line when downpours have started, and ‘guided’ a few clients on walks around the nearby forest paths – and I spent a week re-doing a project proposal so that it met the requi