Just passing through

I'm spending the night in Brussels after travelling in by Eurostar, before getting a flight to Banjul tomorrow. I wouldn't really recommend a trip through Brussels to anyone with 46kg of luggage; to be honest I'm not entirely sure if I'd recommend a trip through Brussels to anyone. There are no lifts Brussels Midi station, nor are there baggage carts. I found this difficult to believe, so asked a passerby for confirmation and was rewarded with a Gallic shrug and a tirade about how it was une scandale. I concurred that it was indeed une scandale and proceeded to lug my bags up two flights of steps to the platform, only to discover that the airport express, which you would have imagined would have been designed with the needs of people with luggage in mind, actually has three steps up from the platform to the carriage.

Whilst trying to negotiate these with my bags I tripped (note to parents: at no point was I actually in danger of falling on the track) and the carriage's only other passenger, a young Arab-looking bloke, leapt up to grab my arm. At this point the guard in the carriage, who it should be noted had made no effort to help me up to this point, leapt out and asked the bloke if the bags were his. I said they were mine and he promptly asked for the bloke's ticket (but didn't ask me for mine) and it turned out he didn't have one, forcing him to leg it off the train. The guard them proceeded to harangue me in Flemish, then in English when I was finally able to get a word in edgeways to say that I didn't understand him, saying that I should be more careful and the guy had been trying to steal my luggage. Now the guy was trying to travel without a ticket and for all I know he might have been about to steal my luggage, I suppose the airport express would be the place for baggage thieves to try it, but the whole incident left a rather nasty taste especially when I later overheard the same guard talking to a colleague in French about how he's just known by looking at him that the bloke didn't have a ticket. The guard then told me I couldn't put my bags on the seat next to me because other passengers would need it (as I was the only passenger in the carriage with two minutes until departure this seemed a little unnecessary) and insisted that I put it in the vestibule and sat in a particular seat so that I could watch it in case the guy came back. To be honest I'm inclined to think that anyone who could run off with a 23 kilogram bag probably deserves it. Incidentally two more passengers did get into the carriage. They put their bags beside them.

There was more fun once I got to the airport – Rothamsted has booked me into what its website suggested was going to be a posh airport hotel, with a free shuttle bus to the airport, wireless internet access in the rooms and . I had visions of reclining in a tub of luxuriant bubbles, sipping champagne from the minibar and possibly in my wilder imaginings munching on complimentary gluten-free Belgian chocolates. Sadly it was not to be. I waited an hour for the shuttle bus and then decided I had a travel expense budget for a reason and got a taxi. This turned out to be a good move, as once I got to the hotel I discovered that the shuttle bus only runs during the week – I could have been waiting a very long time. The wireless internet is only free if you pay the 25 Euro business upgrade, which also entitles you to all the pay-per-view movies you can wank over and a complimentary drink from the bar which isn't open at weekends. I declined and am paying for this by the minute. And although in theory it's available in all the rooms, in practice it only works in the lobby, where I am typing this in fear that someone will look over my shoulder and see the word "wank". And someone's eaten my complimentary biscuit and left the wrapper on the tray (I know that I wasn't going to eat the biscuit myself, but it's the principle of the thing).

Even more annoying was the fact that the restaurant is only open during the week, and as the hotel is situated in the middle of a deserted business park there was a good half hour when I though I wasn't going to get any dinner as I wandered past empty office after empty office, desperately seeking an alternative to cracking open my emergency Gambia Lara bars and protein shake. Fortunately I eventually found another hotel with a restaurant and disgusted the waiter by ordering rose with my steak. So now I'm back, contemplating an evening of repacking my Bugdorms and watching Martha Stewart, who seems to have an entire channel devoted to her over here.

The fun starts tomorrow folks.

Hair today, gone tomorrow

I leave tomorrow at ten thirty so I should really be getting ready, but instead I'm going to write a blog post about my hair. It's called displacement activity, folk.

Back in the mists of time when we were freshers at Durham, with little money and less sense, my friend Johny blew his loan on surf wax and economy Christmas pudding and asked me to cut his hair to save the cost of a barber's visit. Why he picked me I don't know, although on reflection there weren't many people on that corridor I'd have trusted with a blade around my face. There followed an (in retrospect) amusing misunderstanding, possibly due to Johny's somewhat unique accent; he asked me to chop two centimetres off, I thought he wanted me to cut it to a length of two centimetres, and of course made a complete pig's ear of it so he had to get his head shaved to a grade one. I don't think he minded too much, because then he got a lot of girls stroking his head and saying "Poor Johny!", but I felt very guilty.

Well this week Johny got his revenge. I have wild, wiry Welsh hair (there's definitely a sheep back in my genepool somewhere) which takes a huge amount of water, shampoo and conditioner to keep clean and behaving itself, and as all of these substances are likely to be in short supply out there it had to go. I had originally planned to walk into a hairdresser brandishing a picture of Julie Bindel, thus becoming the first person in human history to do so, but time and money were pressing so I ended up doing a Britney with Jeff's shears.


My favourite comment so far has come from Ben, one of the other PhD students, who said "There aren't many women who can carry off really short hair". I waited in vain for him to add "And you're one of them".

Weight watching

Just about everything I need to survive two months in The Gambia. I have 46kg of baggage allowance to play with, which sounds like a lot but at least 20kg of that will be taken up with equipment. I had a minor panic attack when I weighed all this lot and thought it came to 28kg, then realised the scales were reading in lbs.

The next problem, of course, is carting it around, given that 46kg is 73% of my own bodyweight - for the first time in my life I wish I was an ant.

Baggy Trousers

I've just stumbled back from some penultimate minute shopping (the last minute shopping will take place at the airport in a blind panic) and am now the proud owner of two pairs of antibacterial trousers, a phrase I never expected to find myself typing. They are also UV proof and quick drying, and quite frankly for the price I paid for them I'd hope they could stop a small dirty bomb and bullets at twenty yards.

Up to this point I'd managed to be quite frugal in my preparations; I managed to pick up a second hand rucksack, bought a lot of long sleeved men's shirts from Oxfam and got four desert scarves off eBay for £4 from a bloke who realised that the only people who should wear desert scarves are emo kids or people venturing too far from civilisation to be mocked for it, and presumably also realised that he didn't fall into either of these categories. I also picked up a pair of jungle boots for a very reasonable price from a surprisingly urbane survivalist in an army surplus shop at Waterloo, and in any case the lovely people at Kew paid for them. But sometimes you do have to pay for quality and these trousers didn't just blow the budget, they performed a variety of sexual acts, some illegal, with it.

I wouldn't have minded so much if I could have envisaged myself wearing them at any other time but The Gambia is a Muslim country and quite conservative up river, so they can't be too close fitting. I did try on a pair that was two sizes too large, but as these fell straight off when I did them up I didn't think they were fit for purpose. The ones I bought were a mere one size too large, and the crotch is half way to my knees which isn't a good look on anyone. I felt like a member of All Saints. After I'd spent the best part of £40 a pair on some extremely unflattering trousers, the part of my brain that complains at wanton profligacy promptly overloaded and shorted out and in a daze I then bought a couple of karabiners, an LED lamp and a new water bottle. I then staggered out of Blacks to have a bit of a sit down, came to the depressing realisation that the amount I'd save on travel cards whilst in The Gambia would be more than outweighed by the amount I'd spent on kit and vowed to economise over the coming month by using email instead of text messages and eating Jeff.

At least I will now not have to wander around The Gambia in just my pants, which up to this point had been a source of some concern to me, particularly in dreams. Unfortunately the rest of my shopping trip was less successful. For the record, I think that this is the only intelligent thing I've seen in the media about swine flu – yes there is a lot of hype in the media, no that doesn't mean there's nothing to worry about, using alcohol gel after taking public transport is probably a good idea anyway because an extremely unscientific survey I once carried out in a public toilet convinced me that one woman in three doesn't wash her hands and sorry to be sexist but the figure is almost certainly higher among men. If however you do not already possess alcohol gel then tough, you can't get any for love nor money on the high street because in the panic at the impending aporkalypse the shelves have been picked bare. This is quite annoying if, say, you are going to a country with minimal hygiene infrastructure (at least upriver) and want to avoid picking up something a darn sight more common than the hamdemic. I have so far resisted the temptation to buy "travel wash", which is three times the price and comes in an attractive green bottle but is otherwise the same stuff (shhhh, don't tell everyone).

There will now follow a short paragraph featuring my ladybits. I can only offer my apologies to any of my male readers who may be unsettled by this, but really chaps, you should have accepted that we have them by this stage. Not to beat around the bush (sorry), in a hot, humid climate I'm fairly likely to develop either thrush or cystitis, either of which have more potential to make my trip miserable than a herd of rampaging hippopotami. The best preventative measure is loose-fitting, pure cotton underwear, but being either a saucy little minx or too cheap to buy many pairs of pants I don't seem to have much of this. I did however recall that my Gran used to have some knickers that would have been ideal; large enough to propel a reasonably sized schooner and if memory serves made out of something resembling flannel. That sort of thing would have been ideal, so I headed to Marks and Spencers and was shocked to discover that they no longer stocked anything of the kind. Maybe Myleene Klass refused to wear them or something. I left disappointed, and rather curious as to where today's respectable women of mature years purchased their sensible unmentionables.

Even knickerless, I am now rather more prepared than I was, although I don't know if I'll ever feel prepared enough. Here's hoping that parmageddon doesn't ground all the flights and leave me sitting at home with my two pairs of antimicrobial trousers. Still, I suppose if that does happen I could cut them up and flog them off as facemasks.

Tweetness and light

As you may have noticed, a box has appeared at the top of my blog featuring a choice selection of my slightly dafter witterings. This is because I've signed up to Twitter, and while I realise that signing myself up to yet another social networking site and expecting myself to anything productive is roughly the equivalent of chucking Super Hans a big bag of crack and telling him to exercise self control there is actually a very good reason for this. It turns out that there is mobile reception in Walikunda (a rather charming article in a local paper which I've unfortunately lost boasts that it is no longer necessary to climb trees to make calls) and as I'll be getting a local phone but won't be able to afford to send too many texts Twitter looks like quite a good way of reassuring a lot of people at once of my continued possession of both a phone and a pulse. I realise that it is a slightly risky strategy to rely on third world communications infrastructure and a social networking site that apparently doesn't have any way of making money to stay in touch, but at the moment it's the best idea I've got.

So it turns out I’m not Ray Mears

Although I realised quite early on in this endeavour that a trip to The Gambia was not exactly going to be travels through the White Geek's Grave (not only are there Peace Corps cocktail parties to attend, but within two messages of being introduced to a friend of a friend working in The Gambia he'd invited me to a pool party) I am aware that there may be a little more risk involved than in, say, a trip to Tescos to buy some teabags. For this reason I spent last weekend on a Wilderness Medical Training course organised by the Royal Geographic Society. This is the very course that Bruce Parry (on-screen taker of psychotropic drugs and chunderer extraordinaire) attended, and now he gets paid to travel round the world meeting interesting people and lives in a mansion on Ibiza for the rest of the year. Correlation doesn't necessarily imply causation, but I can live in hope.

The preliminary reading certainly looked interesting if a little alarming, with its warnings to put a knotted rope down pit latrines as an emergency exit if the boards shattered. It also advised that human bites were the most likely to become infected, a useful hint in the event of zombie attack, and concluded with a stern admonishment that rectal thermometers should always be clearly labelled as such. Even a mild hangover couldn't take the edge off my excitement on Saturday morning.

I'm not entirely sure what I was expecting the other people on the course to be like, but I think muscles on top of muscles covered with facial hair and Goretex featured quite prominently in my mental image so it was a relief to discover how normal everyone looked. This lulled me into a false sense of security but I was swiftly disabused of any notion I might be as tough as the rest by the first lecture on wounds. Our lecturer warned us that some of the slides coming up would be pretty horrific and that there was no shame in leaving the room, but that it was better to find out now if we couldn't deal with it than to find out in the field. "Pish!" thought I "not only do most of my favourite movies feature eyelid eating zombies but two of my best friends are a nurse and a doctor! Why, whenever they get together the conversation inevitably turns to suppurating abdominal wounds, usually around the time the food is served! Bring it on!"

This turned out to be rather foolish. I could cope with the cut thumb. The cut hand was less pleasant but tolerable. At the slit wrist I had to look down and concentrate very hard on taking extremely thorough notes, and I'm ashamed to say that the split ankle with exposed tendons proved too much for me and I fainted clean away. Fortunately as an undergraduate I did most of my sleeping during lectures so have some experience of regaining consciousness in lecture theatres surreptitiously and with minimal flailing, but it was pretty embarrassing. Luckily when I came to the slideshow had moved on to eviscerations, and I was able to cope quite well with pictures of protruding intestines by imagining them to be Cumberland Rings.

We had a practical session in the afternoon, in which we learnt the best ways to carry an injured casualty. We then split into groups to practice making rope stretchers. I proved rather good at this, impressing an ex-army Amazon in my group enough for her to say "Wow, you really know your knots!". I thanked her, neglecting to mention that this proficiency had been acquired mostly through knitting and crochet. I skipped the after course mingling session in the bar (from experience I know that such things usually end with me having to be peeled off the floor at an embarrassingly early hour) and ran home to my bloke, who spent the evening asking me if I felt faint and generally taking the mick which I thought was a little rich coming from a man who can't even watch House while he's eating.

Sunday brought a talk on common tropical ailments, enlivened by the occasional photograph of explosive diarrhoea, and then a discussion session to teach us group decision making. We were given a scenario; with nightfall fast approaching 3,000 metres up Kilimanjaro, one of your team of twelve exhausted people starts exhibiting disturbing signs of a broken brain. What do you do? What I did was recognise that nothing in my 27 years of life experience qualified me to make that sort of decision, so I sat back on the surprisingly comfortable sofa and let the helicopter search-and-rescue pilot and the woman whose friend once ditched in the sea off the coast of Chile argue it out. They quickly decided to carry her down, which just goes to show that you can't always defer to the experts as we were than told it was most important to consider the safety of the group as a whole.

The instructor asked if anyone had ever had to stretcher an injured person out of an emergency situation. A few people had, and universally confirmed that even with a group of twenty fit people even a hundred metres was gruelling. At this point I remembered that I did in fact have some experience in a similar situation, but thought it best not to mention it as the casualty in question hadn't succumbed to harsh terrain or a tropical infection but had rendered herself incapacitated at the bottom of a cliff on Herm Island through the consumption of several bottles of cheap and nasty white wine. (Are you reading this Kat? I still haven't forgotten honey). As she retained enough mobility to render the two blokes who tried to carry her back up infertile, we decided to bundle her in a blanket and carry her up. The strange thing was that we six not especially fit seventeen year olds (half of us took computer sciences A-level for goodness sake) were able to carry her up a steep fifty-odd metre cliff path and then a further two hundred metres to the campsite, all at a brisk jog because we could feel the blanket ripping, and I certainly don't remember it being particularly arduous, yet a larger group of tough outdoorsy types testified to a similar feat being exhausting. I can only attribute the difference to the amount of cheap white wine we too had consumed, and hence suggest it might be a good idea if rescue teams get completely hammered before attempting a stretcher carry off.

The course concluded with some practical CPR training, in which we were given the depressing news that the only scenario in which CPR alone can revive someone is on Baywatch – in real life it can only keep them going until paramedics arrive. In a survival situation with no prospect of help arriving CPR is pretty pointless, and we were advised to set a limit of twenty minutes just to feel that we'd made an effort then give up. At this point I stuck my hand up and asked about situations like the one I'd be in in The Gambia, where a hospital was six hours drive away but still reachable – was there any chance of saving someone in these circumstances?

The instructor seemed rather unimpressed by the question, saying that by putting ourselves in these situations we had accepted that there would be a risk of death, and that if that wasn't the case then most people in the room wouldn't want to go. I think this may have been intended as a putdown but it actually reassured me. I may not be as tough as most of the people on that course, but I realised then that I was probably a little saner than some. I'm not doing this to push the limits of human endurance or to prove something to myself. I don't relish the prospect of ending up in a situation where I may need to amputate my own toes using only three paperclips, an underwired bra and a kiwi fruit. While obviously I'm delighted to have the opportunity to go somewhere so different from anything I've experienced before, in the end I'm going to The Gambia to get as much data on Musca sorbens as possible at the least possible personal risk. Not only was the weekend good fun and the factual information I learnt very useful (although I sincerely hope I never have to use most of it), but I do feel that this course was very helpful in clarifying my motives for this fieldtrip. I may not be explorer material, but at least I now feel a little more prepared for the rigours ahead.

Bring on the pool party.

Importing live insects into the UK; the saga continues

I still need to get some Musca autumnalis sent over from the States, now also want some Musca vetustissima from Australia and will soon have to start thinking about how I'll get my little Sorbens over from The Gambia, and I still haven't managed to find a shipping company that'll take them. So apologies for the very boring post, but I thought I'd put up a list of shipping companies that will NOT import live insects into the UK, just to save anyone else who might be googling for an import company a lot of time, phonecalls and frustration.

The following companies do not transport insects:

• DHL


• UPS


• JAS International Freight


• GAC Logistics


• James Cargo


• Norman Global Logistics

I'm not quite surre where to go from here - I even tried calling the people who make toffee scorpions to ask who shipped their scorpions, but rather amusingly they wouldn't tell me in case I was a competitor!

Strangely, so far my best leads have come from animal rights campaigning websites posting lists of companies to campaign against because they ship laboratory animals. Umm, thanks guys.

*Update* Ok, I managed to find a pet import comapany that would take them, but they quoted $5,000 for the service which is slightly beyond my budget! If I had that sort of money I'd fly over first class and pick them up myself, possibly smuggling them home in my tousers. I've run out of ideas now, and am trying the Bad Science Forum as a last resort. Suggestions? Anyone? Please?????

Clinical shiny beats green and spiky

Some time ago I asked you to vote for which type of forceps looked least threatening, and nine people did. That's right folks, nine people read my blog and I don't even have any porn on here! I haven't felt this popular since my Mum picked me up from school with the dog!

But back to the forceps, it looks like the round-tipped metal ones have beaten the friendly green plastic six to three, which is good as the plastics are a complete bugger to grip. Thanks everyone who voted.

All change

You know that awkward situation when you say your long goodbyes to someone you won't be seeing for a while, then see them at the bus stop ten minutes later and have to make stilted conversation until you say your long goodbyes again? That's the way I feel at the moment. I've just discovered that the LSHTM's trachoma survey won't be going out to The Gambia until April, so Jeff has had to mothball his plans for a return to batchelor life in January (the pizza menus are back in the drawer, the strippers have been hastily cancelled). Whilst the delay means I will be spending winter in Britain after all, and I had thought I could get away without buying a new pair of winter boots, it does at least give me longer to perfect my fly-rearing techniques (memo to self: animals need water) and to master all the gear.

Of course this does also mean that you'll have to put up with my wittering a little longer. While I still have your attention though, could the person I promised to lend "My name is light" by Elsa Osorio to please step forward? I've found the book now but can't remember who you were. I hope I can get away with blaming this on Aspall, and would like to assure you that your friendship means a lot to me and I greatly appreciate you as an individual. Whoever you are.

Coke is evil #2

Sigh

Putting my foot in it

Obviously there is no part of my body that I am particularly keen to see swelling up, becoming infected or dropping off in The Gambia, but the body part I am least keen to have any of the above happen to is my feet. They are also the body part likely to be subjected to the most insults; thorns, blisters and little wormy things that burrow into your soles then crawl up into your brain and make you like The Feeling or something. For this reason I have devoted more than the usual 4.6 seconds that momentous life decisions tend to merit for me to choosing the most appropriate footwear.

After a lot of research and an afternoon spent having my feet examined at great length by someone who I am increasingly coming to suspect was not an employee of the Cotswold outdoor clothing company but a cunningly disguised foot fetishist, I have decided to go for a pair of army surplus desert boots for the dry season and jungle boots for the wet seasons rather than a hugely complex monument to Goretex that might possibly be able to handle both. Not only are two pairs of army boots cheaper than one technoboot, they come in width fittings for those such as myself who are somewhat gallumphing of hoof, and I like the idea that something designed for combat will be used to help research into reducing human suffering. As a bonus I am hoping that they'll prompt someone to say to me "You're thinking it's Sunday, I'd rather be in Apocalypse Now".



Both types of boots have reinforced soles so that thorns, rusty nails and the splintered bones of your fallen foes can't impale your feet. Desert boots don't have airvents to stop sand (or in my case dust) from getting in, but are made from nice breathable suede to stop your feet from broiling. They beat sandals hands down as thorns, mosquitoes and the aforementioned wee wormies can't get at your feet, and you can wear them with socks without looking like a tit.

Jungle boots are not actually waterproof - that would just make your feet rot when water got in and couldn't get out, but instead have cunning little vents in the soles so that the movement of your feet pumps water out. They are also apparently leechproof, which rather surprised me as I had always assumed than all boots would be proof against any leech that hadn't learned to untie shoes laces (a category into which I would, perhaps complacently, have placed the vast majority of them). However as leeches are some of the very few of God's creatures I find truly repulsive (the others being David Cameron and those horrible bald cats that look like a cross between a gargoyle and a scrotum) I have decided to be reassured by this.

Choosing the right sock is as important as choosing the right boot, and can be the difference between blisters and, erm, fewer blisters. In my extensive googling I came across something called "The Two Sock System" which is fascinating for two reasons; the first is that wearing two socks over each other dramatically reduces blisters by ensuring that the sheer stress is propagated at the junction between the socks rather than between sock and foot, the second is that someone bothered to give the practice of wearing two pairs of socks a name and felt the need to teach it as a course to soldiers. Interestingly I also read that the inner, breathable sock is often made of a material "like pantyhose" - ever since when I've seen footage from Iraq on the news I've been wondering if the soldiers are wearing suspenders under their uniforms.

Where were we? Breathable inner sock - check. Outer sock - wool and synthetic, no cotton as it becomes waterlogged, padding at heel and toe but thin upper to keep feet cool - check. Waterproof outer sock to wear over a dry sock in wet boots in the evening - check. (I wonder if I've just invented "The Three Sock System", and whether I could copyright it). Right, I think that's footwear sorted. To the army surplus store!

Killer cola

Just when I've reached the stage where I can drink a pint of coke in under an hour without twitching, wincing or complaining so much the my friends suddenly realise that they can't stay in the pub with me any longer because they have to get home to clean the oven, descale the kettle and worm the baby, the Guardian goes and publishes this.

I feel evil now.

Choking on Coke

I had my first hint that The Gambia might not be the Heart of Darkness type experience I had anticipated when I explained to a former researcher from the centre that I was allergic to beer and asked what I could drink instead. I was expecting an explanation of how to use water purification tablets, but was instead told that the nearby American Peace Corps training camp held cocktail nights every Friday. Beverages, intoxicating or otherwise, may be a little harder to come by however when I head into the villages to collect samples, so I’m embarking on quite the most painful and unpleasant preparations I could make for this trip. I’m trying to make myself like Coke.

I feel much the same way about Coke as I do about pesto (and my observations on that unholy substance are a matter of public record), that some sort of invasion of the body snatchers has taken place causing the rest of the world to behave in strange and inexplicable ways whilst I remain the only sane person still able to tell that this stuff they’re drinking is foul. I mean how has something that’s mostly sugar, caffeine and phosphoric acid with a few industrial byproducts thrown in become the most widely consumed beverage in the world, and the only safe substance I can be sure of getting in a tiny Gambian village?

Although it’s rather hard to get my head around the idea that I’m trying to like something that’ll rot my teeth and is made by a company indulging in some extremely dodgy practices, I’m trying to drink it as much as I can to get used to it as drinking it in The Gambia does beat the alternative. And frankly that’s about the best I can say for Coke; drinking it is fractionally less unpleasant than having dysentery.

Messing with my mind

I’ve made an appointment to discuss immunisations and anti-malarials, and like every GP’s worst nightmare have done a bit of research before hand. Apparently my anti-malarial options are Larium or Doxycycline for going up-country in The Gambia. Larium is a lovely-sounding little pill, which has been known to cause temporary or permanent severe depression, anxiety, paranoia, aggression, nightmares, insomnia, seizures, and other central nervous system problems you probably wouldn’t want. Doxycyline on the other hand is a broad-spectrum antibiotic which has been known to cause photosensitivity in about three percent of users and so is not recommended for particularly sunny areas, rather unhelpful as malaria isn’t exactly endemic in Wolverhampton. It also interferes with hormonal contraception, which could well make El Jefe’s visit rather less exciting. However it does also offer some protection against elephantiasis, which doesn’t look like much fun.

Being rather fonder of my brain than of my skin, and given that I’ll be covering up anyway as I’ll be in a Muslim country, I’m going to try and go for Doxycycline and take the risk that I might be one of the 3% it turns into a vampire. Thanks to one of these Blogger – poll jobbies, however, I can now offer all of you the opportunity to help me make this crucial health decision. If you’re reading this on Facebook you’ll need to go to the original blog, which is here. I reserve the right to completely disregard the results. And I’m not usually a violent woman, but if anyone suggests homeopathic anti-malarials I will carefully and patiently explain the concept of evidence-based medicine to them, possibly with the aid of a cricket bat.

How the human mind works

I recently made my first conrete step towards preparing for the trip and signed up for an online Wolof language course (although I should be able to get by fairly well with English and French I thought I should try to make an effort). Maybe I'm being a bit harsh on myself as I've only had a quick click through the first module, but the only word I've managed to remember is the number 10, spelled Fukk and pronounced much as you'd expected.

Sadly the rest of the language does not sound like obscenities, so may be a little harder.