Someone told me how a friend had described living in west Africa as living with eternal decay. The decay of buildings, the decay of infrastructure, the decay of governments and democracy and people. I thought this, at the time, unnecessarily gloomy, but I think today I agree with it. This morning the skies were filled with clouds as I tried to find a sunny spot to hang out my washing. It finally rained, but the oppressive tension in the air didn't lift.

At the Air Ivoire office, on my second visit- the first being fruitless since the office was on a lunch break- the clerk sold the man infront of me a ticket on the flight which I had been told had been cancelled due to a plane break-down in Paris.

"Oh, they sent another plane on Saturday," the clerk cheerfully told me. "And check in opens in ten minutes, you'd better hurry."

But someone had told me, from this very office, yesterday that there was no other plane to replace the broken one, that I would have to wait for a seat on a plane with another company.

"Well, they sent another plane on Saturday," he told me again, and I wanted to cry.

Managing to convince him that I could not get home, pack and to the airport in the next hour, he agreed to transfer me to the even more unreliable Air Senegal flight tomorrow. The guard, the one who looked vaguely sympathetic when I arrived at the office in the lunch break, looked baffled as I fled the office in tears. Some days the total decay of everything- communication, planes, order and organisation- knocks me for six.