Patchwork Elbow

Anyone who's been to my house recently will have been quizzed on the new patchwork cloth, and what to do with it.



I've given myself patchwork elbow sewing the little squares together after a long day's work at my desk next door, but it is at last finished and now I don't know what to do with it. Originally it was going to be a pair of trousers, for a boyfriend who, happily, showed his true colours before I got onto row 2, so now it has developed in to two metres of pinks, greens, blues and the odd piece of orange scattered throughout, and it's going to be for me.



I wanted to make it into a pair of trousers for myself, but then I moved onto the idea of a dress, then someone suggested I use it to make another bedspread, a chaise longue, cushions, a ball gown, a tunic, and now I am back to the trousers. But at this rate it's not going to be anything because it's still sitting on the back of a chair being shown to anyone who comes to visit, and Omar the tailor is still waiting for me to come down and give him instructions on what to do with it.

It's been a busy few weeks, and it's suddenly got very hot. I've been spending my saturdays at Now's new shop, where his niece cooks lunch and we drink Nescafe and I amuse his clients by getting up from the broken plastic chair I sit on outside the shop to sell them one cigarette or a teaspoon of pepper. I guess they've never seen a white person spoon washing powder (bought in bulk) into little plastic bags then tied in elaborate knots and hung on a metal wire to be displayed on the back wall before. I've also been working hard, having the annual contemplation of moving to another country, but mostly just trying to do my job well, make new friends and amuse myself with music and going to the tailor to find new scraps of fabric.

I recently wrote an article about an Ivorian singer called Dobet Gnahore, who gave probably the best performance I have seen in a year at the French Cultural Centre in Dakar. She's an absolute fireball of a woman, a singer, dancer, actor, drummer, who's intimidating in her talent on stage but just the nicest sweetest and most modest woman in person. She grew up in an artists' commune in Abidjan, where she learnt every art under the sun, and as I was researching this village, it reminded me of how when I came to Africa I was going to dance, that I said to myself, even if I never find any work, at least I will be able to do what I love most: to dance. Luckily I found a lot of work, but I never did much dancing. So, I am off to Abidjan today to stay with my friend and spend the week taking dance classes in Dobet Gnahore's village.

Next post from Cote d'Ivoire, then.

While I was in South Africa I received an excited email from my friend Idi in Dakar.

"We have some big news," he told me, but didn't tell me any more.

The next day I received an email from Now.

"Madam, I have something exciting to tell you," he said. I couldn't resist, so I called him up to ask what the news was.

"The tree has some flowers!" he said. And here they are. The frangipani tree which we planted to long ago in Mamelle, long before I moved, has at last produced some beautiful, sweet-smelling flowers.



I thought that was all the news I was going to get. But when I went to visit, Now told me his other piece of news. He's opened a new shop, in the depths of Ouakham, a neighbourhod not far from the original shop in Mamelle. It's a small place, a hole-in-the-wall kind of joint, but, he tells me, it's working really well. Single cloves of garlic and little sachets of black pepper are the big sellers, as people in this neighbourhood (euphamistically known as a 'quartier populair') don't tend to stock up on things like other people do. Why buy a whole head of garlic when you can just buy what you need?



So as Idi and Awa run one shop, Now's friend Samba runs the other. And Now runs between the two all day long.



While I was taking photos, a guy selling shoes came along and asked me to photograph him. Then he told me I couldn't take the photo to France and make money from it, which just about ruined my plans.



So nice to be back with my friends. I always forget when I'm away, how much my Mamelle crew mean to me. Then when I come off the plane at 2 in the morning and see Now standing there fighting off the taxi touts and the money changers, I know that as much as I miss 'home' (I don't even know where that is anymore), I like Dakar too.

Actually, when Now came to pick me up from the airport last week, I decided, for the first time, to change some money while I was there. I had some Euros, and no CFA, so I asked the guy if I could change 40 Euros. Sure, he said, just give me 25,000 francs. I did. Then he said I had to give him one Euro commission. When I said that I didn't have to at all, he let me go. Then came running back and told Now that he wanted to un-do the transaction. Apparently, having failed to find a way to trick, lie, cheat or beg some money out of me, he decided he would be much better off changing money with some other toubab.

Saying goodbye to an old friend

For much of my childhood and most of my adult life, there's been an old friend in it. I'm not a dog person but I grew up with Pippa, and she was, for a dog, amusing and friendly. She died early this year and the powers that be waited until I was back in England before we scattered her (small) remains somewhere peaceful.



This was her favourite beach.

While we were in the neighbourhood, we took a visit to a place where we used to go as kids, Dungeoness. Such a gloomy name and with a dis-used nuclear power station hovering over the pebbly beach, almost a gloomy place. But not quite. We had fish and chips in the Railway Cafe, which is, thankfully, just as it used to be (except with the addition of plastic flowers on the plastic table cloths), and we ventured, in true British form, to the beach for just long enough to know that it was way too cold too hang around.

We went somewhere really nice for the weekend

I and the team went somewhere really super nice for the weekend, within drivable distance of Dakar, a clean, perfectly sandy beach with good swimming water, a lovely house right on the beach, great weather, no nuisance...and I'm not going to tell you where it was. But do enjoy the photos (views from the house).

Music link

To hear some music recorded at the wonderful Malouma's house, click here

She has a new album out on Marabi, which is really worth getting.

Another patchwork project

My latest collection. Orders can be made through me.

Thinking of giving up journalism for needlework.

Go on, aren't they just the prettiest?

Speedy photo update ending in a perfect Yorkshire Pudding

hi hi,

I've been rather slack. Moving home, elections, two trips to Mauritania, a visit from Dad- blogging got left behind.

Dad and I had a great week together, lots of going out till all hours then two relaxing days in a tree house. Yes, we slept in trees. And here is a view from mine,



followed by dad in his.



Some amusing conversations were had, generally, over Scrabble and other family activities, but my favourite was when the Belgian owner of the hotel puffed along and said, what would an Englishman know about wine?

After that, let me see, what happened next? After that I went back to Mauritania for Songlines magazine to interview the wonderful singer-politician Malouma, who you will be able to read all about in the next issue, plus soon on my website when I load her live private performance of singing the desert blues.

Remember how a while back I wrote that really smug entry about travelling and how staying in nice hotels and taking planes was a cop-out? Well, guess what? I was wrong. Taking planes, dare I say it, is much better than travelling in sept-places, and anyone who's ever done it, will agree. A sept-place, otherwise known as a bush taxi (and also otherwise known as death on four wheels) is a car that in theory takes 7 people, plus the driver. That's how we get around in these parts, unless you have money, or are trying to do jobs where you hope to make at least some small profit, if not break even.

I left Dakar at 5 in the morning on Monday, and 12 hours later I was in Nouakchott. But despite the length and heat, that journey was relatively easy, a friend came to pick me up from the Mauritanian border, and it was the first time in a while I'd done something like take a 7-place, so the novelty factor over-rode the fact that I was in intense physical pain wedged in the back between two very large men.

But two days of tough work in the desert (Nouakchott is a city, but it's really just a largish collection of dwellings that have been plonked in the desert. I also found out that this city that houses one third of the population, has no fresh water. Something went wrong when they were planning Nouakchottout). Yes, two days of working in this place, plus being hassled by the (Senegalese) guy who worked in the guesthouse (no water, scared to put feet on the 'carpet' for fear of contracting caroet bigs, are there such a thing?) to the point that he actually came banging at my door and I had to get my stern-looking Mauritanian friend to take him aside and tell him I was his (my friend's) fiance. Yes, two days of that and I was ready to get back to Dakar.

Oh, except Dakar is 12 hours away, and real life or not, that's 12 very hot, very uncomfortable hours across the Sahara.

Rosso Mauritania, and the beautiful Senegal River at 7am,



and that was the best bit of the day. From then on it got progressively worse, until I arrived in Dakar with a dehydration headache so bad that I had to be laid down in a dark room until I was well enough to put some food in my stomach. Painful, horrible, should have taken the plane.

But I did enjoy myself. Malouma was an absolute inspiration and radio-journalist's dream, and the cloth market was good too.





Mauritania's a fascinating place, I'd recommend it to anyone, if you have your own car.

Now since then I've written my article (Sunday morning 8am start), and celebrated Easter Monday lunch with my favourite English girls and Senegalese boys.

Cecilia and I have been talking about this roast beef and Yorkshire pudding lunch for a week now. On Saturday, after a post-traumatic 7-place stress episode in which I woke up in tears on Saturday morning and neither stopped crying nor got out of my pyjamas all day, I did manage to get down to the shop and buy my joint of beef, and ingredients for the Yorkshire Pud, or Yorkshire Biscuit (for its special crispy texture) as it's known in my family.

After much internet browsing for recipes and roasting times, Cecilia produced the most perfect YP ever



crispy (but not burnt) on the bottom, just the right chewyness, and it went wonderfully with gravy and cabage and great roast potatoes, followed by steam chocolate pudding and Birds Custard (my contribution), much enjoyed by all.



All the English girls agreed that for a few minutes, it was like being back home.

All the Senegalese boys agreed that we are the best cooks ever, and then went back to their ernest discussions about music.

New Home!

Back from the Sahara, feeling better for my camel milk, but disturbed to find out that perhaps my illness was brought on not by some hard-core desert bacteria, but by the air-conditioning.

There have been requests for pictures of my new flat. It's hard to take photos inside, I discover, especially every time I step back I knock into a wall or door.

The living room, also the bedroom, also the sewing room, looking out to balcony number one.



The famous sewing table, complete with diamante-studded bobbin-drawer knob.



Bookshelves, and Rama, Mave and Aminata, the three African ladies of the house. Beware, wrong-doers.



And some old-school draining-board action.



Here's our favourite neighbour Zal, making the cathedral look rather peaky,



And favourite neighbour number 2, Cecilia, organising a first-day-in-new-home lunch.



Happy as a bee...

Shifting Sands

Mauritania is a special place, a cross-roads for Sahara trade which goes back centuries. For hundreds of years, people have been coming here from all over the world, settling, then moving on again. The result is that if you took a random cross-section of people here, you can bet that you'd find faces resembling every nation on earth.



Check out my website for more pictures

In the last couple of days I've been struck down with a fever and a chest infection, so I've been stumbling through my interviews and trying to put out stories, all the while feeling terrible. This afternoon though, perhaps the relief of the elections being over, I felt a little better and went out to the edge of Nouakchott, only a mile or so away, and watched the shifting sand dunes.



Nomads come here for a few months a year, bringing their camels with them, and sell camel milk by the side of the road. So as a Sunday afternoon treat, we stopped by and sat in our old-school Mercedes and drank a warm bowl of milk, fresh from the camel.



It is strangely delicious and I feel better now than I have in days. Although of course the local remedy for a chest infestion (which Mauritanians get a lot, because of the sand in the air,) is warm camel milk.

Shop improvements

One of the only things that went wrong during the move was that I lost my camera cable. So none of you will be able to see the beautiful view through the French doors until I find the damn thing.

A while before I left Mamelles, Now made improvements to his shop.



He extended it backwards for more shelf space, opened up the side with a large window, and created a lovely little garden. We found planks of wood and balanced them on rocks to make a bench, and planted some plants to keep the frangipani tree happy. Not only does he now sell things like cake and local milk, but it has also created a lovely space in the street for people to come and relax in, lying on the mat under the shade of the trellis, or sitting on the benches and making tea. Everyone agrees that it's the nicest shop in Dakar.



The bread is still delivered in the same way though.



I miss Mammelle and Now but life changes and this life is good too.

In other news, it's my birthday tomorrow and I will be 28. When I was 27, 28 seemed so old! I seem to remember I was getting unnecessarily concerned by my lack of partner, but I was confusing that with something much more important: friends. Now that I have a lot more wonderful, reliable, funny friends here, I feel as happy as a bee.

Moving home

There is a way to do things and there is a Senegalese way to do things. I have never hired a removal van before, in any country, so I’m not sure I am the authority on how removal vans should be packed, but I will attempt to describe the way in which packing a house up is done in Senegal.

First of all, you send someone you know and trust, a man, and a Senegalese, to walk up to random strangers who happen to be driving along in, or sitting in, or sleeping in, truck-type vehicles (this could extend to four legged powered vehicles). You get their phone numbers, and then on the night before you are due to move your entire belongings to the other side of town, you get that same friend to start calling them, ploughing through the “this number is not available at this time” messages until you find one who has given you a number that works. Then you tell him what you need, and you tell him how much you can pay.

This pricing arrangement does not of course work with people who have unlimited funds, like I do. If I paid “as much as I have” every time I was asked to, I would be long broke. But my trusty companion Now took charge of the whole process and he said he had £15, and so that is what he arranged, for two trips from my old house by the sea to my new house in town, on Friday morning.

By Thursday night the flat was dirty, empty-looking, and very sad. Luckily the witch who lives downstairs was clanging away, her screeching voice reverberating through the tiled building, and it acted as a necessary reminder as to why I was moving from this lovely neighbourhood where my friends were literally on my doorstep from morning to night, to another part of town where people probably don’t say hi to each other in the street.

I sat in the shop on Thursday night with Now and I made tea. At the beginning of this talk of moving, months ago, Now had protested (but understood), loudly. Now that the move has arrived, he says nothing, but the silence is deafening. My silence says I feel the same way.

Before the sun had risen on Friday morning, I was at the telephone company office paying for the transfer of my phone line. By the time I got back, the van had arrived and Now was giving the driver, a young man who said very little, breakfast of Nescafe and powdered milk from an old margarine tub cup. When Naomi had moved her belongings and the horse and cart that was to take them to her new place out of the way, we started loading the van.

Now had brought his room-mate George along to help. George works as a security guard and used to be the guard at one of the houses in our street. He was the one who removed the frog from my plant the week I moved into my flat, a year and a half ago. George had been at work all night and was on his way to bed when Now cornered him into coming to help. He made out it was just what he wanted to be doing after a night standing out in the cold watching someone’s house.

Little by little, the plants, the boxes of jam-jars, the bags of shoes and boubous, the endless cushions, and then the bigger things- the teak table which takes three men to move, the bed, the bookshelves, they all came down the stairs, and no one complained, they all made out they were having a whale of a time. The driver got inside the van and lumped the boxes around, as I winced and asked my self what I would do if my Mexican olive-oil pourer got smashed, and then the driver took everything out again and the baskets went in, then they didn’t fit either so the table went in, then the baskets, then the boxes, and after an hour, every single one of my belongings minus the fridge and bed, had gone inside this tiny little van, and there was not an inch of space, not one tiny little crack of air left, and it felt pretty much like a miracle had taken place.

******

It’s always a surprise to me when some part of my life changes and I discover that I am not the totally self-sufficient Superwoman that I imagine I should be able to be. Last night, lying in bed with the parrot squeaking away in the beauty salon three floors below (“Better a parrot than that hell-fire witch-face downstairs from you in Mamelles,” said Cecilia), and the roar of the city outside the French doors, I felt like I had been severed.

It’s true that it is hard to live alone in Africa. There has to be a small team of people around you who can help clean the ever-pervading dust from everything you own, who can find you an oven when you want to buy one, who can put you in touch with the man at the electricity company who will connect your flat up without delay, who can find you boxes, get you vegetables, tell you where to buy an ironing board, find you rice at lunch time. Because nothing is straight forward here, you don’t fix things by going to the shop and replacing them, and life takes a lot of energy.

When I moved to Dakar from Ziguinchor permanently, I barely knew anyone and certainly not people who knew where to find, and how to bang in, masonry nails. But Now’s boutique, and the people around it, provided me first with practical help, and later, solid rewarding friendship. Somehow, despite coming from totally different cultures and educations and upbringings, Now is one of the tiny group of people in Senegal who I could tell anything to, and expect an understanding response. And now it feels like he is a very long way away.

*****

But settle in I am starting to do. This morning, Sunday, despite being out till 6am, I unpacked the rest of the boxes, and arranged a little furniture. From where I sit at my table, through the balcony doors I can see the imposing white cathedral (about 100 metres away) and hear the choir singing. I can see the ministry of information just across the way, and look down into the American Embassy. There is a cool breeze and although I can hear traffic, I can’t hear my neighbour screaming, for which I am truly grateful. There is a very nice feeling in the flat, which I sensed immediately that I came to look around. I think I will be happy here.

Pictures to follow...

High winds and high seas

Senegal has been hit by a tremendous storm, its most recent development being that Dakar is cold, with a biting wind whipping sand through the houses and along the streets. I was in the south for ten days or so, initially working and lying by the pool (at the same time) while I checked through the internet what the situation in Guinea looked like. Then I went off for a week to Boucotte, a village on the coast of Casamance, where I thought I would have a lovely relaxing time.

It was quite clear by the first day at Boucotte, when I had already finished two books and was the only person staying in the campement, that I hadn't brought enough to read or to do. I am not someone who can sit down and do nothing, I get fidgety and need to be usefully employed if I am to be relaxed. The young guy working at the guest house felt sad for me, I think, and while the wind whistled through the empty buildings with the sea roaring on the other side of the trees, I ate in silence while this guy sat on the other side of the solitary table and stared at me, just to make me feel less alone. I did try explaning to him that I wanted to be alone, that I had things to think about, but he just laughed, unsure, and carried on staring at me.

By day 2, I was ready to get out of there. I walked the 6 km or so along the totaly deserted but clear white sand beach to the nearest town, Cap Skirring, thinking I would find somewhere to stay in town. But when I was abused on the beach by rastas who accused me of being racist because I didn't feel like hanging out with them (and eventually handing over money or completing marriage vows), I decided enough was enough. I would go anywhere, just as long as it wasn't there.

When I eventually got back to the hotel I saw my escape route: a 4x4 truck which had brought a group of French tourists. After a painful night in which I was made to sit alone with my back to the group, like a naughty school child, by the young guy who clearly doesn't have a clue how to run a friendly guesthouse, I managed to get a lift with the group in the morning. Being being tourists and impressively excited about everything, the first stop was a village school. Across the sandy yard, a fierce wind was blowing.



We sat in a class while the corrugated iron roof rippled and roared in the wind, and the teacher, in a suit made from colourful African wax print fabric, told us how tough it was to run a school in a rural area. Every day, he said, parents would come to the classroom and ask for their sons and daughters to come and help them in the field, planting or harvesting rice. If the teacher refused, the child would never be allowed to come back to school. When an entire generation grows up illiterate, never experiencing school themselves, it has detrimental effects on the next generation.

Luckily the teacher seemed to be ahead of the game, and although the state has failed to provide the class with any books, he had bought one himself and would write up on the board any reading exercises that needed to be done so that they wouldn't get behind. And when he had first started there, 95% of the school were boys. Thanks to going from house to house and asking parents to let their daughters come to school too, that figure is now roughly half and half.

I made some friends at the school while we played around the tree which has the school bell attached to it. It's made out of an old car wheel and gets banged with a stick to call students to class.










Really cool girls with lots of funk.

So that day, in the relative luxury of a 4x4 truck, I was delivered with the French tourists to Carabane Island, my favourite place on earth. There I lay on the beach and read and when the books were finished, I wrote. For two days, because of the wind (which brought the sea up to the wall of the house, so that we were marooned on our own house-shaped island) there was no fish. So Loulou, the only other person in the house, and I made up creative recipes with onions, rice and one aubergine. At last, on the final day, the wind died down and Loulou went fishing. Within ten minutes he came back and threw the net at my feet: fifteen wriggling fish. He and I grilled them on the fire and it was, kind of, blissful.

The end of the patchwork project

I'm going to get my life back! I have finished the patchwork quilt and I can now dedicate myself to other causes, like reposing upon it.





I hope you will all agree that it is beeeeeautiful.

I have made other plans for other patchwork quilts, but you're all going to have to wait. I don't want to see a bobbin for quite some time. Which is a shame, because Ablaye has made me the loveliest sewing machine table, complete with diamante studded drawer handle. I'll post a picture of that next time.

The Patchwork Marathon

After another evening of sitting on the hall floor with Now sewing, the wadding is attached and I am ready for quilting. I'm not sure yet if the machine is up to it, but the weekend will tell. Wish me luck.

I ask myself again and again why I have let handicrafts take over my social life. I can't go out until this is finished.

C'est pas sure

It was Saturday night, we were standing outside Youssou N'Dour's club Thiossane, leaning on someone's car. It was 4 in the morning, it was cold, and I wanted to go home.

"I'm going to take you to a place you've never in your life seen before in Dakar," said my friend Aziz, a Senegalese who does indeed seem to have a store of good places up his sleeve. Mostly, post-club hangouts in Dakar are Dibis, meat-roasting shops where you order roasted mutton and raw onions by the kilo. I wasn't in the mood for that and the thought of driving all the way into town and then getting a taxi all the way out to my house at Mamelles felt like too much effort. I made sounds about getting a taxi but my friends were insistent: "You have to experience this once in your life."

Soon enough, the backdoor of Thiossane opened and Habib, Youssou's bass player came out and we all got in his car (the one we had been leaning on). Aziz is his manager and he and I have talked music quite a bit, which is why we are now friends. He is one of the nicest people ever, modest, polite and a damn good bass player, so it's always a treat to hang out with him.

We rolled down the empty streets, around the roundabout where I once nearly lost Naomi from a taxi with unsafe door catches, and up a street I know well by day time, which was now, in the dead of night, deserted. A lone beggar stood outside a door, a few cardboard boxes beside him, and rubbish in the gutter. But there seemed to be a odd amount of cars parked around, and the sound of laughter coming from inside the door.

The four of us went through the doorway, a hole in the wall that I'm not sure even had a door on it, and into the dark crumbling guts of a concrete building, perhaps once derelict, but now a hub of activity. The walls were blackened above an open fire and all around precariously-balanced crates and planks were men eating delicious-smelling meat skewers and fresh baguettes. A single blue bulb lit up the faces of these well-dressed people, as well as the people wrapped in sheets sleeping wherever they could get themselves horizontal.

We sat down, Habib (who is no small man) and I on one bench which was more like a see-saw when he then went to get up, the others infront of the drinks boy. I opted out of skewers but said I'd like some coffee. Aziz and the drinks boy at this point got into a long discussion. There was a lot of pointing going on at a collection of glasses which had been washed but were perhaps not what you would call clean, and then the boy got out his knife and starting plunging it into the top of a tin can that had once held condensed milk.

"C'est pas sure," said Aziz, indicating the glasses. "It's better if he makes you a cup."

And so, this is how I am now the proud owner of my favourite cup, handmade especially for me, in a hole in the wall filled with happy laughing people in the dead of night. The handle, the lid of the can, is wrapped in recycled computer print-outs, so as not to lose a finger.



There's something magical about being looked after so well. I feel in the constant protection of someone, strangers or friends, almost all the time. I am never allowed to walk anywhere alone, and apparently not even allowed to drink out of potentially unclean cups. It's something the Senegalese do really well.

In other news, the patchwork is finished. Yesterday, Now and I put the deep blue border on the gigantic beast and now 'all' that waits is the quilting.

Kora-making

I've been working on something special this weekend. Click below to go to my website, and then click on the link to the photos of the kora maker. Enjoy.

http://web.mac.com/roseskelton/iWeb/Site/Photos.html

The patchwork quilt

The lack of frequent blogging can be partly explained by this, my latest project:





It's my last day off work, I am slightly ill, in my PJ's, listening to radio 1, drinking PG Tips (pyramids) doing my patchwork. I didn't imagine I'd move to Africa and take up handicrafts, but, there you go.

In other news, Cecilia took this lovely picture from the house where we spent Christmas.



Happy new year everyone.