The Dakar-Goree Challenge: Day 12

This morning I awoke to hear the most glorious of sounds: rain. What's more, I was cold. I thought, I've been magically transported to England, and as I lay curled up in bed listening to the thunder and rain, I thought, that was the first night I have slept the whole night through without getting up to get water, chase a mosquito out of my net, have a cold shower or check to see whether the electricity had come back on and I could charge my computer. What's more, it stayed 'cold' (ie: I could wear a vest, singlet, tank-top without pouring with sweat) until about now, 9pm, when I am back to sweating again.

Remember the sea urchin spine?

Yesterday, while i was out in the street learning Wolof with Now (we had no electricity yesterday either and once my battery was flat, there was no more working unless it was in pencil), my right arm started to hurt. The skin felt sore to touch and my fingers ached. A weird sensation. I went to town to buy a swim suit and a swimming hat. That was an experience. As I flicked through a rack of 12 tiny swim suits at the country's biggest sports shop I began to despair that I would ever find one my size, but then Omar popped his head around the rack and I knew all would be OK. Omar is the only man in the country who knows about customer care, he's the only man in the shop who says things like, "you need that in a 42? let me look'. The others say things like, "you need that in a 42? let me look" and then they disappear off to lunch.

Omar and I sorted through a lot of swimming costumes, all size 36, until we found one in my size, and since it was the only one in the shop (and therefore the country), I didn't have the luxury to stop and consider whether or not it looked good. Once we had the suit, it was time to chose the hat. Omar was concerned that the cap matched the swim suit so after trying on a lot of hats, and doing a lot of giggling, we chose the silver one. It can only make me go faster.

After that I went to meet naomi. I was sitting on a harmless-looking metal electric box thing outside this shop, and I leant my elbow on the metal grate on the window and suddenly I was flying off my seat- I had been electrocuted, but not enough to kill me, just cause me sever pain.

Well, I got over that and managed to go to a good reggae concert with a friend who's just come over from London (with 2 pounds of cheese and a loaf of organic poppy seed bread as a gift) but at about 2am I started to get a headache and I realised that the weird tingling and sore skin had spread around my head and infact all down the right side of my body. Probably cerebral malaria, I thought, and had another glass of wine. Or maybe, said Catherine, you've got sea urchin spine poisoning. Now there's something I hadn't though of, and it's true that bits of the spine were still at that point in my foot. When my head started to pound I went home.

This morning I awoke with a weird rash on my neck.

"I'm worried about you," said Naomi. Well, you know, you're probably always OK but here, people die of stuff a lot and so it's easy for a headache to become in your mind a deadly cocktail of TB-Cholera-Typhoid. Luckily we had no electricity so I could only work until my battery ran out, and since it was cold I stayed in my pyjamas all day and hung out with Now at his shop where I got loads of sympathy for being on death's door. In the afternoon, my illnesses cleared up and I dug out the remainder of the sea urchin spine and I was OK.

But of a crap ending to the story I know.

But here's something that'll crack you up. I hope to God that no one important reads this, like the editor of the Sunday Times, who was reading this very blog only last week.



We had had no power for eight hours today, and we were starting to get bored. So I decided to try on my swim suit. And then the hat and goggles followed and before I knew it I was posing for the camera. I feel I have already lost a lot of respect out there for posting the picture of me in a red swimming cap so it can't get any worse. Actually, it was Karen who goaded me into putting up there, but then, she hadn't seen it at that point. Maybe she'll think differently about it now.

Anyway, all of this is to tell you that I didn't swim today because of the cerebral malaria and yesterday because I was buying the Very Serious Swim Suit and getting electrocuted but my brother and his girlfriend Mati have now said they'll give me £50 if I do the swim and £100 if I finish it which means if I don't start some serious training very soon then I'm going to deprive the kids of £50.