week 9 Making a few 'boobs'

In the last few days this has started to feel almost like normal living (almost!). No trips or training anymore, simply getting on with day to day life.

I’ve got more ‘company’ at home because in the past week I have removed over 50 cockroaches from my bathroom and it’s not even close to the rainy season yet. Fortunately I’m not that bothered by them or I would have gone mad by now.

My first ‘boob’ was my attempt at plumbing. The sink in my kitchen keeps getting blocked and as Mr Muscle sink unblocker does not exist, I decided to just clear the pipes myself. I managed to do that very successfully.... Now everything just flows out of the sink and onto the floor. Serves me right for trying to be Little Miss Independent

Second ‘boob’ was at work and another cultural lesson for me.
As most of you will know, I have been finding the pace of work enormously frustrating. I don’t have nearly enough to do and as I only really came here to work, (rather than as an experience), I’m doing all I can to change that. Over the past couple of weeks I have been putting together a report for the Director about the HR department and to try and suggest areas where they might make some changes and where I could help. I was INCREDIBLY diplomatic with the wording and content to be as sensitive as possible. Having re-read it about 5 times, I left it for the Director to review and suggested we discuss it at some stage later in the week.

The following day I was called to a meeting with the Director and the 2 senior HR team members. The Director had read my report and was horrified that I had put such things in writing. She read aloud, word for word, my entire 9 page report. It was excruciating, especially as she did it in a slow, sad tone, as if reading a eulogy! In the Gambia putting that type of thing in writing is really serious and they had taken every single word literally. I had written that I was ‘disappointed’ not to be on a certain project, disappointed here means devastated and therefore she was convinced I was going to leave. Things did improve by the end of the meeting when I simply discussed the cultural difference between UK and Gambia and tried to put the report into perspective. Not sure the incident has made a great deal of difference in terms of my work load but certainly I wont be writing any more reports in the next few weeks......

My third and forth boob of the week were a pair! Fellow volunteer, Jodie, had this great idea to bake a birthday cake for a friend of ours who was having a party on Friday night. In her great wisdom she decided we should make the cake a pair of breast!! We hatched this plan forgetting the usual constraints of a volunteer house (no scales, no cake tins, no oven temperature, no mixer, no caster sugar, no baking sheets…………)

Anyway, what follows is our attempt and results!!





1) Jodie guesses weights/amounts of various ingredients and the recipe - Shes poses as 1950's housewife!








2)Jackie is upset when she realises the eggs she has bought are hard boiled and not fresh!

3) Jackie realises shops are shut for Friday prayers so replacement eggs are at least an hour away, she makes cocktails instead.






4) Trying the cake tins (metal petfood bowls) for size!









5) The finished article. Under the circumstances I think it is a miracle that we achieved anything!…incidentally the lace around the edge of the bra was trimmed from a pair of (brand new, I promise!) knickers of mine, what a sacrifice!





(By the way, Paul loved the cake. He is a complete lad so it was a great idea by Jodie. She carried the cake in wearing a very low cut dress and he said that it was like a perfect mirror image!!)