Trip into town

27 Feb. 12

We were supposed to go back into the water today but the tractor is broken. So instead we started with some of the repairs that we would have had to do on the water or on route whilst we wait. My son received his first letter from me yesterday and he sent me such an emotional sms that I felt overwhelmed with emotions and couldn’t finish reading it in one attempt. He turns eighteen in May and I am not sure if I will see him which is really going to be hard. I am not sure how I am going to deal with my emotions on that day. Even now as I think about it I feel a well of emotion so coping in the future on that day makes me concerned.

Yesterday we spent the day moving the life raft from one position to another on the boat trying to find a suitable place for it. It is in a big blue unsightly looking bag so we want to hide it but in the same time make it easily accessible. The bag is about the size of a typical mother in law’s suitcase when she pops over from England on a quick two month long visit. Okay, I used the cliché “mother in law” which doesn’t apply to my “mother in law” just for the record. My mother in law is actually quite easy to get along with, a very thoughtful person with a bit of an adventure side to her. No I’m not just saying this in case she reads my blog or trying to get brownie points from the wife.

Back to the big blue heavy bag. We lugged it onto the new dive platform and placed it under the gas bottle as our first option thinking that this may be just the spot. After staring at it for a while and climbing on and off the stairs onto the dive platform a few times we decided that it was going to be in the way. It may also ruin our possible future plans of widening the back steps in that position. Next we lugged it to the centre of the dive platform and turned it around and onto its side a few times. No this didn’t work for us either. We then thought about using it as a base for a small table in the cockpit so we lugged it into the cockpit and brought up some foam core to use for the table top. This plan failed because the bag together with the table would steel most of our cockpit area. We eventually decided to place it under the helmsman chair which meant we had to build a helmsman chair since we don’t have one anyway.

28 Feb. 12

Yesterday turned out to be one of those, work the whole day on the same thing, without actually getting anywhere, days. The helmsman chair that we built turned out to be a hideous monstrosity that invaded our entire cockpit space. So we had to dump that idea and go back to the drawing board with the life raft situation. At least I can still cut the hideous monster smaller and transform it into a top cupboard for the kitchen, so only half of the previous day was wasted building it and not the whole day. We decided that we would do one job per day towards getting on the water and one that was on the list to be done once we were already on the water, since we are stuck for the moment on land anyway.

This all sounded great in theory, but some days, like yesterday, it just doesn’t work like that. We spent the entire day wrestling with the backing plates and crossbeam. By the end of the day we were not one step closer to completion. It’s as if we didn’t touch or do anything for the day yet were completely exhausted and very frustrated.

Today the plan is to catch a taxi into town, let the kids go to the movies while Lola and I walk around to a couple of different shops for some spares. The last stop will be pick and pay for some groceries and coke. Then catch another taxi back.

29 Feb. 12

The persistent mosquitoes woke me up this morning and forced me to get out of bed. I then looked at my phone to see what time it was and discovered it was only four o clock. During the course of the night I received a long ass sms from my son and when I read it my emotions ran away with me again. For a while I just sat outside in the cockpit with tears in my eyes. Eventually I calmed down, reread the sms and found his typical humour in the message. This made me feel better and I even found myself laughing out loud at some of the things he typed. It amazes me how you can feel so low and so high all at the same time.

The taxi collected us at eight thirty, after a long days shopping and thousands of miles of walking, dropped us back at the boat at four.

I don’t know if all countries in the world are the same, but here in Africa things work like this. A person decides to start a small business for whatever reason of his own. Be it because he has delusions of grandeur or feels that he can make lots of cash. Perhaps he recognises a gap in the market place and believes that he could fill that gap, or maybe he just can’t find employment and life leads him into a situation where he has no choice. Anyway the reason isn’t relevant the end result is. Usually the business is started with little or no capital. The taxi service down here is one of those small businesses.

The first time we called the taxi service the phone was answered by a female voice, that I believed to be sitting in a control centre somewhere. The voice informed us that the taxi would take about fifteen minutes to collect us at our pickup point. The taxi arrived with a male driver and on the journey he reported to his control centre over a mobile two way radio. This was all within my expectation and seemed normal at the time.

Yesterday however the voice herself arrived to collect us in the taxi and we got to experience true African entrepreneurial compromise. As she was driving us to town she was also playing the part of call centre, taking five or six calls on her cell phone with no hands free kit, making notes in her book, giving cost prices and instructing other taxis from one destination to the next. I must admit the voice could multitask but there were a few moments that my concern levels went up a notch or two as she was trying to do everything at once and still stay on the road. At no point did I feel we were going to die, but more than once I had visions of us heading through the bushes on the side of the road.

Today Lola and I are celebrating our anniversary of our first date. An easy one to remember since it only comes once every four years.