a long-awaited delivery

Finally, two days short of six months after it was packed up and taken away, my shipment of personal effects was delivered to my flat.  I was excited, but at the same time nervous, as I had been given so may warnings (from the African end) of likely damage to my stuff, and (from the Panamanian end) of likely pilferage from the container.  But 42 boxes were packed up, and 42 boxes were delivered, so the next step was to open them up.  I went first for the ‘box’ I was most concerned about – a six foot high antelope plank mask from Burkina Faso.  Beautiful, fragile, and impossible to replace; I had asked the packing company to be especially careful with it.
 

The delivery man cut through the packaging, layer by layer.  This was what was revealed:

 

 
I will try to claim something on the insurance, but I’m sure they won’t pay up and in any case, I don’t want money, I want my precious mask.  The removal men, trying to comfort me in my distress, suggested that I could glue the two pieces back together.  I suppose I can, but it won’t be the same.

After that, what should have been excitement at finally getting my long-awaited stuff was more a case of trepidation at what further damage I might find.  Remarkably, though, nothing else was broken, although everything was covered in a thick, malodorous layer of pale grey mildew, having been stored in the Panama humidity for the two months it took the Senegalese movers to pay the necessary money to the Panama end.  Dry rot had also destroyed the heels of one pair of shoes, and paperback books, having been packed on their ends, were bent in two.  It wasn’t actually as bad as I had been led to expect, but I certainly wasn’t celebrating that night.  In fact I had a sleepless night as my eyes and nose reacted to all the mould/mildew spores released into the flat.  I had been looking forward to the arrival of two comfortable pillows, but they too were thick with mildew.

Six loads of laundry later, and a lot of scrubbing to bags, shoes, wooden objects, electric flexes and various other things I would never have expected to go mouldy, and nearly everything is clean.  Now I just have to find somewhere to put it all.

a different side of Brazil

A three-week assignment in Brazil offered a nice break from the process of settling in to life in Panama.  Not tourist Brazil though - we don't have an office in Rio, or Salvador, or the Amazon - but the city of São Luis in the little-known state of Maranhão.

It has a historic centre which is a UNESCO-listed heritage site, but this is run-down and empty enough, in the day-time, to be rather unsafe.

Some 280km away from São Luis though - enough to be done in a day-trip if you can face getting up at 4am - is the National Park of Lençois Maranhenses.  This amazing place consists of 1,500 square kilometres of white sand dunes, with small freshwater lakes in the dune valleys.

The standard trip there gives you a few hours to walk about on the dunes and swim in a couple of lagoons, but I couldn't help but think how nice it would be to stay overnight - to watch the sun set over the dunes and camp under a full moon.  Or even to float over the dunes in a hot air balloon...

The other unusual feature of Maranhão state is its love affair with Jamaican reggae, and I went with some colleagues to a very popular Sunday evening reggae bar where I sipped caipirinhas and danced under the palm trees.  The place was a great illustration of how liberal the place is; the crowd was of all colours and all ages, one Brazilian colleague had brought his boyfriend along, and a friend of another colleague - tall and broad-shouldered, with a strong jaw but otherwise seemingly feminine - was apparently part-way through her gender reassignment.  She described herself to me as "an androgynous boy" with no apparent concern.  What a contrast with the illiberal society I left behind in West Africa!

Speaking of which, my next trip will be a three-week assignment in Dakar!  How strange it will be to go back...