a weekend in Paris

Various factors came together to make me spend a weekend in Paris, but the trip was based around a concert by the Malian singer Fatoumata Diawara in the town of Savigny-le-Temple, a nondescript place some 33km from the capital. Not only would I see her perform for the first time but I was also to meet her after the show, an opportunity that had come about unexpectedly when a facebook post had revealed that an old friend knew her husband.

Paris was cold and covered by a blanket of grey clouds, and I came down with a cold immediately (in fact it started en route - in anticipation of the awful weather?) as I usually do when I visit somewhere cold. & the Fatoumata Diawara concert wasn't to be, as I arrived at the venue to discover that she was in bed suffering from dengue fever. But there was a replacement, called in at the last minute, an unknown (to me, at least) Malian singer called Nanou Coul. She was good (although not really good enough to justify a trip from Panama to France) and listening to her griotte-style singing and the band playing the djembe, balafon and ngoni made me reminisce about the happy times I have spent in Mali.

Once again the usual thoughts went through my head. How I detest the cold and could never again live in a cold climate. How much I adore West African music, especially that from the Sahelian region. How much I adore the climate of the Sahelian countries. So why not retire there? Then the usual thoughts about the negative side: lack of decent medical facilities, the lack of a 'social space' for the unmarried, childless woman, and most importantly my status there as an outsider - someone who would always be stared at, and asked for money, because of the colour of my skin.

So what to do? The next day, back in Paris itself, I ended up as I usually do at the Musee Quai Branly, going around the wonderful collection they have from Africa, and then being tempted by all the CDs and wonderful coffee table books they have in the museum shop. This time they had a special collection of exhibits related to initiation amongst the Lega tribe of the Democratic Republic of Congo - headgear, masks and other implements as well as a good deal of very interesting information about the various levels of initiation. It was fascinating but I was well aware that I was looking at things I could not see if I went to the DRC to visit the Lega as most of the exhibits (collected by some old colonialist many decades ago) are only brought out for secret ceremonies for the initiates themselves.

It is a strange paradox that the best of traditional African culture - the masks and the music - is more easily available to the outsider in Paris and London than it is in Africa. The trouble with working as an expat is that it loosens the ties to your original home but does not necessarily provide an alternative. So the question for me remains unanswered - where do I plan to retire to?

Not that I'm ready to retire yet, but I really would like to know where 'home' is to be - and to buy a house or apartment there and start transporting my books, my masks, etc (those things that cause such difficulties through either their weight or their fragility in moving from country to country) to that home. Any suggestions welcomed!

birding the Pipeline Road

After the disappointment of last week's independence parades, I was pleased to accept an invitation to spend this morning at one of Panama's most impressive places - Pipeline Road.  This is a 17km dirt road through tropical forest, and one of the best-known bird-watching destinations in the world.

This is a very short post as so few of my readers would be interested in a list of the birds I saw, but here is a photo of just one of them, the black-throated trogon, to give an idea of how beautiful many Panamanian birds are.

Independence Day

05:45, and fireworks in the old city signal the start of Independence Day in Panama.  Or rather, the start of the first of five independence-related days.  This, the first, celebrates independence (or separation) from Colombia in 1903, tomorrow the secret manufacture of the country's first flag and the day after that the successful prevention of a fight back by Colombian soldiers.  Then we get a few days back at work, before next week we celebrate the first cry of the fight for independence from Spain, and then finally at the end of the month the actual independence from Spain in 1821.  I hope they don't all start off with a 'wake-up call' at 5:45 in the morning.

After the fireworks we had a flypast of three jets, then another of seven helicopters.  I was wondering how many people get up to watch this, but by the time it finished the sky was flushed pink with the first light of the morning so I didn't go back to bed but made myself an early breakfast.

With my boxes having arrived from Senegal just before my last trip, I had borrowed a drill for the weekend from a colleague, so prepared myself for a day of putting up hooks for pictures and masks.  Only - the first obstacle - the flex of the drill was not long enough, so I went out to the DIY store to buy an extension cable.

On the way back I could hear drumming coming from the streets behind my building, so the DIY had to wait as I went to take a look at the Independence Day parades.  To Panamanians all this is of huge significance.  Apparently a few years ago the government made some noises about reducing the number of independence-related public holidays and there was uproar all over the country - not because they didn't want to lose a public holiday but because they didn't want to lose opportunities to express their patriotic fervour.

On that basis you might expect a lot of pomp and ceremony, or at least a lot of cheering and celebration, but really the only demonstration of patriotism is the proliferation of Panamanian flags at this time: flying from all the buildings, sticking out of car windows, hanging from backpacks...  The parade itself was quite dull, I thought.  Lots of drumming, but not in the African way that makes you want to sway your hips and tap your feet, but rather columns of school and college students in uniform banging out military style rhythms.  Between the drummers were girls dressed like cheerleaders, twirling batons, and with each group at least one woman dressed in the frilly white national dress, the pollera.

A couple of Panamanian colleagues have told me how beautiful their national costume is, but I'm afraid frilly white dresses don't do it for me.  I'm also disappointed at how much it seems to draw on their Spanish colonial heritage, resembling to my inexpert eye a white version of a flamenco dress - they also wear peinetas in their hair and many were using Spanish-style fans.  & the marching bands and cheerleaders draw so heavily on US culture.  There was no hint of local instruments or rhythms, nor anything I could see in the dress that drew on the customs of the various indigenous groups in Panama.

So I went home again, and back to my DIY.  I must say the flat is starting to look much more homely!

back in Senegal

Arriving at Dakar airport at the same time as a couple of other flights, I wondered briefly why I had got so excited about a trip back 'home'.  But I quickly slipped back into the Senegalese way, slowly and patiently pushing my way through the crowd, marvelling at the good nature of the people here as many potential arguments were quickly diffused by someone with a sense of humour.  90 minutes to get to passport control - 90 minutes to remember, as if I could forget, why I love West Africa.

I arrived during the latter part of the rainy season, a period I always found difficult when I lived here, but after the 90% humidity of Panama it felt quite comfortable.  Large parts of the city had been without running water for three weeks though as the government failed to deal promptly with a broken pipe.  Thankfully my hotel was in the lucky half of the city, but riots had broken out in some of the suburbs so I was pleased when it was fixed.  A marabout attended the site of the break and sacrificed three cows - one white, one red and one black - to ensure that the problem didn't recur.

Then with the water supply assured, the shepherds and their sheep started to come into town, more and more sheep filling any spare few inches of ground, on sale to fulfil the need for every Muslim household to slaughter a sheep at the festival of Tabaski.  Of course it would be disrespectful to Allah to sacrifice any but the best sheep you can afford, so there were sheep almost as big as donkeys on sale, the most expensive coming in at some $4,000 a head.  Those finding it hard to scrape together enough to buy even one of the cheapest sheep get desperate for money, and wandering around town is hard work, fending off the would-be guides and salesmen of tourist tat.  Apparently the risk of being pickpocketed is much higher during this period.

But still, it's good to be back.  Despite the demands of the work I managed to fit in two musical evenings, Souleymane Faye and Vivian N'dour at Just4U (an excellent night, thankfully, as I hadn't really warned my colleagues that it might not end until after 4am!), and Baaba Maal at the French Cultural Centre, his ngoni player pictured above.  A visit to the hairdressers too ($100 cheaper for highlights than in Panama), and to my old tailor, and of course to the friends I left here.  A quick trip to the fish market at Soumbedioune, journeys around town in battered old taxis and even more battered public transport - but above all just being here.  Feeling at peace to be here, and hoping that over time I can find that same feeling, somehow, in my new Latin American home.

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...

still settling in

Nothing has changed that much since I wrote about 'settling in' to my flat last month.  I'm still working from the fold-up desk and garden chair, still don't have a bank account and still can't sleep through the traffic noise.  But I met another English woman yesterday who lives 14 floors above me, and her news that some sun will start to reach the balconies in another month or so cheered me up immensely.

My lack of bank account is now in the hands of smile, my UK internet bank, as they tell me they do not have any email address and so my prospective bank in Panama will have to send their reference request by old-fashioned post.  Even if the reply arrives (mail here being highly unreliable) the process is likely to take a couple of months, so I continue to get by in cash.  I get some strange looks paying in cash - I think people suspect me of money-laundering - and it's difficult to know how much to carry as I still need to make lots of purchases for the flat (including the desk and chair).  I am quite astonished that an internet bank does not have an email address!!

The humidity has risen further, to an average 90% over the last couple of weeks, and apparently will stay at this level and above until December.  So I have an on-going battle with mould.  Mouldy jeans, shirts, underwear, shoes, bags, and twice in the last two weeks I have had to drag the corner settee away from the wall to wipe off the mould growing up the back of it.  It really is a most unpleasant climate.

On the good side though I have started to make a few friends.  The first Sunday of every month sees an 'introductory bird walk' in the Metropolitan Park; I went along this weekend and met a few nice people.  Then a chance remark by one of the staff manning the building's reception area led to my discovering an English couple living in the same block.  Over a couple of glasses of wine last night (and I now have a corkscrew on loan until mine arrives!) I learnt that they had experienced many of the same issues as me, but having been here a year longer they had found ways around some and learned that they could live with the others.  It was encouraging.  Although it seems that the only answer to the mould issue is air conditioning and frequent inspections and cleaning of possessions.

The final bit of good news was that the container with all my stuff in is getting closer to Panama - it is now in Mexico!  I'm not looking forward to adding more leather shoes, a leather jacket, a wet suit and a hammock to the list of things that have undergo weekly mould inspections, but I will be so very happy to have my clothes, my kitchen stuff, my music, my books, etc.

time out in Andalusia

In any other year, the news that our annual conference was to be held in Madrid would have been very welcome, but only three months after my move from Africa to Latin America I would have appreciated the opportunity to hit some British shops.  Still, looking on the positive side it offered opportunities to practice my Spanish and to take some of the rest days due to me in Andalusia - to finally satisfy that long-held desire to visit Granada.

In fact I started my time off in Cordoba, as I wanted to see La Mezquita - the old mosque - which is often described as one of the jewels of Islamic architecture.  I have to say though that I was rather disappointed with it.  I could see that it would have been beautiful in its day, but after the re-capture of the south of Spain by the Catholics, the mosque was 'Christianised' (is that a word?), with a cathedral built in the centre of it and gaudy chapels all around the edge.  At some stage the 19 entrances were also closed off, blocking much of the natural light from entering.  Still worth a visit but not what I'd been expecting to see.

On the other hand, I had expected the small town of Ronda to be worth a visit, but not to be such a jaw-droppingly stunning place.

Set on the top of an escarpment, one part of it surrounded on all sides by steep cliffs and only joined to the rest of the town by an impressive bridge, it offers spectacular views over the surrounding countryside. My €20-a-night ensuite hotel room with air conditioning, cable TV and wifi was just a ten minute walk in one direction from bus and train station and ten minutes in the other from these stunning cliff-top views.  There were cheap places to eat (admittedly not-so-cheap if you wanted somewhere with a view), friendly locals and, well, I found myself wondering if it might be somewhere to retire to when the time comes.  The photo is only from my phone (as my camera packed up on day one of the trip) but they really were the kind of views that I don't think I would ever tire of looking at.

I was so impressed with the place that I seriously considered spending the rest of my week there and not bothering with Granada, but as Granada was the real purpose of the trip I tore myself away.

Granada did not disappoint.  Bigger than the other two places, a real city in fact, but dominated by the hilltop Alhambra fortress and palace complex.  I spent an entire day looking around the Alhambra, and then returned for a 10pm concert in the grounds, which gave me a sunset view looking over the adjacent Moslem Albayzin district.

The complex consists of a solid old fortress, several palaces, a church, a very good archaeological museum, an art gallery, a set of Arab baths, and extensive grounds and gardens.  My favourite was the Nasrid Palace, a 14th century set of courtyards and rooms with intricately carved and moulded ceilings and walls, hard to capture on a phone camera but hopefully this picture gives some idea of its beauty.

going back to school

This time round, unlike the time when I started my previous contract in French-speaking Senegal, my employer decided to honour my right to a couple of weeks at language school.  The town of Antigua, in Guatemala, is widely considered to provide the best value in the region so that was where I went, for two weeks of intensive one-to-one tuition plus practise in the evenings with the local family I stayed with.

Intensive was the word, as we covered six tenses, reflexive verbs, pronouns and a number of other grammatical issues as well as adding enormously to my vocabulary.  It was tough-going.  For the first week I was in bed asleep by nine every evening, exhausted from the mental effort.  Words and phrases were spinning round and round in my head.  But, wow!  How much I learnt in the two weeks!  I'm still having to think carefully about my verb endings but now I can actually speak to people!

Of course the challenge now that I am back home is to keep up the momentum.  Today was not a good start, what with a mountain of washing to do (not just the clothes I wore in Guatemala but also the ones here that had grown a layer of mould during my absence), food to buy, and also with an abortive trip to the homewares store (I went for a kettle and a soap dish and somehow came home with a salad bowl and some picture hooks) - not to mention watching the final set of Wimbledon - I have not used a single Spanish word today.  Although I now know that "cuarenta igual" is Spanish for 40-all.  Tomorrow I have to start working on it again, to reinforce what I learnt and hopefully start adding more.

I did have some fun in Antigua too.  It was cold and wet most of the time and so not really conducive to sightseeing, but still the beauty of the town showed through - a grid of cobbled streets with colourfully-painted colonial houses around a pretty central square, in a valley surrounded by volcanic peaks, albeit that the peaks were usually shrouded in clouds.  This photo was taken at just about the only moment when blue sky was visible.

I found time for a tour of a coffee plantation, and to visit the amazing Santo Domingo Casa hotel.  This latter is built in and around a ruined monastery, and includes a complex of six different museums within the hotel grounds as well as a free shuttle bus up to a look-out point near the town.  I think you're expected to buy a meal or at least some souvenirs whilst up there, but there seemed nothing to stop me wandering around with my binoculars instead looking at the Steller's jays and the band-backed wrens...

One really excellent aspect of Antigua is the food.  I had opted for a homestay and so had to eat what I was given in the house for six days a week, with only the middle Sunday to choose something from the enormous variety of restaurants in the town.  A garlicky cheese fondue, something I haven't had for some seven years, won out above the sushi and the Argentinian steak, and on other days I treated myself to local drinks in the cafes whilst I went through my homework (a Mayan recipe hot chocolate - with honey and chilli added to the mix - was one highlight!).  In the house we ate a lot of beans, cheese, chicken, tortillas and avocados, all of which I was pretty happy with.  On my final morning I visited the market, and was astonished at the fruit available - apricots, plums, cherries and strawberries from the cool highlands, and mangoes, pineapples and papayas from the hot coastal lowlands.  Orange and avocado trees in the town were dripping with not-yet-ripe fruit.  & (apparently, as I'm no expert) the coffee grown in the region is some of the world's best.  It tasted pretty good to me and I brought some back with me so now just have to add a coffee machine to the list of things to buy for the flat.

settling in

Well, another two weeks have passed as I adjust to life in Panama.
I'm still sleeping in the windowless back room, and haven't yet had time to go out and buy a desk and chair so working from home involves this:

but I've bought an iron and ironing board, got the internet and cable TV hooked up and treated myself to a pair of skinny jeans and high heels so as to fit in more with the other women here.  My shopping bill is three times what I'd got used to, but then again I am including dried cranberries and wholemeal bread in my diet now, which were unavailable in Dakar.

I've discovered that the surprisingly cool weather (well, compared with what I was used to in West Africa) doesn't stop the humidity from rotting clothes, shoes and bags - this small rucksack had sat untouched in a cupboard for just two weeks when I got it out only to find this:

So I now have a de-humidifier in the apartment too.

To pay for all this I have had to get a salary payment by cheque, as I am still waiting to get an account of my own, which meant an outing last Saturday to cash it.  I located an accesible branch on the internet and went there with my cheque, to be faced by a locked door and a security guard with a revolver and bullet-proof vest.  I first had to persuade him that I needed to use that bank ("yes, it's a Credicorp cheque") then was sent to the back of the queue.  Once at the front he searched my bag and scanned me with his body scanner, then knocked on the door for a similarly attired guard inside to unlock the door and allow me in.  All this in a country which is supposed to be safe, but I suppose they have their eye on the drugs gangs slowly making their way south as they get driven out of Mexico.  & there was a gun shop not far from the bank.

The main obstacle to settling in, to everything I try to do, is the language.  This desk I need - well what is Spanish for desk?  & for "do you deliver?"  I went to one of the cable company's offices to pay my first bill, and having negotiated my way to join the right queue and pay the bill, I then in my stumbling learnt-a-bit-at-school-35-years-ago Spanish mentioned that the main TV didn't actually appear to have any channels available.  The lady said that it must have been set up incorrectly and that someone would come round to fix it.  "When?" I asked.  "When you get home" she replied, at which point I realised I'd probably misunderstood something she said earlier but with a queue of impatient people waiting behind me I nodded and accepted it.  Of course no-one turned up to fix it when I got home.

A few days later the real estate agent was round to check the inventory, so taking advantage of his English and kind nature, I asked if he would mind phoning the cable company to set up an appointment for me.  He told me they had English speakers, and started the call with his speaker phone option on.  Quickly they got to the "Por Ingles, opción 1", which he pressed before turning the phone around to me, but it was just as well he was there as the person manning the English option line spoke only Spanish...

My new home

Last Saturday, on 1 June, I moved into my new flat.  I must say it did look more spacious without the landlords' rugs, pictures, and some of his furniture, although now it has a kind of empty echo.  It's not a bad place, really - modern and clean looking, a dressing room full of drawers and hanging space and a view out over the bay.  But it is small - and unfortunately, very noisy with the twelve lanes of traffic going past down below on the Cinta Costera.  Nice though the main bedroom is, with floor-to-ceiling windows at one end looking over the bay (and the twelve lanes of traffic), I found I couldn't sleep through the noise and so I have reluctantly started sleeping in the other bedroom.  At the back of the flat, it has no windows and so is dark and quiet.

To my surprise I have also been a little cold at night.  Only sheets have been provided, so I slept in gym kit and socks all week until I was able to go shopping yesterday for a quilt.

Another surprise was that there seems to be virtually no radio reception at this height, and quite patchy phone reception - issues that I hadn't foreseen.  I have also been horrified to find that the orientation of the building and of the Hilton next door means that I get no sun on my balcony whatsoever!  A balcony with sun was one of my non-negotiable requirements but I just assumed that being more-or-less south-facing, I would get sun, not thinking about it being blocked by the position of neighbouring buildings in the morning and evening and directly overhead (even, strangely, slightly behind the building) in the middle of the day.  Maybe later in the year when it is a little lower in the sky it might sneak onto the balcony for a short time - I really hope so.  Although as you can see from the photo above, taken from my balcony, we aren´t getting much sun at present.

My main concern before moving in though had been the journey to work, as a trial run had taken 90 minutes.  However I found a better bus route, and am travelling against the traffic, so have found I can do the trip in an hour.  Not quite the five minute walk I had in Dakar, but bearable.

So I am trying to make the place feel like home.  The majority of my stuff isn't here yet - it hasn't arrived from Dakar - so I can't yet start putting books on shelves and hanging masks on the walls.  I've been shopping for some little things though, the quilt I mentioned above, a set of towels, a shower caddy ... also a bottle of wine but then I remembered that my corkscrew is not here yet so it will have to sit unopened for a while.  So I'm getting there.  Perhaps you could say my mood now is rather like the weather the other morning looking the other way from my balcony - cloudy but with sunny intervals.

House-hunting in Panama City

Ever wondered what the view looks like from a 67th floor apartment?  This is one such view, looking to the right off the balcony:

Or what the view looking straight down to the road below looks like?

Well I got to see this and dream of living there, but having fallen in love with the apartment the landlord decided he didn't like the contract my organisation uses.  I cried myself to sleep that night, exhausted and stressed from fitting days of house-hunting around a full-time job (and it turns out somewhat of a poisoned chalice left to me by my predecessor) and wondering what on earth I was doing here.  Didn't help that the rains have started, and won't stop for another eight months so everything is dull and grey.

Knowing where to live is difficult.  I've already described the area around the office in my first post - but it does have its attractions.  A colleague told me about the armadilloes that sometimes come into his garden, and I wavered.  But this is a tropical climate and with a job that involves so much travel I really don't want to face the task of turning a jungle back into a garden every time I return from a trip.  Not to mention the safety concern of living at ground level as there have been a number of break-ins this year in that area.  I've not heard of armadilloes climbing up to apartment balconies, so if I can't be in a house there doesn't seem to be much of an advantage to living there.  Except for the proximity to the office.  I tried out the trip from town to the office in Monday evening's rush-hour - 1 hour and 45 minutes door to door.  Although I know my life has moved on I do find it hard to forget the easy five minute walk I had in Dakar.

A single female colleague has tried hard to convince me that if I live near work I condemn myself to a life of boredom; she is succeeding although I know she has a vested interest in getting me to live downtown - near her.  In many ways it is a lifestyle choice.  Am I still young enough, energetic enough, to want to live downtown amongst the skyscrapers, shops and nightlife of a big city?  Or have I become middle-aged, the type who would be happier living quietly in the leafy suburbs?  If I'm honest I'm not sure of the answer, but I tell myself I have to make the most of living in this city and so have to be where the action is.  & the decision was helped by the fact that there are currently no vacant apartments in the area around the office.

So I've been visiting one apartment after another, mostly along Avenida Balboa where the majority of the residential skyscrapers are.  The lower ones are dusty and noisy from the six-lane highway below, but the higher ones are quieter, some with amazing views.  Most have swimming pools (although not necessarily big enough to swim in) and gyms, a couple even had a 'games room' with a pool table and table-tennis table for residents.  But the nicer ones - newer, with modern kitchens and bathrooms - are all so small and I've been lying awake at night wondering where on earth I am going to store all my books, CDs, photo albums, African masks...

However I have to live somewhere, I've seen just about all of the apartments that are available and have no further time available to wait for others to come onto the market.  So a decision had to be made and a contract was signed on Friday.  On 1 June I will move into a 40th floor apartment on Avenida Balboa.  It's in the same building as the one I had fallen for, and so you can just make out its swimming pool right at the bottom of the picture above, and it has a gym although it's not well equipped.  I'm hoping that once the landlord has removed his pictures, rugs and other personal stuff it will start to look rather more spacious.  If only he had the same taste in furniture as the landlord of the 67th floor apartment but I guess I will eventually get used to the hard black cubist settee and the artificial stone cladding on the walls.  I certainly will have plenty of time looking at them as it seems the best way to manage the awful journey to work will be to avoid it two days a week by working from home.

I hope this doesn't all sound too negative.  I know that many in London (and elsewhere) have small apartments and long journeys to work in the rain, of course.  It's just been a tough week - and I admit that I got very spoilt with my comfortable life in Senegal.

The Haitian citadel

This amazing but little-known UNESCO World Heritage site (photographed here through the plane window as I flew to the north of Haiti) came out of an interesting part of the history of Haiti.

In 1804 the Haitian slaves prevailed in their revolt against their French masters, thus gaining their liberty and at the same time becoming the first black-led republic in the world.  Seven years later, however, these gains were partially reversed as the army general Henri Christophe proclaimed himself Henry I, King of Haiti, and imposed a system of forced labour on the people.

Fearing further attack from the French he set to work building a massive defensive fortress in the mountains behind Cap Haitien. Or rather, his men - 20,000 of them - set to work, in an eight-year undertaking that must surely have been worse than the work and conditions they had endured as slaves.  The fortress (known as Citadelle Laferierre) sits on top of a 3,000 foot high mountain.  Not only did the men have to haul rocks about and build the thick, imposing walls, but they had to equip the fortress - with some 365 cannons and 15,000 cannon balls.

The cannons weigh 2-2.5 tons, and each took 100 men some 15 days to haul up the mountainside.

The French never invaded, and in 1820 Christophe shot himself after becoming incapacitated by a stroke.

As well as the Citadel, he built himself a very grand palace, the Sans Souci, 7km away (as well as eight other palaces around the northern half of Haiti).  The place was badly damaged by the earthquake of 1842, looted of its contents and all but one of its marble statues, but is still an impressive site.

I visited both one Saturday during my three-week assignment to Haiti.  Thankfully you can drive most of the way up, and the last part can be done on horseback although it would make a tremendous walk for anyone fit enough.

Back in Haiti

You may recall my posts on my louiseinsenegal blog about my trip to Haiti in November 2010, and I am pleased to say that things have improved enormously since then.  Most of the rubble has been cleared away, displaced persons' camps have gone, roads have mostly been cleared away and the security situation has improved although Port au Prince is still quite a dangerous place.

But I was given a little tour around town on the Saturday, visiting the rather interesting museum and the iron market.  The latter has a fascinating voodoo section, with some very strange items on sale.

Voodoo is still a big force here, but difficult to see much of it.  In West Africa voodoo is seen as just another religion, albeit a traditional African one, and people are happy to talk to you about it.  In Haiti however it has become associated rather too much with the misuse of spiritual power and so it has become rather hidden away.  People still believe in it but have become embarrassed to admit to it.

On one Thursday evening I was taken to an old traditional style wooden hotel where a local band, RAM, play a live set every week.  They play the traditional voodoo music of Haiti, 11 of them on drums (four different types), guitars, metal gongs and a collection of strange vuvuzela-like tin horns, plus two singers and two dancers. A colleague described the sound as a "train-wreck".  I think that was pretty accurate, but it was a lively, fun, musical train-wreck which I really enjoyed.

I also had to spend a few days up in the north, at Cap Haitien and at Fort Liberte.  In that part of the country the security situation is much better and I was able to wander around the streets.  I got to visit the partly ruined Fort Dauphin in Fort Liberte, but also the incredible UNESCO World Heritage site of La Citadelle Laferriere - see next post...

First impressions of Panama

After the sensory overload that is Africa, I have to say that Panama City seems very bland.  I've not been getting any sights, sounds, smells or encounters that shout out "This is Latin America!", just a neat, clean and tidy set of streets and pavements with the occasional bank or fast food outlet - and lots of greenery.

Our office is in the canal zone, effectively a 1950's army barracks set amongst remnants of tropical forest.  It's full of birds (saw my first scarlet-chested tanager today!), and has the surreal sight of giant ships appearing to pass along between one field and the next, but otherwise it seems to have no character whatsoever.  I'd been keen to live near the office, having got used to a five minute walk to work in Dakar, but one look out of the window persuaded me otherwise. This is American family territory - great for those with children, dogs and cars but with nothing to offer someone single, childless and carless like me.  There aren't even any supermarkets that don't involve a drive to a mall, let alone anywhere to go out in the evenings.

Understanding my response to the canal zone, on Saturday afternoon a colleague drove me into the main part of the city.  Single herself, she was keen to show me why I might want to live downtown like her, in one of the skyscrapers lining the bay.  & I must say a 30th floor apartment, overlooking the Pacific Ocean and with a communal gym and pool on hand, certainly has its attractions.  I was surprised though to find just how well sound travels upwards, the noise from the four-lane dual carriageway down below making the high rise balcony anything but tranquil.  A major disadvantage too would be the daily commute from that side of town, with a choice between losing a good part of my income to taxi fares or spending 2-3 hours a day on buses.

So what to do?  I'm trying not to forget the lesson of Dakar as to just how important it is to live somewhere you like, somewhere you look forward to getting home to at the end of the day, but it seems that there will be nowhere here that ticks every box.

I'm off to Haiti tomorrow for a three-week assignment, but I think that on my return I'm going to have to get out there and onto those buses and see whether I could cope with them on a regular basis.