I woke up Tuesday and felt so tired. I had breakfast while looking at the Lonely Plant to figure out exactly where to go next. My passport would be ready at 13:30, so I'd be able to pick it up and take it to the next embassy. But how much time did I have? Well, upon inspection, it turns out that most embassies are only open in the morning extending only into the early afternoon if at all. In fact, Gambia is the latest opening diplomatic institution. So that meant I'd have to pick up my passport and do nothing else.
I can deal with that. So I found the DDD stop for the #8 exactly where Jonathan told me it would be. Shortly after I got there, it arrived. I thought it went by the CitySport and Casino, but even though I was keeping a lookout, I missed them. Then the bus got into heavy traffic closer to downtown. I got off and was soon at the Gambian High Commission. I tried to go back to the Casino, but got a bit lost. After a lot of wandering and furtive checking of the Lonely Planet map while appearing to be waiting at bus stops, I realized where I went wrong. So by the time I recovered, it was time to get my visa anyway. I headed to the Gambian High Commission and voila! My visa was ready! The same woman as yesterday was there. She asked me to "remind her" of my name. She opened the passport behind the desk down so I couldn't see it from my side of the glass. Then handed it to me open to the page. I inspected the visa, thanked her, stored my passport, and left.
It was hot, so I got myself a beer and wrote out some postcards. On the way back, I mailed them. Then arrived at the Casino where I bought some Mir Express laundry gel for handwashing. I'm almost out of my Carrefour laundry gel we got in France. This tube is a bit bigger. It will allow me to keep my stuff all nice and clean. Then I figured out--with a lot of waiting--that the #8 stops right across the street from the Casino. After about a half hour in the hot hot sun, the bus finally came--not the spacious big bus that says Dakar Dem Dikk across the front, but the smaller blue bus with more seats. But there were no seats so I just stood all the way home.
When I got here, I got a beer and a 1.5 liter bottle of water and read some more Dreiser, and finally did laundry.
Last night I had a minor crisis. My room has these little tiny ants--about a millimeter long and a tiny fraction of that across. In fact, they are so small, I'm not even sure they're ants. Anyway, I had my box of cookies open and it occurred to me after feeling one walk across me, that they might be into it. They were. Not too bad, though. I inspected the cookies, shook off and killed any ants, and ate them up. But there were still crumbs. And one crumb could feed one of these ants forever.
I as write this, the rains have started--a hard sounding rain. I gotta watch. I'm not sure how I feel about this. I wasn't wanting rain.
July 29, 2008 20:26
No comments:
Post a Comment