Best Weekend Ever!

I head back to village tomorrow after what were six incredible days of good living in Kombo.

The trip down to Kombo started off rather rough Friday morning, with a 4:20am wake up from the school's night watchman who had come to inform me that the gele-gele was early, and if I wanted to catch it, I had better hurry to the pick-up. It took me about 5 minutes to even realize what was going on, and that this man actually did have a reason to be waking me up at such an ungodly hour.

The early departure paid off with an early arrival in Kombo, giving me plenty of time to buy yet another pair of sandals to replace the THREE pairs that I had broken in the past three weeks. Needless to say, my feet are a bit sore now, and I still haven't found a decent pair of sandals here. Nick and I started off our weekend with style - beers in hand before noon, followed an afternoon lounging in hammocks at the beach. Friday
night we had drinks at Fausto's beautiful apartment (complete with marble tiles, granite counter tops, leather couches, plasma TV, surround sound, and nice artwork - almost as nice as my hut), and then went out bar hopping and dancing till 5:30am.

After the 'morning fog' was chased away by a couple cups of coffee, we walked to the beach to meet up with another friend, Tom, who had recently purchased a sailboat despite his lack of sailing knowledge. He offered to let us take it out before he himself had even set sail on it, and even gave us a ride to the marina in his sweet, old, canvas top Land Rover Discovery. Now, keep in mind that our typical transportation involves taking 3 different cramped, hot geles to get to the same spot, and you get an idea of how nice this was. After Tom introduced us to the harbor master, he wished us luck and drove back to spend time with his visiting friends, but not before going to buy us gas for the outboard. Unbelievably nice guy. We spent about half an hour getting the boat all ready to set sail while waiting for Fausto to arrive with the beer and fishing rods. While rigging the boat, we ran into three other toubabs in the marina, and ended up chatting with them over lunch.