10/2/12 I need waterproof shoes in Gabon!

 

10 February, 2012

So I gently opened my eyes to greet the early, 06h45 dawn, then closed them and smiled contentedly as my body began booting up and getting itself ready to wake up. Suddenly the door to my container was banged on loudly and the boot sequence accelerated rapidly with a quick 2 foot levitation. I stumbled to the door wondering who the hell would wake me like that. We only started flying at 8:30 so this was inexcusable!

Emergency! Someone injured at one of the drill camps and I had to leave immediately! My helipad guy stood watching me as I took off my Spongebob Squarepants pyjamas and pulled on my tighty-whities and then my flightsuit. Well I wasn’t awake, but I was ready to go. He had waited for me because I had special, VIP transport to take me to the pad… Now why can’t I have that every day?! Quick pre-flight and then a brief fumble as we had to pull the seats out of the chopper to make room for a stretcher. Then into the air for the 45min flight to Ethekamba. Upon arrival I was told that the patient had a suspected heart attack and couldn’t talk. They then drove him up to the chopper, whereupon he climbed out, gingerly to be fair, and climbed into the chopper chatting quite ably in English (an Indian guy). Perhaps he wasn’t in the mood for French and the medic took that as a symptom of loss of speech…

Stretcher installed and ready for drama!	Look how the bushes on the beach grow in a slanted wedge due to the onshore winds

The weather the whole day has been shocking and we ducked and dived around and under massive rain showers and thunderstorms. I dropped him off at Port Gentil where the rain was pouring. And as I stepped off the skids of the helicopter I felt my shoes step into little puddles on the tarmac. And these shoes love water. So much, in fact, that they suck the water up like sponges and I spend the rest of the day risking foot rot as I squelched around everywhere…

As I landed back in Onal, looking forward to some coffee and hopefully a bite to eat (it was now 13h30 and lunch is from 12h00-13h00) I was informed that 5 passengers were waiting to be flown back to Port Gentil! Well they could wait, I could feel the grumpiness starting so food was a priority! Grabbed a very quick bite to eat before loading up (seats, then passengers) and heading all the way back to PG (an hour each way). Even more thunderstorms building, and this time I’d left Onal with 40% fuel, which is a realistic 1h20 endurance. Within 20mins of leaving Onal I was hit with a massive headwind and again had to duck and dive around tall trees and low clouds and rain and raced as straight as I could for PG. The cloud was lower than the tops of the transmission towers in the town and it was raining hard!

Building foundations noticeable in what is essentially a quagmire	And this isn’t special flooding – this area has looked like this every time I’ve flown into PG! Still fully inhabited.

So I’m learning more about the crazy weather in this country all the time. Can’t be scared of flying in heavy rain here! And I’m impressed at how they manage to still build houses etc where the ground is so waterlogged most of the time that many people have large pools of water for gardens whenever it rains.

Boats in gardens and floating rubbish

7/2/12 Do you people know what “doucement” means?!

 

7 February 2012

Seriously, not matter how many times I ask them to speak slowly they always nod in understanding and then continue at the same speed as they started with! I have (at least I think I have) recently discovered that when they say “40 000” (and I’m spelling it phonetically) in French they seem pronounce it “ka mille” rather than “karant mille”. This wouldn’t be the end of the world if not for the fact that 4000 is “katr mille”. This led to much confusion and them needing to get a calculator out to type the number for me to see it. All because they don’t talk properly! Silly people!

So yes, I’m back in my hole for a third tour, quite probably the last, but when it comes to decision point anything can change, so we’ll wait and see when I get there.

My trip back to Gabon started with a 1-time flight (like Ryanair for the overseas people) to Johannesburg. Since I am always worried about delays to flights causing me to miss my international I fly up a good few hours early, so on landing in JHB I stayed sitting while everyone else leapt to their feet and then stood for 15mins while the doors were opened and everyone ahead of them slowly shuffled off. In fact I was literally the last passenger to get off. I had my dark glasses on as I’d been staring out the window on the bright and hot summers day in JHB (a dig at the Europeans who are digging their cars out from under 6 feet of snow!)

Anyway, so I’m sitting and chilling as the last guy walks past me to get off the plane, then he turns around and comes back to me, just as I get up to get my bag. “Oh sorry”, he says, “I thought you were blind and was coming back to ask you if you needed any help”. Made me laugh but a nice guy to come back to help me.

In the airport, my geeky eye saw the “self check-in” machine so thought I’d give it a go. Really impressive! I stuck my passport photo page into the machine and immediately it showed who I was, which flight I was on, what the flight details were, and had printed me a boarding pass. Brilliant! All I had to do, it said, was drop my bag off at the baggage drop desk and that was that. Wow! No queues! So I headed to the baggage drop desk. Where there was a queue. Not a long one so wasn’t too perturbed, and still buzzing from the bit of techy check-in geekness I had just witnessed. I had my bag weighed, was given a little paper stub with its weight on it, and then told to join the normal check-in queue to hand my baggage in at the check-in desk! WTF?! How much of a waste of time is that?! Instead of queuing for one desk which does everything, SAA offers a “much more convenient” process of going to three separate places and standing in two separate queues – one of which being the one you’re trying to avoid in the first place!! Someone is being paid a salary by SAA to come up with these awesome passenger service schemes.

In Libreville I was struck by how lucky I was to have been through this all before. Its very daunting for a first timer because so little is organised and logical that its very easy to get caught up in the confusion and end up in the wrong place or following the wrong people. Most people, including the officials, are not always wearing uniforms, which adds to the uncertainty. On my way to baggage claim a guy walked up to me (note he is on the air side of security) and told me to follow him. I start following him wondering what trouble I’m in when I see that he’s leading me to the baggage carrousel to help me find my bag…. Aaah, the penny dropped and I quickly overtook him, saying I knew exactly how to pick up my own bag, thank you. The thing is he never actually asked me if he could help me – he instructed me to follow him, like an official.

No sooner had I walked out of arrivals onto the main concourse the rest of them started gathering around to help. The problem was I didn’t know who my agent was who should be meeting me there (she doesn’t stand at the doors with your name on a sign or anything – you have to hunt for her throughout the airport) so while I insisted I knew where I was going and didn’t need any help I very clearly didn’t have a clue where I was going and was wandering around aimlessly. So they never left.

Anyway, because I couldn’t find the agent who had my ticket for Port Gentil, I missed the last flight and had to stay in Libreville for the night. Which is fine – arrive late, leave early, no food either way, but finally got to PG and then flew the chopper back to Onal. On landing a man marched up to the chopper and I wondered what I had done wrong. (see how I’m always feeling guilty… what’s with that?!) Turns out he’s the Chief de site (Onal camp boss). Named Jean-Luc. Amusingly in essentially the same position as the captain of the Enterprise… Hell of a nice guy and speaks English!!

Yesterday I flew to the Chinese camp again, but this time we were driven to the drill site directly. Was a 20min drive through bush, which I recorded a little bit of – just to show the roads and height of the jungle. I also got them to stop so I could get a pic of a stunning lake right next to the road with dead trees, black water and waterlillies everywhere. This is how water-logged this country is. The leaches must be plentiful!!

Pooling of water in the jungle	A very dusty ride through the jungle – giving an idea of the denseness of it…

The flight to Ethekamba from Onal was interesting. I think I was flying government officials inspecting the drill site. One of which was a colossal woman who weighed 125kg! (everyone has to be weighed with and without their bags). I barely got off the ground with 5 passengers, their baggage and full fuel! This woman was missing half her teeth and eating just before we got into the chopper. The flight was an hour and on landing she barrelled out of the aircraft frantically grasping for a bread roll the way smokers light up the minute they get off the plane! I felt for the other three women in the back, on narrow seats with very little room. Strangely the skinniest lady sat in front with me. She was tinier than me and I wondered why she wasn’t made to sit in the back to put a bigger person in front. Must have been more senior, I guess…

Well, no pics really this time, but wanted to just leave something (long-winded as ever) marking my arrival for a long 4 week stint… Leave comments when you can – gives me something to read. I (unbelievably) forgot to save a bunch of movies onto my laptop before flying back, so have hardly anything to watch. I’m going to lose my mind!!

14/1/12 Tarzan and Jane

 

14 January, 2012

As a reward for all my hard work sitting on my ass in Gabon, Cath and I took the first weekend I was back off and headed into the midlands to a spot she had heard about where the rooms are built into the side of large trees. Its called Sycamore Grove and while quite overpriced for what you get, certainly is a novelty and a great way to chill and slowly acclimatise to traffic, people and cooler weather.

Listening to the cows eating from the balcony (with no curtain)	Front door into bedroom

I just wanted to add some pics of our room here. The tree house is built on stilts and is double-storey. The bottom floor has the bedroom with little balcony overlooking a field of cows and the berg in the background, and the upper floor has another balcony and a Jacuzzi bath and shower.

Narrow spiral staircase heading upstairs	Small wooden cabinet. Even the hinges are solid wood!

I think I have met one of the clumsiest girls ever as, in the space of 5 minutes, she attempted to open the bedroom curtain with a little bit of a flourish and pulled the entire curtain off the rail, opened the small door onto the balcony by breaking the wooden door lock, returning into the room from the balcony hooked her foot in her carelessly discarded bag and skidded across the bedroom on her face, and finally while sending a text message on her phone to one of her friends somehow (inexplicably) managed to stab me right in the eye with her finger! This girl needs corks on the ends of all her kitchen knives!! Being the gentleman that I am I assured her I would never make mention of her propensity for disaster to the readers of my blog…

Upstairs towards upper balcony	Jacuzzi bath – couldn’t get Cath to pose naked in the bath… SO reserved!! ;-)

We did have a great weekend with good weather without humidity in the upper 90% and I even disclosed my big geek secret of being a Geocacher to her which we did for most of the Saturday, and she was politely supportive and appropriately enthusiastic. Just how much of that was politeness with a smattering of pity shall remain to be seen…

Geocaching next to a railway line	Lunch break in Notties

10/1/12 The very arduous return to SA…

 

10 January, 2012

Yes, I have been quiet, but being back in civilisation brings with it a mass of responsibilities and activities making blog updating difficult.

The jetty where cargo ferry and passenger boats dock for Onal	The jetty with a boat very similar to ours

I left Onal camp on the 10th January, after having sat in my cabin for 10 days (over the third of my tour) without flying a minute due to paperwork not having been done by the Gabonese authorities allowing us to carry on operating in the country. This meant that all transportation to and from camp was made in boats. Since Gabon is essentially mostly low-lying, the majority of the population makes use of long, narrow “speed boats” for getting around. These can be anything from dugouts (a hollowed out tree trunk) to decent, metal-hulled boats such as the one we were to travel in. The problem is it takes over 5 hours to get to Port Gentil on these boats. And the times vary greatly depending on the health of the engines and what you hit underwater while travelling. Part of me wanted to cry just at the thought of 5 hours on a boat instead of 45mins in a plane, while the other part was kinda keen to experience a boat ride in Gabon. This latter part was short-lived.

Beautiful scenery-monkeys & birds making a noise across the water	… and water loaded with fish!

We arrived at the “docks” down the road from Onal camp at midday to await the boat bringing people up from Port Gentil (including the pilot replacing me). Since the boat is travelling through unpopulated jungle there is no means of getting an ETA or in fact any communication from the skipper. We just waited. At 13h30 the boat finally rounded the bend in the river and docked (apparently they hit something on the way up which delayed them). I had a 15min handover chat with the new pilot before boarding the boat for the trip to Port Gentil.

As we pushed away from the bank I did a little mental arithmetic and worked out that we “should” get to PG just before sunset if the trip only took 5 hours. Cutting it a little fine for my liking, but nothing to be done about it. We started up and puttered off. Still puttering slowly round the first bend, I hoped we’d hit a bit of speed or we’d need a week to get to PG. As if on queue the engine stopped. Engine cover off, plenty head scratching, engine cover on. Restart and at crawling pace we TURNED AROUND and headed back to Onal! More mental maths confirmed that even if we left at first light the next day I’d never be able to make my flight! Since I was again flying back via Addis Ababa my flight left from Libreville around midday the following day, and I could never get to PG, then fly to Libreville to be on time for my flight out. Doomed, I tell you. Doooooommeddd!!!!

All aboard the Sweat Express!	Now why can’t I sleep through it?!

As I wailed aloud and beat my breast an engineer from the camp drove down to fiddle with the engines. Clearly a very good fiddler as within an hour we were on our way again, and this time both engines were firing on all cylinders (well the one they each had, but you know what I mean). The trip itself was fairly uneventful. The pain in my ass, however, deserves mention. The seats were curved fibreglass seats (like in a canoe or a paddle boat at the beach). No cushion. In addition to which we were all required to wear a life jacket; a massive orange one like the old lifejackets my sister and I wore as kids for waterskiing (when you can barely see past the huge orange bits next to your face). And because it rains all the time in Gabon, the boat (which seats around 24 passengers) is completely enclosed with a massive canvas roof and walls. So it absolutely bakes inside! They open the front flap for a through-draught but it doesn’t keep you cool. Eventually (after about hour 3) I removed my lifejacket and sat on it. Sod the rules.

Awesome skiing water!	There be fresh air outside!!

The sun started setting as we belted along the winding channels towards PG. And in this part of the world the sun doesn’t really set, it falls off the edge of the earth. In 20 minutes I couldn’t see through the dirty plastic windows, but we were still pelting along at break-neck speed. Even once it was completely dark (and in a river channel in a jungle that’s pretty damn dark) we still kept going. I hoped the skipper had a radar installation on board, but I suspected he didn’t.

Small villages and huts now and again along the bank	Slightly more established village with a church

Suddenly, as we passed a tiny village of a few huts on the side of the river we throttled back and the skipper shouted across to the folks on the bank. I had no idea what was said but the passengers in the boat erupted! Everyone started shouting at everyone else but all I could hear was the odd word from the skipper, “risque” and “dangereux”. When one of the passengers began chanting “You can’t drive a boat” in French the skipper hit the throttles again and we continued into the darkness. Great, I thought, how the hell am I going to save my laptop and ipad when we crash and sink?!

Scaffolding in Addis, even for quite large buildings	No metal scaffolds visible anywhere!

Within 10 minutes we finally rounded a bend to see PGs lights across the bay and everyone, particularly the skipper, no doubt, breathed a huge sigh of relief. We docked at 20h30, but at least we were in PG and I would make my flight!

See rows of satellite dishes in garden	… and cables from each flat to a dish (bumpy bus ride produces blurred pics)

The return flight with Ethiopian airlines and their movie system which didn’t work as well as the grotty hotel I spent the night in in Addis isn’t particularly important, and this blog has gone on enough. But one note is that it was marvellous to be doing the return trip as someone who now knew how the system worked. All the mass confusion and stress from the trip up was replaced with focus and the speed to elbow my way to the front to avoid most of the queuing. I even got to help a couple who looked as lost as I did on the way up.

Water tanks on the roofs of most buildings through Addis	Such a smart little travellin man!

5/1/12 Slowly losing my mind….

 

5 January, 2012

 

And a Happy New Year to all!!

I know I’ve been very quiet on the blog front, but the honest truth is I have been sitting quietly in my little container for 5 days now without any flying!! So my mind is starting to turn to jelly, with nothing but Facebook, Whatsapp, and a ton of movies on my laptop to keep me occupied… Last flight was on the 31st December! The reason for this denial of me applying my trade is because the permission from the Gabon Civil Aviation body for the aircraft (which are registered in Tanzania) to operate in this country, expired at the end of 2011. And so they are not allowed to fly until a new permission letter is issued. Why this wasn’t sorted out in advance is anybody’s guess. Especially mine as my boss has literally not mentioned a thing to me. Apparently (I hear from my helipad official chap) the engineer is coming up here sometime this week to service the helicopter. He was told by his boss. And yet I am being mushroom treated, so have no idea when exactly. Or when we will be able to start flying again. And the fixed-wings are grounded too. They fly personnel into and out of Onal back to Port Gentil. I would have flown back with them when my tour ends next week.

Slowly going mad…. At least the jocks are clean…	Lopé, in the north of the country and due east of Libreville, looks very much like the KZN midlands

Now that the fixed-wings aren’t flying the only other means of moving personnel is by boat. And so since the start of 2012, everyone is being transported to and from camp in a speedboat which seats between 24 and 28 passengers and does the journey (which I guestimate is around 350-400km) in 6-8 hours!!!!!! I am most likely going to spend an ENTIRE day on a cramped speedboat to get to Port Gentil, and then start my 2 day journey to get back to SA! I’m so excited!!! Not.

The “dock” near Onal from where I can expect to begin my epic and painful 8 hour boat trip to PG :-(	Post-rain mist. Pretty to fly over – until it forms a sheet of low cloud!

Anyway, but apart from that little horror story I really have no news. I have literally been stuck in my container for 5 days straight. So I have added the last few pics I have taken over the last week.

Aaah, now THAT’S a Squirrel! Twin-engined and looking all Airforcy	My little heli hides in the background, feeling very threatened and insecure…

One interesting thing I learned is that there is a bird here (incidentally, all the birds look very different to the ones I’m used to seeing – only eagles/hawks, parrots and hornbill-like birds are familiar) which has a bright red belly and pointy face and flies around much like a swallow, that has a call that apparently it makes every 30mins. My heli guy explained that his parents generation would tell the time by this bird, as they didn’t have watches. He said when you hear the bird it is either half past the hour, or on the hour. Not sure exactly how accurate that is, but interesting none-the-less. I don’t have nearly the right sort of camera to get a decent pic of the birds here. They are all quite small (the ones that come remotely close to the camp) and even the ones that sit on the fence outside the window at the back of my container are too small in a picture to really see properly.

At the new Chinese camp again – walking through the jungle	Security has been beefed up since I was last here!
Ha ha!! Like THAT’S ever used!! Lonesome hut about 50m from the other camp buildings. Who’s going out there at night time?!	Lunch with the Chinese. Everything except the watery soup is deep-fried…

One other tiny bit of information I have noticed is that the elephant here are way less upset by a passing helicopter than the African variety. Clearly because the elephants here are left alone, so a passing helicopter is just a noise. Sometimes the youngsters start to panic a little, but the adults generally just watch you go past. The African elephant, on the other hand, is usually spotted from the air because it is already running for all it is worth! Presumably they remember the last time they heard a helicopter they woke up a few hours later with a helluva hangover…

Heading back to Banio2 I passed this interesting mound	35°C plus and these poor buggers are fully kitted out for fire-fighting on the Banio2 pad

And that, dear friends, is it. I’m sure I’ll have an entertaining story of how I got back to SA, so maybe if I have some time whilst there I might add a last page… Thanks for reading and keep in touch.

27/12/11 And this is why one shouldn’t tempt fate!

 

27 December, 2011

For the last few days I have been vocalising my astonishment at the lack of rain since I got back to Gabon. Seriously, there has been nothing apart from a few drizzles for a few minutes and I miss the heavy downpours and massive thunderstorms when holed up in my container at night. So you can imagine my delight when last night it rained properly. Still not as big as I’d like it to get, but heavy enough to make me sleep wonderfully. However, the flip-side to a massive downpour at night is that come morning, the forest is so humid from all the moisture, and warm from its great insulating properties, that a low foggy cloud quickly develops over the canopy, making flying a little tricky to say the least.

Departure for Coucal was delayed a bit while I waited for the cloud to lift. When I finally took off I almost returned immediately. The cloud was still almost touching tree-tops. But it was only a thin, foggy layer, and patchy, and as I flew away from Coucal, towards the lake, I realised that it was easy to get above. Now normally this is a stupid idea for a number of reasons. Firstly, if the engine dies and you’re above cloud, how can you see where to aim the helicopter or judge your height as you come down. And secondly, what if when you get to where you’re going the cloud is solid and you can’t see where to descend through it, and what obstacles, in addition to the ground, are below you. I had plenty of fuel to fly to destination, return to Onal and even fly to Port Gentil if needs be. And, as I said, the cloud was quite patchy, so I could see through it at the jungle below. I decided to carry on and if the cloud got too thick, I’d just return. Onal was opening nicely anyway.

I only had one passenger, who seemed uncomfortable in an aircraft, to say the least. He did a very visible “sign of the cross” across his chest as if to show me that he belonged to God and if I injured him in any way, God would be angry with me. The trip there was uneventful and by the time we got to Coucal the sun was shining brightly. The passenger did what he’d obviously been sent to Coucal to do, found me, and we loaded up and took off again for Onal.

Now the weather had turned quite badly and there was massive rain everywhere. As always, however, its possible to just skirt around the heavy rain (that you can’t see more than 5m into), but on getting closer to Onal it became evident that my helipad would be somewhere in the middle of the massive wall of rain. I called ahead, and again fluently explained my predicament and my intentions. “Too much rain. I look to land somewhere. I call you back.”

The rain was pouring down now, but not heavy enough that I couldn’t see where I was going and I could see the hills beyond the lake so decided to aim for the lake and see if I could get around the rain and sneak into Onal from the opposite direction. My passenger at this stage had clearly given up crossing himself and just closed his eyes and tried to sleep. He wasn’t bluffing anyone. I could see him flinching when the rain pelted the windscreen loudly.

After flying almost the whole way around the lake I noticed that I could sneak down onto the Onal airstrip (about 5km from the camp) and land there until the cloud lifted high enough for me to get to the helipad. No sooner had we touched down than my passenger leapt out, flagged down a passing bakkie and got a lift back to Onal. He had had enough flying for one day. Shame, poor guy. He must have been terrified seeing cloud and rain all around us and without a headset I couldn’t even explain what I was doing. All I could do was give him thumbs up and point at the weather ahead, which I’m sure must have just convinced him that I was insane and suicidal!

Once again, the sun is out and clouds are starting to move off. And I’m done for the day. Tomorrow is a very long day flying literally over most of the country – so could really do without clouds delaying my progress.

Never tempt fate by pointing out what hasn’t happened….

Other than that my only news is that I flew over what looked very much like a couple of chimps the other day. Far too fast to get a picture of them, but cool to at least have spotted them!

And finally we have had a whole new set of helipad green and red lights installed (I think some of the older ones weren’t working either through bulbs blowing or water getting into them). These ones are all LED lights and look quite impressive. I just need a flight which ends a bit late like happened last tour so I can try to get better pictures than the last ones. Perhaps tomorrow…

Some big noo-noos	Spiders just looove hanging out at camp with all the lights. Their webs are loaded with bugs!

These are just a few random pics. This is a bush in Coucal right next the TV room. Loaded with spiders. My camera refused to focus on the big one on the left, assuming every time I tried to focus that I was looking at the leaves on the left of him. If anyone is interested, the white streak of dense thread through the middle of his web is to stop birds flying into his web by accident.

A military moth in camouflage fatigues…	How cool is this plant!? And its practically everywhere…

That moth was massive and amazingly camouflaged. Just needs to rethink what it sits on a bit… The next is a video I can’t upload from camp (not allowed) but will do so when next I'm in town. There is a plant all over the place here, called Mimosa pudica which is seismonastic, meaning it responds to touch. Very cool! It opens its leaves out like solar panels when the sun is shining, half closing them if its too hot, and closing them if its overcast or something (like rain) touches the leaves. Even the little stalks holding the leaves collapse if touched. The video shows me abusing one such plant to illustrate how quickly it reacts.

25/12/11 Xmas Day celebrations….

 

25 December, 2011

 

The canteen is decked out with decorations…	… and messages on the windows. Little cakes for desert on 23rd.

Hermann (of chocolate éclairs fame) getting all Gangsta!

Well, Christmas Day arrives, or rather Xmas Eve (the Frenchies celebrate more on Xmas Eve it seems). We had a proper feast of food cooked on an outside braai. Little crazy since night time is when the tiny insects come out and dive bomb anyone silly enough to be walking around. They appear to have an affinity to South Africans….

Two little golden pigs are WEEEEEE!!!	Braai on right, food ahead, booze on left. Ready!
Many posing for various photos. I was a bit late…	The drinks table very popular…

Obviously there isn’t too much that we can do in a camp in the middle of the jungle, but they dished out some beers and wine for all of us, and “Papa Noel” came out and gave everyone a sweet, but other than that it was really just about sitting around chatting to the guys with some Gabonese music in the background. Apparently one usually stays up until midnight, which is when the kids would open their presents – how the hell do you get them to go to bed after that!?! But given that I can’t easily join in any conversations, and in spite of a couple of guys who speak English coming to chat to me to help me feel included, I faded around 10pm. I know what its like to feel obliged to entertain someone when you’d rather be chatting to your mates, so I felt it only fair to let them off.

Santa makes an appearance and dishes out sweets…	… then gives us a little impromptu dance before heading off
Stan (my heli guy) also taking pictures madly	Dinner is served. Turkey, pork (shame), mutton, beef, prawns and calamari

Kinda a good thing, too, since I was up and flying by 8am this morning! And in this heat a hangover just wouldn’t work! Thankfully it was only to Coucal for a couple of hours, and now back to camp for the rest of the day…. Some heads are looking a little tender and the general noise in the canteen for lunch today seemed quieter than usual… I thought I have to at least post a few pics to show those interested how we do things in Gabon…

Xmas cake…. First nativity scene I’ve seen on a cake!	Coucal has an arched walkway of palm fronds
Coucal’s Xmas tree. Looks more like storm damage…	… until you walk around the front…

Merry Xmas all!!!

“Fweeeeep!!”