Its tough, but someones gotta do it!

Those of you who have followed this blog over the years will know that I have lived in some crumby accomodation and had little to do in my "leisure" time. Not so in fair Angola.

Our house is big and has a large BBQ area, garden (well, dirt patch) and even a recreation area with a rowing machine (display dead, seat wonky and footrests broken), a cross trainer (display dead, very dusty) a set of weights and a table tennis table.

As we start early we are able to get home early-ish. I have been rowing and using the weights and then have the proverbial 3 S's followed by dinner and then some of us play ping-pong. Unfortunately it is dark when we play and the lights over the table pulse as the water pump runs causing the ball to appear and disappear and appear and disappear. Yep, it is ping-pong by strobe light. So as you can see this is a luxurious 5 star paradise compared to most of my haunts. But I am with a great bunch of blokes and it is really enjoyable.

As I have said before, the Angolans are cheerful and friendly people. There is no problem walking round the town at night and going to a restaurant or a bar. The most dangerous thing would be eating the food!!

As for tea, of course we have the ubiquietous Yellow Label tea. this seems to be the only tea sold outside of Her Majesty's realm. It is always the only tea available. It is good, but the homogenised, sterilised carton milk kind of takes away any good flavour you have lovingly instilled using the standard British tea making ceremony.

One of the guys who has been here a while has promised to take me shopping on Saturday, so I am looking forward to an interesting day. Apparently there are 2 main markets. One for fruit and veg and the other full of extremely tacky, very low quality fake designer goods. I presume this will equal the famous "genuine Okley" glasses they sold in Kabul.

Still no roaming herds of Wildebeest, but I am assured we have scorpions and snakes. In fact, I was told to not wear open sandals as scorpions have been known to wander into my finance office and wander around. Very large and dangerous snakes are aplenty, but only out from the town. Of course there are rats, just like everywhere so all food has to be kept locked away. Well not actually locked, rats are not that good at picking locks, but the larder door closed. I can report a very large cockroach wandered past me while I was rowing last night but that scuttled off into shadows and disappeared not to be seen again. Frankly, I would have thought the sight of me on the rowing machine would at least have got it to pause and watch in amazement, but no.

So, on the whole a rather pleasing existence, although no squash courts, so it obviously can't be tolerated for too long.

Till the next time - oh yes, did I tell you what a lovely sunny day it was today. Might even get to spend some time in the sun, come the weekend!!!!