30.11.13 Saturday. Sue and Jeremy arrive

The car was in again today for more sprucing up before we hopefully can sell it.  We are hoping to buy a newer one thanks to an incredibly generous donation to the charity.  Every car or truck here is taxed from the 1^st January to 31^st December, so we are going to change the vehicle at the beginning of January.  I made sure that the room was ready for Sue and Jeremy for tonight.  Faith and Mike are still up country and are moving from Jamwelly to Loumen today for another week.  Faith has been helping the teachers at Jamwelly with singing, action rhymes and ball skills, and plans to do the same at Loumen this week.  Mike has been painting and repairing anything which needed it.  Steve returned in the afternoon and we set off to the airport about 7pm, hoping to get a snack at the small bar in the airport hall before our visitors arrived.  We got to the airport just as the plane was landing, half an hour early, but then they took an hour getting the luggage which meant that they didn’t emerge from the luggage hall until nearly 9pm.  I had arranged tickets for a fashion show this evening for Sue and I, so it was home, a quick change and off to the Kairaba hotel for us, the men went off to Yashmine bar to wait for us.  For once in Gambia things had started uncharacteristically on time and so we had missed half of the evening’s entertainment, but arrived in time to see a group performing a rap type song, followed by two fashion houses, one from Poland and one from Spain showing their designs. The audience was really well dressed, many European evening dresses were on show, so we were glad we had dressed up.  Each fashion designer had about 20 models parading up and down the catwalk which had been laid in the garden of the Kairaba hotel.  A lady radio presenter was the MC for the evening and after each segment came on and variously thanked all the sponsors, the designers, the models and the audience for attending.  The last item was a DJ singer from Denmark, half Danish, and half Gambian who had written a special song for the occasion.   ‘Uplift Gambia’

When it was all over we walked up to Yashmine to meet Steve and Jeremy for a drink, they decided they were hungry so we asked for the menu.  The waiter brought 4 menus and passed them out to us and then said ‘I hope you are not wanting the kitchen as it is closed’ Jeremy thought this was hilarious and kept laughing all the rest of the evening.  As a compromise they offered pizza from their sister bar down the road, which was delivered shortly.  A very late evening for us as we didn’t get home until nearly one.