Onto the next stage

The rainy season at work and the social season at campus are picking up. Here’s a quick update for You.

Thursday, 10 October: Lisa and I joined the Fitness Club tonight. Sports in this humidity never gets less tiring. As we had a lot of housemates coming and going, we also held a campus meeting to have a good start into a new season of campus life.

Friday, 11 October: This morning we had a teleconference and approval to start group 3 of my study, which means we’re now just one stage away from the final one. This put me in good spirits to start my journey to Libreville this afternoon. It had been almost two months and a little getaway is always good. I shared a car Lidwine, Sam, Emmanuel, Ronald and Lia who all had work or mini holidays like me to do, so once again we had a Cermel car. The road does not get better to say the least and now as we’re really in rainy season, it took me around 6h from home to Doria. After my journey and her working day, we spent a movie night catching up.

Saturday, 12 October: Doria took me to the market so we could prepare a typical meal together, African eggplants with sorrel and smoked fish – I will make this again! In the late afternoon, even though it was a bit cloudy, we made our way to the beach and got to take some very nice pictures. We then had drinks and snacks at the beach for sunset before heading back to hers to watch Danse avec les stars (Dancing with the stars / Let’s dance).

Sunday, 13 October: We spent even more time catching up, as You do with good friends You haven’t seen in a while even though You can text each other every day, before I had to take the ride back home. It’s rough, but every now and then it’s worth it. To finish off the weekend I enjoyed supper / sit-in with some colleagues=friends at campus before heading into a new week and new phase of the study.

Thursday, 17 October: Good thing about many new motivated faces at campus: Dinner together! I’m eating way better lately than I used to even though the evenings sometimes feel like little Germany.

Friday, 18 October: We welcomed our new colleague Laura today, a just graduated Dutch physician who will join our team for a couple of months. Welcome! Also, we had inclusions for the new treatment group today.

Saturday, 19 October: After our joint Saturday kitchen cleaning, the idea came up to clear a space between the kitchen and my room to ultimately build a veranda, so we got busy moving water reservoirs, removing bulk waste that revealed some rat families. Before and afterwards I went up to CHU as the weekend was filled with participant visits.

Sunday, 20 October: This morning I went back to church and took Theresa and Ruben with me. I spent a relaxed afternoon before heading into an evening / night shift.

Monday, 21 October: After a more productive Monday than usual, we did a dinner evening / sleepover at Dearie’s and I finally realized my promise to prepare coke-red wine-chicken a flatmate in Hamburg had taught me.

This is it for now, just a quick update. See You next time, leave a message!

See You, take care,

Doro

259 days in Gabon