THE END

And there it is, I'm back in Santiago, rainy, grey Santiago, as it happens. My last day in Africa was also rainy (not as cold though, naturally), as if the weather suddenly decided to reflect my feelings. I was sad to leave, you've no idea how sad.

We got to the airport and a security guy didn't want to let Jandro in with me for check-in. In the end he did, after enquiring, insightfully, if I was Jandro's daughter. I guess the tropical climate really DOES wonders for your skin...

Then 7 hours on the plane and at 5:35 am I got to Paris. My next flight was scheduled for 9:45 and it was a bit late because of "ground crew strike thank you for your understanding" and I landed in Vigo at 12:20. As I was getting my suitcase, a customs officer approached me. I was barely awake as he asked me where I was coming from. "Libreville", I said. "Where?" "Libreville." "Where is that?" "Libreville in Gabon." "Gabon? Wow, and what's it like?" Jesus Christ, I thought. And said: "Great. Hot. Nothing to declare, thank you." A taxi took me to the train station and two hours later I got off the train in my beloved Santiago, which welcomed me with 10 degrees and a disgusting rain. I gave up the plan of going home by bus (good luck going up the Hórreo with a suitcase the size of your armario, wearing zapatillas and with no paraugas) and took another taxi. All in all, I spent nearly 20 hours in different means of transport. Libreville is damn far away.

And that's it. The end of my African adventure, for now.
In the picture me after my African makeover. What do you think? :)

Come back in two months. I will. To Libreville.

THE SUPERMARKET

Today for the first time I went by taxi all alone. And here's how it happened.

I had to go to the dentist's today (long story, let's just say thank God I bought travel insurance) and thus Jandro took me there after lunch. Then he had to go back to work and I decided to go to the M'Bolo supermarket all by myself. He told the taxi driver where to take me, I paid, mumbled "merciaurevoir" and went shopping. That was the easy part, of course.

I successfully asked for some cheese ("Bon soir, I'd like a piece of fromage du chèvre, s'il vous plaît") and then went on to buy some ham:

- I'd like 300 gramms of this ham, s'il vous plaît.
- ?
- This ham?
- (the lady takes the ham, puts it on the cutting thing and calls another lady)
- I'd like 300 grams of that ham, s'il vous plaît.
- ?
- 300 gramms? Three oh oh?
- Ahh, oui. C'est tout?
- Oui, c'est tout, merci.

I paid and then I proceeded to the special check-out place, where a gentleman has to put a stamp on your receipt. He is supposed to check if you paid for everything you have in your basket but in the end he just looks at you and stamps the receipt (I've already mentioned how good they are out here in creating unnecessary jobs, haven't I?). This gentleman (quite good-looking, I proudly admit) started flirting with me a little bit ("You first time M'Bolo? I don't see you early... My English very bad. You like Gabon?") but was not very successful.

And then the moment of truth came. I had to stop a taxi and say where I wanted to go and for how much. In French. As soon as I left the supermarket I saw an empty taxi approaching. I waved and he stopped. I said the thing I'd rehearsed millions of times in my head, employing my best French pronunciation: "Mille francs la course lycée Leon M'Ba". It worked. He said "Oui, madame" (I was flattered, they hardly ever say anything to you) and drove me home. I told him to stop in front of my building ("Ici c'est bon, merci.") and happily greeted the guard outside of our building. For the first time I felt like I was a tiny little bit from here. And I hadn't been this proud of myself in a looong time.

Of course, I was so concentrated on getting a taxi, that I forgot to get some bananas at the fruit stall outside of the supermarket. :)

The picture is of our fridge which I successfully filled with food.

THE MATERIAL

Apart from the church we also went to the Momboue market yesterday. The objective was simple: buy some material for my African dress (I'm having an African dress made for me!:). Sounds simple enough. The problems started when we saw how many different designs there were to choose from (see second picture).

You see, few women out here wear Western clothes and when they do, they are not nice clothes mostly. However, it is extremely common (and cheap) to buy the material you like and just have a dress or an outfit made to measure. And the ladies look amazing! The frocks are great and usually accompanied by a headscarf which makes them look graceful and even more beautiful. We thus went to the market and entered a couple of stalls, until in one of them (a very big one) we narrowed the choice down to three. The effect you can see in the picture.

Some of the materials are really out there, I must admit. It is common to have a dress with the pattern of Virgin Mary, Jesus or President Bongo. Not to mention maps of Africa or Gabon. Some of them had wise statements printed on them ("Every day brings a problem") and other ones just hearts and romatic inscriptions such as "Toi et moi". I went for a very mundane design, didn´t I?

After we bought the material, we asked the shop owner if we could take a picture of his lovely shop. He said yes and, after I took a couple of pictures, he demanded: "Moi aussi!". So he posed for me and I took his picture as well.

There was one more very interesting thing we saw in that shop. Apparently, when a couple gets married out here, they choose a material and all guests are supposed to wear outfits made of that material. So all shops are full of material samples with couple's names pinned to them. You just go and get a few yards of the material chosen and use it the way you like. Solves the "I have nothing to wear to Dagmara's wedding" problem, doesn´t it?

THE CHURCH

Yesterday was Sunday and for the first time in a VERY long time I went to church without the motivation of a wedding or a funeral. We went to a big church called Saint Michel de Kembo, where the Christ is black and the pillars beautifully carved. It's huge, enormous, and yesterday it was absolutely full. We were a bit late and we couldn't even enter but we did experience African Catholicism anyway. The songs (in French and... Spanish, maybe because of Equatorial Guinea?) were amazing: African rhythm (live music and drums) and lively, energetic songs performed by a choir and basically everybody around us... people were dancing, clapping, there was atmosphere of general cheerfulness and joy. And at the moment of "passing on the sign of peace", ALL the people around us shook our hands. They would even come up to us and poke us on the back, so that we would let them take our hands into theirs. I was overwhelmed, since I had not experienced that kind of happy curiousity towards me before. (I'd rather had the experience of being an unwelcome white person, I guess). And even though it didn't make me believe in God, I am going to come back to that church. It's a lovely spectacle and I want more.

THE WAVES

Yesterday we had some drinks (local beer!:) with a friend from here, from Libreville. We told him that we wanted to go the beach on the other side of the bay and, surprisingly, he advised us not to. When we asked why, he said that the waves were enourmous. We agreed but promised to be very careful (we really are awfully careful out here, probably too careful most of the time) but he insisted on the waves being very dangerous. "Why so?", we asked. He explaied that here in Gabon people believe that the spirits of the dead appear to the living and when they come back, they come back on the waves. Normally, they are rather benign but at some point they need to take some living souls with them to survive. And right now is the time of their wrongdoing. The thing is, they don´t usually hunt black people. They prefer the whites and that´s why we should be extra-careful at the beach. And then he told us how various people died or went missing at sea. I don´t really believe all that but you never know. Extra-careful it is, then.