Day 472 4th November
Ben Mansour
Another day off the bike.
I got up at 8.30, awakened by Kamal. I had thought I might get a lie in but it was raining hard and he’d been up since 6 as his house was flooded. It put the tiny drip that landed on my head into perspective when I went for brekkie in his empty house with 2 inches of water where his bed had been. They still managed to make me brekkie and I helped clear the rest of their furniture once the rain stopped. Then covered the cess pit with concrete blocks and polythene and fitted a makeshift roof to the toilet and shower.
I opened the patisserie with Younes and then dug the trench for the pharmacy waste pipe with Tariq before going to lunch at Hamid”s house.
Digging a trench
We had a salty salad and fried fish with beans and a very hot chilli pepper. Once again I was full but we got a taxi to the horse show where we took photos with Mohamed and some camels …
Up close at the horse show
And with the camel
…before taking a rather eventful bus ride back: a couple who were sat on the floor of the packed bus were having an argument with others standing, the handrail was broken and people were almost falling out of the open doors, a child was sick at the back of the bus, (not surprising considering all the bouncing around and amount of sweets consumed at the fayre!) and some people actually paid before the inspectors fined others for not doing so.
The bus is a bit crowded
We had tea back home before going out a nearby cafe to watch the Africa champions league final second leg, which was very exciting as WAC won the second leg 1-0 having scored with 20 minutes left they once again defended brilliantly to hold on and could easily have scored again. I’m not sure if attack is the best form of defence, but it seemed to work as they left two up and were often pushing for a second when most teams would have shut up shop. There was no corner flag time wasting in this game!
Watching football in the cafe
Then after the celebrations we returned with Aziz and Hamid for fish tagine back at the slightly drier house. In bed by 11.30.