Lounge Lizards

It's 45 degrees outside, and the Saturday spectacles have arrived at le Meridien. They're here every weekend. They consist of a clutch of tattooed French soldiers in a technicolour array of banana hammocks, budgie smugglers, nut crunchers, whatever you choose to call them. They lounge on all four sides of the pool sunning themselves alongside the multicoloured lizards that also adorn the poolside paving. I guess it must be welcome respite from their military schedule during the week, but it does make you think twice about heading poolside. You have to breathe in to keep your eyeballs in place.

The excitement of the week for the dwellers of N'Djamena has been a visit by George Clooney, and Mia Farrow who were here independently taking on the Darfur cause - to raise awareness in GC's case; and to record oral traditions on audio and video for a museum in Sudan, in Mia's. Since George was staying at the Meridien there were ripples of excitement everytime he wandered through the lobby. He must have lost half his body weight since he made Syriana. I hardly recognised him.

President Deby has been on a tour of the country over the last week and is due to continue into next week. This means our trip to the desert to train the community reporters has been postponed for 2 weeks. The president on the move constitutes a force majeure in Chad it seems. Whole towns and villages grind to a halt when he arrives with his 200 strong military entourage, so we wouldn't have got much done had we decided to do our training this week.

So it looks like I won't make it back to Niger for the time being. In a way I think it's not a bad thing to stay in one place. The team will hopefully benefit. I'm in the middle of translating a 60 page training manual on different formats of radio shows into French. It's like being back at university, but good for the vocabulary practise.

It also keeps me away from those bronzing beauties by the pool; and dare I say takes my mind off living in yet another place where I can't run about outside or walk down the street to a shop and stop and chat to passers by. The trip to the provinces can't come soon enough. To see and talk to real people in a village and attempt to understand the challenges of life here. To meet our audience and contributors who will hopefully get some benefit from our radio programmes. To feel alive and involved.