A well got goat.

Here I sit, 4 days from skipping this peculiar country for a couple of month's respite, light drizzle and products of porcine origin. It would be fair to say that I can't wait although there is an element of disappointment.

I'd planned on being here until 2009 with perhaps a sanity break back to temperate climes in the summer of '08 but the peculiar timing of my arrival and the lack of gainful employment of either body or mind since then have forced me to take drastic action. I considered hanging around and seeing the country but the rains are a-comin which means that all those bits I want to see are the wrong side of inaccessible, and what's more the VSO salary, hefty as it is for the simple home life I lead, doesn't stretch to even the most spartan of hostelries, especially once you factor in travel and sustenance. There isn't perhaps as much of me to sustain as there was in March but the Lockhart appetite is a voracious one as any one who has hosted one will atest.

And so I find myself tying up the ends that have worked their way loose over the last three months of mental and physical inertia, which basically means I'm not doing an awful lot apart from twiddling my now well developed thumbs and trying to summon the courage/willpower to clean my dust and insect ridden abode. A lizard of local make has recently moved in which does mean that the flies that insisted on using my house as a knocking shop and then promptly turning up their far too numeous toes, have been drastically reduced in number. The flip side of reduced insect 'life' is an upsurge in the amount of lizard poo one has to deal with; not a sentence I ever envisaged myself saying.

It's been a funny old three months that has seen the sheen of enthusiasm be rigorously buffed by the brillo pad of reality back to the base metal that makes up its all too common place core. Serious flaws have been exposed and flowers of rust are already blooming, but there's will and so there must, by default, be a way. Trying to overcome the hurdle that is 'folding stuff' and everyone who's in power's absolute obsession with it is going to take a man of greater stature than I, but at the same time there is hope. My director, for all his pontificating on life's greater questions, does have an almost violent aversion to corruption, but there is only so much he can do.



While the uniformed satraps that plague every move anyone makes in this country do their best to derail its stuttering development, there are good people out there trying to stick to the rules of life as the world sees them, but they are in a minority. Give a man a uniform and he'll want a little something on the side. You know things are bad when you have to bribe immigration officials to get an exit stamp.

Did I say bribe, I meant 'give a present to'; silly me, I must take more care over what I'm saying.

So much still awaits and there are so many opportunities that I'm looking forward to coming back and getting going. The previously mentioned penned letter received a response along the lines of 'tough, we've made up our minds' which was nice ... nice to know you're being supported in your decisions. Hey ho.

Sometimes it's like nailing jelly to a wall, othertimes it's even more infuriating and I haven't even started yet.

Sheesh!

The beast within needs appeasing; the voracious Lockhart appetite has stirred it's insatiable loins and is demanding a sacrifice. There's a man who sells a fine line in barbequed goat just along the road though don't think he's seen the map.

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You may have noticed I've worked out how to add pictures ... gone are the days of the expansive monologue ... now you get visual sustenance too! Don't say I don't think of you!