It looks like the time has come, after nearly five months in this job and this country to do a little update and to note that life continues to have its odd side.

I have travelled a little, one journey to Norway via UK, and another for a few days leave in Uganda (and by accident, not design, two extra nights in Nairobi, courtesy of Kenya Airways).

I was in UK for a couple of days on my way to and from Norway, where I had a week learning about the organisation. . Oslo was so nice, though, as recently confirmed, Oslo remains a very expensive city. It was the middle of summer and in the evenings I used the 'rover' travel tickets to the fullest to see different parts of the city.

Jeffrey now in Sweden, came by train to see me and to look for a job in Oslo. He says that jobs are there (and he now speaks some Swedish, and seems not to be fazed by Norwegian), but feels that he needs to get a Swedish or Norwegian driving licence.

By contrast, the days in Britain which 'bracketed' my visit to Norway were busy and rather taxing. Despite quite a lot of planning I had to sleep on the floor of both my sister's house when the local hotel did not honour my booking (not at all convenient to her as she was just a couple of weeks off having baby Rose) and my mother's flat (now sold but then without beds).

I had a nostalgic weekedn in Edinburgh with a friend, found they had knocked down my former secondary school (and I had no idea!), but that Edinburgh had totally changed into a confident, not-drunk-late at night capital. However, I still managed to get abused at a bus stop for being English (and for pointing out to my friend who had read the Da Vinci Code, that you could get a bus to Roslin. I hadn't known that the Da Vinci Code was a conspiracy to enable the English to control Scotland's heritage, but now I do.

In Edinburgh, it started raining, and then I had the nightmare the next day of trying to leave for London on the 8 am train, finally leaving at 10 and getting in 5 HOURS LATE at 5.30 pm, because of heavy flooding.

I was privileged to hear one of the most bizarre announcements I have ever heard in my life when we had been stuck at Newark station for an hour. The guard first informed us that it was highly unlikely that we would make it to London at all and that we should get off and start going back home again (despite having just announced that all lines ahead were closed, so clearly no trains were going north either).

Then in a masterpiece of communication he informed us over the loudspeakers that the train was TOO HEAVY and that some of us would have to get off. However, as he gave us no idea how any individual would decide if he or she should get off, of course no one moved. He changed it to ‘100 had to get off’. Still no guideline on who. Then he got down to fifty. At no point did he say anything like: 'Everyone standing' or all teenagers' or everyone with a red shirt. .

Martin had barely finished his Masters in Manchester than he was off to ASngola towork for Mines Action Group, thus giving me (eventually) a chance to visit Angola (I insisted on an invitaton before I would give him a reference).

Ebrahim grdauated with his diploma in journalism, Richard went back to South Africa to finish (we hope) the pilot's course (which turns out to be somethingof a scam in financial terms; it seems that the course is getting longer and longer, while he would have finished this stage long ago if he had stayed in Nairobi. I have noticed this tendency before in South Africa, to squeeze out every last penny.

Annie had a baby. And so did another Annie in Bunia.

A report on the project I ran in Ituri came out from the Norwegian donors, confirming several of my positions on management, which had led to quite a lot of argument between me and UNDP Kinshasa.

Here, I was robbed of both my phones in less than a minute by a smooth artist who rang the bell, swept into the flat and out again in less than a minue, pretending to have thought it was her brother's flat. Light skin (meant I hesitated briefly in challenging her (to my shame), large African dress hid what she was doing beside the table. very audaciaous, very professional. I was robbed at gunpoint here in 2003 so this was slightly better I suppose.

Our main project work is some hours drive from the capital, and in this phase of launching the project, I am travelling a lot. Much by helicopter. Landing at wrong airporrt reminder about Catholic and protestant airports in Dungu.

I live in a flat in Abidjan 9soemtimes in this early phase, I seem to be here only at weekends). It would be nice to have a house and garde, because I have discovered that peple have mongooses as pets. I would really like one.

Ssesse weekend

Here in CI, I trundle on. It’s a bit like Somalia in that the crisis is totally man made and could be solved politically in a day if any one was really willing. This was a truly prosperous and well organised country (Abidjan still is – it has more traffic lights, all working than the whole of the rest of Africa put together, huge, I mean huge Lebanese run French supermarkets). Every main village in the whole country (yes, right to the edges) has electricity, street lighting, a well built school etc), but it has politically created ethnic divisions that didn’t matter at all when they were prosperous, and a distinction between ALLOGENES (really foreign foreigners like Burkinabe labourers, drivers, cooks, nannies – a true Abidjanais doesn’t do a stroke of work, like a Khartoum Arab) . ALLOCHTONES (people from the north working in the cocoa plantations in the south who foolishly thought because they were in their own country that they had gained some rights to land etc) and AUTOCHTONES (native natives ‘wha’s like us?’) who massacre the former every so often.

Travel woes are not just in Britain of course. several of my friends trying to either visit me here (from Accra), travel within the country, or in the case of Tim’s friend Samba trying to get back to Freetown through Guinea, all experience the most horrendous time at road blocks (barrages) which completely plague this country. militias, army, police, customs, vaccination, rebels, goverment all strangle the country.

Having said that it is well organised I must add that what they call ‘rackets’ (in French) , mainly consisting of shake-downs, protection money, heavy road blocks demanding huge sums so crossing the country can take two days (on perfect tarmac roads) and five times your bus ticket, are all pretty well organised too. Your average road block, even on the motorway, has militias, police, customs, health, market taxes and you have to get off your bus or out of your car and file past all of them, who all check your papers, and all demand something from you. The bigger bus companies try to simplify it by collecting money from you as they set off from Abidjan and trying to pay off the road blocks all at once. If you come from the Ghana border, you have to choose the right taxi. An ordinary one will take you all day, and you might end up getting forcibly vaccinated twice even if you have your yellow card in order. Or, a friendly policeman directs you to another one which just happens to belong to him, you pay twice the rate (or the real rate if you prefer to put it that way) and get whisked to Abidjan in three hours.

Not unique to here of course. In Mandera if you are a Somali Somali, you pay ten thousand to go to Nairobi and never get off the bus. If you are a Kenyan Somali you pay two thousand and are subject to humiliating checks all the way. You pays your money and takes your choice (or should that be the other way round?).

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Of course in an NGO vehicle you get stopped a bit less (though not in the rebel north even if you have the two Laissez-passers necessary).

Nevertheless, I have chosen to fly when I can on the ONUCI (= UNMIS) and PAM (WFP) free flights. So lots of helicopters and surprise 15 minute visits to towns both north and south en route. Off today to the west to start the first bridging schools (that’s what my project is about) of accelerated education to get formerly displaced kids back into normal schools, though they are over age. A very NRC activity with certain Barry type flourishes! 700 kids to start with. Also an ethnic minefield, since, why were you displaced, why are you coming back? Why is NRC encouraging these people to come back? See above.

Finally, a friend of mine has written to say that e-mail messages are going into his sperm.