A Day at the Beach

Certainly not the most spectacular, eye-opening, or even memorable experience I've had in Africa, but I think this past Sunday would rank as the most fun. About 20 of us from camp piled into SUVs Sunday morning and made roughly an hour drive out to a nearby beach. One of the veterans of camp, who's lived here about 9 years now and knows the protocol, reserved us a private beach hut, arranged for the security escorts and accounted for all the minutia that accompanies doing an event like this (everything is just more complicated here). Apparently several years ago many of the beach huts out there were all owned by Chevron people and on any given weekend you could go out there and see flocks of Chevron expats spending their weekends at the beach. But, in the recent years it has gotten more difficult to get out there due to heavier traffic, stricter security restrictions, and also a decreasing number of expats living on camp.

As I've said before, it's just always nice when you get an opportunity to get off of the camp and this was definitely no exception. It felt so great to just get out by the water, play some ladder golf, toss a football, go for a swim, cook out, and forget where you are for a little bit. That being said, it was also insanely hot and I couldn't stop sweating the entire day, but hey, it's Africa... what can you expect? Here's a few pictures of our hut and view of the water. You'll notice that, of course, as soon as they spot the Oweebos (white people) they all come rushing over trying to sell us stuff. You can see table cloths, aprons, and paintings all draped over our fence.

And then there was this, which was probably the most impressive display of head-balancing I've seen so far in Africa (and you see it everywhere). These guys would literally throw dozens of baskets on top of one another and pack them up as tight as they could, carefully lift them on top of their heads while sitting down, and then stand up and walk around. Quite impressive!

Made some pretty bomb kebabs and sausages as well. Some of the best food I've eaten over here.

And then on the way home came the grand finale, because no African adventure is complete without a little excitement... On the trip back, about 5 minutes into the drive, the lead car in the caravan started smoking from the front of the vehicle. After pulling into a gas station and checking out the problem, one of the guys realized they had kept on the 4WD and that was causing the issue once we got onto the main road and out of the sand. Thinking the problem was fixed, we continued on our merry way. Then, about 15 minutes later we started to see smoke coming from the car again, but not quite as thick this time. We decided to just continue on and hopefully make it home before it got any worse, as we were only about 10-15 minutes away at this point. Suddenly, about five minutes later, we saw a really thick plume of smoke start coming from the engine of the car and we quickly pulled off to the side of the road again. As we pulled up behind them, we noticed a flame on the underside of the car. The people in the vehicle couldn't see, so we naturally started screaming at them to get out, while the driver of our car rushed into the trunk, grabbed a fire extinguisher, and sprinted over the vehicle. He crawled underneath and put out the flame while everyone else was running away from the car. Basically, our driver saved the day. Needless to say, that car was no longer driveable, so we all squished into the remaining cars and had to get a tow truck to come pick up the other one. Everyone made it home safely, but it sure added a little excitement to the trip. Here are a few pictures: one right after the fire was put out and everyone's walking away in the smoke, and a couple others of us just chillin on the side of the road trying to figure out what to do.