Here they they beckon you forward (or backing out a car or for a private word), with palm and fingers pointing at the floor. Very undemonstrative. But I've seen this before, I just can't think where. Answers on an email/message board please.

T-shirt motif of the day:The Porfessionals (sic)

On Saturday I had a lovely excursion out of Tana to a small town called Anjeva (pop. 5,900) in a very small but beautiful train with two-man rattan sofas with thick comfortable maroon cushions and overhead Raffles fans. Lovely. The sofas were actually glued into position rather than bolted so I'm not sure how secure they would have been in the event of a crash but we really didn't go much above 20 mph I don't think. The 4 hour walk was up a mountain from 10.00 to...

Some update-type information: Pal is prounced like this but is French so is spelled Pale which in French means, predictably, 'pale'. He is so known because he is very light skinned. He did tell me 3 first names by which he is known including Pale all of which I have forgotten but his surname is Andrianahaga-Mahery. He is very nice and very bright. Yesterday's noise was a stun grenade throw by troops about 15 yards from my door. They wanted to disperse a g...

An unsettling day. My walk to and from the MFA takes me past the Ministry of Justice and a very large courthouse which always has crowds of small groups of plaintiffs/defendants/litigants of all different social groupings and so it was at 7.50 when I walked in this morning. Very different when I left work shortly after midday. Still the same groups but all pushed away from the central access by soldiers who had two large trucks and a 'paddy-wagon' parked immediat...