Yesterday I went ashore for a walk, with the intention of taking photos of the beaches and the mud brick houses in the nearby village - the sun wasn't shining when I took this one you see here, and I wanted some blue sky pics to make people jealous!

But I ended up spending the whole time hanging out with Yusufu, Hassan, and another young boy whose name I have forgotten. One of them was building a house in the sand when I came along, so I asked him if I could join. They asked me if I was a boy, but didn't seem too bothered when I told them I wasn't - they still hung out with me.

The kids turned out to be great tour guides with their sharp eyesight, spotting monkeys, crabs, or a bird that I myself might not have even noticed. They took me to what one of them called "my road," a path that they then turned off onto a tiny, apparently seldom-used, track through the bush. When I got attacked by giant killer ants - OK, so maybe it was just a large ant that bit me on the toe and its mates - one of the boys came and beat them off my sandal for me.

They were obsessed with taking photos, telling me to stop at every opportunity for a photo - and at many non-opportunities too, if you ask me: posing as gangstas or karates kids. Those were the last photos I managed to take with my camera, because today I discovered it was broken, and I'm not quite sure how it happened.