Yesterday, I mentioned my first invite to a friend’s place. Glad to say it was a huge amount of fun. My new friend actually only lives about 200m from my compound, in a huge family home overlooking the bay. Author Graham Greene reputedly stayed there back in the day – it was that sort of place. The host was hard at work in the kitchen putting together a shepherd’s pie. Starters was home-baked bread, with French brie hot off the plane from Dakar. The boast of the pantry was a head of broccoli (also from Dakar), which is treated as gold dust here (retail value 20 dollars). Another friend arrived to make a second dessert, and we munched, drank wine and GnTs, and tried not to talk about Ebola. There was even a guitar. The music was perfect – a mix of upbeat American pop and some jazz, with some old REM tracks thrown into the mix. We explored the house, played table tennis on the vast veranda, and set-up a regular rotation of card games, crazy dancing (just us five) and then table tennis.

It was a lot of fun. House parties are fun all over the world, so I don’t want to claim exclusive access to special evenings, but I do think there are levels of stress, exhaustion and tropical excitement here that lead to instant intimacy between people. Yes, in some ways it was one of those ‘expat in Africa’ nights. Even the simple pleasure of occasional human touches (innocent slamming hands on each either on the card deck etc) really met an amazing felt-need that particularly long-term people feel to touch again (ignoring the current Ebola advice).

The house was one of those special colonial residences you can find in Africa. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a (vast) book collection more closely alligned to my reading interests, and full of books I’d either read or listed as ‘to be read’. The house had the haunting aspect of being a much-loved family home, but without wife and kids who’d left back in July. It was full of memories and joy, and now the nostalgia of an amazing life on hold. Young children playing at hunting black mambas in the garden, long weekend nights with other families in the house followed by morning excursions to the beach. For those who knew the pre-Ebola days, it’s immensely sad. For those, like me, contemplating several years here, it’s a taste of what life could be like again soon.