After our long walk, we decided to go for dinner at Mama Susu's. I didn't want to go home and cook, so I stopped at Mama Susu's while Haresh kept walking onwards to the house to drop Bijli home and, pick up the car.
During our lively dinner, we noticed a young man sitting on the next table. He came to snap a photograph of Mama Susu's parrot, Sohail, eating chilli peppers. Mama Susu was eating them and, Haresh said, parrots eat them. I really don't know this interesting fact and, sure enough, Sohail chewed on a pepper.
We started talking to him and, learned he's traveling the world. Minh, Vietnamese-British (he was born and brought up in Vietnam, went to studying Germany at the age of 18, and is now living and working in London as a professional photographer/videographer).
He was staying at a guesthouse on Camp Johnson Road.
Minh explained this was his West Africa leg and, he had seen Tunis, Mauritania, Morocco, Senegal, Guinea Bisseau, etc. He said the market people in Morocco were definitely very aggressive and, he was even ripped off by a tour operator. Otherwise he said the Sahara Desert is very beautiful. He said the Muslim folks were extremely hospitable (which I was very happy to hear and of course, Mama Susu nodded deeply). He said he made friends with people in Sierra Leone and, they really took care of him. From the anecdotes I remember, he said he met a Belgian lady who had a restaurant in St Louis and, wondered what she was doing all the way there, even though she was a successful restauranteur back in her country. His experiences of traveling by road from Sierra Leone to Liberia were quite adventurous. He said the road was terrible and, he took a motorcycle to the border and, it was just a mud path, drowned in feet of rain water. He said the driver had to shove something into the exhaust to stop water getting in. Somehow, against all the odds, he made it to the border.
During all his travels via air and land, he said he even slept on the side of the ride because the car broke down.
Anyway, we invited him to spend the next night with us until he left.
Minh spent the next day with us and, Sunday he flew to Lagos, his next stop.
See all the photographs we took with him. The sharp, clear photographs are by Minh, of course. He also photographed our house and Kavita.
Kavita was overjoyed to have a houseguest and, she made Minh play with him in the guest/her bedroom and, listen to all her guitar music (Minh also knows how to strum a guitar).
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