This little creature was given to me by Bob, my tailor/horse trainer over fifteen months ago, as a present on opening the hotel. I say ‘creature‘, since I am not sure whether it is a turtle or a tortoise. I am still not sure. It is quite indestructible, and may be very old.
I put it in a bucket of muddy water when Bob first gave it to me. It splashed about making a lot of commotion. The following morning the water was still. First I thought it had drowned, but it had actually disappeared, managing somehow to scale the slippery slopes of the bucket.
A couple of weeks later we found it in the banana plantation. Ibrahim the gardener made a hole in its shell and attached it to a palm tree with a metal wire which the creature promptly chewed through. This was repeated a few times until everyone forgot about it, and I believed it had finally disappeared.
But no! I went on a cleaning rampage the other day, making everyone pick up rubbish. Boubakar cleaned out the circular cement hole used for the pumping out of the water last September which saved our skin during the floods. And there was the little thing once more, nestling amongst old cigarette packets! How on earth it had survived I do not know.