KEITA IS ILL WE ARE LEAVING FOR BAMAKO
Keita is here seen eating the same custard apple as I am enjoying below. This our first 'fruit of paradise' seems to me now to have been sent as a gift to remind us how precarious life can be- we have, for the moment at least, been banished from paradise and we are on the way to Bamako tomorrow morning, on the very day when the hotel starts its Christmas season and we are fully booked for about two weeks.

Keita had a bad cold about a month ago which affected his hearing and gave him bad earache. He has also had a very bad back recently, the result of an accident about a year ago, getting steadily worse. Suddenly about ten days ago he started developing vertigo and he is losing his balance and has to hold on to the walls to be able to walk.
A guardian angel in the shape of Keita's friend Guida, a neurologist doing a PHD at Uiversity College Hospital, London, just happened to be here visiting his family. Guida told Keita to get himself down to Bamako without delay- we will see him there and he will try and arrange an appointment with his professor of Neurology at the Hospital in Bamako. Undoubtedly there will be tests to do, waiting for tests to be analysed, there is now the Christmas holiday coming, whatever happens we will have to stay in Bamako for Christmas.
So things are looking a little unsettled- I will go with Keita of course, leaving the hotel on the eve of mass invasion of THE BEAST (the full hotel...)