Kakum Forest Treetop Walkway, Ghana

On the third foot bridge I begin to feel slightly scared. 40 metres up, over the canopy of the rainforest, the flat wooden bottom of the bridge dips slightly to the right as I take a step. It feels unstable, and the clanking that our guide, Cynthia, warned me about – the metal on metal – adds to my unease. Cynthia also said that no more than one person should walk on a bridge at a time, and her resolute refusal to take her own advice, bouncing along merrily several metres behind me, disrupting the rhythm of the bridge so that each step feels unbalanced, compounds it.

There are seven bridges in all, and I think that it may be because the Macbeth-like knowledge that going back is almost as far as continuing contributes to my sudden and unaccustomed attack of vertigo. But the lush and diverse beauty of the jungle, stretched out below me, distracts me, and by the seventh bridge I am able to let go of the ropes as I walk, just for a few steps.

Internet Café, Cape Coast, Ghana

To steal Grumpy’s comment in a text message about Nairobi at Christmas, Ghana is a dirty chunk of chaos.

The internet café is just next door to ‘The Blue Cheeze café’, and down the road from ‘Before before car wash and communications centre.’ Computer screens are side to side, no space between them. I am squashed between two people whose screens I can’t help seeing as I wait for the twelfth time for my email page to try (and fail) to load. The first has finished writing an email to ‘Mama Becky’ in America, asking her for money so he can study, with the help of his friend who is dictating to him from a piece of paper, words they have clearly composed earlier, and is now typing a new email: ‘Almightily praise and blessings to God. Dorcas, how is your mother?’ The second has been reading an IMDB page about Eric Bana for the last twenty minutes.

On the wall outside the internet café

Robbed of my opportunity to read emails, I turn to the Guardian online while I wait for my brother to finish writing his message. Richard Whitely has died. I read the obituaries, and while I agree with much of what is being said, find it trite and obvious. All I want to know is: Will Countdown continue without him? It can’t, can it? And does Carol have to go into mourning now?

Lunch, Cape Coast Castle Restaurant, Ghana

We had a look around the slave fort. It was strange, to stand in the rooms where up to 850 slaves were held for weeks until they were sent on ships to be sold in the Americas. Where many of them died, from malaria or from general ill health due to the conditions they are kept in – cramped rooms where their food was tipped from a window 12 feet up into the room, and their bodily waste ran across the floor of the room in a small open gutter. Where the women were spied on by the castle’s owners (at times Portuguese, Danish, Swedish, and British) from another raised window, and the pretty ones were taken into the next room for a bath, then upstairs to where the men would rape them. Where these women would return, afterwards, some of them much later, after they had given birth to the children which had been the result of their assaults – the child taken away to be raised elsewhere, the woman returned to slavery. Everywhere there were reminders of the sub-human treatment of these people.

In pensive mood, we go to the restaurant next door. I order a pineapple shake, which tastes as though it was made with rancid, warm milk. And lobster thermidor, which is covered with a strange white sauce which turns the chips surrounding it into mashed potato.

I smoke a cigarette, and as there is no ashtray, my brother and I have a long discussion about its disposal. I don’t want to throw it over the side, down onto the beach, despite the existence already of a pile of litter there. He doesn’t want me to ‘skank up’ his empty coke bottle by putting it out in there. We finally knock the cherry out, and put the stub on the table, to dispose of later. The waiter comes to take my plate, sees the stub, and picks it up, throwing it over railings onto the beach. My brother and I look at each other.

Recidivist is continuing a year of jet setting by pootling off to Ghana for the next ten days. This is being blogged from Schipol Airport. Mmmmm…. Malt Whisky, Pouilly-Fuisse, Chanel Nail Varnish and some Old Gouda Cheese.

Recidivist loves travelling.

(Recidivist would also like to point out that referring to herself in the third person is not some oblique nod to Makosi of trash tv fame, but merely excitement because it looks like the upgrade ruse has worked. And also tiredness because of silly start time from London this morning. A bientot!)

One of my regular readers commented about how I had sold out by writing about mainstream (and admittedly fairly facile) ‘culcha’ in the form of Big Brother. I have to say I am absolutely obsessed with it this year, and while I don’t feel I should need to justify my interest in the chavvy ones, consider the following facts in mitigation.

The rather beautiful Zimbabwean girl Makosi claims to be from a very grand background, while in actual fact her parents are ordinary middle class Zimbabweans, and her claims about having a butler, chauffer and various other staff in Zimbabwe are much more likely to refer to the time she spent as the lover of the polygamous Philip Chiyangwa when she was only 16. Chiyangwa is Mugabe’s nephew and grew rich on corruption in Zimbabwe, known as a fat cat who owned various businesses and held political posts. He has recently fallen from grace, having been accused of being part of a South African spy ring. The Zimbabwean message boards and gossip websites are all abuzz with Makosi and her affair, and there have been some less than approving comments pointing out how her flamboyant sexuality is not generally acceptable in her culture.

Kemal, the young Turkish belly dancer, is intelligent and interesting. From the moment he uttered the words ‘oh come on headscarf, don’t let me down, bitch’, as that part of his costume threatened to detach itself from his person as he entered the house, I have felt a huge affection for this young boy.

Grumpy says this last fact just proves I am a fag hag, but as a half-Turkish woman who grew up in Zimbabwe, surely I am allowed to watch how two parts of my past are represented on national TV? Or perhaps the lady doth protest too much?

Those great people over at Who Should You Vote For have given us a lovely new quiz – to determine who we should really want kicked out of the Big Brother house. I am slightly surprised at my results, as I rather like the self-styled ghetto fabulous Science. I know his popularity has dropped in the last few days, but he was antagonised appallingly during the pirate task (Maxwell’s playground bully tactics of ‘if you don’t tell us what to do we won’t fail the task’ was mean spirited and frustrating to the poor boy.) I have to entreat everyone to vote off the big mouthed bikini wearing Sam – she is such a nonentity. Keep Derek and Roberto – at least they are interesting, even if they are fabulously bitchy. And it will be a kick in the belly to Saskia and her little coterie of hangers on. For god’s sake. The girl claims to be ‘cool as a cucumber’, and then turns into a screaming harridan, saying ‘we’ll see who wins’. You really showed your spots there, love.

Anthony -6
Craig -18
Derek -41
Kemal -2
Makosi -11
Maxwell -13
Roberto -20
Sam -6
	Saskia 2
	Science 4
Vanessa -3

You should evict: Science. The ghetto rapper who’s probably ‘not bothered’ that you want to evict him.

Take the test at Who Should You Vote For

I am at home on a Saturday afternoon, post foody-market, and pre-Armadillo dinner. Grumpy and I have decided to give his friend Tart, visiting from Australia, a tour of the gastronomic delights of Hackney. Grumpy has just read the last sentence and made a knowing reference to the other delights that he and Tart will be sampling later, in the seedier arches of the darker railway bridges of this city.

A few weeks ago, Grumpy and I happened across a stall at the market which we had never seen before. On this stall was Cioccolato Puro ‘Peper Oncino’ – a chocolate bar made by a Sicilian company called CioMod. At only 45% cocoa, it is a lower percentage than I usually like. BUT it has no dairy products, and the only other two ingredients are cane sugar and chilli. The sugar has maintained its crunchiness through the manufacturing process, and as a result there are two separate consistencies – the smoothness of the chocolate and the crunch of the sugar.

But it is the two distinct tastes of the chocolate which give it its complexity. As Tart has pointed out, having just had another little morsel to be sure, ‘I get the bitterness of the chocolate first, and almost instantaneously, the sugar cuts through it, [or as Grumpy says, 'the sparkle of the sugar bursting through the cocoa'] so that they are almost simultaneous, despite the difference in texture. At first you query where the chilli is because you can’t taste it, and then (I am trying to take you through a journey here) when you swallow the chocolate, there is a pregnant pause, and then all of a sudden it just kicks in and builds to a piquant finale…. Ooh – it’s just done it to me there.’

(Another Grumpy interjection: ‘I think you should say that it’s handmade on virgin’s thighs… On second thoughts, there are no virgins in Sicilia, male or female.’)

Grumpy has asked me not to put a picture of the chocolate on the website, and said he will sulk if I cause a depletion of his stocks… I have had to remind him, though about how excited he was to have found a blog-worthy chocolate, and I have to say that he and Tart are two of the most fabulous chocolate researchers to work with. We have to stop eating now. Dinner is in an hour… Mmmmm…. Armadillo…