Partly to raise Babucar's spirits and in order to smarten up the inside of his 'house' .. it was decided to concrete the floor and paint the inside, which at the time looked more like a prison cell .. with its bare block-work .. than a comfortable retreat in times of need. Removing all the furniture and tools
to the outside, Babucar set to work painting three coats of whitewash on the walls on one day and on the next, mixing and spreading the concrete .. a task that would take a lot of hard work in the heat and necessitated waiting until the new floor had hardened sufficiently to replace the contents, for overnight security. Evidently his first experience at laying concrete, he achieved a good effect.

Removing the furniture, tools and bedding .. prior to decorating.

"Chez Babucar" with its freshly painted walls and new floor.

Thinking like a Brit, I asked him if he wanted matting on the cold and hard concrete floor.
"Oh no," said he, "it is so much cooler than it was before, absolutely perfect !

Staying after darkness had started to fall for the cement to dry and giving Babucar a ride home in Lamin's taxi, to avoid any more accidents .. cycling in the dark on African roads is definitely not to be recommended .. we were treated to these beautiful cloud formations.

With a 6 month season of hot and dry weather well under way .. it was impractical to do much with the fruit cage. So we decided to leave the partially rusty netting to see just how long it would last and I taught Babucar the hopeful benefits of 'double digging' in preparation for future planting into better enriched soil. The method; to dig a trench with a spade, fill it with rotted cow manure and .. working backwards .. cover it with the soil from the next trench .. and so on.

Above you can see the start of the exercise, with many more wheelbarrow loads of manure yet to be collected from the local farmer and dug in. Bottom left are the fledgling tomato plants

As an experiment, I said to leave watering the newly dug soil until he wanted to plant new crops, thus leaving the goodness in the ground until it was ready to be used. Whatever he grows in the fruit cage is directly for his benefit, so I left it up to him whether he decided to make the time to concentrate on consistent and constant watering of anything he plants before the rains return.

I hear his tomato plants have really been doing well .. so something has obviously succeeded.