Totes

A colleague tried to sell me the opportunity to buy branded tote bags as we waited for the coffee machine to whirr and pour. I hadn't expressed any interest and it was too early in the day. The packing and sorting process ahead of a move generally uncovers more tote bags than one knows what to do with, and I am in the process of wanting to shed instead of gain items.

My friend Alison who works on our Nicaragua programme invited me out after work along with a couple of colleagues from there. I was knee deep in proposal writing but decided to join spontaneously. We ate delicious Japanese and went for a pint of traditional ale. It was an interesting walk down memory lane and some good chat about Nicaragua, and I regaled the group about my trip there in 2007. It was Nicaragua, specifically Ometepe Island within Lake Nicaragua, where I realised I had two botflies maturing in my scalp. I'd acquired them in a forest in Guatemala and carried them down the Central American isthmus. It seems all Nicaraguans also have a gory botfly story, with various methods of extraction. Mine involved a doctor with a scalpel in the town of Rivas.