Among the customers who were mostly workers from the nearby construction site, there was a table reserved by a small group of people
who had travelled to Senegal together and had decided to gather once a fortnight.
That day, I was an special guest again. Jeanne, Jui-Chu, Sarah and Matilde were also invited.
I could form another group with the Toitot couple and Jeanne with whom I had travelled to Syria in a tour organized by Annie. Not knowing one other before the trip, We had a lot of laughing moments together.
My availability being constraint by the busy daily programme, I was not able to meet my former travelling companions of Syria earlier. We only managed to save an appointment with Jeanne for lunch and with her husband Christian at 3pm in their house the day before my departure.
I enjoyed chatting with Jeanne more than eating that "cassoulet", which was probably one of the French specialities that I appreciated the least. I was not carnivorous enough to love this meaty dish, and neither was I a fan of white beans.
I was much more tempted by the desserts: "éclairs" and "choux à la crème". Learning to be moderate, I only tasted a portion of each one.
After coffee, Jeanne had to be back to work. It was still early before 3pm. we decided to go to the Mernigoz's house straight instead of idling somewhere else. We rang the bell outside the gate but nobody answered. We opened the unlocked gate and waited in the garden full of Jeanne's favorite
owls objects.
Ernest desperately needed a rest. He had been driving hundreds of kilometres for the past few weeks.
Christian returned to his house punctually. I found back the same friendly and humorous guy that I had known in September 2001. He had not finished his lunch with friends when he rushed back for our appointment. Still feeling hungry, he took out ice-cream and cookies to share with us who had not digested our heavy lunch. The Toitot couple reasonably resisted the intake of more sugar. I was the only one to accept one scoop out of greediness.
We shifted from the garden to inside the house when he wanted to us a series of transparencies on his recent trip in Indonesia with Jeanne. And he invited us to stay on for the appetizer, so that he could call up another travelling companion Michel to join us.
Jeanne also came back from her work and was glad to see that we were still there. We were waiting for Michel who was driving back to Besançon from a funeral. Actually the Toitot and I had a dinner invitation from David and Edith at 7pm. We had to call them to postpone it to one hour later.
Michel finally appeared. When he saw me, he was so full of joy that he hugged me gently in his arms.
We all sat down together in the sitting room to watch sequences of our trip in Syria that Ernest had edited and copied into a DVD for me to bring back to Malaysia. All the scenes, whether funny or serious, evoked good memories of our traces in the then peaceful and hospitable Middle-East country.
All of us admitted that it had been the most wonderful trip that we had ever had.
After that unforgettable trip, they had hardly found any special occasions to meet. This time because of my presence, some of us were reunited after more than six years.
When we were leaving the Menigoz's house respectively, that was another touching moment.
The Toitot promised me that they would make an effort to organize gatherings more often with the Syria travelling companions, without forgetting Annie and Colette who were such sweet ladies. Who knows, one day we eight might be travelling around Malaysia by van, like we did in Syria.
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