March Mishaps... (Thank goodness it's almost April!)

Hello one and all,

Happy Monday morning to you - I've suddenly found myself with a few hours to spare due to an incredibly irritating muck up the bus to Accra... Ah, actually it's not so bad, I shouldn't really whinge - having got to the STC yard in Navrongo at 6:40am for a bus I was expecting to arrive at 8ish (you never can be sure!) I only found that it had actually left EARLY - I THOUGHT THIS WAS AFRICA?! What on earth do they mean by going EARLY?! Anyhu, to cut a long story short, by the time I got to Bolga in a desperate attempt to catch the nice air conditioned (very important in the heat at the moment!) bus it was gone - I mean what is with them? They leave NAvrongo EARLY and Bolga ON TIME!? As you may be able to tell, I am actually still IN SHOCK! However, I've managed to book myself on an overnight bus leaving at 3pm (hence the spare couple of hours) so all is well. My flight to Cameroon isn't until 8:30am on Wednesday so it's all fine. Complaining over!

So that was one of my 'March mishaps' however the other I have to report is a little more serious, but not much so really... I had my first run in with my motorbike last Tuesday... a small incident with a bloomin' woman on a push bike who was riding on the wrong side of the road. I swerved to go around her, she swerved the same way, so I swerved the other way, as did she and then she was really close and I panicked a bit and as I stopped the bike I managed to skid it and go over on the left side. As I was going so slowly by this point I only got a few minor injuries - scrapes on my wrist, elbow and knee and then a bigger cut on my foot. All are healing well now, infact apart from my foot (upon which I am still hobbling... 'ahhh' I hear you cry! Thank you)I'm all recovered. My foot is much better, however is still a little swollen, but hey it'll get better soon.

Anyway, something that I thought was absolutely wonderful was the way that the Ghanaian people just dropped everything to help me. After I'd fallen I couldn't pick up my bike (it's a heavy monster) so this guy picked it up for me and then drove me to a nearby clinic where a Nurse attended to me very rapidly and efficiently. He then took me to the pharmacy to buy the drugs I needed and then drove me home. What a STAR! He just completely stopped his day to help me, and make sure that I was ok - how kind is that? In reality that's one of the main reasons why I wanted to write this blog; to publically say how wonderful he was. (Rather than to make you all worry about me - seriously I'm fine and in some ways maybe it'll act as a timely reminder that motorbikes are dangerous and therefore not to be complacent about safety.)

Right, time to go and write some replies to a few e-mails me thinks.

Much love to all, Sam xxx