Friday, December 3, 2010

Road rash


Soon after I arrived here, Eileen (the other kiwi here) got the old bike fixed up for me to use. Someone had borrowed it and returned it in a poor state - he'd broken the frame in 2 places. This was hard for me to understand how he could have done that, but since then I've seen some of the loads people put on their bikes. Like 50kg sacks of maize. Anyway I've been using that bike quite a bit and it's old as but no worries. A few weeks ago I was biking up one of Gaoua's 2 hills when something felt very wrong. I realised that I was falling off... and landed on my knee on the dirty roadside. Hence the road rash on my knee. (Since there's no rubbish collection here, there's rubbish all over the place.) It so happened that 2 young girls walking by saw me and came to see if I was OK - which I thought was very nice. Then one of them offered to push my bike for me to the nearest bike repair place. The other girl was carrying a chilly bin - on her head of course - so couldn't really push the bike. She probably makes & sells juice and keeps it cold in the chilly bin. It's not the done thing here for anyone to let someone older than you carry anything, so I knew it was quite normal for the girl to push my bike for me. Anyway, not far away we came across a bike repair guy who soon had my pedal back on, good as gold. But then he saw that where the handle bars had been soldered on (after the bike had been borrowed) there was a big crack. The crack was so big that the handle bars were wobbly! I'm so glad they didn't fall off on me!! Once home I cleaned my knee and put a bandage on it, sweet as. But a few days later it got infected - so I learned a lesson about how easy it is to get infections here. It's all healed up now, & I got the bike sorted out too - new handle bars for $8 so cheap as.
I'm still having fun learning Dioula. Fortunately the 4 part-time staff at the mission are very accommodating of my attempts at talking to them, as each week I need to practise something 40 times. This week it's 'What are you doing?' or 'What did you do yesterday?' or 'What are you doing tomorrow?' So I have ask those questions a total of 40 times. Then I say things like 'Are you sweeping?' 'I am making lunch.' I feel like a 5 year old kid learning to read - but bit by bit I'll get there! It's a buzz when I understand people and when they understand me.
Last month I stayed for a week with Mark (from the UK) & Caroline (from Burkina) and their daughter Naomi - the last of my team mates to visit. They live in Banfora, which is about 4 hours drive to the west of Gaoua. It was cool to see what they're doing, and meet some of their friends as well (see the photo). One day Caroline & I went to the market where we bought a T-shirt. The guy originally asked 6000 francs for it (about $18) but she bargained him down to about half of that! I would've been happy to pay more, so I learned about bargaining!
The week before last we had the team's annual conference, which although full on went well. All decisions affecting the team are made by the team, and there was lots of info new to me. Of course it was all in French so all that hard work in France is paying off! It was a good chance for me to get a grasp on the big picture of what the team does here, as well as get to know everybody better. We also made plans for our Christmas celebration - we're going to Banfora for a couple of nights so we can check out the waterfalls. There are also rocks there similar to the Pancake Rocks just out of Greymouth. Watch this space for photos!

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