Untitled
on Alison Helm (Ghana), 03/Oct/2011 22:03, 34 days ago
A week of Moto training . . . . .laughs and tears!I am home now after a week of learning to ride my motorbike on Ghanaian roads/surfaces. It was mostly an excellent week (full of excitement and laughs) apart from the time I got stuck in some very deep sand and then stalled the bike in the middle of a river! (As you can imagine, I certainly WASN'T laughing at this point!)I was most curious to see how full this reservoir was and then get home and find no water coming out of the taps (again!). Some things seem quite advanced here, and then other things seem like a long way from the developed structures we are lucky enough to have in the UK.At one point there was so much water we had to find an alternative way to travel . . . . . . . bikes and all!On one day we travelled as far north as you can go, to the border with Burkina Faso (although we didn't have either our passports or the£100 needed to cross the border!) It was strange that there was about 200 metres of 'no man's land' that apparently doesn't belong to either country, whilst at the same time there were lots of houses within this space; I wondered which country these people considered themselves to belong to?We had to practise our 'hill starts' so headed out to the Tongo Hills which felt like quite a magical place. It reminded me of the peacefulness of the Lake District and there were some amazing rock formations in the middle of vast open spaces.The highlight of the week however was the ride out to the Crocodile Pools:a totally 'risk assessment' free experience!So now I'm the proud owner of a Ghanaian driving license and I am ready to head out to work with some different teachers in their remote schools.(I shall be keeping one eye out for further crocodiles along the way though!)Thanks in advance to everyone at Curwen who has contributed to the book collection - I'm hoping to sort out their new 'home' in the next couple of weeks.Missing you all,Ali x