One of the VSO volunteers in Kerewan, Ivo Jonker, suggested to me a few months ago that, as he will be leaving this summer, he’d like to travel right around the country on his motorbike and that, were I a real man, I’d join him. I obviously had no choice but to do so, and we agreed that the week after Easter would be the time. There were a couple of problems to overcome: we’re not supposed to take our VSO bikes more than 100km from our homes, plus the journey would take at least 5 days and neither of us was due that much holiday (if anyone reading this is from either VSO or the Education Office, it is of course a fictional account rather than a true story!)

Being rather devious, we came up with a cunning plan – we wouldn’t mention it to VSO and would just hope that they never caught us and, if we visited several of the newly arrived volunteers around the country, we could tell the education office that we were meeting them to discuss our work and share ideas.

Having agreed this much, it seemed that we’d probably overdone the planning so we simply forgot about the whole venture until a few days before we were due to leave.

I was away from home for the run up to our start date (which might be Friday, or maybe Saturday depending on how we felt) so I left Ivo to ring a few strategically placed volunteers to arrange stop-overs. He eventually fixed up lodgings for 2 of the 4 nights we’d be out and felt that he’d done all that was needed.

We finally decided that Saturday would be the best day to set off, and so I arranged to travel home on the Friday. I met Natalie, another Kerewan Volunteer, and we crossed on the ferry and rode along the North Bank road towards home. My bike was running like a dream right until the moment the engine blew up about 10 miles from home! I was rescued about half an hour later by one of the office pick-up trucks which just happened to be passing, but it seemed that the trip was going to have to be postponed.

Ivo swore quite a lot when he heard the news – he does that when he’s upset and let’s face it, he’d gone to the trouble of making 2 phone calls to arrange accommodation so I could quite see why he’d be annoyed.

Natalie though remained cool and calm and suggested that I borrow her bike for the trip. Natalie is not a tall person and VSO had bought her bike as a one off as she was the only person in recent years who was physically unable to ride the standard issue AG 100s. Instead, they’d found her a Chinese built FDMCO 125, being the smallest frame they could lay their hands on. It is also a rather cheap and badly made machine and is strictly a road bike – not suitable at all for the dirt tracks we’d be riding. We rolled around the floor splitting our sides for a few minutes and then, when the realisation that this was the only way the trip was going to be possible dawned upon us, I was faced with a very tricky decision.

Being a careful, methodical planner, I considered carefully for 30 seconds and then said that I’d love to borrow it.

The next morning I was up at 0800, packed by 0830 and at Natalie and Ivo’s house by 0900. I hadn’t had breakfast as we’d agreed that our first stop should be Eddy’s Hotel, Farafenni for a chicken and chips brunch.

As the official tour photographer, I set about annoying Ivo by taking pictures of him doing the bike checks he should have done two days ago! This amused Natalie and myself until Ivo was finally ready to start around 0945.

Unlike Charlie and Ewan, there was no ceremony to mark our departure, simply a screamed, ‘Break my bike and you’ll be sorry!’ from Nat as we screeched out of the compound.

We hit the tarmac road a few minutes later and settled back for the 40 mile drive to Farafenni. The sun was out (as always) and the sky was blue (again, as always) and it was good to be on the road – even if I did look a bit silly riding along with my knees round my ears!

 

To be continued….