It was a sad start to the day when, just as I unlocked the front door, Mariama arrived with the news that our young patient and friend Yeng had slipped away quietly at about 5am. A salutary reminder if it were needed that try as we may, we cannot solve anything like all the problems out here any more than our wonderfull doctors and nurses can back in the UK. It has been heartbreaking over the last few weeks to watch Yeng slowly giving up on her tragic young life. Some years ago Yeng, who was just eighteen years old, had fallen from a Mango tree, something all too common in The Gambia and I guess in many other areas of Africa too. Her fall had left her completely parallelised from the waist down and as a consequence she had been in and out of the hospital ever since, often with deep bed sores. There are little if any facilities out here to help victims and their families cope with such eventualities and with no power in most of the villages, a simple aid such as an air mattress which would be used in the UK to prevent her bed sores, would be absolutely useless. I’d been seeing Yeng most days and spending a little time with her, taking her wanjo juice and changing her videos to try to cheer her up, but it was plain to see that she had simply lost the will to live and inspite of the best attentions of the doctors and nurses who had managed to cure the infections that she’d had when she arrived a few weeks ago, she eventually just let go of her life. We will all miss her greatly.

So it was that I just couldn’t bring myself to go across to the hospital this morning. Instead heading off into the bush on my trusty C90. Crossing on the Bansang ferry , it was good to feel cool of the morning air instead of the oppressive heat that I have become accustomed to every day when water leaks from my pores quicker that I can ever pour it down my throat! I rode gently avoiding the worst of the potholes, through Bush Town, Dobo and various other small villages along the way until I met the Farrafeni road where I turned west towards Lamin Kuta and the ferry for McCarthy Island. Lunch was taken at the Bird Safari Camp as it gave an excuse to check once more if my torch had been retrieved; it hadn’t! So a gentle run back to Bansang completed my circumnavigation of this little bit of The Gambia and I arrived back by around 2pm.

Back at the Children’s Unit the men were hard at work taking out the very last section of wall, the corner, which needs to be rebuilt. I’m assured that tomorrow all the guys will be cracking into the excavations for the footing of the new wall, and knowing them, I fully expect to see it not only up but also rendered by the weekend…. However the 26^th is looming up a little too quickly for my liking and I’m starting to wonder if I will make the flight even then… I guess I’ll just have to wait and see, but a further weeks delay in my departure will make my recce trip all the more difficult.