Bansang's on Steroids !

What a difference 3 weeks makes…. Yes, that’s all I’ve been away from the Hospital (in fact, that is the longest I’ve been away from here this year !!! ) And I arrive to find the new CEO Baba Jeng officially installed and wasting no time in getting the place ship shape and Bristol fashion! In just a few days the amount of changes and new initiatives he has introduced are quite staggering. To say that we (Anita and I) are impressed would be a massive understatement! And that is just his opening volley… WoW ! I don’t know where the Ministry of Health have been hiding him (well I do actually it was at Farrafenni !)

The only problem we have with him is his energy… I think Anita may well have to find a younger , fitter, faster Project Manager to keep up with him! In a day and a bit we have been whisked around the hospital at break-neck speed; had meetings with heads of staff teams, met with Ministry officials, watched as the maintenance team actually worked on Friday afternoon! And stood in awe as he tackled problem after problem, most of which had needed sorting for years… and that’s just 36 hours, Phew! I think, no, I know Bansang Hospital is in for a big a wake up call!

So what of the building work I hear you cry… Well, if I’m to be brutally honest,  I’m a little disappointed with the progress. I feared that it would happen but hoped it wouldn’t, but it seems even Morro’s Merry Men slow down somewhat when my beady eye is not on them. Certainly there has been quite a lot of progress; all the block work is complete, the floor tiles in the newly built shower block is all done; all the windows in the lower section are installed but many still need gap filling. Tomorrow, Morro heads off to Banjul to collect doors, sinks, toilet pans and a variety of other bits required to finish at least the lower section completely (hopefully!). By Monday night he should be back on the job, but you can be sure I’ll be watching progress like a hawk! Our aim is to have the children back in the nice, shiny, refurbished part of the ward by the end of the coming week. That will then leave just two weeks to get the top section sorted before I head home… and believe me, it WILL happen. 

At the other end of the hospital grounds on Project Mite House, once more progress has been somewhat slower than I would have liked, but then I’m an impatient bugger at the best of times… again, all the block work is very nearly complete, most of the openings that are needed for doors and windows have been made, so progress should now be a little more rapid and apparent! Today will be a quite day as Morro heads off to the coast this morning on a Gella Gella, so we will also be taking the chance to hopefully (there’s that word again) have at least part of the day off.  It’s hard to believe that it is two weeks today since I set sail from Plymouth, and other than the 24hrs on the boat, I haven’t stopped since! Once I had finished my recce in Morocco I just pushed on down to Laayoune to try for the higher entry into Mauritania, which in the event proved to be a non-starter as the road (and border) have been sealed. So short of riding through the actual mine field… well, I’m sure you get the picture! With that option off the agenda I had nothing else to keep me on the road and just point the bike south and pushed on.

However, I think I was still in Western Sahara last time I posted so I’d better fill in the last few days…

My last stop in Western Sahara was about 100Km north of the border at a rather strange desert hotel which was of course full of people in transit. I left bright and early, which gave me my first opportunity to try out my nice new LED spot lights which I had fitted just prior to leaving the UK. Dawn was about half an hour away as I pulled out of the hotel car park and headed south for the Mauritanian border and the dreaded no man’s land of the minefield crossing. The road was almost devoid of traffic and the temperature was perfect. In fact I arrived too early as the border didn’t open until 9am but I still managed to ride right to the front of the already fairly long queue and was first through the gate as it opened… not that it did me a lot of good! I’ve realised that I’m just too British when it comes to queuing African style and I ended up way down the line at the first customs window with my passport. I’d forgotten about the odd system whereby you put you passport on the window cill and watch it get slowly shuffled along to the tiny gap where a hand occasionally pops out to pick one up or of course to return it to it’s waiting owner. Once through that little hurdle which is in fact immigration, you then head across to the Customs office where they have a cursory glance at the bike and stamp it out of the country. Next come the Police, another look at the passport and I’m away… well almost! Just one more check as I actually go through the exit barrier and say goodbye to Morocco (yes, I know that you and I still call it Western Sahara, but to the Moroccans, it is most definitely now Morocco!)

And this is where the fun starts as you head of into the “Mad Max” world of no-man’s land, a strip of land  about a quarter of a mile wide, cleared (?) of mines  but littered with just about everything else you care to think of. It appears to be dumping ground for old vehicles, possible stolen, all burnt out and stripped of anything that could conceivably be of use to anyone. Add to that heaps of broken TV’s, stereos, computers and various other detritus of modern life. Through this chaos one has to try to find a route missing areas of very soft sand, stray mines (only joking!) and the “chancers” that all trying to scam a few dirhams from you.  All was going really well, it’s really not that difficult to find the way through, until I hit some soft sand. I gave the old girl some welly on the throttle to pull it through, when suddenly something sort of went “pop” and she dropped one cylinder. Just what I didn’t need at that particular point. Anyway she did me proud, still having enough grunt on the one remaining cylinder to pull out of the sand.

Stopping on more solid ground I did a quick check and discovered that the throttle cable to the right cylinder had broken. Not too big a problem as I always carry at least one spare along with a clutch cable and various other odds and sods. My dilemma was simply whether to fixe it where I was or to get through to Mauritania first and then sort it… I decided to chance my luck and push on, it only a couple of Km between the border posts and I was already nearly half way through.  It’s not a place where you can rush anyway, so speed and lack of power really weren’t a problem so I just picked out a 40ft Artic unit which was ambling through and followed at a discreet distance knowing that he wouldn’t be liking soft sand any more than I would. As the comms mast at the Mauri border came closer I heaved a sigh of relief and set to on another round of “pass the parcel” with my documents to another set of miserable, offhand border officials. I know I’ve said it before on posts, but why oh why do we always get greeted into a new country by such a morose, humourless, miserable bunch of border police and customs people. Admittedly, the UK is generally far better in this respect that even the best of the rest, but even ours could sometime do with a personality implant not to mention a little “common sense” training…

Once through with all the formalities I headed off to the main road in a sand storm to try to find a bit of shelter under which to work on my little problem. In fact, much to my surprise the cable hadn’t broken as I had thought , but the twist grip end had slipped from its little holder. However I had known it was frayed for some time so made the decision to change it anyway. As with most “little” jobs it took about 4 time as long as I would have thought mainly due to wear on the little holder into which the ends of the two cables have to sit. I was wary of squeezing it together (which is what it really needed) just in case it broke, now that would have been something of a bigger problem, although I’m sure I’d have cobbled something together. Eventually I got the cables fitted snugly into the right place bolted everything up, adjusted the card ends of the cables to get the card balance correct and off I went with the old girl running better than ever! My only problem then, was that between the border crossing and the repairs I had lost about 4 ½ hours of my day so getting right through Mauritania in a day, which had been my original plan was simply not going to happen. Oh well! I’ll just go with the flow and see where I end up for the night. I knew that once south of the capital, Nouakchott wild camping spots were plentiful and I was confident that I could clear the capital without too much of a problem.

I kept a steady pace all day long on the mainly arrow straight strip of tarmac that runs the length of Mauritania, around 90 to 100kph is plenty on these road as you never know when the surface is going to suddenly deteriorate and break up, or you may come across deep sand blown across from the dunes, or of course the odd, stray camel may wander into your path as you drift along. And besides, what’s the rush?, the faster you travel, the less you see, so a nice steady pace does me very nicely thank you… and of course ir was still way faster than we usually cross it on the C90s !!! In fact the area of Mauritania below Nouakchott has seen an awful lot of development over the past few years, so contrary to expectations finding a good wild camp was not at all easy, then I spotted an Auberg so decided to take the easy (soft?) option. At least allowed me to get another early start for the border to cross to Senegal… that was where I made my first, and hopefully last, big mistake.

Over the years we have always taken the Diama crossing point, putting us in easy reach of the Zebrabar. However, Moulay, the customs guy has got ever more greedy with his demands so against all advice I thought I would try the dreaded and much maligned Rosso! What a mistake to make! It was everything I had been warned of and more. If you add the chaos of the Banjul-Barra ferry to the mayhem of the Moroccan border crossing, mix in  more Del Boy scammers than you can shake a stick at, you might get some inkling of an idea of the scene. Suffice it to say that my mistake cost me plenty, in both time and more importantly, money! One thing is for sure I won’t be using that one again…. In fact my initial reaction was that I would NEVER be coming through Senegal borders again. Oh well, I guess I’ve always been a little prone to over-reaction! But the time wasted here meant that yet again my plans were to be thwarted, as there was now no chance of me making Bansang by nightfall, and I had another border to cross on the way.

The riding through Senegal is always good, with lots to see and mainly good roads, so my mood gradually lightened as the day progressed inspite of suddenly finding that I had no map of Senegal with me and my GPS routing wouldn’t take me where I wanted to go, but I’ve been through the country enough times to know roughly where I was going and so it turned out that I pushed on South East to find the road to Faraffeni and The Gambia. Late in the afternoon I started looking for camping spots, not wanting to stop too early, nor to leave it so late that I would be searching in the dark which is never easy. Once south of Diourbel the countryside opened out to give lots of places to camp and I pulled well off the road to settle down for the night. Sleep came easy in the peace of the Senegalese countryside inspite of the heat radiating through the base of my tent, which turned it into a sauna! As usual I was up as the first light of a new dawn crept towards the horizon. Breakfast was a cup of water with a little rather dry bread and a Laughing Cow cheese triangle, meagre maybe but it got me on the road faster and heading on for The Gambia and of course Bansang. I crossed the last border without incident (or payment) and started the last leg of my ride along the North Bank road. This proved to be a little slower than I would have thought as every police check point wanted to look over the bike and talk about the trip. So I finally arrived in Bansang at about lunchtime to the usual incredible welcome from my “Gambian family”

To summarize the ride down, I must admit that it was not quite what I had reckoned on. Whilst the Airhead performed faultlessly (apart from the clutch cable) It didn’t make the trip any easier than it is on the C90, and being back to traveling alone is as always something that takes  little time to settle into.  Added to that was the self-imposed pressure of wanting to get to Bansang and see just what had, or had not, been done in the Paediatric ward in my absence which definitely detracted from the joy of the ride.  Will I be doing it again on the big bike… probably not if I’m really honest although I wont completely rule out the possibility of doing it in some other way….only time will tell!