African open ditches
On my first night on my (in practice pointless and fun) volunteering project in Ghana I went for a drink with the other volunteers. This being Ghana, at ten o'clock in the evening the lights went out. After dropping off the girls at their host family, we made our way back home.

It was pitch black, I was in a foreign village in West Africa with a few other guys and we could hear the frogs in the swamp. And they were loud. Making our way tough the bushes we finally got to the dirt road and walked by corrugated iron-roofed shacks that all represented a road-side business. Some of them were open, but seeing as candles only get lit if a customer arrives, people would greet you out of the darkness and scare the shit out of you.

Now, it may be worth mentioning that I had arrived that evening when it was already dark (it gets dark fairly quickly that close to the equator), so I had absolutely no idea where I was.

Especially when I landed arse over tit in an open ditch. Filled to the brim with smelly diarrhea. And it wasn't made of concrete. It was gravel. and mud. And I cut my leg. And got some in my ear. It was probably the most disgusting thing I have ever, ever experienced.

Which is why fairly quickly everyone within a 3 mile radius had heard the raucus laughter, investigated and joined in. Yes, even someone with a torch.

I remained surprisingly calm throughout the experience, disinfected all the wounds with something that felt like pure acid and prayed to god I didn't get some sort of horrible debilitating tropical disease.

Somehow, it seemed that the whole thing was forgotten by most of the community there, apart from those who really knew we. But I know that secretly, whenever I walked by, one of the Ghanaians would whisper to the other: "Hey, look, there goes shithead!"
( morrybyte made a subtle namechange at, Wed 27 Jan 2010, 20:44, Reply)