Zebilla is such a lovely little town! It's one strip of main road, with the hills of Burkina Faso in the distance on one side, and a huge expanse of farmland and rural communities on the other. It has a fantastic small town vibe, full of noise, colour and cacophony on market days, and a quieter hum-drum of rural African life on the others. The people are fantastically friendly, as we were confidently told they would be, and every journey takes twice the length of time because so many people stop to speak to me everywhere I go. I am muddling through with the little scraps of Kusaal that I can remember from the training, but that gets some great laughs from the people I meet and they seem to be very impressed and pleased that I have at least made the effort. The smiles people give here are real gifts; they curl peoples' faces into expressions that are so truly happy that you can honestly see that the smile really means what it says. It's lovely.

The many children roaming around here all shout 'Nasara' 'Nasara' every time they see me- they do it in such a sweet sing-song way that I just can't help but wave or shout a 'how are you?!', which makes them roll about giggling and laughing their heads off. I am slowly getting used to being laughed at here. People do seem to laugh at me quite a lot.

I've got to know one bunch of little kids quite well, as every morning they climb up into the mango tree just outside my bedroom window. It's far too early for Mango's to be ripe enough to eat yet, but they have plenty of fun climbing up there, plucking them out, and dropping them down to each other, singing and shouting and having a lot of fun.

I am slowly getting used to living at the edge of the small town, up near the 'barrier' which is the customs barrier where a bunch of blue uniformed security, police and immigration officials spend their days checking through the hundreds of tro tro's, busses, ten-tonne trucks, articulated lorries, wagons, tankers and the odd coach that pass through on their journey into the country from Burkina Faso, Mali, Togo and even Niger. They carry all kinds of things in absolute shed-loads! So far I've seen hundreds of onions, bags and bags of rice, a mix of live and dead goats, cows, guineafowl, chickens and everything inbetween. Everything is stacked up, kind of like on tiers, and it's topped off with people sleeping on hammocks right at the top! It's a real hub-bub of a place.

The downside of this is the noise of the honking horns, a major habit of Ghanaian drivers who honk for just about everything. I am sure they have some kind of honking language that only they understand! Instead of counting sheep in my attempts to sleep at night, instead I have been playing 'identify the honking noise'. There is the 'I'm here look at me', the 'may I please pass your big truck on my small motorbike?', the 'move out of the way stupid goat / pig / cow / guineafowl, or I'll have you for dinner!', the 'woo there's my friend, hey how are you?', and the regular big loud 'GET OUT OF MY GOD DAMN WAY!'. The loudest and mostruthless one is the 'HURRY UP AND GET BACK ON THE BUS.... NOOOOOWWWW!!!!!' which is the most common as the custom stop also provides an opportune toilet stop for many of the passengers. I'm slowly getting used to all this, and somehow, instead of keeping me awake, the sounds now feature in my dreams instead (!).

The upside, however, is what Tom calls 'first aid'. He's referring to the scrumptious freshly cooked chicken, guinea-fowl, yam and plantain, that about 15 little shack stalls cook and sell literally all day and night for the passing tro-tro and truckloads of people. Literally as soon as any bus / vehicle pulls up, all the women are there with their freshly cooked food suddenly whipped up and balanced firmly in huge bowls on their heads, and they're surrounding the bus, hassling, haggling, persuading, and selling their wares with serious ferocity and, it seems, effectiveness. It's great to watch, if a little intense (I've learned where to stand now so as not to get trampled!), but it does mean that we can have something very close to chicken and chips pretty much anytime we like! When I first got here, anytime was pretty much most of the time; it's pure and simple much-needed, nothing-in-the-cupboards-yet, tired-and-hungry First Aid food. Yum J

Zebilla is a real mix of colourful and crazy, peaceful and serene, and I think I'm going to like it here.

xx