One more thing...

Pictures:

1) How many chickens and guinea fowl (which are bigger than chickens) can YOU fit onto a standard one-speed bicycle and still ride it? He has 89 in this picture

2) Walking out to the Sikasso falls (see blog of 2 days ago)

First things first: I've added an element on the right --> that should show, in chronological order, the books I've read since arriving in Africa. This is because I've never read so much so quickly, and want to take the opportunity to brag about it. I've also added a small glossary, so I can stop worrying about explaining PC acronyms every time I write them.

So I was riding a bache (big van into which you can cram at least 20 people) back to site from Thanksgiving on Sunday, when we came across the bache that had left before us (they leave about every 2 hours). It had gotten into a head-on collision with a big cargo truck (think 18-wheeler but made by Mercedes) - usually these vehicles are square, but this one was now a triangle. Luckily my bache was only half-full, because there were a number of people lying around in various states of injury - most baches look at least 25 years old, and there aren't any seatbelts to wear even if you wanted to. The gentleman sitting behind me had a deep circular cut in his forehead and had a chunk of skin hanging off about the size of a baseball. He also had a a deep cut on the back of his head and another under his left eye, which was swelling so that his head looked a bit like one of those Halloween masks you buy in Rite Aid. We loaded up and raced off to my CSCOM. When we arrived I offered to help, thinking I could do crowd control or something since a number of people were coming up to stand around and watch. The doctor said (in French) "Yes you can help, can you do sutures?" to which my shocked response was "... well I mean I've never done them before..." (Peace Corps has forbid me from doing anything like that, but sometimes they forget). Luckily he took the hint, and rather than doing the sewing they gave me a pair of scissors and a clamp with gauze, to cut the sutures once they were tied and to mop up the blood as best I could so that we could see what we were doing. The man with the baseball cut was first - I'd say he had about 14 inches of deep cut in all, distributed between the 4 cuts on his face and head. He was given a shot of what I assume was novocaine around the cuts, and we got to it. It took us a while to get him all sewed up again, he was the worst - we also sewed up another 4 people, not nearly as extensively.

Not gonna lie to y'all, that scared me. Still, I could get into a car accident anywhere - I've just never been quite that close to one before. I suppose if I'm ever going to think about going into medecine (and I've toyed with the idea) I'd better get used to scenes like that. But please, drive safe.