The AA do not service your area...

We enjoy visitors, whether they have come to see us or others we are working with. Last weekend, seven of us, including the visiting parents of Katie Weller (from England, pron: "Wellaaaaa") went to the Ape Action Africa primate sanctuary at Mefou, around 45 minutes from Yaoundé. Seeing and hearing of their conservation work, as well as having the alpha-male gorilla beating his chest at us was interesting.

The non-alpha male took it lying down.



The gorillas were not as big as we expected and the chimps were as curious and child-like as the PG Tips advert. It was, on the whole, an edifying experience. Most of the residents were orphaned when their parents were taken for bushmeat so are now swinging round in fairly spacious surroundings (6 hectares for the gorillas!). We could see with our own eyes that monkeys are difficult to keep penned in (one walked right past us, quite tame).

On returning to the minibus, we saw this:


Clarke and Russ (visiting father of Katie Wellaaaaaa) changed it. Common sense would have suggested getting it fixed. A lack-of-common-sense said "No, it's afternoon already, let's drive up the road, down a few miles of muddy track to a nice place by the river for a picnic". By the time common sense was acknowledged, we had no way of turning (the road was about the same width as the van), we went onward to the picnic spot (where we knew we could turn). Around this point, a suspicious "thump, thump, thump" was heard from the rear...

This site greeted us:


So, what would you do if you were in the jungle with another (well beyond help) flat tyre and realised you were out of spares?

We looked at a lovely, peaceful, river while we had our picnic.


Well, we suspected the next few hours might need all the energy we could muster! Clarke and Russ (while 5 women looked on) switched round the tyres to make sure there were two good ones at the back, and off we went. 10 minutes later, the men were pushing. 10 more minutes later, everyone (except the driver) was pushing. Soon after that, sticks were being broken and laid under tyres to give some sort of grip - the spinning tyres had caused us to look like we'd spent too long standing behind some cattle... This process was repeated for around an hour, though once we were on level ground we were able to sit inside the van (with the horrible thump-thump indicating flat tyre no. 2 was now beyond repair tyre.

We came to a village and were greeted with what roughly translates as: "Do you know your tyre is flat"; "Let us help"; "Where's the spare"; "Oh, your spare isn't going to be much help"; and "Let us take these tyres to the guy on the other side of the main road". Hurrah for the kindness of strangers!



Half an hour later, having shown appreciation to our helpers (who having waxed eloquently about how lovely SIL are), we went on.

The moral of the story: when you get a flat tyre, fix it. In some places, the AA are simply not going to turn up!