“Sometimes Signaling isn’t Enough” (8/20/2010)

As a Peace Corps volunteer in Burkina, I ride my bike… a lot. We go through a few sessions of bike maintenance and bike safety. The most important things are always wear your helmet, and always signal when turning. Since I haven’t been on a bike since I was about 12 when I had a purple sparkly bike, I made sure to always follow the rules and pay attention when I’m biking. After about 2 months here, biking around on dirt roads, I was getting pretty confident on my bike and becoming a pretty good biker. Or so I thought…

A few days ago, after a long day of teaching and classes, I left the school and headed towards a nearby restaurant to celebrate the birthday of a fellow trainee. (Let me preface this by saying that as a part of our training, we have to give a 15 minute presentation in French about a cultural aspect here. I chose to give my presentation on traditional medicine vs. modern medicine in Burkina. After interviewing a few people, I found out that people who practice tradition medicine mainly treat using different parts of plants. Being a biology major, I was really excited about learning about the different types of plants here and what their uses are.) So back to me biking down the road, I was riding near a part of town where there are a lot of trees and plants, and so I was looking at the plants and thinking about what their possible uses are, and trying to remember what they looked like so I could look them up in my traditional medicine book when I got home. I was approaching the turn to the restaurant and signaled like a good biker… or at least I thought I did. So I’m turning left when a moto swerves around me and WHAM! I’m hit! My bike flew to the right, and I flew to the left. I hopped up really quick, made sure my glasses weren’t broken, and then checked out the rest of me. I had some nice scratches on my knees and my hand, but nothing was bleeding too badly. I decided I was ok, and after convincing the other trainees who witnessed my mini accident that I was ok, we continued to the restaurant for the birthday.

I’m there for about an hour or so, and realize that my elbow really hurts and is starting to swell. I decide its time to head home. I ice it and wrap it for the night hoping it would be better in the morning. Well, I woke up in the middle of night with it really hurting and couldn’t fall back asleep. The next morning, my elbow still swollen and in pain, I realized I should call the doctor. Luckily, he happened to be at our training site that day. He takes one look and it and says I need an x-ray immediately. Crap. All I can think about is the other trainee who was recently medically evacuated to South Africa for a similar incident involving his elbow and a bike. I don’t want to be evacuated. I want to swear in with the other trainees.

I head off to Ouagadougou, the capital, with our doctor to get my x-ray. I walk into the Peace Corps med unit when I hear, “Holy crap, Sara!” Who do I know here? I look over, and it’s Phil and Dylan (my fellow volunteers from Guinea)! They were coincidentally in the med unit at the same time as I was! This was a nice little surprise and comfort to see people I know. After quickly saying hi, I was off to the radiologist for my x-ray. I went by myself, which I was a little nervous about. But, I successfully got an x-ray and received the results from the doctor… all in French! This whole thing took about 45 minutes, and I found out that my elbow is fine. I have to wrap it and wear a sling for a few days (so embarrassing!), but after that, I’ll be good as new! Yay!

When I get back to the med unit, I meet back up with Phil and Dylan, who I think felt bad for me, and took me out for some pizza! So, all in all, I got a nice little vacation away from training, some pizza, and got to see my old friends… getting hit by a moto wasn’t so bad after all.

I learned a few lessons from this whole experience. One, there is a reason I haven’t done one physical activity or sport in my 24 years of life… because the one time I do, I get hit my a moto. Two, I now know how to wrap my left arm with only one hand. And three, sometimes signaling just isn’t enough.