Sunday Spotlight – Ouagadougou

Sunday Spotlight today returns to West Africa to the land-locked country that despite my trials there I still have a soft heart for – Burkina Faso. The capital city is the ‘fun-to-pronounce’ Ouagadougou, and whilst it is not a city with a million sights to see, it has a certain character that makes it a …

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Sunday Spotlight – Accra (Ghana)

I promised myself I would lay off West Africa a little bit after all the stuff on Burkina Faso and the malaria, but well when I was thinking ahead for this week’s Sunday Spotlight, all I could think of was Accra, the capital of Ghana. Now, I have to start by saying I can’t say …

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Trip of a Life Time – Part 7 – Egypt (continued)

If you search back a month or so you’ll see my report on the train journey southwards to Aswan from Cairo – a seat in an overnight train packed full of families and the like. To wake in the morning (after very little sleep of course – two hours if lucky) and see we were …

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A Date With Malaria Part Three

Before I begin the final part of my experience with malaria in a West African nation on my own and thousands of miles away from my friends and family – oops, sorry too much there, I think it’s really important to remember that malaria is still a killer, despite the work that has gone into …

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Trip of a Life Time Part Six – Egypt – Alexandria and Cairo

Moving on from one legendary country (in my mind pre-trip) to another, Egypt is one that can easily catch a traveller’s imagination, right? The pyramids, right? Deserts, oasis, camels, Cairo, I half didn’t think it was possible to go there until I started planning this trip, and come mid-April 1999 I was on my way …

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The Kindness of Strangers

On Saturday I wrote a blog about my time in India in 1999. I talked about my experiences in Jalandhar where I was taken in by a family thanks to meeting someone on a bus and spending a few days staying with them, completely impromptu. It turned out to be probably the most rewarding experience …

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Gateway Countries – Cameroon (West Africa)

  Welcome to another ‘Gateway Countries’ blog, this time I am heading to West Africa. Please note – WEST Africa. I haven’t been much to the rest of Africa, bar Ethiopia, and I’m sure as an introduction to the whole continent, there are easier countries to start with such as South Africa for example. West …

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