I’d travelled to Ouagadougou from Mali enroute to West Africa’s Gold Coast when Ouagadougou and I have an unexpected interlude.

There is a train in these parts known as the Ouagadougou choo-choo and I’ve missed it. I conveniently absolve myself of any complicity and lay blame on a slowly perishing bush taxi and its stupendous lack of reliability. I make acquaintance with Ouagadougou’s most basic hotel, then seek missed-connection solace in a patisserie on Nelson Mandela Avenue.

Beer often soothes the frustrations of delay but after weeks in West Africa I have grown somewhat shy of it. Formaldehyde, reportedly, comes in every bottle, and with my liver already fit for embalming I surround myself with pastries instead. For the first time in 24 hours I’m insulated from road dust. The air-conditioning is a wonderful aside. I have no inclination to move and watch night fall.

“Bonne soir,” greets a customer cheerfully then, before leaving the shop, he sidles beside me and whispers “You careful”. Somewhat instinctively, I pull my bag a little closer. Later, as tired increasingly dulls my mind, I consider catching a taxi to the hotel but as it is only a 10-minute walk it seems unnecessary.

The Burkinabe capital’s tree-lined streets are dark without lighting, and while mischief lurks, there are notions of safety. There are plenty of people about and I take comfort as one of the wandering herd. Then, less than a minute from the hotel, the path the pedestrians choose mixes with the traffic.

The tin-pot screams of motorbikes dominate the night. But I hear one bike travelling faster than the others. As soon as I register the thought my shoulder wrenches violently. I grab at my bag and am pulled behind the speeding bike. For a moment I am flying. Until another, on-coming motorbike, smashes into my leg.

The impact separates me from the bag snatcher and, though I am sprawled in the middle of the road, I do not dare to believe what has just happened. The pain seems most severe along my grazed left arm and, elsewhere, there seems a healthy lack of blood. I try to stand. My left leg wobbles in the manner of unset jelly. I crumple back onto the road and scream pathetically.

My leather bag, somehow, is still with me. Somewhat composed, I scrape up its spilled contents and search for a sympathetic face from the encircling crowd. There seems no understanding in any of the eyes I meet - not for the first time in West Africa do I curse my pathetic lack of French.

“Ambulance,” offers a voice unexpectedly. I lie back onto the road. It is still warm from the day and almost as comforting as the stranger’s word.

A young man crouches over me, offers bottled water and I ask him his name.
“Jules César,” he says. It’s oddly appropriate. The emperor. For all his genius, I have always equated Caesar’s name with disaster.

During the wait for the ambulance my mind races toward fear and is only occasionally reeled in by calm. After a wail of siren parts the crowd, Jules makes way for two men in cover-alls. One puts an inflatable cast on my leg. I am heaved onto a stretcher, put into what seems nothing more than the rear of an old white van. The walls are bare metal. Jules César sits against one of them.

At a local hospital three orderlies sit in a room that must be Casualty. A girl is crying. Blood drips from her finger into a bucket and it might be her blood smeared on the wall near where I lie. A doctor in green surgical garb enters the room shortly after me.

“You can fix my leg?” I ask hearing the hope in my voice.

“Yes,” he says but without conviction and disappears.

As the time I wait for attention lengthens, my sense of desperation increases. One of the orderlies, who has until now ignored me, spits some quick-fire French. Jules looks at me apologetically and then leaves the room.

“That boy no good, he is thief. How much money you have in bag?” asks the same orderly in his, until now, carefully concealed English. I am using my bag as a pillow, yet feel for it reassuringly. I sense a thief, but he is still in the room.

I call out the name of my dread-locked friend and Jules comes back into the room.
“Me American. Peace Corps. You telephone,” I say to him. I had drunk beer with the ever-present Peace Corps in Mali and was guessing they would be in Burkina as well. “I understand,” says Jules surely exhausting his limited English.

Portia is a 40-year-old Peace Corps’ nurse and storms into Casualty with an urgency for which I will be forever grateful.

“What happened? Where are you from? Do you have insurance?” Portia puts her hand on my forehead and its softness is much more comforting than the road.

“Yes,” I say to the last of her questions. But I am not sure. I had filled out and posted an insurance form and cheque at the airport before departure. I had none of the appropriate documentation. Portia seems unaware of my hesitation and produces an over-sized needle from her shoulder bag.

“Morphine,” she says. “I will take you out of here.”

Portia and Jules place me in the rear of her truck and we drive along roads strewn with pot-holes that grab and twist at my leg. When we stop, Doctor Cosnefroy, a tanned and athletic looking Frenchman, emerges from the night to great us. He checks over me, in the same unhurried manner a farmer might study a prized cow, as I lie in the truck.

“Do you have insurance?” he asks.

“Yes, yes,” I say hoping he mistakes uncertainty for pain.

I am the only patient in the infirmary he has set up in a part of the German embassy. There are crisp white sheets and walls without blood seem to assure that all will be well.

“Your leg requires surgery. I cannot operate here but I will organise the evacuation with your insurance,” says the doctor. The unknown status of my insurance ‘cover’ is almost as troubling as my throbbing and fast-swelling leg. I give the doctor family details and manage a restless, drug induced sleep.

“The first contact has been good.” These beautiful words wake me. Doctor Cosnefroy is standing over me. “The first contact with insurance is good,” he repeats as I slowly wake. I am insured.

It is to take three days for a nurse to come from Paris. Jules visits daily, bringing fresh fruit and once a flower. Two ever-vigilant nurses, Bridgette and Monica, take turns sleeping in the bed next to mine. There are phone calls from home. Despite the state of my shattered leg I feel incredibly fortunate.

Gilbert Cornu, a nurse from Mondial Assistance, arrives from Paris with a stretcher folded to resemble a suitcase. With his thick beard and my drug induced blur he does not look like a nurse, but he assures me he is here to take me out of Africa.

Airborne and enroute to surgery the stretcher - I am fixed atop a row of seats at the rear of the plane - becomes the bed I have often dreamed of on long flights. I stay awake long enough to watch Gilbert choose the red wine with his meal. He catches me staring longingly at his beaujolais, laughs, then shakes his head like my father did when I was a boy, and hides the bottle at his side. My only other memory of flight is being lowered onto the Paris tarmac in the chill of dawn.

I awake in a hospital in Courbevoie. My leg is pinned. There will be complications says the surgeon but he assures me I am lucky. Had I stayed in Ouagadougou I might well have lost it he says.

I spend nearly two weeks in Paris, see the Eiffel tower from the rear of the ambulance on the way back to Charles de Gaulle and a first class seat to a hospital in Australia. All the expenses are met by the insurer: evacuation from Africa, surgery in Paris, the flight home and even some loss of earnings. Despite the state of my leg I am indeed fortunate: the name Jules César is now much more than a portent to disaster.