9th March 2005. Cape Coast.

I stop for a fag somewhere in Southern Ghana and within seconds a man-and-wife team materialise from the undergrowth and offer me two - er - things in exchange for a cigarette. They're not coconuts but they might be cocoa-pods.

All things must pass, as George Harrison put it so succinctly, and we part enriched by the encounter. Ten miles down the lane I'm stopped by an aggressive copper who begins to denounce and shame me in an African language, making it clear that transporting a cocoa (or whatever it is) on a motorbike is AN INFRACTION, and that the fine is 100,000 cedis. I protest in English - a bloke gave me them by the side of the road officer *tremble*. He continues to tick me off, now about the fact that I can't speak "vernacular". Well I'm sorry officer but I was off sick the day we did "vernacular". Then he almost-grins and says
1. Only joking about the hundred grand.
2. I speak English, German, French, Spanish, Latin and two or three African languages.
3. Learn an African language!
4. Piss off!!