Motorbike training March 5th - 9th

A Fillipino girl, Jorgi and I waved a fond farewell to our vso friends as they departed on their way back to Kombo and left the two of us.. the brave (or crazy!) up country volunteers to begin our motorbike training. We moved location to a town callled Bansang, another dry and dusty town. During our training we stayed at the ICT house, a vso house which can be used for all vsos in their up country visits. It has a generator which we learnt how to use for a few hours each evening. The house is away from the main town and has 5 homes surrrounding it. A night watch man greeted us as soon as we put the generator on,, he was about 70 years old, spoke mimimal english and wanted his phone charged.. another man soon appeared at the sound of the generator also wanting his phone charged.. when we turned the generaror off, they reappeared to collect their phones. This occurred each evening, and soon became quite the norm.
Jorgi and I arrived at the motorbike workshop eagerly awaiting to begin our training.. well i was eager.. Jorgi was terrified. Thank goodness I went through training before I arrived here, because they threw us in the deep end. I have a brand new bike, a Yamaha 100, bright red. Off i went on the bike following the instructor, straight onto dirt roads and to our first training location. This was a small rectangular sand pit, about 35m by 15m. Jorgi had only experienced riding a scooter and has never used a clutch or gears before and they expected her to start her first ride in sand... madness.. ahh we are in africa!! As you can imagine she crashed immediately. I did ok in the sand, only through having a bit of confidence and not being scared as I just slide all over the place, I only fell off once, which was pretty good.
We then went to a location, about the size of a soccer field. Jorgi hopped on the back of the instructors bike.. she is not yet able to start it. The field has sand in the centre and a pelethora of stones, rocks, cement, old cans etc around the outside. To reach the field we needed to go over 30cm dirt bridge.as their was a 1m deep ditch surroundig it.. best not to look at the ground whilst going over... just look straight ahead!!! AT the field I just zoomed around happily dodging stones etc... Jorgi basically crashed each time she stopped... not good.
On day 2 I was required to stand up and dodge a collection of cement markers, ride around standing up with one arm outstretched.. i think this exercise was used to show balance and throttle control. I then needed to go to a dirt hill and go up and down this in both sitting and standing positions then stop half way up and do a hill start. I did this about 35 times duriing the day wearing my black motorbike jacket in the heat, over 40 degrees. Lucky i still have a reasonable amount of fitness because it was hard work. I fell off once going up the hill, I gave the bike too much power on hill start.. no drama though. In the meantime, Jorgi is till falling off her bike each time she stops. Her day ended with a badly sprained ankle and bruises all over her legs, the instructor isnt accustomed to drivers with no experience and was impatient with her.. basically his instructon were move... grip... this in turn stressed her out more.
Day 3
The instructor left us to ourselves on the field for an hour. Here I gave gave Jorgi some training about how to stop and how to use the clutch and throttle smoothly during take off. She only fell off once today and is now stopping safely which is a relief.
We then left Jorgi to continue going around the field and the instructor and I went out into the bush for a two hour ride. I was fine but mentally tired after concentrating for so long. The terrain was mixed... stones, sandy, pot holes etc. He made me go through a deep sandy section.. I skidded all over the place. This was unavoidable, but managed not to fall off. Also rode through small mud brick and thatched roof villages. In each village I saw women pounding away on rice to remove the shell, children manoeuvrering donkey on dirt tracks, children collecting water using the village water pump and groups of men sitting under a meeting area called a bantabaa, which is a large shady tree. Rural areas are harsh and families need to make the most of limited resources.