ACTION MAN LEO GETS FRENCH CORRECTION

LEO dropped from the skies in a great white chopper, with rotor blades churning up clouds of dust that sent everyone scurrying.

When the whirl and whirr were stilled, he emerged white-shirted, looking seriously pale under an African sun.

He was visiting the Irish Defence Forces at Koulikoro training camp, northeast of the Malian capital Bamako, where the African country’s troops are being schooled for their struggle against Islamic extremists.

Mr Varadkar was momentarily slowed by a situation report from Sgt John Pearse, from Finglas, who warned him about snakes, and especially tree snakes. The Taoiseach looked untroubled.

Soon he was throwing himself into the fray as he posed with a platoon of Malian army soldiers, each armed with a Kalashnikov, and whose interpreter insisted they really did know about Ireland, since it is the home of Guinness, both countries’ most popular tipple.

After larking about with the AK47s, Mr Varadkar gave them an impromptu speech in French. The interpreter interpreted. In French. ‘Didn’t I just say that?’ asked a perplexed Leo. The interpreter answered cheekily: ‘You did, but my French is better than yours.’

Actually the locals speak a form of hybrid French known as Bamara, but when Leo later spoke in French again – this time without the intervention of an interpreter – he was understood and applauded by a classroom of officers.

They were being schooled in the humanitarian rules of conflict, including No. 5 chalked on the blackboard: ‘Ne pas tuer un adversaire qui est blessé ou hors de combat’ (do not kill an enemy who is wounded or otherwise incapacitated).

Leo presented a peacekeeping medal to the class teacher, Catherine Smyth, her first decoration, and the trainee officers applauded again. It was all going swimmingly.

Earlier, the Taoiseach had seen Malian troops train in urban house clearance, using a street of houses that had been abandoned, some said, because a local witch doctor had caused them all to be haunted by malevolent spirits.

Then he had gone on to another sector to see a training ground where the Irish were instructing the local soldiery to recognise various forms of improvised explosive devices, or IEDs.

Chief of Staff Vice Admiral Mark Mellett helpfully explained to the Taoiseach that there had been a recent attack at Bur, 60km to the east of Timbuktu, where troops were targeted by a barrel lorry which detonated and blew down a compound gate. A second lorry, filled with barrels of explosive diesel and sugar — designed to stick burning fuel to the skin – drove in speedily thereafter, but the cargo failed to explode.

Leo looked chastened. He had wanted to go to Timbuktu on this trip but the nearest he got was to fly by, 650km due west.

After a conference call back home on Government business, Dr Varadkar was presumed exhausted and was soon on his return chopper journey to Bamako, capital of Mali, another long day successfully completed.

Today the Taoiseach will spend all day travelling the 5,400km east to Ethiopia, where his African tour continues.