THEM

Ifell off an e-bike in May while doing something stupid and broke my elbow. Actually, I pulverised it, while the heavy bike — clever thing — let my body break its fall. Healing has been slow — it’s an age thing, although the gentle and excellent surgeon says it isn’t really about that so much as the dozens of bits of bone he had to put together again.

The last time I broke bones this badly was on a school trip to Botswana when I was 16. There were 12 of us, travelling on a Datsun Caball flatbed truck with bench seats in the back and a canvas awning stretched over a frame to keep us out of the sun.

Near the end of the trip, we had a dull and dusty drive from Moremi Game Reserve to Chobe. Bored to the point of stupidity, I thought I would ride on top of the truck. There being nobody with any spark of intelligence to stop me — such as a teacher, perhaps — I climbed up, lay on the awning and promptly fell off.

It was quite a long fall to the road. We were doing about 60km/h and the surface was dirt, for which I am grateful. I am also happy that the teacher following us in the

Hilux with all the gear was so far behind that he didn’t run me over.

I woke up with my mates standing around, staring at me. My right forearm was the size of a watermelon. My right leg was on fire (torn ligaments). My left hand ... ah f*** that hurts.

The teachers stuffed me full of painkillers, loaded me on the truck and drove on. The clinic in Kasane, when we found it, couldn’t help. A French doctor with vomit on his coat gave me an X-ray and said: “We cannot feex zis ’ere.” He put a temporary cast on the right arm.

Being pragmatic sorts, the teachers gave me R400, drove me to the airstrip, bummed me a lift on a