Hi! Hello from Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso. We arrived here on the overnight bus from Kumasi - a 21 hour journey. What a journey! We left at 4pm and it took us 3 hours to get out of Kumasi and 45 minutes was getting round a roundabout. It soon got dark. It's amazing how bright the moon is when there is little light coming from electricity. It's taken almost half an hour to type this paragraph. All the letters and symbols are in different places on the keyboard...There were hundreds of people along the roadside selling fruit and vegetables - stacked beautifully on the trays on their heads. The roads were a lot bumpier than I had expected and we had gospel music playing all night. At Bologtagna in Northern Ghana, the bus stopped and all our luggage was taken off the bus for no apparent reason and we had to wait 2 hours for another bus to come for us to continue our journey. We reached the Ghana/Burkina Faso border at about 8am. Crossing the border took about 2 hours, including having our passports checked, visas stamped, and suitcases emptied at customs...Then we were in Burkina Faso. On we journeyed past rural landscape dotted with mud huts. We arrived in Ouagadougou in the afternoon. Mum will tell you about our arrival here! Margaret chatting ... Well, we were not prepared for what we saw when we arrived - words fail us. Ceri says this is the worst place she has ever been and wanted to stay on the bus heading back to Accra, Ghana! If I tell you that it has taken me 15 frustrating minutes just to write this much you will have to believe it because this keyboard is not a querty keyboard and not only that but the keys are so hard to press that I now have sore fingers. Thank the Lord I am not preparing Powerpoint on this machine. My mobile is not working either due to no signal here. Having shared a room with a rat in Cambodia a few years ago, we now share our room with several lizards. But hey it must be better than lying on the beach somewhere else - but maybe you will not agree. Lots more to tell but fingers now given up, short of actually jumping on the keys to get any pressure. Back to Ceri ... Well, what is it like here? It is unlike any other African city I have visited. The poverty gets worse the further north you travel - from the coast of Ghana to here. Here it is so hot. We do not go out from midday to 4pm. When it rains (it's the rainy season here), the dirt roads flood and there are big potholes filled with muddy water everywhere. People are sat at the roadside amidst the rubbish and open sewers selling their fruit and vegetables, all day long in the heat. Some with young children / babies. Older children (aged 5+ perhaps)selling fruit too. Haven't seen any children going to school yet. We are now covered in mosquiti bites. Let's see what tomorrow brings. We will visit Mercy, my sponsored child here. Margaret here ... Just something to make you smile - at dinner last night we asked what the meat was on our plate and the lady said it was 'baaaa meat' which we could only hope we interpreted correctly as lamb. I thought it was funny anyway. Well I would wouldn't I. Ceri adds ... French is the language spoken here, and our attempts at making ourselves understood are at least keeping the locals amused! Okay, that's all for today. As usual, lots of love from us to you all back in the UK.