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We arrived in Calgery where we were meeting a couple Janet & Tom whom we had never met before but we had corresponded with via e mail. They have done the same journey to Cape Town as us and have also travelled in the west of Africa in Nigeria and Angola which is by far the most remote and dangerous area to travel through. When I had been doing all the research for our trip through Africa I had by chance come across a blog which had been written by someone who was driving through Ethiopia and unfortunately had had an accident and killed a child. This is every overlanders worst nightmare. Whilst chatting with Janet and Tom over pizza at their house we discovered that it was Janet who had unfortunately had the accident in Ethiopia. She was driving very slowly, which is all you can really do there as there are hundreds and hundreds of people and animals all over the dirt roads, when a child ran right out in front of them and went right under their vehicle. She thought he couldn't have been badly hurt and as she is a nurse she rapidly got out their first aid kit and tended to him whilst the crowd of angry villagers shouted and screamed at her. (Many overlanders actually recommend you don't stop in these circumstances but try to get to a police station as angry villagers can soon turn into muderous mobs) She tried everything she could but unfortunately the child, a ten year old boy, had fallen badly and gashed his head open on a rock. He died in Tom's arms as they tried to get to a first aid post. They had to enlist the help of the Canadian Embassy to calm down the situation and get them out of Ethiopia safetly. This took several days and it cost them a lot of money as in countries such as these it is normal to pay the family for the child and obviously they will try and obtain as much as possible from 'wealthy' westerners.
We thanked Janet & Tom for their hospitality and promised to stay in touch as they are in the process of planning their next trip through South America to Argentina which we have also fancied. We headed off in the direction of Banff in the Canadian Rockies as at long last the weather forecast was good. We just had time to stop at the site of the 1988 winter olympics when Eddie the Eagle was famous in the 90m ski jump. We took a picture of the ski jump which a few minutes before on approaching it I had told Peter was a concrete works. Well it looked like it from a distance!!!!
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