By GREG CLARK
In the preface to Travels with Myself and Another, Martha Gellhorn writes, "The only aspect of our travels guaranteed to hold an audience is disaster."
The train connecting Ouagadougou and Abidjan in Africa is known as the Ouagadougou choo-choo and I had travelled to Burkina Faso to ride it. But I never did. Instead I spent a month in hospitals on three continents. Ouagadougou is not a good place for a personal disaster.
I arrived there late afternoon after 24 hours of bush taxi and bus. Refreshed by a cold shower and clean clothes, I ignored a beckoning bed and walked to a patisserie on Nelson Mandela Ave. Among coffee and cake I sat insulated from roadside dust and traffic noise and watched night fall.
Forewarned of the dangers of Ouagadougou's darkened streets, I considered catching a taxi to the hotel. But it was only a 10-minute walk and seemed unnecessary. The tin-pot scream of mobylettes (mopeds) filled the night.
But, less than a minute from the hotel, at a point where the path became lost in traffic, I can recall a louder, closer scream. It was two men on a motorbike. One snatched at my bag. My shoulder wrenched and I was pulled behind the speeding bike. For a moment it was as though I was flying. Until another motorbike smashed into my leg.
Sprawled in the middle of the road, I did not dare believe what had happened. Initially the pain was worst along my grazed left arm. I tried to stand and watched my left leg wobble before I felt the pain. I crumpled on to the road and screamed in pain and fear.
My bag was still on my shoulder. I scraped up its spilled contents and searched for sympathetic eyes from an encircling crowd.
"Help me please," I said to a staring man.
"Ambulance," he said unexpectedly. I lay back on the road. It was still warm from the day and strangely comforting.
A young man crouched over me, offered bottled water and I asked him his name.
"Jules Cesar," he replied and for some reason it seemed appropriate.
A wailing siren parted the crowd. An inflatable cast was put on my leg, I was placed on a stretcher and slid into an old Bedford-type van. Inside were bare metal walls. Jules Cesar sat against one of them.
Three orderlies sat in a room I took for casualty. A girl was crying. Blood dripped from her finger into a bucket. It might have been her blood smeared on the wall where I lay. A doctor in green surgical garb entered the room.
"You can fix my leg?" I asked hopefully. "Yes," he said without conviction and left the room.
One of the orderlies spat some quick-fire French, Jules looked at me apologetically, and left the room. "That boy no good, he is thief. How much money you have in bag?" asked one of them in, until now, carefully concealed English. I was using my bag as a pillow, yet felt for it reassuringly. I sensed a thief all right, but he was still in the room.
I called out the name of my dreadlocked friend and Jules came back into the room.
"Me American Peace Corps. You telephone," I said.
It was a white lie _ I felt desperate _ but I had drunk beer with the ever-present peace corps in Mali and guessed they would probably be in Burkina as well. Someone there could help me, I thought. I hoped Jules would recognise the stunted words, despite overtones of panic, and call them.
I was lucky.
Portia, a 40-year-old peace corps nurse arrived, storming into the room with an urgency for which I will be forever grateful.
"What happened? Where are you from? Do you have insurance?" Portia put her hand on my forehead and its softness was much more comforting than the road.
"Yes," I said to the last of her questions. But I was not sure. I had filled out and posted an insurance form at the airport just before I boarded my plane in Melbourne. I had no documentation to prove anything.
Portia produced an oversized needle from her shoulder bag. "Morphine," she said. "I will take you out of here."
I was placed in the rear of Portia's truck and driven a short distance along potholed roads to a small private hospital in the German embassy.
Doctor Cosnefroy is a tanned and athletic-looking Frenchman.
"Do you have insurance?" he asked.
"Yes, yes," I said hoping he mistook uncertainty for pain.
I was the only patient in his six-bed infirmary. Crisp white sheets were an assurance that all might be well.
"Your leg requires surgery. I cannot operate here but I will organise the evacuation with your insurance," said the doctor and I dared believe that all might be well. But the unknown status of insurance cover was almost as troubling as the injury. I gave the doctor family details and had a restless sleep.
"The first contact has been good." These beautiful words woke me. Doctor Cosnefroy was standing over me.
"The first contact with insurance is good," he repeated as I awoke. I was insured.
It would take three days for a nurse to come from Paris. Jules visited daily, bringing fresh fruit and once a flower. The Canadian embassy rang to organise a French visa. Two nurses, Brigette and Monica, took turns sleeping in the bed next to mine. And there were phone calls from home. Despite the state of my leg I felt incredibly fortunate.
Gilbert Cornu is a nurse from travel insurance firm Mondial Assistance. With his thick beard and through a blur of drugs he did not look like a nurse. He arrived from Paris with a stretcher folded to resemble a suitcase. It was time to leave Africa.
After many an inadequate "merci beaucoup" I left the infirmary and was driven by ambulance on to the airport's tarmac and parked beside an Air France jet. Gilbert negotiated the formalities of departure and I boarded the plane above the shoulders of four men and was placed atop a row of seats.
Airborne and en route to surgery, the stretcher became the bed I had often dreamed of on long flights. I stayed awake long enough to watch Gilbert choose the red wine with his meal. He saw me stare longingly at his beaujolais, laughed, then shook his head like my father did when I was a boy, and hid the bottle at his side. My only other memory of the flight is being lowered to the Paris tarmac in the chill of dawn.
I awoke later in a hospital in Courbevoie. My leg had been pinned and there were complications, but I was lucky said the surgeon. Had I stayed in Africa I might have lost it.
I spent two weeks in Paris. I saw the Eiffel Tower from the rear of the ambulance on the way back to the airport and a first class seat to a hospital in Australia.
* * *
Greg Clark says all his expenses were met by the insurer including evacuation from Africa, two weeks' treatment in Paris, flight home to Melbourne via London and some loss of earnings.
His $400 travel insurance policy, says Clark, saved him about $250,000 in medical and flight bills.
Check policies carefully
The relatively simple act of filling out an insurance form at the travel agent (or airport) is not always a guarantee of cover.
"Travellers should make themselves very much aware of the conditions which apply, in particular to pre-existing conditions and lost luggage. Study the contract, or ask for an explanation of both these sections," says Paul O'Connor, an insurance specialist.
In the travel insurance business, denial of liability for pre-existing conditions is a common problem.
Another area of dispute is denial of liability for personal effects left unattended in a public place _ in some cases being one metre away from your possessions might be classified as leaving them unattended. Ultimately, it is up to the individual to choose a policy which best covers their needs.
The travel insurance business is a profitable one. Exclusions can be vast and complex. I have chosen to travel without insurance previously, believing I only had to be careful. But in Ouagadougou everything happened so quickly it was out of my control.
Saved by insurance
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