"Hello my sister," goes the familiar greeting, and I am delighted to hear N.'s voice on the other end of the phone. I'd been trying to ring N. for ages but I kept getting his answerphone and no answer to my texts.

"I lost my phone. It fell from my pocket when I was riding with that small motorbike I have," he said. "I went for three days to the Sonatel in Carrefour to get my number back, and those three days it was raining."

I asked him if he remembered the day we went out to his village on the motorbike which his friend lent us. His friend forgot to tell us that the bike had no second gear. We walked and pushed that bike for miles through the bush, but when he came to give the bike back, he told his friend that everything worked perfectly. I asked him why he didn't say that it had a problem.

"This is not nice," he said. "I have to tell him everything is OK or he will be cross."

Everything is going well for N. The business is successful and the rain has come. How about the motorbike which he uses to go from village to village in the forest buying up goods for his shop?

"I have a new system now," he said. "When I go on that bike and it breaks down, I push it to the next village and I leave it there. Then I take a horse cart home. The next time the bus comes through that village, I ask someone to put the bike on it then I meet it in the town."