Fields of gold

Eva Cassidy's song once got me so emotional that I started sobbing at Birmingham New St Station. On one of those dingy underground platforms that are always freezing. Not my most dignified moment.

The African morning (and evening, to be fair) sun is hard to rival, especially when it rises over fields of maize and the sun is glinting aesthetically pleasingly on a bicycle parked under a nearby tree. This has been a pleasant camp for the last couple of nights.

There was a heavy downpour in the night, but I was cocooned and dry in my tent. Charles fared less well: 'the rain was really disturbing me.' At breakfast he overcame his dampness by cutting open boiled plantain and sandwiching it around an inch thick layer of margarine.

We journeyed back to Yambio alongside more fields of corn, attracting stares and waves from people careering towards us on bicycles with no brakes. I am amazed by how orangey-red the roads are, after rain slick like lava, contrasting brightly with the lush green vegetation. I remain in awe of how people can cycle 50km on these roads, carrying huge sacks of cassava, emerging with zero mud splatters. I only have to cycle for five minutes in cambridge in damp weather to look like I've just come from a mud-wrestling competition. And there we have asphalt. I haven't seen asphalt since the capital.