[A/N: This is different, I promise. This NaNo round, I'm actually finishing this, I swear! I'm confident this time!]

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'It's fucking hot,' growled House, staring at Cuddy's back as she tried to flag down passing cars.

'Well if you'd hobble on over here and help, maybe we'd be able to get to Kumasi and into air conditioning,' snapped back Cuddy.

As the eighth car passed and ignored them, Cuddy gave up and walked back to House, sitting down next to him on the stairs. He handed her his jacket and watched her place it over her head, covering her exposed neck from the sun. Nothing around them moved. A couple of minutes had passed before there was a constant metal-on-metal squeaking and they both looked over as a man went by on a bicycle, a dead goat strapped to the bike rack with its neck bouncing limply as he hit a pothole. The awkward grossness of the moment compelled Cuddy to converse with her stair-mate.

'How the hell are we going to get our luggage?' she muttered with a grimace, staring out at the road, her eyes vaguely following the man on the bike.

'We aren't,' he said flatly as he reached down to massage at his leg a bit.

'What an optimist you are,' she replied, pulling the jacket farther forward on her head.

'Not one of my strong suits,' he said as he looked down the road upon hearing the tell-tale sounds of a questionable Ghanaian automobile.

She smiled a bit, looking over for a moment as House looked at his watch and then got up with a hiss, walking over to the road sans cane as the van drew closer.

'House,' she replied, standing up and grabbing his cane. 'House, I was kidding. I was just ma--'

The van passed them and for a moment, it appeared they'd missed another mode of transportation, but not fifteen feet down the road, the van came to a halt and the side door rolled open. House and Cuddy looked at each other, House wearing a very self-righteous look. He took his cane and began walking toward the van as a bleach-blonde white woman jumped out onto the dust.

'Surely yevu shouldn't be in a random area like this a mere four hours from nightfall,' said the woman in an amazingly thick British accent as she walked toward them. 'Where are you headed?'

'Yevu?' muttered Cuddy to House.

'Whitey,' he replied. 'In the east at least.'

'The Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital in Kumasi,' replied Cuddy as the woman stepped right up to them.

'Oh dear,' she said, placing a hand over her mouth and stepping one large step back. 'You haven't something contagious, have you?'

'We have a meeting with the head of diagnostics regarding a patient,' Cuddy said quickly, waving her hands in front of her emphatically. 'We're doctors.'

'In that case, we'd be more than happy to have you join us,' she said, already starting back toward the van. 'Gemma West.'

'Lisa Cuddy,' Cuddy replied, then reached out to press her hand against House's forearm as she followed Gemma to the van. 'This is Greg House.'

When they got to the door, a large, bodyguard-looking Ghanaian man slipped off the second row jump seat and stepped to the side. Both he and Gemma watched them get into the van, House and Cuddy commandeering the bulk of the second row. Gemma allowed them to get situated before getting in herself. She settled in the third-row jump seat then pulled out the second-row jump seat for the black man to sit upon. He sat down and slide the door closed as the other girls in the van with the exception of the two completely conked out denizens of the back row waved their hellos. Rather than paying attention to girlish niceties, House was more focused on the large black man who seemed so out of place in the gaggle of white women who sat in the passenger area.

'We call him Posse,' whispered one of the girls by his ear. 'We're not entirely sure why he's here; he's with the tour guide.'

House offered her a pitiful half nod before leaning back and rubbing at his leg more. Cuddy looked over with concern but didn't say anything.

'They need to go to the hospital in Kumasi, the... uh...,' Gemma began before looking at Cuddy. 'What was the name again?'

'The Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital,' Cuddy said, leaning toward the older woman on the first row that Gemma seemed to be speaking to.

The woman -- Phyllis, according to the girl by House's right ear -- said something to the driver and they merged back into traffic, traveling for a few minutes before conversation started up.

'We're going up to Mole tomorrow,' said the girl behind them who had both warned House about Posse and offered the name of the woman in front of Cuddy. 'To see the elephants.'

'We've already been on the road for nine hours,' said another, so far the only one without a British accent, exhaustedly, leaning against the window. She gave a long yawn before continuing. 'We left at four this morning.'

'Tonight we'll stay in Kumasi,' continued the girl who told them about Mole. 'We've been living in the Volta Region for a few months now, so there's a distinct lack of air conditioning and hot showers in our lives right now, and the hotel in Kumasi where we're staying has both. Alice, by the way. Pleasure to meet you.' She gestured to the half-asleep American. 'She's Judith.'

'How did you happen to get here in the middle of nowhere?' asked another girl who turned around from the front window seat.

'Our van--'

'Tro-tro,' corrected the same girl; Alice quickly murmured that her name was Lydia.

'Tro-tro,' continued House, more than peeved. '--felt the need to leave us at a customs checkpoint.'

'Not too fond of whiteys, the Akan,' replied Alice darkly but quietly, looking up at the men in the front seat. 'I much prefer the Ewe.'

They continued in silence, Cuddy leaning slightly against House to look out the window -- he found, even in the short time he'd been in the van, that he hated Posse, wishing only that the man would move so that he'd be able to stretch out his damn legs. He wondered for a moment if he should capitalise on the look Cuddy had given him earlier and demand her lap be used for an ottoman, but when she gave a long look at Posse then turned to him and twisted her face into a look of utter annoyance and hatred, he decided against it. It was nice to just have a common enemy for an extended period of time. Happy that he at least didn't have a woman sitting on his lap anymore, he popped a Vicodin and leaned against the window with his hand over his right thigh. After a couple of minutes, Cuddy pushed his hand aside and rubbed at his thigh with the knuckles of her right hand. Alice leaned over the seat to watch them but thankfully didn't continue her habit of inserting random statements into places they didn't belong.

It turned out that they'd been left a little less than an hour from Kumasi, and before long, they started entering the outskirts. The first thing that House saw of the city amused the hell out of him: despite a near complete lack of privately-owned vehicles, there were a couple of stores specialising specifically in rims. Apparently they were in the auto area of the city, as the stores around the rims were devoted to motors. Half-finished buildings spotted the landscape, their concrete walls ending in long metal rods sticking up six feet where the walls should have continued. Many more buildings sat basically completed, but the lack of doors obviously made them unliveable.

'Cow,' Judith murmured lazily, and surely enough, there in the dead centre of a roundabout was a grazing Brahmin cow.

'Bizarro world,' muttered House in return as he reached down blindly and lifted Cuddy's hand off of his leg, holding onto it for a moment before she drew it away to place it backhandedly over her mouth to stifle a yawn.

Finally, after the roundabout, which was marked 'Santasi Circle', they began on the first marked road they'd seen since leaving Accra: Bekwai. On the rails of apartments, clothes laid drying, the dirt and pollution of the city more than likely sullying the hard job the women suffered through for at least ten minutes per item of clothing. It was with relief that Cuddy noted the lanes of the road were now properly marked, the insanely sprawling width of the highway forgone within city limits. At Bekwai Circle, they passed the oh-so-easily-named street Pine then went only about a kilometre more before hitting the aptly-named Hospital Circle. Once they stopped, Gemma told Posse to open the door and he did, jumping out and allowing House and Cuddy out before handing them both of their bags. When he got back in and closed the door, Gemma forced open the window near her and leaned out.

'When you finish your meeting, ask the administrator to call a taxi for you,' she said, holding out a piece of paper. 'Tell him to go to this location; it shouldn't cost much more than twenty thousand cedi, and since it's only ten kilometres away, it shouldn't take too long. We'll go ahead and reserve a room for you so all you have to do is check in.'

'Thank you so much,' said Cuddy, taking and treasuring the piece of paper. 'You've been such a great help.'

'We yevu have to stick together,' Alice said with a laugh as she leaned over Gemma. 'We'll see you at the hotel, yeah?'

As they drove off, Cuddy waved as House shifted his bag to the other shoulder. Turning around, he looked at the building in front of which they'd been dropped off. Although clean and well-manicured, it was painted an awkward Easter yellow and had the related 1960s modern je ne sais quoi going on. The main part of the building was six storeys tall, but shorter buildings connected to it had four or less. According to what he could see of the campus, however, it didn't seem like the shady colonial era building in front of them was going to be used for much longer -- the place was a veritable hubbub of rather modern-looking construction. When Cuddy finally turned, they walked through the dry grass to an overhang covering the entrance. As they passed under a canopy of bright red fabric, House looked back at the bottom of the overhang to study the water stains that covered it.

'Insane that they have all these stairs,' Cuddy said as they made their way past a gate and into the building.

Inside, women in light blue dresses with crisp white aprons and starched white hats walked by clutching notebooks and laughing. Surgeons dressed in scrubs and doctors in street clothes milled about, a surprising number of Caucasians mixed into the group. Cuddy looked at one woman, a middle-aged white clinician walking by looking down at a chart, and crossed across the lobby quickly to reach her.

'Excuse me,' Cuddy said, and the woman looked up at her. 'This is the first time I've been here and have no idea who to ask about how to get to the office of the doctor I'm supposed to be meeting.'

'Who are you looking for?' the woman asked in a thick German accent.

'Dr Kwame Agbo.'

'Ah, diagnostics,' the doctor said, then looked forward and pointed down a hallway. 'Keep going that way and you will find a nurses' station. One of the unit managers should be able to call Dr Agbo for you.'

The woman didn't wait for a response, instead walking a few feet to another group of clinicians -- they all began chatting in German as House and Cuddy walked by.

'Is it just me or does this place seem frighteningly modern?' House asked as they entered the hallway.

'Considering what I was expecting due to our experiences so far...' Cuddy said to him, trailing off before continuing. 'And did you see that construction they're starting? This place is going to be nicer than Princeton-Plainsboro, Jesus Christ.'

'And yet I still wouldn't want to be anywhere even vaguely near here.'

Cuddy didn't reply and her body language wasn't offering any answers to him. They walked on for about a hundred feet before reaching the nurses' station. Three women were sitting behind the counter, all wearing the same blue outfits and prim hats that they'd seen in the lobby. The woman closest to them looked up from her paperwork and gave them a smile.

'Can I help you?'

'We're looking for the diagnostics department,' Cuddy replied. 'We have a meeting with Dr Agbo.'

'Let me call him,' the woman said, reaching over to grab a phone, pushing a few buttons then waiting for a moment as it rang. 'Sorry, could I get your names?'

'Drs Lisa Cuddy and Greg House.'

She nodded. 'Yes, Dr Agbo? This is Nurse Aglago. Drs Cuddy and House have arrived for their meeting with you. Shall I have them wait for you? Thank you, sir.'

Nurse Aglago hung up the phone and stood, gesturing to an empty bench near the windows across from the nurses' station.

'If you'll just wait right there, he'll be down to meet you shortly.'