Archived Email Updates

Hi Friends & Family,

Loving it here in Yaounde, Cameroon. The capital is quite nice weather-wise, and not too many bugs. The only downer is my luggage went AWOL. Hopefully it will turn up someday.

There are millions of internet cafes here, although I will have no access to email or phone in Lomie, where I am posted, so will only be able to respond to email or update the webpage monthly or so.

Am here in the Capital until Saturday, and will have to have to buy some clothes in case my luggage doesn't appear. I hope it does, my guitar is missing!!!! The VSO Cameroon crew have been great, and I will meet the director of GECEC (the credit union I am working for) tomorrow. For good news, my french is coming back in leaps and bounds, so I don't feel like a dummy anymore. I think I had a whole conversation in proper french this afternoon...shocking!

Anyway, hope all are keeping well. BTW, if you have any pictures of yourself, feel free to send them by email if they are not too big, or post, as I only have a few pictures of my friends!

As always, I will update the website with pictures and wise words, so check it out!

August 15, 2002

Hi there!

Thought I would stay in touch. You can of course, as always, keep an eye on my website for news and pictures....it is a little behind this email, but I will get caught up this week now that I am in the capital for a week and have electricity and all.

Oh, for those of you wondering...my luggage finally showed up...yay!

Anyway, I made the exhausting journey from Yaounde to Lomie crammed into a Suzuki Samurai with 3 others and our gear. There is a 2 hours section that is paved, but once you cross into the east province, it is a 6 hour endurance test of brutal dirt roads. Think mountain logging roads that haven't been used in 5 years and you are close. You wouldn't dare do this in your regular car. Not only would the suspension be completely trashed, but you would probably get stuck without 4 x 4.

Anyway, the trip was beatiful, if a little bit long. The road passes through gorgeous rain forest most of the way. You also drive past a continuing stream of tiny villages along the way, usually a cluster of houses built with a wood frame of closely placed boards holding up a roof, and then they fill in the gaps with mud. Any decent sized village will have a barrier where there will often be a couple of soldiers who may or may not want to see your papers. People from the villages will often take this opportunity of your stopping to try to sell you everything from boiled eggs, vegetables and the occasional bush animal, usually something that looks like a muskrat.

Had an interesting first night in Lomie (They put me up at a brothel!) but settled in with George, another VSO volunteer, the following day. He has since moved into a veritable mansion on the hill, and I am staying at his place. The house they had arranged for me is actually nicer than the one I am going to live in, but it is way hell and gone and quite isolated, so there could be security problems. My house is right on the main square, so no shortage of people and noise! It has 2 bedrooms and a huge living room/dining room. Also a kitchen and a bathroom with a toilet! (not common here) though sadly no toilet seat or of course running water. All manual flushing here....8)

Lomie is very busy with logging trucks blasting through quite regularily, and the truckers keep the town's bars and brothels busy. The bars have been quite sedate as there has been no electricity (ok, except for one day) in 3 weeks. This has made my work difficult (computers like electricity) although everything else is settling into place. Sadly, it looks like I will not have a fridge here in Lomie unless I can find one cheap to fit my budget.

Anyone with vacation time should seriously consider visiting between now and the end of January. It is gorgeous here, and to add to the fun there is a gorilla habituation project a mere 60km away! So with luck I will see gorillas, and you can too! I will let you all know how it is, as Tom (another volunteer just down the road in Mindourou) and I are checking it out next weekend.

Another fun surprise is that my project will involve me developing a banking system from scratch. Whoa! Lots of work. However, as long as the power turns on sometime, I should be able to make a go of it. I hope so, as GECEC, my employer, is really making a difference here in Lomie, providing much needed savings and credit services to the poorest area of Cameroon. It would be nice to contribute to the effort. The team I am working with is enthusiastic, and are eager to learn to use technology to improve their operation. Oh, for you credit union members out there, they belong to the same federation our CU's in canada and the us do!

The people in Lomie are friendly enough, although shopping is very trying since the only white people they usually deal with either work at the sawmill or with some other large company and are loaded. So it is of course assumed that I too am rich, and they try to fleece me at every opportunity. It can be grating at times. If you play your cards right however, many things here are very cheap. In fact you can find cast-off clothes from charity shops in europe here for dead cheap. I think george bought a pair of used levi's for about $1.50.

Anyway, having a good time and slowly adjusting to the food here. Everyone here seems to eat either fish or bush meat with every meal. I am eating a lot of rice and beans. The anteater here isn't bad. The texture of pork with the taste between chicken and beef.

Well, I will wrap up. I am in Yaounde, the capital until wed. the 21st, so you can email me until then. Anyone who has any clever ideas for my banking project can feel free to send them along!

Cheers

Great news!(and one bit of bad news, but more on that later) Upon my return from Yaounde the electricity was once again flowing, and has remained reasonably consistent since then. It hasn't gone out for more than an hour or 2 at a stretch at any rate, so I can get some work done on the laptop. Other good news, my employer is going to buy me a small refrigerator and I am getting a kitten to take care of the mouse infestation in my house. I am currently ignoring 4000 years of history and fighting a war on 3 fronts....the mice, who are currently pushing my valiant forces back, the ants who have overrun my fortifications and the goats, my lone success...so far. I built a little fence to block off the neighbourhood goat roost...namely my veranda. It has held so far, but I have my doubts if they get insistent. Ah well, the petty little things you occupy your time with, right?

My trip back from Yaounde was excruciating. About 5 minutes out of Yaounde, a rock broke the side window of the van, and the 19 people crammed into a 7-passenger Toyota van had to endure alternating rain and dust the rest of the way to Abong Mbang, a 3 hour trip. After waiting in Abong Mbang for the bus to fill up for a few hours, I finally made it home at 8pm, 13 hours after getting to the bus station in Yaounde. From now on I am hitching a ride with someone from a dutch NGO, SNV, as it is a smooth 5 hours in blissful comfort in a Toyota 4 x 4 pickup. I have taken the bus now, been there, done that, have the dusty, dirty t-shirt.

While in Yaounde we went and played tennis at a country club owned by the father of Yannick Noah, former tennis great. It costs around $5can to get in for the day, and you can lounge around the pool, go swimming, play tennis or what have you all day long. Very nice although the atmosphere is a little colonial for me. I was playing with two other volunteers, Rowena and Josee from the Limbe Botanical gardens, and Kristen, who works with DFAID, the british aid agency.

The project is starting to take shape, although it is an imposing task. Now not only am I building a banking software system from scratch, but I have been told that there are a pile of other credit unions here in Cameroon waiting for me to finish so that they can implement it themselves! Nice to know that me forgetting a bracket somewhere could bring the Cameroonian economy to its knees. sigh.

In other news, the owner of the local football team, Lomie FC, has been trying to get me to play for his team. I guess having the white guy on your team is good publicity, no matter how awful he is! It is looking more and more like I may be able to come back saying that I was a professional footballer! Go figure. Boy can these guys run. I am tired and sweating just thinking about them zooming about.

Am ever so slowly getting more used to the food. Anteater is still the only bush meat I will touch, and boy I could kill for a Wendy's Bacon Mushroom Cheeseburger. I wonder how much it would cost to overnight one to Cameroon? Mostly I eat bread with cream cheese (the ever present Vache qui Rit), rice and beans or pasta with tomato sauce. My next trip to Yaounde I will bring back more bulk food so I can have a little more variety. There is a french supermarket, Score, where some things can be bought for less than a king's ransom.

Tom, a volunteer up the road in Mindourou, and I went to the gorilla habituation project last weekend. We did not see any gorillas, but we did enjoy a good tromp through the rain forest. Tom struggled a bit in the swamp, as his hiking shoes kept coming off, but other than that it was good fun. Lots of walking and a nice 45-minute ride in a dugout canoe on the Dja each way. We are going to go again at the end of October after the rainy season. We are also going to hire the guides 3 days in advance so they know where the gorillas are. Since the funding dried up after Sept. 11th, they haven't been living in the forest, so they don't follow the gorillas every day. Amazing with all the talk about saving the planet in the west that they can't get their hands on $300 a month to keep the project breathing. I am going to build them a website to try and help with the marketing aspect, but really they just need a nice infusion of about $5k a year for a year or 2 to kickstart everything. Sounds like another excuse for a fundraising tournament when I get back! Look out for me and my clipboard!

Speaking of Tom, he had a wierd run-in with the police. I am not sure if it was a national gendarme or a local 'vigile' but this man hassled Tom about his papers and told him he had to come with him to the police station. He went down a remote road on the motorbike, stopped, and demanded money for the beer he had been forced to abandon to hassle Tom. After a long argument Tom decided paying was wisest and coughed up. When he complained to his friend, they went to the police station and made a statement about the incident. Surprisingly, the police officer had to apologize, give back the money and was promptly arrested and tossed in prison, where he remains still! Tom came out unscathed but was no doubt nervous, what with the policeman having a fully automatic rifle slung over his shoulder.

Now for the bad news. I had my first ever wreck on a motorbike last Friday. Nothing too horrific, my boss and I were touring around after completing some business at the american mine down the road (I was the chauffeur, as he owns 4 motorbikes which are used as moto-taxis but doesn't ride himself...?) Anyway, I was having a blast zooming around on these horrific roads on a little yamaha 125 enduro when after a few hours of great sport I got a little lazy in my enjoyment of the day, found myself in the wrong spot on the road, slid in a bit of mud into a 8-inch deep crevice in the middle of the road (did I mention the roads here are wicked? 8) ) and dumped us on the ground. Luckily my boss, Charly, went right over me and suffered nothing more than a sore foot. I bore the brunt of the wipeout and tore my knee up pretty good. Scraped up the elbow a little, but nothing bad there. Was thankful I was wearing a helmet, there was a big dirt smear and scrape down the side! We were about to ride back (the bike was mostly fine other than a peice of broken plastic) when it started pouring, so we left the bike at Charly's dad's place a few clicks up the road and hitched a lift in a car. Thank god, for with the rain the road was even worse. We even did most of a 360 down a hill in the car, a 4WD Toyota. The knee has almost healed up now, the swelling is almost gone and once the huge scab (covering most of my knee) comes off I can get back to my professional football career 8) Hopefully in time to catch the last game or 2 of the season, which is over this month. What did I learn from all this? Don't get careless!

Other than that, as I write this a good part of the Dja river has diverted itself through my living room. A little annoying trying to get to the bathroom, but the fishing is good from my couch. They haven't been biting over by the dining room table though. The rainstorm currently raging outside is quite a sight. I am not sure if it is harder than the old prairie rainstorms I remember, or of it is just the tin roof amplifying everything, either way it is coming down hard. The mice must be getting flooded, they have been running frantically back and forth across the living room. I swear I am going to buy something for them in Yaounde. I can't wait to get the kitten when Jacky gets back in town herself.

All in all I am having a great time. Work is a hard slog and language is still a barrier when I am trying to train the staff, as I never learned many of the technical words in french. They laugh when I pull out my little dictionary...8) My saving grace is sitting about on the nights without electricity strumming away on the guitar. Candlelight is strangely inspirational for writing songs....maybe some of them are even decent! I need to learn some french songs though, all I have so far is a couple of bad joking blues songs I made up off the cuff about the electricity being out...my favourite being 'Le courrant est coupe comme les cordes de mon coeur'. For those not french inclined, 'The electricity is cut like my heartstrings'. No doubt a classic in the making!

Please drop me a line and tell me what is going on with you. I have lots of time to read emails and letters from home. It will help me stay a little bit in touch as well. Send pictures of yourselves and parties and such! However, given the bad net connections, try to keep attachments under 100k.

Farewell until next time.....

NOTE! - I will be in Yaounde for a week or 2, and have borrowed my boss's cellphone. SO if you want to phone me, I am pretty sure you dial 00 237 963 66 92.

It is the credit union's phone, so I tend to answer in french, however, if after introducing yourself the person still doesn't speak english, my boss has the phone! He won't be around until at least monday and I doubt he is coming at all this month as he sent all the financial transactions with the bank in Yaounde with me. I will make a few calls myself, but it is far cheaper for me to receive than make calls. 0.25 a minute vs. 1.25 a minute.

Ok, since I don't want to seem negative, I will end this email with a list of really cool things I have seen/done...8)

First of all, the electricity has been off more than on lately, quite depressing. They quite literally don't maintain they generators, so they go down frequently. It has made my work schedule a bit odd, as I tend to work whenever there is current, which might be at 2 or 3 in the morning. Especially once I am back in a week or 2 after collecting the technical books I ordered I will have to put the nose to the grindstone. Time is starting to run short!!

I noticed yesterday that the more things are different, the more they stay the same. A french woman in a BMW 325i nearly flattened me coming out of the market as she was turning, chatting on her cell phone and trying to calm her kid all at the same time. If I am going to die in some foreign country, they could at least have the decency to make it interesting. Getting shot in a coup d'etat, flattened by stampeding wildebeasts or mice, kidnapped and held for ransom by marxist rebels.....something noteworthy! If I am going to die because of a cell phone it might as well be in Vancouver!!

The house and I are getting along well, although the kitten that was supposed to move in went missing...8( Apparently I killed one mouse by overfeeding it, as it turned up dead on my kitchen floor. However, his friends have begun to pick up the 'leaving-turds-on-my-counter' slack. I hope to find another cat soon as the mice are getting more brazen. I was in a life-and-death struggle with one over a piece of chocolate the other day. If I hadn't had the machete, he might have won.

The goat war is going well! They broke my fence, but me yelling at them and chasing them away like the neighbourhood loon has convinced them there are other perches. I am sure when I get back they will be happily re-installed on my veranda.

The ants have been less noticeable since I used a pile of the ant poison. It is uncertain who will die first from this toxic stuff....the ants or me. I am hoping for the ants.

One very noticeable thing about Lomie is that people drop like flies. The grandmother of my boss's wife passed away this week and I was hauled off to the house to look at her corpse against my will. I hate funerals and have little interest in dead bodies, especially those of people I never met. I think this must have put me in a foul mood as I ended up leaving Charly and Jeanne, George's girfriend in a local bar and tromping home the 4 km in the dark. Nothing like a nice walk on a starry night to lift you out of grouch-land!

At any rate, one thing I will say about funerals here is they make a good party out of it...music, food, drink...if I kick over you guys make sure my funeral is a good party...I hate sombre funerals. It is depressing enough with losing someone without everyone being afraid to have a good time.

I held another dinner last week with about 6 or 7 guests. Imagine that, me cooking for 7! I made a fab pasta sauce with a bunch of fresh tomatoes, onions, garlic, ginger and these nasty hot peppers you can buy here. As they say here, 'Ca pique un peut'. Also managed to rustle up a nice salad of lettuce, onion, tomatoes and cucumber thanks to a gardener I bumped into. All in all a lovely evening. I will upload some pictures of the spread to me website by this weekend.

GECEC is due to move into our new building in a couple of weeks, so I will have some good pictures of the GECEC team. Exciting times as we are hiring 3 or 4 new staff this month and opening a new branch in January. It will be easier to work in the new building I think as I will have a little more space to myself. People tend to be tromping through my office continually in our current building.

One new project I have foolishly embarked upon is a sporting event in Lomie in January. The 'Lomie Olympics' will be a 2-day event for kids (likely 14 or 15 and under, we haven't nailed down an age yet) with a variety of activities including a soccer tournament, track and field events, a dinner and a concert. I have one of the local church choirs and another musical group lined up so far. I am going to try and hit up the logging company in Minourour, PALLESCO, for a few $$ to bus some kids from Tom's village to Lomie for the weekend.

You guys might be able to help me in a couple of ways. First, I am going to hunt around for some shirts for the kids, something simple like a white with red printing with the event name, date and of course a canadian flag! If anyone has any connections with cheap shirt guys, let me know...8)

Second, I was hoping to have one event that was decidedly canadian. The only non-winter sport I could really think of was lacrosse, though that would be fun and simple enough to make the sticks given the bamboo/rattan here. Would be a fun project for the kids involved as well. Anyone have any other ideas? I thought about asking the canadian embassy to build a hockey arena but you know...time is short! 8) Not to mention Cameroonians get cold when it goes below 25. Just when I start getting comfortably my friends begin to whine that it is cold. I actually saw a guy in a toque when it was 25 the other day!!

Anyways, any ideas are most welcome and I thought if there was a cheap and easy to prepare canadian food idea that would also be helpful. Which leads me to my next grand plan...

I am having a Thanksgiving dinner! I know, Chris in the kitchen, recipe for disaster and all that. But I am really getting quite domestic here. It is going to ruin my bachelor image. If anyone has any good Thanksgiving recipes that don't require really complicated ingredients, send them my way in the next week or so, as I will be doing a shopping trip to the french supermarket, Score, to forage for supplies.

Ok, I will end off here for brevity's sake, and send off another email in a few days.....

Cool things I have seen/done the last few weeks.

-driving through waist-deep water on the main road to Lomie!

-watching the local kids zoom down the hill on their 2-wheel carts, an amazing balancing act.

-singing 'By the Glow of the Kerosene Light' by the glow of a kerosene lamp

-realizing that rice and beans is my favourite food in the world

-reading War & Peace in 5 days while the power was out.

-watching a green mamba slither across my veranda not a day after telling Tom I hadn't seen any live snakes.

-enjoying the surprise of both my guests and myself that I can actually cook

-beginning to learn koonzime, the local language

Thanks to everyone who wrote letters/emails, it is like Christmas every time I check my email or get letters. Write, write, write! Send pictures if you have them as well, Cameroonians love seeing pictures of friends and places back home.

Hmmm. I confirmed what I had long suspected about the police in the capital here the other day. I was sitting enjoying a beer when I overheard one cop say he had run out of beer money, at which point the two of them wandered up to the main road and starting pulling over taxis and collecting bribes. Handy way to supplement your income I suppose. Bandits!

On the crime prevention theme, I think someone tried to rob me Friday. He was rather unconvincing. Was walking back home from the net cafe at around 10:30pm when some guy grabbed my bag, which was slung over my shoulder. I didn't let go, he sort of stared at me for a second and then buggered off. In my spirit of training I felt I should almost grab him and explain to him how to properly rob someone. If that is as bad as it gets, I should have no problems....8) Back in Lomie no one will mess with me since my neighbours spread the word that I wail on trees with machetes for fun. I guess the sight of me practicing sword shots with a machete would be worth a laugh. People here leave crazy folk alone, so maybe it is a good reputation to have!

This was not the most confidence-inspiring thing to happen the day before I ended up wandering back to my part of town from visiting Leanne, another canadian volunteer, and Axel and Christian, two german students here for a few months working on their masters. I left their place around 11:30pm to find the formerly bustling street deader than a doornail. So I started walking, and after a few twists and turns and a pleasant fellow informing me I was in fact heading the opposite way I wanted to, I managed to catch a cab home. The guy didn't even try to get more $$ out of me because it was late and I was white. The usual 150cfa, Around 0.35 canadian.

Also managed to find a video arcade where the games are about 0.10 to play. Right on. I can finally afford to play video games again! 8) It ridiculous back home now....most decent games are $1. I remember in my youth being really good at Street Fighter. Apparantly the skill has faded with the years as I really, really suck now. The little kids get quite a kick out of whitey that keeps pumping in 25cfa coins into the machines. They have some good classics some of you will remember. Street Fighter, Street Fighter II, Road Warrior, and the one with the uzi-like gun you shoot at the screen. A couple of pool tables as well.

I wandered into a new internet cafe today as my usual was closed for no apparent reason. Africa is very much like that. It may have hours posted on the door, but they are merely a suggestion on when you might come by and hope they are open. Stopped by a restaurant nearby that had some neat live african music, hoping the internet cafe would eventually open. Foolishly I did not have my camera, but I recorded some of the music using the microphone on the laptop, so it is crappy quality, but you should be able to hear a bit of it on my website. At any rate, I paid well for the privilege of listening. I ordered a Mutzig, my usual beer here in Cameroon, asked how much and was slightly surprised when it was 750cfa, around $1.85can. Usually the 600ml beers are only 500cfa. So you can imagine my joy when he proceeded to bring me a SMALL, 300ml beer for 750cfa. Highway robbery. Either I have a 'White Guy - take my money' sign, or this is one pricey restaurant. I will assume the latter judging by the uniforms and such.

I nearly got run down by a huge wedding convoy today. Fun stuff!! Once again I was regretting leaving the camera at the house. I will have to take it with me from now on. A huge, honking convoy of people hanging out of, hanging onto, and falling off of taxis. Also a big truck with a band in the back!! If anyone is ever foolish enough to marry me I am having a truck with a band in the back...how cool!

But back to beer. I am considering myself quite hard done by that you cannot get Guinness draft here. You can get it in the bottle, but I have never been particularily partial to the bottled Guinness. It is a tragedy that for the first time in my life, even with my almost nonexistant income, I can afford to drink as much as I want, and they deny me my favourite beer. Sigh. I am sure you are all sympathetic that I am stuck drinking Mutzig, a pretty good alsacian lager for $1 a 600ml bottle. Cheaper if you buy by the case. Life is hard sometimes, but we volunteers have to take the bad with the good...8)

Boy life is hard here. I am sitting writing this in a restaurant we found, eating pepper steak and fries with a couple of guinness (ok, so I dabble) for $6. Not too shabby. I also have a cat to play with at my feet. Does anyone know why they trim the whiskers of cats around here? Almost all the cats I have seen have trimmed whickers. Hmm. Anyway, once you figure out where to go, the food options are pretty good in Yaounde. Even so, I am longing to get back to Lomie and away from the mosquitos here. One thing about Lomie, seeing a mosquito is an event! SO not many mosquito bites at home, but boy is there something that eats me while I am in bed. Will have to use the deadly bug spray and hope it kills whatever is biting me before it kills me. I love the instructions. 'For bedbugs: Spray on matress and pillow.' Below that: 'Do not allow to come into contact with skin or eyes.'

nice.

One last anecdote before I let you get back to work, video games, sleep, whatever.....

Axel and Christian had quite the interesting time arriving in Yaounde. They were told someone would meet them at the airport. Negative. Ok, no panic. Get cab for ridiculously high fare into town to find one of the hotels in their 'Lonely Planet'. No problems! Next day. Problems. Noone really uses street addresses here, so the fact that they had an address for the place they were supposed to work was not very useful. Noone knew where the street was. They managed to find a phone number after a while and had that awkward phone conversation we have all had. 'Hi, you don't know me, but I work with you and I don't know where the office is.' After almost 24 hours in Cameroon without knowing anyone they were finally united with their employers. I am glad my only problem was my luggage going AWOL. I am not sure how I would have dealt with being abandoned at the airport.

Well, I hope you folks aren't getting tired of reading these. I enjoy writing them as when I read it I can start to believe I am actually doing this and it isn't some strange liquor-induced dream.

Thanks to all who write back to me, I get much enjoyment from reading the letters. It may sound pathetic, but I usually end up rereading emails 3 or 4 times when I am kicking around the house in Lomie, out of touch with the world.

**Note**

I have updated my website at http://cghall74.tripod.com with new photos and articles, so check it out. I have also put all the email updates I have sent out in chronological order so you can see my descent into madness.

Ah yes, where to start. It has been a month since I graced Yaounde with my presence and it has been a time of mixed results.

At the beginning of October George and I were extremely lucky to hitch a ride back to Lomie with a training NGO in the comfort of their Land Cruiser. Wow. Luxurious!! I am getting spoiled with all this travel in comfy vehicles. I will be ill prepared for my post-work travels if this keeps up.

The power has been more or less steady lately (on during the day and off every 2nd night) with the odd cut interrupting work. This has allowed me to work fairly steadily, and although I am getting a little worn out (most days I work 10-12 hours) I am now ahead of schedule, and we start testing on the banking system next week, so hopefully I can relax a little. Tom and I are contemplating a 2 or 3 day trip to Kribi to sit on the beach and examine the deeper meanings of our eyelids, so I have something to look forward to as I am burning the midnight oil (occasionally burning the midnight kerosene when the power is out)

GECEC moved into our new building which has increased our visibility and improved our image in Lomie. People are almost flocking to join (ok, we have 10 new members since we moved) and with our 4 new employees things are hopping. This is the down side however. With all the hubbub I find it very difficult to get a lot of work done unless I throw on my headphones and crank up the music.(More on this topic later)

Domestically things are cruising smoothly. My house is a veritable palace now that I have a toilet seat. I am going out to buy my fridge today so George can finally take his back.(He is just too nice to have taken it 2 months ago) Add that to my new gas stove (go figure that the cheapest model is called 'Misirli', and I have all I could desire. Of course the mice have all they could desire as well though my new roommate might help this situation. Yes! I have a little kitten named Pierrette (gender misunderstanding) who I also call McWingnut in honour of my friend, Tim. Why you might ask? Well little Pierrette did a complete backflip out of nowhere the first night I had her when she got startled by something. Tim used to have the same disturbing habit of doing backflips when you least expected it.

It may be a little while before McWingnut is ready to tackle the mice (she is practicing on crickets so far) but she is a cuddly companion none the less.

Musically I have been working on some classical guitar and writing a few tunes. I also had a fab frenchman named Frederic stop by and play at my house one evening, which was a welcome distraction as in General Lomie is a little barren on the music front. I am going to start going to the choral practices at the church next week just to get some African music in. Ironically the hymns are all the same ones you would do in church back home, just translated into Nzime. They got quite a chuckle when I belted out 'Hark the Herald Angels Sing' in Nzime the other day.

Tom pops down once a month to Lomie to get a little of the big city as Mindourou can be a little bit stifling for him. He has much better travelling stories than anything I have run into. So far he has travelled 4 hours in a TOyota Corolla with 17 people in it, travelled in the back of a truck with barrels marked 'Biohazard Waste', travelled on a bus with prisoners in the row behind him and was on a bus that the wheel flew off.....twice. That last episode involved a 120km journey of 13 hours. My most exciting story is being in a station wagon with a chainsaw thief in the back with 3 others. Mind you, I was bleeding profusely at the time, but I don't think I can compare with TOm's adventures.

George and I have been going on some hikes of late (there are a few pics on the website) and we are slowly exploring the area around Lomie. We may try a few day trek into the Dja reserve now that the rains have eased off. There are plenty of people who swear that they know the forest like the back of their hand....but I don't know, I can't say I could tell you any specific details about the back of my hand...I just kind of know it is there.

I have had a fairly healthy month other than my knee which is damaged far worse than I had hoped. There aren't any MRI machines in Cameroon (that I can find) so there isn't much I can do until I get back home to Canada. It isn't much of a bother walking or hiking, but I only last about 45 minutes playing soccer before it swells up like a grapefruit. Mind you, I bought some ibuprofen horse pills (400mg) this week in yaounde so perhaps those will help. The weekly games in Lomie are at 6am Saturday morning...not necessarily my usual peak performance time but you take what you can get.

On the 14th of October I held a big dinner to celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving and the weddings of Jos & Nicola and Feisal & Ginger back in Canada. It was no doubt a sage decision to wait until I was out of the country to get married. The bar bill would certainly be reduced if nothing else. Anyway, it was a grand party and I surprised many, including myself, with how well the food turned out. Basically I stole all the foods I could think of given the scarce ingredients available. We had a lovely braised chicken prepared by Jeanne, and I made up 'Anita's Famous Garlic Mashed Potatoes' as well as the 'Marpole Special Fried Mushrooms and Onions' with a lovely green salad and a less inspiring plate of mixed vegetables. People were suspicious of the food to start but were wolfing it down by the end of dinner. The Garlic mashed potatoes were definitely a crowd pleaser.

(Speaking of which, if someone wants to send me their garlic Aioli recipe, feel free....I know it is simple but I have never made it)

After dinner we played a little music and danced into the evening. The girls did a bunch of traditional dancing and singing so it was a good time had by all! I am sure we did our share of damage regarding the wedding parties. I spent 1/3 of my monthly allowance on the booze for the party! Needless to say I won't be holding one of those anytime soon. My wallet is still recovering. I ate a lot of rice and onions the second half of November...8)

The accounting system project has come a long ways since September, and I can see a light at the end of the tunnel (although some might argue it is a train). The only real glitch recently was a small cultural difference that required me to remove my data validation rules on member information. It turns out most older people have no idea when they were born so they will list 'Around 1942' as their birthdate. Needless to say the computer (which was expecting a tidy 23/03/1942 barfed on this and caused a rather amusing discussion which I know involved me at one point saying, "What do you mean, 'around' 1942? That is like saying my name is something like Chris, but I am not quite sure!!" My confusion was quite amusing for the GECEC staff, and I have no idea what they will do for fun when I am no longer around to laugh at.

Even the other VSO's think I am a complete nutter, since I brought a solar shower with me so I could have hot showers. This was the single best investment I made leading up to this trip and is a lifesaver, as no matter how bad my day was a nice hot shower before bed makes it all go away. I don't think they understand just how deep my hatred of cold showers goes. If god meant for us to bathe in freezing water he would not have made hot springs and water heaters. 8)

Here in Yaounde Tom and I have had a good time. We went to a dance bar on Friday evening and the music was fab (including a pretty decent version of 'No Woman, NO Cry' by a fellow with a voice so high windows were breaking), the dancing was good (I am finally getting the hang of the rhythms and butt wiggling) and the only negative was the annoying prat who kept trying to pick my pocket. He would have been sadly disappointed if he had succeeded. I don't think most Cameroonians understand that most of the volunteers have no money. To them all white people have money to burn and light their cigarettes with 10k CFA bills.

After the dance bar the few remaining hardcore partiers headed off to a nightclub and danced the night away until 5am. It is unfortunate that the taste of western dance music leans quite heavily towards the genre of the Vega Boys "Boom, Boom, Boom" although I remember a friend Terry mentioning this was big in Thailand as well. ON an amusing note they have a techno dance song here in french which suddenly dawned on me as 'The Hokey Pokey'...you know, "You put your right foot in, you take your right foot out" and all that. But in French. With a big butt wiggle at the "And you do the hokey pokey" part. Amusing once but I think it may grow old FAST.

Saturday was largely spent recovering from Friday and a lovely evening dinner at the house of Leanne and Katerina, 2 volunteers working with an environmental group in Yaounde. Sunday we set out on a long hike around the hills of yaounde. We were trudging along a small dirt road a few kilometres from town when we heard and saw the rain slowly creeping up the road behind us as people scattered like roaches when the lights go on. With a stroke of luck there happened to be a bar nearby and we piled into the bar (which had been closed but opened when the mob of 11 rich looking whites showed up) and a few minutes later a few guys started playing a little african music on their huge xylophones. A lovely way to spend an hour or 2 avoiding the rain. Once it let up we got back on the road and hiked around a few more hills. Finally, 6 hours after we set out we returned footweary and ready for a nap. Later that evening we had a drink at an incredibly expensive restaurant (whose only redeeming feature is that it has good traditional music) and a lovely dinner (I had pizza) at the french restaurant, Atlantic. An interesting discussion about the differences in christmas celebrations followed and as far as I can tell, Sinta Klaas (dutch version of Santa...sort of) rides a horse, has a little black assistant, and lives in a oceanside villa in Spain. When you are bad, instead of getting a lump of coal he puts you in his assistant's sack and beats you with a stick. If I was a child in Holland I would want nothing to do with this mean spanish gigolo who beats kids....but perhaps I have misinterpreted.

Monday (Today) has been running around with Tom doing some errands. This afternoon I have to go buy my new fridge and a huge pile of Kliche, dried beef(similar to beef jerky) prepared by the muslims. Apparently it will keep for a few weeks even without refirgeration so it sounds like a good solution to my protein problems in Lomie. I also need to search out some fabric with turtles on it for a certain friend, and the muslim quarter is likely my best bet.

Regarding music, 'Pique Pique' is holding on strong to its grip on the Lomie music scene. I think the tape broke as I didn't hear it for a few days but it was back strong less than a week later and resumed it's 20 times daily rotation. Several of you may be lucky enough to receive copies of this fantastic tune for Christmas. It is so good and I am so happy I get to listen to it so often that I can hardly contain myself and feel the need to bang myself unconcious with a hammer when it comes on. SOMEONE MAKE IT STOP!!!! I can handle my coworkers playing Celine Dion 4 hours a day at work, but Pique Pique has to go.

Also on the music front I had a small tragedy this weekend. My MP3 CD player gave up the ghost, leaving me with no music listening ability. This is grave considering I listen to music all day at work and most evenings to drown out Pique Pique. I lent the player to Tom and his rechargeable batteries seem to have fried it somehow. I will have to find a way to get my hands on something else or I will go completely mad. Travelling the roads of africa without music would be unbearable. On top of this my little speakers I bought in Yaounde fo $15 got blasted to smithereens by the lighting that hit the power lines a few weeks ago. It was almost funny...I was walking around trying to find someone with a key so that I could get into the office and unplug my laptop (the storm arrived over lunch) when a bolt hit the pole 50m up the street, I hit the deck in the middle of the muddy street and once the people figured out I hadn't been hit and wasn't dead they had a good hard laugh at the white guy lying in the mud. I have been struck by lightning before and it isn't an experience I am eager to repeat. Especially not carrying a big metal umbrella and walking around in 2 inches of water.

I will wrap this up now.....I hope all of you are having a good fall (winter already in some places....Cameroonians get an odd look on their face when I tell them it gets 40 below in my home town sometimes, as 20 above is freezing here. Note that this is in celcius for those of you south of 49)

If anyone wants to have an online chitchat the next time I am in town just let me know and we can try to organize something. The easiest time for me would be around late morning/early afternoon Pacific Time as we are 8 or 9 hours ahead.

Hello friends and family....

I have been out in Lomie for almost 6 straight weeks now and things have been everything but boring. You would think that after almost 5 months here in a small town I would have seen just about everything that would surprise me yet this is most definitely NOT the case. However, I will be in fairly consistent email contact until New Year's as GECEC is shut up until then and I plan on spending my first Christmas outside Canada on the beach in Limbe. Boxing day (The 26th for you US heathens) will be spent climbing Mt. Cameroon. I am usually skeptical about what people call 'mountains' in other countries, but several people have assured me it is big. Of course, these people are all british and I was less than impressed with the british concept of 'mountain' 8)

I may or may not have a phone during this time so if for some reason you want to phone me just email me in advance and I will let you know.

Things were quite hairy getting back from Yaounde the first week of November as the rainy season was in full swing here in the southeast of Cameroon. Even getting out of Yaounde proved to be an adventure as the bus guys wanted to charge me a ridiculous amount of money to transport my new fridge back to Lomie and it took an hour of arguing, threatening, demanding my ticket money back and finally calling them bloody thieves to get it down to $15. This is about the same as a passenger ticket. It is an amusing thing here that people will routinely try to skive you for a ridiculous amount of money yet have the gall to get offended when you call a spade a spade and call them thieves. I felt like I had actually hurt this guys feelings....

Anyway, transport being what it is in the bush we got stuck in Abong Mbang the first day and spent the night in a fairly seedy hotel after running back and forth between the 2 bus companies that serve Lomie as they kept promising that a bus would be loading for Lomie 'any minute'. I am not sure when this minute will arrive, but it could at any time in the next decade. So a lovely time was had by all in Abong Mbang (Think of a cross between a run-down truck town and East Palo Alto and you are close). As we soon found out, the reason for all the delays in Abong Mbang was that the road was completely impassable unless you either a) had a really big 4x4 in which case you might make it through, or b) like us, were willing to spend somewhere between 30 minutes and a few hours pushing your bus through the huge mud pit about 30km outside Lomie. The mud pit had swallowed a couple of logging trucks and the Caterpillar sent to dig them out already and was waiting to eat any more trucks that came near it. I counted 32 lined up waiting for someone to come fix the road, and some of the drivers had been there for a week sleeping in their trucks!

All in all the pushing wasn't so bad but I could have done without the stopping every 10 minutes to refill the radiator which had a fairly big leak when we started and then an even bigger one after they tried to 'fix' the loose alternator belt with of all things, a rock. I will admit to having used brute force working on cars before, but even I would hesitate to smash something right next to the radiator with a big rock. On the bright side I had a front seat so it was no big deal for me to hop out the 20 or 30 times we had to refill the radiator that day. The other 22 people weren't so lucky. By the time we dropped Tom off in Mindourou and headed out for the last 60km we had somewhere between 22 and 27 people in a 7 passenger Toyota van. There were at least 3 on the roof with the luggage and there may have been more but I was doing my utmost to click my red shoes together and get home so couldn't give you an exact count.

To cut a long story not all that short, it took Valery (lawyer who works in Lomie) and I 36 hours to travel the 400-odd kilometres from yaounde to Lomie. The stretch from Abong Mbang-Lomie (120km) took around 12 hours. Fun, fun, fun. You can imagine I was in no hurry to duplicate that little voyage anytime soon and that is the biggest reason I stayed out in the weeds so long.

Certainly nothing work-related was getting in my way of travelling as we had no power for the rest of November although I am glad to say that they appear to have installed another generator and so I have power 24h a day (more or less) now that all of GECEC are going on vacation for 3 weeks. Sometimes fate can be a cruel mistress. As far as work goes, my system appears to work and so far seems to be doing most of the things we need it to although I couldn't really say how robust it is since there has been zero testing due to the power problems. I couldn't even go up and work at the SNV office as their brand new generator was struck by lighting (in the same storm that blew my speakers incidentally) and so the only people with electricity were the mayor and the sawmill. Since my sawmill contact is in Lebanon on vacation I was out of luck on that front as well. My wearing patience was frayed to within inches of homicidal mania when the CAMCCUL (Credit union cooperative) controller showed up and happened to mention that this project was all very nice and all but they had just signed a contract with a Cameroonian company to develop a new system to replace their old one which doesn't work at all. If I didn't know that 'will be ready in 6 months' actually means 'might be ready in 3 years' in Cameroonian, I would have killed him right then and there. Since the power came back on I have been working around 14 hour days and having some wanker accountant tell me it was a waste was not what I needed. Charly, our Director, seemed to think he was full of hot air and it was likely just one of their cousins who had opened a computer store. So I changed the CAMCCUL password for auditing the system to cockroach and left it at that.

I have felt like I was back in school in some respects here. You know, living of rice and the odd vegetable for weeks at a time. 8) Since the original plan was to be back in yaounde at the beginning of December I have been largely flat broke for 2 weeks so no steak dinners for me this time! On the positive side I have found another volunteer who wants to buy my guitar so I should have a little bit of cash to do some of my travelling. I don't expect Nigeria and Niger to be all that expensive though you never know. I don't know if time or $$ will permit me to get much past those 2 countries given that I will likely have to cut into my vacation/travel time to try to finish up with this project. Anyone want to buy a car? Canadian car....not Cameroonian. It has wheels and everything. Guaranteed never to have transported dead monkeys. Can't guarantee there haven't been other kinds of roadkill in the boot.....

In order to pass some of the time, George and I went for a nice stroll every weekend. In addition to our usual aimless wanders that don't seem to go anywhere we did one 20km hike out to the ECOFAC post in the Dja reserve to fetch the jacket of another volunteer who had left it behind. Well, to be honest we didn't set out to do it but we were only another 5km from Djoumodjo when they told us it was there so we figured what the hell....why not. That was the second time I did that stroll in a week as I had walked out to the post with the aforementioned volunteer and a vacationing chum to send them off into the reserve for a couple days. They were quite keen birders and apparently the Dja is fairly spectacular in that respect.

Continuing, on this stroll, George and I saw one of the more amusing sights I have seen here in Cameroon. In a village called Biba II there is a bulldozer parked in the main clearing that has become a combination statue/flowerpot. The story goes that about 6 years ago it fell into the river trying to make a road and was dragged out. Then some fellows came by in overalls and took out the engine, which seemed to make sense to the villagers as you would have to do some maintenance on an engine that had fallen in the river. You can imagine the surprise when a few days later the owners of the bulldozer came by and wondered where on earth their engine was! It was decided at this point that it would be too much expense and hassle to bring out another engine and install it so Biba II inherited their unique centrepiece. One other sighting of note on this trip was my first monkey sighting in the wild. Just a glimpse but still neat. On the monkey side of things I was completely dumbstruck when the director of the biggest local environmental NGO decided to buy a monkey from the side of the road for dinner. It seems odd to me to be on one hand campaigning for a gorilla habituation project and then eating their cousins for dinner. For those of you who are value conscious a medium sized monkey is about $4.

I did manage to make two road trips out of Lomie this past month to break up the tedium a little. We headed off to Messok, another small town about 60km away, to help cocoa farmers negotiate a better price with the buyers. George and I played major roles in this as fashion accessories and tried to look interested as they spent 4 hours negotiating over 0.4 cents per kilogram. I was ready to kick in the money myself if we could just get the hell out of there. This led into the aforementioned monkey buying incident and a long ride home in a Samurai that smelled of dead monkey. If you have travelled with a dead muskrat in your car you will have an idea.

The other road trip was this past weekend to Mindourou to help out Tom and his NGO with their computer problems. Since I am likely the only qualified (nothing from the peanut gallery) computer technician in the whole east province they were pretty much fubarred. The director had already taken the PC to Yaounde once and it came back still not working. I borrowed a motorbike from CIAD (interestingly it was the same one I tried to kill myself and Charly on in August) and zoomed the 60km Saturday afternoon. After a nice ride I took a peek at their computer and noticed that at the very least the BIOS was screwed and at worst the motherboard was finis and there wasn't much I could do about it in Mindouro. So true to form called it a day Tom and I went out drinking instead. You might think the bar scene in Mindourou would be limited it being a small town and all. You would be wrong. There is a large French sawmill there and they pay everyone Saturdays so Saturday nights are pretty rocking. After watching the second half of Commando in french on VCD, the first bar we went to was warming up for what appeared to be a much anticipated karaoke contest. This actually turned out to be a hallucinogenic melange of Milli Vanilli lip-synching to a song in a language they don't know and mimicking the moves from music videos. This rapidly got old so we headed down to another bar where a live musician from Abong Mbang was playing and had a few more beers. Around 4am, just when you thought you could safely slide out the side door and stumble home someone got wind that I was a musician and I found myself on stage in front of about 50 francophones waiting for me to play a song. Given that I was about 8 double-size beers to the good at this point I felt trying to play something in French was a poor idea and aimed for the song I could think of with the fewest chords. So I played these poor people a Newfoundland song about whacking seals on the head with clubs. Very fitting for a tropical rainforest french logging town, no? If I hadn't been sloshed I might have thought to play 'Let it Be' as there is a version done by a Cameroonian that was a huge hit and no doubt the band would have known it and played along. Sunday afternoon after eating off the hangover I earned the night before I had a thoroughly enjoyable ride back to Lomie except for one village when a group of guys surrounded me and started yelling 'White, go home.' While I thought getting tarred and feathered would make for a good story I was too tired to see it through so fired up the bike and kept going.

One other amusing event was a 'Town Hall' meeting held by the American mining company, GEOVIC. If you want some investment advice, if GEOVIC is publicly traded, BUY! They are talking about supplying 25% of the world's cobalt out of this one project. At any rate, this meeting was to let the Lomie area know what was going on with the project and to lay out the timeline for everything. After starting 5 hours late and a last minute rush to haul in someone's ugly living room furniture for the 'important people' to sit on (think That 70's Show basement furniture) things got off to a big bang when the Mayor of Lomie threw a big hissy fit in front of everyone explaining how the GEOVIC lawyer had insulted him and the whole town of Lomie. I wasn't sure exactly what the point of this all was other than a little demagoguery but it seemed to go over well with the crowd and I think the VP from Colorado thought they were going to get lynched. The townsfolk were disappointed to hear that no mining will start for at least 3 years, but all in all it was an amazing cultural experience.

So you have read this far to find out what the heck I was talking about in the subject? Ok, you win. I was walking down the street in Lomie in a glum mood looking for ANYTHING that resembled a fresh vegetable or meat that didn't share my gene pool when some guy struck up a conversation with me. When he found out I was Canadian he was jubilated. Turns out he was taught by a Canadian teacher almost 40 years ago and proceeded to prove to me how Canadian he was by belting out the Canadian national anthem. As they say, you could have pushed me over with a feather. I wouldn't bet a stolen penny that 50% of Canadians could sing it without help from 19,000 of their closest friends in the arena. I haven't seen him lately but if I do I think I will leave him with my Canada flag.

Well, although I have many more stories from the last month and a half I am sure many of you stopped reading a few paragraphs ago so I will cut out here and try to tune in CBC on the shortwave. It is almost possible some nights although sadly an american 'Faith Network' broadcasts on the same band at the same time (2200) as the sports show. So no hockey scores for me. Anyway, if I have no stories left to tell, what am I supposed to use to coerce all of you to buy me a beer with?

Speaking of listening to the shortwave and the view of the planet listening to BBC, VoA and RCI will give you.........

What's the problem with the human race

No matter where I turn I can't escape your double face

Don't want to listen to the radio

Or stick around just to hear I told you so...

-Treble Charger

Happy New Year from Cameroon!

First of all...for those of you who commented that my website was very broken....I think it is mostly fixed and you should also have access to some of the fullsize pictures I have taken via the website, although it is mostly very recent ones so far and it is a slow process. Thanks to Terry for the server space to store the photos!

I hope the holidays were fun and safe for everyone, sorry I was a little out of touch but my laptop power adapter blew up before Christmas and I wasn't able to replace it until yesterday.

The holidays have been far too hectic but enjoyable none the less as I met a load of fabulous people, had some good laughs and had the usual amount of Cameroon-induced chaos.

In our travels to the Volunteer Conference in Limbe, Tom and I sidetracked through Bamenda where we somehow managed to miss all of the volunteers located there (it is amazing how hard it is to get ahold of people when you forget to bring their phone #'s, I guess we would never think of phoning anyone not having this radical new technology in the east province)Travelling with Harold and Ijya, dutch friends of Leen and Caroline, we wandered up to Bafut where another VSO volunteer, Jaap, is located. Sadly we missed the huge festival at the Fon's (King's) Palace which was a few days after our visit but the palace and little museum/closet were interesting all the same. I was relieved to find out that they now sacrifice goats and other doomed animals during their festivals as opposed to the traditional method of sacrificing doomed people. I bought myself a nifty hat and a few other trinkets and after a fabulous dinner courtesy of Jaap we snoozed, got up early in the morning and moved on to Limbe!

Our volunteer conference went down fairly well with the proscribed amount of interminable meetings with enough interesting bits to keep me from crawling out of my head and making a run for it. Russell and Rowena who were the local Limbe volunteers organized the conference with help from Flacia, a volunteer located in Yaounde. They did a great job running things, especially the food and entertainment for our 'Traditional Night' where everyone dressed up in traditional Cameroonian duds and had a good party. Russell had arranged for some local 'Juju' dancers to come and perform for us and it was an amazing eye-opener. I had a little trouble following the stories and bits of the dances but the energy was astounding. I felt a little sorry for the chicken that got waved around and was used to bonk people on the heads, but I suppose I am getting used to these sort of things. Our temp Office Manager from London, Caroline, almost made a run for it with the chicken when she found out it was part of the show. The variety of outfits from around the country was amazing and people are certainly going to be taking home some great clothes! However, seeing as the local fashions in Lomie tend towards shirts with Paul Biya's face on them I wore an outfit from the North West of Cameroon that was much more colourful and interesting. (Thanks to Charles from the VSO office for lending me parts of his outfit!) Having worn this outfit once I am now forced to go back to Bamenda in the North West and buy the rest of the clothes to match the wacky hat I bought in Bafut.

Christmas eve was quite different from any of my previous holidays with a lovely day on the beach, including a nice Christmas Eve soccer game which I only managed to last 20 or 30 minutes in before my wonky knee gave out. It is getting better slowly but things were I can catch my foot easily are still out. After some english country dancing, a few songs and a few beers a group of us headed out to a local nightclub to dance away the morning. It was a great Christmas Eve marred only by my contribution to Christmas Peace, Love and Understanding which was to almost get into a fight at 4 in the morning. Dodging this incident we headed back to the hotel for a swim until dawn at which point eyes were struggling to stay open and we retired to our A/C rooms.

Christmas day we took a nice boat trip out to an island and had a Christmas Picnic. We had a fairly average dinner at a local restaurant after which some of us did a brief flyby of a party (except for Russell, who prepared for the mountain climb by staying up until 4 and consuming copious amounts of whiskey!) and hit the hay a little after midnight.

Boxing Day was of course the beginning of our trip to the summit of Mt Cameroon. The first day was tough work, hiking up the steep Guinness Trail through stifling rainforest and then sunny savannah for around 6 hours up to Hut 2. Here we settled in for the night crammed into our little room in the hut like sardines where we spent a largely sleepless night tossing, although there was little turning involved as there was simply no room. Day 2 of the trek saw us reach the summit around lunchtime and luck was on our side! It was unusually warm at the summit so we spent half an our or so eating lunch and catching our breath. The clouds were not too thick and although we couldn't see Bioko island off the coast, we did get some spectacular views of the mountain slopes. Our descent changed from a nice leisurely stroll down the mountain to a torturous marathon hike that lasted until 10pm, including the last 3 hours in the dark. Once we arrived in camp there was little mucking about as food was eaten, tents were set up and eyes were closed post-haste. The extreme grouchiness of the night before was all forgotten after a nice sleep and pretty much everybody was cheerful as we descended through the leafy forest for the last 5 hours bit. For the last hour or 2 Russell and I ran ahead and did the last stretch at a dead run down the mountain. This bit was likely the most fun of the whole trek as you had to keep your head on a swivel and watch out to avoid breaking your ankles on the many roots and rocks.

Russell and I reached the village of Bokwango and a bar with cold beer around 2:30 and the others trickled in over the next couple of hours, joining us in a nice cold beer. All were happy with what we had done although there were a few legs and feet a little the worse for wear. One unfortunate sidebar, I managed to leave my journal at the bar and it hasn't been seen since. Aside from bits of my journal it had all of the songs I have written here in Cameroon, and while I doubt this is a huge loss to the world of art, it kind of bummed me out.

The next few days were spent largely in recovery from the trek, eating cheeseburgers and drinking beer. New year's eve we headed out to a beach hotel a few miles from Limbe (Typically of the beaches around Limbe, the beaches are a deep chocolate brown) for a little bit of dinner, dancing and a midnight New Year's swim. It was a pretty mellow evening but thoroughly enjoyable. New Year's day myself and 2 fellow Arsenal fans, Chris and Dave, headed back into limbe to the Mars Bar where we watched our beloved Gunners pull out a far too exciting 3-2 win over Chelsea.

Tomorrow AM I am back to Lomie for the last stretch of my stay here in Cameroon. I am looking forward to getting back to Lomie and a little bit of relaxing calm. In a short 3 weeks I will be done my job here and at that point I am off on some travels! Cash will be a little tight but since I will be passing mostly through Nigeria and Niger, 2 countries that are not too expensive, it shouldn't be too much of a problem. In meeting a pile of VSO Nigeria volunteers over the holidays I have a few places to stay so may drop in unexpectedly on these poor folk! I hope to make it up to Agadez in northern Niger to see the Sahara desert and if time and money allow, go for a camel trek in the Air mountains. Apparently they have a good camel market as well, although I think the shipping on a camel might be too much for my budget.

Best wishes to you all and thanks for all the letters, emails and cards over the holidays.