ANNE

Village life: After the heavy rain on Thursday, the weather continues to play tricks on Zidim. While we have had only light showers here, villages 5 miles away have had downpours. Their millet is a metre high while Zidim’s is still struggling towards daylight after a third sowing. People have been out in the fields collecting flying termites to fry or use as a paste in sauces. Yum!

The market has been poor for weeks now with only beef and onions in plentiful supply. Meat of all sorts is dry, tough and unappetising probably because all the animals are still not getting enough to drink. I have given up trying to live like a local and have bought some luxuries in Maroua e.g. eggs, green beans, cabbage, courgettes and tomatoes. I am already writing my first shopping list for Morrisons on our return.

Work: Life is definitely quieter this week with no planned meetings and time to get down to updating documents for new volunteers. Godam and I did have a long session with the chief though to discuss the work done in the 4 schools, the successes and the disappointments. Like us, he is disappointed in the results in Mofou-sud, the school which has most advantages in terms of educated parents with incomes and 5 qualified teachers. 17 children out of 123 passed the entrance exam to secondary school – a shocking result from a qualified teacher. The Lamido is considering sending his children, who come in “industrial numbers”, according to his brother, to another school. That might finally shake the head teacher and his staff. The chief is enthusiastic about the new classroom at Membeng and doesn’t seem to mind that I didn’t ask him to do the construction. His price for a single room was 9 million CFA whereas Fondation Bethléem has done a terrific job for under 5 million (about £6,500) – no middle men in the form of the Lamido’s own well-lined pocket, the Mayor, Inspector or head teacher. If anyone is interested in the amazing Fondation, Google it – the reality is even more spectacular than its website. We are so lucky to have stumbled across an honest, trustworthy organisation in Cameroon. Père Danilo, the Italian founder, looks more comfortable on a building site than in a church with his beer belly, builder’s bum and three day designer stubble but we are in awe of his achievements here in just 12 years. As his contribution to school development, he has given Membeng School 10 table-bancs which will seat 100 skinny children in the new classroom.

Home: Thomas, our cleaner/laundryman, and I will part company this week; his behaviour has become more and more unacceptable and unpleasant. I thought I might be able to put up with it for another couple of months but this week he has gone too far. He arrived drunk on Tuesday afternoon to take washing in, bouncing the basket off the door frames several times before making it through, ranting and raving all the time. Next day he arrived even more drunk, barely able to stand and completely unable to talk. It took quite some time to get him reluctantly off the premises. Today he told me to get out of the sitting room with my colleague so that he could clean it. He gets the bullet along with his month’s salary in about two hours’ time. Have looked up, “You’re fired!” in my big French dictionary.

Random facts/thoughts:

• Volunteer Tom, who married Aïcha on the 6^th June, has had to leave for Ireland without her. They have had visa problems so the big party planned in Dublin will have to wait. Tom will be back in September to carry on the work of having boreholes and wells repaired.
• Wedding number 10 coming up! My boss, Mohamadou, left for Canada. Next day all the volunteers got an invitation to his wedding on Sunday, 5^th July in Maroua. This is our first Muslim wedding and the Tégal starts at 6.30am at the homes of the bride and groom. Our friend Oumarou will explain Tégal for us.
• Photos show the new classroom ready and waiting to be painted and oranges being washed very enthusiastically and frothily in Maroua.
• Daily temperatures are staying under 40ºC now but not a lot! Have only managed Christmas pudding twice – two more to go.
• Muslim men congregated at the chief’s palace in Maroua to go together to the Grand Mosque to pray for rain last weekend. It poured for hours later that day.

Hamish

Tuesday morning we had a proper downpour of rain.  Virtually no patients arrived at the hospital until about midday and the market was late starting.  Then, in the evening the flying termites hatched.  This is an amazing sight – after the first seriously heavy rainfall, the termites hatch all at the same time.  Last year I was driving to Maroua when this happened and could barely see the road ahead of me.  I remember one ward round last year when one of the nurses ate a handful of termites a patient’s “garde malade” had prepared, but I didn’t feel up for it!  This year, again on a ward round, I noticed a pile of termites lying in the sun to dry.  I asked if they were ready to eat but they had not been cooked yet.  I thought I’d be brave & say I’d like to try them so the next day I was presented with a cupful of the delicacy.  I tasted some – really quite delicious, but the patients were highly entertained by my reaction!  The termites were attracted by the light on our veranda on Tuesday evening and we had a real swarm outside.  In the morning, the veranda had a carpet of dead termites (see photo).  When Lydia arrived, she gathered them all up and took them off to grill them; quite an impressive “harvest”.  The end product arrived in a bowl in time for pre-dinner drinks on Thursday.  As you can see from Anne's _expression_, delicious!

Michaelou, the boy with the nasty head injury, has been operated on in Yaoundé.  The operation went well, he is now out of hospital and after a last check up there on Tuesday, we hope to see him back here in the Far North before the end of the week.

Dr Samé David, the newly qualified Cameroonian doctor has been here for 10 days now.  He seems a bright interested medic but I think is finding the lack of facilities in the Far North a bit of a challenge!  We were well prepared by VSO training before we came out to be able to cope with limited facilities, but poor David has come to what must seem to him a completely different world without any real preparation.  Just hope he settles in, as Anne Poppelaars finishes in just two weeks!  The administration has also sent money to pay travel costs for a doctor from the Congo, so we’re hoping he’ll arrive in a week or two.

Finally, a “new” cure for toothache.  You hack the bark from a tree, boil it and drink the resulting “juice”.  Picture shows Lydia attacking a tree in our garden to get the material to sort her toothache.  Meanwhile, the government is encouraging tree planting and preservation to try to halt the advance of the Sahara!   Lydia was completely unabashed when told she shouldn’t be damaging a tree like this!