1st day, last month
1/8/09 Anne Village life: The talk of the village this week has been the fact that
Suleiman, head teacher of Zidim secondary school, is going to Yaoundé to become
P.A. to the Minister of Transport, who just happens to be his cousin. His salary
will apparently not change but there will be lots of “perks”. Suleiman studied
at Moray House in We are now having rain most days; yesterday it bucketed
for about 7 hours and I went to market wearing my anorak. That’s a first. I
managed to get a few small wild mountain bananas and a pineapple. Wow! I don’t
remember the market being so poor for such a long time last
year. Crops are growing fast now with the millet between one
and three metres high, depending on the individual village or even field. Houses
are disappearing behind it and the scenery now looks as it did when we first
arrived in September 2007. I discovered recently that interest on fertiliser
obtained on credit from the state owned Sodecoton stands at 28% - criminal and
an excellent way to keep the peasants under control. Work: No work in the schools yet but Godam and I have been
preparing for meetings with treasurers and secretaries to help them manage funds
and affairs better. It’s quite a challenge as so few of them can read or write.
I still seem to be spending a lot of time queuing in banks, either to deposit
money donated to the schools or to close my own account. I thought I would get
ahead early with that as I could see a lot of pain ahead. In fact it took only
an hour and was relatively painless. VSO are revising the subsistence rate given to
volunteers in There have now been 11 weddings during our stay here,
with 9 of them between volunteers and Cameroonians. The latest one was conducted
in secret and has caused a lot of “congossa” (gossip) within VSO which I dare
not put in the blog because my boss reads it! My theory is that young volunteers
cannot afford to stay in hotels or even at the much cheaper missions when they
escape from their villages into Maroua at wekends. They make friends with
locals, spend nights with them and end up marrying them! Maybe it is time for a
substantial increase in the subsistence given to the volunteers before VSO comes
to be regarded as a marriage bureau rather than as a serious international
development organisation. Maybe they should do what the Peace Corps and other
NGOs do and have a flat for use of volunteers in Maroua.
Hamish Pleasant surprise last week – just as Anne Poppelaars
was about to leave, Claudia Klemp, who was here for five years from 2002 and was
Médecin Chef before Anne, arrived for a visit. She immediately offered to do the
overnight on call until the Saturday, so just as I was thinking I’d have a hard
week, suddenly I was facing an easy time!
Dr Davide arrived back on Thursday, so life is looking
up! The rainy season has started in earnest. On Wednesday 22nd, I was due
to head for Maroua to present AIDS patients to the treatment committee. It had rained overnight, so we took the
long way round to avoid the more muddy road. On the way back, I decided to come back
the other route, following our hospital driver’s advice. According to Jean, if we wait 4 to 6
hours after the rain, the road will have dried enough not to be too slippery,
and when we get to the bits with deep water, don’t be tempted to go off the
road, keep to the main track through what looks like deep water and it’ll be
fine. We were a bit disconcerted to
note the absence of tracks from four wheel vehicles, meaning we were the first
to try the road after the rain!
Well, Jean’s advice was accurate and with 4x4 and the car’s high ground
clearance, we got through no problem.
And to think at home you’d pay a fortune for an off road experience like
this! The weekend of 18th/19th July we
did our last bit of sight seeing before we leave
Finally, I’m delighted to attach a photo of Michaelou,
the young boy who had the horrendous head injury. His surgery in Yaoundé has been very
successful and the wound is now healed.
He is a very happy young man, so don’t be fooled by his _expression_ in the
photo – Cameroonians NEVER smile for the camera! The dressing on his head is not covering
an open wound – it was explained as being for protection as he’s a normal active
young boy! |