Party party

As you might guess from the pictures, my farewell party has now happened - what I remember of it was great, lots of dancing, not too many speeches and yet more presents for me – including the statuette below, , which by all concerned (except me) was declared a dead ringer of me in my chief’s outfit.

Work has just about finished apart from one last meeting with VSO and my employer to go though my final report, then on Thursday 31^st I travel to Douala to get a late flight to France for a much anticipated holiday, with various members of my family dropping in over the month – then back to London at the end of August. Available from then for dinner, lunch, breakfast, bar mitzvahs, weddings or whatever!

So what will I remember? Well I think it will take a while for all the impressions to get sorted out in my head, but I will not miss the dust, the mosquitoes, the cockroaches, the dust, the power cuts, the water cuts and oh yes, did I mention the dust? What I will miss is the beautiful hilly, jungly scenery, the big sky so full of stars, the music, the food (well most of it, I never did get to like cola nuts) and of course most of all the friendship of the people here, which although overwhelming at times, will live with me forever. It’s quite remarkable to me that in all the two years here I never once received a hostile or jealous reception, even though most of the people I met are dealing with poverty and its effects on a day to day basis and to them I was the rich white man. I have promised to come back in a year or two, ostensibly to monitor progress, but it will really just be to see all my friends again. I also will miss meeting other VSO volunteers, a very mixed bunch from all over the world, but all dedicated to the task in hand and in one or two cases quite inspirational – those beekeepers in particular – look out for that Cameroon honey!

So that’s it, I hope you have enjoyed this little blog, perhaps it has made some of you think about doing some volunteering sometime, I would recommend it, I have had a great time – here’s to the next big adventure – ciao - Duncan

The Official Farewell!

As the pictures show, the big event has now taken place – the celebration of 10 years of RIC plus 5 years of them working with VSO.

In true Cameroon style, the program, meant to start at 8 am, eventually got under way around 11.30! RIC had hired the Hotel de Ville for the occasion and set up a number of marquees on the front lawn – there must have been about 300 hundred or so staff and guests.

The day was a great mixture of the formal – speeches, presentations for long service etc- plus the informal – each branch had been asked to provide an “event” - which ranged from elaborate home crafted songs through to some quite hilarious sketches about the benefits of banking with RIC. This was all supplemented by lots of traditional dance displays and the local comedians doing turns.

The VSO part was a double presentation – a really beautiful statue of an African women struggling with the weight of the world on her shoulders – presented to VSO Cameroon, and as you can see a superb chiefs outfit to your truly, plus a fantastic bronze statue . I was very touched of course and had to fight back the tears when I made my farewell speech, which included a promise to come back in a year or so to check everything is going ok!

This took all day, then it was inside for a slap up meal, drinks and dancing, which was to go on all night- I actually wimped out quite early as I has a VSO colleague visiting to say goodbye, she was tired and we crashed out well before midnight, but it was a great day.

Meanwhile the work has continued, one more branch has been implemented - totally by the guy I have trained, and although it took him twice as long as he had planned due to various hardware problems, it was done successfully and confirmed that my work here is done! The last branch Derick will do on his own as well, while I will spend my last month touring around to say cheerio, writing up the various reports I have to do for VSO and RIC to complete the project, then one last booze up with the staff here towards the end of July - then that will be it! Expect one last posting after this to wrap up this blog – so tara for now, see some of you quite soon!

A nasty tail!

Just in case you hear that I have popped my clogs out here, the cause may well be a terminal attack of rabies - as my health book says once you get this - you die!

The reason is that last night I had what seemed a good idea that quickly turned into a very bad idea - I strolled into my kitchen to disturb this rather chubby mouse snacking on some fruit I had left lying around - it tried to leg it by diving head first down a hole, got stuck and left its bum and very long tail waving in the wind - so I grabbed the tail thinking I would casually sling the beast outside and be rid of it! This worked for a moment, then the sneaky crittur did a reverse back flip, climbed up its own tail and bit me! Bloody sore for such a tiny creature - anyway I dropped it and it scarpered to haunt me again no doubt!

My VSO chums reckon this was hilariuos and as no-one has heard of rabid mice, hopefully this is not my epitaph - if it is perhaps "Mice one, humans nil" on the headstone would suffice!

Jugglers of the world - unite!

Hi

Another month, another branch implemented in Bamenda, which was meant to be the last. Unfortunately, things have gone so well that RIC have asked me to try and complete things by implementing in the last two branches, both of which are very remote, up in the hills towards Nigeria, in two villages called Andek and Oshie. It’s not a problem except that rather than gradually relaxing over the last few weeks, I am going to be dashing around – but it will be great if we end up having implemented all branches!

Feel a bit like one of those Chinese jugglers which start with one plate spinning and end up with 8 – although the system is holding up well, the users are still making a lot of mistakes which mean I have to go back and help them sort things out, and some days it feels like I have dropped a plate or two.

Another major event in the past week was the holding of the bank’s AGM – which in typical Cameroonian style was the third they have had in 10 years – so should really be called the Occasional General Meeting in my view! It was meant to start at 8am, eventually got going around 11.30 but was a good meeting with the shareholders asking many good questions of me, as I had to do a presentation on progress.

Next big thing (with photoes I am sure) is the celebration of 10 years of existence for RIC. They are going to combine this with marking 5 years of working with VSO and my official farewell – should be quite a day – in fact the events planned cover a week – possible including an interview with your truly on the local radio – I am a star at last!

Couple of nasty incidents last week involving robbery which is quite prevalent here – one of the branches was robbed during daylight hours and the thieves got away with Fcfa 1.5 million – a lot of dosh in Cameroon – but were last heard of surrounded in the forest by the local police – they will be lucky to get out alive. On a more mundane level, my next door neighbours flat was broken into, through the roof (I live on the top floor) – he is a wealthy lawyer, the brigands cleary thought he would have more in his flat than a VSO volunteer – lucky for me – as they trashed the place as well. The buildings occupants have now hired a security guard.

So now only about 7 weeks to go, lots of my VSO colleagues who started at the same time as me are already gone – its all a bit sad actually saying ta ra to them, but I am looking forward now to the end and seeing my family and friends again.

Probably one or two more entries on here, hope you have enjoyed reading this half as much as I have enjoyed writing it , hear from some of you by return I trust

cheers

More marching and a disaster in Moscow

Just a short note and yet more pictures of marching – you are probably as fed up with these as I am! This was national day last Tuesday – an excuse for lots more fascist marching – army, police, political parties and schools – so I just snapped some of the school kids to give you a flavour of the scene. The march lasts around 4 hours, I stayed for all of it last year, this year I lasted an hour – time to go I think!

Of course the main event this week had nothing to do with Cameroon – it was the sad demise of Chelsea in the Champions League final. Like most CFC fans I suspect, I was very pleased with the team’s performance, but we just ran out of luck. As I write this I am still nursing a hangover, great game, wrong result!

Coats of many colours

Hey

As you can see from the pictures, there has been yet another day of marching and celebrating here in Cameroon - the local folk certainly love these occasions. This one was in aid of May Day – with the particular theme of promoting health and safety in the workplace, and reducing death at work. I have not seen any statistics on this but it would not be a surprise if these were on the high side as in general life is treated cheaply in this part of the world – but they are trying to improve things.

As this day is also seen as a good way of promoting the company, the decision was taken that we would all be kitted out in the splendiferous garments you see!

The cloth for this cost 3,000,000 Fcfa (about £3,000 / $6,000), which RIC paid for. The workers then had to pay for their own tailoring – so my natty little number cost me 10,000 Fcfa (£10 / $20) to get knocked up – it will go down really well on the Fulham Palace Broadway when I get back - think I should wear it to the first Chelsea game next season! Well, perhaps not but anyway as you can see many companies were vying for the title of most brightly dressed – I think we did pretty well. Once more I was given the honour of being a flag bearer – this time the company flag – and again got lots of cheers from the watching crowds – as a “Monsieur Le Blanc” I am still quite a novelty in these parts. After the march past, it was back to the local bar for food and drinks, again courtesy of the company – all in all a fun day. The guy with the beard and the epaulettes made from condom packets is a local comedian btw – he is very funny, I start laughing just looking at him.

May Day was followed by me then spending a week away implementing the latest branch – this one in the town of Nkongsamba, which is halfway between Bafoussam and Douala. This is quite an interesting town as it used to be the capital of that part of Cameroon before Douala took prominence, and it also used to be the centre of the coffee trade in Cameroon. Sadly as it is no longer the capital, and the coffee trade still has not recovered from the last crash, it has fallen on hard times, but there still are a number of Art Deco style buildings and some broad tree lined roads – both unusual for Cameroon. The implementation went very smoothly – me and the team are getting pretty slick at this now – so that just leaves one medium sized branch to do next month and a couple of tiddlers which I might get done before I go, if not the team can do them themselves I am sure. Although the number of customers is tiny compared with LloydsTSB (where for example at one point I was responsible for a system that was to handle upwards of 12 million customers accounts) in an odd way this job has proved more interesting – I think because I have had to think of everything in IT terms from the moment a customer opens a relationship with the bank all the way through to the last drop of MIS – something I did not do in my full time career even though I worked in banks for over 25 years, tending to specialise in one area or another – plus I am having to teach staff some very basic banking things like what a GL is – again in the UK you can reasonably expect that the staff will have a pretty good banking knowledge.

Time is really flying by now, and in the past week I have booked my flight out, so the end is truly in sight. I leave here on July 31^st, heading to France for a month before getting back to the UK – so two and a bit months to go, seems hard to believe it’s almost over!

Finally cannot go with a word about Chelsea – even though we could end up winning nothing - what a great season it has been I just hope they do even better next year when I will be able to see them!

Hear from some of you I hope, tah rah for now

Duncan

Its not all fun and games!

Hey, just in case you are all out there thinking what a fun life being a volunteer must be, I thought I would just add a spot of reality.

Its Sunday afternoon here, its been raining most of the weekend, water and power have been up and down like the proverbial whatsit, and I finished my last book (Engleby - Sebastian faulks - really really good) at about 7.45 this morning. It will be at least a week before I can buy anything else - gulp!

None of my work mates are around and I am bored, bored , bored - so there, got that off my chest, feel a little better and at least there is a big week coming up - Chelsea in the Champions league final I hope, then the big May Day celebration, then I get out of town for a week to implemen in the next branch - which will leave just one to do - hooray!