June - July '07Nice and not so nice celebrations

Well another month has gone by, that’s nine months I have been here already, time is passing quite fast now, which I guess means I feel quite at home.

It does not seem long since I last penned my thoughts, and not much has changed to be quite honest. The project is picking up speed; we now have a live stock control system designed by yours truly, and later on this month hope to start the banking system in a pilot branch. If the software vendor finally delivers the outstanding changes, we hope also to start loading customers here in the main branch, with the target of starting a parallel run in July. Yesterday we visited the only other Cameroon business that is using the system we have selected and it was quite encouraging in terms of the good support they said they enjoyed since going live a few years ago. This is quite a worry as the software is supported out of the Philippines, and managed from Australia, so it is not as if we can have a quick meeting with the vendors if something is going wrong.

There have been two main cultural things happen this month – the first was yet another day of marches, this time for National Day – a really big deal here in this relatively new country. Four hours of parades, starting with the various branches of the armed forces (of which there is a lot - sadly a very large part of Cameroons budget goes on this). Then the political parties – a huge number of Paul Biya (the premier) supporters, wearing outfits festooned with pictures of the mighty leader – eat your heart out TB - but the biggest cheer was for the opposition parties – there are lots of them so at least there is some democracy here. It was all very colourful, especially the schools section of the parade with literally thousands of kids in coordinated outfits, waving flags, whirling batons and generally having a good time. This day was the culmination of a 5-day holiday, which started with Ascension Day, then a day of morning for the victims of the plane crash, then National day itself.

The other event was a much less happy occasion – one of my fellow workers lost her mother – so as is the custom all friends and work colleagues made their way to her house that evening for a “condolences” session – which involves a lot of hugging and crying and loud wailing – all quite moving. This was a couple of weeks ago, the actual funeral and wake – known as a “cry die” - is next week and is a much jollier affair apparently – if I get to go will report back next time.

This is my eighth letter, I think its quite possible that you have not received all of the previous seven, as I continue to have problems with email reliability here – so if you really want them, let me know and I’ll send you the back editions!

I hope as usual to hear back from some of you, I am open to congratulations for Chelsea’s achievements - I reckon 2 Cups equals one League.

Next time hope I will be sharing with you my delight in becoming a Grandfather – my eldest daughter, Jacqueline, is due to deliver said offspring in a few days from now, all very exciting! All going well I will be jetting back to wet the sprogs head around September so will see some of you then.

Until the next time