Je suis malade comme une parrot!

Ah well, at least they got to the Final!

I should be happy for that I suppose, as my adopted country got a lot further than my real country will ever do! Still, it was very disappointing, I had been really looking forward to the celebrations!

So, back to supporting Scotland for WC2010!

Salmon chanted evening

Well another month passes, and now there are less than 6 months to go, suddenly I am starting to run out of time to do everything.

Work wise it has been a slightly frustrating month. Everyone has been tied up with closing out 2007 in the manual system, which as you can imagine is a very tedious task. So to a degree I have been spinning my wheels a little - no one is available to do much work on the new system. Still, it continues ok in parallel run in the 3 branches and the plan remains that this month we hit two more branches so I will be off and travelling around for a couple of weeks at the end of the month I hope.

There have been a couple of compensating factors though – football with the advent of the African Cup of Nations – which is a big deal here – much fun has been had watching Cameroon’s games in the local pub – quite an atmosphere although what will happen if they do not win the whole thing – which I doubt they will – remains to be seen.

Another welcome distraction was a VSO course for the best part of a week, which took me away from Bafoussam and it was good to meet up with some of my fellow volunteers. It was a real morale booster hearing about some of the great things they have achieved in all sorts of areas from AIDS support to bee keeping – look out for the first batch of Cameroon honey in a health food shop near you sometime in 2009!

There was also the RIC “start of year” party, which will typical Cameroonian timing finally happened on the 18^th! To compound this, it was scheduled to start at 6pm sharp – so I turned up at 6.15 to find two other people there –the rest drifted in around 9. The boss was not at all pleased (he turned up at 7 by the way) and had a big post mortem on the Monday about poor time keeping. He then asked for suggestions on how it could be better next year, and I actually was cheered for suggesting that they might consider getting in outside caterers rather than rely on the women staff to do all the catering – which involved then being up at 6am to start cooking – no wonder they were late!

The reason for the musical title btw – try singing it – was that whilst in Bamenda for the VSO course I found a shop that sells all sorts of “European” goodies – at exorbitant prices by Cameroonian standards – so I treated myself to a Toblerone, a Bounty, a packet of Scottish shortbread and the big treat – a large tin of John West’s best wild Canadian salmon – which is the first salmon I have had since leaving the UK – it was marvellous. Its amazing how a simple treat can work wonders!

Just in case any of you a re worrying about the situation in Chad, no problem, that is at the other end of Cameroon from where I am, but there are quite a few VSO volunteers up near the Chad border, who may well have to be evacuated if things get worse, lets hope they sort it out. What with that and the situation in Kenya it's all very depressing.

Finally, thanks if you have got this far, I know I have been away for a long time, and it was my choice, but it would be really great to hear how 2007 treated you and what plans you have for 2008 – news from home has dried up a bit recently and I am feeling a bit homesick – so drop me a line when you have a moment!