Strangers in Paradise

Hi

Just a short note to prove that Chris and Claire arrived ok, and we made it to the beach and Botanical gardens at Limbe – as you can see from the picture they might usefully pick up a tan while here.

Apart from the pleasure of seeing me, the main attraction of course is the birdlife, so after a couple of days in Douala and Limbe, I dropped them at the foot of Mount Cameroon, where they still are, on a 5 day nature trek. Rather them then me, I have distinctly bad memories of that particular lump of rock, just looking at it gave me the shivers!

Rioting has died down, lots of muttering about the government, Biya has promised salary rises and price cuts – whether or not this will be enough to save him we will see.

Fuller update in a couple of weeks, when I hope to report back on the rest of their visit, plus the next branch implementation, which will be in the town of Mutenguene, our newest branch, very small number of customers so far, so I hope to complete that in a week at most.

Anyway, that’s all for now – Chris and Claire due here in a few days, assuming they get off the hill, so maybe next time I will have some pics of Cameroonian wildlife as well.

Cheers

PS – these palms and ferns are gi-normous!

Marching for the RIC women

Last Saturday, as I am sure you know, was International Womens Day. The RIC women asked me to march with them, which to be honest at first I thought was a set up, especially as it involved getting a special jacket made from this years specially printed cloth! IWD is az big thing here, so after assurances that there would be plenty of other guys expressing solidaity I agreed.

Well, on the day there was ONE other bloke, and to just make sure everyone saw me I was dulty elected to lead our team, carrying the Cameroon national flag. This I did, and fairly strutted my stuff - its amazing, I have not marched with a flag since I was a Boy Scout - but it all came back and I fairly pounded along, to great cheers from all the assembled throng!

It was not a set up, so I took great pleasure in doing this, and have already been told that I must lead the RIC delegation on May Day, so I must have been all right! Sorry about picture quality btw, but obviously I did not take this one. The group of RIC women at the top of the page is clearer I hope. thats it for now, I am in my last 100 working days, so the dowhill slope is in sight!

cheers

Rioting , a conference, a wedding and nearly a funeral

Hey

There has been severe rioting here over the past few days, sparked off by a rise in fuel prices (which are government controlled). Sadly, there have been several deaths and a lot of destruction of property – concentrating here in Bafoussam on the offices of the French gambling company PMUC – who people blame for taking their money and sending all profits back to France. I guess you may not have heard about any of this as the government imposed a news blackout alomsot straight away. So far thankfully there is no indication of any anti white feeling, but VSO have been very good at keeping in touch with us all and have contingency plans should things get really bad.

Apart from all of this, the last few weeks have been a very busy here, starting with my attendance for the third time at the RIC management conference. This was held this time at our most remote branch in Andek Ngie ( see above) , which is high up in the mountains north of Bamenda – takes about 6 hours to drive there up an increasingly difficult road, but with spectacular scenery to compensate.

The conference was a one day affair and much to my surprise started on time and finished only a couple of hours late – this was a marked improvement on the first two which both finished around midnight. So I felt all my efforts in improving timeliness, introducing standard reporting formats and so on were bearing some fruit. However, it does not do to get too complacent – as we had left 5 hours late on the Friday to go to the conference – this was a more typical piece of Cameroonian time keeping!

Work continues to go pretty well, although I have had to slip my plans by a month as it has become clear that there has not been enough discipline and checking when taking on the Loans and Current Accounts and it is only now that several errors are coming to light – so we have decided rather than roll out to the other branches we will spend another month documenting procedures and making some further changes to the system to tighten things up. I am still hopeful of getting around all the other branches before my time is up, but it is now starting to look a little tight.

The Wedding – this was a very elaborate affair. One of the daughters of Mr Abiyah, the overall boss of RIC, was married to a chap she met a few months ago – it was almost an arranged wedding as the procedure here is for the man to approach the women’s parents and ask for the daughter, if the parents agree then it’s a done deal in most cases. There were over 500 guests and the Bride and Groom were attended by:-

• 6 pastors
• 2 choirs
• 4 god parents
• 4 witnesses
• 18 Parents of Honour
• 1 maid of honour
• 1 best man
• 6 brides maids
• 6 grooms men
• 1 bride pilot (there were no planes involved, I think this was probably the driver of the wedding car)
• 4 flower girls
• 4 page boys
• 1 little bride
• 1 little groom
• 3 spray girls (spraying perfume around everywhere!)
• 1 cake designer
• 3 decoration committee members
• 7 food co-ordinators
• 6 usherettes
• 1 security man
• 1 camera man
• 1 video man
• 1 musical director
• 10 arch bearers (carrying moveable ceremonial arches)
• 8 ladies of honour
• 13 fathers of the day (i.e. elderly folk like me!)
• 10 directors of protocol
• 5 drinks coordinators
• a chairman
• 2 masters of ceremony
• 1 bridal wardrobe person
• and last but not least 5 wedding co-ordinators!

Needless to say, we all had a good time!

Oh yes, the (nearly) funerals. This was on the way back from the conference, around 9pm. The driver not exactly sober (as per usual when travelling we had to stop several times to greet friends / family – which invariably involved a beer or two) – when suddenly there was an almighty bang and the car which had 5 adults and a one year old child on board, skidded to a very noisy stop - fortunately on a quiet stretch of road. The back axle had collapsed – if it had gone a few moments earlier we would probably have gone over the edge of a cliff!

So there we are, less than 5 months to go, the next big thing is my son and partner coming over at Easter to see me and do some serious bird watching here, plus hopefully we will spend some time on the beach at Limbe – hope all well with you wherever you are, do send me your news.

cheers