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!

2 down, 2 to go

Hi

Well its all starting to go really fast now, just three and half months to go here, and it will be a very busy time. Over the past week we implemented 2 more branches, that leaves just 2 to do – one of which RIC will do themselves so that I can leave confident in their abilities.

The major implementation in the past week was in the branch at Mutengene, which is on the coast between Douala and Limbe – a really small town, where we have a correspondingly small branch with around 100 customers, 150 accounts. However it was still a challenge as this was the first time we have tried to implement a whole branch in one go (as opposed to the staged approach adopted so far). I am glad to report it all went really well and we left after completing 5 days where everything balanced. The only problem was the mosquitoes – I finally found a place where I am bitten! I hope that there was not a malaria carrying one amongst those that feasted on me, it would be a real shame to pick up a bug so near the end.

The other implementation was in our newest branch, in the capital, Yaounde – this is so new that we do not have premises yet, so I implemented on the sole staff member’s laptop – literally a bank in a box! When we get premises in a month or so it should then be easy just to transfer the data. Doing it this way avoids the complication of take on of existing customers etc. so its easy all round (I hope).

Just before I left town to do these implementations, my son Chris and his partner Claire arrived in Bafoussam for a couple of days at the end of their birding trip to Cameroon. They did really well, surviving 5 days on Mt Cameroon plus several days in the rainforest around Mt Kupe – the photoes are courtesy of Chris. They did all their travelling on local transport, which was brave considering neither speaks much French, so well done them. We had a great night out in Bafoussam with some of my work mates, and they managed to squeeze in a quick tour of the Chefferie here, so they experienced a good flavour of the country. But of course the main thing was the birds – after me saying I reckoned there were very few birds left due to the locals predilection for eating them, they managed to rack up over 150 new varieties – not a bad haul in ten days.

As ever, I would love to hear from some of you, what’s happening in your world – and the next time I write we will know Chelsea’s fate s in the Premier and Champions Leagues – so come on ye Blues!

cheers