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!