Party party

As you might guess from the pictures, my farewell party has now happened - what I remember of it was great, lots of dancing, not too many speeches and yet more presents for me – including the statuette below, , which by all concerned (except me) was declared a dead ringer of me in my chief’s outfit.

Work has just about finished apart from one last meeting with VSO and my employer to go though my final report, then on Thursday 31^st I travel to Douala to get a late flight to France for a much anticipated holiday, with various members of my family dropping in over the month – then back to London at the end of August. Available from then for dinner, lunch, breakfast, bar mitzvahs, weddings or whatever!

So what will I remember? Well I think it will take a while for all the impressions to get sorted out in my head, but I will not miss the dust, the mosquitoes, the cockroaches, the dust, the power cuts, the water cuts and oh yes, did I mention the dust? What I will miss is the beautiful hilly, jungly scenery, the big sky so full of stars, the music, the food (well most of it, I never did get to like cola nuts) and of course most of all the friendship of the people here, which although overwhelming at times, will live with me forever. It’s quite remarkable to me that in all the two years here I never once received a hostile or jealous reception, even though most of the people I met are dealing with poverty and its effects on a day to day basis and to them I was the rich white man. I have promised to come back in a year or two, ostensibly to monitor progress, but it will really just be to see all my friends again. I also will miss meeting other VSO volunteers, a very mixed bunch from all over the world, but all dedicated to the task in hand and in one or two cases quite inspirational – those beekeepers in particular – look out for that Cameroon honey!

So that’s it, I hope you have enjoyed this little blog, perhaps it has made some of you think about doing some volunteering sometime, I would recommend it, I have had a great time – here’s to the next big adventure – ciao - Duncan

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!

A nasty tail!

Just in case you hear that I have popped my clogs out here, the cause may well be a terminal attack of rabies - as my health book says once you get this - you die!

The reason is that last night I had what seemed a good idea that quickly turned into a very bad idea - I strolled into my kitchen to disturb this rather chubby mouse snacking on some fruit I had left lying around - it tried to leg it by diving head first down a hole, got stuck and left its bum and very long tail waving in the wind - so I grabbed the tail thinking I would casually sling the beast outside and be rid of it! This worked for a moment, then the sneaky crittur did a reverse back flip, climbed up its own tail and bit me! Bloody sore for such a tiny creature - anyway I dropped it and it scarpered to haunt me again no doubt!

My VSO chums reckon this was hilariuos and as no-one has heard of rabid mice, hopefully this is not my epitaph - if it is perhaps "Mice one, humans nil" on the headstone would suffice!

Jugglers of the world - unite!

Hi

Another month, another branch implemented in Bamenda, which was meant to be the last. Unfortunately, things have gone so well that RIC have asked me to try and complete things by implementing in the last two branches, both of which are very remote, up in the hills towards Nigeria, in two villages called Andek and Oshie. It’s not a problem except that rather than gradually relaxing over the last few weeks, I am going to be dashing around – but it will be great if we end up having implemented all branches!

Feel a bit like one of those Chinese jugglers which start with one plate spinning and end up with 8 – although the system is holding up well, the users are still making a lot of mistakes which mean I have to go back and help them sort things out, and some days it feels like I have dropped a plate or two.

Another major event in the past week was the holding of the bank’s AGM – which in typical Cameroonian style was the third they have had in 10 years – so should really be called the Occasional General Meeting in my view! It was meant to start at 8am, eventually got going around 11.30 but was a good meeting with the shareholders asking many good questions of me, as I had to do a presentation on progress.

Next big thing (with photoes I am sure) is the celebration of 10 years of existence for RIC. They are going to combine this with marking 5 years of working with VSO and my official farewell – should be quite a day – in fact the events planned cover a week – possible including an interview with your truly on the local radio – I am a star at last!

Couple of nasty incidents last week involving robbery which is quite prevalent here – one of the branches was robbed during daylight hours and the thieves got away with Fcfa 1.5 million – a lot of dosh in Cameroon – but were last heard of surrounded in the forest by the local police – they will be lucky to get out alive. On a more mundane level, my next door neighbours flat was broken into, through the roof (I live on the top floor) – he is a wealthy lawyer, the brigands cleary thought he would have more in his flat than a VSO volunteer – lucky for me – as they trashed the place as well. The buildings occupants have now hired a security guard.

So now only about 7 weeks to go, lots of my VSO colleagues who started at the same time as me are already gone – its all a bit sad actually saying ta ra to them, but I am looking forward now to the end and seeing my family and friends again.

Probably one or two more entries on here, hope you have enjoyed reading this half as much as I have enjoyed writing it , hear from some of you by return I trust

cheers

More marching and a disaster in Moscow

Just a short note and yet more pictures of marching – you are probably as fed up with these as I am! This was national day last Tuesday – an excuse for lots more fascist marching – army, police, political parties and schools – so I just snapped some of the school kids to give you a flavour of the scene. The march lasts around 4 hours, I stayed for all of it last year, this year I lasted an hour – time to go I think!

Of course the main event this week had nothing to do with Cameroon – it was the sad demise of Chelsea in the Champions League final. Like most CFC fans I suspect, I was very pleased with the team’s performance, but we just ran out of luck. As I write this I am still nursing a hangover, great game, wrong result!

Coats of many colours

Hey

As you can see from the pictures, there has been yet another day of marching and celebrating here in Cameroon - the local folk certainly love these occasions. This one was in aid of May Day – with the particular theme of promoting health and safety in the workplace, and reducing death at work. I have not seen any statistics on this but it would not be a surprise if these were on the high side as in general life is treated cheaply in this part of the world – but they are trying to improve things.

As this day is also seen as a good way of promoting the company, the decision was taken that we would all be kitted out in the splendiferous garments you see!

The cloth for this cost 3,000,000 Fcfa (about £3,000 / $6,000), which RIC paid for. The workers then had to pay for their own tailoring – so my natty little number cost me 10,000 Fcfa (£10 / $20) to get knocked up – it will go down really well on the Fulham Palace Broadway when I get back - think I should wear it to the first Chelsea game next season! Well, perhaps not but anyway as you can see many companies were vying for the title of most brightly dressed – I think we did pretty well. Once more I was given the honour of being a flag bearer – this time the company flag – and again got lots of cheers from the watching crowds – as a “Monsieur Le Blanc” I am still quite a novelty in these parts. After the march past, it was back to the local bar for food and drinks, again courtesy of the company – all in all a fun day. The guy with the beard and the epaulettes made from condom packets is a local comedian btw – he is very funny, I start laughing just looking at him.

May Day was followed by me then spending a week away implementing the latest branch – this one in the town of Nkongsamba, which is halfway between Bafoussam and Douala. This is quite an interesting town as it used to be the capital of that part of Cameroon before Douala took prominence, and it also used to be the centre of the coffee trade in Cameroon. Sadly as it is no longer the capital, and the coffee trade still has not recovered from the last crash, it has fallen on hard times, but there still are a number of Art Deco style buildings and some broad tree lined roads – both unusual for Cameroon. The implementation went very smoothly – me and the team are getting pretty slick at this now – so that just leaves one medium sized branch to do next month and a couple of tiddlers which I might get done before I go, if not the team can do them themselves I am sure. Although the number of customers is tiny compared with LloydsTSB (where for example at one point I was responsible for a system that was to handle upwards of 12 million customers accounts) in an odd way this job has proved more interesting – I think because I have had to think of everything in IT terms from the moment a customer opens a relationship with the bank all the way through to the last drop of MIS – something I did not do in my full time career even though I worked in banks for over 25 years, tending to specialise in one area or another – plus I am having to teach staff some very basic banking things like what a GL is – again in the UK you can reasonably expect that the staff will have a pretty good banking knowledge.

Time is really flying by now, and in the past week I have booked my flight out, so the end is truly in sight. I leave here on July 31^st, heading to France for a month before getting back to the UK – so two and a bit months to go, seems hard to believe it’s almost over!

Finally cannot go with a word about Chelsea – even though we could end up winning nothing - what a great season it has been I just hope they do even better next year when I will be able to see them!

Hear from some of you I hope, tah rah for now

Duncan

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

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

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!

Flora and some small fauna

Thought you might to see some of the flora and a few choice bits of fauna that are here in Bafoussam. Nice eh?

However, before you get the idea that I am lazing around in some tropical paradise, I should point out the town itself is a living hell in the dry season, hot and very dusty – so I went for a walk outside town last week to get some relief from it, and took the flower pictures.

The fauna side is also pretty limited – anything bigger than these chaps was eaten long ago by the locals – bush meat as it is called – and even the insects are in danger if there’s a spot of nourishment on them! Apart from these two, I also have a little lizard (Lennie – I might have mentioned him before) in residence but he is extremely camera shy! I do not include the mice in this category, they remain my worst enemies, have given up trying to catch them, they are just too fast, do my best to ignore them - it’s the only way

Anyway, not missing British weather, but increasingly looking forward to coming home, six months and 5 more branches to go!!

Financial year ends!

Just a quick note for all you accountants out there (yes, some of my best friends are bean counters) – I am pleased to report that for the 3 branches live on the system we managed to close the financial year ok!

This took a lot of hard work and late nights in the past week, so I will now be celebrating New Year this weekend with a clear mind :-)

Another year passes......

Hi

So the year ends and another beckons – and I only have around 7 months to go, amazing really how time seems to have speeded up recently!

Project wise things continue to go well, I now have all 3 branches in Bafoussam in parallel run mode, and hope that by the end of January we will go fully live. There is a little reluctance to do away with the manual system – it’s a comfort blanket thing, RIC have been using the cardboard account cards since the very beginning and to file them away for ever is a big leap of faith I guess. Once we take that step then its full steam ahead to implement the system in the remaining 5 branches which are spread around West Cameroon.

Xmas was really nice as I had a couple of VSO colleagues staying at my place over the period. We managed to generate (and consume) a fair bit of festive spirit – and I stayed healthy this time, as opposed to last year when you may recall I was ill all over the holidays – so I suppose my system is now fully acclimatised to the vagaries of Cameroon cuisine.

New Year will be celebrated with an end of year party at work, then probably a quiet whisky on my “terrace” to bring 2008 in – I will be thinking about home I’m sure, as I am getting a little bit homesick now - combination of the time of year plus the end is in sight – but hey ho, lots still to do, lots of Cameroon still to see – the Far North for example – so onwards and upwards!

Wherever you are, hope 2008 goes well for you!

Born House for Esme

Pictures from yet another celebration – they do like a good party here – this time to celebrate the fact that that I have become a grandfather!

Its called a “Born House” and the idea is that all your friends come to your house (in my case the local bar was substituted) and you give them drinks and food. Two of my colleagues volunteered to do the cooking, I just put up the money – which was not much, as there is a social fund in operation that everyone contributes too, which subsidies events like this - so we had a grand spread – that’s fou fou corn (the white stuff) and ndole (the brown stuff) – both of which are delicious albeit presentationally poor! The other great delicacy is the (whole) gizzard of a chicken which as the “big man” in this case I should have eaten – luckily they know I am vegetarian so did not pursue the point.

The other pictures - me and Mr Tata having a beer, and me with the very tasteful picture I was presented with to honour the occasion – I am sure Esme will be happy to display this in her bedroom! There is also a traditional child’s outfit being made, which I will get later.

Hope the Xmas season not proving too stressful, a bientot!

Bafoussam Bash

I was sitting on my balcony the other night when I heard some drumming and singing wafting up from the chefferie (kings compound) which I overlook.

Being a nosy bugger I wandered down to have a look and discovered a very big celebration in progress, to honour some visiting dignitaries. Luckily, I spotted the guide to the compound, who I have got to know, and he put me in a front row seat. Some excellent dancing and music ensued, plus several speeches by the Fon (king) himself!

It’s a funny mix here – something like this, which is totally traditional and stretches back hundreds of years – alongside folk wandering around chatting into mobile phones – and the two systems seem to coexist quite happily – strange.