These are pictures from the trip I took to the Far North region with Sulemanu.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2049256&id=1337370415&l=a77a0626fa
And these are a few pictures Sulemanu took with his camera that I made a copy of. They're from no particular time and are kind of spread out in their location/time.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2049258&id=1337370415&l=e79074afce
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Going home.
I made it back safely to the United States with only a few minor road bumps along the way, Cameroon-side. I left Banyo on Thursday night, May 13th, around 8pm to take the night bus to Bafoussam. Just about everyone I had become friends with wished me farewell at the bus park and I was on my way, alone. The bus wasn’t more than an hour into the 10 hour+ journey to Bafoussam before we got a flat tire. No big deal. It only delayed us by about 15 minutes to change it, and then when we got into the next biggest town, Mayo Darle, we stopped at the bus park there for an hour for someone to patch the tire.
Since it’s the start of the wet season, it had been raining on and off and some sections of the road were pretty bad. We got to one point where another bus going the opposite direction had gotten stuck. Many times on these dirt roads, if the road is bad enough, people start driving around the bad section onto the grass nearby. After a while, once many drivers have used it, there is basically a new side-road, parallel to the existing one. Our bus driver decided to take that side road although it wasn’t looking much better.
The bus driver and his helpers made everyone get out in order to lessen the weight of the vehicle so it would be less likely to sink into the mud. All of the passengers had to walk along the muddy main road to the point where the side road meets up with the main road again. It wasn’t far, probably only a quarter mile. But then we waited and waited, and eventually we could hear the bus coming, its tires just barely making it through the mud until all we could hear were tires slipping in place, going nowhere.
We all walked over to the side road where the bus was–sitting perpendicular to the direction of the side road, stuck in mud with its rear tires in ruts several inches below ground. The bus workers were using a rope to help pull it out while the driver tried driving it out. Then eventually all of the male passengers gathered together, myself included, to push the bus out. No such luck. We then rocked it back and forth a bit until eventually it got out of the ruts and could go with a nice layer of rubber left on the mud in the ruts. We all hopped in and took off; many of us with our feet covered in mud.
As I was nodding off at around four in the morning, I could feel the bus driver was going pretty fast as we hit a real bumpy patch. He could barely slow down since he was going so fast and the whole bus rattled something fierce until “PSSSSHHHH” another flat tire. Luckily we had had that other tire repaired so I figured we should be good to get going again in another twenty minutes. An hour passes by before I finally get an answer from someone who talked to the bus driver (who was M.I.A) as to why we weren’t going anywhere. Apparently part of the steering linkage had broken.
I took a look at it and it looked as though just the rubber boot (seal) surrounding a ball joint had ruptured. Now that’s not good, especially in dirty conditions, but it certainly doesn’t prevent you from driving. I certainly don’t think any Cameroonian cares about something like that being ruptured considering they often run their machines ragged until they completely fall apart. But they said it was no good and we’d have to wait for another bus to come from Bafoussam to pick us up. A couple of cars passed by as the sun was just starting to dawn and a few passengers were able to negotiate their way into getting to Bafoussam. I sat in the bus and nodded off for a bit. At around 7 am I asked someone how long it would be before the replacement bus got to us. They told me noon. If the bus got to us at noon, and we still had another four hours to go, plus I’d probably have to wait a few hours to get a bus to Douala from Bafoussam if even possible, then take that five hour bus ride from Bafoussam to Douala, that doesn’t put me in Douala until around midnight. There was no way I wanted to wait that long. I had to find a way to Bafoussam.
I flagged a car taxi down as it passed in order to get a ride. I wasn’t sure if the driver would take me with my two large suitcases but for a pretty steep price as far as taxis go (5,000 francs, $10), he could take me to Foumban (a fairly large town before Bafoussam) and I could get to Douala from there. He already had two passengers and we drove out to a real far out place to drop them off. It was a little weird being so far away from the main road, with not a person in sight for miles with a man I did not know at all with all of my personal belongings. Luckily nothing bad happened.
We drove around for a bit and he ran out of gas in the middle of nowhere. We were able to coast long enough, having to constantly restart the engine trying to squeeze every drop out of the gas tank in order to get to a place that could sell some gas. Before he bought gas, I could’ve sworn I saw him drink some gasoline out of a water bottle. When I asked him about it, he said no, he only used it to prime the carburetor when he got out and opened the hood shortly afterwards. Shortly is a relative term. I really think he drank some gasoline. He didn’t seem too with it if you know what I mean. Anyway, we stopped at his house along the way so he could drop off some wood he bought shortly after picking me up. I met his wife and several children before we headed to the bus park.
We got to Foumban and he dropped me off at a bus park and I was able to quickly take a bus straight to Douala. It made numerous stops along the way but only took about six hours to get there. We got into Douala around five and I took a taxi to get to the Baptist Resthouse. I told the driver what it was called and the neighborhood it was in. He seemed pretty confident he knew where I was going. After a few minutes of driving around aimlessly in large circles around the neighborhood, I could tell he had no idea where I wanted to go. He was driving in the neighborhood I think hoping I would spot it. I had no idea what it looked like anymore. It had been four months since I had been to this rest house and I was only there for one night. I even told him it was near a Toyota dealership since that’s what I was told. He still had no idea where to go. I couldn’t believe it. You’d think a taxi driver would know where a place is, especially something like the only Toyota dealership in a small neighborhood in Douala, but no, he didn’t know. I had to make several phone calls and even ask some people on the street. Eventually we found the place (across the street from the Toyota dealership). I didn’t get settled in until around seven. After almost 24 hours of being en route I was exhausted.
That night, I met a man named Thierry who helped the taxi driver and I find the rest house. He worked for the Baptist Mission in Cameroon and knew where the rest house was. He hopped in the taxi and as we were talking, I mentioned that I wouldn’t be leaving until the following evening. He wanted to hang out and I knew I would have nothing to do on Saturday before I left so I agreed. He met me early in the morning Saturday and we went out. He took me to his mother’s house so I could meet her. She fed us spaghetti and talked a little bit. We then went to the bank which I needed to do in order to withdrawal some cash for fees at the airport. We also went to a grocery store so I could get a few food items to take back home.
We went back to the rest house and hung out for a few hours playing cards and going on the internet. I left for the airport around five in the afternoon. Thierry helped me by staying at the airport for a bit to make sure everything was alright. When we arrived, I was greeted by baggage handlers wearing green outfits. They looked pretty legitimate. They weighed my bags with a hand-held scale that had a hook on one end. You hook it into the suitcase handle and pull up until the suitcase is lifted off the ground and then read the analog dial. Both of my bags were overweight and I had a feeling that might be the case. I had made sure to withdraw enough at the bank to cover that if they were, afterall, Cameroon is a pretty much cash only environment. The airport might’ve taken cards but I didn’t want to chance it. They did have an ATM there, though.
The baggage handlers told me it was 180,000 francs ($360) for two overweight bags. I knew that wasn’t the case. Thierry and I argued with them for probably twenty minutes before I finally got so fed up I demanded they show me where the Brussels Airlines (my airline) office was. I just needed to speak to someone there and they would clear it all up. I checked their website while I was at the rest house earlier that day to make sure what their fees were. It’s 50 euros per overweight bag. Two bags translates to 65,600 francs. Not 180,000. I found the Brussels Airlines counter, in a different section of the airport and the men there told me I was correct. They said, “don’t listen to the guys outside, they don’t even work here.” I couldn’t believe it. They were just people trying to make a buck by weighing people bags for them, and then more than just a buck by scamming them in overage fees. Ridiculous. I was so outraged.
I handed my bags over to the Brussels Airlines people, checked in, said goodbye to Thierry and proceeded towards the gate. I paid my 10,000 franc ($20) airport tax and went through security which was a breeze. Since I arrived so early (my flight didn’t leave until 11:40, this all happened around 7:15), there was no one in the security line. I was the first person at my gate and waited around a bit. The gate is an air-conditioned room while the hallway is not. About an hour before boarding the plane, they made everyone who was in the gate exit into the hallway and re-enter. It was an extra security measure just to make sure everyone in there had their passports and tickets. They got to me and told me I needed to go down to customs. There was a problem identifying an object in my checked luggage. I left the secured part of the terminal and went to customs.
I walked into this small room with two people working. There was a guy, a girl, and a TV monitor with checked luggage going through the scanner just outside the room. The girl was the one talking to me and told me to open my suitcase. As I was doing so, I looked up at the man in the room who happened to be sleeping. His eyes were closed the majority of the time. The girl was too busy preoccupied with me to watch the scanner monitor. As a result, bags were just going right on by, one after another on the screen, completely unchecked. I chuckled a bit to myself, hoping no terrorists were on my plane.
I pulled out a few items from my suitcase and we determined it was just a few straw hot pads/coasters for a table that were causing the problem. They told me to close my suitcase back up and then they told me they wanted 10,000 francs ($20) for it. I asked why and they said for customs. There was no legitimate reason for them to be demanding money but they wanted it. If this were a gendarme (national police) at the side of the road demanding a ridiculous bribe, you can always stall until he gives up and lets you through but these were airport workers. I didn’t want to be on their bad side because they could’ve very well just not put my bags on the plane as soon as I left customs. I didn’t want the hassle, even though it already was a hassle and they were completely in the wrong.
I pulled out my wallet and showed them all I had was 4,000 francs. They told me it’s not enough and that they needed 10,000. I said, “what do you want me to do? It’s all I have.” So, they just told me to give them everything. I left customs and walked on that plane without any money on me. Luckily I didn’t need it. I only had a two hour layover in Brussels and didn’t need to buy any food while there. I was fed two breakfasts that Sunday morning, once towards the end of the eight and a half hour Brussels Airlines flight from Douala to Brussels and then again on the six and a half hour Continental flight from Brussels to Newark.
Once we reached cruising altitude on the flight from Douala to Brussels, an announcement came on the speakers saying they needed to spray disinfectant to sanitize the cabin. That had never happened to me before on a flight and immediately my mind flashed back to my days of visiting my family in Houston, TX during the summer. At around two in the morning, a bug truck would come by to release chemicals into the atmosphere to kill off all sorts of little critters in bug infested Houston. I remember one time my Aunt Caroline and I got back to her house from somewhere real late at night. As soon as we got out of the car, the bug truck was coming up the street. I remember my Aunt Caroline yelling, “quick! Hurry up! Get inside! The bug truck is coming!” You definitely did not want to be outside at that moment.
I looked back in the airplane and two flight attendants, one in each aisle, starting from the back and walking towards the front had a can of spray held above their heads and slightly back. They walked up the aisle quickly while releasing a nice little foggy spray to fill the cabin. Ahhh! Nowhere to run to. It actually smelled not so bad. My flights were uneventful with a couple of movies/TV shows to watch in each. I arrived in Newark and had no problems with customs there. I was greeted by my mom outside the baggage claim/customs area and was on my way home.
All in all it was a wonderful trip and a great opportunity. I feel I learned so much about a culture vastly different from American life. It really gave me a sense of what like could be like for anyone and how much opportunity we do have in America. We shouldn’t take anything for granted and be extremely joyful in what we do have. I’ll write again fairly soon for a better wrap up/reflection.
Since it’s the start of the wet season, it had been raining on and off and some sections of the road were pretty bad. We got to one point where another bus going the opposite direction had gotten stuck. Many times on these dirt roads, if the road is bad enough, people start driving around the bad section onto the grass nearby. After a while, once many drivers have used it, there is basically a new side-road, parallel to the existing one. Our bus driver decided to take that side road although it wasn’t looking much better.
The bus driver and his helpers made everyone get out in order to lessen the weight of the vehicle so it would be less likely to sink into the mud. All of the passengers had to walk along the muddy main road to the point where the side road meets up with the main road again. It wasn’t far, probably only a quarter mile. But then we waited and waited, and eventually we could hear the bus coming, its tires just barely making it through the mud until all we could hear were tires slipping in place, going nowhere.
We all walked over to the side road where the bus was–sitting perpendicular to the direction of the side road, stuck in mud with its rear tires in ruts several inches below ground. The bus workers were using a rope to help pull it out while the driver tried driving it out. Then eventually all of the male passengers gathered together, myself included, to push the bus out. No such luck. We then rocked it back and forth a bit until eventually it got out of the ruts and could go with a nice layer of rubber left on the mud in the ruts. We all hopped in and took off; many of us with our feet covered in mud.
As I was nodding off at around four in the morning, I could feel the bus driver was going pretty fast as we hit a real bumpy patch. He could barely slow down since he was going so fast and the whole bus rattled something fierce until “PSSSSHHHH” another flat tire. Luckily we had had that other tire repaired so I figured we should be good to get going again in another twenty minutes. An hour passes by before I finally get an answer from someone who talked to the bus driver (who was M.I.A) as to why we weren’t going anywhere. Apparently part of the steering linkage had broken.
I took a look at it and it looked as though just the rubber boot (seal) surrounding a ball joint had ruptured. Now that’s not good, especially in dirty conditions, but it certainly doesn’t prevent you from driving. I certainly don’t think any Cameroonian cares about something like that being ruptured considering they often run their machines ragged until they completely fall apart. But they said it was no good and we’d have to wait for another bus to come from Bafoussam to pick us up. A couple of cars passed by as the sun was just starting to dawn and a few passengers were able to negotiate their way into getting to Bafoussam. I sat in the bus and nodded off for a bit. At around 7 am I asked someone how long it would be before the replacement bus got to us. They told me noon. If the bus got to us at noon, and we still had another four hours to go, plus I’d probably have to wait a few hours to get a bus to Douala from Bafoussam if even possible, then take that five hour bus ride from Bafoussam to Douala, that doesn’t put me in Douala until around midnight. There was no way I wanted to wait that long. I had to find a way to Bafoussam.
I flagged a car taxi down as it passed in order to get a ride. I wasn’t sure if the driver would take me with my two large suitcases but for a pretty steep price as far as taxis go (5,000 francs, $10), he could take me to Foumban (a fairly large town before Bafoussam) and I could get to Douala from there. He already had two passengers and we drove out to a real far out place to drop them off. It was a little weird being so far away from the main road, with not a person in sight for miles with a man I did not know at all with all of my personal belongings. Luckily nothing bad happened.
We drove around for a bit and he ran out of gas in the middle of nowhere. We were able to coast long enough, having to constantly restart the engine trying to squeeze every drop out of the gas tank in order to get to a place that could sell some gas. Before he bought gas, I could’ve sworn I saw him drink some gasoline out of a water bottle. When I asked him about it, he said no, he only used it to prime the carburetor when he got out and opened the hood shortly afterwards. Shortly is a relative term. I really think he drank some gasoline. He didn’t seem too with it if you know what I mean. Anyway, we stopped at his house along the way so he could drop off some wood he bought shortly after picking me up. I met his wife and several children before we headed to the bus park.
We got to Foumban and he dropped me off at a bus park and I was able to quickly take a bus straight to Douala. It made numerous stops along the way but only took about six hours to get there. We got into Douala around five and I took a taxi to get to the Baptist Resthouse. I told the driver what it was called and the neighborhood it was in. He seemed pretty confident he knew where I was going. After a few minutes of driving around aimlessly in large circles around the neighborhood, I could tell he had no idea where I wanted to go. He was driving in the neighborhood I think hoping I would spot it. I had no idea what it looked like anymore. It had been four months since I had been to this rest house and I was only there for one night. I even told him it was near a Toyota dealership since that’s what I was told. He still had no idea where to go. I couldn’t believe it. You’d think a taxi driver would know where a place is, especially something like the only Toyota dealership in a small neighborhood in Douala, but no, he didn’t know. I had to make several phone calls and even ask some people on the street. Eventually we found the place (across the street from the Toyota dealership). I didn’t get settled in until around seven. After almost 24 hours of being en route I was exhausted.
That night, I met a man named Thierry who helped the taxi driver and I find the rest house. He worked for the Baptist Mission in Cameroon and knew where the rest house was. He hopped in the taxi and as we were talking, I mentioned that I wouldn’t be leaving until the following evening. He wanted to hang out and I knew I would have nothing to do on Saturday before I left so I agreed. He met me early in the morning Saturday and we went out. He took me to his mother’s house so I could meet her. She fed us spaghetti and talked a little bit. We then went to the bank which I needed to do in order to withdrawal some cash for fees at the airport. We also went to a grocery store so I could get a few food items to take back home.
We went back to the rest house and hung out for a few hours playing cards and going on the internet. I left for the airport around five in the afternoon. Thierry helped me by staying at the airport for a bit to make sure everything was alright. When we arrived, I was greeted by baggage handlers wearing green outfits. They looked pretty legitimate. They weighed my bags with a hand-held scale that had a hook on one end. You hook it into the suitcase handle and pull up until the suitcase is lifted off the ground and then read the analog dial. Both of my bags were overweight and I had a feeling that might be the case. I had made sure to withdraw enough at the bank to cover that if they were, afterall, Cameroon is a pretty much cash only environment. The airport might’ve taken cards but I didn’t want to chance it. They did have an ATM there, though.
The baggage handlers told me it was 180,000 francs ($360) for two overweight bags. I knew that wasn’t the case. Thierry and I argued with them for probably twenty minutes before I finally got so fed up I demanded they show me where the Brussels Airlines (my airline) office was. I just needed to speak to someone there and they would clear it all up. I checked their website while I was at the rest house earlier that day to make sure what their fees were. It’s 50 euros per overweight bag. Two bags translates to 65,600 francs. Not 180,000. I found the Brussels Airlines counter, in a different section of the airport and the men there told me I was correct. They said, “don’t listen to the guys outside, they don’t even work here.” I couldn’t believe it. They were just people trying to make a buck by weighing people bags for them, and then more than just a buck by scamming them in overage fees. Ridiculous. I was so outraged.
I handed my bags over to the Brussels Airlines people, checked in, said goodbye to Thierry and proceeded towards the gate. I paid my 10,000 franc ($20) airport tax and went through security which was a breeze. Since I arrived so early (my flight didn’t leave until 11:40, this all happened around 7:15), there was no one in the security line. I was the first person at my gate and waited around a bit. The gate is an air-conditioned room while the hallway is not. About an hour before boarding the plane, they made everyone who was in the gate exit into the hallway and re-enter. It was an extra security measure just to make sure everyone in there had their passports and tickets. They got to me and told me I needed to go down to customs. There was a problem identifying an object in my checked luggage. I left the secured part of the terminal and went to customs.
I walked into this small room with two people working. There was a guy, a girl, and a TV monitor with checked luggage going through the scanner just outside the room. The girl was the one talking to me and told me to open my suitcase. As I was doing so, I looked up at the man in the room who happened to be sleeping. His eyes were closed the majority of the time. The girl was too busy preoccupied with me to watch the scanner monitor. As a result, bags were just going right on by, one after another on the screen, completely unchecked. I chuckled a bit to myself, hoping no terrorists were on my plane.
I pulled out a few items from my suitcase and we determined it was just a few straw hot pads/coasters for a table that were causing the problem. They told me to close my suitcase back up and then they told me they wanted 10,000 francs ($20) for it. I asked why and they said for customs. There was no legitimate reason for them to be demanding money but they wanted it. If this were a gendarme (national police) at the side of the road demanding a ridiculous bribe, you can always stall until he gives up and lets you through but these were airport workers. I didn’t want to be on their bad side because they could’ve very well just not put my bags on the plane as soon as I left customs. I didn’t want the hassle, even though it already was a hassle and they were completely in the wrong.
I pulled out my wallet and showed them all I had was 4,000 francs. They told me it’s not enough and that they needed 10,000. I said, “what do you want me to do? It’s all I have.” So, they just told me to give them everything. I left customs and walked on that plane without any money on me. Luckily I didn’t need it. I only had a two hour layover in Brussels and didn’t need to buy any food while there. I was fed two breakfasts that Sunday morning, once towards the end of the eight and a half hour Brussels Airlines flight from Douala to Brussels and then again on the six and a half hour Continental flight from Brussels to Newark.
Once we reached cruising altitude on the flight from Douala to Brussels, an announcement came on the speakers saying they needed to spray disinfectant to sanitize the cabin. That had never happened to me before on a flight and immediately my mind flashed back to my days of visiting my family in Houston, TX during the summer. At around two in the morning, a bug truck would come by to release chemicals into the atmosphere to kill off all sorts of little critters in bug infested Houston. I remember one time my Aunt Caroline and I got back to her house from somewhere real late at night. As soon as we got out of the car, the bug truck was coming up the street. I remember my Aunt Caroline yelling, “quick! Hurry up! Get inside! The bug truck is coming!” You definitely did not want to be outside at that moment.
I looked back in the airplane and two flight attendants, one in each aisle, starting from the back and walking towards the front had a can of spray held above their heads and slightly back. They walked up the aisle quickly while releasing a nice little foggy spray to fill the cabin. Ahhh! Nowhere to run to. It actually smelled not so bad. My flights were uneventful with a couple of movies/TV shows to watch in each. I arrived in Newark and had no problems with customs there. I was greeted by my mom outside the baggage claim/customs area and was on my way home.
All in all it was a wonderful trip and a great opportunity. I feel I learned so much about a culture vastly different from American life. It really gave me a sense of what like could be like for anyone and how much opportunity we do have in America. We shouldn’t take anything for granted and be extremely joyful in what we do have. I’ll write again fairly soon for a better wrap up/reflection.
Saturday, May 15, 2010
More photos.
These are photos from my time back in Banyo after coming back from the Baka land. I'll upload photos from the Far North soon.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2048677&id=1337370415&l=736acc0285
I'm in Douala now and about to leave the Baptist Resthouse here to head to the airport! :-)
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2048677&id=1337370415&l=736acc0285
I'm in Douala now and about to leave the Baptist Resthouse here to head to the airport! :-)
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Back from the Far North
Last Friday, Jean-Luc, who arranged our trip to Rhumsiki, showed up to the Baptist Rest house in Maroua where we stayed just a little before 7:30am with the driver whose name I can’t remember. Sulemanu and I weren’t quite ready to go and the driver actually needed to get gas. I paid him 35,000 francs of the 50,000 total so he could get gas to prepare for the journey. The driver, Sulemanu and I left around 8am for the two hour drive to Rhumsiki. When we got there, we were met by teenage looking boys ready to give a tour. The driver picked one named Jean-Pierre.
Jean Pierre led Sulemanu and I around the town of Rhumsiki while the driver waited around at a hotel. In the far north, the land is pretty flat overall but Rhumsiki has tons of tall rocks shooting out of the ground. It almost reminds me of the cliffs in Arizona, California, Nevada, etc. that just shoot up out of nowhere. There are plenty of smaller rocks in the town and many of the people of Rhumsiki, known as the Kapsiki people, use these rocks to build walls between farms and house properties.
Rhumsiki is named after one particular big rock jetting out of the ground called Rhum, pronounced “room”. The siki part was named after a hunter, Siki, who had lived up on the rock around hundreds of years ago. In Rhumsiki, there are many pottery makers, basket weavers, cloth weavers, etc. Seeing them, the Kapsiki, and where they live is part of the charm of going on the tour, besides seeing the beautiful landscape. I bought a few small pieces of pottery that were made from soil and oil as well as a few other souvenirs. The soil/oil pottery is formed, baked in the sun, then polished to a shiny black finish. I was able to try some homemade wine on the tour too. They mix ground up corn with water, let it ferment for two days, and heat it in a pot over a fire when serving. It tasted like wine but was a bit thick and a tiny bit gritty. Sulemanu, who used to be a devout Muslim, and has never had alcohol before, did not like it at all. His face wrinkled at the taste of it.
On the tour, we also met a traditional medicine man. For a price, I would be able to ask him a question about my future. Both Sulemanu and I knew, of course, whatever his prediction is, it isn’t necessarily true but we were curious what the ritual looked like. I couldn’t think of a question right away so Sulemanu, who was speaking both Fulfulde and French to Jeanne-Pierre, who in turn was speaking Kapsiki to the medicine man, said I could ask him anything, like about marriage for example. So I thought to ask if I had already met the woman I will marry. Sulemanu told me it would probably cost the full price, 1,000 francs ($2). I didn’t really want to pay $2, which may not seem like much but you can get lots of things in Cameroon for less than 1,000 francs. It seemed a bit steep to me.
So I thought of a different question: would my flight from Douala to Brussels be affected by the volcano in Iceland? Apparently that would also be 1,000 francs! So I gave in and stuck with the first question. The medicine man said he’d answer both anyway though. He took a big bowl filled with sand and poured some water in it. He then shoved shells and sticks into the sand. One stick represented me, another represented Cameroon, another represented Africa, and another represented Europe. He then took a live crab out of a vase, spat on it, blew on it, and put it up to his ear. He then spoke to it very rapidly, almost in a chastising way, spat on it again, and then put it down in the sand. He then covered that bowl with another bowl, inverted upside-down.
We waited a few minutes for the crab to do its thing. When the medicine man lifted the cover off, he analyzed where the crab was and where it had been in the bowl. He told me that my flight would not be affected and I will be able to travel fine. He also said it will be long time before I am married. It’s not time yet. I guess the question got a bit lost in translation but oh well, close enough. He also said when I am married, it will be a happy marriage, free from problems and divorce. We’ll see if the medicine man is correct both in the near future and in the rest of my life.
Of course I don’t believe what the man said has any sort of realistic truth to it, but it was interesting to see him conduct his connection with the spiritual world and also it was nice to help an older gentleman out financially. I have a video of the whole ritual I’m hoping to post online sometime when I get back to America. He closed the ceremony with a benediction by sprinkling water on Jean-Pierre’s feet, then my feet, and then Sulemanu’s feet as we exited his place.
All in all we were in Rhumsiki for a little over two hours. It was a bit expensive to get there (45,000 francs for the car, 5,000 for the tour, and a thousand here and there for pottery, the medicine man, etc.) but it was worth the trip. Sulemanu told me that the far north tends to have darker colored people and it’s definitely true. In Banyo, the Fulfulde people tend to have more of a lighter shade of black but people in the far north are definitely much much darker.
We left Maroua the next day, Saturday, and spent a night in Ngoudere at the same place we stayed on the way up. Again, the bathroom with no light, no toilet paper, etc. but the faucet seemed to work better this time (see previous blog). I thought about how the faucet probably works inside, what’s causing it to not work until full blast, and realized all I have to do is just turn it on a little bit and then smack it really hard.
We found out this time though, that our room key happened to be the same key for all of the rooms. When we arrived, there was no one to greet us and give us a key. We made a phone call to the person in charge who at the moment was out. We noticed a set of two keys on the table when you first walk in, one for the main entrance door, and one for the room. The woman on the phone told us that was our key and I noticed it had a three on it, which was our room number just a couple days prior. She confirmed that we were in the same room as before. Then, later on that day, there was a man in the hall wondering what happened to the key on the table… it was HIS key for getting into HIS room. So we tried it and sure enough, it worked for his room. Then another person also wanted the key for their room, the SAME key. What a jip! We made sure to keep our valuables with us when we left that evening for dinner, just in case. No security there!
We left Ngoudere on Sunday morning around 7 am. We took a kind of bus I had never been in before. It’s made by Renault, is very jacked up, with big tires and a very very very cramped passenger space. All 25 passengers are crammed in the back of this bus with hardly any leg room. The driver, and his two helpers sit in a separate, closed off section of the bus, almost like a prisoner transport bus with a steel wall/wire barrier. You enter the bus from the one back door, which requires nobody to be sitting in the center aisle, which also has seats that fold up so people can get through, and then people can sit when no one is moving in/out. Most buses here, besides really really big ones, have folding seats in the aisle in order to cram more people in.
Sulemanu and I were able to get seats in the front row which he said had the most room. But throughout a decent chunk of the trip the guy’s knees behind me were digging into my back and side. There was so little leg room I had to either sit with my butt only half on the seat and my knees pointed down, sit all the way back with my knees bent upwards, or have them angled to one side. If at any point they touched the metal wall in front of me in between me and the driver, I could feel the burn from the heat of the engine right behind that wall. The ride was very bumpy and very uncomfortable. For once I was very very thankful I was not an inch taller than I am right now (just under 5’9”). I can’t imagine how anyone any taller could manage in that bus.
We were on the bus for six hours before we really stopped for a while in Tibati. I was so happy to be out of that bus and wasn’t sure how I was going to make the rest. The bus is a slower kind of bus than the ones I’ve taken before, and the trip from Ngoudere to Banyo is about 11-12 hours in it. We left Tibati at 2pm and drove for about two hours. As I was nodding off to sleep despite the massive bumps in the road, a load screeching noise came from the engine.
We pulled over and they stopped the engine. I thought to myself it must just be a bad belt. Hopefully it’ll be okay. Well 20 minutes passed and I realized it was more serious than just a bad belt. I figured it was probably a seized pulley, which made sense for the screeching noise. Also, there was definitely a coolant leak since the driver kept adding water to the radiator every few hours. However, he wasn’t using a coolant mixture, he was using straight water. Not only does that not protect against the water from boiling, but straight water does not have any rust-inhibitors. I imagine that the seal in the water pump could have gone bad, (explaining the coolant leak) and the water rushing passed the seal, caused the water pump bearing to rust and go bad (causing the seizing of a pulley and the screeching noise).
I asked the driver as best I could think of if it was the water pump. Est-ce que c’est la pump de l’eau? I believe he said he didn’t think so but I couldn’t catch everything he said in French. There were definitely several maybes in his explanation of what it could be as he was talking to me, putting the valve cover back on that he had just taken off. Maybe it could be this, maybe that, maybe this, maybe that. It was then I realized we weren’t going to be going anywhere anytime soon.
They hadn’t touched the water pump, or even the belt for that matter, which didn’t make much sense since I can’t think of anything else that would cause the screeching we just heard besides a belt problem. They drained the oil, took the oil pan off and was looking around underneath the engine. Sulemanu and I walked up the road a little bit to a nearby village to see what else is around. There were only a few homes, no stores and no electricity. We bought some fruit from a boy selling bananas and mangoes, hung around for a little bit and then walked back the bus where everyone else was still waiting at the side of the road. Then, dark clouds started to form in the sky. It was about 6:30pm at this point and we had been stopped for over two hours.
Sulemanu and I headed back to the village where we just were and it started to pour. We found shelter in someone’s home and everyone there pretty much accepted the fate that this is where we would all be for the night. So we made pillows out of our bags and laid down on the ground to see if perhaps we could get some sleep. Well, Sulemanu didn’t want to sleep there. He didn’t want to deal with any snakes, rats, etc. while sleeping on the floor. So, when the rain cleared up a bit we walked back to the road and hitched a ride with two truck drivers on their way from Maroua to Banyo to deliver goods. This was around 8:45 and we made a very cramped, mud-ridden hour and a half drive to Mbamti, the next biggest town on the way to Banyo. There, we could hopefully find an Auberge (hotel) to spend the night.
Along the way, on the very bad, very soggy muddy roads we came across a truck that was almost perpendicular to the road because it had slid around so much. There was a multitude of guys trying to push it out of the mud and we waited around for 20 minutes for the road to be clear to pass. We got into Mbamti around 10:15 and all the rooms had been occupied by truck drivers spending the night because of the bad roads. Luckily, Sulemanu found a room in a random person’s home who happened to have a family member that was away that night. We shared a double bed in this random place in who knows what kind of sanitary condition but at least it was better than the floor of the other place.
I then woke up the next morning at 6am because Sulemanu said he found us a car taxi that would take us to Banyo. I got ready, went to the bathroom (a very small hole in the ground outside surrounded by a woven, straw fence), and washed my hands and face using water that had been collected in buckets from the rain the night before. We then waited, and waited. The taxi driver said he only needed two more passengers so the car could be full (even though as it was we already exceeded the number of available seats in the car). We waited over two hours, until 8:30 when we finally took off: eight adults in a five seater who knows what brand car. We got into Banyo at 9:40 and I had never been more happy to be back in Banyo. It felt so wonderful to take a shower again and relax.
I’ve been finishing up some final things here in Banyo. This morning, Dayyibu, Abdu and I hiked up Mt. Banyo, where we had hiked the first week I was in Cameroon. It was a little over two hours up and a little under two hours down. Quite tiring! Tomorrow night I’ll leave and take a night bus to Bafoussam. Friday morning I’ll take a bus from Bafoussam to Douala, spend a night at the Baptist Rest house there, and then I leave Saturday night to head for Brussels and then Newark. I may not update again until I get back in the States.
Jean Pierre led Sulemanu and I around the town of Rhumsiki while the driver waited around at a hotel. In the far north, the land is pretty flat overall but Rhumsiki has tons of tall rocks shooting out of the ground. It almost reminds me of the cliffs in Arizona, California, Nevada, etc. that just shoot up out of nowhere. There are plenty of smaller rocks in the town and many of the people of Rhumsiki, known as the Kapsiki people, use these rocks to build walls between farms and house properties.
Rhumsiki is named after one particular big rock jetting out of the ground called Rhum, pronounced “room”. The siki part was named after a hunter, Siki, who had lived up on the rock around hundreds of years ago. In Rhumsiki, there are many pottery makers, basket weavers, cloth weavers, etc. Seeing them, the Kapsiki, and where they live is part of the charm of going on the tour, besides seeing the beautiful landscape. I bought a few small pieces of pottery that were made from soil and oil as well as a few other souvenirs. The soil/oil pottery is formed, baked in the sun, then polished to a shiny black finish. I was able to try some homemade wine on the tour too. They mix ground up corn with water, let it ferment for two days, and heat it in a pot over a fire when serving. It tasted like wine but was a bit thick and a tiny bit gritty. Sulemanu, who used to be a devout Muslim, and has never had alcohol before, did not like it at all. His face wrinkled at the taste of it.
On the tour, we also met a traditional medicine man. For a price, I would be able to ask him a question about my future. Both Sulemanu and I knew, of course, whatever his prediction is, it isn’t necessarily true but we were curious what the ritual looked like. I couldn’t think of a question right away so Sulemanu, who was speaking both Fulfulde and French to Jeanne-Pierre, who in turn was speaking Kapsiki to the medicine man, said I could ask him anything, like about marriage for example. So I thought to ask if I had already met the woman I will marry. Sulemanu told me it would probably cost the full price, 1,000 francs ($2). I didn’t really want to pay $2, which may not seem like much but you can get lots of things in Cameroon for less than 1,000 francs. It seemed a bit steep to me.
So I thought of a different question: would my flight from Douala to Brussels be affected by the volcano in Iceland? Apparently that would also be 1,000 francs! So I gave in and stuck with the first question. The medicine man said he’d answer both anyway though. He took a big bowl filled with sand and poured some water in it. He then shoved shells and sticks into the sand. One stick represented me, another represented Cameroon, another represented Africa, and another represented Europe. He then took a live crab out of a vase, spat on it, blew on it, and put it up to his ear. He then spoke to it very rapidly, almost in a chastising way, spat on it again, and then put it down in the sand. He then covered that bowl with another bowl, inverted upside-down.
We waited a few minutes for the crab to do its thing. When the medicine man lifted the cover off, he analyzed where the crab was and where it had been in the bowl. He told me that my flight would not be affected and I will be able to travel fine. He also said it will be long time before I am married. It’s not time yet. I guess the question got a bit lost in translation but oh well, close enough. He also said when I am married, it will be a happy marriage, free from problems and divorce. We’ll see if the medicine man is correct both in the near future and in the rest of my life.
Of course I don’t believe what the man said has any sort of realistic truth to it, but it was interesting to see him conduct his connection with the spiritual world and also it was nice to help an older gentleman out financially. I have a video of the whole ritual I’m hoping to post online sometime when I get back to America. He closed the ceremony with a benediction by sprinkling water on Jean-Pierre’s feet, then my feet, and then Sulemanu’s feet as we exited his place.
All in all we were in Rhumsiki for a little over two hours. It was a bit expensive to get there (45,000 francs for the car, 5,000 for the tour, and a thousand here and there for pottery, the medicine man, etc.) but it was worth the trip. Sulemanu told me that the far north tends to have darker colored people and it’s definitely true. In Banyo, the Fulfulde people tend to have more of a lighter shade of black but people in the far north are definitely much much darker.
We left Maroua the next day, Saturday, and spent a night in Ngoudere at the same place we stayed on the way up. Again, the bathroom with no light, no toilet paper, etc. but the faucet seemed to work better this time (see previous blog). I thought about how the faucet probably works inside, what’s causing it to not work until full blast, and realized all I have to do is just turn it on a little bit and then smack it really hard.
We found out this time though, that our room key happened to be the same key for all of the rooms. When we arrived, there was no one to greet us and give us a key. We made a phone call to the person in charge who at the moment was out. We noticed a set of two keys on the table when you first walk in, one for the main entrance door, and one for the room. The woman on the phone told us that was our key and I noticed it had a three on it, which was our room number just a couple days prior. She confirmed that we were in the same room as before. Then, later on that day, there was a man in the hall wondering what happened to the key on the table… it was HIS key for getting into HIS room. So we tried it and sure enough, it worked for his room. Then another person also wanted the key for their room, the SAME key. What a jip! We made sure to keep our valuables with us when we left that evening for dinner, just in case. No security there!
We left Ngoudere on Sunday morning around 7 am. We took a kind of bus I had never been in before. It’s made by Renault, is very jacked up, with big tires and a very very very cramped passenger space. All 25 passengers are crammed in the back of this bus with hardly any leg room. The driver, and his two helpers sit in a separate, closed off section of the bus, almost like a prisoner transport bus with a steel wall/wire barrier. You enter the bus from the one back door, which requires nobody to be sitting in the center aisle, which also has seats that fold up so people can get through, and then people can sit when no one is moving in/out. Most buses here, besides really really big ones, have folding seats in the aisle in order to cram more people in.
Sulemanu and I were able to get seats in the front row which he said had the most room. But throughout a decent chunk of the trip the guy’s knees behind me were digging into my back and side. There was so little leg room I had to either sit with my butt only half on the seat and my knees pointed down, sit all the way back with my knees bent upwards, or have them angled to one side. If at any point they touched the metal wall in front of me in between me and the driver, I could feel the burn from the heat of the engine right behind that wall. The ride was very bumpy and very uncomfortable. For once I was very very thankful I was not an inch taller than I am right now (just under 5’9”). I can’t imagine how anyone any taller could manage in that bus.
We were on the bus for six hours before we really stopped for a while in Tibati. I was so happy to be out of that bus and wasn’t sure how I was going to make the rest. The bus is a slower kind of bus than the ones I’ve taken before, and the trip from Ngoudere to Banyo is about 11-12 hours in it. We left Tibati at 2pm and drove for about two hours. As I was nodding off to sleep despite the massive bumps in the road, a load screeching noise came from the engine.
We pulled over and they stopped the engine. I thought to myself it must just be a bad belt. Hopefully it’ll be okay. Well 20 minutes passed and I realized it was more serious than just a bad belt. I figured it was probably a seized pulley, which made sense for the screeching noise. Also, there was definitely a coolant leak since the driver kept adding water to the radiator every few hours. However, he wasn’t using a coolant mixture, he was using straight water. Not only does that not protect against the water from boiling, but straight water does not have any rust-inhibitors. I imagine that the seal in the water pump could have gone bad, (explaining the coolant leak) and the water rushing passed the seal, caused the water pump bearing to rust and go bad (causing the seizing of a pulley and the screeching noise).
I asked the driver as best I could think of if it was the water pump. Est-ce que c’est la pump de l’eau? I believe he said he didn’t think so but I couldn’t catch everything he said in French. There were definitely several maybes in his explanation of what it could be as he was talking to me, putting the valve cover back on that he had just taken off. Maybe it could be this, maybe that, maybe this, maybe that. It was then I realized we weren’t going to be going anywhere anytime soon.
They hadn’t touched the water pump, or even the belt for that matter, which didn’t make much sense since I can’t think of anything else that would cause the screeching we just heard besides a belt problem. They drained the oil, took the oil pan off and was looking around underneath the engine. Sulemanu and I walked up the road a little bit to a nearby village to see what else is around. There were only a few homes, no stores and no electricity. We bought some fruit from a boy selling bananas and mangoes, hung around for a little bit and then walked back the bus where everyone else was still waiting at the side of the road. Then, dark clouds started to form in the sky. It was about 6:30pm at this point and we had been stopped for over two hours.
Sulemanu and I headed back to the village where we just were and it started to pour. We found shelter in someone’s home and everyone there pretty much accepted the fate that this is where we would all be for the night. So we made pillows out of our bags and laid down on the ground to see if perhaps we could get some sleep. Well, Sulemanu didn’t want to sleep there. He didn’t want to deal with any snakes, rats, etc. while sleeping on the floor. So, when the rain cleared up a bit we walked back to the road and hitched a ride with two truck drivers on their way from Maroua to Banyo to deliver goods. This was around 8:45 and we made a very cramped, mud-ridden hour and a half drive to Mbamti, the next biggest town on the way to Banyo. There, we could hopefully find an Auberge (hotel) to spend the night.
Along the way, on the very bad, very soggy muddy roads we came across a truck that was almost perpendicular to the road because it had slid around so much. There was a multitude of guys trying to push it out of the mud and we waited around for 20 minutes for the road to be clear to pass. We got into Mbamti around 10:15 and all the rooms had been occupied by truck drivers spending the night because of the bad roads. Luckily, Sulemanu found a room in a random person’s home who happened to have a family member that was away that night. We shared a double bed in this random place in who knows what kind of sanitary condition but at least it was better than the floor of the other place.
I then woke up the next morning at 6am because Sulemanu said he found us a car taxi that would take us to Banyo. I got ready, went to the bathroom (a very small hole in the ground outside surrounded by a woven, straw fence), and washed my hands and face using water that had been collected in buckets from the rain the night before. We then waited, and waited. The taxi driver said he only needed two more passengers so the car could be full (even though as it was we already exceeded the number of available seats in the car). We waited over two hours, until 8:30 when we finally took off: eight adults in a five seater who knows what brand car. We got into Banyo at 9:40 and I had never been more happy to be back in Banyo. It felt so wonderful to take a shower again and relax.
I’ve been finishing up some final things here in Banyo. This morning, Dayyibu, Abdu and I hiked up Mt. Banyo, where we had hiked the first week I was in Cameroon. It was a little over two hours up and a little under two hours down. Quite tiring! Tomorrow night I’ll leave and take a night bus to Bafoussam. Friday morning I’ll take a bus from Bafoussam to Douala, spend a night at the Baptist Rest house there, and then I leave Saturday night to head for Brussels and then Newark. I may not update again until I get back in the States.
Friday, May 7, 2010
In Maroua now, the biggest city in the Far North.
This entry was written on Thursday, May 6th. I tried to access the internet that night but was unsuccessful which is why it’s not getting posted until Friday.
Dayyibu and I left Wouram around 5:50am, Tuesday, to go into town where the bus park is. He had already taken Sulemanu there. We waited around for a bit for the bus to load up. We departed at 7am and arrived in Tibati around noon. It was a pretty bumpy ride. Sulemanu told me the road from Banyo to Tibati is one of the worst in Cameroon.
I had a window seat in the second row which I thought would be quite alright except that there was a piece of square tubular steel welded in place for support a couple inches from my head. Anytime we’d hit a large enough bump my head would go bouncing right into it. When I was awake I was able to keep from hitting it for the most part. However, it was very early in the morning for me, I was dozing off quite a bit, and I hit it quite frequently. By the time we reach Tibati my left temple was hurting pretty badly and I had a bump on my scalp for quite a few hours.
From Tibati we had to take another bus to Malarba, our first stop along the trip. We ate some soya (steak) at the bus park, bought some lollipops for the kids in Malarba, and waited for the bus to leave. I even dozed off for a little bit. We were told the bus would leave in about 30 minutes to an hour. It left after two hours.
We arrived in Malarba around three in the afternoon and the people there were very happy to see us. We passed out lollipops to the children, took a look at the community center they are building, and ate some dinner. We had foufou (corn flour and water) and fish. Afterwards there was singing and dancing in the community bukaru. Sulemanu distributed some money which was raised for the refugees in Malarba so they could buy food, clothing, and finish the community center which still had some construction that needed to be done.
We left the compound where we stayed in Malarba around 6:30 and got into “the junction” of Malarba to get a bus to Ngoundere. We waited around for a little over an hour before Sulemanu gave up and tried to find a car taxi to take us to Ngoundere. It was a little more expensive that way, a bit more cramped (seven adults in a five seater Toyota Carina, about the size of a Camry) but a lot quicker. We were on the road by 8:30am and got to Ngoudere at noon. What would have been a four and a half hour ride by bus, plus waiting for the bus to show up, took only three and a half hours.
Once we arrived, we quickly made the decision whether to try to make it to Maroua in one day or to leave that portion of the trip until Thursday. Since it would’ve added 8 hours to our day, we decided to just spend the day in Ngoudere. We found a room at a Lutheran Church Resting House. The room is nice with a single bed and a set of bunk beds. There is a communal bathroom with a shower down the hall. It has no lighting, no shower curtain, no hot water, no soap, nothing to dry your hands with, no toilet paper, no toilet seat, and a sink faucet that doesn’t turn on until you have the handle opened counter-clockwise all of the way and then the water SHOOTS OUT like an EXPLOSION and then you have to turn the handle back, clockwise to slow down the water flow but other than that the bathroom is fine. Whew! Run-on sentence…
In the evening, after we settled in and took showers, we went to the bus station for Maroua to reserve our seats for the first bus out on Thursday morning. We also went to an Internet café and walked around a bit. I did a tiny bit of grocery shopping and even got to see a train station. The train in Cameroon goes from Douala, through Yaounde, through Bertoua and ends in Ngoudere, stopping at small towns along the way. There are freight trains carrying oil and passenger trains too. The passenger cars looked to be from the 80s but maintained well enough. There is a first class and coach section labeled 1 and 2, respectively. In first class you can even get beds. Sulemanu said he does not like taking the train because it often runs at night and there are crazy people that ride it.
We ate some dinner, went back to our room and slept for the evening. We woke up around 4:30 Thursday morning to get to the bus park in time for the first bus out to Maroua. We were told it would leave right at 5:30am. At 6:10am we left the bus park and made the 8 hour trip to Maroua hardly stopping throughout the journey. It seems many of the other bus rides I’ve had in Cameroon seem to stop at every little town to drop passengers off or just buy stuff.
We got to Maroua around 2pm. The area before Maroua is very flat and very dry. I haven’t taken any pictures of Banyo since I got back from the Baka land, but Banyo is now very green now that it’s rained a bit. The far north however, is still looking very dry. I’ve been told the rainy season starts earlier in the south and happens later and later the farther north you get. It rained a tiny bit on the way up but not very much. We passed a few rivers that were almost completely dried up with children playing in the center of the sand at the bottom. Banyo and much of Cameroon seems to have a lot of dirt/mud/dust on the ground whereas the far north has a lot of sand.
When we arrived in Maroua, we took a motorcycle taxi to the Baptist Mission Resthouse. Here, I met Christelle Pusch, who was referenced to me by a few missionaries in the north. She’s in charge here at the resthouse and was able to arrange for someone named Jean-Luc to come talk to Sulemanu and me about heading to either Waza (animal game park) or Rhoumsiki (natural, beautiful scenery). Waza was still a possibility if it could be done for very cheap but the Jean-Luc said that without other people going, to take just Sulemanu and I to Waza would be well over 50,000 francs ($100) which I don’t have the money for.
Jean-Luc said that now is not the best time of the year to go to Waza anyway since the wet season hasn’t really started in the far north and there isn’t enough vegetation for the animals to want to migrate to Waza just yet. He said it’d be possible to drive all the way there using up all of the expenses and not even see any animals. I’ve heard a mix of opinions with some saying you might see some and some saying you might not see any. It’s not worth the risk and besides, it’s too much money anyway. So tomorrow Jean-Luc will pick Sulemanu and I up and we will head to Rhoumsiki.
It’s pretty hot in the far north with the temperature hovering around 100 degrees F. We were told it’s cooler today since it just rained a little bit yesterday so I imagine tomorrow will be around 105. Whew! Maroua is a very nice city. It’s pretty clean compared to Banyo, Yaounde and Douala. There are wide streets with wide sidewalks for people to actually walk on. That’s something I haven’t really seen much in Cameroon. It’s a fairly big town, maybe around the size of Bamenda. Population? I have no idea. It really depends on who you ask. Haha I don’t believe there are many government censuses in Cameroon.
One thing I’ve noticed is that almost every motorcycle taxi seems to have a two-stroke engine and either be a Suzuki or Qinqdi brand. They’re 90 cc and pretty small. They almost look like a French-made 2-stroke moped but they do have an electric start so I guess they’re considered motorcycles. Anyway, since they’re two-strokes, smoke fills the air of the streets as they whiz by. In comparison, for the most part in Banyo, the motorcycles are four-stroke and don’t smoke as much.
I’ll update sometime again in the next few days with the rest of our journey to the far north. Bye for now!
Dayyibu and I left Wouram around 5:50am, Tuesday, to go into town where the bus park is. He had already taken Sulemanu there. We waited around for a bit for the bus to load up. We departed at 7am and arrived in Tibati around noon. It was a pretty bumpy ride. Sulemanu told me the road from Banyo to Tibati is one of the worst in Cameroon.
I had a window seat in the second row which I thought would be quite alright except that there was a piece of square tubular steel welded in place for support a couple inches from my head. Anytime we’d hit a large enough bump my head would go bouncing right into it. When I was awake I was able to keep from hitting it for the most part. However, it was very early in the morning for me, I was dozing off quite a bit, and I hit it quite frequently. By the time we reach Tibati my left temple was hurting pretty badly and I had a bump on my scalp for quite a few hours.
From Tibati we had to take another bus to Malarba, our first stop along the trip. We ate some soya (steak) at the bus park, bought some lollipops for the kids in Malarba, and waited for the bus to leave. I even dozed off for a little bit. We were told the bus would leave in about 30 minutes to an hour. It left after two hours.
We arrived in Malarba around three in the afternoon and the people there were very happy to see us. We passed out lollipops to the children, took a look at the community center they are building, and ate some dinner. We had foufou (corn flour and water) and fish. Afterwards there was singing and dancing in the community bukaru. Sulemanu distributed some money which was raised for the refugees in Malarba so they could buy food, clothing, and finish the community center which still had some construction that needed to be done.
We left the compound where we stayed in Malarba around 6:30 and got into “the junction” of Malarba to get a bus to Ngoundere. We waited around for a little over an hour before Sulemanu gave up and tried to find a car taxi to take us to Ngoundere. It was a little more expensive that way, a bit more cramped (seven adults in a five seater Toyota Carina, about the size of a Camry) but a lot quicker. We were on the road by 8:30am and got to Ngoudere at noon. What would have been a four and a half hour ride by bus, plus waiting for the bus to show up, took only three and a half hours.
Once we arrived, we quickly made the decision whether to try to make it to Maroua in one day or to leave that portion of the trip until Thursday. Since it would’ve added 8 hours to our day, we decided to just spend the day in Ngoudere. We found a room at a Lutheran Church Resting House. The room is nice with a single bed and a set of bunk beds. There is a communal bathroom with a shower down the hall. It has no lighting, no shower curtain, no hot water, no soap, nothing to dry your hands with, no toilet paper, no toilet seat, and a sink faucet that doesn’t turn on until you have the handle opened counter-clockwise all of the way and then the water SHOOTS OUT like an EXPLOSION and then you have to turn the handle back, clockwise to slow down the water flow but other than that the bathroom is fine. Whew! Run-on sentence…
In the evening, after we settled in and took showers, we went to the bus station for Maroua to reserve our seats for the first bus out on Thursday morning. We also went to an Internet café and walked around a bit. I did a tiny bit of grocery shopping and even got to see a train station. The train in Cameroon goes from Douala, through Yaounde, through Bertoua and ends in Ngoudere, stopping at small towns along the way. There are freight trains carrying oil and passenger trains too. The passenger cars looked to be from the 80s but maintained well enough. There is a first class and coach section labeled 1 and 2, respectively. In first class you can even get beds. Sulemanu said he does not like taking the train because it often runs at night and there are crazy people that ride it.
We ate some dinner, went back to our room and slept for the evening. We woke up around 4:30 Thursday morning to get to the bus park in time for the first bus out to Maroua. We were told it would leave right at 5:30am. At 6:10am we left the bus park and made the 8 hour trip to Maroua hardly stopping throughout the journey. It seems many of the other bus rides I’ve had in Cameroon seem to stop at every little town to drop passengers off or just buy stuff.
We got to Maroua around 2pm. The area before Maroua is very flat and very dry. I haven’t taken any pictures of Banyo since I got back from the Baka land, but Banyo is now very green now that it’s rained a bit. The far north however, is still looking very dry. I’ve been told the rainy season starts earlier in the south and happens later and later the farther north you get. It rained a tiny bit on the way up but not very much. We passed a few rivers that were almost completely dried up with children playing in the center of the sand at the bottom. Banyo and much of Cameroon seems to have a lot of dirt/mud/dust on the ground whereas the far north has a lot of sand.
When we arrived in Maroua, we took a motorcycle taxi to the Baptist Mission Resthouse. Here, I met Christelle Pusch, who was referenced to me by a few missionaries in the north. She’s in charge here at the resthouse and was able to arrange for someone named Jean-Luc to come talk to Sulemanu and me about heading to either Waza (animal game park) or Rhoumsiki (natural, beautiful scenery). Waza was still a possibility if it could be done for very cheap but the Jean-Luc said that without other people going, to take just Sulemanu and I to Waza would be well over 50,000 francs ($100) which I don’t have the money for.
Jean-Luc said that now is not the best time of the year to go to Waza anyway since the wet season hasn’t really started in the far north and there isn’t enough vegetation for the animals to want to migrate to Waza just yet. He said it’d be possible to drive all the way there using up all of the expenses and not even see any animals. I’ve heard a mix of opinions with some saying you might see some and some saying you might not see any. It’s not worth the risk and besides, it’s too much money anyway. So tomorrow Jean-Luc will pick Sulemanu and I up and we will head to Rhoumsiki.
It’s pretty hot in the far north with the temperature hovering around 100 degrees F. We were told it’s cooler today since it just rained a little bit yesterday so I imagine tomorrow will be around 105. Whew! Maroua is a very nice city. It’s pretty clean compared to Banyo, Yaounde and Douala. There are wide streets with wide sidewalks for people to actually walk on. That’s something I haven’t really seen much in Cameroon. It’s a fairly big town, maybe around the size of Bamenda. Population? I have no idea. It really depends on who you ask. Haha I don’t believe there are many government censuses in Cameroon.
One thing I’ve noticed is that almost every motorcycle taxi seems to have a two-stroke engine and either be a Suzuki or Qinqdi brand. They’re 90 cc and pretty small. They almost look like a French-made 2-stroke moped but they do have an electric start so I guess they’re considered motorcycles. Anyway, since they’re two-strokes, smoke fills the air of the streets as they whiz by. In comparison, for the most part in Banyo, the motorcycles are four-stroke and don’t smoke as much.
I’ll update sometime again in the next few days with the rest of our journey to the far north. Bye for now!
Monday, May 3, 2010
In Banyo for a week, witnessed a public school, heading to the Far North
I’ve been in Banyo for a little over a week. Things are going fairly well. Dayyibu, Abdu and I have been watching movies almost every night. I did not realize you couldn’t buy peanut butter in Banyo. Instead you have to make it. Abdu and I bought peanuts in town, roasted them, shelled them, and ground them in a grinder that the Lokkers have. It tasted good but came out clumpy. I watched a TV show I have on my external hard drive called “How It’s Made” from the Discovery Channel. I found the episode on how to make peanut butter and found out you just need to add oil. Voila. We have peanut butter.
I copied a computer program from the Andertons in the Baka land called Typing Instructor Deluxe. I put the install files on my flash drive and installed it on the computer in the room next to the workshop here in Wouram. Abdu, Dayyibu, Sulemanu and Yusufa have enjoyed using it to practice their typing skills. I’m hoping they’ll continue to use it after I’m gone and master the art. We’re hoping to keep the number of users small, to just those mentioned. If everyone from Wouram wants to start using the computer, pretty soon it’ll start having problems. There was a computer in Wouram that was open to the public for use and it is now very broken. The mouse and keyboard don’t work and Windows is now running very slowly. We’d like to keep this computer running smoothly.
Last week Anna, a Peace Corps volunteer here in Banyo, told me that the Lokkers have a few packages sitting at the post office. You can’t leave packages there for too long otherwise you won’t be able to get them at all. They’ll just disappear. I went ahead and picked them up and they ended up actually being for Chad, another missionary here who is currently back in the States. Unlike in the U.S. where the post office brings you your packages free of charge when dropped off, here in Cameroon you have to pick them up yourself and pay money to receive it. It’s not covered in the expense of sending it.
Last week, for a few mornings I led a small Bible devotion with Sulemanu, Dayyibu and a friend named Ismaila. Mosa and Abdu were also there on a few days. I did my best to find verses fitting to a major theme. The first being patience, then I did suffering, then I covered loving one another and having compassion. I think it was helpful although probably not nearly as insightful as when Bob leads the devotions here. Oh well. I tried.
Today, I had the opportunity to go to a high school in Banyo. There are three high schools here, two are francophone and the one I went to was bilingual. Classes are over for the year and today was the first day of finals. I would’ve liked to see a class being taught to get a better feel for it but I didn’t think of the idea of going to a school until late last week. I first suggested the thought to Abdu and he said it would probably be possible but it would be easier to organize my visit by going through Anna. Her boyfriend, Sam is a teacher at the bilingual school. By the time I saw them on last Friday, it was already too late to see any classes. Oh well. It was still a good experience.
The bilingual school has about 1,300 students spread between seven different grades. The secondary schools here are essentially a middle school and high school combined. For young kids, there is a nursery/kindergarten referred to as l’ecole de maternait (translation: School of Maternity). Then there is the primary school (elementary school). Then the secondary school, also known as a lycee (in French) and can also be referred to as college. After that would be university. Although not too many people make it to university. All in all it seems like less than 1% of students graduate from high school. Some students are smart and motivated enough to do so but many just lose focus halfway through highschool. The number of what would be freshman in high school is probably somewhere around 100 in that school of 1,300. By the time you reach senior year, the number is 8.
Adamawa Province, where we are, has the worst rate of education out of all ten provinces. The East, where I was with the Baka, has a pretty low rate of education but Adamawa has the worst. I asked Anna what she thought was a rough estimate of the number of kids of school age enrolled in school was and she guessed around 50%. School is not mandatory. It also does not help that parents have to pay out of their own pocket to send their children to school. The government does pay money to the schools to be in operation, but it is not a free public service paid for by taxes like in the U.S. Anna said that by about halfway through high school, tuition is 25,000 francs ($55) per semester and that cost goes up with each grade. Now $55 may not seem like a lot but in a nation where very few people actually save money and most live from the income they get day to day, week to week, $55 is a decent amount of money some do not have.
The school itself seems to be pretty well maintained and clean. There is no electricity but plenty of sunlight through the windows. There seemed to be about eight rooms in one building, four in another, four in another, plus an administration building. The buildings are covered by tin roofs which is not really so much a problem this time of the year, since it doesn’t seem to rain much during the morning/early afternoon. But in August, when they start school again, and it is raining during the day during the heavy wet season, I imagine it makes it pretty hard to hear the teacher.
The rooms are not connected by hallways but rather are separated by walls and have one doorway in each. There is a sidewalk outside each room with a roof overhang to walk between rooms in each building. That’s fairly common in houses here in Cameroon it seems. Most houses that have multiple rooms have a separate entrance to the outside for each room and mud/brick walls in between. It felt fairly cool inside the rooms but it could just be because I was there from about 8-9:30 in the morning. I imagine by noon it’s probably pretty hot. Kids start class at 7:30, have a 40-minute break at 10:30 and then usually go until about 2:30 although it all depends on the teachers. Sometimes they get out much earlier. Some days Abdu would be in the Wouram compound around one meaning he was let out of school probably by noon.
When I first got to the school today, I went to Sam’s room. He was waiting to receive the tests from the administrators so he could hand them out. There were about 75 kids in a room about 30 feet by 20 feet. There were three students to a desk. Their test was in Chemistry. I took a look at it and I feel like I remember a good amount of the Chemistry I learned in high school and college. The test lasted about 40 minutes, after which, the students congregate outside to wait for the next round of tests to begin. Anna said that’s kind of what it’s like a lot of the day. While the administration and teachers prepare for the next portion of the day, students are outside waiting around. It makes sense now why I see so many students outside when I drive by the schools. I just always thought there was some sort of rotating recess period or something.
Tomorrow, Sulemanu and I will leave for the far north. We will head to Malarba and spend a night there first, where we spent a night with refugees from the C.A.R. in the beginning of March. We’ll take a bus from Banyo to Tibati. Then another bus to Malarba. It’ll probably take about eight or so hours to get there. The next day we’ll either take a bus or a train (which would be nice if we could do since it’ll probably be much smoother than on the dirt roads and I haven’t seen a train here yet) to Ngoundere, the capital of Adamawa. It’s a fairly big city from what I hear, about the size of Bafoussam or Bamenda. There I can withdraw money from the bank which at this point is crucial. It’ll take about 10 hours to get there from Malarba. Then we’ll head to Maroua, which will probably take about 6 hours or so to get to. Keep in mind, Cameroon is the size of California and with all of this travelling we’re about to do in the next day, we’re only covering a small portion of the country. Dirt roads really slow progress.
We’ll spend a night in Maroua and from there will either go to Rhumsiki, a tourist attraction for its scenery, or possibly Waza National Park. It’s a wild game park with lions, giraffes, hippos, etc. I’ve heard it’s kind of a hit and miss and it’s also fairly expensive. You have to rent a car and a tour guide and go searching for hours to see animals. Most people at least see something but everyone I’ve talked to say it was many hours of driving and not a whole lot of success. Rhumsiki on the other hand is beautiful with lots to see. We’ll see what ends up happening. I may not have internet access for a while, fyi.
Until next time…
I copied a computer program from the Andertons in the Baka land called Typing Instructor Deluxe. I put the install files on my flash drive and installed it on the computer in the room next to the workshop here in Wouram. Abdu, Dayyibu, Sulemanu and Yusufa have enjoyed using it to practice their typing skills. I’m hoping they’ll continue to use it after I’m gone and master the art. We’re hoping to keep the number of users small, to just those mentioned. If everyone from Wouram wants to start using the computer, pretty soon it’ll start having problems. There was a computer in Wouram that was open to the public for use and it is now very broken. The mouse and keyboard don’t work and Windows is now running very slowly. We’d like to keep this computer running smoothly.
Last week Anna, a Peace Corps volunteer here in Banyo, told me that the Lokkers have a few packages sitting at the post office. You can’t leave packages there for too long otherwise you won’t be able to get them at all. They’ll just disappear. I went ahead and picked them up and they ended up actually being for Chad, another missionary here who is currently back in the States. Unlike in the U.S. where the post office brings you your packages free of charge when dropped off, here in Cameroon you have to pick them up yourself and pay money to receive it. It’s not covered in the expense of sending it.
Last week, for a few mornings I led a small Bible devotion with Sulemanu, Dayyibu and a friend named Ismaila. Mosa and Abdu were also there on a few days. I did my best to find verses fitting to a major theme. The first being patience, then I did suffering, then I covered loving one another and having compassion. I think it was helpful although probably not nearly as insightful as when Bob leads the devotions here. Oh well. I tried.
Today, I had the opportunity to go to a high school in Banyo. There are three high schools here, two are francophone and the one I went to was bilingual. Classes are over for the year and today was the first day of finals. I would’ve liked to see a class being taught to get a better feel for it but I didn’t think of the idea of going to a school until late last week. I first suggested the thought to Abdu and he said it would probably be possible but it would be easier to organize my visit by going through Anna. Her boyfriend, Sam is a teacher at the bilingual school. By the time I saw them on last Friday, it was already too late to see any classes. Oh well. It was still a good experience.
The bilingual school has about 1,300 students spread between seven different grades. The secondary schools here are essentially a middle school and high school combined. For young kids, there is a nursery/kindergarten referred to as l’ecole de maternait (translation: School of Maternity). Then there is the primary school (elementary school). Then the secondary school, also known as a lycee (in French) and can also be referred to as college. After that would be university. Although not too many people make it to university. All in all it seems like less than 1% of students graduate from high school. Some students are smart and motivated enough to do so but many just lose focus halfway through highschool. The number of what would be freshman in high school is probably somewhere around 100 in that school of 1,300. By the time you reach senior year, the number is 8.
Adamawa Province, where we are, has the worst rate of education out of all ten provinces. The East, where I was with the Baka, has a pretty low rate of education but Adamawa has the worst. I asked Anna what she thought was a rough estimate of the number of kids of school age enrolled in school was and she guessed around 50%. School is not mandatory. It also does not help that parents have to pay out of their own pocket to send their children to school. The government does pay money to the schools to be in operation, but it is not a free public service paid for by taxes like in the U.S. Anna said that by about halfway through high school, tuition is 25,000 francs ($55) per semester and that cost goes up with each grade. Now $55 may not seem like a lot but in a nation where very few people actually save money and most live from the income they get day to day, week to week, $55 is a decent amount of money some do not have.
The school itself seems to be pretty well maintained and clean. There is no electricity but plenty of sunlight through the windows. There seemed to be about eight rooms in one building, four in another, four in another, plus an administration building. The buildings are covered by tin roofs which is not really so much a problem this time of the year, since it doesn’t seem to rain much during the morning/early afternoon. But in August, when they start school again, and it is raining during the day during the heavy wet season, I imagine it makes it pretty hard to hear the teacher.
The rooms are not connected by hallways but rather are separated by walls and have one doorway in each. There is a sidewalk outside each room with a roof overhang to walk between rooms in each building. That’s fairly common in houses here in Cameroon it seems. Most houses that have multiple rooms have a separate entrance to the outside for each room and mud/brick walls in between. It felt fairly cool inside the rooms but it could just be because I was there from about 8-9:30 in the morning. I imagine by noon it’s probably pretty hot. Kids start class at 7:30, have a 40-minute break at 10:30 and then usually go until about 2:30 although it all depends on the teachers. Sometimes they get out much earlier. Some days Abdu would be in the Wouram compound around one meaning he was let out of school probably by noon.
When I first got to the school today, I went to Sam’s room. He was waiting to receive the tests from the administrators so he could hand them out. There were about 75 kids in a room about 30 feet by 20 feet. There were three students to a desk. Their test was in Chemistry. I took a look at it and I feel like I remember a good amount of the Chemistry I learned in high school and college. The test lasted about 40 minutes, after which, the students congregate outside to wait for the next round of tests to begin. Anna said that’s kind of what it’s like a lot of the day. While the administration and teachers prepare for the next portion of the day, students are outside waiting around. It makes sense now why I see so many students outside when I drive by the schools. I just always thought there was some sort of rotating recess period or something.
Tomorrow, Sulemanu and I will leave for the far north. We will head to Malarba and spend a night there first, where we spent a night with refugees from the C.A.R. in the beginning of March. We’ll take a bus from Banyo to Tibati. Then another bus to Malarba. It’ll probably take about eight or so hours to get there. The next day we’ll either take a bus or a train (which would be nice if we could do since it’ll probably be much smoother than on the dirt roads and I haven’t seen a train here yet) to Ngoundere, the capital of Adamawa. It’s a fairly big city from what I hear, about the size of Bafoussam or Bamenda. There I can withdraw money from the bank which at this point is crucial. It’ll take about 10 hours to get there from Malarba. Then we’ll head to Maroua, which will probably take about 6 hours or so to get to. Keep in mind, Cameroon is the size of California and with all of this travelling we’re about to do in the next day, we’re only covering a small portion of the country. Dirt roads really slow progress.
We’ll spend a night in Maroua and from there will either go to Rhumsiki, a tourist attraction for its scenery, or possibly Waza National Park. It’s a wild game park with lions, giraffes, hippos, etc. I’ve heard it’s kind of a hit and miss and it’s also fairly expensive. You have to rent a car and a tour guide and go searching for hours to see animals. Most people at least see something but everyone I’ve talked to say it was many hours of driving and not a whole lot of success. Rhumsiki on the other hand is beautiful with lots to see. We’ll see what ends up happening. I may not have internet access for a while, fyi.
Until next time…
Thursday, April 29, 2010
More FES Pictures
These are more pictures from the two week missionary kids schooling program I was a part of, called FES, in Bamenda. I received these pictures from the Conrods while I was out in the Baka land.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2047204&id=1337370415&l=622b709460
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2047204&id=1337370415&l=622b709460
Sunday, April 25, 2010
In Banyo with not-so-cold cheese.
I’m back in Banyo now. I ended up making a small detour on my way back. Instead of going straight from Yaounde to Bafoussam and then to Banyo, I stopped in Bamenda for a night first. I wanted to find a fold-up road map of Cameroon since I was unable to find one in Yaounde. The Colemans, in Yaounde, had a map they bought at a place called Presbook in Bamenda. I went to Presbook but they didn’t have any maps. They told me to go down the street to the Macmillan bookstore. Luckily, they had a good map that I bought.
I also bought a few groceries in Bamenda, specifically cheese. I wanted to get the cheese as close to my point of taking off for Banyo as I could so it wouldn’t get too warm. I borrowed a small travel jug to keep cold things in and a flexible, blue freezer pack from the Colemans. I rented a room for the night at the Cameroon Baptist Convention rest house (where I stayed for FES for two weeks in February). That place is a lot quieter with no one around. I stuck the freezer pack in the freezer at the rest house for the night to get cold in hopes that my cheese would stay cold during the trip to Banyo.
I left Bamenda around noon on Friday. I took a 19 passenger bus (which looks like it should only fit 12 people) on the hour and a half trip to Bafoussam. Then I took a motorcycle taxi to get across town to another bus park to get on a bus to Banyo. I bought my ticket and was told the bus would probably leave in about an hour or two, as soon as it filled up. I waited for three hours for the bus to finally depart, all the while my bag was getting hot, with the cheese probably just barely at a refrigerator temperature.
We left Bafoussam around 5pm and made a few stops early on for people not travelling all the way through to Banyo. It seemed like throughout the whole trip we stopped every hour and a half to two hours. Each time we stopped it was a 15 or so minute delay. However, one time we stopped for 45 minutes. I could not understand why on earth we were stopped for so long. At 20 minutes I thought for sure we’d be leaving soon. The luggage rack had already been retied after taking down the bags for the person who just got off. We didn’t pick up anyone new so there was no point in staying any longer. But sure enough we were stopped for 45 minutes. I could see why public transport takes so much longer than car. We ended up getting into Banyo around 3:30am. Not too bad. Just ten and a half hours in a very cramped bus. Compare that to driving with Bob and next to no stops at a time of 8 hours.
Dayyibu had told me earlier to give him a call when I get into town so he can pick me up. I waited for a few minutes for him to show up, all the while I figured someone was going to untie the luggage rack and get our stuff down. I waited… and waited. I thought for sure somebody must just be using the bathroom or something. They’ll be getting the luggage down soon. Then the driver came out of the building at the bus park, opened the van door, put a pillow down on the bench seat and went to sleep!!
Dayyibu showed up and I asked him if it was possible to get the luggage down. Afterall, I really wanted to put my cheese in a refrigerator as soon as possible. Dayyibu spoke in Fulfulde to someone still awake and the man said to come back in the morning around 6 am and they would get it down. I couldn’t believe it! It made no sense to go back to Wouram, get a few hours of sleep, and then come back to get my luggage. Ugh.
Dayyibu and I left for Wouram and halfway there his motorcycle ran out of gas. Pitch black, no one in sight, out of gas. He knew of someone not too far away who might be willing to sell gas at this time. We walked down the road for a quarter mile or so, with him wheeling the motorcycle along. He found someone and we got enough gas to get all the way to Wouram. I got into my room and everything looked like the way I left it, just covered in a thin layer of dust. My bathroom was swarming with spiders and cob webs. Oh well. I did the best to clean it up a bit real quick, took a shower, and went to bed. Two hours later I woke up and we went to the bus park. Right at the moment we got there they were ready to let my bag down. I grabbed it and headed back to Wouram.
Since the Lokkers are away now, their refrigerator has been off. I wanted to put the cheese in the Smith’s refrigerator since it is definitely still on and cold but unfortunately the Smiths are away right now, traveling in Pakistan. The only person who had the key had already left to go farming for the day. Oh well. So I turned the Lokkers’ fridge on and put the cheese in. The cheese was somewhat warm when I took it out of the container it had been stored in and probably had been somewhat warm for quite a number of hours. But luckily, it had been unopened and not yet exposed to oxygen. I had a little bit of it last night and it tasted just fine to me. I slept for a bit of the day on Saturday since I had not slept much on the bus ride the night before. I went into town with Dayyibu when I woke up, got some soya to eat, picked up a Fulbe jumper suit and a shirt that I had a tailor make while I was away. Both look great and I’ll be sure to post pictures soon.
I also bought a few groceries in Bamenda, specifically cheese. I wanted to get the cheese as close to my point of taking off for Banyo as I could so it wouldn’t get too warm. I borrowed a small travel jug to keep cold things in and a flexible, blue freezer pack from the Colemans. I rented a room for the night at the Cameroon Baptist Convention rest house (where I stayed for FES for two weeks in February). That place is a lot quieter with no one around. I stuck the freezer pack in the freezer at the rest house for the night to get cold in hopes that my cheese would stay cold during the trip to Banyo.
I left Bamenda around noon on Friday. I took a 19 passenger bus (which looks like it should only fit 12 people) on the hour and a half trip to Bafoussam. Then I took a motorcycle taxi to get across town to another bus park to get on a bus to Banyo. I bought my ticket and was told the bus would probably leave in about an hour or two, as soon as it filled up. I waited for three hours for the bus to finally depart, all the while my bag was getting hot, with the cheese probably just barely at a refrigerator temperature.
We left Bafoussam around 5pm and made a few stops early on for people not travelling all the way through to Banyo. It seemed like throughout the whole trip we stopped every hour and a half to two hours. Each time we stopped it was a 15 or so minute delay. However, one time we stopped for 45 minutes. I could not understand why on earth we were stopped for so long. At 20 minutes I thought for sure we’d be leaving soon. The luggage rack had already been retied after taking down the bags for the person who just got off. We didn’t pick up anyone new so there was no point in staying any longer. But sure enough we were stopped for 45 minutes. I could see why public transport takes so much longer than car. We ended up getting into Banyo around 3:30am. Not too bad. Just ten and a half hours in a very cramped bus. Compare that to driving with Bob and next to no stops at a time of 8 hours.
Dayyibu had told me earlier to give him a call when I get into town so he can pick me up. I waited for a few minutes for him to show up, all the while I figured someone was going to untie the luggage rack and get our stuff down. I waited… and waited. I thought for sure somebody must just be using the bathroom or something. They’ll be getting the luggage down soon. Then the driver came out of the building at the bus park, opened the van door, put a pillow down on the bench seat and went to sleep!!
Dayyibu showed up and I asked him if it was possible to get the luggage down. Afterall, I really wanted to put my cheese in a refrigerator as soon as possible. Dayyibu spoke in Fulfulde to someone still awake and the man said to come back in the morning around 6 am and they would get it down. I couldn’t believe it! It made no sense to go back to Wouram, get a few hours of sleep, and then come back to get my luggage. Ugh.
Dayyibu and I left for Wouram and halfway there his motorcycle ran out of gas. Pitch black, no one in sight, out of gas. He knew of someone not too far away who might be willing to sell gas at this time. We walked down the road for a quarter mile or so, with him wheeling the motorcycle along. He found someone and we got enough gas to get all the way to Wouram. I got into my room and everything looked like the way I left it, just covered in a thin layer of dust. My bathroom was swarming with spiders and cob webs. Oh well. I did the best to clean it up a bit real quick, took a shower, and went to bed. Two hours later I woke up and we went to the bus park. Right at the moment we got there they were ready to let my bag down. I grabbed it and headed back to Wouram.
Since the Lokkers are away now, their refrigerator has been off. I wanted to put the cheese in the Smith’s refrigerator since it is definitely still on and cold but unfortunately the Smiths are away right now, traveling in Pakistan. The only person who had the key had already left to go farming for the day. Oh well. So I turned the Lokkers’ fridge on and put the cheese in. The cheese was somewhat warm when I took it out of the container it had been stored in and probably had been somewhat warm for quite a number of hours. But luckily, it had been unopened and not yet exposed to oxygen. I had a little bit of it last night and it tasted just fine to me. I slept for a bit of the day on Saturday since I had not slept much on the bus ride the night before. I went into town with Dayyibu when I woke up, got some soya to eat, picked up a Fulbe jumper suit and a shirt that I had a tailor make while I was away. Both look great and I’ll be sure to post pictures soon.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Back from the Baka land.
I’m back in Yaounde now. I left the Baka land yesterday around noon, taking public transport (a bus) by myself to get here. I was in the Baka land a little more than two weeks and got quite a bit done, although not as much as I would have liked. Progress tends to be slow in Cameroon it seems. I’m not sure if it’s the heat/humidity or just the way of life or not having every tool available to you from a local Home Depot to get the job done the fastest/easiest or just a combination of it all.
Jen’s house is pretty much mostly complete at this point. The veranda is completely screened in and has a door. She still needs Ethernet cable for the internet to be ran to her house, a few doors on the inside and she still needs a few more things moved from her old house to her new house but I think other than that it’s mostly complete.
I managed to get a nice cut on my left cheek and a black eye while working. I was assembling the door for the veranda and had the pieces of wood stuck in the frame to see if it would line up. Nothing was secured but friction was holding it all together long enough for me to check each corner out. Well, one of the supporting pieces of wood slid out and a relatively heavy redwood 2x4 fell from a height of about 7 feet onto my face as I was sitting down on the ground below it. I still have the black eye but the cut has healed pretty nicely.
I was able to go over engine fundamentals/mechanics with the Anderton/Conrod children. I think most of the older ones understood fairly well and the younger ones probably learned a thing or two but were mostly just interested for a few minutes at a time.
My heart really feels for the Baka people and especially the children. It pains me to think of their potential future. It seems the kids don’t have a lot of opportunities in life to go beyond just living where they are, to get an education, and to live in a city larger than just the tiny area they know. The Baka are considered to be fairly nomadic but when they travel, it seems they most stay within the forest area they know and hardly travel to towns/cities. The Baka are unfortunately looked down upon by some people of Cameroon. Even if they did have an education, people might still shun them for being Baka. Occasionally there are some that make it out of the area and might find a job in Yaounde and make a living there, but very few.
Most of the children don’t receive a formal education. All they know is what they experience from their parents and extended family/the people in their villages. A lot of the adults don’t tend to be very good examples. They don’t use their money wisely and definitely don’t save money. The concept of having savings is kind of foreign to most Cameroonians but it seems more so with the Baka. They’ve never known anything different so why change? Many of the adults are alcoholics and spend much of their money on that. The children usually have only one set of clothes that they wear 24/7. Very few of the Baka around here wash and almost no one has soap. They say they don’t have the money for it, but it’s not necessarily true, they just don’t wisely spend their money.
The children are very sweet, playful and happy. Often as I was working on Jen’s veranda, they would watch and help out when they could, handing me a saw when I reached for it holding a piece of wood in place when I needed an extra set of hands, etc. I really hope that with the missionary families there, the Baka children are inspired to live a more-I don’t want to say Western life-but a more civilized life. Bathe regularly, save money, don’t abuse alcohol, strive to educate yourself. These are all things that could happen if they were instilled in the children from an early age and I really hope it happens. Jen told me that it isn’t going to be very easy and they need to know the love of Jesus to make a life change and a commitment to improving their lifestyles. Hopefully they see what they could have and more of how life should be.
I’ll leave Yaounde tomorrow at some point, just staying here for two nights. I’m hoping to find a few groceries I can’t get in Banyo, a few Duracell batteries and take out some money from the bank. I’ll have to take public transport to Bafoussam first (about 5-6 hours) and then from there, catch another bus to Banyo (about 10 hours). Once in Banyo, depending on the time, I’ll either take a motorcycle taxi to Wouram where I live (only a five minute drive) or arrange for someone to get me.
Here are pictures from my trip to the Baka land. http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2046922&id=1337370415&l=53cb4a833d
Jen’s house is pretty much mostly complete at this point. The veranda is completely screened in and has a door. She still needs Ethernet cable for the internet to be ran to her house, a few doors on the inside and she still needs a few more things moved from her old house to her new house but I think other than that it’s mostly complete.
I managed to get a nice cut on my left cheek and a black eye while working. I was assembling the door for the veranda and had the pieces of wood stuck in the frame to see if it would line up. Nothing was secured but friction was holding it all together long enough for me to check each corner out. Well, one of the supporting pieces of wood slid out and a relatively heavy redwood 2x4 fell from a height of about 7 feet onto my face as I was sitting down on the ground below it. I still have the black eye but the cut has healed pretty nicely.
I was able to go over engine fundamentals/mechanics with the Anderton/Conrod children. I think most of the older ones understood fairly well and the younger ones probably learned a thing or two but were mostly just interested for a few minutes at a time.
My heart really feels for the Baka people and especially the children. It pains me to think of their potential future. It seems the kids don’t have a lot of opportunities in life to go beyond just living where they are, to get an education, and to live in a city larger than just the tiny area they know. The Baka are considered to be fairly nomadic but when they travel, it seems they most stay within the forest area they know and hardly travel to towns/cities. The Baka are unfortunately looked down upon by some people of Cameroon. Even if they did have an education, people might still shun them for being Baka. Occasionally there are some that make it out of the area and might find a job in Yaounde and make a living there, but very few.
Most of the children don’t receive a formal education. All they know is what they experience from their parents and extended family/the people in their villages. A lot of the adults don’t tend to be very good examples. They don’t use their money wisely and definitely don’t save money. The concept of having savings is kind of foreign to most Cameroonians but it seems more so with the Baka. They’ve never known anything different so why change? Many of the adults are alcoholics and spend much of their money on that. The children usually have only one set of clothes that they wear 24/7. Very few of the Baka around here wash and almost no one has soap. They say they don’t have the money for it, but it’s not necessarily true, they just don’t wisely spend their money.
The children are very sweet, playful and happy. Often as I was working on Jen’s veranda, they would watch and help out when they could, handing me a saw when I reached for it holding a piece of wood in place when I needed an extra set of hands, etc. I really hope that with the missionary families there, the Baka children are inspired to live a more-I don’t want to say Western life-but a more civilized life. Bathe regularly, save money, don’t abuse alcohol, strive to educate yourself. These are all things that could happen if they were instilled in the children from an early age and I really hope it happens. Jen told me that it isn’t going to be very easy and they need to know the love of Jesus to make a life change and a commitment to improving their lifestyles. Hopefully they see what they could have and more of how life should be.
I’ll leave Yaounde tomorrow at some point, just staying here for two nights. I’m hoping to find a few groceries I can’t get in Banyo, a few Duracell batteries and take out some money from the bank. I’ll have to take public transport to Bafoussam first (about 5-6 hours) and then from there, catch another bus to Banyo (about 10 hours). Once in Banyo, depending on the time, I’ll either take a motorcycle taxi to Wouram where I live (only a five minute drive) or arrange for someone to get me.
Here are pictures from my trip to the Baka land. http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2046922&id=1337370415&l=53cb4a833d
Friday, April 9, 2010
Keeping busy in the Baka land.
For the past few days, I’ve mostly been working on Jenn’s new home during the day. We put some wooden beams in place to frame a veranda in the front. The framing is not complete yet but hopefully will be soon and screens can be installed. More importantly, once the stucco was complete, we cleaned the excess, splattered concrete of off the walls and floors. The whole place is looking a lot cleaner now. The toilet and sink for the bathroom have been installed. Today I put in screens for the windows, installed door knobs and helped install some of the window shutters.
When I was in Kribi, I thought to myself, “I’ve never been bitten by as many bugs before.” I remember counting many mosquito bites on each arm and on my legs. Well, I’ve come to the rainforest and now I can say again, “I’ve never been bitten by so many bugs before.” Thank God my mom packed bite itch cream in my Christmas stocking just before I left. It has come in handy quite often during my stay here. I had a war with a wasp in Jenn’s new home while doing some cleaning. It wouldn’t leave me alone, and I whacked it with a broom I was using. Then it was angry. We fought back and forth. It would leave, and come back, and leave and come back. Finally I got some bug spray, shot it a few times and it wasn’t an issue after that.
There are also these really tiny flying insects known as moot-moots. They’re so small they look like pieces of dirt so I rarely even notice that they’re on me when they are. They leave small red dots where they bite that aren’t raised and don’t itch, at first. Jenn told me that when you first get here, and are bit by moot-moots, they don’t itch. But after you’ve been here for a few months, the bites itch a lot! I’ve also been bitten by many mosquitoes. I probably have about 20 or so bites on each arm and several on each leg. I really have to try hard to not scratch them and make the itch worse.
In addition to flying insects, there are many ants. Ingesting ants here and there is just a part of life. You’ll find them in your sugar, honey ¬cereal, all sorts of stuff. Just the other day, the Andertons were having bread with honey. The honey was speckled with dead tiny tiny ants. They’re not necessarily bad for you. It’s just something to get used to. I have not yet knowingly eaten anything with dead ants in it but I’m sure I’ve ingested more ants so far in this trip to the Baka land than I have in my whole life. Just one piece of bread with honey has about 20 ants alone. They’re miniscule and can squeeze into the air tight seal between a Tupperware bowl and lid.
Yesterday, Noah and Nelson Anderton, ages 13 and 9 I believe, led me into the forest on a hike to see “The Big Tree.” We left around five in the afternoon suited up in long sleeve shirts and pants. Noah was leading the way and we didn’t get more than 30 seconds away from the compound where they live to a point where Nelson said, “hey Noah, you missed the trail.” He pointed to a section of overgrown plants and trees. I laughed and thought he was joking. Noah responded by saying, “oh yeah. There it is.” He wasn’t joking. Our hike consisted of “paths” if that’s what you want to call them where you are constantly ducking under or climbing over vines, branches, fallen trees, and every plant at least partly in your way. For most of the hike I was walking with my hands in front of my face to push the leaves out of the way. There was a clear path sometimes more than others. Still, it was all very overgrown-certainly not like walking through Washington Crossing State Park in New Jersey.
We passed through areas where loggers cut down a tree, cut a section out, and left the rest. They even had tons of cut wood just sitting there, waiting to rot. This “red wood” is extremely strong stuff. At one site, I estimated there to be at least $200 in already cut 2x4s and 4x4s just sitting on the ground. It’s amazing that they go through the effort to cut a whole tree down, only to cut into about a quarter of it, but I really have to wonder what the purpose is of taking some of the wood that was removed from the tree, cutting it into 2x4s and 4x4s, and then just leaving it there on the ground. Now, admittedly, this $200 in wood isn’t worth that much here. That’s just how much it would be worth sitting in the lumber section of Home Depot. But still, that’s a lot of precious, usable wood.
There was one massive tree that still had a large section of its trunk just sitting horizontally on the ground, rotting. Its center is pretty much completely rotted through. You can even actually crawl inside of it. Noah said his dad once counted the number of rings on the tree, got about ¾ on the way through and gave up. He counted 300 rings making the tree around 400 years old. America was still in colonial days then.
We finally arrived to the big tree. It’s about 300 feet tall, according to ¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬a forestry expert who had come to the Baka land sometime recently. I have a picture looking up from the base of the tree but it doesn’t do the tree justice. I also have a picture of me standing in one of the trees many large roots but you can’t even see the whole base. It was too big for the picture. It was starting to get dark and we decided to head back for dinner. We got to a clearing with another tree that had been chopped down with tons of cut wood just laying around that Noah and Nelson had never seen before. We realized we were lost and pretty soon we got really lost. We wound up not on a path at all, completely hacking our way through trees and plants. By this time it was pitch black out.
We managed to find our way back to the tree with all of the wood cut down where we first realized we were lost. We tried to retrace our steps and take the path back into the rest of the woods to get back to “The Big Tree.” We made marks on the trees we passed with a machete so in case we got lost we could get back to the clearing with the chopped up tree. It’s a good thing we did because pretty soon our path was no longer a path. We went back to the tree and sat around for a few minutes trying to think of a strategy. Pretty soon we heard motorcycles off in the distance. The road must’ve been nearby. We found a path, probably the widest path we had been on all afternoon, that took us in the right direction. Pretty soon we encountered Baka people familiar with the forest that Noah and Nelson’s mom had sent out to find us. We made it back safely and all was well.
The Baka people are somewhat nomadic. They don’t often stay in one area for a long period of time. They’re scattered throughout the southern part of Cameroon and a good part of Gabon. There’s a wide estimate that there are between 5,000-60,000 Baka in Cameroon. Some say they do live way way out in the forest and some say no one lives out that far. It’s hard to tell where they might be since no roads go that far into the forest.
It’s apparent the Baka don’t hold onto possessions, and cherish them quite like Westerners do. It’s common for Cameroonians to share what they have with one another, specifically friends and family. Since many don’t have a whole lot, they have no problem lending things out to people in need. It’s a very communal sharing system. But the Baka are even more to the extreme it seems. When they have something, they treat it as though it could easily become lost or just downright gone. They have no way of locking things up to keep them safe from being stolen. Things break after repeated use and they just very quickly and easily accept that it’s no longer around.
When someone in the family dies, often they don’t really seem to grieve much. A young girl, about 12 years old died a little while ago. Her mother and father were not around and her aunt raised her her whole life. This niece was practically like her daughter in that sense. When she passed away, the aunt said very nonchalantly, “we knew she was going to die. It’s the path of everyone.” Joan Lokker told me about one time when she was talking to a Fulbe woman in the middle of cooking some food for supper. One of her children had recently died and Joan said she was sorry to hear that. The woman stopped a brief moment said, “eh, it’s God’s will” and kept on cooking and talking about whatever. Very nonchalant, very accepting. It’s just the way it is.
In the evenings I usually play a game with the Anderton boys and Conrod boys such as Risk or Monopoly. I also try to hop on the internet for an hour or so to catch up on the news. Tonight everyone here watched a movie called “The Gods Must be Crazy.” I’d never seen it before and I really enjoyed it. It has a lot to do with cultural differences between different people and takes place in Africa, specifically South Africa and Botswana.
I’ll be here for another week or so before heading back to Banyo. I’ll probably update at least once more before I go. Until next time…
When I was in Kribi, I thought to myself, “I’ve never been bitten by as many bugs before.” I remember counting many mosquito bites on each arm and on my legs. Well, I’ve come to the rainforest and now I can say again, “I’ve never been bitten by so many bugs before.” Thank God my mom packed bite itch cream in my Christmas stocking just before I left. It has come in handy quite often during my stay here. I had a war with a wasp in Jenn’s new home while doing some cleaning. It wouldn’t leave me alone, and I whacked it with a broom I was using. Then it was angry. We fought back and forth. It would leave, and come back, and leave and come back. Finally I got some bug spray, shot it a few times and it wasn’t an issue after that.
There are also these really tiny flying insects known as moot-moots. They’re so small they look like pieces of dirt so I rarely even notice that they’re on me when they are. They leave small red dots where they bite that aren’t raised and don’t itch, at first. Jenn told me that when you first get here, and are bit by moot-moots, they don’t itch. But after you’ve been here for a few months, the bites itch a lot! I’ve also been bitten by many mosquitoes. I probably have about 20 or so bites on each arm and several on each leg. I really have to try hard to not scratch them and make the itch worse.
In addition to flying insects, there are many ants. Ingesting ants here and there is just a part of life. You’ll find them in your sugar, honey ¬cereal, all sorts of stuff. Just the other day, the Andertons were having bread with honey. The honey was speckled with dead tiny tiny ants. They’re not necessarily bad for you. It’s just something to get used to. I have not yet knowingly eaten anything with dead ants in it but I’m sure I’ve ingested more ants so far in this trip to the Baka land than I have in my whole life. Just one piece of bread with honey has about 20 ants alone. They’re miniscule and can squeeze into the air tight seal between a Tupperware bowl and lid.
Yesterday, Noah and Nelson Anderton, ages 13 and 9 I believe, led me into the forest on a hike to see “The Big Tree.” We left around five in the afternoon suited up in long sleeve shirts and pants. Noah was leading the way and we didn’t get more than 30 seconds away from the compound where they live to a point where Nelson said, “hey Noah, you missed the trail.” He pointed to a section of overgrown plants and trees. I laughed and thought he was joking. Noah responded by saying, “oh yeah. There it is.” He wasn’t joking. Our hike consisted of “paths” if that’s what you want to call them where you are constantly ducking under or climbing over vines, branches, fallen trees, and every plant at least partly in your way. For most of the hike I was walking with my hands in front of my face to push the leaves out of the way. There was a clear path sometimes more than others. Still, it was all very overgrown-certainly not like walking through Washington Crossing State Park in New Jersey.
We passed through areas where loggers cut down a tree, cut a section out, and left the rest. They even had tons of cut wood just sitting there, waiting to rot. This “red wood” is extremely strong stuff. At one site, I estimated there to be at least $200 in already cut 2x4s and 4x4s just sitting on the ground. It’s amazing that they go through the effort to cut a whole tree down, only to cut into about a quarter of it, but I really have to wonder what the purpose is of taking some of the wood that was removed from the tree, cutting it into 2x4s and 4x4s, and then just leaving it there on the ground. Now, admittedly, this $200 in wood isn’t worth that much here. That’s just how much it would be worth sitting in the lumber section of Home Depot. But still, that’s a lot of precious, usable wood.
There was one massive tree that still had a large section of its trunk just sitting horizontally on the ground, rotting. Its center is pretty much completely rotted through. You can even actually crawl inside of it. Noah said his dad once counted the number of rings on the tree, got about ¾ on the way through and gave up. He counted 300 rings making the tree around 400 years old. America was still in colonial days then.
We finally arrived to the big tree. It’s about 300 feet tall, according to ¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬a forestry expert who had come to the Baka land sometime recently. I have a picture looking up from the base of the tree but it doesn’t do the tree justice. I also have a picture of me standing in one of the trees many large roots but you can’t even see the whole base. It was too big for the picture. It was starting to get dark and we decided to head back for dinner. We got to a clearing with another tree that had been chopped down with tons of cut wood just laying around that Noah and Nelson had never seen before. We realized we were lost and pretty soon we got really lost. We wound up not on a path at all, completely hacking our way through trees and plants. By this time it was pitch black out.
We managed to find our way back to the tree with all of the wood cut down where we first realized we were lost. We tried to retrace our steps and take the path back into the rest of the woods to get back to “The Big Tree.” We made marks on the trees we passed with a machete so in case we got lost we could get back to the clearing with the chopped up tree. It’s a good thing we did because pretty soon our path was no longer a path. We went back to the tree and sat around for a few minutes trying to think of a strategy. Pretty soon we heard motorcycles off in the distance. The road must’ve been nearby. We found a path, probably the widest path we had been on all afternoon, that took us in the right direction. Pretty soon we encountered Baka people familiar with the forest that Noah and Nelson’s mom had sent out to find us. We made it back safely and all was well.
The Baka people are somewhat nomadic. They don’t often stay in one area for a long period of time. They’re scattered throughout the southern part of Cameroon and a good part of Gabon. There’s a wide estimate that there are between 5,000-60,000 Baka in Cameroon. Some say they do live way way out in the forest and some say no one lives out that far. It’s hard to tell where they might be since no roads go that far into the forest.
It’s apparent the Baka don’t hold onto possessions, and cherish them quite like Westerners do. It’s common for Cameroonians to share what they have with one another, specifically friends and family. Since many don’t have a whole lot, they have no problem lending things out to people in need. It’s a very communal sharing system. But the Baka are even more to the extreme it seems. When they have something, they treat it as though it could easily become lost or just downright gone. They have no way of locking things up to keep them safe from being stolen. Things break after repeated use and they just very quickly and easily accept that it’s no longer around.
When someone in the family dies, often they don’t really seem to grieve much. A young girl, about 12 years old died a little while ago. Her mother and father were not around and her aunt raised her her whole life. This niece was practically like her daughter in that sense. When she passed away, the aunt said very nonchalantly, “we knew she was going to die. It’s the path of everyone.” Joan Lokker told me about one time when she was talking to a Fulbe woman in the middle of cooking some food for supper. One of her children had recently died and Joan said she was sorry to hear that. The woman stopped a brief moment said, “eh, it’s God’s will” and kept on cooking and talking about whatever. Very nonchalant, very accepting. It’s just the way it is.
In the evenings I usually play a game with the Anderton boys and Conrod boys such as Risk or Monopoly. I also try to hop on the internet for an hour or so to catch up on the news. Tonight everyone here watched a movie called “The Gods Must be Crazy.” I’d never seen it before and I really enjoyed it. It has a lot to do with cultural differences between different people and takes place in Africa, specifically South Africa and Botswana.
I’ll be here for another week or so before heading back to Banyo. I’ll probably update at least once more before I go. Until next time…
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Baka land.
I’m in the Baka land, just outside of the small town, Dimako. On Thursday, I took a four and a half hour bus ride with Zac Coleman and his girlfriend, Miriam to get here. It cost a little over eight dollars and wasn’t too bad. It was a big bus, like a coach bus. There was no air conditioning but it wasn’t hot unless we had to stop to drop people off or pick more people up. Once in Dimako, it was a ten minute motorcycle taxi ride to where the Conrods, Andertons and Jennifer Jesse live.
They live in the middle of the rain forest off a dirt path which is off of the main road going from Yaounde to Bertoua. The dry season here lasts for four months while the wet season takes up eight months. During the wet season, it rains pretty much every day. It isn’t a heavy downpour every day, but it often can be. The Conrods, Andertons and Jennifer Jesse each have their own homes, within 100 feet of each other. The schoolroom for the Andertons is also very close by, only 50 feet or so from the Conrods. I’m currently staying in the addition of the Conrod’s home. It’s a separate section, attached to their house and has the washing machine and a storage room attached as well. In my room are a twin bed, double bed, and bathroom with shower.
The main mission here with the Baka is building relationships, doing construction projects, providing medicinal treatment, and church planting. The Baka people aren’t Muslim, like many people in Cameroon. It seems the Baka loosely practice a tribal religion just within the Baka group. Currently there isn’t a Christian church building where people meet for worship but Nathan Conrod does stories with the Baka twice a week. Once a week the Baka come to the part of the forest where the missionaries are, and once a week Nathan goes to where the Baka are. It’s only about a five minute walk. The Bible has not yet been translated into the Baka language but large sections of it, those stories that Nathan shares, have been. Nathan said he is hoping to work on having the whole Bible translated in a few years.
The electricity around here is all solar/battery powered. The lights all run off of the 12 volt car batteries they have in each house. Actually, they’re more like giant diesel truck batteries. There are inverters in each house also connected to the 12 volt batteries to supply electricity for the 110 volt outlets to plug appliances into. The water pump to provide running water to all of the homes is also 12 volt battery powered. The refrigerators here are called absorption refrigerators. They’re kerosene/butane powered and don’t require any electricity or compressors to work. All they need is fuel and gravity.
There is internet here at the houses. It gets turned on twice a day; once in the morning for an hour and once in the evening for an hour. The internet comes into the Anderton’s home and from there goes to the Conrod’s home and Jennifer Jesse’s home through Ethernet cables under the ground. The Andertons use an empty piece of plastic conduit or hose to make a horn sound, almost like a native tribal hunting call, to signal to the Conrods and Jenn that the internet is turned on. Two blows of the horn means the internet is on, one blow means it’s five minutes until the internet will be shut off.
My shower consists of a water tap that is near the ground, and a bucket with a valve on the bottom. I fill the bucket with the water from the tap, and then hang it up on a hook over the shower stall. I can then turn the valve on the bottom of the bucket open to get water to wash with. I think the reason why the shower water tap is near the ground and not high up is because of low water pressure due to the solar powered water pump. The toilet takes several minutes to fill its tank after each flush.
On Friday, Miriam, Zac and I helped Jenn with the construction of her new home. It’s currently mostly built, and some local Baka men are stuccoing the outside and inside brick walls with concrete. Miriam Zac and I helped by trimming some plywood walls that weren’t fitting correctly, stapled screens for vents in place, organized some tools and removed the doors and window shutters so the men could stucco without getting concrete all over the doors/shutters. Once the house is complete, where Jenn is currently staying will become a guesthouse or a house for another missionary who will be coming back, named Heidi.
After lunch on Friday, a bunch of the kids, Zac, Miriam and I went on a walk in the woods to see some huge trees. This area is a major forestry area for wood. Unfortunately, about 80% of the trees that get chopped down are wasted. The foresters take a small, big section of the tree that can be used for making long sections of 2x4s, and leave the rest, the smaller sections, to rot. What a waste! Some people do come along and cash in on the hard work of taking down a tree by chopping up left over wood for firewood. Still, 80% does go to waste.
Zac and Miriam left today to go back to Yaounde. They’ve been on spring break and school starts back up on Tuesday. I’ll be here for another week and a half to two weeks. I’m hoping to continue to help out with the construction project in any way that I can. When I leave, I’ll travel back to Yaounde for a day or two, and then back to Banyo. Hopefully I can put some pictures up from this trip to the Baka land while I’m in Yaounde.
They live in the middle of the rain forest off a dirt path which is off of the main road going from Yaounde to Bertoua. The dry season here lasts for four months while the wet season takes up eight months. During the wet season, it rains pretty much every day. It isn’t a heavy downpour every day, but it often can be. The Conrods, Andertons and Jennifer Jesse each have their own homes, within 100 feet of each other. The schoolroom for the Andertons is also very close by, only 50 feet or so from the Conrods. I’m currently staying in the addition of the Conrod’s home. It’s a separate section, attached to their house and has the washing machine and a storage room attached as well. In my room are a twin bed, double bed, and bathroom with shower.
The main mission here with the Baka is building relationships, doing construction projects, providing medicinal treatment, and church planting. The Baka people aren’t Muslim, like many people in Cameroon. It seems the Baka loosely practice a tribal religion just within the Baka group. Currently there isn’t a Christian church building where people meet for worship but Nathan Conrod does stories with the Baka twice a week. Once a week the Baka come to the part of the forest where the missionaries are, and once a week Nathan goes to where the Baka are. It’s only about a five minute walk. The Bible has not yet been translated into the Baka language but large sections of it, those stories that Nathan shares, have been. Nathan said he is hoping to work on having the whole Bible translated in a few years.
The electricity around here is all solar/battery powered. The lights all run off of the 12 volt car batteries they have in each house. Actually, they’re more like giant diesel truck batteries. There are inverters in each house also connected to the 12 volt batteries to supply electricity for the 110 volt outlets to plug appliances into. The water pump to provide running water to all of the homes is also 12 volt battery powered. The refrigerators here are called absorption refrigerators. They’re kerosene/butane powered and don’t require any electricity or compressors to work. All they need is fuel and gravity.
There is internet here at the houses. It gets turned on twice a day; once in the morning for an hour and once in the evening for an hour. The internet comes into the Anderton’s home and from there goes to the Conrod’s home and Jennifer Jesse’s home through Ethernet cables under the ground. The Andertons use an empty piece of plastic conduit or hose to make a horn sound, almost like a native tribal hunting call, to signal to the Conrods and Jenn that the internet is turned on. Two blows of the horn means the internet is on, one blow means it’s five minutes until the internet will be shut off.
My shower consists of a water tap that is near the ground, and a bucket with a valve on the bottom. I fill the bucket with the water from the tap, and then hang it up on a hook over the shower stall. I can then turn the valve on the bottom of the bucket open to get water to wash with. I think the reason why the shower water tap is near the ground and not high up is because of low water pressure due to the solar powered water pump. The toilet takes several minutes to fill its tank after each flush.
On Friday, Miriam, Zac and I helped Jenn with the construction of her new home. It’s currently mostly built, and some local Baka men are stuccoing the outside and inside brick walls with concrete. Miriam Zac and I helped by trimming some plywood walls that weren’t fitting correctly, stapled screens for vents in place, organized some tools and removed the doors and window shutters so the men could stucco without getting concrete all over the doors/shutters. Once the house is complete, where Jenn is currently staying will become a guesthouse or a house for another missionary who will be coming back, named Heidi.
After lunch on Friday, a bunch of the kids, Zac, Miriam and I went on a walk in the woods to see some huge trees. This area is a major forestry area for wood. Unfortunately, about 80% of the trees that get chopped down are wasted. The foresters take a small, big section of the tree that can be used for making long sections of 2x4s, and leave the rest, the smaller sections, to rot. What a waste! Some people do come along and cash in on the hard work of taking down a tree by chopping up left over wood for firewood. Still, 80% does go to waste.
Zac and Miriam left today to go back to Yaounde. They’ve been on spring break and school starts back up on Tuesday. I’ll be here for another week and a half to two weeks. I’m hoping to continue to help out with the construction project in any way that I can. When I leave, I’ll travel back to Yaounde for a day or two, and then back to Banyo. Hopefully I can put some pictures up from this trip to the Baka land while I’m in Yaounde.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Yaounde
We got into Yaounde on Thursday with no trouble. I felt a bit sick once we got here and for the rest of the evening. I threw up but felt fine the next day and have since then. We’re staying with a missionary family, the Colemans, the same place where we spent one night on our way from Banyo to Kribi. They don’t live right in downtown but it’s only about 15-30 minutes away by car, depending on traffic. We’re fairly close to the airport and I can usually here a few planes taking off each day from my bedroom window.
Yaounde is the capital and second largest city in Cameroon. You can find a lot of things here you wouldn’t normally find elsewhere in Cameroon. I went to a couple grocery stores with Arnie Coleman, the father. In Yaounde, you can get Crunch bars, Kit Kats, Snickers, Lindt chocolate, all sorts of seasonings I haven’t found elsewhere, soy sauce, Dove shampoo, Duracell batteries, and a lot more. You can buy full size refrigerators and other large electronic appliances. I’ve seen a few car dealerships including Peugeot, Renault and Toyota. I haven’t found a Mercedes dealership yet although I know it has to be somewhere around here. There are definitely a lot more Mercedes in Yaounde than anywhere else.
There’s even a Hilton Hotel. We went there on Sunday for church. The International Christian Church of Yaoude, where Arnie is an elder, rents a meeting room at the Hilton on Sundays to have church. It’s a small congregation, mostly consisting of missionaries station in Yaounde.
I ate at a MakDonald’s the other day. It’s a knockoff on McDonald’s but had pretty good food. They didn’t have the variety of burgers they do at McD’s in America but you can still get a burger, fish, chicken, soya steak meat, fries, salad and ice cream. There’s no cheese though.
Tomorrow I will try to find some parts to take back to Banyo, as well as a watch battery.
And I’ve added a few more photos to my photo album. http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2038953&id=1337370415&l=bba13eaecb
Yaounde is the capital and second largest city in Cameroon. You can find a lot of things here you wouldn’t normally find elsewhere in Cameroon. I went to a couple grocery stores with Arnie Coleman, the father. In Yaounde, you can get Crunch bars, Kit Kats, Snickers, Lindt chocolate, all sorts of seasonings I haven’t found elsewhere, soy sauce, Dove shampoo, Duracell batteries, and a lot more. You can buy full size refrigerators and other large electronic appliances. I’ve seen a few car dealerships including Peugeot, Renault and Toyota. I haven’t found a Mercedes dealership yet although I know it has to be somewhere around here. There are definitely a lot more Mercedes in Yaounde than anywhere else.
There’s even a Hilton Hotel. We went there on Sunday for church. The International Christian Church of Yaoude, where Arnie is an elder, rents a meeting room at the Hilton on Sundays to have church. It’s a small congregation, mostly consisting of missionaries station in Yaounde.
I ate at a MakDonald’s the other day. It’s a knockoff on McDonald’s but had pretty good food. They didn’t have the variety of burgers they do at McD’s in America but you can still get a burger, fish, chicken, soya steak meat, fries, salad and ice cream. There’s no cheese though.
Tomorrow I will try to find some parts to take back to Banyo, as well as a watch battery.
And I’ve added a few more photos to my photo album. http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2038953&id=1337370415&l=bba13eaecb
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Leaving Kribi tomorrow.
The time here at Kribi has been really nice. Going to the beach has been fun and hanging out with some kids has been cool. For a few days there were a whole bunch of jellyfish in the water that would sting almost everyone that got in at some point or another. I’ve been stung about a three times so far along with everyone else. It’s a really sharp sting that feels kind of like an ant bite that hurts more, is a little more spread out and a lot deeper into your skin. Then depending on how bad you get it, your skin may swell and show little red marks. The jellyfish seemed to have disappeared yesterday though. No stings thankfully. Hopefully it will stay like that for all of today. We leave tomorrow, Thursday to go back to Yaounde.
The power also came back on late last night. It went out on Monday night in the middle of watching a TV show. We were all a little scared for a day since one of the women here named Jennifer said she was here in Kribi a little while ago and the power went out for 3 out of the 5 days she was here. Hopefully it’ll stay on...
The power also came back on late last night. It went out on Monday night in the middle of watching a TV show. We were all a little scared for a day since one of the women here named Jennifer said she was here in Kribi a little while ago and the power went out for 3 out of the 5 days she was here. Hopefully it’ll stay on...
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Kribi so far.
Well, we’re in Kribi.
We left Banyo to go to Kribi at 7 in the morning on Wednesday. We got into Yaounde, the capital, by 8 in the evening and spent the night at the home of some missionaries, the Colemans. We then left at 7 on Thursday to make the four hour trip from Yaounde to Kribi. Our hotel, Costa Blanca is a few hundred feet from the beach. It has several rooms and hosted all of the missionary families until today. The Colemans came today around two and all of the youth, myself included, are now at the Schneiderhouse Hotel just a couple hundred feet from Costa Blanca. All of the adults and small kids will stay at Costa Blanca. I shared a room and bathroom with Timothy Lokker while at Costa Blanca and I think I’ll share an even bigger room with a few more boys although I’m not sure. I haven’t actually seen the room yet.
For the most part, since we arrived, I’ve been watching the kids. Most of the parents and adult missionaries have been having meetings most of the day each day. We spend a lot of time in the water swimming around playing games. We’ve also watched some movies and played some card games.
The beach is very nice. The sand on the beach itself is white, but underneath the water it’s black for the most part. The top sand is very very fine and it gets coarser the further down you go. There aren’t very many seashells or pebbles in the water like there are in the Jersey shore. And the water is pretty warm, although not as warm as South Padre Island, TX. The water only very gradually gets deeper as you walk out. I can walk out for probably about 150 feet before I can’t touch the bottom with my feet anymore. It’s like a large wading pool. So far I haven’t come across a point where it very quickly drops off like in Jersey. And there aren’t sand dunes underneath the water where it gets deep and then shallow again like in Texas. It’s just a very slow descent.
I haven’t seen a ton of animals around; mostly just a few stray dogs on the beach. There are some minnows or other small fish swimming around in a lagoon close by. I’ve seen a couple crabs but that’s pretty much it. I saw a dead shark about three feet in length in a bucket from a local girl who had taken a boat out to go fishing. So there are sharks in this water but they don’t come close to the beach, at least that’s what I was told. They wouldn’t cause a problem anyway. As I said, they’re only a few feet in length. Humans are not their prey.
To eat, we’ve mostly had fish, shrimp, chicken, bread, mangoes, pineapple and rice. I’m not much of a seafood fan but I’ve been managing. The first lunch we had here consisted of a lot of shrimp. They still had their legs, eyes and mouths attached so I had to learn how to pull it apart. It took me a few minutes just to get one apart until a missionary named Dan showed me how it’s done. First you rip the head off which really is more like the upper half of the entire body. Then, you dig you thumb under where their legs and shells are and you peel the shells off. Then, you grab the very tip of the tail, pull it back, and wiggle the whole body as you yank the meat out of the tail section. And then, you can eat. It’s very messy and in my opinion isn’t worth the hassle, although the shrimp did taste good.
We’ll be in Kribi for the next week before heading back to Yaounde. I’ll probably spend a few days there before travelling to the east and staying with another missionary family for a week or two.
Here are some photos so far: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2038953&id=1337370415&l=bba13eaecb
We left Banyo to go to Kribi at 7 in the morning on Wednesday. We got into Yaounde, the capital, by 8 in the evening and spent the night at the home of some missionaries, the Colemans. We then left at 7 on Thursday to make the four hour trip from Yaounde to Kribi. Our hotel, Costa Blanca is a few hundred feet from the beach. It has several rooms and hosted all of the missionary families until today. The Colemans came today around two and all of the youth, myself included, are now at the Schneiderhouse Hotel just a couple hundred feet from Costa Blanca. All of the adults and small kids will stay at Costa Blanca. I shared a room and bathroom with Timothy Lokker while at Costa Blanca and I think I’ll share an even bigger room with a few more boys although I’m not sure. I haven’t actually seen the room yet.
For the most part, since we arrived, I’ve been watching the kids. Most of the parents and adult missionaries have been having meetings most of the day each day. We spend a lot of time in the water swimming around playing games. We’ve also watched some movies and played some card games.
The beach is very nice. The sand on the beach itself is white, but underneath the water it’s black for the most part. The top sand is very very fine and it gets coarser the further down you go. There aren’t very many seashells or pebbles in the water like there are in the Jersey shore. And the water is pretty warm, although not as warm as South Padre Island, TX. The water only very gradually gets deeper as you walk out. I can walk out for probably about 150 feet before I can’t touch the bottom with my feet anymore. It’s like a large wading pool. So far I haven’t come across a point where it very quickly drops off like in Jersey. And there aren’t sand dunes underneath the water where it gets deep and then shallow again like in Texas. It’s just a very slow descent.
I haven’t seen a ton of animals around; mostly just a few stray dogs on the beach. There are some minnows or other small fish swimming around in a lagoon close by. I’ve seen a couple crabs but that’s pretty much it. I saw a dead shark about three feet in length in a bucket from a local girl who had taken a boat out to go fishing. So there are sharks in this water but they don’t come close to the beach, at least that’s what I was told. They wouldn’t cause a problem anyway. As I said, they’re only a few feet in length. Humans are not their prey.
To eat, we’ve mostly had fish, shrimp, chicken, bread, mangoes, pineapple and rice. I’m not much of a seafood fan but I’ve been managing. The first lunch we had here consisted of a lot of shrimp. They still had their legs, eyes and mouths attached so I had to learn how to pull it apart. It took me a few minutes just to get one apart until a missionary named Dan showed me how it’s done. First you rip the head off which really is more like the upper half of the entire body. Then, you dig you thumb under where their legs and shells are and you peel the shells off. Then, you grab the very tip of the tail, pull it back, and wiggle the whole body as you yank the meat out of the tail section. And then, you can eat. It’s very messy and in my opinion isn’t worth the hassle, although the shrimp did taste good.
We’ll be in Kribi for the next week before heading back to Yaounde. I’ll probably spend a few days there before travelling to the east and staying with another missionary family for a week or two.
Here are some photos so far: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2038953&id=1337370415&l=bba13eaecb
Friday, March 12, 2010
Malarba
On Sunday, we came back to Banyo with two guests. Wynona and Rachel are a mom and daughter from Canada seeking to do long term missionary work in Cameroon. They got into Bamenda on Friday, went souvenir shopping with me on Commercial Avenue in Bamenda on Saturday, and have been in Banyo with us for this past week.
When we got back, we found out that the doctor’s home had been broken into while they were at church in the morning. The thieves took two brand new laptops still in the box, one new laptop that the doctor had been using and $4,000 that they had in emergency money. Nothing like this has ever happened before in Wouram and it really is a shame. The doctor, Jim, and his wife, Ina, said that their dog, Cody, had been barking all night the previous night which leads everyone to believe the thieves hid in the night and waited until the two left for church. They could hear Cody barking from church, only about a few hundred yards from their home, but didn’t think much of it.
The thieves did not take the other two laptops in the house, which were older and slower which also leads everyone to believe it could have possibly been an inside job, someone in the hospital, or someone who overheard someone talking about the doctor bringing new computers back from the States. Either way, it’s very unnerving and unfortunate. Jim and Ina were still very happy to have us over for dinner the night we got back from Bamenda, like we had planned, which was very kind of them. They seem to be in good spirits despite everything and hopefully nothing like this will happen again.
On Wednesday morning, Bob, Sulemanu, Dayyibu, Wynona, Rachel and I left to go to the small town of Malarba to meet the people there, bring tables and benches, and to hand out small care packages. On Tuesday, Dayyibu, Wynona, Rachel and I went into town to gather stuff to make the care packages. They consisted of soap, toothbrushes, toothpaste, scrub brushes, Vaseline and matches. Wynona and Rachel also brought with them some candy from Canada, such as candy necklaces and Skittles. The seven hour trip to Malarba was a pretty bumpy and uncomfortable one but not too bad.
We stopped in a little town along the way called Tibati and I was able to try two new chocolate bars and a drink I hadn’t seen yet. One chocolate bar was called Rigardo (I can’t remember if that was it exactly) and the other was called Pluto. Rigardo was chocolate with caramel, nougat and peanuts inside. At first I thought it might be like a Snickers but it was a bit different. The Pluto was similar to Kinder bars from Europe but with less truffle filling. It has a hazelnut truffle filling, covered in wafers, covered in chocolate. The drink, Vimto, was a grape-raspberry soda. I’m not usually a fan of grape soda but it was really good. I think the raspberry helped. I haven’t seen it in Banyo but I was told you can get it here. I’ll have to look for it now.
Anyway, enough with food – onto the more important details. When we got to Malarba, we were first mobbed by swarms of kids and several adults. There are about 32 families in Malarba, each with like 8-15 kids. Lots of kids! After greeting many of the adults, Wynona, Rachel and Sulemanu pretty quickly started handing candy out to the children. We had a drink called gaari which is basically ground up corn kernels, with milk and a little bit of sugar. It was pretty good and pretty thick.
We then more or less played with the children, holding them, shaking hands, etc. for little bit. Many of the kids seemed to be sick with a cough and runny noses. They were all pretty dirty and definitely didn’t wash hands. I remember shaking one child’s hands and I could just feel a layer of residual dirt being transferred from his hand to mine. I definitely washed my hands after that.
We then had dinner which consisted of rice with a sauce and a hickory/chicory tea with sweet, condensed milk and sugar. It was pretty good and pretty sweet. After dinner we went to the prayer room for praying and singing. Malarba is a mostly Christian town that consists of refugee Fulbe from the Central African Republic. They’ve lived here in Cameroon for about the past ten years or so, ever since they left the C.A.R. Bob and Sulemanu have been to Malarba many times before discipling and being there for the people.
After the prayer room, I got ready for bed. Bob and I slept in a man’s room who gave it up for the night we were there. I was very thankful to him for that. I slept on the bed and Bob slept on a foam mattress on the ground. I didn’t sleep very well, mostly because of a moth that would sometimes fly on top of me but it’s nothing compared to Wynona and Rachel’s experience, who were in the room right next to Bob and I. Two cockroaches crawled onto Wynona’s head in the night. Mice (or possibly lizards) were scurrying around in the night. Bob said he heard the mice but I guess I was asleep at that point. We woke up pretty early, had some breakfast which consisted of rice and fish. Bob led a devotion, then we went around to the different people’s homes and passed out the care packages. I carried the box full of soap while Dayyibu carried all the bags filled with the other products, and Wynona and Rachel passed them out.
Overall, the people there were very happy to have us and very welcoming. It’s amazing to see how little some people have but how blissfully happy they can be. The children seemed very intrigued by us. In the hours before we left on Thursday, while Wynona and Rachel were getting their hair braided by the Fulbe women, a few kids clamored around me holding my hands, stroking my white arms. They were also fascinated with the cameras and loved it when we would take a picture of them, and show them afterwards what it looked like. Dayyibu stayed in Malarba for an extra day to nail benches and tables together that we had transported as pieces of pre-cut wood.
Today, Sulemanu invited Wynona, Rachel and I to his house so his wife could teach us how to make fufu and jamajama. It’s a very common dish around here. Fufu is made by taking corn flour and mixing it with boiling water. You allow it to bowl for awhile until the water mostly evaporates. You’re left with a large white clump of moist, sticky food. The jamajama is made by first frying a few onions and tomatoes with oil in a pan. You then take chopped green plants, mash them, boil them with the tomatoes and onions, and continue mash it all together. You then eat it all with your hands by scooping a little bit of fufu up and then scooping some jamajama with it and eating it. It’s filling and fairly good but definitely lacking in substance.
Wynona and Rachel will leave Banyo tonight to visit another area of Cameroon for a couple days before heading back to Canada on Tuesday. The Lokkers and I will be leaving on either Monday or Tuesday to go to Kribi on the Atlantic Ocean for the World Team missions conference for two weeks.
When we got back, we found out that the doctor’s home had been broken into while they were at church in the morning. The thieves took two brand new laptops still in the box, one new laptop that the doctor had been using and $4,000 that they had in emergency money. Nothing like this has ever happened before in Wouram and it really is a shame. The doctor, Jim, and his wife, Ina, said that their dog, Cody, had been barking all night the previous night which leads everyone to believe the thieves hid in the night and waited until the two left for church. They could hear Cody barking from church, only about a few hundred yards from their home, but didn’t think much of it.
The thieves did not take the other two laptops in the house, which were older and slower which also leads everyone to believe it could have possibly been an inside job, someone in the hospital, or someone who overheard someone talking about the doctor bringing new computers back from the States. Either way, it’s very unnerving and unfortunate. Jim and Ina were still very happy to have us over for dinner the night we got back from Bamenda, like we had planned, which was very kind of them. They seem to be in good spirits despite everything and hopefully nothing like this will happen again.
On Wednesday morning, Bob, Sulemanu, Dayyibu, Wynona, Rachel and I left to go to the small town of Malarba to meet the people there, bring tables and benches, and to hand out small care packages. On Tuesday, Dayyibu, Wynona, Rachel and I went into town to gather stuff to make the care packages. They consisted of soap, toothbrushes, toothpaste, scrub brushes, Vaseline and matches. Wynona and Rachel also brought with them some candy from Canada, such as candy necklaces and Skittles. The seven hour trip to Malarba was a pretty bumpy and uncomfortable one but not too bad.
We stopped in a little town along the way called Tibati and I was able to try two new chocolate bars and a drink I hadn’t seen yet. One chocolate bar was called Rigardo (I can’t remember if that was it exactly) and the other was called Pluto. Rigardo was chocolate with caramel, nougat and peanuts inside. At first I thought it might be like a Snickers but it was a bit different. The Pluto was similar to Kinder bars from Europe but with less truffle filling. It has a hazelnut truffle filling, covered in wafers, covered in chocolate. The drink, Vimto, was a grape-raspberry soda. I’m not usually a fan of grape soda but it was really good. I think the raspberry helped. I haven’t seen it in Banyo but I was told you can get it here. I’ll have to look for it now.
Anyway, enough with food – onto the more important details. When we got to Malarba, we were first mobbed by swarms of kids and several adults. There are about 32 families in Malarba, each with like 8-15 kids. Lots of kids! After greeting many of the adults, Wynona, Rachel and Sulemanu pretty quickly started handing candy out to the children. We had a drink called gaari which is basically ground up corn kernels, with milk and a little bit of sugar. It was pretty good and pretty thick.
We then more or less played with the children, holding them, shaking hands, etc. for little bit. Many of the kids seemed to be sick with a cough and runny noses. They were all pretty dirty and definitely didn’t wash hands. I remember shaking one child’s hands and I could just feel a layer of residual dirt being transferred from his hand to mine. I definitely washed my hands after that.
We then had dinner which consisted of rice with a sauce and a hickory/chicory tea with sweet, condensed milk and sugar. It was pretty good and pretty sweet. After dinner we went to the prayer room for praying and singing. Malarba is a mostly Christian town that consists of refugee Fulbe from the Central African Republic. They’ve lived here in Cameroon for about the past ten years or so, ever since they left the C.A.R. Bob and Sulemanu have been to Malarba many times before discipling and being there for the people.
After the prayer room, I got ready for bed. Bob and I slept in a man’s room who gave it up for the night we were there. I was very thankful to him for that. I slept on the bed and Bob slept on a foam mattress on the ground. I didn’t sleep very well, mostly because of a moth that would sometimes fly on top of me but it’s nothing compared to Wynona and Rachel’s experience, who were in the room right next to Bob and I. Two cockroaches crawled onto Wynona’s head in the night. Mice (or possibly lizards) were scurrying around in the night. Bob said he heard the mice but I guess I was asleep at that point. We woke up pretty early, had some breakfast which consisted of rice and fish. Bob led a devotion, then we went around to the different people’s homes and passed out the care packages. I carried the box full of soap while Dayyibu carried all the bags filled with the other products, and Wynona and Rachel passed them out.
Overall, the people there were very happy to have us and very welcoming. It’s amazing to see how little some people have but how blissfully happy they can be. The children seemed very intrigued by us. In the hours before we left on Thursday, while Wynona and Rachel were getting their hair braided by the Fulbe women, a few kids clamored around me holding my hands, stroking my white arms. They were also fascinated with the cameras and loved it when we would take a picture of them, and show them afterwards what it looked like. Dayyibu stayed in Malarba for an extra day to nail benches and tables together that we had transported as pieces of pre-cut wood.
Today, Sulemanu invited Wynona, Rachel and I to his house so his wife could teach us how to make fufu and jamajama. It’s a very common dish around here. Fufu is made by taking corn flour and mixing it with boiling water. You allow it to bowl for awhile until the water mostly evaporates. You’re left with a large white clump of moist, sticky food. The jamajama is made by first frying a few onions and tomatoes with oil in a pan. You then take chopped green plants, mash them, boil them with the tomatoes and onions, and continue mash it all together. You then eat it all with your hands by scooping a little bit of fufu up and then scooping some jamajama with it and eating it. It’s filling and fairly good but definitely lacking in substance.
Wynona and Rachel will leave Banyo tonight to visit another area of Cameroon for a couple days before heading back to Canada on Tuesday. The Lokkers and I will be leaving on either Monday or Tuesday to go to Kribi on the Atlantic Ocean for the World Team missions conference for two weeks.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Mbingo
This entry is extremely long but has lots of details for those who really want to know what Mbingo was like.
On Tuesday, around 2pm, Robbie and I left for Mbingo. We were able to easily find a Toyota Corolla taxi cab that would take us all the way there. Originally we thought we’d have to take a taxi out of Bamenda to a village halfway between Bamenda and Mbingo. Then, from there, we would probably have to find a new taxi to take us the rest of the way. Luckily it was made easy for us, although it wasn’t the most comfortable ride. We had seven adults, including the driver, plus a baby, crammed in a little four door, five passenger Corolla from the early 90s.
I was in the back, with Robbie to my left, and a man, his wife, and baby to my right. In the front was the driver on the left, then two people sharing the front seat, the one on the right shoved against the door, and the one in the middle, half on the seat, half on the center console, somewhat in the way of the shifter. I see multiple people crammed in these little cabs all the time but have never been in one this packed before. It was an experience.
We got to Mbingo around 4 and took a quick walk around the hospital. Robbie stopped in and said hello to nurses and patients he hadn’t seen in a few days. I could see his eyes light up when we got there. It was the same look I probably get when talking about cars and learning about engines. I could tell that working in the medical field was something he really wants to do, just like I really want my own car company. I believe at one point he said being a surgeon would be ideal. He has one more quarter of undergrad school left this year, and then just one more quarter left next year. He’s hoping to take the MCATZ over the summer and he’ll be done with his Bachelor’s degree in December. He may take some time off from continuing school and may not jump right into medical school, but ultimately hopes to be officially trained in the medical field. He has really enjoyed the work he’s been doing in Mbingo.
The hospital is very nice, and much larger than the one in Banyo, even though both are basically funded and owned by the same Baptist organization. It definitely handles more patients, has bigger wards, more operating rooms, more doctors, a bigger library, etc. Robbie said the hospital in Mbingo is a very good one in Cameroon, one of the best, if not, the best. People from all over Cameroon come to it. One of the women I saw operated on today was from hours and hours away. They have multiple surgeons whereas most hospitals in Cameroon have only one legitimately trained surgeon. Robbie mentioned the cleanliness and the quality of machines aren’t up to American standards although I’m sure for a third world country, this hospital is superb.
After leaving the hospital, we went to the Sparks’ home. It’s Cory and Suzanne’s home where the kids from FES went this past weekend (see previous blog). It’s a very nice home and is practically a palace compared to how most Cameroonians live. Although by American standards, it’s fairly normal. It’s in a very nice spot in Mbingo overlooking much of the town. Stephen Sparks, Cory’s dad, is the vascular surgeon at the hospital and was the only person home when we got there. Their two older daughters are away at school right now. I watched some X-files with Robbie, traded some music with him, and ate some dinner. We were both pretty tired and went to bed fairly early, (around 10). It was a good thing because we needed to be up early the next morning.
I woke up at 6:30 and we were out of the house by 6:50. We got to the hospital just before 7. Robbie and I changed into some sterilized scrubs, and put on “indoor shoes”. They have a rack with slip on shoes for use inside the “theater,” a British term for an operating room. When I first saw the word theater at the hospital, I thought to myself, “wow, they even have a theater for patients to watch movies while they wait for their surgery to begin! Sweet!” Not so much.
Robbie introduced me to many of the nurses and doctors in the theater. In this one building, they have three operating rooms, a lounge, and a room to clean clothing and sterilize equipment. I scrubbed up, or rather, did my best to after Rob basically showed me how. He said it wasn’t too critical that I’m completely scrubbed up since I’ll just be mostly watching and observing and won’t actually be doing surgery stuff, obviously. Nonetheless, I wanted to be clean. You have to scrub your hands and arms with soap, and then when you rinse, you start from the tips of your fingers, with them pointing upwards, to allow the germs in the water to drip off your arms. You then always keep your hands elevated above the elbows. We then put on our surgical masks and watched the doctors get to work.
The first surgery was classified as a “pelvic exploration.” The woman came in complaining of pain in her abdomen. Through an X-ray, the doctors were able to tell something was in that area that shouldn’t have been. However, since they don’t have things like a CAT scan, they weren’t able to tell exactly what it was but they figured it was probably a cyst. Robbie mentioned the cyst is most likely the result of an STD. The whole procedure took about 6-7 staff to perform.
It started with two nurses assisting the anesthesiologist in administering the spinal tap. She had to stick a fairly long needle in the spine in order to numb the whole area below the insertion. They then laid the girl down on her back, and gave her some meds to also help her remain comfortable during the procedure. I believe they gave her some ketamine, which is “Special K” in American slang. Ketamine also makes you pretty loopy and you occasionally repeat the same things over and over again during your trip. One day, Robbie was assisting in a surgery where a little boy was on some ketamine. The boy saw Robbie, pointed to him, and repeated over and over again, “White Devil! White Devil! White Devil!” Robbie laughs when he tells the story although I’m sure at the moment it was more a distraction than an amusement.
Then, after the anesthesiologist was done, Robbie used an electric razor to shave any little bits of hair off the woman’s stomach. He used a piece of tape to remove any loose hairs that had just been cut. Then he used iodine to disinfect the area. Then, another nurse carefully placed multiple sterilized cloths around where the incision would be made and then one final large cloth sheet with a hole in the center for the surgery. Then, the anesthesiologist and two nurses plus Robbie stayed on while three doctors came in to do the surgery.
Before the surgeons got to work, the nurses unwrapped a bundle of sterilized smocks and clothes for the surgeons. The surgeons, using their just scrubbed hands, put the smocks on. Before sticking their hands all the way through the sleeves, they used the sleeves to grab the glove packet and opened it. They then very carefully put two sets of latex (or nitrile) gloves on each hand and over the sleeves of the smock. Cleanliness is of course extremely important. Before the whole sterilized smock and glove thing, they put on eye goggles to avoid any blood/fluid splatter.
One doctor did most of the incisions and work while the other two assisted that first doctor by holding utensils in place, provided tools, and soaked up blood using both sterilized cloths and a suction machine. The first incision is done with a scalpel which cuts through the layers of skin. Then the fat and any tissue in the way are cut using an electric cauter. According to Wikipedia, what the doctors used isn’t classified as an electrocauter but rather just electrosurgery.
A cauter is designed to use heat to burn through and slice the tissue you are trying to cut. In the process of burning it, you coagulate the blood in the blood vessels in order to prevent bleeding. It’s kind of like singeing or welding blood vessels shut. Rob described it to me like in the last Star Wars movie. Luke and Darth Vader were battling to the death using their light sabers. Darth Vader managed to slice Luke’s hand off, but Luke didn’t really bleed much. That’s because his blood vessels were singed shut. So by using the electric cauter, you’re basically using a mini-light saber.
This electric cauter the doctors used doesn’t generate heat at the tip, like a soldering iron would which is why it’s not classified as “electrocautering”. What it does is create an electric circuit within the patient’s body that allows the tip of the cauter to slice through the tissue, and coagulate the blood. For anyone that needs a quick lesson in electricity: in order to complete an electrical circuit, you must have a wire coming from the positive side of the power source (a battery, wall socket, whatever the power source is), and you need a wire coming from the negative side of the power source. The negative side is also called ground. In order to use the cauter machine, you have to attach a grounding strap to the patient’s leg. The tip of the cauter gun itself, which looks like a pen, is the positive side. There is a button on the pen you press to complete the circuit and allow electricity to flow.
Electricity then goes from the cauter machine to the tip of the cauter pen, through the person’s body, to the grounding strap on their leg, and then back into the cauter machine. I wasn’t able to find out exactly how much current or voltage was going into the person’s body but the machine’s output was adjustable between 1-500 watts I believe. They had it set to about 20 watts if I remember correctly. Judging by the sparks created between the cauter pen tip and the person’s body tissue, it looked like the voltage was at least 30 volts. It smelled kind of bad but not the worst. It was a combination of the smell of burning plastic and a bad barbecue in my opinion.
They used the cautery machine to cut through much of the tissue in the way and I believe they used a scalpel to actually remove the cyst. The cyst was about the size of a few small garlic cloves. It was filled with a watery liquid, but not pus. The doctors then put everything back in place that they had to move outwards and out of the way, like the intestines and other organs. Then they stitched the opening they made, which looked to be about six inches long. There are two layers of stitching to be done. The first layer is about a centimeter or so below the surface of the skin. The surgeons perform this part using a small, curved hook needle with the stitching thread attached. They used small needle-nose pliers (or whatever the correct medical term for those are, I call them small needle nose pliers) to loop the needle in and out going back and forth from one side of the cut to the other.
Then, the surgeons leave and the nurses do the second layer of stitching in the same manor the surgeons did it. This second layer is done on the skin surface. Both sets of stitching are automatically dissolving stitches. After the stitching was over, Rob and a nurse put gauze and tape over the opening to allow it to heal. We then picked the woman up by the cloth sheet she was laying on, and moved her onto a new hospital bed to roll her out of the room and to the recovery area. A few minutes was given for the doctors to take a break before the next patient came in.
The next patient was an older gentlemen in his 70s with a hernia in his abdomen that needed to be removed. It was more or less the same as the previous procedure. Sterilized equipment, spinal tap, incisions with a scalpel, cautery, removing the hernia, two layers of stitching, move the man onto a different hospital bed and then out to the recovery area. The third patient was a woman who had an abscess in her abdomen (also most likely the result of an STD) that needed to be drained of pus and for some infected tissue to be removed. This was the surgery I got the chance to take pictures of and posted on Facebook. http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2037698&id=1337370415&l=a82aeade57
This was, at this point, the foulest smelling surgery because of the pus. I had to breathe through my mouth several times during the procedure. In all three of these surgeries, the only helping I really did was to move the patient from the surgery bed to the rolling hospital bed by picking up the feet end of the cloth the patient was laid out on.
In between the second and third surgery, and for a small portion of the third surgery, I stepped out of the operating room we were in, and went to the eye surgery room. A man’s eye had ruptured and needed to be sewn back together. I imagine that the whole procedure was a little bit more complicated than just a rupture and there was probably some sort of other problem with the man’s eye but I didn’t catch what it was. There were three people in the room when I arrived. The doctor was performing the stitching through a magnifying machine for looking at the eye up close. A nurse was assisting with giving tools, soaking up blood, and rinsing the eye with saline solution. The third person, who was probably a nurse/student, was observing through the same machine the doctor was using to magnify the eye. The machine had two spots to view what was going on. Perfect for the person actually doing work and someone who needs to learn and observe.
The nurse observing got up to allow me to watch for a little while. It was intense! You’d think seeing a small curved stitching needle no longer than a centimeter or so going in and out of an eye would give me the creeps but it was very fascinating. In it goes with the thread trailing behind. Out it comes. The doctor cuts the stitch, ties the two ends together, cuts the excess, and creates a new stitch just a millimeter or less away from the previous stitch. In the needle goes into the eye, out it comes across the clearly visible ruptured slit in the eye. It gets tied, cut and a new stitch is formed. It was really cool.
I guess that’s more or less what the surgery done on my eyes when I was a baby looked like. I was born cross eyed and had a surgery when I was 9 months old (correct me on this if I’m wrong, mom) to correct it. A few days (?) after the surgery, I started to cry and scream bloody murder. My mom called the doctor and he said one of the stitches in my eye probably came loose and that she should bring me in to the hospital to fix it. Ouch! I’m glad I don’t remember it.
The fourth and last surgery of the day that I witnessed was the hardest, most grueling. A burn victim needed his wounds to be redressed. The man, who is 25, was apparently siphoning gasoline from one container to another, or something like that. It accidentally spilled all over him and somehow got ignited. Almost every square inch on this man’s body had third degree burns. His face was untouched, the bottoms on his feet were okay in some parts, and a few patches of skin on his chest and stomach were okay. Other than that, he had just exposed flesh, bits of blood, and yellow pus everywhere. I breathed in through my nose just a couple times before I made the decision that if I breathe through my nose anymore, I would throw up. I breathed through my mouth the rest of the procedure.
The man cried out very loudly several times and his whole body shook from time to time. You could tell he was in a lot of pain from even though he was very doped up. The anesthesiologist gave him several injections of ketamine to reduce his pain and sedate him. It had been a week since he was burned and Rob said his wounds were much better than when he last saw him. The gauze and bandages covering his body need to be replaced every day.
I put some gloves on and actually helped in this procedure by holding his legs up and removing the old bandages. It was very eerie to feel and hear the gauze sticking to his flesh as it was being peeled away. I felt so bad for the poor man. What a devastating experience. I didn’t help with putting new gauze on, mostly because I wouldn’t know what I was doing. They used gauzes with Vaseline and hypochlorite on them to prevent sticking and infection. Seeing that man was quite disturbing and I hope I never have to suffer from third degree burns ever. They don’t expect the man to live for very much longer and are surprised he has so far recovered as well as he has.
After that surgery, it was almost three o’clock in the afternoon. I needed to get back to Bamenda before the taxis stopped running from Mbingo to Bamenda for the day. I thanked everyone for letting me witness the surgeries and told them how grateful I was for the opportunity. Robbie and I then left, went back to the Sparks’ home, and got something to eat. We then walked back towards the hospital and I got in a taxi, this time with 8 people plus a baby. I was cramped with four people in the front between the two actual seats available in the Corolla. It was like that until we got into Bamenda and my legs were numb for most of the ride but all in all I was fine.
I’m very grateful I was able to meet Robbie and go to Mbingo. It was an amazing experience I probably won’t be able to have again for a very long time, if ever.
Today was a day much like any other. I had algebra class (which Sherri did by herself yesterday while I was in Mbingo) and swimming in the morning and some free time in the afternoon. I played hockey with the kids after school was over for them and graded their math homework after dinner. Tomorrow is the last day of classes and a celebration in the evening for the whole two week program. The Lokkers and I will travel back to Banyo on Sunday.
On Tuesday, around 2pm, Robbie and I left for Mbingo. We were able to easily find a Toyota Corolla taxi cab that would take us all the way there. Originally we thought we’d have to take a taxi out of Bamenda to a village halfway between Bamenda and Mbingo. Then, from there, we would probably have to find a new taxi to take us the rest of the way. Luckily it was made easy for us, although it wasn’t the most comfortable ride. We had seven adults, including the driver, plus a baby, crammed in a little four door, five passenger Corolla from the early 90s.
I was in the back, with Robbie to my left, and a man, his wife, and baby to my right. In the front was the driver on the left, then two people sharing the front seat, the one on the right shoved against the door, and the one in the middle, half on the seat, half on the center console, somewhat in the way of the shifter. I see multiple people crammed in these little cabs all the time but have never been in one this packed before. It was an experience.
We got to Mbingo around 4 and took a quick walk around the hospital. Robbie stopped in and said hello to nurses and patients he hadn’t seen in a few days. I could see his eyes light up when we got there. It was the same look I probably get when talking about cars and learning about engines. I could tell that working in the medical field was something he really wants to do, just like I really want my own car company. I believe at one point he said being a surgeon would be ideal. He has one more quarter of undergrad school left this year, and then just one more quarter left next year. He’s hoping to take the MCATZ over the summer and he’ll be done with his Bachelor’s degree in December. He may take some time off from continuing school and may not jump right into medical school, but ultimately hopes to be officially trained in the medical field. He has really enjoyed the work he’s been doing in Mbingo.
The hospital is very nice, and much larger than the one in Banyo, even though both are basically funded and owned by the same Baptist organization. It definitely handles more patients, has bigger wards, more operating rooms, more doctors, a bigger library, etc. Robbie said the hospital in Mbingo is a very good one in Cameroon, one of the best, if not, the best. People from all over Cameroon come to it. One of the women I saw operated on today was from hours and hours away. They have multiple surgeons whereas most hospitals in Cameroon have only one legitimately trained surgeon. Robbie mentioned the cleanliness and the quality of machines aren’t up to American standards although I’m sure for a third world country, this hospital is superb.
After leaving the hospital, we went to the Sparks’ home. It’s Cory and Suzanne’s home where the kids from FES went this past weekend (see previous blog). It’s a very nice home and is practically a palace compared to how most Cameroonians live. Although by American standards, it’s fairly normal. It’s in a very nice spot in Mbingo overlooking much of the town. Stephen Sparks, Cory’s dad, is the vascular surgeon at the hospital and was the only person home when we got there. Their two older daughters are away at school right now. I watched some X-files with Robbie, traded some music with him, and ate some dinner. We were both pretty tired and went to bed fairly early, (around 10). It was a good thing because we needed to be up early the next morning.
I woke up at 6:30 and we were out of the house by 6:50. We got to the hospital just before 7. Robbie and I changed into some sterilized scrubs, and put on “indoor shoes”. They have a rack with slip on shoes for use inside the “theater,” a British term for an operating room. When I first saw the word theater at the hospital, I thought to myself, “wow, they even have a theater for patients to watch movies while they wait for their surgery to begin! Sweet!” Not so much.
Robbie introduced me to many of the nurses and doctors in the theater. In this one building, they have three operating rooms, a lounge, and a room to clean clothing and sterilize equipment. I scrubbed up, or rather, did my best to after Rob basically showed me how. He said it wasn’t too critical that I’m completely scrubbed up since I’ll just be mostly watching and observing and won’t actually be doing surgery stuff, obviously. Nonetheless, I wanted to be clean. You have to scrub your hands and arms with soap, and then when you rinse, you start from the tips of your fingers, with them pointing upwards, to allow the germs in the water to drip off your arms. You then always keep your hands elevated above the elbows. We then put on our surgical masks and watched the doctors get to work.
The first surgery was classified as a “pelvic exploration.” The woman came in complaining of pain in her abdomen. Through an X-ray, the doctors were able to tell something was in that area that shouldn’t have been. However, since they don’t have things like a CAT scan, they weren’t able to tell exactly what it was but they figured it was probably a cyst. Robbie mentioned the cyst is most likely the result of an STD. The whole procedure took about 6-7 staff to perform.
It started with two nurses assisting the anesthesiologist in administering the spinal tap. She had to stick a fairly long needle in the spine in order to numb the whole area below the insertion. They then laid the girl down on her back, and gave her some meds to also help her remain comfortable during the procedure. I believe they gave her some ketamine, which is “Special K” in American slang. Ketamine also makes you pretty loopy and you occasionally repeat the same things over and over again during your trip. One day, Robbie was assisting in a surgery where a little boy was on some ketamine. The boy saw Robbie, pointed to him, and repeated over and over again, “White Devil! White Devil! White Devil!” Robbie laughs when he tells the story although I’m sure at the moment it was more a distraction than an amusement.
Then, after the anesthesiologist was done, Robbie used an electric razor to shave any little bits of hair off the woman’s stomach. He used a piece of tape to remove any loose hairs that had just been cut. Then he used iodine to disinfect the area. Then, another nurse carefully placed multiple sterilized cloths around where the incision would be made and then one final large cloth sheet with a hole in the center for the surgery. Then, the anesthesiologist and two nurses plus Robbie stayed on while three doctors came in to do the surgery.
Before the surgeons got to work, the nurses unwrapped a bundle of sterilized smocks and clothes for the surgeons. The surgeons, using their just scrubbed hands, put the smocks on. Before sticking their hands all the way through the sleeves, they used the sleeves to grab the glove packet and opened it. They then very carefully put two sets of latex (or nitrile) gloves on each hand and over the sleeves of the smock. Cleanliness is of course extremely important. Before the whole sterilized smock and glove thing, they put on eye goggles to avoid any blood/fluid splatter.
One doctor did most of the incisions and work while the other two assisted that first doctor by holding utensils in place, provided tools, and soaked up blood using both sterilized cloths and a suction machine. The first incision is done with a scalpel which cuts through the layers of skin. Then the fat and any tissue in the way are cut using an electric cauter. According to Wikipedia, what the doctors used isn’t classified as an electrocauter but rather just electrosurgery.
A cauter is designed to use heat to burn through and slice the tissue you are trying to cut. In the process of burning it, you coagulate the blood in the blood vessels in order to prevent bleeding. It’s kind of like singeing or welding blood vessels shut. Rob described it to me like in the last Star Wars movie. Luke and Darth Vader were battling to the death using their light sabers. Darth Vader managed to slice Luke’s hand off, but Luke didn’t really bleed much. That’s because his blood vessels were singed shut. So by using the electric cauter, you’re basically using a mini-light saber.
This electric cauter the doctors used doesn’t generate heat at the tip, like a soldering iron would which is why it’s not classified as “electrocautering”. What it does is create an electric circuit within the patient’s body that allows the tip of the cauter to slice through the tissue, and coagulate the blood. For anyone that needs a quick lesson in electricity: in order to complete an electrical circuit, you must have a wire coming from the positive side of the power source (a battery, wall socket, whatever the power source is), and you need a wire coming from the negative side of the power source. The negative side is also called ground. In order to use the cauter machine, you have to attach a grounding strap to the patient’s leg. The tip of the cauter gun itself, which looks like a pen, is the positive side. There is a button on the pen you press to complete the circuit and allow electricity to flow.
Electricity then goes from the cauter machine to the tip of the cauter pen, through the person’s body, to the grounding strap on their leg, and then back into the cauter machine. I wasn’t able to find out exactly how much current or voltage was going into the person’s body but the machine’s output was adjustable between 1-500 watts I believe. They had it set to about 20 watts if I remember correctly. Judging by the sparks created between the cauter pen tip and the person’s body tissue, it looked like the voltage was at least 30 volts. It smelled kind of bad but not the worst. It was a combination of the smell of burning plastic and a bad barbecue in my opinion.
They used the cautery machine to cut through much of the tissue in the way and I believe they used a scalpel to actually remove the cyst. The cyst was about the size of a few small garlic cloves. It was filled with a watery liquid, but not pus. The doctors then put everything back in place that they had to move outwards and out of the way, like the intestines and other organs. Then they stitched the opening they made, which looked to be about six inches long. There are two layers of stitching to be done. The first layer is about a centimeter or so below the surface of the skin. The surgeons perform this part using a small, curved hook needle with the stitching thread attached. They used small needle-nose pliers (or whatever the correct medical term for those are, I call them small needle nose pliers) to loop the needle in and out going back and forth from one side of the cut to the other.
Then, the surgeons leave and the nurses do the second layer of stitching in the same manor the surgeons did it. This second layer is done on the skin surface. Both sets of stitching are automatically dissolving stitches. After the stitching was over, Rob and a nurse put gauze and tape over the opening to allow it to heal. We then picked the woman up by the cloth sheet she was laying on, and moved her onto a new hospital bed to roll her out of the room and to the recovery area. A few minutes was given for the doctors to take a break before the next patient came in.
The next patient was an older gentlemen in his 70s with a hernia in his abdomen that needed to be removed. It was more or less the same as the previous procedure. Sterilized equipment, spinal tap, incisions with a scalpel, cautery, removing the hernia, two layers of stitching, move the man onto a different hospital bed and then out to the recovery area. The third patient was a woman who had an abscess in her abdomen (also most likely the result of an STD) that needed to be drained of pus and for some infected tissue to be removed. This was the surgery I got the chance to take pictures of and posted on Facebook. http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2037698&id=1337370415&l=a82aeade57
This was, at this point, the foulest smelling surgery because of the pus. I had to breathe through my mouth several times during the procedure. In all three of these surgeries, the only helping I really did was to move the patient from the surgery bed to the rolling hospital bed by picking up the feet end of the cloth the patient was laid out on.
In between the second and third surgery, and for a small portion of the third surgery, I stepped out of the operating room we were in, and went to the eye surgery room. A man’s eye had ruptured and needed to be sewn back together. I imagine that the whole procedure was a little bit more complicated than just a rupture and there was probably some sort of other problem with the man’s eye but I didn’t catch what it was. There were three people in the room when I arrived. The doctor was performing the stitching through a magnifying machine for looking at the eye up close. A nurse was assisting with giving tools, soaking up blood, and rinsing the eye with saline solution. The third person, who was probably a nurse/student, was observing through the same machine the doctor was using to magnify the eye. The machine had two spots to view what was going on. Perfect for the person actually doing work and someone who needs to learn and observe.
The nurse observing got up to allow me to watch for a little while. It was intense! You’d think seeing a small curved stitching needle no longer than a centimeter or so going in and out of an eye would give me the creeps but it was very fascinating. In it goes with the thread trailing behind. Out it comes. The doctor cuts the stitch, ties the two ends together, cuts the excess, and creates a new stitch just a millimeter or less away from the previous stitch. In the needle goes into the eye, out it comes across the clearly visible ruptured slit in the eye. It gets tied, cut and a new stitch is formed. It was really cool.
I guess that’s more or less what the surgery done on my eyes when I was a baby looked like. I was born cross eyed and had a surgery when I was 9 months old (correct me on this if I’m wrong, mom) to correct it. A few days (?) after the surgery, I started to cry and scream bloody murder. My mom called the doctor and he said one of the stitches in my eye probably came loose and that she should bring me in to the hospital to fix it. Ouch! I’m glad I don’t remember it.
The fourth and last surgery of the day that I witnessed was the hardest, most grueling. A burn victim needed his wounds to be redressed. The man, who is 25, was apparently siphoning gasoline from one container to another, or something like that. It accidentally spilled all over him and somehow got ignited. Almost every square inch on this man’s body had third degree burns. His face was untouched, the bottoms on his feet were okay in some parts, and a few patches of skin on his chest and stomach were okay. Other than that, he had just exposed flesh, bits of blood, and yellow pus everywhere. I breathed in through my nose just a couple times before I made the decision that if I breathe through my nose anymore, I would throw up. I breathed through my mouth the rest of the procedure.
The man cried out very loudly several times and his whole body shook from time to time. You could tell he was in a lot of pain from even though he was very doped up. The anesthesiologist gave him several injections of ketamine to reduce his pain and sedate him. It had been a week since he was burned and Rob said his wounds were much better than when he last saw him. The gauze and bandages covering his body need to be replaced every day.
I put some gloves on and actually helped in this procedure by holding his legs up and removing the old bandages. It was very eerie to feel and hear the gauze sticking to his flesh as it was being peeled away. I felt so bad for the poor man. What a devastating experience. I didn’t help with putting new gauze on, mostly because I wouldn’t know what I was doing. They used gauzes with Vaseline and hypochlorite on them to prevent sticking and infection. Seeing that man was quite disturbing and I hope I never have to suffer from third degree burns ever. They don’t expect the man to live for very much longer and are surprised he has so far recovered as well as he has.
After that surgery, it was almost three o’clock in the afternoon. I needed to get back to Bamenda before the taxis stopped running from Mbingo to Bamenda for the day. I thanked everyone for letting me witness the surgeries and told them how grateful I was for the opportunity. Robbie and I then left, went back to the Sparks’ home, and got something to eat. We then walked back towards the hospital and I got in a taxi, this time with 8 people plus a baby. I was cramped with four people in the front between the two actual seats available in the Corolla. It was like that until we got into Bamenda and my legs were numb for most of the ride but all in all I was fine.
I’m very grateful I was able to meet Robbie and go to Mbingo. It was an amazing experience I probably won’t be able to have again for a very long time, if ever.
Today was a day much like any other. I had algebra class (which Sherri did by herself yesterday while I was in Mbingo) and swimming in the morning and some free time in the afternoon. I played hockey with the kids after school was over for them and graded their math homework after dinner. Tomorrow is the last day of classes and a celebration in the evening for the whole two week program. The Lokkers and I will travel back to Banyo on Sunday.
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