Cleaning carburetors, learning about diseases...

Wednesday was the first day where I didn’t see Bob at all until after dinner time. He and Sulemanu went to a different village to fellowship and assist “refugees” from the Central African Republic. We say they are refugees but they’ve lived in this area of Cameroon for a number of years now. There was conflict in the C.A.R. a decade or so ago where the president had armed a group of militias around the country in order to maintain peace, prevent any incoming attacks from neighboring countries and all around just have an army for defense. Well, the money the president had set aside to pay these militias soon ran out and the government wasn’t able to pay these people for their services. As a result, the militias basically kept the weapons they were supplied with and started terrorizing people around the country. They would kidnap people, hold them for ransom, and demand bribes from innocent, peaceful people. A number of people left the country and flooded into Cameroon. They live a ways away, probably an hour or so. Most that left settled with extended family members in Cameroon or settled on the edges of already existing towns. I imagine a lot of the work Bob and Sulemanu did involved non-English speakers and it would’ve been probably more of a hassle to have me around so I stayed in Wouram and did some work.

Dayyibu and I put the tire back on Bob’s motorcycle wheel, put the wheel back on, and adjusted his rear brake. I also determined the engine to a water pump here has no compression. It’s kind of at a dead end for now until I can find a compressed air source to do a cylinder leak down test to determine where the leak is coming from. I also started to work on an orange Mitsuba motorcycle that hasn’t run in a while. The spark plug boot, or cap, was missing and the bare, non-insulated spark plug wire was just wrapped around the tip of the spark plug. I went into town with Dayyibu, bought a new spark plug boot, dropped into Salamoun Voyage to eat some more soya (steak). While there, I also had some fried bread known as jinjin. It was kind of sweet and tasted a little like a croissant. I think it had a little bit of sugar sprinkled on it. I also had a fried plantain which was not as appetizing as I thought it would be. I figured I like bananas, especially the delicious bananas here, but not this fried plantain. Oh well.

When we got back, I put the spark plug boot on the Mitsuba motorcycle, sprayed some fuel down the throat of the carburetor and gave it a start. It started up after many attempts but was running a little rough.

After dinner, Tim, Bethany, Joan and I played a board game called Break the Safe. It was pretty fun and we all had a good time. Afterwards, we had carrot cake and Joan told me, in a very casual tone, all about different diseases you can get here and the kinds of medicines they take a few times a year as a precautionary measure. It’s a little scary the different things you can get here. One thing, called onchocerciasis also known as filmaria, or river blindness is where a worm will enter your body, usually through undercooked meats, and then it will live inside you. If it gets bad enough, after like a few weeks or months of having it, you’ll see little worms crawling under your skin. If it enters your eye, you can go blind. One missionary, in a town not too far from here had it, or rather, still has it. Once you get a full blown case of it, it stays in your system for up to 15 years! Another disease, which I believe was similar hookworm is a similar one to filmaria where little larvae will enter your skin and stay at the surface. They often get into your skin if you put on wet clothes. Let’s say you just did laundry and it’s drying out in the sun but is not quite fully dry in some areas. If you put it on and there is a larvae in there, it’ll get into your skin and form this lump that grows and grows. You can get it out by putting some Vaseline over the lump, putting a band-aid on and the little larvae will try to escape from being suffocated. That’s when you can pick it off and get it out. Both Bethany and Bob have had it. Bethany got it from clothes that were dried at a resthouse (hotel). Instead of the clothes being dried in a normal clothes line, they were dried directly on the grass or on bushes. It seems it would kind of defeat the purpose of washing them, depending on how dirty the clothes were in the first place. She put some clothes on and got hookworm. Bob got it from putting on hiking boots that had gotten wet. They weren’t fully dry before he put them on again and a sore developed around his ankles. I really hope I don’t come back with anything. When I come back to the states, for 2-3 weeks I’ll have to take doxycycline (an antibiotic) to prevent getting malaria in case it’s still in my system which it might be and might just be right now. I’m just currently immune to it thanks to the mefloquine pills I take once a week. I’ll also have to take a few of the meds the Lokkers take as precautionary medicines towards the end of my trip to get rid of anything that might be starting. I really can’t give blood for a very long time once I come back.

Thursday, I cleaned the carburetor for the orange Mitsuba motorcycle. It runs great now and actually works better than the blue one. In the afternoon, I taught Tim, Bethany and Joan how carburetors work and then took the carburetor that I just cleaned apart again to show what the different parts look like. There is a diesel powered air compressor here that was used to power a water pump for a well. It hasn’t run in about a year but if I can get the engine running again, change the air hose fittings, tighten up on some air fittings and change a broken pipe, then it’ll be a working, useable air compressor like my one from home. What a blessing that would be. It’ll make cleaning carburetors easier, blowing up tires easier, cleaning dust off of EVERYTHING easier, and I’ll be able to do cylinder leak down tests on the two water pump engines that don’t have any compression. That’ll be the start of getting those two engines running again so it would be extremely productive to get this air compressor working. Bob said he’ll try to find the owner’s manual on it so we can figure out why some things are the way they are and possibly why it won’t work. I’m excited.