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.