Much to say, and too little time!
After my ridiculously expensive transit flight through Lagos, I arrived in Douala and eventually met up with Tom, Claris and Isaac, who felt it more important to chill in the bar than meet me! No worries. Tom had been waiting 5 hours for me in the airport, during which (in classic t-mac style) he had made some friends, although he didn't realise they would come with a $20 dollar fee! This was what they called "Customs duty". Lesson learnt.
On our trip to Bamenda, with our driver "Napolean" we stopped off in almost every village for a beer (650ml of 7.5% Guinness...happy days) it turns out Isaac somewhat likes his drink (understatement much). So, on what Tom and I saw as a bit of a detox...
We stayed one night in Bamenda, where we had some fantastic food, including "huckleberry", plantain and a pepper sauce deadlier than a blood thirsty black mamba in a inexpensive gun shop.
The road from Bamenda was ridiculously bumpy, and the roof of the car worryingly close to my repaired head wound, which will only ever reach 80% of its original tensile strength. We arrived in Ndu late at night, and Isaac insisted that we have a beer at the "Soul City" bar. We quickly set up a tab.
Our house was incredible, we had a cook, nightwatchman and two dogs called Tom and George. We had a study, kitchen, bathroom, living room and 3 bedrooms...all for 150 smackers per month. Take that, student accommodation.
Isaac and Claris are wonderful people, with a fantastic sense of humour and both very intelligent, down to earth and productive. We could not have hoped for better company, both in the academic project work and as house mates.
We visited our first village yesterday where we will be carrying out our research into the jigger flea. We spoke to the chief (fon) of the village, and all his secretaries and helpers. We shared palm wine (10p per litre) and I introduced the project, and thanked him and his villagers for their cooperation. We tested a few of our pilot questionnaires and also augered a few of our first jiggers! Jiggers that Isaac insisted we take home and dissect...with two pen knives, a head torch and a magnifying glass....all done on a CD case. We saw the contained eggs.
Our meeting with the Fon was so surreal, Tom and I were not allowed to cross our legs, drink with the left hand (only the fon can do this) or speak out of turn. All to pay respect to the chief.
We met the man who has the terrible jigger attacks in his feet shown in the previous post!
That is all for now I am afraid, I hope to upload some photos in Ndu later this week. Research begins tomorrow! Exciting times!
2 comments:
Wow - it all sounds as if the project has got off to a great start! Looking forward to seeing some pictures of Claris and Isaac. What a team you've got! Surprised you haven't got a dissection kit with you for digging out those jiggers. How are you getting on with the language? Do you like the palm wine? Need to know how long you've got Napoleon and the vehicle for. Are you keeping it for the whole project? Must be expensive I suppose? Keep up the good work all of you!
should've asked the Fon if you could've bin the timemaster..."WE ARE NOW LEFT HANDED IMBIBING". would that mean he would drink right handed though?!
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