At the market yesterday, I gave limestone a second try. Unfortunately, it’s still a no go, just tastes like rock. It’s neighbouring stall sold little dried fish, and I tried one of those to take the taste away. Still no luck, just tasted like dry fish skin, and the crunch of bone. Horrible mouth taste. Eurghh.
Today was our last day on the project! It was our first and only day in a village called Wowo, whom we had visited previously to warn them of our arrival. They were fantastic during our first visit, and seemed to be having quite a discussion to make plans, and insisted we arrive at 9am. This was excellent, and very encouraging. In fact, we were early to arrive, and when we did, we were greeted by, literally, the whole village. Hoards of people swarmed from their homes, and they formed into neat, orderly queues. One queue for women, one for men and one for children. It was extraordinary, and they were all so well behaved. In two hours, we inspected 129 people, and were home by midday! Unfortunately, we had a huge wad of questionnaires to enter into the computer.
I’ve uploaded a photo of our last inspection (tom doing thumbs up), as well as our photo with the villagers afterwards. The most recent disgusting picture of the person’s infested foot, had a jigger dangling off it. This jigger is the one on Tom’s hand, which we then discarded. It was taken away by ants! Hilarious! New photos are in the link below:
Tom and I have been discussing with Leo our plans for the next two weeks, as we don’t come home until 19th August. We are going to visit Buea, and discuss with Professor Ndumbe, one of our advisors, about the project and also meet Claris. She, of course, goes to university there. We’ll enquire there into the possibility of climbing Mount Cameroon, which is a good 4 day trek. But we’ll have porters carrying all our equipment, water and food. After Buea, we’ll go to Limbe, the tourist centre of Cameroon to relax and work on the write up.
On another note, and for those interested, I was dealt 4-of-a-kind 10s in cribbage yesterday, and a 5 was drawn, totalling 20 points. Unbelievable. I have never seen that before.
2 comments:
Hi George - postcards received and I will post them all for you and hand deliver Oscar's!!! You are clearly having the most amazing time and are obviously both very famous! I hope you and Tom enjoy the last two weeks of your stay and that you can relax and do more touristy things. Hopefully my visa will arrive and I can go to India on Tuesday to meet Dad. See you back in england on the 27th. Love and miss you loads!
Mummy x
Thanks for the great time in Ndu-I really enjoyed it. It was very special to be made "Nformi Bara" and I feel very honoured to have experienced this. I hope we have got all the video we need. Just to let you know, I only have copy of the interviews with Isaac, not those with you, Tom and Clariss. I guess they are on your machine, but do take great care as we have no back-ups.
Return trip to Douala was uneventful and comfortable in the Ministry's 4x4 with Godwin the driver, Hans the bodyguard and Clariss. We got to the airport at about 8pm and my short overnight flight to Nairobi, then connecting to Kigali Rwanda, was as comfortable as can be expected. Kigali was very interesting - a nice clean and uncongested city where amazing progress has been made since the genocide. We had a one-day meeting preparing Rwandese for joining the Commonwealth, which almost certainly they will do next year. Next morning had a very pleasant meeting with the Prime Minister and later with the Chief of the National Reconciliation Commission and the President of the Senate, accompanied by the UK Ambassador. Took off for Nairobi in the afternoon and waited five hours for the connection to Bangkok and on to Kuala Lumpur. We boarded OK, then a fault developed and we were taken off the plane and faced a further long delay. The upshot was that I would have missed my connections and the slot for my speech at the Commonwealth Parliamentarians Conference, so with regret I decided not to go and instead booked onto the london flight for the next evening. I headed off to Muthaiga Club and got there at 2.00a.m. Spent the day working at the club, flew home and am now in Cambridge!
Played 18 holes at Bourn with Chris this morning. He took the first nine but I won the second and the 18 thanks to a par 4 on the 17th which got me 4 points!
We're off to Chennai on Tuesday at 13.30 and will drive straight on to Pondicherry. Looking forward to it!
Take care if you try Mt Cameroon at this time. I gather it's difficult in the wet season so don't take unnecessary risks. But at least a trip up into the lower reaches would be a great experience even if the summit is elusive.
Thanks again for the great visit and congratulations on a fantastic project.
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