Buses and Breakdowns and Bribes, Oh My!

Hello everyone!

13 days and counting until I return home from Cameroon! I now have less days left in this country than the Dugger family has children (See TLC show "19 Kids and Counting").

Last weekend we took a trip to Kribi, which is a beautiful town on the Atlantic Ocean in the South region of Cameroon. It should have taken us about 5 hours to get there...it took us 8.

We began our journey at 10 AM by meeting at the bus station to get on a bus headed to the capital of Cameroon, Yaounde. Chinedum was getting her Nigerian visa that morning and said she would meet us at the station. She arrived as the bus was pulling out of the station, giving Alyssa and I some serious anxiety. Then there were more people on the bus than there were seats, so the bus took another 30 minutes to pull out onto the road. About an hour and a half into the journey, we passed through a police checkpoint where the police officers walked through the bus, checking ID cards. Most of the time we never travel with our passports, but our "legalized" photocopies so that we don't lose our original passports. Jose had brought his original with him, and Chinedum had her original because she was getting her visa right before, but the police officer asked Alyssa and I to get off the bus because we had only photocopies and no proof of our Yellow Fever vaccination (which is required to get the visa in the first place). We explained to him that the card was required to get our visa and that it was unnecessary for us to have it, but he asked for a bribe of 2000 CFA (about $4) from both of us. I told the police officer that I would call the US Embassy ans that he could speak to them and that they would verify that my visa is valid and that I have my vaccinations. He seemed very unhappy and begrudgingly let us return to the bus.

After another hour and a half we got off the bus and stopped in a city called Edea, which is about an hour from Kribi. We walked to a bus station where we caught a "bus" (van) that was going to Kribi, but about 15 minutes into our drive, the car broke down. So there we were, 4 foreigners and our Cameroonian friend Mandela, stranded on the side of the road with other travelers for 2 hours. We finally decided to head back to where we began and try to find another car to take us to Kribi. So we hopped in a truck that was going down the hill (3 in the back seat, 2 in the truck bed) and caught a ride back to Edea where we began. After about another hour we found someone who was willing to drive us to our hotel in Kribi, so we piled into to this man's car and went on our way.

We arrived at our hotel at around 6 PM, checked into our bungalow and immediately sought out the only restaurant nearby. The menu had pizza and drinks besides beer, so we were in heaven. The outdoor dining area was right on the beach, so we always dined outside, looking out at the ocean. Our way home went much smoother on Sunday, as we went through Douala, as we probably should have done on our way there.

Other than our weekend away, not much has been going on here in Cameroon. Since we finished our filters we have not had a lot to do. The people who have the information for our next project have both been out of the office until today, so we have been reading and watching movies in the office every day and leaving at lunchtime. So far, in the last 8 weeks I have read 11 books and began a 12th. These books include:
1. Water for Elephants
2. Pride and Prejudice
3. Lonely Planet's Best of Travel 2014
4. The Invention of Wings
5. Divergent
6. Gone Girl
7. Inferno
8. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
9. Insurgent
10. Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns)
11. Allegiant
12. A Game of Thrones: A Song of Fire and Ice: Book 1 

As you can tell, we have a lot of free time here. The kids I live with think I am weird because I like to read so much, but since I don't have a lot of time to read for pleasure during the school year, I am taking this opportunity to do a lot of reading and enjoying it.

Well that's all from Cameroon! Now that the World Cup is over there's not much to do here...
Peace, Love and Clean Water!

Rain Is A Good Thing

As I was sitting in my room on Saturday listening to the rain fall heavily on the metal roof over my bed this song happened to come on in my ears. Rainy season is now in full swing here in Buea and that comes with all sorts of challenges and learning experiences. Since we are at such a high altitude it is cloudy a lot and we walk through the clouds pretty regularly and it's pretty neat to watch them roll down the street towards you. The streets I take to work can no longer be referred to as streets. Mud puts or creeks would be more appropriate names for most of the unpaved roads here.

We have officially completed all 6 filters we set out to complete when we arrived here, which we are very happy about. We finished just before the roads got too soupy, which is great because driving on some of the muddy roads was like driving on unplowed snowy streets. We are now planning on spending our laat weeks here working on education and learning about the organization as a whole. Hopefully we will be able to help out a little bit with other projects that are happening through NKong, but in Cameroon you really never know.

I apologize for the shortness of this post, but there's not much to report. I miss everyone back home and I am countin down the next 19 days until I head home!
Katie