22 quick reminders that I'm back...
on An Earl in Cameroon (Cameroon), 26/Nov/2009 19:03, 34 days ago
Almost a month back in Cameroon and it’s easy to recognise you’re back when:1. As you’re leaving for work one morning and the temperature is already over 32°, one of your neighbours kids who is about 4 years old comes up to you and starts licking the cold condensation on the outside of your water bottle which you’ve just been taken out of the fridge and put on your bicycle carrier.2. All your fresh guavas must be washed in bleach before eating them.3. The Muslim call to prayer wakes you at half four in the morning; and again at half five.4. You go to the local print shop and starting chatting to the guy there who says he hasn’t seen you in a while and the rest of it. Then you explain that you’ve been back in Ireland for the past few months and ask him how he’s been. He replies that he’s good and he’s just had two children. You congratulate him and ask how the twins are keeping. He replies that they’re not twins as he has two wives.5. The students at primary school are still sitting on the floor.6. There’s no mention of An Bord SNIP Nua or NAMA…it ceases to matter!7. You have to filter 8 litres of water a day just to avoid your body shrivelling up like a prune in 43° heat.8. There are no Christmas ads on TV.9. Beans and beignets from the street are one of your 5 a day.10. After spending one hour trying to get your front door lock open, you go looking for some oil from the local shopkeeper, Bashyru. He gives you some petrol in a vegetable oil bottle with which to dose the lock, but to no avail. You return to the shop where Bashyru then takes a needle and syringe from behind the fresh bread and hands it another guy sitting outside who comes back to help you. On the way back to the house he says that with the change in weather (the nights have started to be a lot cooler) everybody is getting sick; even the locks are sick. He then proceeds to inject the lock with petrol and 5 minutes later you’re back inside your house.11. You pass a Sunday morning at the Chadian border happily watching the car ferry.12. People aren’t talking about X-factor or The Apprentice and the only time the words “reality” and “TV” are found in the same sentence is when you say “The reality is I don’t have a TV!”13. The Larium dreams return.14.« On est ensemble » means “Yes that’s a great idea provided you do all the work!”15. You pay 200f entry into a night club at 4 o’clock in the afternoon to watch the Cameroon v. Morocco World Cup qualifier on a big screen with 200 other locals and lose 2kgs in sweat alone just waiting for the match to come on. In the end, due to technical difficulties, the match is not shown at all and you leave a shrivelled prune.16. You get back to find that one of your colleagues has died.17. Helping a school to buy second-hand school books on the black-market for their teachers makes them extraordinarily happy.18. Your scheduled Mothers’ Association meeting at 8am on a Saturday starts at 10.20am.20. You shake, on average, at least 60 hands a day.21.« J’arrive » means I’ll get there when it suits me and no sooner!22. You have time to write stupid blog entries!GC