Bienvenue au Cameroun
on The Road Less Travelled (Cameroon), 01/Nov/2009 16:28, 34 days ago
After three flights, long layovers and H1N1, I arrived in Yaounde, the capital of Cameroon on Saturday evening. In Paris I met two other volunteers who were coming from Vancouver, Greg and Carolyn. They will also be working in Maroua.From Paris we flew to Yaounde and I have to say I am surprised the plane could even take off with the amount of luggage it was carrying. I think everyone was carrying on at least one or two small suitcases, some of which were so heavy they needed to be lifted into the overhead compartments by two people. When we arrived after the 6 hour flight it was relatively simple to clear customs, we just showed our yellow fever certificate, and then our passport and we were ushered through. Waiting for our luggage was somewhat of a gongshow. Everyone on our flight not only had carried on as much as they could and more, but they had also checked everything but the kitchen sink. We saw boxes of TVs, enormous suitcases, and huge duffle bags. The bags are carried by hand to the baggage carousel so we had to wait an hour for our luggage to come. Eventually it did arrive though and it was all there and nothing was broken or missing.We were met at the airport by Menge, a VSO staff person in Yaounde. He had brought us a car to bring us to the hotel. We piled all our luggage in the back and then the three of us got into the back seat, with Menge in the front with the driver. We spent the next 1.5 hours driving to the hotel in a torrential downpour. We were in bottlenecked traffic until our driver said he would take another road...this other road turned out to be an unpaved bush road and I can’t believe going down it we didn’t lose the undercarriage of the car because it kept scraping against the ruts of the road.We made it to the hotel and grabbed a bite to eat. Greg and Carol had fish and I had grilled plantains. Then we went to sleep. It was really hot and muggy. I slept until about 3am and then woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep. I used the hours of the morning to figure out which lightbulbs worked in my room and which ones didn’t and moved some around so I had a light in my bathroom and one in my room that worked.Greg and Carol didn’t sleep well either. We were annoyed our rooms had air conditioners that had had the knobs removed so we couldn’t turn them on or off... I even got out my leatherman pliers to see if I could force mine on but that didn’t work. It was only later on today that we found out that a small button on our wall turns the unit on and off. These hotel rooms have no instructions whatsoever... it took me quite a while to figure out how to get hot water this morning too, who would have known you would have to turn a dial on the water heater, then turn the hot water tap to the off position and then pull a plug in the sink...Today we had a tour of Yaounde. It is a very large city with supposedly 3 million people living here although guidebooks only say 1.5 million. We saw all the government ministry buildings and many many people although we were warned that given it is Sunday it is quiet here and no one is around...if this is no one I am scared to see what a weekday crowd is like.Tomorrow we start our in country training and I will hopefully be getting a SIM card for my phone and learning about all the wonderful cultural quirks and quarks here.I also found out there is a VSO office in Maroua (the town I will be living in). So if you would like to send me mail or parcels you can send them to me at the following address:Catherine Shih (CUSO-VSO volunteer)VSO CamerounCNPS BuildingBP 1004, MarouaCameroun