Just another morning in Cameroon...
on Mischa in Cameroon (Cameroon), 31/Jan/2010 07:54, 34 days ago
Yesterday we had a big conference in Maroua for women from all the mothers’ associations that VSO works with in the Extreme North. My first task of the day was to get seventeen women on a bus from the villages of Pouss, Maga and Guividig to Maroua, 85km away, by 10am. This had been meticulously planned: I’d spoken to all the women in advance and given them written reminders, and hired a bus to leave from Maga at 5.30am to pick up the first group of ladies from Pouss.5am (on schedule): I woke up and waded into my kitchen, which is currently inundated in over an inch of water. The only water point in my house is my shower, and currently it can only be turned on by a large red handle on the outside wall my house. Because the shower doesn’t drain properly unless you bale it out with a bucket while using it all the water flows down the corridor into the kitchen. When I came home yesterday evening the kitchen was ankle deep in water, so my guess is that some curious child (or adult) in the compound couldn’t resist turning on the interesting looking red handle to see what it did.5.30 am (still on schedule): I went to the bus agency, where I found some bus drivers just waking up for prayer, and told them that I’d hired a bus, and confirmed it the day before. They gave me bemused looks and told me they hadn’t heard anything about it, and refused to go anywhere. I asked them where the head of the bus agency was (who I’d arranged everything with). “Oh, he’s away today,” they said. I then sent them to the secretary of the bus agency’s house to wake him up. He arrived and saw me, and said “Oh yes, she did rent a bus. I just forgot to tell anyone”.6.30 am (half an hour behind schedule): We arrive in Pouss at my 6am rendezvous point for the four women I have arranged to meet in the small market. There is no-one there. There was no mobile signal in the area round Maga yesterday, so it was impossible to call the one woman who had a phone.7am (an hour behind): The bus driver and I decide to give up on the ladies of Pouss as none of them have turned up and to head back to Maga to pick up the women there, as we are already late for their 6.30 meeting time. We are just driving out of Pouss, when a man flags us down.“The women are coming,” he tells us, “they just decided to meet in someone’s house instead of the market. And some of them are coming late as the bus was late last year and they thought it would be the same thing this year.”7.45 am (almost two hours behind. Already late for the women of Maga and the women of Guividig): The women of Pouss announce they are ready to go, and come out of the house and get onto the bus. Instead of the four I had invited there are six. When I asked what was going on they told me that as six women had gone from Pouss to the conference last year they had decided that six should go this year. I explained that there weren’t spaces either at the conference or on the bus for the two extra women, and said I was sorry, but they’d have to get off. They refuse to move and give me furious looks.8.30 am (two hours behind): We arrive in Maga with the two extra women in tow. I pay for the motorbike that got sent off to Pouss by the people waiting at Maga to try and find out what had happened to us.9.15 am (still two hours behind): We arrive at our last meeting point, Guividig. We are so late that the women there have bought tickets for another bus because they thought we weren’t coming. We have to stop and argue with the second bus driver to reimburse us for their tickets. We then crowd onto the bus, which is so full because of the extra Pouss ladies that I spend the whole trip to Maroua on untarmacked roads balancing with one buttock on the seat and trying to stop myhead hitting the windscreen every time we hit a pothole.10.40 am: We arrive in Maroua and brief the women quickly on how to use a western toilet (last year a lot of the women at the conference had never done this before, with disastrous consequences…). We are miraculously only forty minutes late as after five months in Cameroon I’ve learnt to leave time for delays! Fortunately the conference itself was brilliant and well worth the trip.