Secondment - Bamenda for April
on The Road Less Travelled (Cameroon), 04/Apr/2010 17:24, 34 days ago
I will be in Bamenda working for another NGO temporarily during the month of April. Bamenda is in the Northwest province and requires me travelling to Yaounde and then onto Bamenda. Since I was travelling alone this time I decided to fly on Air Leasing to Yaounde from Maroua instead of taking the 8 hour bus trip and then 18 hour train ride. The two hour plane trip was surprisingly relaxing and quick. I am in Yaounde right now and will leave tomorrow morning for Bamenda which will involve an 8 hour bus trip.Bamenda should be an interesting city to visit and I feel really lucky I get to spend a month there on work business. A bit of interesting information about Bamenda is that is the seat of the largest opposition political party in Cameroon, and so has a large military presence. Bamenda is also in one of the two English-speaking provinces in Cameroon, so I will be able to speak English for a month.While in Bamenda, I will be working for an organization called the Integrated Development Foundation or IDF for short (they don’t have a website). They are quite an active organization and have projects in the health, local economic development and human rights domains. I will find out more about their projects once I am there, however I gather from what I have read and been told by VSO staff is that IDF is incredibly devoted to bettering their organization. They have been undertaking organizational development on their own without the placement of a permanent VSO volunteer which is amazing by the standards set in the Far North. While I am working for IDF my specific task will be to help them develop an informationmanagement system – fancy was to say filing system. I gather they have lots of files and have no idea how to organize them. It may not be the more compelling and interesting work but I am thrilled to have the chance to actually concretely help this organization.More details to come about Bamenda and my secondment when I start on the 7th of April.