Last Day!
Trip Start
Apr 18, 2012
1
7
Trip End
May 26, 2012
Yaounde, Cameroon
Thursday, May 24, 2012
It has been a whirl wind week, travelling from one city to the next. We appologize in advance that this blog will probably have a lot of typos as we are using a french keyboard.., Letters and commas are in the wrong place...
Anyway, on Friday we rushed up and down Kumbo to say goodbye to people. It's always hard to say goodbye to our friends, especially because this means we eat far too much. In the morning we ate some avacado and bread for breakfast not knowing that a huge platter of potatoes was to come. Then we had lunch with a friend, followed by several more roasted plantains and avacados given by a friend. At four we met another friend who wanted to prepare a going away meal for us, so we ate so much chicken, rice, and vegetable. Then when we arrived at the house we were staying at, we had a special meal cooked for us, so we had to eat there as well.
Then on Saturday we left early in the morning to go visit a friend at a hospital about 4 hours from Kumbo. The drive takes you through some of the most beautiful country in the world, but the roads are soo terrifying it is hard to enjoy it. Everyone here drives like a maniac. The family we went with has a custom of praying before driving. We like praying just fine, but it's a little unnerving when praying for our safety on the road. Thank fully we arrived unharmed, except the driver did hit a speed bump at about 50mph--not highly recommended. Our friend is doing better but is bored out of her mind because she has been on bed rest for the past month.
Saturday night we stayed in Bamenda with a family related to our Fulani friends in Takui. It is so incredibly easy to make friends in Cameroon. People are so incredibly inviting. People actually want us to stay with them for as long as possible. It is not an inconvience to have guests. Actually a couple times this trip, people we surprised we were leaving after only a few days. They thought we had come to stay for a month or two.
Sunday, May 20th, was national day in Cameroon, which equates to lots and lots of speeches with no real focus and LOT of people marching. We were happy to be in Bamenda because the city is much bigger than Kumbo, population around a million or so. The parade was massive. We saw thousands of militia marching, heavy weight lifters, and several thousand primary students. After about an hour of primary students marching by, we decided to take a rest from the parade and sat in the shade for about an hour while the secondary students marched by.
Then on Monday we visited the main market in Bamenda--which is terrifyingly large. Our mission there was very simple. To find a matching set of his/her O'bama underwear. We heard they existed and could be found in Bamenda. Sadly no one could find them, but we did find some absolutely hideous shirts that have Obama pointing to a crowd. People in Cameroon seem to really like Obama. They name their children, taxis, and businesses after him.
We arrived in Yaounde on Tuesday afternoon and have just been knocking around the city, meeting up with our friends and students. Today is our last full day in Cameroon! Our flight leaves on Friday evening. If all goes as planned we will be arriving on Saturday night in Denver. It's amazing how quickly a month passes.
