Since we last spoke...

This time I think I have a pretty good excuse for falling off the face of the earth. On Monday night, 12 friends and I were mugged just outside the PC house in Bamenda. I don't want to get into too many details here, but if you're interested in what happened, drop me a line. I'm fine, as is everyone else, but I lost A LOT of stuff. Laptop, camera, cellphone (again), flash drive, TNF rain jacket, backpack, lots of other clothes, and I was unfortunate to be bringing my stereo back from another volunteer's house so I lost that too. It's all stuff that can be replaced, but it really hurts that I lost all my work since it was only backed up on the flash drive, not to mention all my music. Luckily I still have my Zune so I can listen to most of what I had.

This has been the definition of bad timing too. I have so much work coming up in the next few weeks. It's already been a frustrating few days trying to get back to normal, but I've had some spells of good luck, like getting an old phone for free from a leaving volunteer. There were so many things I would have rather been writing about right now. Hopefully I can get all of this taken care of and get back to focusing on work.

The other day Austin and I were in a cab in Bamenda. I was sharing the front seat with a Cameroonian (the breakdown for a full cab is 4 in the back and 3 or 4 in the front, the 4th having the driver sit on their lap) and the driver decides he can't shift easily so he moves our seat back. As he does that a guy in the back starts complaining about his leg being squashed. So there's all sorts of confusion as we're hurtling down the street trying to shift the seat back up but it won't latch. I'm pretty distracted at this point so I never even noticed that either the guy sitting next to me or the on in the back somehow slid my phone out of my pocket. There's still so much fuss about the seat that the driver just pulls over and tells Austin and I to get another taxi. The cab leaves us on the curb and drives away and Austin mentions that the whole situation reminded him of the time he had his wallet stolen. So I check my pocket and what do you know, no phone. Looking back it's like all 3 guys had to be working together or something. It was like some minor problem erupted into mass-confusion just to create a distraction and give the driver reason to drop us off before I'd have time to realize I was robbed. I wasn't too upset, this is Cameroon after all, but losing my phone meant losing all my numbers, which has been particularly frustrating because I'm in the middle of putting together about a dozen meetings/sessions. I went to the cell company's shop in town and was able to get them to reassign my old number to a new SIM card and luckily the phone I brought from the States, the one they told me in Yaounde wouldn't work here, does in fact work. So I didn't have to spend anything to get the problem fixed, but now I've got the task of recollecting all my numbers to look forward to. Still it could have been worse.

Labor Day

May 1st was the Cameroonian Labor Day and yours truly was invited by NOWEFOR to march, along with the other volunteers Austin and Carl, in the Bamenda parade. Only with typical Pidgin/Special English creative license, they call it a 'march pass'. Carl was in Yaounde, but Austin and I were there. And we were there at 8:30 when we were told to arrive. You'd think we'd have figured it out by now. People didn't even show up at NOWEFOR's office until about 9:30. Finally we were all shuffled into the back of a farm-to-market truck and made our way to Commercial Avenue (the main drag in downtown Bamenda). Countless groups, NGOs, churches, and the like were amassing in the street. I didn't see one person who looked like they were coordinating the thing so I guess I should be thankful that it only took another 2 hours standing in the sun before we started to march. Apparently we were waiting on the governor and other officials to arrive, which is a pretty typical display of power here. Remind everyone that they are on your time. It wasn't so bad though. My friend Kelly's group was right behind ours and a VSO that Austin knew hung out as well and we all vented together. Still, all that waiting for about 5 minutes of marching and a flyby of all the officials sitting under their cool canopy. I also got to meet Dave, a Canadian VSO who's working with NOWEFOR now. He and his wife are here together, I'd say they are in their early 60s, and Dave seems like he will be a really good contact to have. Especially since I've been wanted to improve the relationship between us and NOWEFOR (i.e. have one).

That's the most interesting thing that's happened this week. I've been getting busier and busier which is good. Seems like some projects might actually start taking shape soon, provided it starts raining...