Traveling(!): Limbé, Yaoundé, Ngaoundéré, Garoua
(I wrote this last night the 26th but am posting this on today the 27th since we have no internet in the house)
Right now as I write this, I’m sitting with my host sisters, watching a latin-american telenovela which has been translated into French. Few stations can afford shows from the US or Europe so they take telenovelas from Central and South America and translate them from Spanish to French. The one we’re watching now is from Mexico.
This last week I’ve gotten to travel! Last friday night I went with my host dad to the small beach town of Limbé. Though Douala is on the coast, Limbé (about an hour away) is the nearest beach. Limbé is wedged between the Atlantic Ocean and Mount Cameroon (a 4000m tall active volcano). We stayed at a fancy resort-like hotel. At 30000CFA/night (~$66) it was pretty expensive, but had very nice facilities. I took my first hot shower since I’ve gotten here, met my first American since I’ve gotten here (she was a UT grad!) and got sunburned on the beach. Here are some pictures:
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| Limbé |
We got home Sunday night where there was no running water, I played some tennis, we worked a half-day Monday and then hopped the bus to Yaoundé, the capital of Cameroon. 3.5hrs later we arrived, went to the Aigle Voyages office in Yaoundé, then caught the north-bound train to Ngaoundéré. We had a chouchette which we shared with two others. Meals served straight to our couchette were reasonably priced ($7 for dinner and $5 for breakfast) and delicious. In Ngaoundéré we worked a bit (Georges doing administrative things and I helping to finish the network). I, Marius, Mohamadou (another employee of CEFA in Ngaoundéré), and our driver for the day went and climbed Mount Ngaoundéré. The next day we headed further north to Garoua where we talked to a Peace Corps organizer about getting CEFA involved in the financing of projects that the peace corps advises on. We ate a quick lunch and I got a 5 minute tour of the town before we rushed back to Ngaoundéré to catch the train. I slept in chunks on the way back as the train was real bumpy. We hurried back to Douala this morning so Georges could catch his plane to Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoir. The pictures tell the story better than I do.
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| Yaoundé, Ngaoundéré, Garoua |
I’ve had a couple run-ins with the President-appointed Governmental Minister’s here. They are treated with great (almost royal) respect. My first experience, we were almost run off the road by a convoy of about 10 trucks and SUV’s speeding down the road to Garoua. The head of the convoy flashed his lights and waved us off the road. We also had the Minister of Tourism on the train with us this morning. As we left the train, we (and all the other passengers) were stopped from leaving the platform immediately in front of our train while the minister and his party strolled off the platform amidst salutes from the soldiers present.
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