Well, week five was mostly just work, work, work. There were so many issues with the new system and GHAPE’s files, it was one of the more frustrating weeks of work. We worked all day on the computers; I spent every night trying to fix things. I think the most frustrating part was that even while working around 16 hours a day for GHAPE, Loveline would spend her day yelling at me. I would yell back, and then she would walk out. She felt like I was accusing GHAPE of having bad practices because I was making them recheck all their files and address the issues. In the end, we found 5 Kiva clients whose profiles had been uploaded twice, and therefore fundraised twice and had to be refunded. Then there were another 27 whose payments hadn’t been made in September; Kiva had ended all 27 as delinquent. I frantically emailed Kiva requesting they charge us for the remainder of the 27 loans so they could finish properly. We didn’t receive a response to all our issues from Kiva until Thursday and Friday; the majority of the week was spent counting the days until November payments were due: Friday. Thankfully our payments were put on hold, meaning that our loans would not all become delinquent. In all, the week was extremely frustrating and tense; however, we fixed a lot of mistakes and were able to move towards a more organized GHAPE. I also set up appointments on Thursday and Friday with two organizations in the Bamenda area; I found out about them through the VSO volunteer connection. One is a Youth Outreach Program—we’re (well…I’m) hoping to create a partnership between YOP and GHAPE so that they can create centers specifically for unemployed youth in Bamenda. The job market here is impossible for educated youth; it would be a really interesting partnership to see form. YOP has an extensive background in providing training courses all over Cameroon, so in exchange for taking their youth into the GHAPE program, GHAPE would receive free training from YOP. NGOs are somewhat hesitant here to work together—they are always suspecting one another of trying to take the other’s funds and what not. I suppose in a place where capital is so hard to come by there is reason to be somewhat weary; however, it is very frustrating from an outsider’s point of view where it just doesn’t make sense not to work together. The other organization was IDF who is creating a home based care program for HIV/AIDS patients. GHAPE already has a number of HIV positive clients; however, by admitting these ones into the program through IDF, we are hoping IDF will provide HIV and health training for all GHAPE members. Enough about work…
This weekend was pretty stupendous. Friday night was another uneventful, but much needed visit to Dreamland. The website is unbelievably deceiving. I suppose when all the restaurants only carry chicken, fried plantains and njama njama it doesn’t make much difference anyway. On Saturday morning, I met up with Steve and Charmaine for breakfast at Alizane. It was…alright…it took me an hour to get my coffee. When they finally did bring it (after being reminded a number of times), it was a pot off of another table who had just left. Mmmm, used coffee…yes, I drank it. After breakfast (lunch by the time we had our food), Steve and I walked around looking for pork for dinner. We walked to the Nkwen market, outside of Bamenda. It was much smaller than the food market in Bamenda, but just as busy and overwhelming.
After a lot of effort and being sent in every direction, we found the pork man. It looked pretty clean, well, compared to what I’ve seen here I guess. The head was sitting on the counter, the eyes were still somewhat opened…I just prefer cleaned pre cut meat into individual portions with no reminder of the animal it came from I guess. Ah well, it wasn’t so bad. Click here to see photos from the weekend and the butcher… We went back to Steve’s place after the market and his neighbours were playing outside his back door. There were about 6 young kids who were very interested in the whitemen. After yelling it for a while, they started to come closer to check us out. One of the neighbours had brought me a plate of grasshoppers, remembering that I had said I liked them. I really must watch what I say here. We ended up taking too many photos and laughing all afternoon at these little models in the making.
Sunday we took a day trip to Menchum falls. The waterfall itself was pretty spectacular, but we weren’t able to get too close or really do anything other than just snap a photo. We tried to drive further down the road to find a lake my travel book talked about, but after 20 minutes or so on a less than optimal road, we were informed that it was still another hour. We stopped at a junction to grab some food before the drive back. Heather and Steve had the oh-so-popular ’spaghetti omelette’. Essentially, it is eggs mixed with onion, tomato and spaghetti noodles, cooked in a pan. I opted for some chicken and bread. On the drive back, we spotted a calm open area of water in one of the rivers. I was pretty dirty and have wanted to go swimming for a few weekends now, so we went down to check things out. It was pretty quiet other than a few kids fishing. Steve and I hopped in and did some floating in the murky river water. There wasn’t a whole lot of improvement on the cleanliness issue; however, it was pretty refreshing. While we were swimming a bunch of kids spotted us and began running towards the water, stripping off their clothes as they were sprinting. By the time they reached the water, I think some fear had set in, because they weren’t jumping in towards us anymore. They swam and played beside us, keeping a close watch on us. Steve decided to start swimming towards them and making a raawrr noise. It was too funny. All the kids were screaming and splashing away, wondering what this crazy whiteman was doing. Pretty priceless.
