A Cameroon Christmas

 

I had a great Christmas and New Year with A*, J2 and FP. It was quite precious to have two children as a captive audience for 10 days even if they were one day delayed by the snow. When FH and I were young parents we had a retired, widowed babysitter called Rene. She spent her savings paying for her extended family to take exotic cruises with her. I thought it was a good idea then and I still think it’s a good idea. Most young people are cash poor and would not choose enforced vacations with parents, but location, pace & it being free oil good relationships considerably without in any way labelling them as mercenary! Let’s just say I’m pretty sure we all got good things out of the experience. Christmas day we spent in a hotel by Lake Maga (above), complete with mini zoo and had a set menu of cured ham salad, antelope casserole and waffles and ice cream, washed down with a few beers by the side of a swimming pool bathed in mellow yellow sunlight …. or was that the alcohol?!!

However, it was a military manoeuvre covering such distances with the vagaries of Cameroonian transport so it was lovely when it was just FP and I. We went up to the North West and were shown around the Fon’s palace at Bafut by third son where Gerald Durrell got his animals for Jersey zoo and wrote ‘a zoo in my luggage’. You can still get live and dead animals – porcupines, anteaters, snakes, monkeys etc. at the side of the road en route. Cameroonians are not enlightened about bush meat – they are too poor.

 

We also travelled to Ndop, through mountainous green valleys that made me think of the Lake District or the Yorkshire Dales. We stayed in a 1950s style room in the catholic mission and ate with the nuns. This was entertaining, if slightly surreal. The nuns were very engaged with the alcohol content of the wine they were drinking and we had an interesting conversation with an American nun about the merits of democracy when heaven is obviously not one. 2 of them gave us a lift back to Bamenda in their 4×4 which broke down.

I have just got back to my Bogo home today to endless mouse droppings, sandy dust and my beloved sheep and chickens – only 2 chicks left out of the 7 babies, but at least some survivors this time.

I am trying to prepare for my return next year which because of staff changes may not be certain any more. I am encouraging myself to enjoy the sunshine, my swims and the experience of life at a leisurely pace just in case I don’t get to come back.

 

I still haven’t got much of a clue about what I will do when I get home beyond immediates, like seeing J1, sorting Sean the horse and tidying the house. A* says I have become so laid back I am horizontal, so let’s hope it lasts!

 

I am looking forward to a lack of enforced celibacy, catching up on the detail of friends’ lives, cheese, milk and hot and cold running water.