I arrive in Yaounde

Yaounde is the political capital of Cameroon nestling in a valley surrounded by hills. There are very few buildings of architectural beauty or significance. Our hotel is in the Bastos area where all the foreign embassies are and where most of the European workers live. At 726 metres above sea level, it is not overbearingly hot with a tropical wet and dry climate. It is a bilingual city where French is taught as the first language and English as the second.

I have woken up after my first night in the Hotel Diplomat and I have 2 hours before we are meeting in the hotel foyer at 11am to go and have breakfast. I know we are going to an internet café and we have been told to bring our laptops so I am writing to you now so I can cut and paste and send quicker.

The journey turned out to be 24 hours as our original booked flight on Air France via Paris was cancelled due to storms in France and we ended up going on Air Maroc via Casablanca. This involved getting from Heathrow to Gatwick with my very weighty baggage. I ended up officially 4kgs over weight and had to pay £32, but the lady was actually generous because I reckon it was about 9kgs. At this point I had met up again with the couple I met in training and we made this journey together with a young woman we picked up en route also going to Cameroon. I was glad Janis and John were there as it was actually quite complicated as we were given vouchers that National Express would not accept as tickets and there was a lot of chasing around, trying to get on packed coaches with tens of other travellers redirected etc and it was good to have support for watching luggage while taking it in turns to negotiate passage.

In the Gatwick departure lounge we met up with 8 other VSO volunteers and a Dutch guy joined us at Casablanca. I haven’t spoken to everyone yet and it is very early days, but these are my first impressions. There are 3 young guys in their late 20s, 2 women possibly late 30s early 40s and the rest are women my age. I hate to say this because I don’t really like to see myself belonging to a ‘group’ but I think an outsider would see us as pretty alike – middle class, white, liberal all dressed in that slightly understated, not old fashioned, but not trendy either, way.

As far as I can make out (I don’t know where the Dutch guy is going yet) there is only me and one other lady, Iris, going to the Far North and she is only going for 6 months. You are going to hear a lot more about Iris. Iris is awesome. I am not sure she will be a person I will get emotionally close to, but she is interesting. Her wrinkles suggest a woman of 80, but she holds herself very upright and is slim so could pass for 60. She is British I think, but lives in southern Italy. This is about her 7th time of volunteering. If I remember correctly she has done 2 years Papua New Guinea, 2 years Namibia, 2 years Thailand, 3 years Kenya, 6 months Mali, 6 months Ghana and now here. She is travelling with a fifth of the luggage I have – one carry on bag and her crash helmet.

The nearest among my friends she is like is Isabel, but I think she may have an army or public school background as she has immediate authority in the group and is obviously fiercely intelligent. Her core area is education.

There are 4 women from Wales who have come with a programme under the Welsh Assembly for 2 months. They are all quite bubbly and they will be working in the same area as me – participation and governance. Of the two men, I know that Robert is a roads boff and Colin an IT manager. Then there is Janis and John who are Canadian. I am sure I will find out more about the others today. What is clear though is that the majority of the group would only work with English as their main language.

Air Maroc wasn’t too bad. The chicken dinner was dry and yucky tasting, but the beef dinner I had on the second flight was nice. I experienced my first taste of African living. We were given beautifully wrapped ear phones but none of the sockets worked so we had 2 films I could only watch in silence. On the first flight the lady next to me fainted and had to be revived by the cabin crew and taken up to 1^st class.

We were met at the airport by 3 men from the VSO Cameroon team and brought here in 2 huge 4x4s and taxis. There were beggars, but not too much hassle on the way here. The room standard is better than the one we had in Jerusalem and has air con and a fridge if a very broken toilet seat. There is a smell in public places which I think I will get used to as I can’t smell it this morning, of fresh human sweat.

I feel OK. My eyes are sore from rubbing them yesterday when they got tired and stingy and I think I may have left behind my steroid cream for my itchy ear, but no major disasters yet. Only 2 of my toiletries leaked and I had them all in plastic bags so it is OK. I lay in bed and had a little panic about the thought of leaving the ‘group’ and being on my own, but I will try and take one day at a time.