No i-net in Cameroon

Haha, all of Cameroon had no internet connection for more than a week now! Look it up in the news, funny reasons!

Since I have received several complaints concerning my “one-text” writing and the wish for more paragraphs or sections, I have made some divisions.

Yaounde

As you were already able to see from the pictures below, I had a fabulous weekend in Yaounde, the capital of Cam. However this was two weeks ago. My main reason for the trip was to attend an Aiesec information meeting at the university and give a small speech concerning my relation to Aiesec and my experiences. Hehe it sure was a very very short speech, given that it had to be in French and in front of loads of “bi-lingual” students. The fact that Cameroon is a bilingual country is a big lie!:) Moreover, I spent most of my weekend with the German youth connection from Yaounde. It was a very nice mixed group, Cams and GermsJ Yaounde is very different from Douala. Its infrastructure is more developed and the city is not as hectic. It is a beautiful mix of city and countryside. The saying that in Douala the money is made and in Yaounde it is spent seems to be perfectly true!

Housewarming Party

The weekend following Yaounde, Bartosz and I organized a housewarming party for all Aiesecers and CAC colleagues. I also invited the people form Yaounde and the interns from Buea, which all stayed in our apartment. We literarily had a full houseJ Since during the week there is absolutely no time to do any shopping, as we leave to work before anything opens, have lunch break when all shops have a break as well and leave work after everyone closed their shops, we had a very very busy Saturday morning. Bartek was responsible for organizing the drinks and I took over everything concerning food à which meant my first trip to the market!!! Luckily I had friends helping me coz otherwise I would have been lost and probably much poorer! It was a huge market, only selling vegetables and fruits. Everyone approaches you and tries to sell you their fruits and you have these young boys running around with baskets who want to carry your purchases. They were actually getting mad at me since I was carrying the carton myself! Well at the end I ended up buying several kilos of tomatoes, rice, oranges, lemons, pineapples, papayas, avocados and half a tree of green bananasJ That was not my plan, however, you can only buy an entire branch! (Best part of all, in all the stress I forgot to prepare the banana for the party so I have been eating them ever since!)
Then we searched one fish-shop after the other looking for shrimps, as I wanted to make my mum’s world famous ceviche! (I actually managed, however, no clue if it tasted good, as I never got to try some!) Eventually we found this nice place which sold all sorts of fish and shell fish, mhhhmmm a dream for every seafood lover. Bad thing though: Here you get everything really really fresh, which means we spend almost 2 hours cleaning and pealing the shrimps at home! Those who helped me learned to cherish the shrimp even more!!! Once all the food was more or less done, the first rings at the door already started, thus there was not much time for relaxation. For clarification purposes: I expected 30 people, feared that more or less 50 would show up, in reality the number reached around 80 (our apartment is huge!!!) at the end! Furthermore, a party here means more eating than drinking… so hopefully you can imagine the work that took place in my kitchen and the mess in my living roomJ
All in all it was great fun, I did not eat at all, afraid that the food won’t be enough! The crowd was a good mix from people from Aiesec, CAC, our neighbors and friends we have made along the way. (However, Aiesecers did take up most of the space with their world famous Aiesec dances… the rest preferred to enjoy and just watch!) The night ended in a very nice local night club, called “Why Not”. It was nice to see that until the end the crowd stayed a nice mix and people had a lot of fun.
One addition: There was not one crumb of food left, however Bartosz and I have a nice wine collection now!


Work, home and general impressions

I have to admit that I am enjoying my time a lot now. Ever since I have my apartment, I actually feel home and much safer. The area is nice, its close to work, and I don’ t have to be afraid in the darkJ Well a certain attention should always persist! Work is becoming more demanding. However, it is difficult to get used to the working atmosphere here. By the time I finish two tasks, my colleagues are half way through their first one. It always looks as if they have sooo much to do, but that is all a façade! Well until now I can say I am an expert in filing, translating, digitalizing and interviewing future employeesJ I applied for a couple of projects coming up now in November, hopefully I will be assigned to one of my choices.
In my freetime, the little I have I am exploring Douala. However it is quite hard, since everyday I receive at least two calls from people wanting to meet up with me during lunch or after work. If I would actually meet everyone consequently, I would be booked out until New Years! It is nice though, I am not complainingJ