Calm before the storm

Hello once again from wonderful, warm, and wet Cameroon. A lot has happened the last few days, so I’ve split today’s blog entry into two parts so you can read them on different days. (It might be a week or so until I am able to blog again).

On Thursday, we met with Mr. Benjamin to discuss the project in general. On our way there, Mark saw another friendly face. Kumba reminds me of UD because you can meet someone new everyday but you still see friendly faces wherever you go. Mr. Benjamin believes our section of the project may only take a few weeks. As I said before, this may allow us the chance to do more phases of the same project or even research new projects for next year. Ordering pipe will take 5 to 7 days and hopefully that will coincide with completion of the tanks and finishing the trench.

We also made a stop at the local hardware store owned by Mr. Josephat. Mr. Josephat is our go-to-guy for pipes, fittings, tools and any other construction materials we may need. He has worked with ETHOS in the past and will provide us with good materials at fair prices. Corruption is very common in Cameroon. Throughout the country I have witnessed countless half-finished buildings and projects. So, we are fortunate to have a supplier we can trust. Then, we walked back to the house for a short rest.

Brian and Mark both needed haircuts. So, we headed down to Spirit’s barber “shop” at the end of Soba Street (the street where we live). His shop was an 8’ x 8’ room with two couches and one barber’s chair. The barber’s chair was made out of an old car seat and other reused parts. After Mark got his hair cut, he met up with our friend Julius to go pick up a phone that we can use over here.

Spirit began to cut Brian’s hair as I talked to another man in the shop, Leonel. Leonel was originally from Duoala and moved to Kumba as a child. However, he is just in Kumba on summer vacation as he studies hospitality management in Bangkok, Thailand. Like most Cameroonians, Leonel is very interested in the United States and is up on all the latest news about our government. Everyone in Cameroon feels that Obama’s election to the Presidency was a victory for them as well. Leonel said that many people stayed up all night watching the results on television. By the time the election was final, it would have been at least 4 or 5 in the morning here. People celebrated in the streets much like after a victory for the national soccer team. Posters and calendars of Obama hang in many businesses, including Josephat’s hardware store and Spirit’s shop.

Anyways, back to the hair cutting story. As I talked with Leonel, Brian apparently became quite hot. (Spirit had a large towel around his neck to catch the hair) At some point Brian passed out and when I looked up, his head was back over the chair. It scared Spirit, Leonel, I half to death. Spirit had his assistant run and get Brian a bottle of water while Brian slowly came to. After Brian calmed down, Spirit anointed both Brian and I with holy olive oil and made us lick it off our hand. He said he sensed we were both holy men and invited us to his church (needless to say, I don’t think I will be attending) So after our wonderful trip to the barber shop, I walked back with a face dripping in olive oil combined with Brian’s hair clippings. Yum.

We had dinner with Pa and learned that he has a farm a short distance away. Hopefully, we’ll get the chance to visit it when we are in town some weekend. After dinner, we played cards with the other young people in the compound. The kids included Clinton (age 12), Brandon (age 10), and Gloria (age 17). All of them are very fun. However, they are ruthless when it comes to playing card games. They introduced us to a fun game called “Cheque.” The game is played very similarly to UNO only you must use a deck of playing cards with four jokers. This was the calm before the storm of craziness the next day would bring.