Ran Up a Two Million Franc Hotel Bill.....And Don't Mess With Texas.....

.....and no, the two million francs weren't the bar tab. That was room, meals, laundry and an occasional ice cream sundae.

The trip back was long, long, long but relatively uneventful. I did have a 2 1/2 holdover at Paris because of the blizzard that's going on in Europe right now. Trains are shut down and lots of airports are also closed. I felt lucky to get out at all--even if it was late. Some poor people had been waiting there for four days trying to get into Newark/New York area or anywhere else close to it. With the blizzard in the U.S. northeast, they weren't able to get out or in. And Continental was offering to fly them south to places like Atlanta for a $600 fee with no guarantees they'd be able to connect north to New York before Christmas. Airlines are worse than bankers or lawyers in my opinion.

After we taxied out onto the runway, they had to bring up spray trucks and de-ice the entire airplane before we could take off. We probably spent 30-40 minutes sitting there and the snow was just blanketing everything. They were big, huge snowflakes and so thick you could hardly see the trucks outside the windows. While we were sitting there, you could literally see the snow accumulating in front of us on things like the runway lights. As much as I hate cold weather and snow, there is something magical about watching snow fall through the window of a warm room. Magical, at least, so long as you don't have to go outside into it!

Someone once wrote that you can tell the state of the economy by how loud the Texans are shooting off their mouths and bragging. The better the economy, the louder they talk (especially the oil field economy.) Well, I think the U.S. economy has, in fact, turned the corner and things are getting better. One of the last things I saw before I left Cameroon was the baggage screening equipment before I boarded the plane. On the X-ray machine, right over the conveyor belt, someone had pasted a bumper sticker announcing: "Don't Mess With Texas."

God, it's good to be home again.....Merry Christmas to all.

Got It Made Now…..and Headed for Croatia in April.....

…..I’ve only got one student for the final program and am going to work with him Saturday so that means I have tomorrow (Friday) off as an unexpected layover day. Since I get paid nearly as much on layover days as on work days, I welcome the unexpected chance to rest up before the flight back Saturday night. With just one student, Saturday should be short and sweet before I fly out for Paris around midnight.

In some ways, it’s hard to believe it’s been four weeks since I arrived here but, surprisingly, I’m not in that big of hurry to get home. Looking forward to it for sure, but I don’t feel that sense of urgency to “get out of here” like I have on some jobs. Not getting out and visiting the beach resort was another disappointment but I did really get familiar with Douala over the past four weeks. I’m not sad to leave, but after four trips here (five if you count Chad,) there is a sense that I’m probably seeing this place for the last time. Of course I said two years ago, I wouldn’t return.

Just some last minute random thoughts: Beside the Christmas tree at the headquarters this week they have a large brass camel statue. It’s really neat—I’d like to have one like it—but what is intriguing is the fact that the crescent moon on top is definitely Muslim. I’m not sure if it’s there to recognize Islam during the “Christ”mas season or what, but it is a really neat touch. So much, I guess, for the theory that the two religions can’t coexist.

We’ve been training this past month outside the city at a place called Lima Base. Each morning, and again at noon, COTCO has been catering food out to us. And it’s been really good. Last time I was here, we always ate lunch at a small restaurant called the London Belle. Now they are catering and have been providing the food we’ve eaten for the past four weeks including my Thanksgiving dinner.

It’s an interesting story: the London Belle is owned by a brother and sister and is pretty much a two-person operation. The brother used to work at one of the very few hotels approved in Douala for Westerners to stay in and he observed how stringent the kitchen standards were for those hotels. COTCO and the other oil companies here routinely inspect the kitchens and food to prevent any kind of food poisoning. Water is especially suspect here and since dishes are washed in the local water and almost all vegetables are predominantly made up of water—vegetables are almost always a no-no in developing countries because they use the local water source (which may contain fecal bacteria) to water the plants which is then sucked up through the roots into the vegetables themselves.

Anyway, the brother decided there was a real niche for food that met Western health standards so he and his sister opened the London Belle and, later, the catering service. All their vegetables are raised organically including the use of processed drinking water from the local bottling plant. They then rinse and soak the vegetables three times in decreasing percentages of chlorine water. The result is salads and vegetables that sometimes have a faint Clorox odor but also are completely healthy to eat. There is a local distributor that warehouses inspected meat and they use him to provide their fish and meats. Some of the meats are local but are closely inspected (I think including medical inspectors) and are fresh and uncontaminated. Milk here is not homogenized or pasteurized, so all dairy products are flown in from Europe. Actually the “powdered creamer” is very popular over here.

So they created a restaurant and catering service that is completely healthy and reliable and, in the process, have become almost exclusive caters for many of the oil companies over here. They, in fact, catered the company Christmas party for 200 people last weekend. They also bake their own pastries.

I have really enjoyed their food for the past four weeks. I’m including a photo of the two of them with the office manager of Lima Base (the woman with the red hair.) I’m also including a picture of the local “hot sauce” which they call pilli pili. It is made of red peppers and is probably of the same heat index as Thai peppers. They dish it onto virtually everything—kind of like me with Tabasco sauce.

To get to Lima Base we had to drive through an industrial area which included logging trucks. This morning I shot a photo through the windshield of one of the trucks being loaded. These trees are massive redwoods—but they’re not cedar—and are cut into large planks for building construction. They are a semi-hardwood and the local craftsmen use scraps for wood carvings and the color is really beautiful. The truck in the photo was only partially loaded—probably at least two more trees would be placed on top. When the trucks are moving, they almost always have someone sitting on top of the logs which I thought was not all that smart. One day we were following one of these trucks and I noticed a low-hanging electrical wire across the road. These electric wires are unlike anything you see in Texas—they are old and frayed and it is not unusual to see where people have “tapped into” them with illegal splices. Anyway I was wondering how the truck was going to go under this one wire and then I found out why the man was sitting on top. It was his job to stand up, grab the wire, and hold it over his head then walk the length of the tree trunks to drop the wire behind the truck. And all of this in open-toed sandals. The sad part is that if he were electrocuted or fell off the truck and got hurt they would probably hire somebody along the road on the spot and continue driving. Safety is non-existent here outside the oil companies and life is far too cheap.

This may be my last post before I get home. I have been alterted that I have a tentative 2-week job in Croatia scheduled for April.

Well Into the Final Week Here…..

…..and all is going well so far. Some of the people who were coming in from Chad can’t make it—the airport is closed for security reasons there—so I have really light programs right now with regards to the number of people. This makes it much easier on me and I’ll still be coming home on the regularly-scheduled date of December 20. I really feel like I’m coasting right now and really not at all feeling an urgency to leave here. This has been a far better job than I had originally hoped for.

We have been doing our training at Lima Base, which is a service facility for one of the pump stations on the 670-mile Chad-Cameroon pipeline. We’re located about 25 kilometers or 15 ½ miles southwest of Douala. I can now say with some pride that I’ve worked both ends of the pipeline—from the north at N’djamena, Chad to the southern terminals at Douala, Cameroon. In addition, I’ve trained at Khome, Chad and Lima Base, Cameroon.

Nothing extraordinary has happened since the Christmas party. We were detained at a police roadblock yesterday but all our papers were in order. I carry with me photocopies of my passport and visa that have been certified by the American consulate here in Douala. It was my first and only experience with a police roadblock unlike in Equatorial Guinea where we had two or three every single day—often manned by bored and drunk soldiers. Here, the experience was far more civilized and efficient.

Like I said earlier, I’m basically on cruise control here……

Finished Up Week Three and Went to a Christmas Party…..

…..this week went really well and, for one thing, I got caught back up on my rest. Now I go into a six-day week but it involves three 2-day classes so it should go smoothly and quickly. I head back for home one week from tonight (Saturday).

COTCO held their annual Christmas party last night and I was invited and enjoyed myself thoroughly. After three weeks in the country, it was the first evening I had spent outside the hotel room and it was good to get out.

The theme of the party was Christmas but the setting was traditional African. There were about two hundred people in attendance and I would guess just about every one of them at one time or another introduced themselves to me and welcomed me. It really was a mixture of African music, food and traditional African clothing.

The music being played is often referred to as “palm-wine music” and is something I’ve been familiar with for a long time—in fact I bought my first palm-wine CD several years before I started this job. It features xylophone and keyboards with multiple drums. It’s thought to be an old music genre and probably the basis for the Caribbean reggae music that came out of West Africa. It’s almost all instrumental and, unlike a lot of reggae music, doesn’t have all that political stuff involved. Basically its just happy music.

It really was “African”—three or four Western COTCO employees from Europe were there and there were about a half-dozen white contractors in attendance (I am considered a contractor which basically means consultant.) I found it kind of interesting that they arrived and mixed in but then all sat at one table together. They had two food buffets—one traditional African and the other was a mixture of European and Chinese. The only time I talked to any of them was when I was standing in the buffet line for the African food when one of them came over and asked me if I realized which line I was in. I told him yes and thought to myself, “I’ve been eating this for the past three weeks.” I did eat some things I didn’t recognize but, what the heck, it’s Christmas. As always when I’m traveling, however, I do keep my pocket container of Lomotil and Levaquin within reach at all times.

The only real problem I had last night was communicating. While English is the official “working language” of COTCO, it is French that is spoken almost exclusively even within the workplace. Still, it was a good time and a first-time experience for me and I had a good time…..

Christmas is in the Air……Even if the Air is 95 Degrees and 99.5% Humidity…..

Joyeux Noel—they put up a Christmas tree at the COTCO office today and it’s really unusual and I really like it. I’m not sure what the branches are—some local plant—but the gold decorations are gourds grown all around Douala. The rope strings area actually fern-like plants that grow near the ocean and they, too, are painted gold and make really pretty decorations. One photo shows a bunch of them in a basket as they appear in the wild and above them are some more that have been painted gold. Very unusual, very simple, and very attractive—I like it.

In a more traditional note, the Ibis Hotel put up its Christmas tree today too. This one is far more like the ones we have at home except for the sign behind it advertising a French hotel chain. The point is, however, that Christmas is about the spirit of the season…..and we’re getting into it at work and at the hotel.

I’m really enjoying this week. I’m doing what I’m trained to do and what I like—I have a small class of only three; one of whom speaks English well, one of whom doesn’t speak any English, and one who speaks a little English. With only three students, we can go slowly, take our time and I can improvise ways to do the training. I have to make all kinds of adjustments and the students are all cooperative and this is the kind of challenge I really enjoy when working overseas. Next week I’ll be doing three 2-day refresher programs and I enjoy doing them too because I will know all the people in the classes—I’ve trained them twice before already.

I have been really pleasantly surprised with the hotel. Initially I resisted coming back here because it is so restrictive but they’ve done a nice upgrade since the last time. There’s still nothing to do outside the room but the rooms are much nicer now. Last time I had to take my laptop down to the lobby to get Internet access and now I have it 24/7 in my room. Believe me, it makes a huge difference.

Last time I was here there were about 40-50 French oilfield workers staying at the hotel. I believe every single one of them smoked cheap tobacco and the lobby and lounge always had a blue hazy smoke hanging in the air. It’s not that way this time—the hotel is about half-full and there are more engineer types and the non-smoking area of the restaurant is about as full as the smoking area now. I met a guy briefly in the elevator who was from Mississippi but he’s the only English-speaking person I’ve heard since I’ve been here. Most of the American oilfield workers are stationed further north near Chad along the border area. The French oilfield workers were a really obnoxious bunch of rednecks last time—the swearing, tattoos, heavy drinking and raising hell. It’s nice not to have to put up with that during this go-around. Actually the term “French Redneck” seems like a contradiction in terms to me—after all, aren’t rednecks supposed do a lot of fighting?

The restaurant is a pleasant surprise too. It was good last time—the main drawing point of the hotel—but even that has been upgraded. The menu is about the same only now they have two “chef specials” every day and they rotate them constantly and the food is actually really good.

Anyway, just some more random thoughts—things are better now than the past two weeks and time is passing pretty quickly. The temperatures are near the mid-60s now in Friendswood. Life is good…..

Got Week Two Behind Me and am Half-Way Home……

…..finished up the second week of training and, for the first time ever in Africa, I had a female trainer in the program. You don’t see a lot of female drivers in Cameroon—some, but not a lot—and she held her own really well. In Chad and several other countries around here, they just flat-out don’t allow women to drive.

This was a good group but very difficult to work with since none of them really spoke English very well. I have limited materials in French so we were able to cross-reference and overall I think we did OK. I’ve found that many people can read English much better than they can speak it.

It’s snowing right now in Friendswood but it’s not in Douala. We’re having 94-95 degree highs here with high humidity. There are some forecasts next week for scattered showers but right now it’s just clear skies and very hot weather.

Right now they have the draw for next year’s World Cup on TV right now. That’s where they choose the groups of countries that will be competing in the soccer tournament next year in South Africa. The tournament doesn’t even start for seven months but CNN claims eight times more people world-wide watch the draw than watch the U.S. Super Bowl.

I’ve got the coming weekend off—no plans—but I’m really tired so I’m looking forward to down time. I’m still agitating for a trip to the beach next weekend but they seem to be resisting it. We’ll see……

Random Thoughts From a Developing Country……

…..it’s Wednesday afternoon and I’m half-way through my second week here. Last Friday was a Muslim holiday—the end of Hajj—and the entire country took off. We, however, worked. I was originally scheduled to work six-day weeks but after I got here they asked me to scale it back to five. Really, I don’t care either way—it’s one less day of work and one more day stuck in the hotel room.

Still, since we worked Friday, we were able to observe a lot of the celebrations. Muslims and non-Muslims alike dressed up in their finest African clothing and I so much wish I was allowed to take photographs here. Imagine all the National Geographic photos you’ve seen of African women with the long, colorful robes and colorful jewelry and that’s what we observed all over town. Again, tribal (or clan) affiliation affects the colors and designs of the clothing but all are bright colors and really make for an amazing scene.

Compared to neighboring Chad, Cameroon is a relatively prosperous country but in many ways still reflects the vestiges of the old colonial past (which, in the case of Cameroon included German and French colonization.) The company I’m working for—COTCO—just built a new four-story office building and it is one of the nicest buildings in Douala. It’s so new they’re still striping the parking lot out front but one thing I found very unusual is that the brand-new restrooms feature the “stand and squat” toilets. When I was in Chad, my hotel room had one but at least here they have toilet paper available. Usually, in places like Chad and Senegal, they only have a bucket of water beside the unit and that’s why you never eat food with your left hand in those countries. This particular unit was manufactured in France so there you go…..

Partially because of the geographical “hook” along the western coast of Africa, Cameroon is often derisively called the “armpit of Africa.” Cameroonians seem to either have a great sense of humor or really misunderstand the nature of insults because one of the Cameroon tourism websites introduces itself with the announcement: Cameroon is known as the armpit of Africa.

Part of that nickname, however, may come from the fact that the climate here is very hot and very sticky which leads to a great deal of fungus and mold and foul odors. Right now the temperatures are in the low to mid 90s but the humidity is every bit as bad as Houston in August. As a result, everything here appears and feels grimy. Older buildings have that brownish, dirty look about them.

The streets, however, although in bad repair, have very little trash. That’s because Cameroon, like most Third World countries, is very, very efficient at recycling. Very little is thrown away here—there’s always some use for everything. America, with its disposable mentality, could learn so much from many of these countries. Monday when we were driving about, we went down one street where some men had climbed palm trees along the street and were trimming the branches back. The result was that there were palm branches knee-deep all along the sidewalk. Tuesday when we drove by there must have been 20-30 women sitting on the sidewalk weaving baskets. Today when we drove by there was nothing—literally nothing left lying around.

Although there is plentiful electricity in the city, I still find it amazing that many of the sidewalk entrepreneurs have found an old gas pump somewhere—the old gravity feed pumps with a large glass bowl at the top. They sit the pump on top of a 50 gallon gasoline barrel and then hand crank the gas up into the bowl which is marked with liters and then let the gas flow down into a motorcycle gas tank. No electricity is needed—the pump owner can charge the motorcyclist, and a barrel will probably keep him in business for a week or so.

You also see women—usually near corners—who have an old Singer sewing machine on the sidewalk doing alterations and repairs. I’m talking about the old foot-powered trundle machines probably a hundred years old. Again, no electricity is needed. Today I saw a man with a foot-powered grindstone sharpening kitchen utensils. I’ve seen a number of people grinding corn into meal for money—the old hand-cranked grinders with the hopper on top—we used to call them Armstrong mills. Everybody is looking for a niche to fill and, combined, Cameroon gets along pretty well without iPods, the Internet, plasma TVs and the other things we think we can’t live without.

One exception, though, it the cell phone. Virtually everybody here has one. In Senegal, I took a photo of an old man in a cart pulled by a donkey talking on his cell phone. It seemed so iconic—2^nd century transportation and 21^th century communications. When you think about it, though, it makes perfect sense. I’ve been told that requesting a land line to have a phone installed in your home here can take 15 to 20 years and then it won’t work half the time. Cell phones bypass all that but over here the cell phones don’t take photographs, text message or play music—they make phone calls.

Getting back to the Cameroonian sense of humor, I’ve also been told the favorite Internet game over here—for those with access to the Internet—involves rescuing hostages from the Douala airport. Kind of an Entebbe-raid sort of game. I mean, that’s got to be kind of insulting, but it’s a popular game over here.

Like I said earlier, everybody is looking for a niche over here and the streets are lined with vendors. I’ve only seen one grocery store over here and I got the impression it caters to the Western workers mostly. You see all kinds of food for sale in these kiosks—every fruit and vegetable imaginable and raw cuts of meat hanging in the open. As I also pointed out earlier, nothing is thrown away—everything is recycled—but that can lead to some humorous uses for old stuff. One boutique near the company headquarters must have found some old mannequins somewhere and now use them to display their clothing out on the sidewalk. Problem is, the mannequins are male and the clothing is female so you have these guys standing outside on the sidewalk in lingerie and dresses. Still, it’s advertising at its best…..

As far as I can tell there are no sports played over here except soccer and, as a result, Cameroonians are near-fanatical about their soccer. The Cameroon national team has qualified for next year’s World Cup and you see advertising signs everywhere and jerseys on people in the streets. Soccer is a real unifying factor for this country and they take pride in their team and their country. As it should be…..

Anyway, just some random thoughts…..two more working days and then a weekend free. I seriously doubt I’m going to be able to arrange a trip to the beach while I’m here. Until later……

Finished Up the First Week…..Three to Go……

The first week wrapped up yesterday. Initially the training programs were designed to be six days in length which is very unusual and after I arrived they requested we keep it to five days which is a relief. There may not be a lot to do in the hotel on weekends but the work—believe it or not—is physically exhausting and six straight days would be tough.

The first week went pretty well. We started off with logistics problems such as training vehicles, meeting rooms, meals, etc., but that is usual for overseas jobs. Probably the next three weeks will go a little smoother.

This was a good group. They were all from Cameroon and all but one spoke really good English. The fifth student spoke almost no English at all which slowed things up for translations but he was a good student and overall the program went well.

Things at the hotel are good—one of the three English-language TV stations is an all-movie station and I’ve enjoyed the movies so far. I really don’t watch TV very much at home so I haven’t seen the movies they’ve had on the station. I prowled around yesterday and found another stairwell inside the hotel and it is really nice—well lit, clean and carpeted—and I’ve started doing some stair-climbing as a form of exercise. It makes a positive difference.

I’m taking it easy today and tomorrow and then back to work Monday. I’m trying to lay the groundwork for a trip to one of the beach villages next weekend but COTCO seems to be against it again this trip. We’ll see……

Thanksgiving in Cameroon 2009......

Except for my short army career, I don't remember being away from home for Thanksgiving before......I thought about it some today and I really do have a lot to be grateful for.














I'm grateful for the food I've enjoyed today. The fish is simply called sole and the rest of the food is typical Cameroonian fare. One of the rice dishes is called ndole , which is made of boiled, shredded bitterleaf (a type of green), peanuts, and melon seeds. It is seasoned with spices and hot oil, and can be cooked with fish or meats. It is considered the national dish of Cameroon.

The right-hand tray above the fish contains some clear-looking balls. They are a mixture of starches--rice, potatoes, yams--that are cooked then pounded until they form a sticky mass which is then formed into balls and dipped in spicy sauces.

The sauces are typically made of a root called cassava (which naturally contains traces of cyanide), okra and tomatoes. Peppers are added and can be very similar to Thai peppers in hotness. One of the other trays contains fried plantains which I've been told are not bananas but very similar.

I'm grateful for the hotel room I have over here. It is small but safe, secure and relatively clean.



















I'm grateful that I have three English-language channels on my TV set.





















I'm grateful for the Internet in my room which allows me to follow the online newspapers at home, keep track of the Dynamo during trading season, and basically just maintain contact with the outside world.



I'm grateful for my friends--especially the ones that send me emails.






















I'm grateful for the Skype feature on my computer that allows me to talk to Devin live almost every day while I'm over here.




















I'm grateful for my home and I truly feel for the many people in the world today that live in shanties like these we drove past today.



























I'm grateful for the community I'm going back to in three weeks and I really do appreciate it after traveling through poor communities like this one today.



















I really do feel grateful this Thanksgiving and, like I told Devin on Skype earlier this evening, don't feel sorry for me over here. I actually have it really good......I'm really grateful for the opportunity to travel the world and visit places like Cameroon.

And lastly, I'm grateful for this fleeting but beautiful sunset outside my hotel window as I was typing this.

Happy Thanksgiving from Cameroon.

Half-Way Through the First Week……

…..It’s now Wednesday evening and I’ve done three days work this week which means I’m half way through the first of four weeks over here. As is typical in Cameroon, things got off to a rough start logistically but are starting to smooth out and probably will be ok for the remainder of the job. The hotel I’m staying in is the same one as when I was here two years ago and there have been some upgrades which make it a little nicer but it is still in many ways a gilded cage. It is secure and safe, relatively clean and has a good restaurant—all of which makes it one of the nicest hotels in the country—but there is absolutely nothing to do outside of my room.

Security is so tight here that when I went out the front door to take a picture of the front of the hotel, the doorman came running out to stop me. I guess he thought I was going to go walking down the street. Inside the hotel, there is a small lobby connected to a lounge and then the restaurant. All this consists of the first floor. There is a small walled patio outside the restaurant that has the swimming pool but there are really no grounds to the hotel—no place to walk, run or exercise. I thought about walking up and down the stairs but they are hot, smelly and filthy. No, I didn’t see any bats but I’m sure they’re there somewhere. They take two-hour lunches in Cameroon and I considered taking my running shoes and trying to walk during lunch, but the work area is a hard-hat and steel-toe boot area and it’s too hot and humid anyway.

Like I said earlier, conditions are pretty nice at the hotel but it is just so restrictive. COTCO is headquartered in Douala but our meeting site is outside of town on the Wuori River at a site called Lima Base. The river here has been dredged and there are some pretty large vessels moored. This morning we saw a long dugout canoe with about twenty people in it. They had large cloth bags and were dressed in native African clothing typical of this area. One of the workers said they were probably refugees from Gabon. Douala itself is about 1.6 million people but they are spread out in a network of small villages.

To get to Lima Base we have to drive through one of these villages on a dirt road and it is everything you imagine impoverished Africa to be. There is one well in the center of the village with a concrete wall around it and there are always people there filling plastic bottles with water. There is a “free medical clinic” there but I’ve never seen it open on my trips here. There are literally hundreds of small children—many can hardly walk they are so small—and you can tell they are starving and sick. This is one of those areas where you don’t take photos and I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing it anyway. We really don’t realize how fortunate we are in the States…..

Which brings me to the subject of Thanksgiving tomorrow. I’ll have lunch with the group out at Lima Base and then I will probably splurge a little for supper at the hotel. Pretty sure there’ll be no turkey though……

It Took Nearly a Full Day, But I Made it to Douala…..

…..From the time I left my front door until the time I checked into my room, it was a 22 ½ hour trip but that included over six hours layover at the Paris airport. For the most part, the trip went smoothly with only minor glitches.

On the flight from Paris, one of the passengers came up to me on the plane and introduced himself. He was the head of security for ExxonMobil here and he remembered me from two years ago. We had a good talk at the airport and he will be giving me a detailed personal security orientation as part of my first-day initiation on Monday. I’ll also have a detailed medical orientation and will be issued a malaria survival kit—I have started the mandatory anti-malarial medications yesterday and will take it daily until a week after I’ve returned to Friendswood next month.

As far as personal security, not much has changed since the last job here however there was a recent taxi strike that turned violent and there have been public demonstrations in support of the taxi drivers. One of the fallouts of that is that cameras and photography—always restricted—are both very touchy subjects right now.

At the airport, COTCO met me and walked me through the complicated customs and passport issues here and arranged a minibus to the hotel. I had tried to change hotels but they overruled me because of security reasons and booked me in the same hotel I was in two years ago. I checked in—the typical room above the fourth floor facing away from the street—and and the room is much nicer than last time. One major upgrade is free Internet access in the room so I should be able to post regularly and email every day. I’m including a photo I shot out of my room window this morning.

I hardly slept during the trip so I had a full night’s sleep last night and we’ll see how quickly my body adjusts to jet lag today. I went down and had lunch earlier and was only moderately hungry—we’re seven hours ahead of Texas so it was breakfast time and I don’t eat much breakfast. I have a $141 per day meal allowance while I’m here and, believe it or not for one of the poorest countries in the world, it will cost me about that much to eat here. One favorable thing I do remember about this hotel from last time is that the food was good and safe—and that in itself is a major plus. Of course, you pay for it…..

Another upgrade from last trip is that the room now has two English-language channels—CNN and BBC. I also get Al Jazzera, but it’s in French. And I now have a flat-screen TV in the room. Life is good and I will come across a lot of people this coming month that have little food, no electricity and no drinkable water. I feel under house arrest in the restricted confines of the hotel but it is really a very good and safe environment that most Cameroonians will never experience in their lifetimes.

I’m basically spending this first layover day taking it easy—watching TV, playing with the Internet and trying to adjust to jet lag. The work begins tomorrow and I’m really looking forward to it. I’ll be training Cameroon COTCO employees to teach their tractor-trailer transport drivers safety techniques in hauling fuels and hazardous chemicals in dangerous driving conditions. This is what I enjoy doing—this and working with embassy drivers for the State Department—and it sure beats doing the basic instruction myself in downtown Houston as I’ve done almost all year in 2009.

We had a “bat invasion” just now outside the hotel. I’d forgotten about them, but several times a day there are literally thousands of bats that come out and swarm in huge circles around the city for fifteen or twenty minutes then go back to wherever they stay during the day. I’ve been told the underground parking garage at the hotel is like a cave with the ceiling covered with bats. I remember seeing some of them in the stairwells but never in the hallways or rooms. Actually, the locals here are big fans of the bats—they swarm several times a day and eat probably millions of mosquitoes. And mosquitoes are the biggest cause of malaria—one of the biggest medical problems here and a huge killer of children in this country. I tried to take a picture but they’re really small and really fast…..

I’ll eat supper a little later and will probably be a little more hungry and will sleep at least several hours tonight. It usually takes me two to three days to make the full adjustment after I arrive. I’ll try to post regularly but the photos may be few and far between. So far, off to a good start……

Making My Fourth Trip to Cameroon in November.....

.....which means I'll be on the road for Thanksgiving but will be home six days before Christmas.

This will be my third job with this company--called COTCO, or Cameroon Oil Transport Company (subsidiary of Exxon)--so I know what I'm getting into.

I'll be working in Douala, a major port city on the coast and within the shadows of Mt. Cameroon. In the past, I've been pretty much restricted to work and the hotel but this trip I'm going to make every effort to get out at least a little bit which may be hard since I'm working 27 straight days with only three Sundays off.

Cameroon is a hardship assignment but I can't complain since I've been to places like Cairo, Cape Town and Manila since my last trip here.....I guess you have to take the bad with the good.

I'll be posting more information as I learn more myself......

Dos Gringos in Pachuca, Mexico.....(Loco Gringos to boot......)

Devin and I just got back from one of the most enjoyable “international” trips I’ve ever made—to the mining city of Pachuca, Mexico located about two hours northwest of Mexico City to take part in what was almost a“pilgrimage” to see a Pachuca soccer match.

I know most of the people who read this blog aren’t all that familiar with the sport of soccer but to Mexican soccer fans, at least one trip to Pachuca during a lifetime is considered a pilgrimage given the storied history of the club there.

Pachuca is the birthplace of North American and Mexican soccer and the first Pachuca team was founded by Cornish tin miners in the mountains here in 1901. That makes the club 108 years old and it is an internationally-known club—in fact, just last year they placed fourth in the Club World Cup playing against teams from Africa, Asia, South and North America and Europe. You aFlways hear about English and European soccer clubs like Liverpool, Chelsey, Manchester United, Barcelona and Milan but last year Pachuca placed higher in the world than all but one of them (Manchester United won the championship). The clubs in Mexico City always measure themselves against Pachuca and the matches are always packed with fans, often violent, and filled with passion.

This is it: Mexican Soccer Mecca. There is no equivalent in U.S. sports—Pachuca is the Mexican version of the New York Yankees, Boston Celtics and Dallas Cowboys all combined in one franchise, year after year, for 108 years.

Devin and I have both wanted to see a game here since we’ve become Houston Dynamo fans. Actually, there is some history between the two clubs—Houston has beaten Pachuca twice in Houston and Pachuca has beaten us twice in Mexico (Pachuca rarely looses to anybody in Mexico). This game was September 16—his birthday—and as a present, we went down there against the advice of almost everybody we talked to.

We flew out of Houston that morning to Mexico City and logistically, things started going wrong almost immediately. We landed in Mexico City about a half-hour late and it took us nearly two hours to clear customs. Despite the recent bad blood between the Mexican and U.S. national teams this summer, we both wore our bright orange Dynamo jerseys and drew a lot of stares but nobody gave us any trouble.

From the airport we had planned to take a bus to the Mexico City north bus station then connect to Pachuca. Since neither of us speak particularly good Spanish, that was the part of the trip I considered most stressful. Once we cleared customs, though, we were so far behind schedule we decided to take a taxi directly to Pachuca—very expensive but a good investment in hindsight.

We arrived at Pachuca and checked into the Holiday Inn there. Pachuca is still today an active mining town—a working-class community of over a million people located about 8,200 feet above sea level and one of the highest towns in Mexico in terms of elevation and coolest in terms of temperature. We ate supper at the restaurant there and Devin was able to contact the Houston Dynamo front office over the Internet and actually established contact with the Dynamo Chief Operating Executive who was surprised to learn anybody had made the trip from Houston. He also later called Devin on his cell phone and arranged to get us free tickets to the game. This is like a sports fan being contacted by someone like Jerry Jones of the Dallas Cowboys or Drayton McLane of the Houston Astros—pretty impressive that the Dynamo would take that kind of effort to support visiting fans!

We also learned that the game has been delayed two hours because of television coverage so that gave us a little room but I’m still glad we took a taxi instead of negotiating the bus schedules.

Like I said before, Houston and Pachuca have a short but competitive history and when the North American tournament brackets were announced last spring the Pachuca front office publicly stated they wanted another match up with Houston. The two teams play well against each other, respect each other, and to promote this match the Pachuca front office offered free tickets to the whole stadium. Try to imagine the Los Angles Lakers or Chicago Cubs doing that for an important game! Predictably the result was a packed stadium—between 25,000 and 30,000 fans. Our orange jerseys started really standing out in the crowd!

Despite that, we decided to make a twenty-minute walk up the side of the mountain to the stadium instead of taking a taxi about an hour before game time. Again, we got tons of strange stares and some taunting but nobody gave us any real trouble. That would be a recurring theme throughout our two-day stay there—lots of taunting (about 90% of it good-natured) but we never ran into a single real jerk looking for trouble. For the most part, I think we were considered novelties and possibly maybe even “crazy Gringos.”

We got to the stadium and were walking around looking for “will call” to pick up our tickets when Devin got another call from the Chief Operating Officer and he had sent a security officer to meet us with the tickets. We got inside the stadium and noticed the tickets had no seats marked on them—we didn’t realize the game had been opened up free to everybody and there were no assigned seats. We just started looking for a good spot and accidentally stumbled into what was their ultra, hard-core support section which would have been a HUGE mistake but a security officer stopped us and radioed somebody else who sent a contingent of Hidalgo State Police to escort us.

Despite the fact the stadium was “sold out” due to the free tickets, one section is always reserved for visiting supporters. You have to remember that these matches, especially with Mexico City clubs, tend to be very violent and security is very tight here—also very efficient.

We were escorted to the “visitors section” and guess what, out of nearly 30,000 soccer fans that night, there were only two orange Dynamo jerseys in the stands. We were literally “surrounded” by Hidalgo State Police about five feet apart. I am attaching a short video here that I took in which I can count 44 of them around us. To view the video, click on the little triangle in the lower left corner--it may take a couple of seconds to buffer but should then play. I would also mention that not a single one of


them looked like someone you would want to start trouble with. We had a “contact” that spoke pretty good English and was very good to us. We didn’t do it, but he told us if we needed to use the restroom, they would literally shut one of the men’s rooms down for us and escort us there. Once inside the security ring, I don’t think we were in any danger at all!!!

As expected, it was a really good game and, as expected, the Dynamo lost 2-0 but we were never really predicted to win against the No. 4 club team in the world, in their stadium, at 8200 feet. It really was a "David vs. Goliath" match, but it was a good game and well worth our trip down there. Nobody really gave us any trouble and several people actually came up and welcomed us to Pachuca and expressed surprise we were there. We had fun, showed “the colors,” and displayed our flags and cheered for the Dynamo. I traded club scarves with one of them and a number of their fans asked us for other Dynamo gear.

We were held in place until the stadium was nearly empty then escorted to the entrance and then, a little surprisingly, turned loose into the remaining crowd to get back to the hotel. We decided to walk rather than take a taxi and made the walk with some friendly taunting but no problems. Of course, if the Dynamo had won, it would probably have been much different.

The next morning we slept in, ate breakfast, and took a taxi to the old historic downtown area of Pachuca. This area is a long ways from the border and almost nobody spoke very much English, so we were really on our own.

Pachuca is a very old and historic mining town and even today quarries are located throughout the city. Much of the architecture here is stone masonry—walls, aqueducts, and old buildings. In many ways, it has the feel of an English village because of the rock masonry. We visited the landmark of the city, the Monument Clock Tower, in the heart of the historical district. As they are proud to boast, there are only four of these particular clocks in the world—Big Ben in London, the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa, and another in France.

We went inside the base of the tower and signed up for a city tour on a small bus. We were, as usual, the only Gringos, but a young kid who spoke pretty good English joined the bus with us and gave us a personalized interpretation while the main guide spoke to the others in Spanish. Overall, it worked out pretty well.

We rode around the city center looking at old historic buildings, the Hidalgo Supreme Court, and some convents and old churches. We stopped and went inside the Church of San Francisco—the oldest church in Pachuca and very ornate and beautiful.

The tour also went up the side of the mountain and stopped at the huge, and I mean huge, statue of Christ overlooking the city. We returned to the clock tower at the end of the tour and Devin and I ate at one of the restaurants on the main plaza. The food here is obviously “Mexican” but not Tex-Mex like you get in Houston. There are some similarities such as tortillas and tacos, but it really is a type of Mexican food all in its own.

The food item that Pachuca is famous for is a Mexican version of the Cornish pasties where a small meal is rolled up in crust and formed into a pastry containing a meat, potatoes, vegetables and a dessert. The restaurant we ate at was out of them at the time, so we ordered off the menu.

After lunch, we decided to take a taxi back to the soccer stadium for some more pictures of the outside and in doing so managed to stumble into one of the most pleasant surprises of the whole trip.

Devin collects photos of himself in front of various stadia in his Dynamo jersey with his scarf and we hadn’t found the main entrance the night before (and it might not have been a good idea at the time anyway) so we took a taxi there and walked around looking for the main entrance sign. One of the side gates was open so we went in and were stopped by a little, older man who was the gate guard and spoke no English whatsoever. After stumbling through an explanation and pointing to my camera, he let us wander around inside the stadium.

The Pachuca stadium is literally the showpiece of Pachuca. It is a really nice stadium and that day the only other people there were the cleaning staff doing their thing after last night’s game. Devin and I shot pictures of each other against the backdrop of the club name in the stands and were leaving when the little old man stopped us again and motioned for us to follow him.

He then took us to the luxury boxes, through the stands themselves, and gave us a personalized tour. He didn’t speak English but I think he understood we really respected and admired the Pachuca tradition. I don’t think many other Gringos have ever had such a tour—at least such a two-on-one personalized tour. He then took us to the press box and other locations in the stadium. We then got on an elevator with him and went down about three or floor stories and then, to our amazement, we stepped out onto the playing field! Only a die-hard soccer fan would probably appreciate this—but it was an almost unprecedented thing to see this famous and historical stadium grounds from this perspective.

He also took us down a long hall which was basically a museum—a hallway of historic photos including the 1901 Cornish team, photos of all the trophies and international matches and tournaments during the past 108 years, and pictures of famous Pachuca players and moments. Every visiting team that plays here has to run through this tunnel to get on the field—could be pretty intimidating!

We thought the “tour” was over when he took us through one more door and to our amazement, we were in the Pachuca locker room. As you would expect with this club, it was much like a spa in a five-star luxury hotel. We got to go into the pre-game meeting room where the team meets before each match. It is designed in a circle with each player having a designated seat and his life-sized photo and framed jersey behind the seat. One of those spots belongs to Jose Torres, a kid from Longview, Texas. Visiting here is something even organized tours don’t get to do and we are quite possibly the only two people on the face of the earth to visit here wearing Dynamo jerseys.
Secondly only to the game itself, this was the highlight of the trip! From the stadium we walked back down and found the local sports shop where Devin got an official Pachuca club scarf from the 2008 Club World Cup in Japan and we headed back to the hotel, stopping at the local bus station and buying tickets back to the airport for the following day.

We had visited a lot that day, walked quite a few miles, and got back tired. After showering, we hit the business center, checked emails and Devin called Alida. We ate a fairly light supper and called it a day.

The third morning we got up early, checked out of the hotel, and walked down to the bus station. It was surprisingly easy to negotiate and we got on our express bus to the airport with no problems. The trip back was going great until the engine overheated and we had to stop while the driver poured bottle after bottle of drinking water in the radiator to get the temperature back down and we took off again only to have stop shortly later at a filling station where he poured buckets of water in the radiator but he did get us to the airport ok—and basically on schedule.

At the airport, our flight was delayed but Continental got us on a flight an hour earlier. After we had boarded, we sat there at least an hour because of maintenance problems then were told to disembark because the flight was cancelled. Our original flight was still delayed but after standing in line for what seemed two hours we got back on it and it left a couple of hours behind schedule but we made it back to Houston ok.

All of this took place in just 48 hours but it was one of the best and most enjoyable trips of this nature that I’ve ever taken. I’m sure it will be a birthday Devin will always remember and we’ll both have stories that will be told and retold for years to come.

As Devin pointed out during the trip: "Fortune favors the bold." We went boldly where few other Dyamo fans have ever gone. Of course, we may have had a little help.....