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……