Journal Cameroon 5 - 19 Aug 2012
The old diaries of Papua New Guinea
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Pictures will be limited in our diaries from Cameroon because people can get angry when taken in a picture, even when that happens as part of a streetview or whatever.
For the next diary I will make some pictures of life at school, students, classrooms etc.
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This week the lessons really started. It is quite a job to get everything ready. The content of the subjects is not to difficult, but planning and organization od labs, homework, tests etc. is not easy with all new american books (full with all kinds of ideas and examples that would fill 5 years of teaching instead of 1 year!).
I will have to accept that I have to follow my own style instead of the official bookstyle. But this first week the pupils seem to enjoy the lessons (and the stories!).
Roelie and the children in NL. are fine. Everything is focussed on the wedding of Gideon and Jaimie. This Friday Jaimie arrived with her parents. The wedding is planned for September 3. Two weeks to go! Then I will leave for NL to be at the wedding and return September 6 to this place in Cameroon together with Roelie.
Streetview when I walk down our lane to this mainroad, with numerous small shops and "restaurants" at its side.
Yellow taxi's all over to make the picture of traffic in this big city, communicating in a polite way with their claxons.
But everything seems to change at 11.00 at night. Then the trucks loaded with Tropical trees
are allowed to go (high speed) through Yaounde. It is better not to travel with your own car at night.. It is better to give way to everything that ios bigger and stronger than you are!
It is funny that I get compliments for my English (though far from perfect).
Thanks to my "teachers": the students of Malango School-Hoskins-PNG!
A Dutch party.
Friday night I was invited for a meal with other Dutch missionaries.
Arjen (translater) was the cook, with Helma (literacy worker) and Lisanne (visitor orientation for future missionwork) as his helpers!
We had a great time with lots of stories!
Every day I pass this little shop just outside our gate. It belongs to a Frenchman with whom I try to speak French: "Comment ca va? (How are you?) Ca va tres bien, Merci. (I am fine, thanks!). .
Roelie and I are invited to enjoy an excellent French meal with the best French wines at his house as soons as Roelie arrives. He lives in an appartmentbuilding just accross our "street" (picture below).
Left some expensive appartments across our street along my daily walk to school (=the place where the van picks us up to bring us the 6 miles to school!)
Right: our neighbours - buildings of the organization that coordinates the bachelors studies in Cameroon.
Our gate of our guesthouse complex "SIL-Annex".
We have 24/7 guards. Left "Nana" and right "James" (who desired an own picture afer I had printed a small one for Nana).
In the center of our complex are nice trees to climb for the children of the viisiting missionaries. Here are some children whom I teach. .
Because our house at SIL-annex is part of a guesthouse complex I meet many missionaries.
Parents of some pupils invited me for a delicious Tortilla meal. The dinig room was this nice pavillion (left).
Right: We had a very good time together. I was fun to hear the boy at the right saying "eet smakelijk" in Dutch (= have a good meal). His father worked in Holland for one year!
Next week more... !
Our address in Cameroon:
Rain Forest International SchoolSIL - BP 1299
Yaounde
Cameroon - Africa
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