Gadjiwan 20. - 22. January 2012

On the 20th of January we were invited to Gadjiwan to visit Solbjørg. So early in the morning that day the boys, us two girls, the driver and two African women who are from Gadjiwan went on what turned out to be a six hours drive.
As Gadjiwan is a small village way out in the bush west in Cameroon, the road leading to it is quite bad and bumpy.
So squeezed into a car, the eight of us had a really nice time and were even fortunate enough to see some wild monkeys running over the road!
The last 25 km. (which is about 15.5 miles if anybody wondered..) took 2 (!) hours, that says a bit about the condition of the road..

Beautiful African sunset in Gadjiwan

When we arrived in the little village we were shown to a house where we were staying for the weekend. Solbjørg and her visitors are fortunate enough to be able to get electricity from solar panels. So for a certain amount of time each day she has light in her house. The others in the village do not have the technology to have electricity, or even water.
The water is in wells and the light is provided from torches or candles.

After eating a great dinner and a really good cake the youth, Solbjørg and Erik Sandvik who had joined us went on a visit to a neighbouring village to deliver a mattress to one of the pastors there. We sat on the back of a pickup truck and had a blast driving to Mayo Balèo on top of the mattress, however the way back was a bit more painful and bumpy!

Kristian, Runar, me, Andreas and Sara-Jeanette on the back of the pickuptruck

On Saturday morning we went into the village with Solbjørg and visited some of the families that live there. We did not get to speak allot with them as there are very few people there that speak French, so most of the things we managed to say in Fulani/Fulfulde was: good day = sanou,  how are you/ fine = djamna, djam, and thank you = ossoko.
It was very nice seeing how they lived together there. The small houses that were made of dirtbricks and straw roofs looked quite cosy, but it was dark inside most of them. But why stay inside in the dark during the day? People were mostly outside chatting to their neighbours while sitting on their homemade stools and porches leading up to the houses.

Woman making peanut butter from scratch

One of the families we visited had a man who was digging a well right outside their house. He did not know for sure if there was any water to find, so hopefully the hard work was not for nothing.

In the evening we were invited to a neighbouring village. We visited the Muslim leader of the village and an other family. We were served couscous and makkala and sat on the floor while eating the latter.

Erik Sandvik and the village leader

There was another reason for us to be there that evening an this was to show a Christian film for the inhabitants of this village. The film was a Nigerian Catholic made film but as Solbjørg said it is still Christian so it would make do. The film was shown on a TV that was placed on top of the pickup truck with great speakers and an aggregator that made it all possible as there was no electricity. A man sat next to the truck with  a microphone and translated the French into the mother language of the villagers. This meant that the film was paused several times to make sure the most important parts were translated properly. And if there was something funny show it was rewind and played again and again and again. And each time was as funny as the first!!

The TV that was used for the christian film we saw with the village

It was an amazing experience to sit there and watch this little screen together with maybe about 100 other people seated on the ground around us. As they knew that we were not used to sit on the ground for that long we were given plastic chairs to sit on.

On Sunday morning we went to the church in Gadjiwan and experienced a different kind of sermon than what we are used to in Ngaoundéré. With only Fulfulde and Péré as the spoken language, we did not understand so much more than  the bible verses that were read as we had bibles in French and Norwegian with us.
After the sermon Solbjørg served Couscous and some leftovers from the delicious cakes she had served us that weekend.

We were really lucky to be invited to visit her, and we had a great time there! While we weren't visiting Solbjørgs friends or eating her delicious cakes we were playing cards or hunting down the enormous rats that lived in the attic over our house we stayed in.
This was quite an entertaining adventure in it self! The boys took turns in trying to sneak a peak at the great beasts by climbing up on weakly mounted chairs. Kristian threw a makkala up as bate so that the beast would attack something else than him when he lifted himself up there. Andreas managed to take some better pictures up there than what I was able to.. But Runar was not as keen on this risky game we had going as the rest of us were, but he had to take a look as well.

BATE! = Makkala

Kristian taking a careful look up in the attic

No giant rats were seen though... so the knifes the boys got from Solbjørg were not put in use yet... But we could hear them over our heads when we went to bed, probably having a feast over the makkalas that we had thrown up there!

After dinner and church on Sunday we drove home again. This trip was mostly spent on trying to get home to the last minutes of the football game the boys had been talking about all weekend. Which was "unfortunately" not possible as we had a stop in Tignère where we visited a sibling of one of the madams we had with us in the car.



All in all, it was a great trip! And we were given the opportunity to see the life in the small villages of Africa. Without electricity, water, TVs, computers, Internet and even mobile reception they live a completely different life than what we do in Norway!

Johanne Teresie

Tello waterfall 14.1.12

So I have almost waited a month to put these pictures out but now they're finally here! We went on a trip to the Tello waterfall on the 14th of January and had a really nice time there, it was very nice and it was so green compared to Ngaoundéré! So enjoy!

Johanne Teresie

Kribi and Infield in Nairobi, Kenya

On the 26th of December we went with the train to Yaoundé, starting the long trip to Kribi in the south of Cameroon. When we arrived in Yaoundé we hopped on a bus that would take us the remaining four hour drive to Kribi where we were staying for the end of the Christmas holidays together with the Bischler family and the Aasen family.

Runar on the train

Team picture in the sunset

The first days went by with hanging on the beautiful beach, while sunbathing, playing cards and eating delicious meals that was on the menu at the restaurant and bar of the hotel Ilomba.
The missionaries that had been there before had talked about a waterfall not too far away from the hotel and recommended us to go and check it out. So because the others were too busy being sick or too lazy, me and Kristian went to check it out, and it was beautiful! We decided that the others had to come and see it for themselves too. Therefore on the next day we went over to the waterfall again and even did as the locals did, bathed in the river!

The waterfall we were bathing in

The gang bathing in the river

The stream was strong and you had to hold on to the rocks in the bottom so you wouldn't go down the waterfall. We even jumped in from some rocks above the river! We had seen the locals do it and decided that we wanted to try it out too. So after asking a local guy to show me where to jump, I was the first out into the water. It went perfectly, but the boys were not as lucky. Kristian had a visitor from Norway that arrived the same day and he managed to jump straight on to a rock that was just under the water. And the day after that Runar managed to do the same mistake. But that did not stop him, he talked with the locals too and jumped from a higher cliff beside the waterfall! We were all lucky and got safely back.

New Year's eve

New years eve was spent together with the one-year-volunteers of NMS while babysitting the children of the missionary families  while they were at a barbeque at the beach.
We ate a really good pizza and played cards in the suite before twelve. At twelve there were maybe two or three fireworks, but unfortunately we did not see them, but I had a very good time with the others at the bar by the beach, eating banasplit and playing cards and enjoying a pineapple cocktail before we went up to the rooms at the catholic hostel we were staying at.

On the second of January we travelled back to Yaoundé where we spent a night before me and Sara-J. went to the airport at five in the morning. The aeroplane was (of course) a bit late so we were the last to arrive at the Mission Station in Nairobi for the Infield course with Hald.
It was really good to see the students and teachers again. All the Hald-students in Africa were there so we were a great bunch of people. The first two days were filled with bible classes, and other lessons.They were mostly about information work and what we had done so far and what we wanted to do the remaining period in the countries we are working in.
On January 5th we went on a field trip to the Matareslum and to a school by the slum where some of the Hald students were working. We were introduced to a program for the youth in the slum and were also invited into the homes of some of the youth that lived there.

The Matareslum in Nairobi

The day after we went on Safari, and saw allot of different animals, I have never been on Safari before so this was exiting for me!
But after mostly seeing antelopes all the time the group were tired and some actually slept! But we drove around looking for the lions, and after about four hours the cats were spotted. Lying underneath a bush in the cold there were three lions. I did not manage to take a good photo of this as my camera lived its own life on this trip, and did not want to be turned on...
Infield was finished on the Sunday but we had one more day to spend in Kenya, so together with the girls that are staying on Madagascar we went shopping in the big malls and went to a cinema and watched Sherlock Holmes 2!
The malls were huge! And we almost got a opposite-culture-shock when we went into some of them!
The cinema was big too, and the film was great, but in the middle we were reminded that we were still in Africa as the power went out and we had to wait until they started the poweragrigator.
After a really nice last evening we went back to the hotel and packed the last of our things and said goodbye to the others that were staying for a few more days.

Safari with Hald

This cheeky bugger got into many cars and stole food!

Waking up at four o'clock to get to the airport on the 10th was hard, and it was even worse when we ended up waiting for the plane for several hours. But after about four hours the airport staff apologised and gave us free beverages at the coffee bar outside of the check in. Sara-Jeanette and I played cards and had a chat with a  guy from South Africa while we were waiting. After approximately 9 hours at the airport we were finally on our way back home to Cameroon!

It was really good being back when we finally got to Ngaoundéré the following day, after being away for two weeks! We had missed the people, the language and the red earth that we have here in Cameroon when we were out travelling.

Johanne Teresie

Christmas in Cameroon

21^st December: We went to Mount Ngaoundéré, it took us as much as maybe fifteen minutes to walk up the small hill and the view was really nice! We took some cool pictures and had a nice time up there with some friends. 

View over Ngaoundéré

Mount Ngaoundéré

 

Slingshots - always handy

Chillin' on the top with the boys

 

Just before we were going down, Sara-Jeanette managed to fall from a big rock and scare a snake which was lurking around our feet without us noticing it! In anticipation to be able to shoot at a snake with the cool slingshots that the boys had brought with them, we hadn’t noticed it before this. But unfortunately the snake had vanished before anybody could get a nice aim at it. But satisfied with the sight and not so satisfied by the hurting hand Sara-Jeanette, me and the others made our way back down safely to the car.

 

22^nd December: The day started with spending some time at the pool and in the afternoon we went to the Norwegian School to join a Christmas porridge dinner together with all the workers at the Station. There we got traditional Norwegian rice porridge with cinnamon sugar and butter. It was really good! The Bischler boys performed a little song for us and Erik had a speech before he said that all of the workers would get ¼ of a goat each for Christmas! So right about then someone brought ten goats with ribbons and names of the owners around their neck, over to the school and tied them in the trees. Erik instructed that the goats were to be slaughtered before the 24^th so that it would be ready for the feast on the 25^th for all the households. All the workers were really exited to see them and they couldn’t stop rejoicing and thanking God for the gift.

23^rd December: We were invited to lunch at the Norwegian School where we were gathered together with the other Norwegians who had come to spend Christmas here some days before. We got allot of good Norwegian food and cakes, and we enjoyed the company with the others very much. The Music club had a concert for us outside and collected money for the work in the Sunday Schools in the church. A very nice performance!

The red bowl was overflowing with money!

After the lunch we went together with the boys to the market for some last minute Christmas shopping. Which included Kristian buying two chickens which were very much alive (!) to one of our friends here for Christmas. This then led to some screaming and laughing in the car on the way back home.
Sara-Jeanette and I had decided to make some marzipan for Christmas and as it was the evening before Christmas Eve we had to make it then if we were going to make it before the big day. Runar also joined in for a bit as mental support and with Christmas songs on the loudspeakers we had a really nice evening! In other words the evening lived up to the traditions with my family in Norway. 

Moise with the two chicks

Me and our mental support = Runar

The Marzipan, yum,yum!

24^th December: The big day started with watching “Tre nøtter til Askepott” together with Runar and Kristian with lots of sweets and sodas. Later we helped out with arranging chairs out at the back of the Norwegian School for the sermon which was held by one of the Norwegians that were here at the station for Christmas. With really nice weather, Norwegian songs and a nice sermon made it all remind of how the first Christmas might have been.
After the sermon we were invited to the Bischler house together with the one-year-volunteers, the Aasen family, Jan Martin and Oda Hurum. We had a really nice Christmas dinner with “pinnekjøtt” which made us all feel the Christmas spirit even a bit more than what we had earlier.
The evening passed with eager kids who wanted to open presents, nice conversations and a really enjoyable company of people.
I also had a short conversation with the family back in Vanse too before they all went to sleep.

The four of us, f.l. Runar, Sara-Jeanette, me and Kristian

 












A bit strange not being home for Christmas this year, but I can honestly say with a hand on my heart that I wouldn’t have it any other way this year. There will be many other Christmases at home, but never another Christmas here in Ngaoundéré as a Hald student so I enjoyed it while I could!

 Merry Christmas!
Johanne Teresie