Arriving back In Douala we were both eager to try out our new bargaining skills gained from negotiating motorcycle taxis and Ethernet cable at the market in Kigali with the various baggage “helpers” who had swarmed us the previous time, but tour disappointment the airport was fairly empty and we had very few requests to assist us through customs. We spent the ride back to Buea getting updates on what had been going on at the UAC from Taco and remembering that Cameroon was a country that had a charm all its own, perhaps not the quiet rolling hills of Rwanda, but something wild and sweaty that was no less interesting. After exchanging stories with the other volunteers and adjusting to the reality of no water a severe lack of variety in our diet (bread, bread, and maybe some cucumbers and mayonnaise) we settled back into the pace of life as we prepared for our trip to Yaoundé at the start of the next week. Most of the other volunteers were busy preparing for a grueling ascent of Mt. Cameroon that weekend, the tallest second tallest mountain on the continent after Kilimanjaro and the looming background to Buea that was one of the region’s major attractions. Team DBF decided to stay behind and work on setting up our classrooms in hope that this would bring our laptops to us sooner, or at very least allow us to start as soon as they arrived. Although Sam was sick and spent his weekend on a quest for the movie Blood Diamond instead of joining us, Brittney and I did join a few of the other volunteers who had decided not to brave the Mountain in a trip to Limbe, a nearby coastal town, where not only did we enjoy a lovely day on the beach, but were able to have a real shower afterwards!
That evening we talked with Mr. Orock about what we wanted to do for our Opening Ceremony when we finally got the laptops and we could begin the Summer Holiday Caravan we had been talking about so much. He mentioned that we would pay a “courtesy call” on several figures of importance the next day and so we waited in anticipation for the morning. In the morning we tossed on some clothes of a finer nature and piled into the UAC van and 30 minutes later arrived at the regional TV and Radio station, where we met with the Director as a group and gave several individual interviews about our program. We left with them promising to cover our opening ceremony and assured us that the whole country would be aware of what we were doing this summer.
Next stop was the Regional Delegate in charge of Basic Education who greeted us warmly in his top floor office. With him we stayed longer and discussed the many opportunities that the XO’s presented and how likely it would be that the Government of Cameroon might like to go the Rwanda route and purchase them in large quantities in a real bid for one laptop per Cameroonian child. This was good to talk about, but was a bit premature in my opinion, especially considering we weren’t even in possession of our 100 yet, and so had yet to prove their feasibility or effectiveness. We ended our meeting with an invitation to the delegate to attend our ceremony, to which he readily promised to make an appearance.
So, all we really needed were those darn laptops…the next day Mr. Orock traveled to Douala to pick up a package and to purchase a subscription to the new Internet provider we were subscribing to, MTN having failed us (no internet for the past week!) we were switching to Orange and upgrading the speed of the connection to work with the laptops. We graciously begged off his offer to accompany him, a trip to Douala being next to scheduling a root canal in our books, and continued to plan how we would make our case in Yaoundé to get our laptops released.
Lo and Behold, Mr. Orock was planning a surprise, for as we were walking home that evening he pulled up in his pick-up truck, the bed filled with large brown boxes, and triumphantly announced that he had returned with the XOs! We were completely unaware that he had succeeded in getting a pass from the government and so this came us a very unexpected, though very pleasant, surprise. We resolved the next day to post-pone our trip to Yaoundé and instead devote the remainder of the week to preparing the classrooms and main hall for the grand opening ceremony, for it was to be held the following Monday.
26 JUN 2009