You are Christmas

The days begin early, with sunrise at about 6.:00a.m. The church bells ring, roosters crow and the cars and motorcycles are honking their horns incessantly.  And so we awake.
Tuesday we went on a road trip around Bamenda.  GP-DERUDEP (it's a long name turned into acronym), has done a variety of development projects in the region.  Firstly, the roads. We were definitely in four by four country, bouncing up hill and down, in and out of potholes, blind corners, the finest earth roads in Africa!
We stopped at a health centre in a small village, serving over 1000 people. There was no doctor, just a nurse, mid-wife and pharmacist on staff.  The nearest doctor would be back in Bamenda, down that awfully rough road.  Next we stopped at a slaughter slab, a new concert installation that was set up to be more environmentally conscience in its waste disposal.  In another village GP had been involved in the construction of a large community hall.  The projects are always participatory in nature and the villagers put in materials (locally made red bricks), and labour in order to take ownership of the project.  Then we stopped by a school in another village.  GP had built three new classrooms, to create a total of 6 classes (5 teachers) serving over 200 students, grades 1 to 6.  The kids were so curious about us visitors. When I pulled out a camera they crowded around to photographed, especially when I showed them their pictures.  One of our group commented:  "Visitors are always a novelty.  We are like Sunday, we come by every so often.  But you, you are like Christmas!"
These last two days I've been busy with the IDF booklet.  My office is on the 4th floor (walk up). The windows are wide open to the noise of street vendors below; especially loud are those selling music, home and car audio equipment.  With all the competing sounds, it feels like I'm at the midway.
Dave had another opportunity to go travelling around and besides seeing some bridges, new market stalls, he also saw some brush fires.  That would explain why the air here is so smoky and hazy.  We haven't really had the hot sun shining down on us at all, making the temperature quite pleasant.
One of my colleagues was trying to wrap his mind around the negative temperatures of a Canadian winter.  "How do you live?"  he asked as we were weaving our way around market stalls on the street. I can understand his question because life in Cameroon is outside on the street.