Have you got enough Bob Marley in your diet??

The reason I ask is that the DJ seems to have discovered a Bob Marley CD and has clearly decided to give his DJ skills a bit of a rest as he’s just been playing it on a loop for the last few days. And there’s only about six songs on the CD, so that’s more plays of each song every hour! Guaranteed! It’s like the opposite of a tag line for a good radio station!!!
Well yesterday we went to visit an orphanage in Fundong. I’ll post the pictures. It’s a bit away from here, so we got a taxi to the town. It’s run by ABCD, which is a charity affiliated to GMM, so I’ll be doing a bit of work there too. Lots of stuff that’s similar to here, doing profiles for a child sponsorship project and then other admin stuff like grant applications and things like that. It wasn’t as bleak as I was afraid it might be. I mean it wasn’t a walk in the park, but the kids were all running around. They’re pretty resilient, and were just playing together, but it’s not the nicest setting.
So I’m just about recovered from my first bout of what I imagine will inevitably be a number of instances of food poisoning. I ate a Scotch Egg on Friday about which I had my doubts at the time, but just ate to be polite (I don’t even like them at home!!) and suffered the consequences for the last two days. Friday was mainly a blur of trekking around the area trying to fill in the blanks on the profiles I have, but we stopped for a coke at this fabulous bar on the edge of town which has a verandah that looks out across the mountains. Definitely the prettiest bottle of coke I’ve ever enjoyed. Picking up a bit of a colour too which for me translates as “I’m not quite that funny shade of blue that I usually am”, but I have marks on my feet from where the straps of my shoes are that are whiter than the rest of my feet so that’s proof enough for me. Hence I am claiming that I’m getting a tan.
Then we volunteers headed out for a few beers on Friday night, which was really good fun. It’s weird here. We had a full night out and I was still home at just after half eleven and I was one of the last two standing. But I’m pretty sure the beer did not help the food poisoning at all! So the weekend was a complete write-off. Well Saturday anyway, I just had to sleep and stay near the bathroom, and then on Sunday I went to Mass at half six in the morning, which meant we had to leave at six. (The two things I’m finding it hardest to adjust here to are the food and the fact that the working day here is from crazy o clock in the morning but finishes up early enough-I like our way better!!) I’m just not built to function normally at half five in the morning. It’s a wonder I managed to dress myself in a way that was even halfway presentable! Nearly fainted in Mass which wasn’t the most fun in the world, but somehow made it back to the house and slept for a few more hours, and then was feeling almost normal by yesterday afternoon, so had a meeting about the orphanage in Fundong about some other projects that I think can be put in place there besides the kitchen thing (To me a garden project there seems to be the most sensible thing in the world, as it can provide food and maybe a bit of funding if they can get enough produce to sell and yet no-one seems to have thought of it. It’s beyond me! So I’d done the research so had to float the idea, and now have the proposal written to present to the director) and then finished my big notice board and put it up in the office. Francis is beside himself this morning since he’s seen it. It’s fantastic! Just a few bits of paper glued together, and I keep spotting him standing in front of it with a huge grin on his face. I think he’d keel over if I ever took him for a walk along the corridors in St. Mary’s! But I have learned a valuable lesson: Noticeboards + Cameroonians= Euphoria!!! It should be fun when I set up the linking project with St. Mary’s from ABC School.
Think I’m finally going to be able to move into own room this week, which means I can finally start to cook for myself hopefully. I’m heading into Bamenda today to buy my stove and pots and pans and things. God that first stir-fry and rice is going to really blow my mind! Also getting paint to revamp the offices here and re-paint what is currently my bedroom but what will become the computer room when I move out.
Still without water, and last night had no electricity, so I wrote this until the computer battery told me that it needed some sleep. Working by candlelight is new for me and very quaint and Dickensian, but I’ve been liaising with another volunteer who I met for five minutes in Douala as he was he on his way out and I was on my way in who used to work in the orphanage in Fundong, so it’s handy that I have someone to bounce things off, and he’s brilliant for ideas and planning, so I’m basically only trying to put his ideas into working processes here. So last night I had to read his ideas and start to put a proposal together on that all by the light of a little sputtering candle since I’ll be away for much of today.