Day 30

This weekend, Martine, Lenneke, and Sharon, three NGO workers from Yaounde, stayed at the guest house during their weekend visit to Buea. Martine and Lenneke, from the Netherlands, work with Focarfe, an environmental NGO, and Sharon, from Germany, works with a company that deals with printing and literacy.

This morning, they took a rain soaked hike up Mt. Cameroon. In the meanwhile, I took a walk through Buea town, did some grocery shopping, picked up some Cameroonian tea from the Ecotourism office, and went to check out an outlook with a stunning view of Buea. The first time I went up this route, I had forgotten to bring my camera. The children in this neighborhood are really cute. The last time I took a walk, there was a man teaching a little boy words. On the way back, the man was teaching the boy how to say ‘white man’ and as I passed, the boy waved at me and shouted “wat mahn!” On the way back this time, I left a group of children gawking and giggling with my crude pidgin, and joined in a game of football with some local teens.

In the evening, the girls from Yaounde and I went out for get some tasty grilled fish and some drinks. Almost all the bars here serve only beer, so if you wanted some wine, you’d have to get it from a convenience store, which, in addition to bottled wine, also sell it in juice boxes. I’m still curious if it comes with a little plastic straw. All in all, the bottled wine was pretty good, and I enjoyed drinking it out of the bottle as the bar had no glasses. We were told this was the Cameroonian way to drink wine.