The well has been successfully drilled and we are currently developing it. Pump is installed and the concrete pad goes in today. Hurray! It is pumping clean water and we have tested it for many water quality constituents. Will need to wait 24 - 48 hours for bacteria analysis, but it is looking good so far. Water hygiene education program is going very well. The Council Member in charge of sanitation and hygiene is so excited about the materials that I brought to share. He has been going to the radio station to announce more workshops and so the information dissemination [View Full Entry]

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Our road trip was painful but safe. My back went into spasms and my ass had a stroke! The first trip was about 7.5 hours on dusty, pot-hole roads, with 9 people and 14 bins and bags stuffed into an old toyota previa. We each had about 1/2 seat. But we made it to Bamenda safely. Then, the next day was 6.5 hours on an even worse dusty, windy, mountain road. This time we each had our own seat, but it was so dusty, we had to cook inside with the windows closed or risk respiratory failure! Again, we made it [View Full Entry]

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Map of travel route attached. [View Full Entry]

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Getting ready to leave tomorrow. Wanting a way to keep in touch without having to memorize everyone's email addresses! Be back in 2009. [View Full Entry]

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On the Kenya Airways flight from Nairobi to Cameroon, I had the bizarre and probably once-in-a-lifetime experience of disappointment that I would only be on the plane for 4 hours. While in the air I could savour the thrill of embarking on the final West African leg of the trip, but once we touched down reality would hit as we tried to get the bike out of Customs and put it back together (assuming the bike was actually on the flight, which we were not sure of). Eventually the descent into Douala was announced, the air hostesses stopped serving us drinks, [View Full Entry]

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After several hours at the Nigerian side of the border trying to exit that country, we ended up spending the night at the Cameroon border post as we were already hitting night fall by the time entry was being sorted out. This is the real disadvantage to group travel, because border crossings take 10 times longer when you're trying to get 20 people and a large truck across. Christmas day was one to remember. We drove a total of 36km in 8 hours, the roads were that bad. This, after several locals and police men had told us the roads were [View Full Entry]

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Leaving Oslo The buzzer went of at 04:15, as programmed, and up we went. It was cold, -11 centigrade, and Anja didnt want to leave the warm cosy bed, but I managed to kick here out of it. We hurried to the airport with all our luggage. It looked like we were going on a major expedition, as we had no less than 14 kollis. The girl at the checkin counter made huge eyes, but went along with it, and sent us off, despite us beeing a little bit over the limit. Security wasn't to bad at this early hour, but [View Full Entry]

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"It's all part of the trip" people say about breaking down.......but why did it have to be in the middle of a two day jungle crossing between Cameroon and Nigeria?....... Flying into Douala on the west coast of Cameroon reminded me of the Apocalypse Now movie - the wooded and thatch huts surrounded by flooded jungle and a dense thick humid air. Not really the type of scene that wants to make you leap out of the plane and jump straight down the throats of bribing French speaking customs officials, but it was going to have to be that way. One [View Full Entry]

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We arrived in Cameroon on the worst roads I've ever experienced. Crossing the border from Nigeria on a Thursday morning, it was Saturday before we arrived in the city of Douala - a grand total of 400km in 2 and a half days! The dirt roads here are rendered impassable at times in the rainy season and one local described them to us as bad "beyond human comprehension" - he hit the nail on the head there! Miraculously, we only got bogged in the gluey mud once, when knee deep in slime, the truck had to be dug out and crumbled [View Full Entry]

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For a few weeks, climbing Mount Cameroon was the only thing I really wanted to do before leaving Africa. True there were other little trips and activities in Cameroon, Nigeria, Benin and Togo, but none excited me like the prospect of climbing West Africa’s highest mountain. Another reason it was important is because the trek was a present from my granddad. Sadly I never got the chance to meet my granddad but my mum received compensation from British Coal for the sickness that he endured after a lifetime working as a driller down the pit. Mum decided to split the [View Full Entry]

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