First I would like to thank everyone for their messages and birthday wishes. They were very nice and I will respond eventually.
I realize how terrible I have been about posting blogs and I could blame it on many reasons but its really that I’m just lazy, and when I do write I constantly rewrite myself. But this blog was written about a week ago and then my post mate accidentally deleted it. C’est la vie. So now I’ll have to rewrite myself from memory. While this experience has been very challenging for all the adjusting and work that has taken, it is often times just as challenging for the amount of boredom one experiences. I never work an eight hour day and I’m lucky if there is enough work for three or four hours during the day. I hoping to make more friends to combat this problem but for right now I spend a lot of time in my house or wandering around the town. And there is only so much I can read and listen to the BBC. I’ve read eleven books so far since coming to post, and these are not small books either. I have a tv but it has not had anything on it for a least a month now. We went about a month straight in February and March without electricity, and then the cable guy has just not come to fix my cable yet. Even though i bug him daily. But even if I had tv I would just watch the French news and French sports. But I also get to go the beach every once in a while and see friends so that is not too bad.
In March I got to make a trip to the beach resort town here in Cameroon called Kribi. This was for IST or for those of you who do not speak government acronyms In Service Training. This is the time all us PCV (Peace Corps volunteers, i could go forever with the acronyms) get together to talk about the first three months of service and are given resources for the rest of our service. A good idea in its own right but an even better idea having it at the beach. Kribi is pretty much what you think of when you think of a tropical beach location, golden sand, palm trees, random rock outcroppings and even a waterfall. But with anything picturesque in Cameroon there is always one thing there to spoil it. In this case it is the giant oil tanker/ refinery just offshore that processes the oil that comes from the Chad pipeline. We got to spend a week there and it happened to overlap St. Patricks day and my Birthday so the whole week became a continuous party.
Another thing that happened that I haven’t written about yet was the civil unrest here in Cameroon. It started in the main industrial city as a strike by the taxi drivers over the price of gas. It soon spread to other large cities and became political as well as economic. The President Paul Biyahas been in power for over twenty five years now. According to the Constitution he is not supposed to be able to run again in the next election of 2011. But he announced that so many people want him to run again, that he is looking at changing the constitution. So the strikes and civil unrest went on for a few days, with roads blocked, some government building burned, and a bunch of people arrested. But then the weekend hit and people stopped because they just couldn’t afford it anymore. People have to eat.
Out of this the President lowered the price of gas from 600 CFA/litre to 594 CFA/ litre. The exchange rate right now is about 430 CFA to 1$ for those that want to figure it out. But for a village like mine where the gas is imported from the big cities, the price stayed the same at 650 per litre. Also the President promised to lower the price of other basic goods like rice, soap, beer, and fish. But that was supposed to kick in April 1st, hasn’t happened yet and no one seems to think it will. He also promised to raise the salaries of the state employees which will really not go down well if he doesn’t. As far as the politics it seems that Biya was trying to calm the situation down and placate some people before pushing through the constitution later. He wants two more seven year terms in office because people say if he leaves office he is afraid he will be killed or he will be tried for crimes against the country.
In turns out just a few days ago in a very quiet and anti-climactic fassion the constitution was changed. In a vote of something like 156-5 his cronies ruled the day. Nothing happened, I didn’t even hear about it till a day later. Paul Biya when back to his chateau in France and life continued here. We will see if there are any protests here soon.
