As time goes by

Waiting patiently - is that a skill we have to learn? If so, Cameroonian people are experts. I'm certainly much better at this than I was a few weeks ago. Waiting to download emails in the Internet cafe, or to upload photos for the blog, I wish I'd brought my knitting!

Shopkeepers wait for customers, sitting patiently. They don't try to "look busy" as I was told to do when working as a sales assistant for a Saturday job. No, they just do what they need to do, then wait. If someone comes by, they get up to serve you, eagerly. If they don't have what you need, they run to fetch it from another trader. Then they sit down again to wait.

Standing at the roadside, waiting for taxis, all you can do is stand. No chance to read a book, you have to keep a lookout and whenever a likely prospect comes near, you call out to them. If they don't accept your business, you just wait some more. At the motor parks, you may get in a taxi right away, but then you still have to wait for it to fill up. No point in being impatient - it won't get you anywhere any sooner.

Meetings never start on time. We plan to start at 9am, and the VSO volunteers are ready. One councillor is always on time; he sits. He might close his eyes for a while. He talks to you if you want, or just sits while waiting. Someone else comes, then goes outside again. When enough people have been spotted, we go to round them up, or phone them. The meeting usually starts around 10.

One meeting started 3 hours late - the volunteers were all on time, but the one paid staff member didn't turn up till 12, without letting us know. We just get on with discussing what we can. I arrived once to find a farming lady stretched out on a bench in the Community Education Action Centre. She had come for a meeting but the Director wasn't there, so she just lay down to sleep!

Workshops always start late. We are a bit tense, organising a workshop for councillors and not knowing how many people will come. The workshop is scheduled with registration at 8 am in the hope that sufficient people will arrive to start at 9. By 8:30 I am trying to find the rest of the committee, to brief them on the group work. By 9:50, half have arrived, and we start gathering them in from chatting outside, so we can start an hour late. It's a bit like sheepdog trials, round them up to bring them in. We even ring a brass bell! A few more people drift in during the morning.

One problem with starting late is that lunch is at least an hour late. It's hard to get people back to work after a break, so they prefer to work through, even if lunch is not till 3pm. Breaks are tricky; allowing even 5 minutes for a breather means that not everyone comes back. Do we wait for them? No, carry on regardless. They may have gone to make phone calls, or to another meeting, or to a local bar ...

Waiting for food is getting easier now. I'm used to having hunger pangs through the day, and being glad of a few plantain chips or an apple to keep me going. When we go to a restaurant we can expect a long wait, easily an hour or more between ordering and getting anything to eat. Maybe they've had to go buy the ingredients at market, or butcher an animal, or light a wood fire under the grill. And getting the bill, that's a whole other matter. Sorting it out between a group of us, getting the waiter to tot it up again and take off those extra items nobody owns up to having, and then looking for change!

Well, guess I'll have to write another blog about money.