In the city

Street life - yellow taxis hooting, elegantly dressed ladies picking their way along the hole-ridden roadside, stalls selling peanuts and phone cards, a photocopier in the middle of a rubble-strewn building site ... with people queuing up to use it. Dusty, dirty, noisy, fascinating.

We've been lucky to have enough water at the hotel. Yaounde is short of water, and some districts have no water for one day a week. People have to fill containers first thing in the morning, then none till next day. But everyone is clean, with clean clothes and polished shoes. They say it's better to be late than not well dressed!

Last night we had our first real power cut, in the middle of dinner out in a small grill place. Two of us had our head torches (good on us Welsh women!) and thank goodness, with no street lights to see our way around the potholes. Don't look down them, you don't want to know! The storm took out the hotel air conditioning, but left the satellite TV intact to see the Cameroon football team's international against Italy. Those bars with their own generators were doing extra well last night!

Then today, our first tropical downpour. We abandoned our hotel terrace when the rain came through holes in the canopy - and watched the canopy take off a few minutes later! Should I bother to buy an umbrella? With the rainy season about to start, this was a good taster session - raindrops is too gentle a word for this stuff. The street quickly emptied as everyone took what shelter they could find. Now, it's cooler. We don't really have dusk here, just the rush hour traffic and then it's dark. I keep missing it, just have a quick shower and - oh, it's night. I'm betting that everyone has their torch tonight!

A picture of you

Cameroon is so rich in natural resources, it's hard to understand why the country is so poor. Our in-country training here in the capital, Yaounde, is just a first step at finding out. I certainly don't expect to get all the answers in the 8 weeks that I'm here.

In VSO UK training they talk about a foreign culture as being like an iceberg. We volunteers are like seagulls landing on the iceberg for a short stay. How do we find out what's happening beneath the surface? Find some friendly penguins and ask them!

We've met friendly VSO staff and volunteers, each willing to share a bit of the puzzle. We're doing a bit of shopping, going out for meals, using our varied levels of French to talk to local people.

A visit to Mont Febe monastery and museum gave us fine views over the hazy city, spreading over its hills. The museum gave us a glimpse of a rich ancient culture, with over 230 ethnic groups and languages. Folk here smile a lot, and we could see that in the wood and clay figurines from older times.

People feel a strong loyalty to their kith and kin, their community, in ways we seem to have lost in our world. These cultural differences are going to be the toughest things to learn, and to accept that things are not better or worse, just different. As an example, a cultured, western-educated, middle-aged professional told us that when he goes back to the village, he doesn't speak his opinion until his uncle has spoken, and then he does not contradict his uncle in front of other people. He has to find another way around it. Tact, discretion, empathy - a lot to learn here.
I'm looking forward to seeing the land when I travel to the north west province on Saturday. Cameroon has the whole of Africa in one place, (about twice the size of the UK I think). Three volunteers are going up to the Far North, a desert region bordering Chad with temperatures in the 40s. Ten of us (including the 5 Welsh volunteers) are going to the north west, a hilly region of grasslands, arable crops, forests.

Our trainers tell us there is an abundance of food in Cameroon, with a wide variety, but 40% of the people go hungry. Seven out of about 20 million population live in poverty. What can we do to help?

Welcome to my world

Storms in France on Sunday led to early morning flight cancellations, but being in a group with other volunteers made the delays much easier to bear, and gave us plenty of time to start getting to know each other. Air France's "involuntary reroute" took us via Casablanca and we flew over the Sahara in the dark - so much dark, no light pollution here!
Arriving in Yaounde past midnight, our welcome by the local staff was warm and immensely helpful, easing us through customs formalities and delivering all 12 of us safely to a hotel. Hot and humid, an impression of smoke in the air, ramshackle industrial buildings on the road from the airport, reminded me of Greece.
Amazed to find an ensuite bathroom with W.C., fridge, TV, aircon and a fleecy blanket! It's not luxury but better than I expected of a volunteer organisation. Another woman mentioned that her room door seemed to have been jemmied at some time - yes, so has mine. I put the chain on the door, did my best to fasten the windows shut and hoped nobody would climb on to my balcony.

Disturbed dreams of mosquitoes woke me early, and from my window I watched groups of smartly uniformed children walking to school. Adults stopping at a street stall, some women in traditional brightly patterned frocks, a man carrying a large bundle on his head, people shouting at a car - what was that all about?
On the shady side of the hotel, I will soon find out just how hot it is out there today!