A weekend in Maroua

Hi all, sorry for the delay in reporting back to you on the blog. Sorry as well that we're struggling to load up photos: for some reason, blogger is not accepting the upload, and I don't know if it's to do with the file size or the connection here in Cameroon.

Everything here in the hospital is going well. Sarah is well into her work in the surgical 'bloc' and I think is intending to write an update on her work there soon. I've been doing general visiting around the wards, speaking to patients, reading with them, and sometimes praying with them too: some of them however don't have French (they come from as far afield as Chad and Nigeria), which makes communication difficult!

We had a great weekend: in particular, on Saturday we went into Maroua, which is the local town: a very busy place, with the most crazy traffic in the world. We bought some essentials from the market (bananas, tea, avocados) and Sarah was able to buy a laf'ya: a shawl that needs to be worn over her shoulders in addition to the headscarf that she wears whenever she leaves the house.

On Sunday we attended the local church. It was a great service: from 08.00 to 10.30, not as long as I thought, to be honest, certainly compared to my experience in Zimbabwe! It was great fun, full of singing (we even had to lead a song ourselves for the congregation!). The service was conducted in French and translated simultaneously into Fulfude: as well as a great sermon on 2 Corinthians 3. 

It's quite hot here, but not unbearable, so we're doing OK on that front. 

OK - til next time, all best wishes, and a bientot!

And in Meskine ...

We were met at Maroua airport by one of the long-term partners at the hospital and taken to Meskine, the village/ town where the hospital has been built.

No photos to offer yet – they can come in the next post. But I’ll try to give you a sense of what it is. The hopital de Meskine was planned, set up and built in the early 1990s by a group of American (and other nationalities) Christians in order to provide health care to the area. Now, it’s pretty big, and definitely thriving – male, female, paediatric, maternity, VVF wards, a surgical theatre, a pharmacy, and an outpatients/ clinic area. It’s almost entirely staffed now by Cameroonian doctors, nurses and surgical technicians. Patients come from all around the north of Cameroon – as well as Nigeria and Chad (we’ve met lots of Chadaians already).

We’ve had a tour around and this morning, we attended medical teaching sessions and a medical ward round. I’ve been helping Sarah translate the French (everything is conducted in French or Fulfulde, the local language).

Work in the surgical ‘bloc’ starts tomorrow for Sarah – we’ll update you as soon as we can!

Arrival in Yaounde ...

Hi all: sorry for the lack of posting on the blog so far: we’ve had some problems accessing the internet.

Anyway, we’re here in Meskine and things are absolutely fine with us. I’ll try to write a couple of posts now to bring you up to date.

I mentioned in the last post that we had two days in the capital, Yaounde, before coming up here. It’s a typical African city: hot, dusty, with crazy traffic and beeping horns everywhere. I loved it!

We arrived at the airport on Saturday night with me (Tim) realising that my preparations hadn’t been as thorough as I thought, and that we were turning up in a new country without the address of where we were staying, nor any means of contacting our hosts, nor even any CFA (Central African Francs) to get us there! As we got out of the baggage reclaim area, we could see the doors out of the airport filled with, to put it kindly, a scrum of local baggage carriers, taxi drivers and who knows what else waiting to offer us some service or another. After a quick pray, we ventured into the crowd and, thankfully, found our driver, Yaya, pretty quickly.

We stayed at a small-guest house with an American couple who have lived in Cameroon for many years: they’d worked with Wycliffe Bible Translators (we have come across a number already; they seem to be active in West Africa). Here are a couple of photos from the guest house giving a glimpse of a rainy Yaounde:

We also meet an American lady who, with her husband and three children, was in the process of working out the paperwork to adopt two local children from an orphanage: it was great to get to know them. We’re hoping they all get re-united soon and meet their new brothers and sisters.

Anyway, that’s enough about that leg of the journey. On Monday we got on a “Cam Air” flight to get up to Maroua, a town in the ‘Extreme North’ region of Cameroon…

We're here safely

Hi all - just to let you know we're here safely.

The flights were all fine yesterday: Heathrow - Zurich - Douala - Yaounde: and now we're here in a guest house in Yaounde waiting for our onward flight to Maroua, the small town in the north of the country where we'll be staying. We've even managed to get hold of the elusive Cameroon currency: the Central African Franc. So all well so far.

Sorry we can't get any photos up yet: the download speed isn't quite there. But we'll post some as soon as we can. Thanks.

What we'll be doing in Cameroon ...

The purpose of our new blog is to keep you updated with news and photos once we're in Cameroon (internet connection dependent, of course!)

But here's a first post to fill you in with a little more detail about where we're going and what we'll be doing when we're out there ...

With Sarah starting a new research job in October, and with myself on my long summer holiday from college (yes, I know, it's a hard life being a student!), we realised a few months ago that we might have some time spare in August and September. So we had a look around to see what might be needed.

Thankfully, the guys at 'The Medical Centres of West Africa' (MCWA, website here), a charitable organisation based in the US, were kind enough to invite us to come to work with them: they help to run a 80-bed hospital in the Far North Province of Cameroon, West Africa, called 'l'hopital de Meskine'. Here's a map: the location of the hospital is near to the city of Maroua, right up there in the north:

The hospital serves the local village’s (approximately) 10,000 residents as well as patients who come from as far away as the neighbouring countries of Chad and Nigeria. They've been set up for many years, and have a great, multinational team of medics and surgeons. 

With one or two of the more permanent staff taking a well-earned summer break, hopefully Sarah's going to be able to help with some of the surgical and ward work: from what we hear, nighttime on-call and the high patient volumes in clinic can be quite demanding. And, having some French, hopefully I can be involved in some general dogsbody work around the hospital, as well as some of the Christian mission and outreach to the local area, which is predominantly Muslim.

Anyway, that should give you a bit of the background. If you want to see more, here's a video from a doctor who visited a few years ago: it includes some stuff not relevant to her trip to Cameroon, but it should give you an idea if you're patient enough to watch it through:

Drop me an Email via my profile above if you'd like any more information, and if not, next post (all being well) will be from Meskine!

Welcome to the Blog!

Hi - and welcome to Tim and Sarah's new blog. We'll be writing and posting photos of our trip to Meskine, Cameroon, from 20 August to the end of September. 

Why not bookmark the page here - and feel free to comment as much as you want!

Look forward to staying in touch, Tim and Sarah.