Week 1 Summary

It has been a busy and successful week for us.  We have poured all of our efforts into getting the container that we shipped from the United States on 2 April out of the port of Douala.

The container arrived on last Saturday the 16th. That means it took 75 days to travel from Door to Port, and it is still not yet out of the port itself.  Sending this container has been an arduous and expensive process.  We are hoping that we will be able to remove the goods first thing Tuesday morning.

We have made all sorts of connections here in Douala, so there have been many meetings with people at banks, the port, customs, and even the U.S. Consulate.  On top of all of the meetings there is a lot of running around preparing things for the container's release. 

Things are much different here than in the West.  There are no one stop shops for anything.  If you want to have a document notarized, you must go to two places instead of one.  If you want to retrieve the bill of lading for your container, you have to visit several places first before making the request at the shipping office.  To put it more plainly, it is a chaotic sort of work that is interesting and exciting in the short term, but as a livelihood, it must be difficult.

Yesterday we spent the entire day in the port while we observed the customs inspection of our container.  Things went well, and we made the best case we could for our goods, but we will not know how they will value it for taxation until Monday.  Even though we are a certified NGO in Cameroon we are still subject to paying some taxes.  That is a difficult thing to grasp for an American, but there has been a lot of abuse of non-profit status here, so it is very difficult to receive full exoneration from taxes right  away.  Once we receive word back about the value, we will pay the taxes and then will work feverishly to remove the container from the port so that we can travel to our home base in Kumbo. 

We now know everything to expect in the ports.  The good stuff, the shady stuff, and WHATEVER YOU DO, do not get caught taking pictures!  We nearly lost a camera yesterday when some guards spotted Jeff snapping pictures of the ships in the port!  I really wish we could have filmed the argument that ensued.  Our driver and Austin were out of the car yelling and screaming back and forth with several guards for several minutes.  It was not until we made an emergency call to the U.S Embassy that the guards agreed to allow us to delete the pictures from the camera rather than seize it.  We were happy with that result, and also with the fact that they did not see my camera, so we still had the photos and videos that I had taken.  We all had a good laugh about that.

Douala is a crazy town of nearly 6.5 million people.  They are mostly French speaking, and finding a stranger that is an anglophone is rare.  We have 4 people who are traveling with us that make sure that we are getting on fine.  Two of them live in Douala as Customs Clearing Officers, so they help us through the ports  their names are Austin and Derrick.  One of them is a man named Eric.  I know Eric from our last visit.  He is a very nice and helpful person.  He is the finance officer of the HIC.  Our other host is our driver who is also well connected in Douala.  His name is Shey-Don.  Shey is a title of honor given to certain people in Cameroon.  Shey-Don took us on a scouting trip of the marketplaces and specialty stores in different parts of the city.  He knew how to find everything we were searching for.

Everything else is going well.  Finding food to eat is proving difficult.  Eating meat here is not a good idea as there are all sorts of things that you can catch from it.  That is an easy pill to swallow for us.  Jeff and I are both vegetarian, but it is difficult to find places that prepare vegetables in a manner that we find appetizing.  So for the most part we have been cutting up fresh pineapple in our room, eating mandarin oranges, cookies, granola, and the staple has been one of three sandwiches that we make in the room:

1. Avocado, with cheese and cream cheese
2. Nutella and strawberry jelly
3. Jelly and butter.

We also have a strong desire for variety, so you can take any of the above ingredients and mix them together, and one of us has made a sandwich out of them.  Jeff was even so bold as to have an avocado jelly sandwich with cookies on it!  HA!

We did find a good place to get pizza the other night, and I am hoping to return there tonight.  It is very nice to eat hot food every once in a while.  That pizza was the first hot thing that we had taken since the plane ride to Morocco.

So that is the scoop from the first 5 days of our journey.  We are going to take a day tomorrow to get caught up on rest, laundry, and other personal matters.  I think I will even cut my hair.  That what Sundays are for!