We are preparing to leave on Thursday, 3 March, to head to the NW of Cameroon. If you look on your map, you will see Yaoundé and then as you head up NW you will see Bafoussam and then Bamenda. From Bamenda there is a road that makes a big circle, called the “Ring Road.” We will be at the top of the Ring Road near Nkambe. Our family will be living with the Bessa people group, they speak Sari language, in the small village of Bonsobi. The Nji family will be our hosts for the 15 days we will be there. The husband in the Nji family is a teacher and the mother is a farmer, typical of most rural Cameroonian women. They farm things like plantains, coco yams, peanuts and corn. They have two small children in their family, but over 50 children live in the compound that we will live in. Woah!!
Let me share some of what awaits us, so you can better envision our surroundings, as well as know how to pray for us. Our “house” in the village is about one kilometer off the main road. The home is made of mud bricks and has a dirt floor. There is a tin roof, but no ceiling. It won’t be what we are used to, that is for sure. The toilet is a long drop latrine surrounded by a palm frond privacy fence. At present, the bathing area was just a pile of rocks, but the hosts were asked to add some sort of shelter around that. We will see when we get there. We will be drinking spring water that we collect and then filter. There is no electricity or running water, so we will do bucket baths and use bush lanterns for our light at night. A bush lantern is the name here for a small kerosene lamp.
The area of Cameroon where we will be is currently in the very dry season and there has been virtually no rain. The landscape (as in the pictures) is very brown, but nice and hilly. We will be at a higher altitude up there and have been told by other Cameroonians that we will be “cold.” I guess that is all relative, but cooler weather would be so nice.
Our days are a bit uncertain there. I will surely school the children sometime each day. The mother will apparently be up early and to the fields to work from about 8 until 4 or 5pm. I will hopefully join her some days, but will also be with our kids too. Many of the men there are hunters and the prospect of using spears for hunting excites all 3 men in our family and gets the testosterone boiling!! Bonsobi is a very hilly area and they said that we will have to go up or down large hills just to visit the neighbors.
We will covet your thoughts and prayers during these next 2 and a half weeks. We will return to Yaoundé on Monday the 21st of March. We will actually live with our family for 2 weeks with 2 days traveling each way tagged on there. Our children are all well, though we have battled Sam’s asthma quite a bit these past two weeks. This has led us to connect with a doctor here and she is excellent and we feel blessed. Hugs to you and keep in touch by email or through this blogspot.