Day 6/7
March 7th and 8th
Our first weekend at the hospital was pretty quiet. Nick had no duties and the school was closed so we were left to our own devices. We started off with breakfast at 8 a.m. then met Christine, the Canadian anesthesiologist, and she took us to our first market. There is always market, but Saturday is the big day. She is well known by the locals so it was much easier for us to buy things (they tend to up the price based on the color of your skin.) We bought some juice and a soda, a papaya and some pears, which we later found out were avocados! She bought a little tool for her garden and many food supplies as she has her own cook. After market we came back to the room and uploaded some pictures we snapped at market and had plans to hike, but the weather had its own agenda. We got our first experience with the rains here. There was crazy thunder and a little lightening and it rained late into the night with heavy downpours. We sat on our covered porch and caught up on some reading. We had dinner with the others and then retired to our room for the evening. We read some more, played computer games and watched 24.

On Sunday we had plans to go to Bamenda with all the other volunteers to see the Women’s Day Celebration, but the larger group backed out because they feared more rain and you definitely don’t want to be in one of these cabs on wet roads. Ann, the pediatrics med student, and us were going to go hiking until we decided to just go to the city the 3 of us. We decided to brave the INSANE taxis here and headed out to the gate to catch one. We found one after a little while and paid the way. Here there is no such thing as a limit to passengers, the more the better. We paid extra just so we could sit alone in the backseat. But in a small Toyota car, they fit four ppl. in the front seat. One got in to the left of the driver and he just reached over her and drove, not very comforting to say the least! It took us one change over and about an hour to make it into the city (30 miles). Many things were closed because the country is so religious and it’s Sunday, but it was sort of a festival because of this Women’s Day Celebration. All we saw in the few hours we were there was the parade. They all had special material made especially for this day that had the year and different words like children, farming, international peace, etc. that the dresses were made out of. Very colorful and neat to see, a bit boring, we never saw much of a celebration, but we might have left too early. The way home was easy, we found a cabbie that would take us the whole way back to Mbingo. This time we also paid extra, only to have the 3 passengers (one with the driver on her lap this time! talk bad about white people) but we made it home safe, our only concern. Lunch was ready when we returned and the thunder started back up.