road trip!

We're off with RELUFA coworker Christi and two others on a four-day road trip early tomorrow morning, to the towns of Douala, Njombe and Bafoussam. Ann and Christi are doing research related to fair trade (a term that refers to programs that ensure a healthy chunk of the revenues get back to the producers), and I'm coming along for the ride, and taking pictures for any articles Ann will write about this. We'll be visiting some fruit dryers associated with an NGO that is a RELUFA member. We want to get better acquainted with the dryers and their work, to see their facilities and how they run their business. We'll be back in Yaounde on Saturday. No bus this time after all; we'll be taking Christi's car, and we hired Isaac, who is married to Julia who works at our house, to be the driver. I'd love to drive myself, but I never bothered to get an international license for this trip. We're glad we could throw Isaac some work, and it will be great to have another anglophone along to talk (fluently) with. He's a solid, friendly guy, so maybe this could lead to more work for him too.

We had Isaac Julia and some of their family over a couple of weeks ago, and their nephew Paul announced his engagement at our place after dinner! We got some nice pictures of that, so I'll get few of those posted sooner or later. Paul's fiancee is off to Dallas to live with her folks and go to school, and they decided to get engaged before she left.

Reading list for the trip: Wind, Sand and Stars, by Saint-Exupery (Ann); The Gulag Archipelago, by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (Chris); Ragtime, by E. L. Doctorow (Chris). Packing list: clothing, bug repellent, assorted medicines, aforementioned books, flashlights, water bottles, notebooks,
pens, nifty bandannas stuffed with water-retaining chemicals to wrap around your neck and stay cool, camera, hats, sunglasses, towels. We forgot the mosquito net this time; we'll have to lard up with repellent before we go to bed at night.