back from the far north

Here's a first few pictures from our trip to the far north of Cameroon. We flew on SIL's airplane, piloted by our friend Rob. We left Yaounde on Monday and flew up north to the city of Maroua, with a stop for fuel on the way, and then flew home again on Wednesday.

The Extreme North Province, as it's know, is a completely different part of the country from where we've been so far, in the region of Africa called the Sahel, a hot, dry area that lies south of the Sahara desert and stretches across several countries. This part of Cameroon suffers poor harvest, droughts, and people often simply run out of food at certain lean times of the year.

Our RELUFA network has a food sovereignty program to help villagers set up communal granaries in this part of Cameroon. The purpose of our trip was to visit some of the villages where the granaries are located with Christi, and with Lionel from the Presbyterian Church USA's Joining Hands program, who was here visiting Cameroon for a week.

Here's the plane, just leaving the hangar. We got there about 545am, so this picture is at maybe 615.

Christi, Lionel and Ann. We work with Christi on a regular basis; she is the Joining Hands liaison to RELUFA and, along with her husband Jeff, the one who offered us volunteer work in Cameroon. In fact, we're officially Presbyterian Church USA volunteers. Jeff works with Presbyterian churches in Cameroon and other central African countries, and he and I are collaborating on a French training session for Microsoft Excel at the moment. Christi and Jeff live in Yaounde with their two high-school age kids, and we typically see them several times a week. Lionel is Christi's boss. He's lived in a few different African countries, lives in the US now, and is originally from Haiti. He's been doing development-related church work a long time, and it was a real pleasure to get to meet him and talk with him a bit about development projects here and elsewhere.

Me in the front seat. I don't have a lot of small-plane experience, and I loved it. I kept thinking of the Millenium Falcon in Star Wars. Lionel and I agreed that this was the next-best thing to motorcycling.

Rob, who works for SIL as a pilot, and is flying the plane.

Shot this out the window as we were leaving Yaounde on a clear, beautiful Monday morning.

Another shot from the plane. Cameroon's terrain is varied; we're still in the green central part of the country here, headed north into the mountains.

Partway to Maroua, stopping for fuel. We lingered about half an hour refueling from a drum some local missionaries trucked to the airstrip. A couple of friendly Cameroonian guys in soldier uniforms showed up and I think Rob checked in with them briefly. Us passengers stretched our legs. People kept trickling in from the surrounding bush, and we had a crowd of maybe 10 scattered along the sides of the runway by the time we taxied to the end, turned around, and took off for Maroua.

More pictures coming soon, including the villages and countryside up north.