flight home from the north

Here are some photos from our flight home from Maroua last week.

Ann rode in the front on the way home.

And here are a few pictures out the window of landscapes in Cameroon's Extreme North:

We flew through a curtain of rain, in between two thunderstorms, on the way to our fuel stop in Ngaoundere.

This next surreal photo is looking down on the airstrip in Ngaoundere. That's a herd of cattle being shooed off the runway for our approaching plane:

And here are a few last ones I shot flying into Yaounde:

And landing:

Since the photos on the blog are so tiny, I might clip out some portraits of the people we met as well, just the faces, and post a few of those sometime soon.


Elsewhere in the news, besides being back from the north, we had a good meeting with Valerie at work this week and decided to go into the office every Monday, so people there know when to find us. Ann continues to work on fair trade research and article writing, and I'm working on the microfinance program database, an Excel training session (in French, ulp!), and may be doing some web design work, which is always fun. Our social life here on the SIL end of town where we live is a continuing pleasure; last night we had David and Danielle and Karen over for dinner; D&D brought gazpacho, Karen brought smoothie fixins', Ann made a salad and I brewed coffee and did dishes and talked a lot. We talked about books and food and the boat D&D lived on for a year back in the states and friends and things we love and hate about Cameroon for hours and hours, blissfully ignorant of the time in a way we never seem to be back home.