I'm here!!! I finally made it to my new home in Edea! I moved in on Wednesday night with the help of Carolyn. Its a decent sized house in the middle of a crowded neighborhood. Lets just say that when I leave the house there are about five families totalling about 30 people who know. The upside of that is that once I get to know them, they will be my best source of security. The house itself is up a little slippery rock hill and has three bedrooms (one of which is quite dark and small and will probably only be used for storage). There is also a large living room and a back deck from which you can see the Sanaga river. In addition, there is a separate outdoor kitchen totally detached from the house. In fact its closer to my neighbor's house than mine. I have decided, as did the previous tenants, that I will be using my cookstove inside the main living room area instead of going out to the dank kitchen alone to cook.

Right now I'm in Edea's brand new internet café! It opened about two weeks before I got here! Lucky for me!!

On Tuesday last week, I helped Carolyn move into her house in Akonalinga. She didn't have power or water, so we spent the evening drawing water from her landlords well and buying candles. Its amazing what you can live without if you have to. Her house is decent and actually within the gated compound of her landlord, who is a very nice woman.

Before I forget, here's my new address that should take about 2 weeks less time to reach me, on average:
Peter Bine
CPC-FIMAC
B.P. 508
Edea, Cameroon

You've got to love how easy the addresses are here. Mail is never delivered to a place of residence or business, but only to post office boxes. Mostly that's because there are rarely street names and never street numbers!

The city of Edea seems pretty nice, and I am getting more and more comfortable here each passing day. People are already starting to get to know me and recognize me. As soon as I find someone to wash my clothes and clean the floors all will be good (by the way, that's normal and expected around here- some of the women neighbors seem surprised that I haven't starved to death yet since I don't have a woman living with me!)

I went to work for the first time this morning. The Gerant (manager) told me to go home at lunch time since it was raining and it wasn't likely that there would be any business for the rest of the day. I took the bank charter with me to read tonight! Fun, huh?

I have resumed my intensive reading program, which is being helped by the load of books left behind by the previous inhabitants, Pam and Patrick. I just finished the third Harry Potter book, and have delved into something a bit deeper- "Shame" by Salman Rushdie (interesting so far...). If nothing else, I will come out of this whole experience a better read person, which is something I have sorely lacked in the past.