This is so exciting ! I can’t believe I’m writing this on our new computer ! Its hard for me to explain what a huge deal this is. Maybe if I put it in dollars... The entire budget for the entire year for the cooperative is about $5000. The sole employee makes about $70 per month, and rent and electricity is donated by the State. The single largest expense each year is Provisions for Bad Debts which is budgeted at around $800. This computer with printer and scanner- a last minute decision- and UPS to guard against frequent brown/black-outs cost about $1200- a quarter of the entire year’s budget! Needless to say we had to get special permission to buy it. The President, being a palm oil plantation owner and not the least bit technically inclined pushed the Board of Directors to decide that the purchase of a computer for the cooperative was indeed a decision for the entire membership. A special meeting was convened on a Saturday two weeks ago and the plan was presented. I had done, with some help of the manager, a cost-benefit analysis to show that the computer would pay for itself in less than one year. They approved it and finally after some additional research and talking to my friend, Gabriel who runs the largest supermarket/general commerce store in town, the President and I went to Douala on Tuesday morning to close the deal. We took the bus up and met with our regional auditor, Mr. Wifoke, who accompanied us. We took his pickup, found the store I had been to almost a month beforehand when doing research, and went upstairs to discuss the deal in private with the owner. Mr. Khodor is a fairly young Lebanese muslim- I’m not sure why, but there’s a sizeable lebanese population in Douala- and was very generous in giving our small cooperative a very good price, and significant reductions from the list prices. As a thank you gift for coming with us- and explaining to the owner the finer points of micro-credit banking in Cameroon, we bought him a new mouse with scroll- something he’s been wanting. To celebrate our purchase, and the fact that the computer was going to be delivered the next day to our door for free!, we went across the street where the President had chinese food for the first time- curry shrimp and ginger beef- yum!

I’ve spent the last couple of days developing some templates in Word and Excel as well as beginning the development of the database I designed to run the cooperative. My favorite incident thus far was yesterday when I put together a schedule of payments for credits of varying lengths and interest rates with equal payments each month. This is something that he calculates anew for each customer, and has been known to make minor mistakes and takes him about ten minutes. Now, we’re down to 30 seconds. He stared at it for a long time and made me explain the formulas over and over. He’s happy now, and has already begun to fully embrace the computer’s capabilities.

Other great news, I found a new house and will hopefully be moving in the next couple of weeks- I will likely be paying for two houses for the month of November, but it’ll be worth it. A little background, and Mom, please don’t worry... I’ve been having a bunch of little problems in and around my house. First of all, the house is simply too big for one person. Its a big white house on a hill and overlooks the surrounding, much smaller houses containing large families. Others seem to feel the same way at times. I have been asked for money several times by different neighbors in a “I’m hungry” kind-of-way. Additionally, I still have not gotten used to the noise and routinely wake up at 5:30am thinking that the neighbor unlocking his door is actually my door- his door and mine are about equidistant from my bed. Also, I had two incidences where one or more of the mischevious teens tried to open my lock in the middle of the night, but failed- when I’m inside, each door has a lock and at least two bolts, so its very hard to get in. And lastly, someone somehow got into my room and took my portable CD player- I’m very sad about that one. I’ve deduced that it must have been the guy who came to fix my door after the lock was broken the first time, but its not to my benefit to accuse him since he’s a member of the cooperative and generally looked upon as an honest, hard-working man in the community. The only other choice is my housekeeper, who, when I told her about it, became very upset that I would even consider that it was her, and said it would be stupid for her to take something so soon after starting work. She does really good work, so I reluctantly believe her and told her that if anything else goes missing, she’s history.

Anyway, the new house is within the grounds of the Aluminum factory in town where a number of French families live currently. The house has a yard and is air-conditioned! There is also a guard 24 hours a day and only lets in employees and approved visitors. All of this for the same price I’m paying now. The only catch is that in two weeks, I will begin teaching english after work for four hours a week to little kids at the Alucam-sponsored school. I figure that should put a fun mix into my work, so I agreed.

As a follow-up to the story about the guy who cornered me in the bar demanding a loan... the next week, he came in and the manager and I went out to see his house. It seems that he needed money for aluminum sheeting for the roof of his “retirement house” in a far quartier of Edea. When we got back, we looked at his situation and, after some haggling back and forth, he got his loan of a little over $1000. Needless to say he was frustrated but in the end pleased with the result.

Other things have happened- connecting with a world-studies teacher in Charlotte through the Peace Corps World-Wise Schools program, a trip to Cameroon’s Ocktoberfest festivities complete with brautwurst, saurkraut and a German band, a night out at a Douala nightclub with Gabriel, and the return of Hortense, but this is already quite lengthy. I’ll just finish with a quick book report. I finished James Clavell’s “Tai-Pan” and although the written-in accents of British and Portuguese sailors was a bit tough at first, the story was fast-paced and interesting, and I enjoyed the historical aspect of the creation of Hong Kong as a British trading outpost. Recommended. I also finished William Goldman’s “The Princess Bride”. Yes, its THAT Princess Bride. The book was written ten years before the movie, so I figured it should be good, and it was. It was at least as funny as the movie, and there were passages which much better explained some of the events in the movie that I have always thought were a bit incongruous. A very quick and enjoyable read. Two-thumbs up. Next up: “Picture of Dorian Grey” by Oscar Wilde.

A mail update: since moving and changing mailing addresses, regular airmail takes only about 9 days to get to me with packages only slightly slower. I LOVE packages (recent faves included mac&cheese, m&ms and US Magazine!), but if you send one, please seal it very well. Two packages I received recently had been “accidentally” opened, although I think all the contents made it more or less intact.

Finally, since I will now be prewriting the blog updates, I want to start a series of observations/thoughts on various topics. So, if you’d like to send suggestions, things you’d like to know about here, send them to: pbine@yahoo.com