The Ruins Of Palmyra

A Syriaously Awesome Eid Adventure (Part 1)

This past week marked the end of Ramadan, and consequently the celebration of Eid Al-Fitr, the three day holiday that marked the end to the month of fasting. For us this meant that we had the entire week off from classes and thus a prime opportunity to travel around and see a bit more of the Middle East. Most of the other students were making expensive plans to fly to Turkey over the break, but myself and two other budget minded explorers (Alex L and Alex A) decided to take our chances trying to get into Syria, which, if managed would provide a much less costly adventure for our week, as well as more crucial practice speaking (and negotiating) in Arabic. We knew that is was difficult for Americans to obtain Syrian Visas, in fact our guidebook dismissed the idea of getting one at the border, saying it was only possible in Washington (and for $130), but we had heard reports that for those willing to put in the time (over 6 hours for most people) it could be done, and for a fraction of the price getting one Stateside. So we resolved to give it our best shot, knowing if we succeeded we would have the adventure of a lifetime, and what an adventure it was…

We left straight after class Thursday afternoon, heading for Abdali bus station where supposedly service taxis to Damascus left regularly. Because of our visa situation we knew we wouldn’t be able to take a bus because it wouldn’t wait for our “situation” to be worked out so we had to negotiate for a car on the side of the road to bring us to the border, where after (insha allah) getting our visa we would have to find other transportation to Damascus. The man who drove us attempted to hand us off to some taxi driver friends of his close to the border, but we insisted he bring us as far as he could, which according to him was a police checkpoint a few miles away. Here we discovered that we had not quite made it to the border and needed a taxi to drive us the few miles to the Jordanian exit visa station, as we were not allowed to go by foot. Thankfully there was a friendly young Syrian cab driver nearby who agreed to drive us through for a fair price and as we crawled through the traffic and army out posts attempting to discuss Barak Obama’s relationship with Bashar Al Assad in our broken Arabic we knew we were in for quite an experience. After getting our exit visas we proceeded to the Syrian Visa building, a chaotic hall filled with shouting angry people and even less happy men in uniform behind the many windows. After queuing in the small line for foreign visitors we finally were able to hand our passports to the stressed man behind the counter, and in our most pleasant of voices offered him some of our bread as we knew it was close to Iftar and he would be very hungry. His response: American? Sit. You will wait. 2, 3, maybe 5 hours, maybe tomorrow! And with that we took our seats and began the waiting game. Approximately 5 and a half hours later a fax came from Damascus with the green light for us and after paying our $16 and with a hearty Shukran! we made our way out onto the road where a fleet of buses and cars were in a standstill waiting for their passengers to get permission to cross. At each bus we asked at we were turned down, given the signal for full with the fingers interlocked of both hands, feeling discouraged we were finally directed to a large dirty blue bus that had already made it across and was parked on the side, and whose drivers agreed to take us to Damascus for 300 Syrian Pounds (about 6 USD) Getting on we realized that the bus not only didn’t have any seats available, but there were about 10 other people sitting in the isle who also had no seat, leaving us room only to stand on top of our bags for the duration of the journey. Finally getting under way we stopped again after 10 minutes, ostensibly to stock up on snacks at a store roadside. Having had only bread and peanut butter all day we happily grabbed some chips and soda, only to look out to see the bus rolling away, leaving us with no alternative but to run after it and jump in through the open door, much to the amusement of the many passengers who witnessed this, mainly because the bus stopped a few hundred meters on to let on the remainder of the people who were getting food. Another hour of standing passed before the lights went out and the bus rolled to a silent stop along the side of the road, owing to the fact, we were to be calmly told, it had run out of gas. Another hour passed before a delivery of gas was made, and another after that as attempts were made to start back up the failing engine. Finally roaring to life we resumed our cramped crusade into Al Sham (Damascus) and a few hours later were dropped off along some random street, just in time for the Suhoor call to prayer at 4:30 AM. This was followed by a few hours spent walking before we relented and took a taxi to the city center, after which more time was spent fruitlessly searching for the hostels we listed in out travel guide. Finally finding a few of them (and waking up the owners) we were told they were either full or we would have to pay an extra night to arrive before noon, so we made our way back to a nearby park and napped for several hours on benches as the sun rose around ancient, crumbling, Damascus, giving us our first real look at the oldest continually inhabited city on earth. Around 9 AM we arose and found a hostel that had a room we could occupy immediately and as fast as we could climb the stairs and remove our shoes we were asleep, just as the rest of the city woke up around us. Around 4 that afternoon we awoke and decided to get some food and explore the city a bit, so we navigated through the hustle and bustle, passing the park we had taken refuge in earlier and noticing it was full of others resting and playing at this point, ducking through the thick canopy of hanging shoes at outdoor stalls and past the many sweet shops selling all number of syrupy nutty goodies in anticipation of the Eid until we reached the grand entrance to the Souq Al Hamidyya, a long enclosed network of streets bustling with families and foreigners, glittering with bright fabrics and numerous jewelry stores, ending in the Archway of a Roman ruin that framed one side of the grand Umayyad Mosque, one of the most spectacular and historic in the Islamic world. The Old City of Damascus was enigmatic, vibrant, and rife with more twists, turns and hidden gems than we could hope to explore in the few days we would be there. Needless to say we got lost a lot.

The next day we spent the majority of the morning trying the find the US embassy in New City Damascus, which, although less compact and warren like, proven no less confusing and we wandered park to park, fountain to fountain until we finally spotted to high security walls topped by rolls of barbed wire behind which the Red White and Blue was just barely visible. After knocking on the unmarked entrance door we were greeted by a man who informed us the Embassy was closed for the Eid and we should come back next week. So much for that. Later that evening we enjoyed dinner in a courtyard restaurant buried between the streets of Old City, followed by an attempt to explore the Christian Quarter ending in tea and hummus on a café rooftop overlooking the elaborate Minarets of the Umayyad Mosque.

The following morning we hiked to the Pullman Bus station where Al-Kadmous bus company had been recommended to us by a British couple we had met at the hostel. This “luxury” bus service put us on an old Pullman bus to the ancient ruins of Palmyra for a mere $3 and we dozed for the 3 hour drive straight out into the desert. Arriving in Palmyra the next thing we noticed after the spectacular Roman ruins rising magnificently out of the desert was the great number of children in all parts of the modern town next to the ruins, hundreds of young girls and boys running up and down the streets shouting Hello! On closer inspection we discovered that these children were also armed to the teeth, each one with a plastic pellet gun in imitation of any range of real weapons from pistols to rifles and machine guns. For the most part these mini soldiers and gangsters fought turf battles against each other, but occasionally they would train their fire on the tourists, leading us to seek shelter quickly inside a nearby falafel shop. After dropping off our things at our hostel, we spent the evening exploring the ancient ruined city, climbing over the walls of the Temple of Bel (it being closed by the time we arrived) and talking our way into the remarkably well preserved Theater free of charge due to our surprising Arabic abilities. Feeling small and insignificant among all this eroded grandeur, and with miles of columns, temples and tombs still to explore, we resolved to wake up before dawn the next morning to experience the true glory of these monuments as they glowed pink in the rising sun. Before heading back to the modern town we found a passageway up into tower ruin that over looked the grand colonnade, and as we gazed out over the spectacle in the setting sun we imagined what these ruins must have looked like when they were a new city, at its height a truly impressive display of human art and achievement. Brought back from these imaginings to the present by drops of rain we noticed an approaching storm and decided to ride it out in the ancient monument which must have weathered a thousand similar events. As the rain grew harder the wind began to blow the sand in a stinging swirl and we were forced to don our sunglasses for protection and to hunker back into the staircase of the tower. As the rain lessened we resolved to make our way through the ruins as the light was rapidly fading and with the wind at our backs and dogs howling in the distance we picked our way past the columns and walls to where our bed waited our imminent rest in anticipation of our early rise.

A little run down of learning projects (skip if you just want the high flying action of other posts ;)

We embarked on and completed a number of learning projects during our deployment, the majority of which were geared toward introducing or increasing the knowledge of specific programs or skills and they were set up so that each learning project built on the skills gained from the previous lesson as well as always leaving room for the students own creative voice to be heard. The learning projects that we began with differed according to the age level of the class, for the younger classes we started with basic lessons on using the keyboard, mouse, and other features of the XO. For Holiday classes 5 and 6 the students were asked to practice writing sentences in Write about their class, taking care to use proper punctuation and spelling. For Holiday classes 3 and 4 the lessons began as basic as moving the mouse pointer in a circle around the home screen and then typing the letters of the alphabet in upper and lower case in Write. These classes gradually moved toward exploring other activities such as Record and Paint, and here they started with simply drawing a flower or a house, or taking a picture of themselves and moved on to changing the colors of their painted objects and importing pictures into Write so that they could be described. The majority of learning projects occurred within our morning XO specific classes where we taught the 100 students who had signed up to be a part of our summer program. These classes were divided into two age groups, 7-10 and 11-13. I will describe what learning projects we progressed through in the older class as this class moved into completing learning projects 1st and generally the younger class followed with similar learning projects, just at a slower pace. One of the first projects asked the students to come up with their own superhero that would possess a certain superpower they would like to have themselves. The students first drew their superhero in Paint and then imported the image into Write where they wrote the background history about their superhero's life and how he or she gained their superpowers. Day 2 of this learning project had the students picking a heading in the offline Wikipedia that would most likely encompass the superpowers they had written about. They then skimmed the articles for a suitable definition and copy and pasted this from Wikipedia into their Superhero Profile under a section called "Facts".This was meant to show the connection between the fantastic powers they came up with and the foundation these powers had in science and nature as well as give them the skills of copy and pasting between different programs. A few following learning projects involved taking a picture of themselves, pasting it into Paint, making it the center of the page and them using various tools to draw lines out from their pictures to create a family tree where they used the text tool to type the names of their different family members in relation to each other on the tree. They were then encouraged to decorate their diagrams like real trees by adding color and leaves around the names they had typed. Another project involved the creation of a Memorize game that compared words and phrases in the Pidgin dialect the majority of the students spoke amongst themselves and at home to phrases in standard English that they were required to speak in school. This was meant to demonstrate the potential of Memorize and demonstrate similarities in phrasing, but also to delineate a clear demarcation between the two (somewhat) similar languages that acknowledged an appropriate context for each. One of the next major learning projects we did involved a more advanced use of Write as well as a transition into the use of more complex programs such as Scratch. In this project I chose animal sprites from the Scratch Activity and listed them on the board alongside a list of themes in literature. We spent the first half of class discussing the components of a story (plot, characters, theme, setting, conclusion etc.) after which the students were asked to come up with a story of their own, choosing several of the animals from the list and one of the themes. They were asked to have a creative title as well as distinct paragraphs for setting, plot and conclusion that demonstrated their understanding of how a story was typically formatted. After working on their stories they were encouraged to illustrate them either by drawing pictures themselves in Paint or taking pictures around the school that would fit in. The next day we had an introduction to Scratch that involved us acting out the action from an example story and working with a giant Scratch screen drawn on the board, after which the students were asked to bring a scene of their story to life using Scratch. Among the several other learning projects we completed there are two other larger ones I will mention. The first began with a discussion of vocabulary related to the idea of business and commerce. Students defined terms such as product, company, advertisement, goods and services. Afterwards they were told to come up with their own product to market. They were to draw their product in Paint and then answer several questions about it such as what it was made of, who would buy it and what it was used for. The next day the assignment was to create an advertisement for their product using either Paint, Record, or Scratch in an attempt to convince others to buy what they had created. The intention after this (though we didn't get a chance to implement it) was to show the advertisements and have students with similar products combine to form Companies, they would then come up with a business plan of operations and we would have a "classroom marketplace" where they would all attempt to sell their products and the company that made the most profit would win. The second project began with a discussion of what was special about their country. The students then looked at the Tourism web sites for other countries and discussed what the purpose of tourism was and how other countries tried to encourage it. We then talked about the problems that they saw in their own country and what things they would change if they were the leaders of their own country. They were then assigned to write about their own "perfect country" and to pick several of the headings from Wikipedia about other countries (economy, geography, climate, language, government) to fill in for their own countries. They then made tourism brochures in Paint about their countries so that others would come and visit. In addition to these and other learning activities something we did with the students as a review of the skills they had been learning was to create contests where they took down a list of actions that had to take in a certain order that included things like taking a picture and labeling it or making a scratch presentation with certain criteria and the first students to successfully complete everything on the list received a prize.

Last Days in Planet Cameroon

The last week was a hectic storm of activity, broken only by the occasional glimpse of sunlight through the perpetual clouds of Buea. This final week of class was highlighted by the progress all of our students were showing, now able to accomplish any number of complex tasks on their XO's as well as explore on their own. (to the great amusement or their teachers, I remember the first time I let them bring their XOs home the next day they were incredibly eager to show me all the pictures of ancient Mayan sports games and copies of the Declaration of Independence that they had found in the collection of world images available offline in the Browse activity). As our students gained skills we were able to create learning projects that tested their abilities and challenged them to explore new areas that they would never have touched on in a normal classroom. The many projects we did require some explanation and are treated in more detail in a separate blog entry. Beside the ends in out of class we had other tasks to accomplish before we could sit back on the airplane leaving Douala and feel confident enough to say that we had done all that we could to ensure our project would continue and could successfully sustain itself through the upcoming school year. To this end we decided it was necessary to put together a Handbook or guide to using the XOs in the classroom, something that would include examples of learning projects and suggestions for the teachers whose responsibility it would be to introduce these laptops into their classes at Jamadianle come September. For the most part we felt fairly confident that the teachers who had gone through our training sessions as well as those who had the opportunity to use the XOs during their Summer Holiday classes would have little problem successfully integrating the XOs into their daily lessons to great effect. However we wanted to be sure that these teachers, as well as those who would be coming back fom spending their summer holidays elsewhere, would have an comprehensive resource available that they could reference for inspiration as well as for assistance in technical matters including troubleshooting any problems that might arise during a typical day in the classroom. As we scrambled for time to write this guide in the UAC Cyber, we also made sure to collect contact information from the many teachers and other UAC staff we had worked with so we could make updates to this document as well as check up on how classes were progressing in the fall, as of course, just to stay in touch as several of them had become friends. As Friday drew nearer Brittney and I found ourselves spending longer than usual hanging out at the Orock's house, savoring these last days with the family we had been so warmly welcomed into. This of course and the fact that we bid our most of our fellow volunteers goodbye on Wednesday morning as they were leaving for a vacation in Kribi and would not be returning until after our flight, so we were feeling a little lonely back in the volunteer house. The night before they left we had our sendoff ceremony, a tradition with the UAC where whenever a volunteer was leaving we would all share a common meal of our request from Madame Amelia. During this ceremony Mr. Orock was absent as he had missed his train coming back from the far north but the rest of us volunteers and UAC members celebrated in style with our favorite Beans and Rice, Chicken and French Fries in special tomato sauce. We also had the opportunity to make short speeches about our experience working with the UAC this summer and perhaps there were more than a few people with some moistness in their eyes, or it could have just been the reflection of Hannah Montana coming from the TV.
Friday arrived early and as we stepped out onto the mud path to head to the UAC Compound for our last day of class we were greeted by a few rays of sun, the first in weeks, surely a sign that today would be a fitting finale to our summer's work. Without a doubt we would be doing Harambee today (as long as the weather held, you never know) and it was going to be sooo HYPE!
When we arrived at the compound the kids were as usual milling around in chaos, but there was an extra element of activity, which we were to soon find out was the presence of some 100 candidates who were applying for teaching positions in the Jamadianle School. Evidently the 100 percent success rate on their final exams made the school a popular choice and there were many applicants for a fairly limited number of positions, not a bad situation to be in. It was somewhat awkward when I went to ask the Head Nursery teacher Madam Ada if t wouldn't be too disturbing to throw down a massive Harambee circle in the middle of all this, at which point she took me around to each of the rooms where the hopeful teachers to be were waiting for their interviews and made those stand up who professed to be "computer literate". The number proved awkwardly small and more awkward still was their obvious struggle between an honest assessment of their abilities and their desire to be considered for the job. After which Madam Ada assured me that they would only be hiring new teachers who had skills in ITC so as to adequately support the new OLPC aspect of their classes, progress, i guess. We did manage to secure permission to Harambee and after a rousing (and somewhat sweaty) run through of our favorite cheers and chants we all packed into the main hall for our final class. In this class the students were asked to make a presentation about what they had learned over the summer, and in this they could use any combination of their favorite programs to make it as multimedia and informative as possible. Many of the students stuck with the professional format of writing up a numbered list of their achievements and these I read to much excitement as they very succinctly included most of the goals we had set out to accomplish at the start of our program. Other students used Scratch presentations or Record to make full motion presentations demonstrating the many things they had learned and each of these deserved to be recorded and saved as they really made it clear how far these students had come over the course of the summer. After taking in all these projects it was time to take up the XOs and say goodbye, and as hard as this was we did it knowing the XOs would go on to benefit more children during the school year and that those who had been through our program had enjoyed a really wonderful experience. Besides which several of them had created email accounts and would be keeping in touch with their teachers form America.
At this point it was time for Brittney and I to go back and finish packing, after which we decided to go to Bonokanda for Caravan one final time. In Bonokando we only had a short while before we needed to leave for the airport but in this time we managed to have a rousing jump-rope competition, spurred on my the packet of glittery stickers that I found in my pocket. As the inevitable rain began to fall again we headed back to the UAC to pick up Epeye who evidently needed to bring a bunch of plantains down the road on our way and after several more random people piled into the van (as always trips to Douala were strangely popular) we finally left. After enduring the incredibly horrible road (if it can be called that) that marked the Boniberi entrance to Douala we had just enough time to use the remainder of our CFAs up at the Zepol bakery were the most delicious pastries could be had for impossible to beat prices (!). From this point we made our way to the airport and after a short but meaningful farewell to Barclay and Monique and our faithful Germans Leah and Jannick, Brittney and I checked in, paid our exit tax and finally relaxed in our seats, I personally anticipating the In Flight meal on our journey to London that was Air France's forte. It had been am incredible summer and we were committed to spending all the time we could find over the next year to staying in touch with the people we had met and supporting the program we had founded with the UAC in Buea, Cameroon.

Going Down Yaounde for a Day

This past week has been a whirlwind and this upcoming one promises to be just as busy as we have our final days of classes while we wrap up our trainings of the teachers and the UAC staff and prepare for our sad but inevitable departure this Friday.
This past Wednesday Sam, Brittney and I traveled to Yaounde, the capital of Cameroon, in order to meet with a special contact of Mr. Orock who occupied a high position in the government as well as to meet up with the OLPC team that was working on a much larger 5,000 laptop deployment in 51 government schools in the Northern part of the country. We were scheduled to leave early in the morning, and after having breakfast, doing a bit of waiting, and then finally getting into the pickup truck that Mr. Orock's personal driver Antoine would be taking us along with Mr. Orock's good friend and co-proprietor of Jamadianle Henry to Yaounde in, we set out... and then pulled over at a stream on the side of the road because evidently we needed to have the vehicle thoroughly cleaned before we could roll into a place like Yaounde, certainly we couldn't let them judge us for coming form rainy, muddy Buea. After another half hour or so, during which several men spent alot of time throwing water over the truck and scrubbing the wheels, which could certainly get dirty gain the minute they pulled out of the stream, we finally got under way and began the trip, which a 2.5 hour slog into Douala, followed by a thrillingly fast 3 hour speed along the highway to Yaounde, with several stops along the way for the paying of tolls and the buying of street snacks such as grilled plums, plantain chips, or fresh bananas. We finally rolled in around 3, and the difference between the commercial capital of Douala and the government capital of Yaounde was evident form the beginning. Whereas Douala was a chaotic headache of honking congestion threaded through by reckless motorbikes all pushing their way past a million random shops rising out of the mud, Yaounde, while it has its fair share of hustle and bustle in the surrounding sections, has something Douala lacks, stately charm from the many fairly grand and modern looking buildings that house the various ministries that make up the Cameroonian government. Even a few wide avenues and green spaces were visible as we drove through the 7 hills that make up the main part of the city, though of course our view was somewhat limited by the ever present rain. After we checked into out hotel and changed, we grabbed a quick bite to eat and headed down to the lobby wear we had scheduled a meeting with OLPC people who were working with the government to bring 5,000 laptops to schools in the northern region of the country, as part of a grant from an Islamic Bank. During this meeting we talked about how our summers had gone and shared stories about how successful the laptops had been in bringing new interest to education and inspiring both teachers and children. We concluded with promises to help each other out, us by providing information and lessons learned from our deployment this summer working with our 100 students and the teachers of the Jamadianle School. Them by connecting us with their contacts in the Ministry of Basic Education to see is there might be a chance to expand out successful deployment to other part of the Southwest Region, which would not be receiving any laptops from their own upcoming deployment. Aftter exchanging contact information we followed them to their office opposite the UNICEF building and saw where they had been conducting many of the trainings they had been focusing on this summer. From there we drove on to the house of the Special Assistant to the President, where we had our meeting scheduled for 7pm.
We arrived at about 8 pm, but our fears of coming late were put aside once we were told that he had not even arrived yet and so we took seats in the very large and comfortable sitting room where we were promptly served drinks and snacks by the many attendants he had in service at his very large and impressive residence.
As we waited we had the opportunity to chat with a few of the other personages waiting to meet the big man, among them the Rector of a University in Yaounde who had a son who studied at Drexel University (adjacent to our own UPenn), and another man who claimed to work for the Ministry of Commerce. He also claimed to have attended Harvard University and lived for many years in Cambridge, also having been to many other places in the US about which he spoke in length. With this man we had a long discussion about democracy in Africa and also about Cameroon and its many problems, all of which was very edifying and credible until he began to enlighten us about Hitler's role in losing the colony of Cameroon for Germany in the 1st World War. Despite this little slip up and the fact that he saw fit to bum a ride off of us when we left some hours later, the conversation was very interesting and we were engrossed in it right up until the entrance of the master of the house was announced and we all stood to greet him as he walked through and straight into another room where he spent some time meeting with a woman who accompanied him and another, evidently higher priority, man who had come in a little while after us.
Finally he came down to greet us and we explained to him our reason for coming and presented the laptops that we had brought to show him how effective they could be in educating the children of his country. He seemed to be interested and even asked several questions about how our experience working with the UAC has been and what our hopes for the future of the program were. We told him about the many things we had done over the summer and how we hoped that the success of our program would stand as an example to those in charge of the education system that these laptops could be very beneficial to the progress of the country and indeed were in line with many of the goals already set by the government which included introducing computer education, even to the extent that there would be a national exam on ITC required for all students of a certain level starting next year. He was forthcoming with suggestions, including the idea of bringing XO's to the "Champion Schools" sponsored by the first lady as a test case on a more national scale, and he offered to introduce us to contacts in the Ministry of Basic Education and the Ministry of IT Education to talk further about what could be done in the Southwest Region. We responded that though we were leaving Cameroon next week, we could certainly remain in touch via the internet and also empower Mr. Orock to meet with these individuals to talk about what next steps we could take to expand our deployment. With this and the late hour we made our gratitude for his time known and drove back to our hotel to spend a short night before setting off bright and early the next morning so as to arrive back in Buea in time for the end of class, which was being taught by some of the other volunteers that day, so that Sam could see his students for the last time and say goodbye to them before leaving the next day. As for Brittney and I, we were in need of rest, but also aware that our own last week of teaching approached and so eager to have a great last few days of lessons before making our own goodbyes.

A Day in the Lyfe: Diary of an OLPCorps Crazy

And Several Weeks Later....

We find our three intrepid explorers deep in the midst of their teaching experience. Apologies for writing so infrequently but there really has been little time to do so as we've just had so much to do.
Each morning we arise around 7 to have breakfast next door at Mr. Orock's house, prepared by Mr. Orock's charming wife Madame Amelia or one of her many helpers in the kitchen such as Big M, Claudette, or Judith. From here we proceed, rain or shine, up the path which resembles more a river bed when dry, a real river when precipitating to the UAC Compound that includes the Cyber Cafe where I am writing, the Nursery School where the UAC Summer Holiday Classes take place and the UAC office where it all began and where we store the laptops each evening, and where the younger students ages 7 to 10 in our laptop classes are taught.
Depending on the day or the weather we may do Harambee with the kids before we start, a program we do at home in Philadelphia with our afterschool children that involves many cheers and chants to get excited about learning. The word come from a Swahili tradition and means "Everyone pulls together", needless to say the kids really love it and we often catch them clapping and singing the chants on their own outside of class.
Then we split the students up and the older ones ages 11 to 13 come with me, transported by the signature UAC vans, to Bwitingi, a nearby village where the new Jamadianle school has been built and where there is a larger hall to accommodate them.
Our classes run from 9 to 11 and we have accomplished several learning projects designed to emphasize the basics and to challenge the creativity of the students while they are also introduced to new programs and the many capabilities of the XO. Over the past few weeks the students in the older class have created superheroes and drawn them in paint, imported their pictures into write and written a back story to their heroes lives. They then went on Wikipedia and copied selections from different scientific articles relating to their heroes superpowers and pasted these under a separate section of their profiles. They have also made numbered lists of things describing themselves and then had the lists taken and mixed up so that they had to play a game to find out who each list described. They have taken notes in Write using bulleted lists on Mesh Networking and used chat to talk to each other. They have explored Memorize and made their own Memorize games matching phrases in their local Pidgin dialect to phrases in standard English, which they then swapped and played each others games. Most recently we talked about story writing, about setting, plot, conclusion and characters, after which I gave them a list of different animals and a list of themes from which they picked to write their own fairy tales. On Monday they will be making scenes from their stories, which they illustrated with photos and painted pictures today, come to like in Scratch, as the list I provided was made up only of animals that are options as Sprites. Also starting on Monday they will have the opportunity to sign-out their personal laptop at the end of the day and take it home with them, something we have been planning so as to happen in the most efficient and organized manner so that the students can share their work with their families and explore at home, while still guaranteeing that we are able to use the laptops in the other innovative capacities we are exploring.
At 11 after the 100 students have their class, we have alternating classes from the Jamadianle School Summer Classes come in accompanied by their teachers to go through a lesson that serves the dual purpose of introducing the XO's to these students as well as giving the teachers experience using them in he classroom.
At noon we have a teacher training two days a week, and the other days just have time to get all the laptops plugged in and charging before we are do back at the Orock's house for lunch at 1pm.
At 4 pm, after a short rest break (read: time to do laundry or write a blog) We take a load of the charged XOs along with sports equipment out to some of the villages surrounding the town of Buea. We play games with these children and then let them play on the XOs as part of the UAC's village outreach called the Summer Holiday Caravan. Many of these children have never seen a computer before and so it is quite a challenge to work with them to where they have enough ability to explore and do things on their own.
We return from the caravan just after 6, and with the evening fading fast we rush to put away all the laptops and chargers so that we can make it back to the house for supper before the darkness makes walking along the slippery uneven road a sure recipe for a mud covered bum and a severely injured pride.

That's a day in the life of Team DBF Cameroon, its supper time now and I am ravenous, more on our trips and some challenges soon, until next time folks!

A Whole New Class of Crazy

Wednesday arrived before we knew it and as we were seated waiting for our breakfast at the Orock's house Barclay arrived to inform us that already there were many students waiting outside the hall for the program, which was scheduled to start at 9. It was just after 8. In a place where we were accustomed to most things beginning hours even after they were supposed to this was a strong sign that we would be in for quite a turnout, and so it was with much anticipation that we quickly ate our breakfast and made our way to the hall, which was about a 5 minute walk towards the main road. We could here the commotion from quite a distance as we approached and as we arrived we observed many many students waiting outside the hall, some lined up in front of the door while others chased each other around the yard of the compound or sat on the steps chatting. We obviously had way more students that could easily fit into the small hall we had set up the previous night, and though we were already planning ot split the group up and use the greater space of the new Jamadianle campus a few miles away, we had to make do with what we had the first few days and so preceded to pack more tables and chairs into the room, as well as set some up outside the door as it was not raining for once that morning. once we had all the students assembled in some seat or another, we preceded to pass out the laptops with instructions that they should leave them alone until we had given one to everyone, which they surprisingly followed, perhaps as a result of their respect for adults and experience with discipline, or maybe just that they had no idea how to open the laptop and turn it on. That was fine by us, we had prepared the lesson for the day to cover the most fundamental basics, so that we were starting from a level where every child could participate and make progress, even if they had never seen a computer before. We began by asking if anyone knew how to open the XO and 1 or 2 hands raised up, allowing us to have these students do their best to demonstrate to the class the process of flipping up the ears (antenna) and separating the screen from the keyboard to where it resembled a computer of a sorts at least, though one that looked more at home on Neptune than planet earth. We preceded to call on volunteers or demonstrate ourselves how to maneuver the mouse, how to click on activities, to open them and to close them properly, all of which took some time, but time well spent in the hope that once these basic skills were mastered the lessons to come would flow much smoother. I also introduced a few key catchphrases that I hoped would help the students remember some important things about using the XO and creating a good classroom environment. The first one was "you have the power" meaning that each student was in charge of monitoring their own battery life and raising their hand to call for a charger when the light turned red and it needed to be plugged in, this way we were not required to grow the 8 eyes and arms of a spider in order to be constantly looking at battery life and hooking up chargers so that the classroom didn't devolve into a massacre of powerless computers. The second phrase was "the best pupil is a helper" which was meant to emphasize that they should rely on and look to each other first for help in understanding things, by showing each other how to do things they would learn better themselves and tale some of the burden off us for explaining everything multiple times. The third and certainly most cliche was "sharing is caring" and this was just to make the point that we wanted them to do good work that they would be proud of and anything that they had done well they should always be ready to share with the class to appreciate what they had done. By the end of the lesson each child was plugging away playing the maze activity and navigating to the homescreen and beyond, and by the time we dismissed them at 12 we had come to several major realizations. First off was that 3 hours each morning was much too long, especially with teacher trainings and Summer Holiday Caravan in the afternoons, so we resolved to have class from 9 to 11 each morning. Second thing was that despite any doubts we had had about our recruitment efforts, we certainly had no issue getting 100 students and as soon as possible we would need to finalize the list of those that were registered and take many of them to the other campus before out small hall exploded. Above all we realized that we were going to have an awesome summer and that working with all the students who were so excited it almost provided enough electricity to power the room would be an incredible experience. All said we were pretty darn tired though, and an after lunch nap before hitting the villages with the caravan was highly in order.

The OLPC Launchapalooza!

When i previously said "all that has to be done is have the launching" i perhaps misrepresented, or was rather, ignorant of, the massive undertaking that this would be, so let me begin by describing some of the preparations. On Sunday we went to the market, which was experience enough in itself, several of the other volunteers had been before to buy fabric for dresses (of which there is a really amazing variety of some truly awesome patterns) but I had not been before, and not with the same mission to accomplish. Our journey was lead by Madam Amelia, Mr Orock's wife and a lady of considerable force. We began by haggling over some chickens, which involved pulling them up by their wings and shaking them to test their weight while they squawked and struggled. We ended up buying 8, at which point they were stuffed into a burlap sack we had brought and tossed in the van, while we went in search of the other necessities for the reception that would be a part of our launching ceremony and included fish, nuts, onions, yams, oil, eggs, and wine, though Mr. Orock had already picked some of this up on his way back from Yaounde. Loaded with all of this several hours later we returned home and most of the others fell to napping, while Brittney and I were invited to help, or rather, watch, the preceding taking place behind the house. Though we missed the beheading we did arrive in time for the boiling and plucking of the dear fowl, and the gutting of the fish in great quantities for the fish pie we would be enjoying the previous day. This was some rather gory work and so after a while we begged off to go and prepare our presentation for the next day. We wanted something that introduced the XO in an exciting way that would also demonstrate some of its potential but also not lose the momentum of the speaches and other exciting aspects of the ceremony. What we came up with was to make a short narration asking the audience to imagine a world where every shild had access to their own laptop and where they and their teachers worked together to advance their education, providing the tools to the children to explore on their own and chart a successful path through life and one that would enefit not only them but their communities on the whole as well. We would then announce that that world was not far off and that our program was seeking to do just that. Then we would introduce the star of the show, the XO laptop, and have an XO hooked up to a pair of speakers greet the audience and announce the launch of our program using the Speak activity, really giving a face to associate these mysterious computers with. With this and a prayer we decided to retire for the night and finish with the preparations the next morning, with the ceremony scheduled to start at 10 am, Africa Time of course. The next day we had breakfast with the other volunteers and Madame Amelia took care to inform us that she and the other kitchen help had been up to 2 am the cooking for the occassion, a tremendous effort for which we were extremely greatful. We arrived at the Hall at the Jamadianle School arounf 10, having spent some time packing the 20 boxes containing all 100 of the laptops into a van to take over and set up. Once we arrived at the hall we found that the other volunteers had already arrived and there were also a good many kids chatting in the white and purple chairs we had set up the previous day. There were several tables set up nice with table clothes, presumably for the more distinguished clientel that would be arriving to join in the occassion. We quickly unloaded the laptops and set them up around the long table in the center, and then fell to our number one pasttime, waiting. As we sat the rain started to come down even harder and we began to doubt that anyone would brave downpour to attend our launching ceremony, but before too long people began to arrive, along with a massive speaker system and the rest of the UAC staff and we were ready to rock and roll. Among the officials that arrived were the Director of the school project in Mamfe, Mr. Orock's hometown and a place we would be bringing the XO's later in the summer, the directors of several sister NGO's there to support the UAC, the Regional Delegate for Basic Education, the Regional Delegate for Youth Affairs, the Mayor of Buea, and several other important personages. To this distinguished audience we made our introductions and began our presentation. After the centerpiece XO announced the official launch and thanked everyone for attending all of the audience erupted in applause for its computerized performance and the Regional Delegate for Basic Education and then the Mayor delivered long and strident speeches that the audience cheered on at several occassions, and Mr. Orock made his own address to the crowd. During these precedings several of us were called outside to give interviews to the TV station crew that was present and we tried to but on our most professional demeanors for the cameras. The ceremony cumlminated in the government officials each presenting one of the XO's to one of the teachers from the Jamadianle school and we then gave the teachers a mini lesson to demonstrate some of the more impressive features. By this point the time was long and we were hungry for the meal that was to arrive a little later, delayed we were later to learn because the van had become stuck in the mud between Mr. Orock's house and the school. After the officials had drunk their wine and finally moved on, we stacked up the chairs and returned to the volunteer house triumphant, full of confidence that the launching was a success and we were prepared to start class that wednesday...

Teaching Those that Teach

It was teacher training on Tuesday and we didn't get started as far from on time as one might expect (i mean, TIA...) just as we did expect though, it was raining heavily, but to be honest I think it gave the small dirty classroom that served as the Jamadianle school's main hall before they moved to the knew and bigger location some miles away some atmosphere and made all of us who were working inside feel a little closer. At least that's the way I try to look at the rain situation, for looking at it any other way would perhaps be rather dire as it is raining almost every day now. But on to the actual training :) we had about 15 teachers show up, including the Head Teacher of the primary school, and the Head Teacher of the nursery. Most of the teachers were well dressed in traditional looking attire and appeared to be in their thirties, quite a contrast with many of the Rwandan teachers who were quite a bit younger. We started out the training by mainly focusing on the fundamentals of the XO, how to open and close programs, how to turn on and shut down the computer, how to navigate the different views etc. We then went through a short sample lesson involving Record and Write, where they took a picture of themselves and copy and pasted it into write so they could label it. We also showed them several more of the XO's features including how to make a spreadsheet in Write, something that was very practical for their own use in the classroom and with which the head nursery instructor immediately began to compile a table of her students and their contact info with. 2 hours into the training and we decided to wrap it up, feeling like any more would be too much to introduce all at once and besides we were getting pretty hungry for lunch. Many of the teacher seemed very pleased and several approached me with questions about using the computers in their classrooms and were also eager to further explore the laptops at the next training, which we will be having weekly for the duration of the program. All in all this training went perhaps better than I had expected and I think the teachers may really be as open to them, given real evidence and a thorough understanding of their potential, as the Mr. Orock, the director of the UAC, has said on many occasion, though at one point one teacher did ask to speak privately with us at some point and I can only postulate that there may be skeptics among them who we would do well to sit down with and discuss rather than just read the feel of the room. All that remains to be done now is the grand launching ceremony on Monday, after which we will have another, more in depth training on Tuesday, in preparation for the start of classes and the Summer Holiday Caravan come this Wednesday. I can hardly wait!

BBB Back in the Cameroo-ooon

Arriving back In Douala we were both eager to try out our new
bargaining skills gained from negotiating motorcycle taxis and
Ethernet cable at the market in Kigali with the various baggage
“helpers” who had swarmed us the previous time, but tour
disappointment the airport was fairly empty and we had very few
requests to assist us through customs. We spent the ride back to Buea
getting updates on what had been going on at the UAC from Taco and
remembering that Cameroon was a country that had a charm all its own,
perhaps not the quiet rolling hills of Rwanda, but something wild and
sweaty that was no less interesting. After exchanging stories with the
other volunteers and adjusting to the reality of no water a severe
lack of variety in our diet (bread, bread, and maybe some cucumbers
and mayonnaise) we settled back into the pace of life as we prepared
for our trip to Yaoundé at the start of the next week. Most of the
other volunteers were busy preparing for a grueling ascent of Mt.
Cameroon that weekend, the tallest second tallest mountain on the
continent after Kilimanjaro and the looming background to Buea that
was one of the region’s major attractions. Team DBF decided to stay
behind and work on setting up our classrooms in hope that this would
bring our laptops to us sooner, or at very least allow us to start as
soon as they arrived. Although Sam was sick and spent his weekend on a
quest for the movie Blood Diamond instead of joining us, Brittney and
I did join a few of the other volunteers who had decided not to brave
the Mountain in a trip to Limbe, a nearby coastal town, where not only
did we enjoy a lovely day on the beach, but were able to have a real
shower afterwards!
That evening we talked with Mr. Orock about what we wanted to do for
our Opening Ceremony when we finally got the laptops and we could
begin the Summer Holiday Caravan we had been talking about so much. He
mentioned that we would pay a “courtesy call” on several figures of
importance the next day and so we waited in anticipation for the
morning. In the morning we tossed on some clothes of a finer nature
and piled into the UAC van and 30 minutes later arrived at the
regional TV and Radio station, where we met with the Director as a
group and gave several individual interviews about our program. We
left with them promising to cover our opening ceremony and assured us
that the whole country would be aware of what we were doing this
summer. Next stop was the Regional Delegate in charge of Basic
Education who greeted us warmly in his top floor office. With him we
stayed longer and discussed the many opportunities that the XO’s
presented and how likely it would be that the Government of Cameroon
might like to go the Rwanda route and purchase them in large
quantities in a real bid for one laptop per Cameroonian child. This
was good to talk about, but was a bit premature in my opinion,
especially considering we weren’t even in possession of our 100 yet,
and so had yet to prove their feasibility or effectiveness. We ended
our meeting with an invitation to the delegate to attend our ceremony,
to which he readily promised to make an appearance.
So, all we really needed were those darn laptops…the next day Mr.
Orock traveled to Douala to pick up a package and to purchase a
subscription to the new Internet provider we were subscribing to, MTN
having failed us (no internet for the past week!) we were switching to
Orange and upgrading the speed of the connection to work with the
laptops. We graciously begged off his offer to accompany him, a trip
to Douala being next to scheduling a root canal in our books, and
continued to plan how we would make our case in Yaoundé to get our
laptops released. Lo and Behold, Mr. Orock was planning a surprise,
for as we were walking home that evening he pulled up in his pick-up
truck, the bed filled with large brown boxes, and triumphantly
announced that he had returned with the XOs! We were completely
unaware that he had succeeded in getting a pass from the government
and so this came us a very unexpected, though very pleasant, surprise.
We resolved the next day to post-pone our trip to Yaoundé and instead
devote the remainder of the week to preparing the classrooms and main
hall for the grand opening ceremony, for it was to be held the
following Monday.

An Escapade into the Rwanda hills, with some intense XO learning on the side

Trip to Rwanda
So we arrived in Rwanda and besides the overnight flight with a
6 hour layover in the Kenya airport it was a lovely flight. Kenya
Airways, despite all the trouble we had trying to book with them,
manages to try to feed you whenever possible, so we received meals at
around 2 am on our 4 hour flight, and another full meal on our little
1 hour flight from Nairobi to Kigali International Airport, which, if
you’ll excuse the term, has got to be one of the cutest little
airports I’ve ever seen, resembling most closely an overlarge Cabana
you might find housing a bar somewhere on a tropical beach. The fact
that we had absolutely no trouble walking through customs, getting our
free visa, and grabbing our waiting luggage should have informed us
that Rwanda was a very different place than Cameroon, and as we were
driven over to where the workshop was being held in a nice tour bus we
got a chance to see just what an understatement that was. A cool
breeze blowing through the trees, growing next to clean red-dirt roads
along which pretty red-roofed houses were scattered among the many
rolling hills of this “land of one thousand hills”, all this was
enough to make it apparent that that contrary to the perception held
by most Westerners, most likely informed by knowledge of the 1994
Genocide and movies such as Hotel Rwanda and Sometimes in April,
Rwanda today embodies bucolic beauty and peaceful progress. Indeed the
facility where much of our training was to occur was a modern marvel
that housed the Kigali Institute for Science and Technology, or KIST,
an important partner to OLPC in Rwanda. Rwanda has further
distinguished itself by having purchase more XO laptops than any other
country in Africa, and is pursuing a goal to have one for every child
in the country. These laptops are already being used to propagate
public health warnings and to facilitate the transfer over of the
language taught in the public school system from French to English, a
move that the Rwandan Government hopes will further increase the
opportunities for foreign business investment and growth. This is just
one example of the many new policies implemented by Rwanda’s much
admired president Paul Kagame, who gained fame as the leader of the
Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) the Tutsi led army that put an end to
the genocide and brought stability back to the country.

But back to the training. Unfortunately Team DBF had to miss the first
two days, where the grand ceremony involving the OLPC and Rwandan
leadership occurred, though we heard mixed results on how exciting it
was (from “it was sooo looong and boring you guys are lucky” to “omg
you missed the biggest thing ever! I got to shake the president’s hand
and meet Nick! (the chairman of OLPC)). Whatever the case, we arrived
on Wednesday and got right to work meeting the other teams and getting
the technical rundown on everything we ever wanted to know about
updating the XO, setting up our server, and establishing network
protocols, setting up access points, and our personal favorite,
NANDblasting (a way to update all 100 of our XO’s to the latest
operating system. We also ( I think perhaps most importantly) got the
chance to visit a primary school that already had over 3,000 of the
XO’s (almost enough for every student there) but where they were
significantly underutilized, mainly because the teachers were a little
scared of them and not very comfortable using them in their classrooms
yet. At the school we had training sessions where we (the OLPCCorps
members) taught the teachers how to use a few of the programs (mainly
Scratch, Record, and Write), and worked with them to brainstorm how
they could use them in their classrooms. These sessions were somewhat
frustrating, due mainly to the language barrier and a technology
learning curve, but they were also very useful as it helped us to
identify many of the issues we would probably have in our deployment
country when it came time to familiarize our local teachers with the
XO and get them comfortable using it in the classroom. We also had the
great opportunity to interact with many of the children at the school,
and a more curious lot I have never seen, with groups of them
gathering around us during their recess time and staring at us like we
were alien life forms. We responded by using the few words in
Kinyarwanda we had learned from the teachers and the hotel staff to
surprise them with a hearty “Mwaremutse” (good morning) and an even
less expected “Nimeza” (Well or Fine) when they found their voices to
ask us how we were. The evidence that much of their limited English
was gained through rote learning was pretty plain by their response of
“Fine, Thank you” to almost any question posed them. That and other
aspects of the education system were somewhat new to me, especially
the extreme discipline the students were under, where they responded
like machinery to whistles blown by their principle and any student
out of line would receive a sharp smack from a light wooden cane that
they were obviously quite terrified of. These kids were still kids
enjoyed rousing games of volleyball and soccer during recess which
they graciously allowed us to join to our unending embarrassment. More
than anything I think this interaction with students made us eager to
return to Cameroon and start using the XO’s with the children there,
though as we were to soon find out that was not to happen as soon as
we might have hoped…

The last few days of the Kigali workshop were spent saying goodbye to
the new friends we had made, sharing contact info and advice on each
other’s deployments, and working out last minute kinks in our
technical setups. We met a man who would also be working in Cameroon
in the North of the country with a deployment of 5,000 XO’s that he
was financing through a partnership with a major Islamic Bank and so
we made sure to network with him and made plans to meet up in a few
weeks once we were back and started in on our deployments. By the end
of the week we were sad to be saying goodbye to plentiful food,
showers, the cool climate and the interesting people from all over the
world we had spent the past 8 days with, but we were also ready to get
back to the UAC and the program we were itching to now get off the
ground. Of course as we were to be reminded time and time again,
things in Africa are rarely that simple. Before we left Kigali,
Brittney, who had stayed behind in Buea to assist with some
preparations, (and to visit lovely beaches, waterfalls, and pigmy
villages in the exotic southern town of Kribi) informed us that we
were unable to get our shipment of XO’s out of customs because their
monetary value was of such a size that they required a hefty duty to
be paid, somewhere along the lines of 3 million Central African
Francs! Mr. Orock had been in Yaoundé the capital attempting to
negotiate their release for several days but was unsure of his chances
at success, and so we needed to think of something to get our laptops
and save our project, fast. The only thing that we could come up with
as we packed our bags to return was that we would go to Yaoundé
ourselves and plead our case before the highest official we could get
access to, and if that didn’t work, well, it would just have to.

No Day but the first Day (time to start paying our rent ;)

The last post should really have been called "first evening in Cameroon, as we had yet to experience a typical day with the UAC. The next morning, after waking and having our breakfast at Mr. Orock's house, we learned that this would not be a typical day either, as it was the day of graduation for the students at the Jamadianle School, and in fact the graduation of the first class to go through each grade in the school, 6th graders who started at the school 6 years ago. After a bit of waiting around (a condition we would quickly find was just going to be the norm as nothing was ever really meant to start of time, we took a van to the school, were were were swarmed by hundred of kids dressed in the cutest graduation outfits you have ever seen in your life, full robes, and graduation hats complete with tassels, all in the stunning purple and gold that is the colors of the Jamadianle School and also is present in their day to day uniforms, which include purple bow ties and suspenders for the sharp dressed little boys and gold skirts and purple blouses for the exceedingly put together little girls.

After some time of just exploring the school while everyone just hung out and listened to music, the ceremony began, and in the largest classroom we all gathered to watch the school choir and various groups sing an dance to praise their school and country. As the afternoon approached the ceremony continued on, as it seemed each and every student in every grade received an award or a prize of some sort, including such categories as "most bilingual" and "most cultural family". After these awards drew on for several hours the ceremony ended and the graduation was finally complete, at which point we headed back to Mr. Orock's house for lunch and afternoon celebration.

A little later the three of us had out meeting with Mr. Orock in the UAC office, where we began by discussing our expectations, goals, and all around opinions and philosophy of education, the role of NGO's and their relationship to the government, the importance of reaching all levels of society, the best ways to be effective, and our role in bringing our project in cooperation with the UAC to fruition during the time that we are here, as well as ensuring that what we created would be sustainable and would be supported after our stay had ended. We were very happy to find that our views and the views of Mr. Orock, informed as they were by his extensive experience in this work as well as his deep roots in the area, meshed very well and we found ourselves very much on the same page. From here it was a more simple step to plan out how we would outreach to the surrounding villages, announcing our program to students there and here in Buea that there would be a Summer Holiday Caravan that would pick them up and bring them to the Jamadianle School were we would be setting up the laptops and the wireless network to connect them. We would be meeting very soon with some of the teachers at the school to introduce them to the XO and to work with them on developing lessons to implement with the students, as well as the IT staff at the UAC to ensure the continued support of the laptops during the school year.

We are waiting on Mr. Orock to take the van into Douala to buy supplies and get phones and more local currency, as well as our laptops which evidently have arrived! We are excited about finally having the equipment to show to everyone and to lend some out to the teachers to learn on their own while we are in Rwanda for the OLPC training all next week.

Until Later,

Team DBF

Our Ship Having Finally Come In...

Hello again,

This entry finds us Sam, Siler and Brittney, having arrived safely in Douala the night before yesterday, walking out of the airplane into an immediate sauna of heat and humidity. After a long wait for our luggage we finally made it through customs and out to where the staff of the United Action for Children was waiting for us. It took us 2.5 hour drive from Douala to Buea where the UAC is based and where will will be implementing our project.

On this van ride we had the opportunity to speak with some of the UAC staff and they answered many of our questions about the part of the country we were passing through and how we would find our stay in Cameroon. of the 5 or 6 staff who came to us, one named Barkley turned out to be in charge of coordinating the volunteers, of which there were already 5 others staying at the volunteer house before the 3 of us arrived. Both Barkley and another staff member named Taco both immediately struck me as incredibly friendly and did their best to make us feel immediately welcome and at home.

When we finally arrived at the house we would be staying in Buea, after what seemed to be, though it was night, a beautiful drive through tropical countryside, we were shown to our rooms, where we each had a very pretty bed to ourselves, and then were invited over the house of the director and founder of the UAC Mr. Orock Thomas, where we were given delicious omelets made by his wife Amelia that were a perfect closure to this part of our journey. Sipping tea with Mr. Orock we learned that he was not only the man behind the UAC, and local NGO that had grown from one small room and a few staff to encompass many building at several locations, several schools, and a staff of over 50, but he was also deputy mayor of his home town of Mamfe and was the chief of service for vocational education in the southwest province. After discussing our trip and a few other things about the UAC and the area, we made a plan to meet the following day and discuss in detail our expectations for this summer and how we would accomplish all the goals we had been preparing for now that we had arrived in Buea.

At this point we said goodnight and retired to our rooms, happy to have arrived, and confident that we were working with a great man and had every chance to accomplish what we set out to do this summer.