A summary of our sojourn in Buea

Our apologies for not updating the blog recently! Internet access in Buea, while definitely present, was not always 100% reliable…kinda like the electricity there, as well. Sadie and I ended up spending a total of three weeks there and just got back to Yaoundé this past Sunday. On the plus side, the archival work in Buea went extremely well. Prince Henry Mbain, the retired-yet-still-working archivist there is an absolute gem, and kept the documents coming. At the end of our time there, he remarked to us that he had never seen anyone plough through the documents so quickly, saying that we did the work of ten people. Of course, this was a nice feather in our cap…which definitely helped uplift our spirits amidst the boring, dreary (though beautiful) landscape of Buea Town. While there, Sadie and I stayed at the Presbyterian Church Synod, which was nice enough, clean enough, and had a public kitchen so we were able to cook our own food. The only problems were that the manager was a bit socially awkward and that the building was quite old, making all of our clothes and belongings a little more pungent-musty-smelling than we would prefer!

On the way back from Buea, however, we did manage to have one day of pure fun in Limbe. We stayed in a nice hotel (that had hot water for about 5 minutes!) right on the ocean. Dairou, a wonderful young man and an “extended family member” of Usuman’s, has been the one driving us around Cameroon for the past few weeks, as the roads are quite dangerous and besides, we would have no idea where we were going! He and his brother Abduraman—a student at the University of Buea—came with us to Limbe, and we all fasted together that day, as it was in the middle of Ramadan. That made dinner that evening all the more enjoyable. It was definitely our best day in Cameroon thus far.

Being back in Yaoundé has been great…except for the work. I took many people’s advice and gave a pretty hefty “present” to the head archivist at the National Archives. I’m sad to say that while she has done a few things, the service is still slow and no one in there can hold a candle to Buea’s Prince. This sad fact, along with my conclusion that the British just left more interesting and organized information about their colonial endeavors, has made the work-part of being in Yaoundé very frustrating. So, in sum, living in Buea sucked but the work was fantastic, while work in Yaoundé drives me crazy but the life in here—especially with the Buba family—is fun, exciting and comforting…kind of like our home away from home. Let’s hope that my upcoming fieldwork and our living situation in the Bamenda area will be positive on both accounts!!