January 12, 2011

--The plan today is to do assessments and treatments with Mangamba people till mid-morning, then move down the road to the primary and secondary schools in Miang.
--The first customers were here by 8:30, a full hour before we were ready. We stumbled around with cups of coffee and cereal bowls, finding our supplies and deciding where to set up the assessment stations. By 9:30 we were in full swing and saw more elderly than young people, a nice change. In their high 70s and early 80s, these hardy folk are still going to their fields daily to care for their crops. Predictably, the most common complaint was arthritis-related aches and pains.

--On time, we arrived at the Miang schools. I wasn’t able to see the health education activities because I was busily helping with assessments of 21 very cute 4 and 5 year olds. Most of them were happy, healthy and very curious about these white visitors. But, we’ve dubbed this “Yukky Ear Day” due to the nasty infections we found and treated.

--One of the teachers was albino.  We've seen several albino people in our travels.
--Back at home in Mangamba, we’re all kind of stir-crazy. One end of the living room was transformed to a gym, several went out for walks despite the very humid and hot weather, and others headed for the local bar. The bar is a board stand on the main street under a huge tree filled with at least a hundred hanging bird nests, loud contemporary Cameroon music fills the air – it’s a popular hang-out.
--We ran out of clean clothes, and Joe saved us by doing our laundry in a bucket and hanging it to dry on every available surface. It will be so wonderful to wear a fresh shirt tomorrow! Thank goodness, the power has been on for two days so we have water, lights, and power for the coffee maker and the refrigerator gives us cool drinking water.