Ndanda!

 

Which means something like good day in the local dialect of M’muock. We just came back from our first one week trip this year to M’muock Fosimondi (that is the full name of our project village) in Lebialem, SWProvince, Cameroon.

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Thanks to our companions Dr. Kennedy (from the M’muock Cultural and Development Association MUDECA), Fabian and Edwin (both from our partnerorganization Nkong Hilltop) we were able to accomplish the two goals we had set for this first trip.

 

During our stay at Papa Nkyteyims house (he is the father of Patricia – our “family” in Buea) we were able to identify many possible sites for wind- and waterturbines and we were abe to train 10 interviewers in the village for our data collection on income and energyusage in the village. You can see our room and the kitchen where we spent most of the time doing our project documentation since itwas the only room that was bit warm…

 

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But let us start from the beginning, since we also had some challenges to meet and adventures to go through.

We left Buea on Friday noon to go with the car of our partner organization Nkong Hilltop to Dschang and then further on to the village. By 5 p.m. we had reached Dschang on very good paved roads, went for a nice dinner at Mama Titis and left for the bad roads to M’muock. I don’t think you need any comments on the picture you see here – this is the condition of the roads and our car struggling to climb up… By the time we reached our house the car unfortunately was making funny noises… so there was no way we could be using the car again the next day. But we made it up there!

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Saturday we were picked up early in the morning by Fabian and Dr. Kennedy and went for some Papp (some sort of fermented maize powder cooked with water) for breakfast in the village at this Mamas place:

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Then the discussion with our bikeriders started, since there was no way we could go treck or take the car around the whole village. In the end we found an agreement and were travelling with our 5 bikeriders the whole day through the village to identify possible sites for wind- and water turbines. The aim was to select two sites where we could place the demonstration sites in November. We stopped many places and ran off into the bush and through fields and found many possible sites especially for water, with streams and waterfalls that do not dry out during the dry season – here you can see a few pictures of our trip.

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In the end we were soaked – since rain started to hit us badly around midday, when we were only half way through the trip. But we found two sites that we wanted to explore more during the next days.

 

Sunday then was the day of the training of theinterviewers. Since we want to measure the impact of our project to the village after the implementation it is necessary to collect some data on income generation, energy needage and usage and other data (if interested you can get the questionaire by writing an email to me). For that purpose we had prepared a questionaire and now wanted to train 10 intrerviewers from the village on how to carry out the interviews in the 100 sample households. The training went very well and had some important guests too. The chairman of the traditional council was there as well as a few other notables and a quarter chief. They all wanted to find out more about the project and asked a few questions and made some comments on the carrying out of the quesitonaire and the project. We were glad that these people were there since this ensures good cooperation with the villagers. The workshop was a success and the interviewers were to carry out the first 2 interviews until Wednesday when we wanted to meet again to find out how the interviews went and if there were any major problems with the questionaires.

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Monday was a trecking day for us – we went down to “brown hill” the site we had picked for the demonstration wind turbine. You can see Edwin and Fabian trying to collect some wind data.

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Back in the village we tried to find out about the progress of our car, since the fanbelt had been raptured and the mechanics in the village were sure that it was that that caused the funny noise. Unfortunately nobody had been able to send somone down to Dschang to buy a new one. Which was strange, since we had asked for someone to go down and get the fan belt since Saturday – only problem was, we did not want to contract somebody solely for that purpose, but wanted (for cost reduction purpose) to use a driver that was anyways going down to Dschang with passengers…- did not work out that way and in the end we ended up sending someone down on Monday evening to Dschang to buy the fan belt.

Our (european) plan was to leave the village at 6.30 Tuesday morning to go to Bafoussam and Bamenda to visit a few projects on renewable energy that we had found on the internet. Guess what – Africa just does not work that way J - we were waiting for the fan belt to be changed until 11 a.m. and left for Dschang around that time… only that the noise in the engine was still there although the fan belt had been changed… so we decided we will go to Dschang and have a quick repair and then go to Bamenda and do the project visits on Wednesday…

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On the way down to Dschang we stopped at the windturbine of the neighbouring village that had inspired us to the project last year. The windturbine is placed at a hospital to pump water. We found someone from the hospital to tell us a bit more about the wind turbine, since we had observed that is was broken. Well here is the story: The turbine was donated and constructed in 2006 by a french organization through a person from that village that studied in France. It was built to produce electricity that is stord in a huge battery system. The electricity then goes through a inverter (to change DC to AC) to run an electrical waterpump that pumps three times a day 1000 Liter water from a 45 m deep well. After 8months the inverter broke since the hospital had a power failure and some electrician decided to bridge the fuse and run the whole hospital with the electricity produced from the turbine. The inverter now cannot be repaired or replaced since the parts are not available in Cameroon… It is really a pity that this project failed so quickly, but it also gives a lesson to learn. It shows how important it is to ensure the material used for such technology is locally available and how important the technology transfer is…

 

But back to the car – as soon as we hit the paved road our car now started vibrating… we went to see a mechanic in Dschang to find out that we would not leave Dschang that day… The tire had to be changed since it was bent and the noise in the engine was still to be diagnosed…

So we made out for plan B, which was meeting Gilbert, another person (geographer) from the village who is doing his PhD at the university in Dschang on the topic of sustainable development in the village. He had some valuable information and papers that he had written on deforestation and its impact on the village – information we need for our underproject of environmental education in the area. So we met him and stayed the rest of the day in Dschang waiting for the car to be repaired. By then we had given up the plan on going to anywhere else than Dschang.

 

 

On Wednesday we had to get back to the village since we had a meeting with the interviewers in the late afternoon. We decided since we cancelled the trips to Bamenda and Bafoussam that we might as well go early and then check out the waterfall site for the demonstration site again. The site is near the fons palace with approximately 20 households around that will benefit from the demonstration site.

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In the afternoon we had the meeting with our interviewers of whom only 4 showed up (with 2 being excused) – we clarified a few questions on the questionaire and discussed the challenges of a few questions. In general the few interviews that had been carried out until then were very good, so the data collected will be of use for us. We only hope that the things we clarified during that meeting made its way to the ones missing out on this meeting.

 

On Thursday we left early morning for going bakc to Buea with a stop over in Douala, since we really wanted to check on two parcels that were supposed to arrive for the project. One is a parcel from South Africa with copper wire inside that was donated to the project by a SA company… It came by airfright and was supposed to arrive September 11^th – which it apparently did, but noone thought it necessary to contact us to tell us that it was there… The cost for storage of course increased trough that ‘little’ delay. And of course we did not have the right documents with us, so we needed to come back to pick it up. But at least we found out it was there.

 

The second parcel is one from Germany, that was supposed to arrive in Douala on September 2^nd. Well it did arrive just not in Douala but in Nigeria (guess our freight handeler in Germany forgot to tell us that the container in which our parcel was, was not to be shipped directly to Douala…). Anyways after many phonecalls to the freight agent in Douala we finally found out that the container in which our parcel was had reached Douala on the same day we were there. Clearing of course still needed some time…

 

Well at least we found the parcels – and yesterday Johannes tried to get the one from SA out of customs… The price they tell us so far is 800 Euro for customs… we left it there for now…

 

And since we know since 7 a.m. this morning that there is a public holiday today (no joke, we only know since this morning that it is the end of Ramadan today), we did not go back to Douala today, we will try again tomorrow and see how we get that parcel out of customs…

So far so good – we had an amazing trip to the village, accomplished what we were there for and learned that trips by car can become expensive and should in the road conditions here not be planned too european, especially in the rainy season J

 

Take care

 

Cornelia and Johannes