Club Odza

We are getting more and more settled at home: the fence is finished hence Jara can play safely outside, all our luggage has arrived - now with the babypool we feel like holiday every day, and we've got fast internet!! The vegetable garden is growing well, we've had already a nice cucumber to eat and harvest beans every day. The gras we planted is less of a succes. The ants and birds were eating it faster than we could plant it... but we'll try a different technique.

Geraldine, our new nanny is great. In the mornings, when Jara's gone to the crèche, she cleans and irons and in the afternoon, she looks after Jara when I want some time for other things (like updating this blog for example).

And today our dog arrived...

Miko (that's how we baptised him, can't remember his italian name) arrived today and feels at home already. It's a young Cameroonian dog whose previous owners are leaving to go back to Rome. But as Miko only understand - a bit of - Italian, and as we don't, we'll have to change his language. Knowing us, it'll be a mixture of German, Dutch and French. He'll also still need some potty training and learn NOT to eat shoes, toys or the swimmingpool. On the good side, he's used to eat everything: from vegetables to plantain (fried banana's), bread and other left-overs.

This morning, Milan came to play and it was great watching them play in the pool.

A few weeks ago, Cameroon held a CEMAC (Conférence Monetaire d'Afrique Central) meeting for its memberstates. To show a bit of power politics, the road to and from the airport was closed for most of the day when the high officials (mainly presidents) arrived and left again a few days later. And we live... en route de l'aeroport...
It was a bit of a hassle and took some patience and strong nerves as I had to pick up Jara from the crèche the day the officials left. Luckely I was able to get to there in the first place, but to get back it took me over an hour (the crèche is 10 min away) of driving to and fro the different access roads, discussing with the policemen, gendarmerie and presidential guards to convince them that I really wasn't going to the airport, I didn't even need to cross that one crucial junction. It's amazing how one person can close a capital down, get all military staff available to stand at every single junction between the Hilton Hotel and the airport for a whole day. What would have happened if we needed emergency health care?? Don't want to think about that he.