moving on

That's it. Our life in Cameroon comes to an end. By the end of December, we will be living in Bujumbura, Burundi. Same continent, different country. Same same, but different. A lot different I think.

Thorsten will continue working with GIZ, but within a different project. If all goes well, there should be less extensive travel involved. The girls, especially Jara, have always found it hard when Thorsten was not there.
I hope to return to work too at some point.

We're looking forward to the change. We have spent 5,5 beautiful years in Yaoundé and it will be hard to leave. But we're happy. We've seen so many good friends come and go and now it is our turn.
We told Jara and Lisa and they seem excited. Although when we told them they'd be going to the Belgian School, we realised they expected to return to Europe... I know, it is confusing for their little minds.

Until then, we'll continue our little life here.
Jara has started first grade, which, for German tradition, is a very big thing. It includes choosing "Schulranzen" (schoolbag, sport sack, pencase, folder etc all in the same theme), having a "Schultüte" filled with toys and sweets and having a party. Thanks to some good German friends we were able to have a real Schultüte party:

Lisa was very good not getting all the attention, but obviously is expecting an equal opportunity next year ;-)

Siri getting bigger and cheekier each day. She's walking, more or less, and enjoys the attention she's getting from her sisters, who adore her. And, for a change, she's a great eater! (Those of you who don't know, Jara and Lisa aren't the greatest eaters).

She's so full of love and laughter, it's amazing. I'm curious how's she's going to deal with the changes.

Milk

Milk is delicious. Providing it's fresh and does not come in a brik after been UHT'ed and traveled for 5000 miles to get here.
Unfortunately, the last kind is the only kind available in Yaoundé (oh, and the powdered milk à la Nido etc). If you're lucky you can find fresh powdered milk on the market, sent down from the North or North West of Cameroon. Because there you can find milk. There, people have a tradition of herding cows, making yogurt and cheese. 
So when a friend and I found out that there IS in fact fresh milk, only it doesn't get to Yaoundé we decided to change that. 
We found a dairy in Kumbo, the Tadu Dairy Cooperative, that was willing to try it out. That was more than a year ago. 
Since then, we've set up a regular dairy delivery to Yaoundé of fresh milk, yogurt and butter. It's quite a challenge to get the dairy (and especially the milk) down and cold as it should. Kumbo is a 7 hours drive away, and that's on a good day without traffic. 
This is how it's usually done: 
We send the Dairy our order (and that of 80+ other milk lovers in Yaoundé) and a week later it arrives. The Dairy puts everything in big coolers filled with ice bottles. They drive the order up to Bamenda where it gets loaded on top of the night bus. Overnight, it travels down to Yaoundé and arrives here in the early morning nice and cold.
We've been having orders for over 350 liters of milk and more than 500 yogurts (of different tastes) and so far, none of it has arrived bad. 
The Tadu Dairy Cooperative is a cooperative that has had quite some funding and support from (mainly) US organisations such as Land O' Lakes, USAID and others. They are now completely independent and provide mainly the North West of Cameroon with yogurt, butter, cheese etc. More information on the success story of Tadu Dairy Cooperation you can find here.

 

life as a "non-working accompanying expat wife"

A non-working accompanying expat wife...What's in a name!?

Non-working; I am not having a job for which I get paid and for which I need to go to an office

Accompanying; I accompany my spouse who's the lead bread winner in this arrangement

Expat; according to Wikipedia an expatriate (commonly abbreviated expat) is a person temporarily or permanently residing in a country and culture other than that of the person's upbringing 

Wife; well, you all know what that means.

In our expat-family of 5, we employ a 2 wonderful people. We have V, our nanny and D, our housekeeper. 

Why employ 2 people if you don't work yourself, I can hear you wondering. 

We employed these people in the time that both T and I were working full time and were traveling frequently for work. Then my contract came to an end so we should just let them go? No. We made a commitment to V and D. They both have (extended) families that depend on their income and we make sure that income is sufficient and assured. 

V and D are extended family to us and are even more so for the girls. 

And I won't lie, it's great to have the house help. 

So what do I do with all that free time? ALL that free time is relative. Jara and Lisa are attending a school about 15 min drive away. It's a great little school but the hours are crazy. Add the after-school activities and playdates and I do an average of 4-6 (school) runs a day. 

And of course there's still Siri who's only 6,5 months old. And then there are the errands to do which take so much more time and energy as they would in our home country (electricity, water, internet and telephone all need to be paid in cash at their respective office, but that's another story). So my free time is pretty scattered throughout the day: 1 hour here, 30 min there etc.

But I don't complain. It's great to have V and D around and it's thanks to them that I can spend a lot of my free time on my new hobby. 

I bought a sewing machine a while ago and am really enjoying making things from scratch. The abundance of cheap fabric (9-10 Euro for 5,50m) gives room for a lot of trial and error ;-) and results often in pretty little things.