LISA is born

We are very happy with the birth of our daugther LISA on 10 November 2008! Both, Griet and Lisa are very well. The delivery was (again) rather fast and uncomplicated. Friday both got out of the hospital and we could enjoy a lovely weekend together. Jara has been absolutely beautiful with her little sister LISA. We are glad she is coping so well and hope she will stay like this. LISA had 3.380g and 51 cm, but the most amazing fact are her long feet - we have no idea where our little Bigfoot has these from. So far she is happily breastfeeding and hopefully nicely developing. We are glad we decided to deliver in Belgium as Griet had a very nice midwife and lovely nurses.

Limbe 7-13 september

Thorsten had partner visits last week in Limbe. Limbe is a small sea side town in the South West of Cameroon... So Jara and I joined and enjoyed the beach while Thorsten did his work.
Although rainy season has started, the rain mainly fell during the night. Most days were hot, humid and sunny.
Limbe is situated at the foot of Mount Cameroon, a still active volcano. Last eruption happened about 10 years ago and the lava stream passed at 200m of our hotel. It literally blocked the road. There's now an old and hardly visible signboard that warns for diversion. However if you don't know the road and arrive in darkness you might aswell end up in old scrap metal on the lava.

The beach is - thanks to the volcano - coffeeblack. It does feel a bit weird in the beginning, but Jara didn't mind at all. In contrast with Kribi, this time she couldn't get enough of 'jumping the waves'. Mummy just had to make sure she was there to catch her before going under.



We also visited the Wildlife Centre, an initiative from the Cameroon Government, in collaboration with the Pandrillus Foundation (www.limbewildlife.org). The Wildlife Centre houses several spieces of primates and other wild animals that have been rescued from the bush meat trade. Bush meat is still very popular although it is illegal to hunt for bush meat. Jara loved watching the gorillas, chimpansees (especially the baby-ones that were orphaned when there parents were caught and killed) and other animals. She has a nack of communicating with them - hilarious.

One day we went to Buea, a little town on the mountain, about an hour from Limbe. I didn't know there were 2 roads going to Buea and mistakenly guided Thorsten up the old, potholed (but very scenic) road past teaplantations and with gorgeous views. I, however, was a bit at unease and afraid I may go into labour there and then.
Buea reminds of a little hillstation, with its small winding roads. It is the startplace for treks up Mt Cameroon and by the time we left, we were in the clouds.

Now, I'm slowly slowly getting ready for my departure to Belgium next week. I'm sad to leave Odza but I'll be relieved when I'm safe and sound on Belgian ground. I just don't want anything to happen to me while I'm here!

My work in Cameroun

Since march 2008 I am now in Cameroun as the country representative for Broederlijk Delen (BD). Having worked the previous 7 years in the forestry sector (mainly on Community Forestry or FLEGT policy work) I am grateful to be back in my real domain - the agricultural sector. BD is supporting 15 local partners in the field of sustainable rural development. For logistical and development reasons BD focuses on three regions in Cameroon - the Extreme North, North West and the great Center-South. Most of our partners are small organizations working directly with farmer groups and associations.
In the past weeks I have visited most of my partners and could learn about their work. During my trips I could experience with my own eyes the huge diversity we have in Cameroon. The Extreme North reminds me very much of the Senegambia. I felt like I have returned to my roots in Africa, seeing the wide open Sahel plains with groundnut fields, donkeys, mud houses and experiencing the hot days. The only real difference for me was that the majority in Cameroon is Christian, whereas West Africa is Islamic. So I had the permanent urge to use the Islamic greetings 'Salam Alaikum' but soon realized that this was the wrong place. Life in the Extreme North is rather difficult as it is very dry and the nature harsh. It seems however, that the harshness of the life is compensated by the warmth of the people and a very 'no-nonsense' appeal. Most of our partners in the Extreme North are around Maroua and work on the improvement of the soil and agricultural production, the marketing aspect of the products, and the strengthening of farmer groups and organizations with the aim to improve the lives of the people. The real threat to the lives there is the ongoing desertivication and with it the further destruction of valuable and scarce agricultural land. [To be continued...]

Greetings from Kribi

Looked forward to it for weeks, counted the days... and now it's already over... our (long) weekend trip to Kribi. Especially Griet looked forward to leave Odza and its surroundings. Thorsten has had his share of partner visits the last few months and has been in North Western, South Western, Extreme Nord and Central provinces. He has already seen the sahel, mountains and pygmeés. No wonder Griet was getting itchy feet to leave. But 4 days in Kribi have made up for it!
4 days of relaxing, strolling along the beach, fantastic seafood, playing games, reading or doing absolutely nothing. The sea was too rough to swim, but Jara wasn't too keen to get her feet wet anyway - the big waves were a bit scary. Els, a BD volunteer from Ngoumou joined us for this trip before getting ready to return to Belgium.

Jara provided enough entertainment though: the first day we removed a tumbofly from her bum. A tumbofly or mangofly lays its eggs in clothes that are hanging to dry, especially under mangotrees. If the clothes are not well ironed (like the elastic of your knickers), the hatched maggot enters your skin and lives of you. It looks like a pimple, except it has a black tip.
The second day, Jara suddenly got feverish but the fever went down the next day - probably teething, the poor kid is getting 2 molars at once!!

Now we're back at home in Odza and it has to be said, there is no place like home!

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.

Cameroon –just arrived

Not much yet to tell really. Except that the weather is great: cool nights, warm to hot days and a shower every couple of days to wash everything clean (including the inside of the car as we forgot to close the windows…)

Materialistic as we are, I’m gonna start with our house: It’s a great place, newly built (which means not a manicured garden as yet…), with a big garden and on the outskirts of Yaounde. But within 20-30 min drive of the city centre. Water and electricity are mostly present – we’ve had a couple of power and water cuts but mainly due to technical problems rather than availability. On the picture below, you see our house on the left and the office and guesthouse on the right. Both are connected with a great terrace.

Jara’s doing fine. Is enjoying running around naked or just a nappy and having a lot of space. A difficult sleeper as she always has been, the nights are not too bad! We’re getting a couple of nights through every so often – hopefully that will become regular before too long. We’re in the process to look for a crèche or something similar which would be good for Jara. She misses her Bangkok –buddies!! Luckily, with us arrived another couple with a son, only a few months older than Jara. We meet up with them at least once a week to let the children have a good play.

We have explored Yaounde a couple of times and no, it’s not Bangkok, nor Ghent or Stuttgart. But if you look, you can find everything. Before leaving Belgium for example, we were warned to bring a water filter as they don’t have them in Cameroon. As they are impossible to find in Belgium, we had one send to us the week before we left from Germany, at great expense. On our first outing in Yaounde, what do we see… dozens of water filters for sale at a fraction of the price we paid in Europe… future travellers, be warned!

Work wise, Thorsten is getting settled well and looking forward to the coming partner visits with trips into the country. I haven’t really started looking for fulltime paid positions as we have another baby coming in November. So far I’m feeling fine and have had no problems. Where I’ll be for the delivery is not decided yet. We’re trying to figure out the options and if possible I would like to deliver here. But we’ll see.

Pai - Mae Hong Son

Leaving Thailand for good, it must be done in style. So we decided to go for the last 10 days to the North of Thailand and do 'the Pai- Mae Hong Son Loop'. It was well worth it.

We set of to Chiang Mai and rent a car from there. Arriving in Pai, we decide it is such a nice chilled out place, we hang out there for 5 nights - oops! Half of our holiday gone and we haven't started properly... The fact we were staying in a beautiful place in the middle of the rice fields (http://www.thecountrysidepai.com/en/index.php) may have had something to do with it. Pai is a great place to do day treks from. With Jara we were obviously limited in what we could do, but we managed to visit a couple of so called 'coffin caves', drove to and through hill tribe villages and made a few walks in the villages and rice fields.

Arriving in Mae Hong Son, we immediately realized that if we would not have stayed 5 days in Pai, we would have done it in Mae Hong Son (http://www.sangtonghuts.com/index.html). MHS attracts lots of hill tribes who come to sell their local produce in town. There are lots of influences of Myanmar (Shan temples, Shan kitchen etc) which brought back memories of Griet's friends of Myanmar during her study. We also went to the Myanmar border and stuck our hand into Myanmar - didn't dare to cross the border as there was no-one there but a watch post a bit further and you never know if they are watching you with their binoculars.

Another great outing was visiting the Long-neck Karen or Padaung Karen village. They came into Thailand years ago, fleeing Burma and their refugee camps have become their home. Jara was as much an attraction to them, as they were to us. The same happened in every hill tribe village we passed. Jara was often almost pulled out of our arms, so keen were they to pick her up. And to be honest, it made it much easier to make contact and take pictures too!

In the Doi Inthanon National Park we stayed in a village-run place. The funny thing was that they cultivated their own coffee in the Karen village, which we could go and taste but the guest house only served instant Nescafé...

Al in all it was the perfect way to say goodbye to Thailand. We will go back but it won't be for the first couple of years.
Now, we are getting ready to move to Cameroon and start our new life there. Thorsten will leave for Yaoundé 2nd March but has to come back to Belgium for work in April already. So Griet and Jara will join him at the beginning of May, when the 3 of us will go back together and start the new adventure.

X-mas in Uganda

When you live in Thailand, Tourist destination no 1, why would you go to spend X-mas in Uganda?

We came from Thailand, Thorsten's parents, sister and niece from Germany and Griet's sister from Belgium and we all met at the Kenis- residence in Wakiso (house of Griet's parents, who live there), near Kampala.


After a few days of adjusting to the weather and jetlag, we took off in a minivan to meet Santa Claus in Fort Portal, walk around the Crater lakes in Nkuruba, search for lions (failed), hippo's (succeeded) and elephants (succeeded) in Queen Elizabeth National Park and get lost in the markets in Kampala.
We were very lucky with the weather and the electricity - I think the Ugandan government provided a X-mas special. Only once or twice did we have dinner by candle light.

At the end of the holiday, Thorsten and I took a 2-day honeymoon in Jinja at the sources of the Nile and left Jara in the good hands of my parents... She didn't blink once. Think she didn't even notice we were gone... Due to the problems in Kenya and the fuel shortage in Uganda we managed to get a ride both ways although it wasn't always sure we'd get back.

We all suffered a bit of the usual holiday disturbances which make you run to the loo several times at night but it never interrupted our itinerary. Having 2 babies with us ensured that we took it easy and therefore were able to enjoy more as you can see in the pictures.
Luckily Jara and Sophia did not complain about 'too long hikes'. They joined willingly.

A girlie holiday in Krabi

Through lucky unforeseen circumstances my mum (Griets mum that is) ended up coming to Thailand for a week to join me for a nice holiday in Krabi - women only!

As you can see on the pictures below, Krabi's scenery is wonderful and the beach is never far away... We just relaxed, snorkeled, swam in the ocean and swimming pool, played games, read books and just enjoyed being with each other. Jara just loved the water and would have stayed in it all day long if it wasn't for the hunger now and then - and breastfeeding in the water, not sure about that!


One had to take a long tail boat to get to the peninsula in the first place but Jara didn't mind at all. All she could do was smile and chat away. She obviously enjoyed the 24h attention she got from grandma... and grandma enjoyed Jara...


We were so lucky with the weather as this time of year Krabi has the highest rainfall... But we had rain only once and it was in the evening.



And now the added bonus: as we were ready to board the plane to go back to Bangkok, Thorsten called to say that he has a job in Yaoundé, Cameroun for early next year... So we're getting ready here for our new adventure!!

Holidays, wedding and much more

Jara's been growing soooo fast, you would not believe it. When she was 6 weeks old (it seems like yesterday) Thorsten's parents came for a visit to Thailand. 2 weeks of helpful hands, traveling and lots of advice. It was wonderful.

We decided to do some traveling in proximity of Bangkok, just to get the hang of it (traveling with a baby that is). A visit to Khao Yai National Park was on the top of our list. We've been in Thailand for more than 2 years and we never made it... shame on us!
We stayed in a lovely place amidst the green hills of Khao Yai en enjoyed the surrounding nature and wildlife. Jara (who has always been a difficult sleeper at night) slept wonderfully in this fresh air.

As we were up that end of Thailand we decided to come back to Bangkok via Buriram, a restored Khmer site à la Angkor Wat. Also Thailand has quite a number of ruins from that era and some Thais even claim that Angkor Wat in Cambodia belongs to them... Nevertheless, whoever it belongs to, these sites are beautiful and absolutely worth a visit.

After spending a few days in the jungle, it was time to wash off all the insects at the beach in Hua Hin. We went back to Jara's birth place and paid a visit at the hospital wing where she was born. The nurses we delighted to see how much she had grown in these few weeks.

Again we stayed in a lovely place and there the idea grew of spending the next Christmas together in Uganda, where Griet's parents live. As of now, the tickets and accommodations are booked and we are looking forward to land on African soil.

Once Thorsten's parents left it was time for Griet to organise her wedding dress... Which was an adventure on its own, not the least finding a tailor who can sew a proper dress ('Thai style' wedding dresses are very, very glittery and extremely tightly stitched together so you can barely move, let alone dance!).

Although Thailand is the country of custom made clothes, Thorsten also needed some encouragement to get his suit tailor made. However, it all worked out well in the end.

At the beginning of July, Griet flew to Belgium with Jara where her mum met her at the airport, arriving from Uganda the same time. We needed the extra weeks to finalise the wedding preparations... ever tried organising a wedding from a distance (Griet and Thorsten in Thailand, Thorsten's parents in Germany, Griet's parents in Uganda and the wedding to be held in Belgium)?

It was also a time for Griet's family to meet Jara and Jara to meet her relatives.

The wedding itself was wonderful. The Weather Gods were extremely kind and provided us with Bangkok-like temperatures. Most of our friends from all regions of the world came to Belgium for this day.



The service was beautiful, plenty of good food and drinks and non-stop dancing.

It was so nice to meet again with all the friends we met during our stay and work in The Gambia, UK, Germany and Belgium. The fact that people made an effort to come from so far away (some came from as far Mexico, Afghanistan, Ecuador and Cameroon) made it an unforgettable day.

The next day we had an "after party" for those that came from furthest away and that was as much fun as the wedding day itself. It gave us an opportunity to have some more time for our friends, finish the leftovers from the party and have a BBQ.

Before we knew it, the holiday was over. Now we're back in Bangkok and for Griet, the job search has begun. It's great, looking after Jara full time, but one needs to find a job at some point...

Since we are back we have been able to go away for a weekend to Vientiane, Laos and again, a very nice place to be... wouldn't mind finding a job there...
It is, just as Luang Prabang in the North of Laos, a very laid back place where you can stroll along the Mekong River, have pint and good French food.

Last weekend we went off with the Bangkok House Hash Bikers (http://www.bangkokbikehash.com) to Nakhon Nayok (towards the Khao Yai National Park). Thorsten did the biking, I did the swimming in the pool with Jara instead.
It was a very nice weekend away, among lots of trees and fresh air. The right environment to reload our batteries for another couple of weeks Bangkok. Because in 3 weeks time we head off to Krabi - another one of these places we've never been...- for 5 days beach, sea and sun (although it's rainy season, we have ordered good weather).