This is a picture of the Wardens home at the school we taught at. Finally got a picture up!

Hey, everyone! We're still trudging along here. This will be the third installment to this blog since the last time I wrote. Something always happens before I can post it and then Hayley posts and my info becomes second hand. Anyway we are now in Bamenda. We kept hearing from everyone in Limbe how great Bamenda was and how everyone came from here. Everyone talked about their village. So I expected to find this virtual Garden of Eden with people living in little grass huts or something. It's not like that at all. It's like a bigger, slightly more organized, much quieter version of Limbe. The people are nicer. Here at least no adult has called us "whitemon", to our face. Some children have though. My last blog I was trying to paint a picture in words of what it physically looked like... you won't believe this but we were actually able to post a picture. So you see every time I write my info gets to be old news.

I'll tell you about our crazy 6 hour bus ride. We arrived at the bus station at 9am and waited as they loaded all the luggage on top of the bus and strapped it down under a tarp. We sat around and a man that works at a little food place said Rosemary was his mother. I guess I should mention that she rode here with us, as she is taking weekend classes at the University near here. Well the man is not really the warden's son, but he did ask her if he could marry Hayley. We soon departed and stopped what seemed like every 5 minutes to pick people up, pay tolls, or be questioned by customs. Luckily there was a police commissioner riding with us so we never actually got searched. We really lucked out because we were traveling with all the medical supplies. The police and custom agents have a license to annoy people at will. But if you're in trouble, don't call them because they are not in the business of protecting the citizens or keeping the peace. Only the Lord above does that here. And I'm not being facetious. God save us if the people here had no faith. There certainly are no laws, as far as I can see. Anything goes. I seriously thank God every day for all the brave missionaries that came before. You've no idea.

Back to the bus ride: We bounced around for a few hours looking at the stunning scenery; mountains, banana plantations, rubber tree farms, palm trees, etc. The next thing you know we're slowing down to pay a toll and all the local people are rushing up to the windows of the bus trying to sell you things. They offer granuts (peanuts), fruits, things that nobody could tell us what they were and the farmers don't really speak English, so they didn't understand my question. It's a much smaller version of the people who descend on you when you cross the border in and out of Mexico. I bought some granuts for the trip and later pineapples and carrots to bring to our hosts. Then we were all treated to a show of sorts from the insane travelling salesmen/traditional medicine pushers that just jump on the bus at various stops. We had two, though not simultaneously. The first guy was selling ginseng from China. First he got all our gullible fellow passengers attention by asking them simple questions and then giving them candy for the correct answer. He spoke in English but the accent was very difficult to decipher. Therefore, when he claimed that the ginseng would cure malaria, AIDS and typhoid fever I had to ask him to confirm this claim as I repeated it. He said this was true and he had no problem with me questioning this. With this, even Hayley, who usually tells me to mind my own business, piped up and disputed this charlatan’s claim. Would you believe that most of those people defended this guy? They weren't nasty about it. It was all civil but pointless to argue with them as I have learned since being here. So I just said, "Well if you can believe that...". This made a few people laugh. But a few people bought this stuff and later the same people bought more illusion in a little glass bottles from the second travelling sales shyster. It reminded me of the musicals, "Oklahoma" and "The Music Man", well a little anyway. The trip ended uneventfully and our host, Christopher, picked us up in his SUV. He is a very nice, intelligent medical doctor who runs a clinic.