September and the end of the year draws nigh!

September heralds the end of the year. I started writing this on 18th September and it already 1st. October! The summer months passed quickly and we are now heading for the best time of the year – a slightly cooler dry climate as the sun slumbers into its southerly phase. Notwithstanding, the humidity has been high and with little rain now, the temperature has risen. Locally grown vegetables have been plentiful and the corn and yam particularly sustaining.

Maroua is gearing up for the presidential, pre-election visit this Tuesday. The President rarely comes to town and this is a big event. All the hotels will be full and people will come in from the outlying towns and villages. There will also be those from the two biggest cities to the south in the same region as President Biya is only coming to Maroua. Then there are the elections on 9th October so it will be a pretty hectic week. They tell us to have supplies in reserve and to avoid any congested areas.

Work has been going well and my academic responsibilities are increasing. This is good as it means acceptance and recognition of my work and efforts so far. But more about this when things get under way – at the moment, they are still at the drawing board stage. I have also been writing short articles in French on certain topics of Ayurveda and health. Suffice to say that there is little awareness of health and well-being here. People wait until they are really sick before seeing a doctor and they seem to die “suddenly”. As families are large, there seems to be always someone you know in mourning and this means the person is away from work for almost a week.

Up until last week, one of the two bridges crossing the river was in such a bad state of disrepair that they had closed it for a couple of months! Repairs were finally undertaken and now the traffic is more evenly distributed over the two bridges. I may have mentioned it in a previous posting, the bridges themselves are remarkable – they were built by the Germans prior to the First World War and still hold strong. The problem is that there is virtually no road maintenance. One of the main artery access roads has so many potholes that the motorbikes have to skirt from one side to the other to avoid them. Quite hazardous, really, but that’s the way it is. To the front of the apartment building, there is the cement distribution center as you know. Well, the trucks park on the dirt road and with the rains, their wheels have gouged enormous holes in the dirt road, so big that a regular sedan car can hardly slip through. You can be sure that Cimecam won’t be paying for road repairs.