Our apartment

Here are some pictures of the place we will call home for the next year or so. As you can see, it's not what many people have in mind when they think of African living – many of our friends at home expect it to more closely resemble something Bruce Parry visited in Tribe. The reality is, Yaoundé is an expanding city combining a variety of colonial, traditional and modern architectural styles. For example, the SIL compound we are living in closely resembles a typical late-20th century European concrete structure. There are many such buildings on the main road which we are on. Turn off to the right and a walk up a dry mud road takes you past smaller wooden homes and shops that look draughty by our standards – but when the coolest you get is typically around 18 degrees Celcius, insulation is hardly a priority!

Our living area is spacious – kitchen, dining room and living room combined. Here's what you see when you come in the front door:



Hmm, hardly a brilliant view. Turn to the right (around 60 degrees) and it gets better:





Keep turning.... on the notice board we have lots of cards various people sent us before we left NI.



To continue the tour, we'll move over to the cards and look back into the room. These pictures are looking towards the bedrooms (top) and with a slight turn, looking towards the kitchen area (bottom).




The furniture and fittings are a combination of what I can best describe as the SIL housing department's 'standard issue' and the leftovers from various inhabitants here over the years. The wicker sofa probably came from what we refer to as 'Furniture Road' (out the gate, turn left, left again at the Toyota garage) – several hundred metres of open-air stalls selling good-quality, locally made furniture. We're used to a roomy warehouse to walk round – but when the weather is predictable there's hardly a pressing need to invest in a roof, is there? I hope they remember to pull the tarpaulins over the goods by 4.00pm though! The rain has been regular this week to the point you could almost set your watch by it.

This was today's view (and enlarged, so you can appreciate the rain).





The windows are all 'louvered' and are generally left open to provide a nice draught. A thin wire mesh deters insects and geckos from coming inside, and bars deter anything that might be too strong for the mesh! This seems to be a common practice, which we have seen in other buildings. Some visitors wait until your door is open and dart inside while you don't notice – we have named this little guy 'Cedric'. He's been with us since we arrived, mostly minding his own business and feeding on any insects that find a chink in the security. At a whole two inches long, he's hardly obtrusive. Apologies for the image quality – he was hiding under the kitchen work-top and didn't want to come out for a photo. We're wondering if we can train him to sit, beg, roll over and pause on command.




If he ever begins to look like this guy (all 12 inches of him), Cedric will be encouraged to move on. This fella (and lots of his mates) freely roam the compound outside. A good population of geckos is a sign there are no snakes (we're told), so we're happy for them to stay!



Back inside, and before going to the bedrooms we see the kitchen in all its glory. The blue bucket, with a tap, receives water from the filter in the basin.



If we go out of the living-room/kitchen area, we come to the study (or, “spacious bedroom for a child” as an estate-agent would describe it).



Moving away from estate-agent speak we come to the spacious bedroom for adults. There are a number of opinions on whether mosquito nets are needed in the city. Our medical advice is that for the first while anyway, we'll be more tired than usual and hence more prone to illness, so take no chances. One morning soon, we'll remember it is there before bouncing out of bed and ending up trapped like flies in a web! It does provide us with some amusement – we haven't yet tired of humming the 'Mission Impossible' theme when getting into bed!



Finally, you'll be pleased to know that despite the changes in diet and so on, we haven't spent any more time than usual in this room:Finally, you'll be pleased to know that despite the changes in diet and so on, we haven't spent any more time than usual in this room: