Season Greetings!

New Year’s Eve 2011. I remember I celebrated that night with my cousin, her husband and some friends. At some point during the night, my cousin told us to write a (practical and possible) wish for 2012 on a paper and burn it in fire so the smoke would take the wish up. According to her, the wish would come true.

I remember my wish very well. I wrote that in 2012, I wanted to find myself a nice job somewhere in Africa. It almost came true, I got accepted to work with VSO in 2012, and although I left only in 2013, I think it still counts.

Now, it will soon be New Year’s Eve 2014. What should I wish for 2015?

I think 2015 will be an interesting year. I hope to continue the work we are doing here. Of course we will continue to donate textbooks to schools. But we also have a lot of new plans. Together with some partners we are trying to organise training for teachers in nursery schools and class one and two of primary school. If it all happens as planned, all over Cameroon over 2500 teachers will be trained and almost 65.000 pupils will benefit from that.

With Knowledge for Children we plan to start our so-called Leadership Program. The aim of this program is to make communities more pro-active, make parents understand why books are so important and get them to be actively involved in the education of their children.

Another program where I expect a lot of progress is the Income Generation Program. We will hopefully train women on some skills like soap making. We are looking at ways to use this also to increase the income of Knowledge for children.

Besides Knowledge for Children, I wish that in 2015 I will be able to keep working as a volunteer with my friends of the Rural Development Foundation. I wish that I could travel around the country a bit and see something more of Cameroon. I wish I will be able to share the beauty of this country with some friends from the Netherlands (Katja, Nima, Narges, Giuseppe, I’m waiting for you!)

I also wish for very materialistic things. I wish for the road to my house to be paved so I can safely walk to work in the rainy season, without fearing a car will hit me because the driver cannot control it anymore, and the dust which is hitting us now will be less. I wish for a constant supply of water. I wish for brown bread or just baguette to come to Kumbo. I wish for a reliable internet connection.

But most of all, I wish all of you a very happy, healthy and interesting new year. I thank everyone for the support I get from you, in whatever way.

I miss my family and friends in the Netherlands, in Benin and in Nigeria, but I am happy to be with my friends here in Cameroon. So maybe I am far, but in my heart I am still with all of you. Thank you for being with me, and I hope to meet you all in 2015!