City life

Not as nice as the view in Kumbo,
but still not bad

Some time ago I wrote about my adventures looking for an apartment in Yaoundé. Since last week I officially live in Yaoundé.

While I travelled to the Netherlands, my landlord finally managed to remove the previous tenant from the house. The landlord told me he disconnected that guys four years ago from water and light because he never paid the bills. Can you imagine living without water for four years? At least, the pipes and taps in my house didn’t really survive that. So plumbers have been working in my house for three days.

Luckily, my colleague moved my belongings while I was in the Netherlands. Most things made it, except for a table and my toothbrush… I borrowed a table from the landlord, so the house is fine now. Only the toothbrush is still missing!

The house is quite nice and until now the water and light have been really reliable. At least once it was fixed! It is quite a delight to just have water whenever you on the tap. Or to feel you can take your laptop off the charger as light will still be there by the time your battery is empty. Of course, you never know for sure but until now it works!

I live in a quite central location, but outside the real expat quarters. I like it, I can go there easily but I still feel like living in Africa. My neighbours already know me, when I came back from Kumbo I got comments that they missed me. I already have ‘my’ sandwich boy, tomato lady, onion lady etc.

After a few days in Yaoundé I had to travel to Kumbo. It was really nice to meet my colleagues and be in the office. But when I saw all the mud and entered the hotel without water, I remembered why I wanted to go to Yaoundé. 

I still need to get to know the city. Mission for next week is to get an office. For now, I have been working from home but that is kind of boring. Hopefully I can find someone who could sponsor Knowledge for Children by giving me a free office space. And, as a real Dutch, I want to get myself a bicycle. So; slowly getting a city life!