I have spent the better part of the past 48 hours restoring my computer and throwing water down my toilet to make it flush.  Countless skype calls to the MAC service center and too much money spent to re-download programs I had meticulously selected before I arrived in Africa - in combination with 2AM freak outs - is enough to put a person on edge for the better part of the day.  Still, I am here, sitting, sipping away at my Nescafe elated as I type away on my lap top keys and download the la...
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Really, I’m not really much of a braggart, but in respect to all awesomeness that has been the last 19 months of my life I feel the need to tell you why should volunteering abroad if you haven’t yet.

Lets start at the beginning… its fresh, crazy, fascinating, jubilating, different. When you first arrive its nothing you expect, it’s a realization of what the word culture really means. How cultural differences aren’t just traditions, past-times, songs, etc, but social interactions an...

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Volunteering abroad is funny thing. When taking the plunge to go abroad, our assumptions on difficulty are often corporeal, things like pit toilets, unbearable car rides, etc. But I’ve found that the real trials we international volunteers face here is social.

Recently, I was at the market with a fellow volunteer who asked the price of grapes. “Whiteman pay 500 for 1-1 grape.” Many Cameroonians have a way of seeing us foreigners as money bags. They assume we come from our palaces in the...

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I came to Cameroon almost 17 months ago to the day. It’s funny now to think about my expectations on that day. I was just coming out of University, excited, nervous and anxious about living in Africa. I’d traveled before and my learned experience was to travel with as few assumptions as possible since they’ll undoubtedly be turned upside down. Still, we all have an image of Africa. The media shows us the famine, the desolation, the war, and a mental image is made.

Villages, huts, guns,...

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    I guess its about time I introduced myself... If you've followed YAN's development I'm sure you've seen me here on the site as a member of "the team." I've been here in Buea since December of 2009 volunteering at Buea School for the Deaf (BSD) independently. I worked with Erin Wildurmuth (YAN Director) in teaching video production to the students at BSD last Jan-March and then continued to help Heather on her arrival last October at the Bilingual Grammar School. So I've been apart ...
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