Graduation from Orientation Week

Sara and I successfully graduated from orientation week by venturing into the "downtown" of Bamenda to do some shopping on our own Thursday afternoon. Didn't buy anything to exciting...mainly just some household type products and some basic foods that we hoped to cook providing we eventually got our gas cook stove for our kitchen. (The cook stove arrived today so we can now cook dinners :) ). We just went to the supermarket so we didn't have to do any bargaining but we managed to get there and back without getting lost and by getting our own taxis for the first time. We were pretty proud of ourselves.

Friday morning Emma, Marcelo, and Shela (all BCCSDR staff) went with Sara and I to Treasure Center which is a school for children and young people with intellectual disabilites in Upstation, Bamenda. It is an amazing school. Beautiful setting and although the school has been around for about 9 years, they moved into new facilities a few years ago and just completed the modern shower building recently. There was so much OT focus there without an OT that it made Sara and I pretty happy to see. Each child, parent and teacher help establish a goal for the child, and then work together through a variety of activities to help the child reach that goal. Once goals are reached, they pick a new goal! As the child gets older a lot of the activities have a vocational focus so that they can be employed after graduating from the school. Although Fridays at Treasure Center are usually sports days for some reason they weren't doing them yesterday. So I plan on going back to Treasure Center one Friday to see the sports activities they play to help me with my project for BCCSDR.

So what is my BCCSDR project? (or one of them). Well I will be working on preparing a document regarding inclusion in sports for people with disabilities including specific sport adaptations and modifications that can be implemented. Pretty sure all of you know that this is a pretty great and perfect project for me to be working on! I'm excited.

Friday night Mr. Julius took Sara, Emmanuel and I out for dinner in town. I had roasted tilapia (what we would call grilled), vegetables and chips and a beer (tried a Beaufort light this time).  Honestly, the potato chips (fries) here are amazing!!!!

At Mbingo Baptist Hospital

Today Sara and I took a taxi to meet Emmanual in town and then headed to Mbingo to go to Mbingo Baptist Hospital (a private hospital in Cameroon) with Emma and Marcel. Mbingo is surrounded by gorgeous landscapes, beautiful green covered hills and valleys. At the hospital is also a school for the hearing impaired where children come from all over and board there while going to primary. The goal is that the children will then be integrated into mainstream high school. Aside from our walk and experience visiting Mbingo, the taxi experience there and back was a new one for us too. Once we got to the outskirts of Bamenda our cab stopped and we had to transfer to a different cab. But at these new cabs we were required to wait until the driver had the amount of people he wanted. Although he originally told Emma that the back seat would be for the four of us, he took on more passengers so that we drove to Mbingo with 4 in the front (the driver basically on Emma's lap) and 4 of us in the back. I have no idea how the driver drove like that but we made it there. On the way home it was the same thing after waiting for a bit as taxi drivers argued over which cab got to leave with their 8 passengers first. Sara and I have been told a cab with 8 people could be what we experience some days on our way to SAJOCAH.

Thought of the day: One thing I have noticed is that almost all of the facilities or organizations we have visited so far have had workshop rooms or a focus on vocational rehab and learning or relearning a trade such as basketweaving, knitting, shoe making, farming etc. And almost all of the people we have met has said that part of the focus is on providing people a mean to support themselves financially once they are out of rehabilitation and back in their communities. Everyone is so passionate about people with disabilities being economically independent and a valuable and contributing member of the community - such a great thing that I don't think Canada has quite figured out to the same extent. Sure we have vocational rehab but it is most often linked to insurance and does not occur concurrently within the rehab facility. Yes the types of vocations are quite different but they seem to have figured out how to match the vocations people will be doing in their communities to the rehabilitation plan right from the start and continue once a client returns home, as opposed to only when the client returns home and it is time to go back to work.

That brings us to right now where we finally have internet in our apartment and will be heading out to pick up omlette and chips for dinner tonight.

(check back later because I will be adding pictures to the post hopefully tomorrow sometime!)