Its the weekend and we have been planning our trip to the north west: I leave the capital tomorrow at -am on a - hour bus ride to Bamenda, a large town the size of Cardiff. Here I will meet the mayor of Ndu, have supper with him the, the next day it is another - hour drive to my new home in the tea plantations.

Its been a great week, shopping for material and celebrating Margs birthday between working learning about local government in Ndu. The best new of all is that my case has arrived. Yusuf, the dirver, went to colect it at èpm on Wednesdy. He has done this 20 times before but this time the customs officer demanded that he drove all the way back to Yaounde to fetch me and Rachel so that we could verify that they were our cases. We drove through rush hour traffic.It took 90 minutes.

Then the man who deals with lost cases was out.

Finally I tracked down the head of customs, a fierce looking woman who was not keen to part with the bagI am told that she wanted a bribe, but, VSO says we have to resist corruption so, I answered her every question and finaly she agreed to part with my bag. Why? Because we shared the same second name _ Louise. I have never been so pleased to be called Louise.

I now have clean clothes, an i pod and a laptop. What more could I need in life?