In the jungle....the mighty jungle....

I've been meaning to do this post all week but my internet has been soo painfully slow and im not patient enough to sit and let the page load for more than 10 mins so it has had to wait until now.

So last friday Jeff had to leave me here all weekend while he went to Mamfe, which is like maybe a 7 hour drive away from Douala, to survey an area with a customer who has a rural road contract and needs a few of our machines. Although it sucked being by myself, i was mostly just worried about Jeff on the roads because highway rules and regulations like speeding, overloading, no passing, staying in your lanes, ect. don't exist here. It really is a free-for-all and gives me a heart attack almost all the time. Anyways after all day driving he made it there friday night and made sure to call me and let me know he was safe and he'd call me in the morning before going out to the site. So saturday morning comes, i get up and wait for him to call since i have barely any credit on my phone (cell phones are prepaid with scratch cards here). 11 am comes and i still haven't heard from him, which is weird but i try not to get too worried and decide to go grocery shopping and get some phone credit. I tried calling a few times but it just rings and i start to get this sick feel that something isn't right. By 4pm i honestly start losing my mind and call and wake up my mom bawling...like she could do anything but still at least it was someone to talk to. We decided he just must not have any service where ever he is but i still feel like something is wrong. I spent the rest of the evening on my knees praying that he is safe and wondering what the heck i would do if something was wrong? Who would i call? I don't speak french, i have no idea where he is, and no one is here but us. It seriously was the worst feeling in the world. Finally just before 8pm my phone rings. I really have never been soo relieved in my life to hear his voice. After i finally pulling myself together he tells me he spent the whole day lost in the bush and was completely dehydrated. I thought i was having a bad day...i had no idea.

I guess he and the customer, Alhaji, went to a village that is along the site where the road is to be built and where it meets a river - and a bridge needed to be built - so they were trying to find the best (most narrow and inexpensive) spot for the bridge to be built and needed to check several possible crossing areas. I guess there were several villagers (each from different villages in the area) giving their opinions on where it should be built (of course with each arguing that it should cross closest to their own respective village). So the engineering team split up into a few groups to check various sites to see which would be the best, jeff going with the main contractor, an engineer, and a villager guide. They were told by the villager that it would take 1 hour to walk to the river, the part they wanted to see, so off they went. To make a long story short 5 hrs later they were still hiking to this spot that was suppose to be 1 hr away, with the guide saying it's just another 10 minutes every half hour (in other words, doing a very “good” job convincing them the bridge should be built in his village hey). Alhaji couldn't keep up to them so Jeff stayed back to walk with him and soon realized the villager and engineer had left them too far behind to ever catch up and were nowhere to be found. Jeff knew it was going to get dark in a couple hours and if they didn't turn around now they would never make it back before dark and would be lost. So they turned around on their own and started back. Jeff hadn't eaten or drunk anything minus an early morning breakfast of a piece of toast and hot chocolate, and didn't dare ask for any of alhaji's water since he could see that he was hurting and would need every drop for himself. So after hiking all day in the hot sweltering jungle mountains they were already soo tired and jeff was very much needing water. Anyways, they turned back and within an hour Alhaji was really having a hard time and just couldn't go anymore than a very slow pace with long breaks. Both of them knew that they couldn't find the way back in the dark, so they decided it would be better to have Jeff go ahead back to the village before dark and send some villagers back for him that knew the way in the dark, so they split up. Jeff made it back to the village just before dark and sent a few villagers back for Alhaji. He then tried finding some water but the village had no running or drinkable water. The main road to the nearest town was about 5 more km away where he could get some so he had no choice but to keep going. Just before 8pm and 46 km later (the surveyors later said they GPS'ed the distance) he finally got back to where they had started. He found some clean water and finally called me completely dehydrated and exhausted. It definitely was a bit of a rough day for both of us....although there are no words to describe how very grateful i was that my prayers were answered and he was able to have the strength he needed to make it out okay. We seriously have been soo very blessed over here. We haven't even gotten sick in the 2 years we have been over here. for some reason, only when we go home to good medical care we get sick. There is no doubt in my mind someone is definitely watching over us while we are here. We count our blessings everyday. Jeff did snap a few pics while walking through the bush. Doesn't it look absolutely beautiful.....it almost makes me wish i was there to see it in real life......almost.

This is taken from the main road at the beginning of the day. For some reason all i can think of when looking at this pic is mighty joe young bursting through the trees banging his chest....



The villager/lobbyist leading the way....



Gorgeous hey!




That's Alhaji. Jeff said the trees were ginormous!




This is the river that the bridge is to be build over.



Crazy Tree.



Resting in the village before deciding to continue for water.