The second week, I started accompanying my colleagues to clients to audit their books. I worked at a computer trader, a fish wholesaler, a brewery and many companies I don´t remember any more (I am writing this more than four years later). By checking tax declarations prepared by my colleagues for plausibility, I slowly understood the complicated tax system. So after about six weeks I was able to fill out the tax declaration forms myself, and some weeks later I found myself training the Cameroun traineeships employed how to do it - I had become something like an instructor for Cameroun tax systems. During the traineeships I prepared balance sheets and did some book-keeping as well. My boss managed to get a part of an World Bank Project. All the public or partly public companies were to hand in some statistical figures regularly. But by most of them the form wasn´t filled in. They apparently did not know how to do it (or werenÄt willing to do it). So it was our job to visit three of the companies in question, to find out the necessary figures from the past, and to instruct them how to do it themselves in the future. Our first client was a tea plantation in the anglophone part of the company. They claimed not to understand the form, because it was written in French (Cameroun is bilingual with English being one of the official languages). So we first had to translate the form before being able to fill it in. The work went much smoother with the too other clients, a palm oil producer and an india rubber plantation. It was an interesting project which I partly took part in together with the boss M. Tchokogue and the “chef de mission” M. Kamdoum, partly on my own. What I liked most about it was that it implied travelling and that it gave me some interesting insights into the agricultural companies.

Not only by working for and with Cameroun Companies I learned much about the country and it´s culture. I took advantage of the AIESEC network and lived with a Cameroun family - treated exactly like a daughter and feeling like that, too. This allowed me to experience the daily life in Cameroun, with all its pleasures and inconveniences. There were as well the members of AIESEC Douala and AIESEC Cameroun, who invited me for week-end trips, projects and meetings. And, naturally, I tried to travel as much as possible. Some of my impressions of the different parts of Cameroun are shown on this home page.

Forming the boundary between West and Central Africa, Cameroun is about the size of Spain with one-third of its people - about 12 million. Douala, with over a million inhabitants, is the largest city. Geographically, Cameroun is the most diverse country in Central and West Africa, if not the entire continent. There are three major zones: the northern savannah area, the southern and eastern rainforests, and the smaller western hill region near Nigeria that was once British Cameroons. During most of the colonial period, France and Britain split up Cameroun, causing severe unification problems when independence came. There´s not even a single official language: Cameroun is unique in Africa in that both French and English play that role. The array of ethnic groups and languages in Cameroun is bewildering. With more than 130 ethnic groups, it is one of the most ethnically diverse countries in Africa. Strongly hierarchical, some are tenaciously managing to hold on to their traditions. Tribal leaders are not just called chefs (chiefs); the Bamoun call them sultans; the Bamiléké, fons; and the Fulani, lamidos