Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Happy X-Mas from Cameroon

We've got lots of Christmas lights and fake plastic trees up around Buea (seriously) and everyone is wishing everyone else a "Happy X-mas." Tonight should see lots of partying around town - usually Christmas Eve is when everyone goes out drinking with their friends. Tomorrow people will be spending the holiday with their families and friends. I've had several invitations so I'll be moving between several different places over the course of the day and night. I anticipate a long, steady, gorging process.

Hope everyone out there is enjoying the holidays! Best wishes from Cameroon.

Oh, Goody

Just what Cameroon needs: rebels.

Busy today trying to wrap things up before Christmas but I'll try to post more on the tortured recent history of the Bakassi peninsula after the holiday.

Fortunately I don't think there's any danger to me or any other Peace Corps volunteers - we're nowhere near this area. Just to be on the safe side though Peace Corps has given us orders to stay away from the beach for the next few weeks. Hopefully nothing will come of this.

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Back to the Lecture Hall

VisiCalc: On the bleeding edge of technology

After my time at the university in Nanga, I thought I was probably done with the college scene here in Cameroon. Not quite. A member of my NGO's board of directors is an economics professor at the University of Buea (located here in ... Buea). A few weeks ago he invited Bill and I to give presentations on business and technology at a seminar for his students. So, last Wednesday we went before an audience of several hundred UB students (mostly economics, business, and accounting and finance majors) in a packed lecture hall.

Fortunately, we had technology on our side. The school had loaned us a projector, so we were able to set up a laptop and use PowerPoint for our presentations. I even got to include the cool VisiCalc screen shot above.

There were presentations by our host on the stock market (interesting) and by another Cameroonian professor on risk management (booooring). Bill gave a talk with lots of cool illustrations and animations and some video on how credit card transactions and online retail work (credit cards and online retail are not common here in Cameroon - the economy usually works on a strictly cash basis). I followed him with presentation introducing the use of information technology in corporate accounting and reporting. I gave a bit of history, then talked about spreadsheets as an essential accounting and reporting tool. After demonstrating how a spreadsheet works using Excel, I then moved on to a discussion of different types of accounting software packages from Quicken to SAP and some of the advantages and challenges of using them. I capped off the presentation with a demonstration of QuickBooks as an example of a simple accounting program.

The students seemed interested and we took some good questions at the end. All in all I thought it was a successful evening. It felt good to be back in the classroom.