What’s your address?  This is a common question and before living in Cameroon, I had a specific answer.  David & I had a specific street address wherever we lived in the USA and in France.  Now the answer is quite different.  I can give an address that is equivalent to a P.O. Box for flat mail that gets collected for everyone in our organization, but our home doesn’t have a number on it, we don’t live on a marked street and to explain how to get here one must know several surrounding landmarks.

I remember when we first arrived and were going through orientation, our trainer for living here went over a list of location names we would use for getting around in a taxi.  She explained we would say a certain word to get to a certain area of the city.  I  asked why we would use those specific words when there isn’t anything around with that name.  She went on to explain that at one time (1980’s) there was a building with that name on it at that location and so on and so forth.  Now I don’t think anything of it and give directions based on landmarks, based on things that stick out (like a big tire in the center of a roundabout) or based on things painted on buildings.  So, if you want to know how to get to our home, you first need to know where Mvan is.