Greetings from Bamenda, Cameroon.

Some of you may recall that I asked for book suggestions before I headed off on my two year posting. I'm a British volunteer (from Newcastle upon Tyne) working for an AIDS charity.

The Julian Cope book is still doing the rounds here...love it.

Well I've been here five months. It's been tougher than I ever could have imagined but I'm still here.

Just a couple of things I wanted to say that are Word magazine related. Firstly I wondered if there are any other African podcast listeners. iTunes does not work here so I have to subscribe to the podcast on my RSS reader and manually download.

Even that normally takes about two to three hours. If there's a blackout (which is very common here) then I have to start all over again.

Above and beyond the obvious podcast quality banter - you might wonder why I bother - well work finishes at 4pm, and we're pretty much curfewed for our own safety after 6pm so what else is there? Podcasts are a godsend. Any chance of a mention...go on..

Another godsend are DVDs - amongst volunteers (us VSOers and the American Peace Corps) The Wire is very popular. I'm currently working on a range of Bamenda/ Baltimore inspired t-shirts. "Bamenda, one day at a time" is out soon. Also seeing as the president here is far from loved there's a "Carcetti for Cameroon" shirt in the pipeline.

I'm going to try and sell them via my blog eventually to raise money for fighting HIV/AIDS locally.

Also just wanted to mention the Word music download system with 7Digital. As I said already iTunes is a write off and 7Digital is the only system that works - well okay - each song takes two hours to download but in this context it seems entirely worth it.

My most played album since arriving: Nick Lowe's At My Age. Fabulous.

Finally I'll leave you a story from a my blog...just another day in Bamenda:

http://bit.ly/LobJ

PS Shame about the magazine overseas subscription rates. I haven't read The Word magazine since I arrived - nor any other magazines for that matter. I miss your fine magazine terribly (it comes third after family and sushi. Football has been relegated to fourth due to the rank crapness of Newcastle United)

Hope all is good back in the UK. Enjoy the snow.