The Afrika-Festival Tübingen 2015 has started!
The Programme Onchocercoses team presents its activities in the ‘Cameroon village’. 19 pagode tents are grouped together to represent Cameroon, which shall be the country in focus of this year’s festival.
http://www.afrikafestival-reutlingen.de/en/
Start of the Festival on Thursday: Situated close o the ntrance of the ‘Cameroon Village’, our tent shall be the first to be seen by the visitors when they enter the village. However and unfortunately, the guests from Cameroon had not received their visa in time!! The German Embassy in Yaounde had not benn capable to grant them the visa necessary for travel to Germany. This was true as well for the guests of the festival as for our four students from Cameroon, which we had invited. These students from the universities of Ngaoundéré and Bamenda should have participated in the presentation of the Programme Onchocercoases project. Then, starting on Monday, they were expected to participate in a two wekks workshop on new molecular techniques in medical entomology, held by Albert Eisenbarth and Babette Guimbang.
On Friday, the Africa-Business-Meeting and Embasadors Talk to place in a large tent on the festival. Mr. Otto Erbe, head of the Industrie und Handelskammer welcommed the guests and introduced the speakers. After the talk, his Excellency Jean-Marc Mpay, Embasssador of Cameroon to Germany and his wife visited the Programme Onchocercoses presentation. They highly appreciated the work done in collaboration with IRAD and the universities of Bamenda and Ngaoundéré and had a long talk with Ms Babette Guimbang, who recently had received a teach-at-tübingen grant.
On Friday evening, a heavy thunder-storm went over the festival and forced the visitors to refugee under the tents.
On Saturday however, a very heavy storm sadly forced us to finish our exhibition. Many tents were destroyed.
In summary, we had a strong and interesting presentation at the festival, which this year was extremely well prepared by the organisors. Unfortunately, the Cameroon Village was left deserted because of the problems in obtaining the visa for the representatives of Cameroon.
More pictures from the festival on the homepage of the local newspaper: http://www.tagblatt.de/Home/bilder/bilder-lokales_autoplay,1_mmid,5797.html#454092
Alfons Renz
F 
