Cameroon visit (Part 1)

This is my first trip to Cameroon and to African continent. Let me give you brief information about Cameroon. It is former French and British colony and its independent came in 1960-61. It is one of the prosperous countries in Western Africa and Yaoundé and Douala are major cities. My visit is in Douala with some chance of visiting Yaoundé in the second week of my stay. I am staying in Akwa area, near the seashore of Atlantic Ocean.

Main difficulty I had so far is a language. Being a former French part, main language is French and only 30% of city populous speaks English. My hotel is located just near seashore. As Douala being a major port in Cameroon, it wasn’t surprising to sea large ships and containers from my room’s window. Weather so far is mild and I guess its typical equatorial weather with good amount of humidity in the atmosphere. Traditional French food is available and as long as you don’t mess up with waiters, there are good chances of getting delicious food within an hour once you place an order. Vegetarian dishes are also available although choices are very few for that.

One thing you will notice in Douala is number of 4x4 cars around. I think there are more SUVs in Douala than in London city. There are two reasons for this, first is that roads in the city and outskirts are not in good conditions and second reason is that people who got money they would like to show their richness by driving big cars.

Night is always darkest before the dawn

At some point in our life, we come to a situation when we face several difficult situations at the same time and we don’t know whether we will be able to get out of these successfully or not. At that point life seems like a long dark tunnel and we standing alone at the intersection where we see doors surrounded by darkness and we don’t know which door is the one which can lead us to the light.

Time is cruel. God is cruel, too. Time and god tests us to see our abilities and self believes at various junctures. We are nothing but the result of our past. The wrong decision taken in the past rebounds one day and number of those wrong decisions brings us to chaotic circumstances in the present. As a human tendency, we always believe that no matter what the current situation is, we will come out of this. We always hope for the best, and as night is always darkest before the dawn, we think that our future will be bright again some day.

Each of us is alone and each of us dies alone someday. Hence, we have to be prepared for any situation that comes in our life. Everyone has to pass this phase some point in lifetime. The only positive thing someone can have at that time is support from the closed ones. At that point we know who true friend is and who is really at our side. It is warmth and comfort of these people brings us out of our miseries. I really believe that there will be at least one door in the dark tunnel that can lead back to light. The path may be darker than we though but we will be able to cross it if we have support from our loved ones and if we have someone with us who really cares about us. I wish that no one come across the dark junction where he/she finds alone and no one there to support. I also wish I do not leave anyone alone in the dark when he/she asks for my help and I will be able to support the person.

We always have a choice

We always have a choice to do right thing. Everyday we come across many different situations for which we will have to make decisions in order to solve personal or work related problems. There always be a right path to follow to solve those problems, and that path may be a long and stringent, but at the end, we always finish our task with complete satisfaction. With all these situations, we also see shorter and less painful unethical path involving deception and dishonesty. And, it is up to us to follow right path or the wrong one.

Some of us have principles towards each and every aspects of life. Strong dedication to those values makes us different person from others who don’t have any moralities. It is what we do define us. There always be people around us those will try to pursue us to choose wrong path and we will need to beware of these pessimistic minded people.

Those people who have ideologies in life, they should always try to stick to those ideologies. With pure commitment to values of life, we can be what we want to be. It is always strong-minded person who gets tough tests from God. God and nature will not test weak-minded persons, as they are not capable of any test. If you believe in any religion, stick to it. No matter what anybody convinces you otherwise, you do what you believe is right for you and right for the people close to you. If you are vegetarian, try to stick to it. If anyone asks you to eat meat, you can always deny that.

It is an honest person who always gets tested by dishonest people and these dishonest people want to see whether this honest person will stray from the honesty or not. Dishonest people do not have any rules and hence they can play dirty games. But, if you are a person, who believes in certain values and follow principles in life, please stick to your beliefs, because once you dishonour your values, you will never be able to go back to the stage where you were before. And the image you created for yourself will vanish forever from your mind and from other people’s mind, too. If you follow right path, then no matter what happens on that path, do not deviate. Try to walk on it and you will prove it yourself (and to others, as well) at the end that you have made a right choice by walking on that path.

Extraterrestrial life

According to Darwinian theory, life on earth has evolved from the same common ancestors through the process Darwin called natural selection. We haven’t found sufficient proof regarding ‘same ancestors’ from whom we have all evolved. Some says that life has started here on earth as a result of chemical process on primordial elements while other suggests that life on earth has originally came from other planet from other solar system. We are still not sure whether there is any form of life available on other planet in the Universe.

Frank Drake, a famous astrophysicist who founded SETI programme, devised now famous and controversial Drake equation in 1960. Using this equation, one can find our chances to find any extraterrestrial life or to check whether there such life exists or not in the universe. Within scientific community, considerable disagreement on the values of most of the parameters for the equation exists, and hence, we have no clear value for our chances to communicate with civilised communities within our galaxy.

It is fascinating to think that what if the life on our planet is the only unique creation of the universe and no other form of life exists anywhere in the universe. If this is true than we are special, each and every other species on this planet are special because it took nature millions of years to form life as we see it now. It will be our responsibility to preserve life on earth because we as a human are the most intelligent species and hence we are more responsible to take care of our planet.

Thinking about other possibility, what if there is an intelligent life exists somewhere, may be in our galaxy or in other galaxy? Can we be able to communicate with them in our lifetime? By looking at recent technological advancements in radio telescope and astronomy in general, I don’t think that right now we have that much capability to probe in the distant galaxies or to understand signals from aliens if we are able to capture any.

To probe further:

http://frombob.to/drake.html

http://www.seti.org