Paint BidTracker in Cameroon

A huge part of why I have been lucky enough to do this four month internship of sorts in Kumba with CFDP is because I am employed by an awesome company in the United States that allowed me to take a four month leave of absence and promised to hold my job for me when I get back. The company is Paint BidTracker, or PBT for short. Many companies would never think to do such a thing, especially given the fact that I had only been working at PBT for four months before I left for Cameroon. Therefore, I wanted to make sure I showed them at least a little bit a love all the way from Kumba.

Paint BidTracker is one of four companies that work semi-independently underneath the Technology Publishing Company, a company based in Pittsburgh, Pa., and comprised of around 50 journalists, graphic designers, and tech wizzes that do researching and publishing--both digitally and on print--for the protective coatings, engineering, and architecture industries around the United States. Paint BidTracker in particular is a reporting service that tracks state-funded construction projects out for bid around the country for general contractors, painting contractors, and protective coatings manufacturers. The "state-funded construction projects" that I'm talking about normally involve large industrial structures such as water towers, water treatment facilities, bridges, communication towers, marine ports, etc.

Before I left I told my co-workers that I would send them some pictures of bridges and water towers in Cameroon, so I’m following through on that promise. The only thing is that these structures are nothing like the ones we have in the United States and most of them have little to no paint on them. I hope my co-workers back home don’t think I’m sarcastically sending these photos. I mean, yeah, it is kind of funny, but Cameroon just really doesn’t have much to offer in the way of industrial structures.