When Bermudian Eugene Carmichael took early retirement a few years ago and relocated to Spain in search of new challenges, he hardly expected to find them in a small village in the extreme north of Cameroon.

But now, just as Bermuda remains close to his heart in Valencia, Spain, so too does Gouria in a remote part of Cameroon, West Africa. He hardly misses his job at Marsh, an insurance management company, which he said was "challenging and enjoyable, but nailing me to a desk and I felt there had to be another life".

What he lives for now is to help the people in the village of Gouria who have precious little. Through the efforts of Mr. Carmichael and others some of their basic needs are being met, but still more needs to be done.

He helped build a school for the students and found sponsorship through the European Union to build two more classrooms. However, there are many other issues facing the people of Gouria, including a lack of water which Mr. Carmichael says is a top priority throughout Africa where rainfall is scarce most of the year.

When he first spoke to a Lifestyle reporter in 2000, Mr. Carmichael was excited about building a Bermuda-style water tank in the village as a means of storing water.

"In fact we built a small model that worked well," said Mr. Carmichael who is back home on vacation for the first time in three years.

"However, to build a water tank with a sufficient capacity to provide water throughout the nine-month dry season in the north would present another set of problems due to the lack of refreshing rain.

"The expertise to treat the water with chemicals reliably does not reside in that part of the north. Thus, we are seeking assistance to drill at least two deep-level wells that would be equipped with a standpipe to bring the water to the surface. The good news is that due to a lucky break here in Bermuda that problem may be well on the way to being solved."

Mr. Carmichael recently spoke to Dr. Roosevelt Brown about the needs of the village and has received some useful advice.

"I consider him the fountain of all knowledge of developing small villages and he has given me a tremendous amount of information to plough through, part of which deals with water tanks and how to deal with the problem of stagnation," said Mr. Carmichael.

"While I've been here, through a wonderful bit of good luck, I spoke with Sonia Whayman at XL Foundation who put me in touch with an agency that specifically deals with water problems in Africa. It is quite possible the agency will take on this water problem in Gouria and finance and drill as many deep-level bore holes as is necessary."

How Mr. Carmichael discovered Gouria in the first place is an interesting story. "But I don't believe in coincidences," he points out.

When he first moved to Spain four years ago he met his son's grade school teacher, Judith Burnett, who used to teach in Cameroon. She learned that the village of Gouria did not have a school or a healthcare facility and set about changing that, using her own savings to buy land and finance the building of the first classroom.

Ms Burnett could not take time off work to check on the progress so Mr. Carmichael, with time on his hands, travelled to Africa and spent five weeks there helping with the construction.

"We had finished the one room school and students had been enrolled, but hunger for knowledge was so strong that we had far more children outside the classroom than inside," he revealed.

"It became very apparent the scope of the problem. The children were clamouring to get in. So we started to teach on a rota half-day system. Still they came, putting pressure on us to enlarge the school.

"At this time we have found sponsors to build and equip two more classrooms. The present enrolment for the September term is approximately 120."

The school issue being tackled, another one surfaced!

"We came to quickly realised that not one of those children had been vaccinated against normal childhood diseases, so we gave them all vaccinations," said Mr. Carmichael.

"Then we realised that not one of them had a birth certificate, so in effect they didn't exist. That's very commonplace and is a major problem later on. An ongoing programme at the moment is getting all of `our' children certified.

"I call Gouria the village the world forgot. Our attention was drawn to Gouria because Judith was teaching next to Bene Tize, who I call my brother in Cameroon, and he drew her attention to Gouria and the problem of no education facilities."

While there Mr. Carmichael became seriously ill with amoebic dysentery, through drinking untreated water. Twenty four hours lapsed before he sought medical treatment, by which time he was in very serious condition.

"The care I received was swift, precise and first rate and I am now back to normal," he stated.

"However, the experience did bring very sharply to my attention the lack of health facilities at the top of the mountain. Working with specialists in Spain who provide medical facilities without frontiers, a clinic now functions in the area."

But there are still critical needs for the people of not just Cameroon, but other countries as well. For Mr. Carmichael, raising the awareness starts at home with his Bermuda-born son Nathanial whom he describes as "now 12 years old, six-feet tall and very Spanish".

"I'm trying to impress on him the fact that there are people in the world who have great needs and people should think beyond themselves to focus on people who are in need of help. In fact he takes 25 per cent of his pocket money and supports a boy younger than him in his education.

"This happens to be a child who is also an orphan, one of the very many orphans in Africa who have lost both parents to AIDS. This child is about eight or nine and because he is an orphan one of the ways he survives is he has a little business going, where he will go to the nearest town, about 15 kilometres away, and will buy items such as soap and matches.

"He will bring that back and set up a table by the road as an instant convenience store. And he is not unique. You will see a lot of children that age who are little entrepreneurs."

Mr. Carmichael doubts anybody could visit Africa and not be affected by what they see.

"You will come back a changed person," he promised, no doubt speaking from his own experiences.

"Because no one else is making an effort for this village, we find ourselves having, naturally, adopted the problems of the whole village. There is so much that they need. Apart from school, the health issues, birth certificates, there is the water problem and no electricity feeding the village.

"Although power lines go straight over the village it doesn't actually feed the village. At some point we would like to bring electricity to the village, to help the village with businesses that will make it self sustaining."

Mr. Carmichael, who has a support group called "Adopt-a-Village", can be contacted at carmichaelworldonline.es for those wishing to help. He is also presently putting together a website.

"I'm in the process of making application for a Bermuda charity called "Project Cameroon" that will solicit sponsorship from Bermuda for the Malima Primary School in Gouria. The village of Gouria is in the Kapsika mountains."

He says $20 a month would sponsor a child and help to improve the general quality of life in the village.

"I manage the project from Spain, but I expect I will go back when the first class graduates in a couple of years time...unless there is a project that requires my presence before that," said Mr. Carmichael.

He has taken on the challenge of learning Spanish in his adopted country, something which has come a lot quicker to his son.

"I'm doing something a 60-plus year old person would not normally do, I'm learning the language from scratch," he said proudly.

"Most people who retire to Spain at my age go and live in an enclave where all the English (speaking) people live so they don't have to speak Spanish. We deliberately sought a Spanish area where we would be challenged by the culture and the language. Although it's hard work, I'm making progress."

He sees himself as a Bermudian living in Spain but whose heart is with the people in that village of northern Cameroon.

"I think it is fair to say that the majority of hands-on health that is offered in Africa is probably a white face, and for that I'm particularly grateful," he said.

"But what I'm saying is we - western blacks - can and should do more than we are. I'm aware that here in Bermuda efforts are being made by various groups to offer hands-on help and assistance, noticeably the churches. For for instance the Bermuda Institute in Southampton has a programme that recently built a church in the Dominican Republic.

"We sit here and ask ourselves what can we do. I would suggest two things...sacrifice one of the trips to Disney World or Mall of America, save up the time and money, do a little research to find where your help is needed and go for a month.

"Pack at least two suitcases and be prepared to leave one behind, with varying sizes of clothes, and share your experience and wealth of knowledge with our brothers and sisters in Africa. You will learn a lot about yourself, come back a changed problems and have no problems worth complaining about in relation to what you have seen and experienced in Africa."

Added Mr. Carmichael: "When I tell people I have problems with both of my cars, that problem pales into insignificance with people who don't have water...or food...or money.

"Sometimes we care too much about ourselves and whine because everything isn't exactly right. When I came back here after an absence of three years and was riding along the streets, I'm thinking what a fabulous country this is. What do we have to complain about?

"I think it is vitally important that we leave our own envelope and leave our comfort zone and do like so many people are now doing and go to Africa and do what you can. The need is so awesomely, overwhelmingly great that it will take a lot of willing hands to whittle away at it.

"This place (Gouria) is the back end of nowhere. It is forever and a day to get there, but it is literally the Garden of Eden, so impossibly beautiful. It is Bermuda 100 years ago.

"You'll never, ever regret it and it will change you for the rest of your life, and for the better!"