Cameroon’s volleyball team travelled to Turkey to train ahead of the African Championships and returned with medals. The nation’s federation has since returned to say thanks.
A delegation led by Bello Bourdanne, President of Cameroon’s Volleyball Federation (Fecavolley), alongside some medal-winning men and women who have won medals in the previous African Volleyball Championships, visited their Turkish counterparts at the Turkish Embassy in Yaounde. An affectionate gesture, showing how much the two nations value their relationship.
This was matched by the Turkish Volleyball Federation, which thanked the men’s and women’s national teams, the Fecavolley president and all of the delegation. The Turkish Embassy in Cameroon also shared a message on its Facebook page.
“We would like to thank the women’s and men’s national volleyball teams for bringing pride to the Cameroonian people in the African Championships after training in Türkiye, and thank the president of the federation and his team for their lovely visit.”
Following discussions, Bourdanne and the Turkish Ambassador took questions from the press. Bourdanne started with thanks.
“We were very pleasantly surprised. I would like to thank the Ambassador generally for their efforts for us to obtain our visas. We obtained our visas thanks to the Ambassador’s kindness within record time, showing their commitment from their attaché who went with us on all levels, especially sports. We were very pleasantly surprised by the welcome, facilities and most of all the standard of Volleyball in Turkey. Therefore, we requested His Excellency that we would like to continue this collaboration. We discovered an amazing Volleyball Nation with unbelievable facilities. We hope to have the support of the Turkish State via His Excellency the Ambassador and most of all the Turkish Federation and amazing teams to enable our Volleyball to excel and most of all win this gold medal that has eluded us for years. I believe we discussed this with His Excellency the Ambassador.”
Ambassador Volkan Öskiper remained humble. “It was a pleasure to meet with the President and the two teams again. They travelled to Türkiye for training camps ahead of the African Championships and have returned with multiple medals. I didn’t do anything personally but it was a real pleasure to hear everything went fantastically in Türkiye. We also discussed with the President what we can do moving forwards to enable our Volleyball to get to know each other better. What we can do here and there together. It was a pleasure to speak with the President again and hopefully we can do even better.”
Whilst no specifics were announced, there was an overall feeling that Cameroon had found a highly equipped Volleyball Nation to take inspiration from and Turkey had found an enthusiastic partner who will travel, thank them and ask for more. This collaboration could prove to be more valuable to Cameroonian Volleyball.
