Holy shit it's November!

Hello out there! My apologies for the long delay in posts, everything is fine. I am not sick, I am not dying, I have not been eaten by a lion or trampled by an elephant (actually the extent of my animal encounters have been with goats, chickens, and a very tiny lizard on my bedroom wall-very scary). You might ask, Why am I a horrible person and not given you daily/weekly updates on my adventures in cameroon? I am sorry to say that Not only do we seldom have mass quantities of time to ourselves during training, you might have figured out by now the internet is not fun or at least the internet gods have something against me. Every time i try to communicate with the other side of the world, gmail won’t load, the internet is out, the place is closed, or the electricity is out. I was also there with a friend the other day who was trying to download a tv show from itunes and it told her that there were 6,000 hours and 45 minutes remaining (insert hint: dvds/cds are strongly recommended in package form J)- oh how I am beginning to love Cameroon!

I feel I have so much to tell you and I am not quite sure how to tackle it. As my French gets a little better (I have hit intermediate mid level after a terrible language exam interview 2 weekends ago – one more level to go to be cleared for post!) my English seems to get worse, please bear with me. I guess I'll just go point by point instead of trying to form prose of any kind, as you all know I might be the world’s worst speller and perhaps writer for that matter and will do my best to give you information in a cohesive and organized manner

Training is intense and feels like freshman foundation year at risd all over again minus the all-nighters of course which is thanks to our wonderful 6 o’clock curfew. I feel slightly overwhelmed by the bombardment of information we receive everyday and sometimes feel that I am never going to be prepared to work/teach farmers these skills in French. But nevertheless, I am learning a lot. 5 weeks ago I would never have known what the hell a contour bund is (a row of trees on a hill to prevent erosion), marcotting (when you grow a new tree off of another tree’s branch), or how to use a machete (which I get first place for since I sliced an avocado in half the other day- mid air). I have made my very own tree/vegetable nursery (actually sharing it with two others since there was no room in my home stay yard), learned about medicinal plants, apiculture, composting, and a variety of other techniques that will be useful in village.

For those of you who ask, "what do you do all day?": Well we are all following a strict peace corps training schedule of waking up very early (for me around 6 or earlier, usually when my family begins listening to religious music videos, for others when their family lets a goose loose in the house), eating a big bowl of bouille (cream of wheat esque), walking to school a half hour before I have to be there just so I can walk with my home stay kids on their way to school. We start classes at 7:30 with either technical or French and occasionally there is a health, safety, or cross cultural session thrown in. last week we talked about making a “diarrhea diary” in our health session, this week we got a few more shots and talked about malaria. We have an hour and a half lunch, often with a half hour of French tutoring thrown in and then continue till 4:30. Sometimes we do presentations, sometimes we have guest speakers, and sometimes we convince our French teachers that it is imperative to learn French by visiting the market for the afternoon. Often times, we sit around waiting for things to happen (there is a lot of waiting). After class there is an occasional outing to the stad for football, Frisbee or promenading. And you can generally find a handful of people at one of the local boutiques for a beer before returning home at 6 to eat dinner, do devoirs (homework), and try to communicate in French with the fam until the 8:30/9 o clock bedtime rolls around. This happens Monday through Friday and for half of Saturday. Finally Sundays are for getting laughed at by your family when you try to do laundry for three hours and the damn mud will not wash out of the white socks that no one warned you about bringing! This week I got smart however and had my home stay kids wash them for me. I told them that if they washed my socks I would let them use my paints. You may ask Child Labor? I respond, Being Resourceful With the Willing.

For those of you who ask, "isn’t it hot in Africa?": I respond, with a laugh (maybe also a sigh of relief). The weather here (in the west province at least) has been guaranteed colder than it was for the entire September and October summer that I hear happened in NJ/NY. We are in the rainy season currently, hence the mass quantities of mud, downpours every night, and less than rare power outages. I wear pants and sweaters on many days. We are however nearing the end of the wet season and entering the saison seche. Where the rain will stop and the days will get very dry and hot. When the sun is out midday it is very strong and one may want to look into wearing sunscreen. On the whole however, the weather is not nearly as bad as one might think. Quite pleasant actually.


For those of you who ask "what about hygiene?": This is often a problem. The water at my house goes off for periods of 3 days or more. right now (today is Thursday) it has been out since Sunday morning. I am on my last half jug of reserve water and have officially mastered the bucket bath. Not so fun. But when there is water, it is very cold take your breath away water that surprisingly we all look forward to. Also, you may be happy to hear (however shallow this may sound) that I have not stopped shaving my legs or my armpits. It’s the small things that you can do for yourself to feel a little more clean and put together that make a big difference.

Transportation: This is an interesting and often amusing event here in Cameroon.
First there is Walking. You cannot walk anywhere where you will not have attention drawn to you in some way shape or form. There are often many people (generally kids, high school students and moto taxi drivers) who will yell at you to get your attention “La blanche la blanche” (the white the white). Sometimes I have children run up to me in the road say Bonjour and try to touch my arm. They immediately giggle and run off talking about the whitey with their friends.

Two: Moto. Now that we have had Peace Corps Christmas again. This time receiving moto helmets or casques we are allowed to ride motos. This is SO much fun. It was also pretty hysterical when I brought my helmet home and every person in my family tried it on. The 4 and 6 year old just about fell over and my home stay dad simulated a moto ride for all of us (Cameroonians love to act).

Three: Bus. This is an interesting time. I went to baffousam the provincial capital with my friend nura the other weekend. We tried to get a car because it is usually faster and easier than taking a bus but because it was later in the day there were tons of people waiting to get a ride as well. Here you arrive into the market, which is very busy, and start asking around for cars and buses going to certain destinations. We missed the first car which looked like it was going to bottom out it had so many people in it. And decided that if we wanted a spot in the next car we would have to make some friends. Minutes later we are getting grabbed by the arm and pulled to the back of the market sprinting back! These two people were trying to get us through the crowd to the last bus out of town for the night. We got on and then sat and watched as this little bus filled with people. They fit as many as possible on the bus and then you sit and wait for it to leave. Everyone yells and of course they yell at the les blanches as well. Once you wait for everyone to pay, you stop and gas up, and then roll out at about 25 miles an hour stopping multiple times on the way to let people off. Then when you arrive to your destination the driver tries to let you off long before you’ve reached the center of town. People will sit and protest this yelling and screaming, “this is not right, this is not just” until the driver takes you a little further in.

Four: Taxi. On the way back from baffousam we took a taxi. This was not a first but it was by far the funniest transportation experience I have had yet. We found a car going back to bangante and were able to score the front passenger seat meaning that nura and I would sit on top of each other (thank god we were able to open the window so she could put her arm out the window.) There were four or five people squeezed in the back seat. The trunk completely full of stuff: Luggage, boxes with noisy baby chickens, and a couple of other chickens in bags that some how became loose in the back as we were driving. As we were getting ready to leave, a mami (what they call older larger woman often wearing traditional moomoo like dresses) came up and decided to ride petit chauffeur, which is when someone shares a seat with the driver. This is especially interesting since all the cars here are manual. The word petit is funny since this woman was very very large; needless to say she was pretty much on top of me her elbow in my kidney and her hand on my thigh. Also as a result of letting this mami sit up front, the driver was not quite in the car all the way. On top of it all, The car broke down before we even left baffoussam, we had to get pushed up a hill and wait for them to do god knows what with the engine and eventually we Drove off with no key in the ignition and no working speedometer and the car basically felt like it was going to fall apart at any moment. By the time we got back to bangante I had not feeling in the lower half of my body. GOOD TIMES!

Autre chose.

-my home stay family continues to be wonderful. My home stay mom and I really seem to get along well. She took me into to town a couple of Sundays ago to the coiffure or hair salon. I got to sit in a tiny little room maybe four feet by four feet with about four other women and got to watch her and a few other women get a weave and extensions. Still no braids for me yet though, not sure if it will ever happen.
- when I told my home stay sister –the 4 year old-I was going to take a shower the other night, she proceeded to go into the bathroom strip off her clothes and pretend to bath for over an hour, I suppose waiting for me to shower with her.
-My home stay mom is a true entrepreneur. She has been making and selling crepes and cake to the trainees and instructors during break time. I am forever amazed by how much she works. Getting up at just about 5 in the morning most days to start daily household chores.
-The tech trainer’s name for my program is Elvis, need I say more.
-the director of agro-Dr. Njiti is the happiest jolliest man in the world. he wears beautiful bubus (traditional African robe, pant and hat set for men) , has an adorable pot belly and a contagious chuckle giggle laugh that is kind of reminiscent of rafiki from the lion king.
-we spent a Saturday in Bandrefam (a neighboring village) visiting a volunteer to see what he has been working on for the past two years. After being caravanned into the bush in two peace corps safari like vehicles for about 30-45 minutes, We visited an apiculture center where we found ourselves- 24 people-crammed into a little shack, drinking palm wine and eating peanuts at 9 in the morning with a bunch of farmers. We then hiked into the bush a little more to check out some fields with contour bunds and learned how to make an a-frame and drank more palm wine, then hiked further out to see a medicinal plant nursery and tree grafting/marcotting site. It was a great way to spend a Saturday morning.

Finally, I GOT MY POST!!!! I will be living in the same province that I am living in now actually about 30 minutes from the home stay ville. I will be working in three different towns. Bangou –Chefferie (where the chief of the village lives), Bayangam (where my counterpart lives), and Baham (where I live and where there is a farm school I will work with). It’s so exciting to finally have some answers. Part of me was a little disappointed to be so close and not get to have an adventure into the other parts of Cameroon, but my home stay family is very excited that I will be nearby, there are many volunteers around here, and it is really easy to travel from the west. I will be spending the week at site, meeting the community and learning as much as possible from the volunteer I am replacing. I’ll be sure to tell all on the flip side!

ok this is way too long.

Congrats to all those Red Sox lovers out there and my condolences to the Yankees fans.
Hope you all had great Halloween costumes and parties and ate candy until you felt sick.
Thanks to all of you who sent letters and packages, they finally arrived. YOU MADE MY WEEK! Working on responses…..
au revoir tout le monde. A bien tot!.