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!.

Hello Bangante!

Hello home for the next 3 Months!

We left yaounde with all but one who had a bad case of travelers diarrhea (something we are all experiencing to some extent). The bus ride, 42 (dressed in bis-cas.) crammed onto an old 1970s ish bus with no air condu and few windows that opened made for an interesting trip. Nonetheless, the ride was our first glimpse of life outside the hotel and yaounde. Driving through the rural countryside, the lush earth and small villages tucked away in the hills, I could only think about how weird it was that this is my home for the next two years. Crazy to go from nyc to this! 3 hours, several road blocks, one FUN pit stop later (pit stop meaning girls go on one side of the road and boys go on the other) we arrived to the grande ville of Bangante. Welcome to the land of beaucoup de boue i.e. MUD!

We arrived to our families just in time for the heavens to open, which it does everyday around 5pm or so. and when I say rain, I mean downpour with thunder and lightning. My mother Sylvie greeted me (as did all of the other host families) and helped me retrieve my bags that I am now wishing were not so plentiful and heavy. My first impression of my homestay mother was of her carrying my water filter in one arm, my bookbag in another and my suitcase (that I could barely lift with two hands) balanced on her head. Not only this, she managed to walk down a steep slippery hill with mud up to our ankles with out blinking an eye.

My homestay family is unbelievably kind, patient, and welcoming. My pere is an English teacher at the high school and my mere works at the peace corps training building (cleaning the floors after we track in all the mud). I have 3 kids in my house. Livingston is the oldest, eight years old that I think is smarter than I am. He speaks much much better English than I do French and is very helpful. Stephen is 6, SUPER cute and also an amazing artist. I gave him a little notebook and a pen to draw with last night and he has already filled half of it, the pen however mysteriously disappeared. American BICs are hot commodity items around here. Lastly we have Esther the four year old. She is also very cute but also very much the baby. She loves attention and doesn’t always know what her boundaries are, but Augustin and Sylvie (my parents) are amazing parents and are very good at teaching the kids to behave and take responsibility for their own actions. According to my homestay dad, they now consider me the newest and youngest member of the family (even below the 4 year old that still wets here bed!).

MY NEW HOUSE. It is a humble abode. There are 3 bedrooms a living room a tiny kitchen (with no oven, only a gas top, and no draining system for the sink), tiny bathroom, and back hall/work area. We have electricity but it cuts out often (usually at night and when it rains). There is plumbing, a bathroom with a toilet, shower and cold running water, but that too cuts out and today I opted not to play soccer with mes amis because the water is not on and that would mean getting sweaty and dirty and having to bucket bathe with my reserve water (in big jugs in my room). Honestly I don’t mind the electricity going out, its somewhat romantic to do my French homework by candle light/lantern, listening to the rain. you only run into problems in the middle of the night when you have to use the bathroom. I have my very own (small) room equip with a double bed, a mosquito net aka a princess net, a desk, about 3 feet of space around the bed, a hanging rod for a closet/clothesline, and a metal trunk to lock up my valuables.

FOOD. Well lets just say, if I don’t start playing soccer everyday and doing hard manual labor soon, I will not be loosing 30 pounds in Africa. Granted everything had been going right through me, I imagine it is only a matter of time until I start packing it on. Dr. Atkins and South beach dieters stay away. I eat carbs for breakfast lunch and dinner. Beans and potatoes for dinner, porridge like dish for breakfast or bread and coffee, baguettes with egg cheese and avocado for lunch, cookies and bananas for snacks, beer, and more carbs for dinner. The other night I ate an entire pot of French fries and half a grapefruit. tonight was way better though, swiss chard sauté and fried plantains. My homestay mom is trying to teach me how to cook with local foods so I wont starve when I go to post. She also thinks that Americans don’t eat enough, Cameroonian women like to be shapely (it means you are well fed). We made crepes the other day and she is supposed to teach me another local dish soon with corn (it resembles polenta). There are not many greens around here which is a little tough, and no refrigeration which also makes things un peu difficile. Most africans generally cannot afford to eat anything other than bulk rice and corn with sauce.

There are so many things to tell!

- there is a muddy soccer field entitled “le stad”. If you go there at any given time of the day there will be kids kicking around a football(soccer) that are happy to start up a game.

- When women wear pants especially jeans it is considered sexy, so whenever people where jeans they are having “sexy time”.

- The malaria pills so far aren’t as bad as they could be. In fact many people have started having sex dreams. Way better than night terrors in my book!

- Pooped in my first hole in town on Saturday It was an emergency! If you know what I mean. It went way better than expected but I did have to beg the guy for extra tp. People don’t seem to use it here at all.

- My family is very religious so I Went to a Pentecostal church with my host dad on Sunday. The service was three and a half hours long and they made me stand up and introduce myself to the congregation with a microphone in French. (everyone laughed at me). I think I might be curiously ill or have a lot of homework next Sunday morning.

- We met the mayor who is surprisingly a stunning woman, and the super fet the head of the town (has a glass eye and felt a little out of a movie). It is protocol to introduce yourself in a village when staying for a long period of time.

- Haven’t gotten my hair braided yet although its only a matter of time….. two girls have had it done (not really by choice) one with extensions (meant for black women) and one also got a rhinestone glued to her tooth. BLiNG!

- On a sad note, had my first encounter with death the other night. A collegue of my host dads died at a very young age (I can only guess what from) , a group of teachers gathered at midnight to take the body back to her home village and my dad was in charge of writing the eulogy speech in english. He asked me if I would mind proofing it for him. And of coarse I was happy to help in any way possible. It was both touching and incredibly sad.

- On a happy note, peace corps Christmas happened again today! Received my machete, a watering can, a hoe, some other kind of digging tool with a long stick, a file to sharpen the already really sharp machete (please pray I don’t cut off my arm), and a bucket. American gothic pictures to come.

- I may have lifesaving cute farming boots, but I AM SO UNPREPARED TO BE A FARMER!

Overall things are going well. Training is a lot of information and homestay is even more draining at times. It really feels like a 24/7 job right now. Everyone has had their ups and downs, today I was crying and laughing at the same time.

Petit a petit (little by little) as everyone keeps saying……

I miss everyone at home more than you know!

And btw no marriage proposals yet!

Ps. Just to let you know. Internet is not easy as are me making phone calls. These two things are very expensive and the volunteer salary is not. I will be checking email probably once a week. I would love it if you called me!

C’est La Vie au Cameroun

We flew the 8 hours to paris and then boarded again to fly to Cameroon. I knew immediately that we were headed for a different place once we arrived to the gate for our second flight. In the terminal there were very well dressed Cameroonian men and women and then the group of 42 sloppy white Americans. We stick out like a sore thumb but as we chatted with the people around us they all seem to respect the peace corps and know we are here to do good work. There was one stop over in douala the largest city in Cameroon. We were only supposed to sit for a half hour while some got off and others got on but ended up being stuck in the plane on the runway for more than an hour. Apparently the plane was struck by lightning and they had to wait for clearance to take off again. CRAzY. Also, flying over the sahara desert was pretty amazing, you couldn’t look out the window without sunglasses it was so bright.

Here In yaounde, We are staying in a hotel up the street from the peace corps head quarters and although the two buildings are within walking distance, we have to be shuttled to and from in the pc land cruisers and vans. 15 people piled into a car. We are not allowed to leave the hotel to explore mainly because many of us have no language abilities and do not yet have our cameroonian identity cards. The hotel we are staying in is pretty nice. For American standards I imagine many would be unhappy here, but we have electricity (it did cut out for half the day today), an air conditioner in our room (its actually not too hot though) and a toilette, however the water has not been working since around lunch time and it is now midnight. C’est la vie au cameroun

This week we have had intensive training and info sessions on what will be happening in training the next 11 weeks. We will have 102 hours of language classes (I am at the second to last level after being tested yesterday), hours of health, safety and cross cultural classes, and agro training all day long. GET THIS: we have an entire 1.5 hour health section devoted to diarrhea, sweet! I also learned today talking to one of the agro volunteers training us that I will be receiving my very own MACHETE when I arrive to post and that I will be planting lots and lots of trees.

We will be in bangante by Friday ( a smaller town north of yaounde in the mountains) and will be placed with our homestay families then. Fortunately we have been told vegetarians will be able to keep their habits for at least homestay. And they eat a lot of fish here so this is good news!

The people in the program are all very nice. Everyone comes from incredibly different backgrounds and they all seem to have a ton of previous travel experience. LOTS of Midwesterners, west coasties, kids from the south, and only 4 northeasterners. It's typical though, I have joined yet another organization that is primarily female. The ratio is ridiculous kinda like risd. So for all of you out there telling me my future husband is in the peacecorps, you’re wrong. This is not the marriage corps.

We had a fancy welcome dinner at the PC country directors house. We met his family and the staff for PC Cameroon and were all officially greeted by the American ambassador to Cameroon. Pretty cool! I felt like I was in a movie about Africa in the gated houses of the diplomat neighborhood.

I cannot believe we are actually here! Some things I’ve noticed so far. The clouds are amazing. There was a lizard on the wall in our hotel hallway. We have gendarmes (police/soldiers) posted in our hotel to keep us safe. There is a mango tree out our window. The traffic is ridonculous! Absolutely no rules. Beer is super cheap and plastic baggy pouches filled with whiskey cost 50 cents. Not too bad.

I will be getting a cell phone in the next few days and will get my phone number to all asap. I can get calls for free and I know of a few semi cheap services in the states that people can use to call my cell. There is skype an online chat thing. I think it costs 30 cents a minute. You connect to the internet and can call me. And then there is Africa Dream Card that you by on line to get a refillable number/pin that I hear costs only 10 cents a minute, that is a deal! I miss you all lots and hope things are going well. I am fine and think this whole Africa thing might not be so bad after all.

I have to run, I think the water just turned back on and I need to take a shower!

we are here

Emily has finally arrived in Africa.
The blog is giving her some trouble, but stay tuned.

AFRICA HERE I COME!!!

two hours of sleep.
3 injections.
3 hour bus ride through nyc.
one malaria pill.
42 peace corps trainies in jfk airport for 5 hours.
20 hours on an airplane.

CAMEROON!


please send letters to:

emily haines
peace corps volunteer
corps de la paix
bp 215
yaounde cameroon