The Land of the River of Shrimp

Why Leaving the Peace Corps Was the Best Decision I've Made Since Joining the Peace Corps

2011-08-19T23:35:00.005+02:00

Well, I meant to write a wrap-up/conclusion earlier, but here it is 5 months later and I'm still looking for the words to say. It's hard to believe I left Cameroon over 5 months ago, and my stage-mates are still there for another 3 or 4 months still! Wow.

So, I ET-ed (Early Terminated) from the Peace Corps after serving for 18 months. Why? I was really struggling on a personal level, which led to me struggling on a professional level, too. Well. And back and forth. Instead of doing productive work or ANY work or much cultural exchange at all, I was fighting anxiety and hiding in my house for days at a time.

What were the biggest factors contributing to my problems?

1. Probably culture shock and lack of integration - I struggled with feeling comfortable in a different culture the entire time I was in Cameroon. From my time with my (wonderful, patient) host family to living in my village, I was never really at ease. I made some good connections but no real friendships. I was absolutely at a loss with how to deal with men there (outside of a few really stellar guys I worked with), besides saying, "No," to everything and avoiding eye contact. (It has taken me months back in America to feel comfortable making eye contact with guys again, jeez!)

2. Lack of structure/job skills/contacts. Well, every Peace Corps Volunteer has the worst road to their village and the worst insect story and the most difficult domain. But I really felt like I had the most difficult domain! For me, anyways. Agroforestry is a pretty interesting project because there is a wide scope of possible projects and work. I have learned, however, that I really like having some structure in my work. Education volunteers are paired with a school, health volunteers are paired with a health center, business volunteers are paired with a microfinance institution, and agroforestry volunteers get… luck of the draw? (And absolutely some schools/clinics/MFIs are difficult to work with or more challenging, and some agroforestry volunteers love the freedom of their assignment). My counterpart was rarely available and my supervisor (who ran an NGO local to my village), well, we didn't get along real well. So. No host institution. No counterpart or supervisor to speak of. This left me with the option of going out to find my own work. I felt adequately trained in agroforestry, but going out in another culture and looking for people to work with was beyond me. Personal shortcomings, yo.

3. I didn't ask for help. Not loud enough.
3a. I was struggling with anxiety back in April 2010 around in-service. I talked to the PCMO. I got off mefloquine and that made things a lot better. But the anxiety crept back. I talked to the PCMO again at mid-service, and it wasn't very productive. The PCMO was leaving the job in a matter of days, I didn't want pills or phone counseling to DC and I didn't express how serious the anxiety was. After that PCMO left, we no longer had an American medical officer, and I didn't feel comfortable talking about mental health with our other PCMOs.
3b. I was struggling with my counterpart back in April 2010 around in-service, too. I talked to my APCD about it and he talked to my counterpart and nothing happened. I brought it up a few other times to no result. What I didn't realize or think about is that I could have gone another step up and talked to my PTO. I was really struggling with finding work, and I didn't know how to talk to my APCD about that (I wasn't very optimistic about talking to him because he was very busy and had done nothing to help with my counterpart problem).

I had several people (PC staff and friends) ask me if I would do it all over again (join the Peace Corps) and what I would do differently. Yes, yes, yes, I would absolutely do it all over again! Joining the Peace Corps was my dream for years and years. While I might be jaded on international development work in general, the dedication of Peace Corps Volunteers (and Staff) and the interpersonal exchanges between PCVs and locals are absolutely selfless, generous, noble, humble actions that work to promote peace, respect and a global community. Y'all PCVs are amazing. :)

Would I do anything differently? Could I have? I don't know. The answer I gave back in March is that, yes, I would join again, but I would probably run into the same problems and leave again. What could I have done to prepare myself better?

1. Volunteer. I really had 2 days of volunteer experience before joining the Peace Corps. I think that I could have benefited from doing more volunteer work and learning those skills like: be outgoing, be confident, ask for help when you need it.

2. Be Picky. I had my heart set on being a Health volunteer, but I was so excited to get into the Peace Corps, I jumped at the opportunity to get in ASAP as an Agroforestry volunteer. I remember my recruiter asking me if I was sure that was okay. I remember shooting off something about, "Sure, I mean, agriculture is like nutrition which is at the base of health, so I am absolutely passionate about it." The health work I did get to do (Girls Camps) was the high point of my Peace Corps service, though, and it was amazing and it let me know that is what I want to do with my life.

3. Be Realistic. I guess I always had this image in my head, that if I were a Peace Corps Volunteer, I would be this archetype of the outgoing, altruistic, perfect person I had in my head. Nope. I am still introverted and I get anxiety and I love structure and when I'm struggling I tend to block people out instead of asking for help. When my Mom was visiting me in Cameroon, she told me, "I think you're brave for joining the Peace Corps, I've always known that is something I would be really bad at." (I think she knew it about me, too, but thanks, Mom, for not telling me until after). I had some unrealistic expectations of myself.

Anyway. I left. Very suddenly. I made the decision and I was out of the country within 4 days. I packed up my house and told my nearest volunteers that I was leaving. I didn't tell anyone in my village I was leaving. I didn't tell Peace Corps I was leaving until I was in Yaounde. It was not a graceful departure and various friends and PC staff had to clean out my house/pay my rent, etc, and I still feel awful about not taking responsibility for that. I was a pretty big wreck. A few friends came to see me off in Bafoussam, and it was bittersweet. I have some amazing friends.

I remember sitting in the bus from Bafoussam to Yaounde and thinking, "Well, at least if I die today (as you worry about on Cameroonian public transport), I can be happy knowing that I made the right decision." And I really haven't regretted leaving. And I'm really glad that I didn't die that day. :)

Yaounde was a whirlwind of paperwork and administration. (My bank account still isn't closed, even though I submitted all the correct paperwork). I got to see a few more friends at the CASE before I left. I had meetings with my PTO and Country Director and they were both just absolutely wonderful and kind. The ride to the airport was surreal, just before sunset through all the neighborhoods of Yaounde. At the airport, they took the snacks I packed, I still think that was bogus, but I didn't really care, I was just a big sigh of relief.

So I've been back in America for 5 months and I'm still figuring out how to answer people when they ask me how Cameroon/the Peace Corps was. It was something! It was eye-opening. It was the experience of a lifetime. "Well, yeah, but…" the person asking inevitably replies. Seriously, I don't know how you expect me to sum it up concisely. Give me a few paragraphs at least. I feel absolutely lucky to have had the opportunity to live in Cameroon for 18 months. Cameroon is a beautiful, vibrant country full of culture(s) and history and wonderful people. I was so lucky to experience the culture as a resident rather than just a tourist. To meet so many amazing people. To learn such a completely different way of life, and to live within it. To have the opportunity to recognize our shared humanity. To have seen such a geographically different part of the world. To have had a chance to see so blatantly my needs, my weaknesses, my dreams for the future. To have worked at an amazing Girls' Camp with amazing volunteers and been able to share some knowledge about health. I really can't say enough what an amazing opportunity/experience it was and how lucky I was to have it. On the other hand, it was absolutely the hardest thing I've ever done and it knocked me flat and I lost a lot. I am still getting back to the good mental place I was at before I joined the Peace Corps. But I am getting there and while I have no desire to be crying in my room in Cameroon for days at a time, I wouldn't change my experience for the world.

To everyone who supported me in my decision and on my return, thank you so much. It has meant a lot to me. There were a few people who said that they respected my choice to leave rather than to stay and do nothing. And I really needed to hear that, so thank you, thank you, thank you.

And now I'm in America. I'm still living with my sister. I'm volunteering at two places (a domestic violence survivor support nonprofit and a hospice), I'm taking a CNA class and I'm applying to nursing school this fall. I feel like I am heading in the direction I want to be heading and it is deeply satisfying. I'm finally raising chickens, I'm learning to play ukulele, I do some hula-hooping and I bike all over the place. I feel safe being outside at night. I am happy.

Love.

ET, phone home

2011-03-15T17:50:00.003+01:00

Well. I am leaving Cameroon and coming home.

I've been pretty unhappy here for awhile and have come to a breaking point where I can't seem to find a reason to stay.

I've packed up and left village and now I'm in Yaounde. I'll probably fly home in 3-5 days. And I'm finally feeling happy.

Thank you all for your support while I have been in Cameroon! I hope to post a better end-of-service summary one of these days.

2010-11-16T08:13:00.004+01:00

Well, it's been a while, blog. 2 months, it seems. One was very busy. One was very unbusy.

Since I last left you, I got to welcome all the new Agro/Health Peace Corps Trainees with Paul. It was crazy and fun and exhausting. Where our stage had a week in Yaounde to take care of everything, the new stage had 3 days. Except then they missed their connection in Brussels (really, a plane can't wait for 50 people?). And had to fly into Douala the next day. So they had 2 days and it was nearly all traveling!

How busy were we? The night that they got in, after they got into their hotel rooms and ate dinner, we had them start filling out forms... at 9 PM! We stayed up til 2 AM talking and got up at 6 the next day to go to Yaounde. They got in on Saturday and were in Bafia (their training site) by Monday. Paul and I were still running around getting them phones and regulators and finishing paperwork until Wednesday or Thursday. Gosh.

After that crazy sleepless, no-time-for-more-than-a-bite-of-food week, I headed back to post where I felt oddly directionless. I only had a month until I would be leaving post again and all my work momentum had pretty much dropped off.

So. There was that month. Of not much happening.

Then at the end of October I got to go back to Stage and co-teach some sessions for the Trainees, which was a blast. Well. More the hanging out with the trainees than lecturing about fertilizer chemistry. Alright, and it was mostly Richard who was doing the lecturing because he is a brain. Then I was home for a few days. Then I went to the West Halloween Party (as a maybe-creepy doll) and then I went to Yaounde....

... to pick up my parents!

Wow! It is weird having my parents here in Cameroon. It is like I am finally realizing that it's not all a crazy dream. Or alternately that the dream is crazier? We spent a day in Yaounde (ice cream!) and grabbed a (surprisingly) nice bus to Bafoussam and spent a few days at my post. We walked over to Baham one day to see Fovu and the Handicap Center and that was fun, though a really long day.

Then we headed to Buea to climb Mt. Cameroon! It was a little stressing and confusing to have so little say over how the trip was planned, but on va faire comment? We let the Ecotourism guide company buy our food and it was very Cameroonian. 12 loaves of bread. Maybe 2 kilos of rice for one dinner. 6 sacks of wine. To that I said, "No, my parents don't drink." The lady replied, "No, it's okay, this is wine even children drink." Oh, Cameroon.

The first day up the mountain was.... 6 hours of straight-up climbing. We gained 1800 m elevation, or about 6000 feet. No switchbacks. Just. Straight. Up. The last 600 meters or so I counted steps. Well. To 20 over and over again. Sometimes I would forget and get up to 30. Or 40. By the time we got to Hut 2, our bivvy for the night, I was absolutely DONE.

The plan was to summit on day 2 and hike down to Mann Springs and to go to the rainforest for day 3 and to come out on the beach day 4. Alas, the Rainy Season intervened. Day 2 we got rained in and spent the day playing cards and napping. Oh, did I mention that 10,000 feet is COLD? Even 5 degrees north of the equator. It dropped below 50 F at night. Brrrr! I was a cold Zara.

We met some other hikers on the mountain, Melinda and Joe, newlyweds from the Bay Area (California, represent!) and a radio reporter from Germany (who hiked like she was made of steel). Melinda and Joe made a summit attempt on our day 2, but got rained out. On day 3 we went for the summit and hoped to get to Mann Springs. The German (Bettina) had left at 4 am for a summit attempt and we met her not far up the trail. She said she had made the summit, though we later determined this not to be the case. (She didn't want to discourage us).

Up up up up up. It wasn't as steep as the first day, but the altitude was breath-stealing and I was getting at least a full inhale-exhale with every single step. As me and my Dad slogged uphill, my Mom was bouncing off the trail left and right to pick up trash, to take a picture, to pick some mint. What a lady! It was foggy and cold and windy and it got foggier and colder and windier as we went up. Visibility was rarely more than 20 feet. After 2 and a half hours we got to Hut 3 and we and all the porters were freezing (they more so than us). Samuel, our guide said we should go back down. We agreed, since the weather was awful and we figured he knew the mountain better than us.

But when I walked out of the hut, Samuel started going UP the mountain. I went back and told my parents we were going up and we continued. Up. Up. Up. Cold. Cold. Cold. It was much flatter from that point, but the visibility dropped and the temperature dropped and the wind kept roaring. I could barely see Samuel's figure in the fog in front of me and I would turn around and wait until I could see my parents barely emerge from the fog behind me. (I took the lead because I was so excited for the summit! My mom stayed back with my dad).

We could tell we had reached the top ridge when the wind started ripping so fast that you had to lean your full body weight into it in order not to tip over. We passed false summit after false summit after false summit and always another lurking shadow would appear in the fog. Until finally I see Samuel throw himself down sitting with his back to the wind and we were at the top! All the sign pieces were strewn on the ground and I found two pieces of a sign, one that said SUM and one that said IT. SUM IT!

My parents were close behind and one of the porters came up, too (previously unbeknownst to us). We took a few quick pictures and then beat a hasty retreat. On the way off the summit I realized I couldn't feel my hands (4 layers and a hat and two hoods, but no gloves, oops!) and I looked down to see that they were looking pretty yellow. I unzipped my two outer jackets and jammed my hands in my armpits, but then the wind was coming from the front and wanted to blow my hoods off. I grabbed the hood ties in my mouth and ran down the hill grinning into the wind.

The descent back down to Hut 2 was warming but quad-jarring. Sleep came easy. Day 4 was 1800 meters straight down. I was slow slow slow. We got off the mountain and ate some chicken and plantains and watched a National Geographic special about mysterious elephant deaths. Then we headed to Limbe for HOT SHOWERS.

The hotel in Limbe was really nice, and being on the ocean was nothing short of INCREDIBLE. I love the ocean and I can't believe I've been away from it for over a year. What a mistake! The hotel even had a pool, though I never got in it.

Day 2 in Limbe we went out to a private beach at a fancy hotel and played in the ocean. Before I went in my mom asks, "Are you sure you want to wear your glasses in? That is how I lost mine in Hawaii." I say, "Yeah, I'll be fine, I'll just hold on to them if I go under."

Always listen to your mother.

2 minutes later and I am bliiiind. At any rate, the ocean is fun regardless of whether or not you can see. I spent some hours throwing myself into and over waves and I think it is the first time I've played in the ocean since I was 6 in SLO. We head back to the hotel for more hot showers and then walk to town for dinner (shrimp!). Being blind is bizarre and discombobulating and I reflect on how many people in this country probably can't see very well or afford glasses (which cost about the same here as they do in the states, what is up with that, Cameroon? Need some Zenni Optical up in here).

Sunday morning we head to the bakery and then the Agence and after 3 hours we head towards the West. Amazingly the whole trip goes smoothly and we hop from Limbe to Carrefour Bamougoum outside Bafoussam to Marche B in Bafoussam to Socada in Bafoussam to Bamendjou.... where I have my backup glasses!!!! Being blind and traveling a new route in Cameroon with my parents was terrrrrifying, talk about the blind leading the blind.

Cat is happy to see us and my Dad is happy to see Cat. I think they are in love. We have a big dinner of green beans and couscous (de Mediterranean) and bread and sardines (Cat gets the tin and is a happy cat). Then packing. Then sleeping. Then up early to go to Yaounde. Too much travel!

We got to Yaounde yesterday and got train tickets this morning to go up to the North on Thursday. Exciting! It's rainy now and it's nice to take a little break from vacationing so hard. 2 days to gather our thoughts and laundry and watch some movies and play some games.

Pictures now, updated!

Love you all!

I put my mom to work in the garden. She is a good worker. She planted an herb garden and some salad veggies. Thanks, Mom!

Fresh gnocchi and pesto. Yummers.

My Dad loves my Cat. Apparently my Cat is freakishly tiny.

Turns out my mom loves pagne, too. Yaaaay, pagne!

My parents at Fovu sacred rock site. With his beard and white skin and sombrero, little children kept thinking my dad was a juju. Juju! Juju!

At the Handicap Center in Baham. I let the newest resident try on my glasses. He was ADORABLE! Kept running up and hugging me. :) They think he is deaf. When he first got there he ran away... like 30+ km away. But someone found him and got him back.

Mom and I walking back from Baham. Lookin' classy.

Before heading up Mt. Cameroon. We were so naive.

In the forest it was humid. My glasses were all fog. But they were glasses!

Mom and I on Mt. Cameroon. She is energized. I am exhausted.

Hut 2 Luxury suite. Polished wood bench bed. Mouse butlers.

Preparing potato soup in our out of doors kitchen. Day 1 was beautiful.

Day 2. Mountain. Why you dey vex me?

SUM IT. One plus one na one.

Bisoh, Samuel, Dad and Me. In gale-force winds. But happy!

Samuel made Dad a walking stick so that going down would be easier. They are fwiends.

Emmanuel watches as Bisoh and Isaac's friendship grows. Can you believe we had 4 porters and a guide? Felt very weird. Very weird.

After the mountain. Back row: Samuel (guide), Isaac, Samuel (porter), Emmanuel. Front row: Random guy, Bisoh, Me, Mom, Dad (you probably guessed those ones).

No longer blind! Cooking green beans! Happy!

2010-09-10T15:13:00.002+02:00

Camp in Bandrefam was more challenging than in Baham. The girls were older and less involved. Several already had babies. They had trouble believing that HIV exists in their village, despite the testimonial and a recent SIDA death. I think that there were still some benefits (I hope), but by the end of the week, we were completely and totally and utterly drained.

Bandrefam itself is very different from Bamendjou. It's a small village, maybe 4,000 people and everybody knows everybody. This means a few things. For the girls it means that if they buy condoms, everybody knows. They don't even talk to their friends about sex here! For Julie it means that everybody walks into her house all day and if she has coffee or cocoa or bread, everybody knows and they ask for their part.

Also, the main water source for the village is a robinet (tapstand) that is turned on every other day for half an hour. !!! But it's often broken for months at a time, like when we were there. Then you have to walk down to the source to haul water. Fill a bidon, put it on your head and hike back uphill for 15 minutes. Julie has a 30-liter bidon, which we can't carry full because that is over 60 pounds on the head. She also has 15-liter buckets, which are difficult to carry because the water just slops over the sides if you aren't careful. I also carried the food across village on my head everyday. Rice for 40 is heavy!

We also carried dishes down to the source to wash them and washed our hair down there. There were about 20-30 other women and children down there, too, washing clothes and legumes and children.

It is easy to see the benefit of many children here, they do so much work! One boy was telling me how he has been carrying water since he was 3. And how he can carry a full bucket on his head without spilling any. I don't doubt him. On the other hand, everyone is hungry in the village. I tease Julie about not being able to say No to anyone, but you say no to a hungry child. Try it. Especially after they help you carry water. Especially ever.

We also celebrated my birthday in Bandrefam with vegan chocolate cake! Yummmm. I'm 25 now! Quarter of a century. Mid-20s. All that jazz. And running in Bandrefam was nice because it was so much flatter.

Anyway. After the long and exhausting week in Bandrefam I came home to Bamendjou. And it really felt like coming home. I had a smile on my face as we hit the Baf-Bam road and I anticipated seeing my little house and my little Cat and speaking my little patois.

I spent a glorious day at home relaxing and sleeping and cutting my hair. The second morning at home I went for a run, and then got a text from my APCD that I had to be in Yaounde TOMORROW OR ELSE I CAN'T BE A HOST! It was already 10 am, and Yaounde is a 4 to 6 hour ride from Bafoussam. Oh tiring world. I packed up all my dirty clothes, left my dirty dishes, locked up again, apologized to Cat, and hit the road.

In Bafoussam I found the bridge where on cherche (one finds) the private cars to Yaounde. Often drivers will pick up passengers to cut down on gas prices. I had been talking about this in Bandrefam about how we'd probably only do this under safe-feeling conditions, ie, not all guys in the car. But in racing and pushing to get inside a car (which I do, within 2 minutes, much better than waiting 2 hours at an agence) I realize that I am in a car with 3 other men. Ah well. The fates are kind, right?

Our car breaks down halfway between Bafoussam and Bangangte. Oh jeez. Now what? It's already such a late start for going to Yaounde! But luckily the guy driving is some sort of bigwig and he calls someone and they bring out another car and a mechanic to fix the old one. So an hour wait and we are on our way again. Just 4 of us in one car... it was luxuriously spacious. Upon arriving in Yaounde (a car-full and confusing city), they drop me off at the roundabout right by the Case. Excellent.

Yaounde. It's the first time I've been back since the first week we arrived. Bizarre. The Case (pronounced cause, the volunteer transit house) is full of folks from my stage and some others. I snag the last free bed (of 30ish). Jeez!

Yaounde. Days are spent in the Training Designing Workshop, where we plan the training for the trainees arriving September 17th. It is satisfying but also a bit mind-numbing. Evenings are spent socializing and appreciating the fine foods Yaounde has to offer. I spend my nights crying or trying not to cry about my ex and his new GF. Lame-o. Drama even in Africa, n'est-ce pas? But it keeps me from staying up late and drinking, and I get up early every morning to run.

Running Yaounde is kind of great. It is more anonymous than villages and I can choose how many hills I want to include (some, but not all). There are still the guys who derange ("I love you!"), but there are also hundreds of other people faire-ing le sport and running, stretching, footballing. Also it makes the rest of the day much easier. I can run 45 minutes without stopping now, so, boo-ya.

Also we watch music videos on Trace (Ciara, Rihanna, Soprano, P Diddy, Ice Cream Truck...), track championships, tennis championships, the occasional movie. TV is weird.

On the weekend after TDW we have a faux-beach party. Bikini tops, water balloons, margaritas, salsa, ping-pong, dance party goodness. It is nice to have a vacation from village-life, even if just for a few days.

I also manage to find some time for pagne shopping (oh my gosh, so much pagne) and some grocery store shopping (ice cream? I eat a liter in a night, I stock up on quinoa, soy sauce, tapatio). One night we go out for indian food. Mmmm, chana masala and daal and paratha and a free dessert of gulab jamun (sp?), which is cheese-y fried dough balls in cumin-honey.

3 days of TOT (training of trainers), which includes giving a faux presentation to get feedback, and it is time to leave Yaounde. Gosh. Finally.

I leave the Case by 6:45 am, and am at the agence by 7. A porter from a different agence grabs my bag and I have to chase him down. He tries to get me to choose them through trickery and lying. Finally I just grab my bag and start dragging it and him across the mud yard. After a minute he lets go and I go buy a ticket at the correct agence. I snag a window seat in the back row of a giant bus and wait for an hour while it fills completely.

The bus ride takes a good 5 hours, and is more crammed than most of my Baf commutes. Something in my leg is pinched and I can't unpinch it. Oww. It still hurts today. After 5 hours I make it to Baf and meet up with Liz for lunch at les Arcades. Then I swing by the Post Office for packages/letters galore! I'm juggling 5 bags by this time and make it to my gare.

I got home yesterday after 9 odd hours of traveling. I met a young woman on the car from Bafoussam to Bamendjou and she helped me carry my things home and we sat and talked for a while. Well, she talked. I was exhausted, but it was also a story I could not end. She asked if I had noticed the cuts on her lip. Yes, I had, I said (they were very noticeable). And then she started telling me about her faux-husband (they can't afford to get married, but they've been together for 3 years). How he had hit her. Just this one time. Never before. That he didn't mean to make her bleed. How her mother advised her to leave him. But if she did that she would have to go work with a cousin who is part of a church that eschews medical care. And that is not in her heart. How her grandmother advised her to stay. How she can't read or write and other men who have proposed to her have dumped her on finding this out. This man, however, is paying for her to learn to read and write. What do I say to this? Sure, in America there are resources for battered women, resources for illiterate adults, resources for finding a job, perhaps even more understanding men and family members. But here, what do I say? I asked her what she wanted to do. She wants to stay with him. I told her that I didn't think that there is ANY reason for a man to ever hit a woman, regardless of if he leaves a mark or not. I told her that in America that is illegal and he would go to jail. But. What do I say? Also she has a 12 year old daughter who lives with her mother in Douala. Who she can't afford to send to school.

Anyhow. Today. I slept 13 hours last night. The West is FREEZING! I am wearing a hat and a sweatshirt and my toes are like ice. I need to clean my dishes, the hair off my bathroom floor (from when I cut it two weeks ago), unpack... Sunday I am meeting up with some other Westies to do Yoga and deliver packages. Wednesday I am going back to Yaounde. Friday the new trainees arrive, FIFTY of them. Wow. Then I have something like a month at post. Then a week at training. Then in November my parents come for a month+. !!!

Who's a busy lady?

It's me.Camp in Baham. One day the rain was pouring on the tin roof too loud to do anything but play. So we played.

Making sure the two anglophone girls understand the anatomy lesson we are going over.

Liz & I prepping for camp one morning.

Taking photos with the summer school we were not involved in. Every picture is better with la blanche? Oh Africa.

Explaining how a female condom works in a Tangui bottle vagina.

Washing my hair at the source in Bandrefam. Plenty of spectators.

Carrying the not-full bidon. Probably still 20 L, ~40 pounds. Julie and Kim carried it up the steep part. I took it for the "easy" part at the end.

Blowing out matchstick candles on my vegan chocolate birthday cake. Yum.

Anika, Liz, Kim and I at Julie's house.

Oops, I cut all my hair off!

Parting thoughts... Doing the girls summer camps was my favorite thing I've done so far and it really reinforces my dream of doing women's health work. Really.

Also, all my love. It's been 51 weeks in country. Next week I will celebrate my one-year anniversary with the arrival of the new trainees. Even though we've been apart for a year, you are all in my thoughts and I can't wait to see you all again! Love love love love LOVE.

2010-08-20T21:27:00.008+02:00

Home again, home again, after a long week in Baham doing girls' camp. Wow! What an experience.

I've come home to a very lonely cat. I'm sure he'll be very sad that I'm leaving again come Sunday for another girls' camp in Bandrefam.

So. Last week. I had my site visit. It was fine. I was far too stressed before it happened. My APCD came, we talked about how post is going work-wise and health-wise and whatever-wise. We visited Marcel and talked about the water project. We visited Marie Noelle and saw her community farm and then went to Odile's farm in Nkonkouo. Then we went an talked to my supervisor in village about how my counterpart is a flake. I also don't get along great with my supervisor (he is the one who thinks I should be a man and give him all my stuff). Then we went back to my house and had a big delicious lunch! Then my APCD left.

Then I had some really good conversations with my ladies. They also don't like my supervisor, but they do like me and are glad we are working together. They were disappointed I was leaving for 2 weeks to do the girls camps, but we are going to do a marcotting workshop when I get back.

Friday evening I left for Baham. It seems so long ago. I don't even remember what bed I slept in that night. Saturday morning Christina came and she and Liz and I went to the school where we had a classroom and tried to find some peer educators. After waiting a while (and prepping for the week) we walked downtown and found one girl. She said that she would find more girls to bring.

So Saturday and Sunday were more laid back than planned, but we had fun with the peer educators and talking about what it means to be a peer educator and a woman, what is puberty, how can you prevent HIV/AIDS, STDs and pregnancy, what is the immune system, what is HIV/AIDS, etc.

Monday morning we arrived to find not very many girls. But there was summer school in the morning and we stole all the girls from there. Which gave us a larger variety of ages than we planned on. Instead of 11-18, we had 7-18. We went around and had everyone say their name, their age, their grade and what they want to be when they grow up.

Hmm. It's hard to remember the order that everything happened in. Christina gave some great health presentations, including one on the fecal-oral route that had ALL the kids attention, from teeny to grand. We had an activity where all the kids drew/painted a woman that they admire and then presented it and spoke about why they admired her. All the little girls said the same thing. She is pretty and nice. But when we got to the older girls there were some really interesting things said.

Julie came on Monday and Liz and Julie were amazing with planning all the activities for the camp. Truly. Truly truly truly.

On Wednesday, I think, I gave a presentation on women's and men's reproductive systems. It was a lot of fun. I got to explain what puberty is, what a period is, how you become pregnant, what happens when you're pregnant, what a clitoris is, what the function of all the organs are. We also had a question box so people could ask questions anonymously (though most people were pretty comfortable asking questions) and we got some verrry interesting questions. Some of them were kind of worrying (one girl asked if you could get pregnant the first time you had sex, and then later asked why you would miss a period) and some were really good discussions (should you tell your family if you have HIV?).

Thursday we had a visit from an HIV-positive woman. She came and spoke to us when we were doing training and Julie and Liz got her to come out for this camp. In the morning we went over biology of HIV/Immune system stuff, and then she did a testimonial. It was really eye-opening for the girls. They were very surprised to see that she was a strong, healthy woman and also had been living with HIV for over 10 years. The girls asked some really great questions of her, too, and they were sad to see her go. Many girls got her number. Even this morning, a guy came to ask for her number. It's crazy to think that something like 5% of the population of Cameroon has HIV and so few people know about ANY resources.

Today we went over STDs and family planning/contraception. We also did a lot of review and questions and true/false games. The girls really learned a lot! It was good to see how much more they knew about HIV transmission and about their own bodies and about how to protect themselves. We also did condom demonstrations today, and of course that was HILARIOUS. We even had a female condom and showed how to use it on an inverted water bottle.

Our only drama was Thursday afternoon. Is it possible to make it a week with 40 girls without drama? I would guess no. We were trying to do an activity for self-esteem. Each girl wrote her name on a piece of paper and then we passed them around the room for every other girl to write a compliment on it (this was with just 28 of the older girls). Unfortunately, some girls started writing mean things, too. Really mean things. And then there was an accusation and a denial and an angry fight that ended in tears (which are NOT okay in Cameroon) and I cried to because I was so upset (which is NOT okay in Cameroon). We had a talk with 2 of the girls who had been writing mean things (though there were more) and of course they were only writing mean things about girls who had said mean things about them and everyone's feelings were hurt because of insults. We had some serious discussion, but the day ended on a low note. In the evening Liz, Julie and I remade each paper with only compliments. The girls definitely all smiled when they got them today.

Anyway. The end of camp was nice (what an exhausting week!) but also sad. A lot of the girls went out of their way to say thank you and we thanked them, too. I think that everybody got something out of the camp (even if it was just a free lunch) and I'm hoping that it will continue to effect positive change in these girls' lives.

Okay. Photos!

PS: Also it was sooo much fun to spend a week with the girls! We baked dessert almost every night. Zucchini bread (twice), pumpkin pie and chocolate cake with frosting. Yum yum!

PPS: Oh and on another day one of the girls started having a lot of trouble breathing and was crying and beating her chest. It was very scary. After it passed we talked and I guess she has a heart condition, some kind of palpitations. Some other girls went to get her mother, who sent a raw egg for her to drink. Normally she has medication but they are out. Oh, Africa.

PPPS: Oh yeah, and the new German volunteer in Baham has arrived. She is getting thrown into the mix quickly!

Camel and me. She was a sweetheart and very shy. She always helped to clean up without being asked.

I made my first pumpkin pie in Cameroon! We didn't have cinnamon, but it was delicious.

This is Prestige. She is drawing a woman she admires.

This is Hornelle. She is drawing a woman that she admires.

Caren is telling us what she likes about the woman she admires. I'm pretty sure she said that she was "jolie" et "gentille".

Gaelle is talking about the woman she admires, I think it is one of her teachers.

Jafercine is telling us about the woman that she admires.

Sonia is showing us the woman she admires. I think that this is the first time most of these girls ever used paint!

Yollande is telling us why she admires Julie. I admire Julie, too.

I'm talking about a woman I admire. Can you guess who it is? It's my mom!

Anne drew her brother and sister. I think her drawings are adorable. She was very shy and quiet the whole time. Every once in a while she'd smile, though.

Chocolate cake with sucre glace. Mmmmm.

Adorable baby goats next door to Liz. They were very loudly playing hide and seek outside her room this morning.

Here are all the girls when Madame Njiki (president of a living with HIV group) came to visit. She is on the right in the yellow skirt. The girl furthest to the right is Aline, Liz's neighbor. She is 12 and has the cutest laugh and is still refreshingly naive and innocent and open.

Girls playing jumprope during a pause. They also played a lot of circle dance games.

Prestige in a cape and Megane on a stump.

Julie is explaining our next activity.

Christelle, Marie-Claire and Anika watch HIV education movies in French.

This is Fanny. I've met her before at Liz's. She's sweet, but also has a pretty tough exterior. She was one of our peer educators. We had problems with her showing up late and teasing other girls. But she also broke down in tears and ran off when falsely accused of writing insults. She brought me fresh corn and a pineapple, and I convinced her to come back the next day. It's tough being a teenager, and more so a girl and more so in Cameroon. I think we'll stay friends for a long time.

2010-07-23T15:16:00.007+02:00

Sometimes I read other PC blogs (less often now that I'm a volunteer) and they explain that the long stretches of time between posts are due to busy-ness. Well, it's rather the opposite for me. I haven't been posting as frequently because, gosh, I haven't done much lately!

So let me regale you with the minutiae of life in Cameroon.

Zara's Adventures In Piment Land

Today is Market Day. I've been missing market days pretty often over the last months due to illness or, more often, wanting fresh food less than I want to deal with a big crowd. But my mental state has been climbing lately (I attribute this primarily to my resuming a regular exercise schedule). So today I set off to market.

I walk to the center of town in my matching pagne top and headwrap (and jeans, which fit for the first time in 6 months, thanks again, exercise), swinging my basket and smiling at all the ladies I pass (and kids, and some of the men).

Once at the market, I start along my habitual route, stopping first at Marta's stand. We shared a taxi back to Bamendjou the other day, though it took me a few minutes to recognize who she was away from the veggie stand. She's busy, so we exchange a quick greeting and her lovely daughter (whose name I forget) helps me. (I buy some tomatoes).

Onward, onward. I stop and buy some ginger from one lady, some piment from the next, some onions from the next. I stop and get some garlic. I hear my name, and my friend (who is 9) Kevine is there with some of her friends. I love her! I say hello and reach out to put my hand on her shoulder, and she flinches away. I miss living in a country where hitting your kids is both looked down on and illegal. I ask her how her vacation is, and she asks why I don't come out to Balatsit. I tell her I'm busy and that I don't know if I would see her if I went out (if I knew I would, I probably would go out there! Such is my social life).

I wander on through the market, but don't see a tamis (sifter) or beans, which are my two must gets. I remember seeing some beans that were ok, so I start on another circle of the market.

Some big tasty looking pineapples draw me in and I'm not in the mood for bargaining, so I probably overpay (you know, 60 cents for 2 giant, perfect pineapples, what a ripoff!). Then I see that she had beans, too, so I get a couple boites. Excellent. A little further on I see my friend Vanelle (who is also 9, and friends with Kevine), sporting a big head of hair (in the summer girls have hair! During the school year buzz cuts are de rigeur) and playing cat's cradle. We exchange some greetings.

I take a different path around the market and I'm starting to resign myself to finding a tamis in Bafoussam tomorrow, when all of a sudden I run into a man who has nothing but tamis! I examine them for quality and pick two that seem nice. He wants 1000 for them. I know this is too much. I offer 700. He says 850. I say 750. He says, okay. Actually he says, give me the money, which is what vendors say when they agree to your discuted price.

My basket is full at this point, so I am carrying the two tamis in my hand. This is apparently HILARIOUS. At least 8 people ask me if I am selling them before I get out of the market. What a hilarious thing!

I stop and get some bananas and an avocado for Cat. My last stop is to get more prunes. Yum! I'm out of little money by this point, so I have to pay with a mille note. The boy selling prunes sends the younger girl next to him selling something I don't recognize to get change. While I stand and wait, the woman on the boy's other side starts a conversation.

I try to explain a little about what I'm doing, but in retrospect I think she still thought I was with the church. She asks if I know Pere Stanislaus (the Polish priest), and I say yes. We exchange names. I'm Izara and she is Emilienne. She lives out in Toumi and I tell her I was working on a farm there recently. I get my change and we part with smiles. I wish I ran into ladies/girls I meet in the market more often.

Walk home, greeting and smiling at everyone. I unpack all my groceries and get ready to prep piment. If I don't grind all my piment right away, it goes bad. My last piment melted and dried up in a hanging basket and I used absolutely none of it. So I put on my piment gloves, throw my 200 CFA worth in a pot to wash and get out my grinding stone.

Grind, grind, grind. This is not as easy as Cameroonian girls make it look. About halfway through (200 CFA of piment is probably a liter or liter and a half of piment), I realize that there is some piment inside my gloves, on the back of my hands. And it is burning. I don't really want to take my gloves off halfway through and have to clean up twice. So I work through it. Grind, grind, grind.

My right wrist gets sore, but my left hand is horribly uncoordinated. My arm is also very tired (post work-out). I have a small/flat grinding stone that I put on my counter and then I grind it with the grinder rock on top of that. In a traditional kitchen, the grinding stone is usually pretty large, on the ground, and sporting a smooth concave surface from lots of use. Girls grind on it bent over in half, using both hands for leverage on the grinder. I think their way is much more efficient.

I eventually get it all ground, the backs of my hands still burning. I fill up a 6 oz jar with pure ground pain (I mean, hotness). I wash everything that piment has touched before I take off my gloves. I managed to get piment on a lot of things. Oops! Finally I take off my gloves and start my wash. First I rub oil all over my hands (the hot oil is not water soluble) and then I wash that off with Dr. Bronner's.

Hmm. The backs of my hands are still burning. Maybe I'll try some acid to react with the alkaline of the piment. I mix vinegar in with the piment puree (reminders of hot sauces back home, also helps preserve it). I pour the end of the vinegar over my hands. It helps.. momentarily. I try oil again, and my hands are smelling like salad dressing. I wash again with soap.

Oww. The backs of my hands are still burning! Maybe I should have taken care of this when I first realized... I find some very old limes in my fridge, cut them open and start rubbing them all over the backs of my hands (which are visibly red and irritated). This provides some relief, when I'm actively rubbing the lime juice in. I've also read that salt is supposed to help. Well, nothing to lose! I dump salt all over the lime juice on the backs of my hands. It doesn't really do anything except make me think about tequila.

Eventually I get fed up with rubbing lime on my hands, and I wash it off. Then I decide to write a blog about how silly I am and how flipping hot the peppers are here. And in case you're wondering, my hands are still burning, but not as much as before the lime.

THE END.

What else is going on? Minutiae. So, I lost my tamis, I think it got a bit ruined after my last cheesemaking experiment. Earlier this week I really wanted some pancakes (because I didn't want to walk AAAAALL the way across the street to buy eggs... I even made eggless pancakes). I opened my flour, and gave it a shake to see if there was anything crawling about in it.

There was. I miss worm-free flour. I was on a good run for a while, getting flour from the supermarche and being worm-free. But. Then there was the worm in the crepes. And now there's this big mealy fellow. Not having a tamis, and really wanting pancakes, I decided to sift the flour through a piece of gauze-y fabric. That took about half an hour for a cup of flour. But my pancakes were delicious and comfortingly worm-free and I even had powdered sugar to put on the top, which was a revelation.

Later that night, I decided to try to make some tofu from soy flour (because I was craving protein and still didn't want to walk across the street for eggs). It was going along, until I got to the step where you strain out the solids. I tried straining through the gauze-y fabric again, but nothing doing. The night ended with soy slurry splattered across the kitchen, multiple fabric types full of soy slurry and me feeling frustrated.

So. I now have two tamis (ha ha, how hilarious! Am I selling them?), one for flour and dry things, and one for wet things like cheese and tofu. Boom.

Alright, alright, I suppose I'll talk a bit about work related things. Only so you don't think I'm completely useless. My APCD is coming for a site visit on August 11th. He'll spend the day here to see how I'm doing and what I'm doing. I'm pretty nervous about this, seeing as I don't have much to show. But everyone is telling me not to worry and that progress is slow. I imagine I'll keep on worrying 'til it's over.

On Tuesday I had a meeting in Bafoussam with Liz and RIDEV. Theo wants to apply for a USAID grant for an HIV/AIDS project, and even if we don't get that grant (which is highly competitive, they're only awarding one or two in all of Cameroon) he wants to have a strong proposal to apply for other grants. Liz came up with the idea of working with traditional practitioners in the fight against VIH/SIDA (as it is known here).

So, we're in the very early planning stages of that. I'm pretty excited about it (probably because I know a group of traditional practitioners here in Bamendjou). The plan goes something like this: Write questionnaires for Tradipraticiens, general community and health care providers about VIH/SIDA and traditional healers. Assess data. Identify one behavior to change. Work through DBC framework (a very organized Designing for Behavior Change process to make actions as effective as possible), and then write an action plan.

Also on Sunday we're having an 80s Dance Party. So. Spandex! Neon colors! Dancing! Fwiends.

Much love to you all. Really. SO MUCH LOVE TO YOU.
Zara

PS: Oh yeah. Gross story. I got a chigger in my foot. What we call chiggers here are different from what you call chiggers in the state. Cameroonian chiggers burrow into your feet, unbeknownst to you. Then they grow an egg sac that is the size of a pencil eraser. Then you find it. Then you have to cut it out. And then maybe you cut open the egg sac, and the guts, and you are squeezing out eggs and green goo and trying not to throw up. And then after you get it all out, there's a hole in the end of your toe and a weird blood-bubble. And then you never feel like your toe is quite clean, and you briefly consider just chopping the whole thing off. GROSS.

PPS: Oh yeah. Exercise. So I've been doing this silly workout video, 30-day Shred with Jillian Michaels. I'm half-way through today! I am definitely getting stronger and exercise does all sorts of good things to my brain. Here's why I like it so much: It's a 20 minute workout. It's pretty hard to convince myself not to workout for 20 minutes when I first get up in the morning. Especially when you never do any exercise for more than 1 minute. Also it's pretty simple stuff, which is good because I'm really uncoordinated. Also it entirely kicks my butt in 20 minutes. So. You know. If you're looking for a workout video. I'm planning to start running again after I finish the 30 days (I don't think I could handle both right now). Anyone want to do a marathon in a few years?

Here's some pictures, because I can:

The post-chigger blood-bubble on my toe. Gross. One of my friends asked if I had pictures of the extraction. No. I don't. I have to say that the thing that makes me shudder with disgust more than anything is the thought of something living under my skin. Once I found it, I could not rest until it was out.

This little piggy went to the market and then got piment all over and cried wah, wah, wah, all over the internet.

Piment is soooo pretty. And soooo painful.

Obligatory artsy picture of my grinding stone. I'm so meta.

Here's the chard-pine nut pasta I made the other night. It was delicious! I'm so bored with my usual foods. I'm working on expanding my culinary repertoire. You can find my recipe for it HERE.

Bristol, thank you for the watercolors!! I've been painting quotes'n'things to put up around my house. This is an excerpt from Ash Wednesday by TS Eliot, and it's one of my favorite things. I also painted a mantra I've been using a lot. "Breathing in, I calm my body. Breathing out, I smile." Speaking of mantras and breathing, the volunteer who is replacing Wendy is a yoga teacher. Also, I bought Wendy's yoga mat. So. Expect to hear about yoga in the future. Also Cristina worked for Conde Nast for lots of years. The West is getting fancified!! New volunteers will land at post in mid-August, and new health/agro volunteers will be getting to country mid-September. Which will mean I've been here for a year...

Love love!

2010-07-10T17:09:00.003+02:00

July 10th already. Times is flying. The last two weeks have been site visit for the new SED and ED volunteers. They keep saying things like, "Wow, so you've been here for a year already?!" It's only been 10 months. And somehow it feels like less. In 2 months and 1 week, it will be one year in Cameroon. And yet, at this time a year ago, I still didn't know where if I was coming here or anywhere. I hadn't had my final interview yet. Bi-zarre. Time flies. Time steals.

So since the last blog, I went on 4 more farm-plantings on two long consecutive days.

Day 1 went like this: meet up with ladies and walk out to Toumi. Plant trees on farm. Eat macabo and njama-njama. Walk to Toumgouo. Plant trees on farm. Eat pomme-pile, bananas and mangos (fresh from the tree we were sitting under). Walk to Marie-Noelle's. She cookes some manioc (cassava) for me that the ladies gave me but I didn't know how to cook. It is delicious. Home. 11 hours of patois.

Day 2 went like this: Plan to wake up at 7 and meet at 7:30. Hear knocking on gate at 6:30. Groan. Yell at gate. Leave at 7:20. Buy bread to eat on the run. Meet at 7:30. Walk to Bakang. Somehow getting everyone to the same place takes 3 hours and a bit of back and forth. Rain threatens. Plant trees on farm. Eat green bananes in ?? sauce. Walk to Mboum. Run from rain. Sit inside 'til rain stops. Plant trees on farm. Eat spicy veggied rice. Walk sloooooowly home. 8 hours of patois.

None of the farms was closer than an hour walk from me or from each other. We saw a lot of country. Between Bakang and Mboum, we heard the rain come. It was insane. It sounded like we were next to a rushing river. It was on the hill behind us, where we had just come from, and you could see the rain overtake the trees and fields in a powerful line of grey pouring water. After we'd run from it (though we were a ways from it), we stopped and laughed.

Earlier on the walk to Bakang, I saw two kids walking on the road. The girl was maybe 8. Her knees were the widest parts of her legs by far. Her younger brother's stomach protruded in a way that a full belly cannot. They just stared as they walked past. I guess it's the famine time right now. The stores from last year are used up, the crops aren't ready yet and there's no money. Later we walked past a mother on a porch with 7 kids. Her face was so drawn and thin. I don't see this much hunger where I am in Bamendjou, but when I head to the outer reaches it's impossible to avoid..

So often I feel like my impact here is impossibly small. A drop in the ocean, if that.

Julie, another volunteer, was telling me about a recent donation in her village. Some millionaires came and painted their health center (which didn't need paint) and donated all these new fancy hospital beds and bragged about how much money they spent (18 million CFA ~ $36,000). But the hospital didn't need more beds. They need money for medication, food, preventive care. It's so frustrating here to see development work that is just a photo-op and does nothing for the people in need.

I went up to visit some other volunteers for a big 4th of July party. We had hamburgers, hotdogs, mac & cheese. America time. I busted out my hammer pants, Obama shirt and statue of liberty crown. It was nice to spend time with everyone, and I met some of the new volunteers there, too. I can't explain just how nice it is to be with other volunteers. I'm learning a lot about loneliness here.

I was in Bafoussam this morning for a meeting (fish and baton de manioc for breakfast, yum). I saw the rainclouds heading in, so I figured I should head home before the rain made the road impassable. Alas, I was late and the rain was early. On the moto towards my gare the rain poured and I was soaked. I took refuge in a car, but then there was some commotion and they said that car wasn't going to go to Bamendjou and if you wanted to go, run to that prison bus. Always one to follow a crowd, I follow to the bus. It is very full, but one of the men from the car tells me there is a spot. I squeeze on and can't even get my butt onto the seat. Of course, before we leave 2 more people are in the same row. (Prison bus is 3 lengthwise rows of seats in the back of a truck/bus... 9 to a row that comfortably accomodates 6, everyone buried under their sacks and babies). They demand 800, more than a normal car journey, but by the time we leave, the rain has cleared and I'm wishing I'd held out for a car or moto.

We take the long way around, through Bahouan, which means craaaaaaaaaawling up long hills, while our hipbones are pinched together. We head down a steep hill and we're pressed together enough that the 9th people at the back squeeze onto the seat. Ow. The girl next to me is complaining, and I'm struggling not to. The girl on her other side says, "Ce n'est pas toi seul." It's not just you. Somehow the girl next to me complaining makes it easier for me not to. I focus on the babies across from me. There are three in a row, two of the mothers must be new. Every once in a while they bend down to touch their lips or their nose to their baby's forehead. It makes me smile, and they shyly smile back. I talk some with the man next to me. He's a lawyer in Yaounde, but home for a family reunion. He talks about how the roads in the East are much worse.

Another conversation concerns first wives treating second and third wives' children worse. It slips in and out of patois, and my attention comes and goes. I hear bits of another conversation, about how there are people who will buy children to eat. Would you like to know how much you have to pay to eat a child? Is it 300,000 francs ($6000)? 3,000,000 francs ($60,000)? 300,000,000 francs ($600,000)? I can't tell you because I'm not a very good eavesdropper in French, but I hope that I misheard it all and that it was an ugly rumor anyways.

And it goes. It rains.

I hope you all are well.

LOVE.

Odjile and Marie-Noelle planting Acacia in Toumi. I got reprimanded again for not bringing my machete.

Katherine resting after we planted at Toumgouo. She is my favorite of all the ladies. She is always smiling and she never yells or complains. Even on her farm she was calm and rational.

Girl in Mango Tree at Toumgouo. Everytime her older sister saw her in the tree she threatened to beat her with a stick. She never did, but I think life is tough for a kid here.

From left: Odjile's adorable son, Ulrich, moi-meme, Odjile's tree-climbing daughter.

Marie-Noelle, with manioc sticks for planting (vegetative reproduction?), Odjile with baby and wood, and Martine doing the notes for the day's work.

Ulrich, carrying firewood. Everyone else calls him by his village name, Talla Fundop. He walked me home the second day, since we're neighbors. We walked past a big group of guys his age playing marbles. They were all yelling and joking at us in patois. Poor kid. I hope for his sake they were making fun of me.

Walking home from Toumgouo. They make it look easy, but it is HARD to balance stuff on your head. Also, the loads are often too heavy to lift onto your own head. Sometimes I come across ladies on the side of the road waiting for someone to help lift their load onto their head.

Martine & Marie-Noelle in Bakang. The hill just falls away. It's so steep!

Ulrich (Talla Fundop) enjoying bananas and sauce. I'm so happy when I see kids getting enough to eat here.

When I came home from the fourth of July, I found that my mushroom spawn jar had... spawned. Beautiful Oyster Mushrooms.

Again. Love.

2010-06-24T18:27:00.005+02:00

What's been up lately? Gosh, you have no idea, huh? It's been awhile since the last blog.

Hmm. I spent some days working out in the wee morning, getting fit with Jillian Michaels. I went to our regional Agro meeting and learned a lot and had an amazing dance party. Had a mushroom cultivation workshop and ate some delish mushroom soup. Engineers Without Borders have been here 2 weeks and left today. I've been sick a lot lately, mostly in the fatigued way (sleeping 10 hours a night, and 3 hours in the day). I got over the 2-months-diarrhea!

Today I went to Bafoussam to get my internet back (disappeared for a week), get the key to my new post-box (write me!), and to pick up a few things. I scored 2 pairs of perfect fitting pants from the frip for a reasonable price, yesss...

Anyway. Here is my new address:
Zara Sykes
BP 979
Bafoussam, CAMEROON.

Tres simple, n'est-ce pas? If you're inclined to send more than a postcard I'd love to get some more coriander, emergen-c, seeds (esp. chard, basil, cilantro...), pictures of you to put up in my house!, america candy, whatevs.

So. I feel like the slice of life is more interesting than the broad and forgetful summations, so here's a journal I wrote yesterday. I'll put some pictures up at the end.

23 June 2010

Rain this morning. Rain in the night. I haven’t been sleeping well. I toss and turn until my bed is unrecognizably scrambled. I wake up at 2 am, wondering why it isn’t morning, and when morning comes I’m ready to sleep all day.

Rain this morning. I hoped it would be fierce so I wouldn’t have to go plant seeds with Marie-Noelle. (Un)Fortunately, the rain let up and after some oatmeal and an episode of Dexter, I gathered my seeds and camera and water and headed off to Marie-Noelle’s.

I sat in the kitchen for awhile. Two new faces there. The young boy Marie says is the son of one of the ladies in the Women’s Group. I think the older girl is her daughter home for the holidays. But she wasn’t introduced to me. Those unmistakable cheekbones, though, definitely family. Nina was there, too, and Brell. I greeted the Pere. Some other dude stopped by and I greeted him, too. In the kitchen, they were peeling tiny potatoes with giant knives. It seems so entirely natural now that a kitchen is a dark and dingy mud brick building with raffia rafters, full of smoke from the fire between the 3 stones. We sit on short benches on the dirt floor.

After a while, Marie-Noelle tells me to Venez, Allons. We go to the farm and plan our planting scheme. The boy comes with us. Marie chides me for coming to work on a farm without my houe or machete. I didn’t know, I say. I fall in the mud. Marie spends some time explaining to me how to walk without falling. I am sure that I come off as infantile to anyone in the country, I have no mastery of the language, culture or daily activities. But sometimes I wish that I could explain eloquently that I am not a fool and I know how to walk. Clumsy doesn’t really translate in French. Marie starts talking about how I should give her a computer and finance their maïs project, and I’m feeling like it’s going to be a long day.

But she starts clearing and the boy works on chopping down an offending tree and I put the branches on the farm (l’engrais vert). A few ladies show up. At first I think they are just walking by, though I recognize their faces from the meeting Sunday. But they come up and watch us as we start to plant 2 rows of Calliandra. The lower row at the drop-off above the road the boy plants with a machete and a leaf full of seeds. The upper row Marie measures and makes holes with the houe, I follow and plant. Martine carries the seeds and refills my hand when I run out. Odjile carries her baby on her back and does some weeding. Katrine and other Marie watch. Marie-Noelle answers their questions about agroforestry, in Patois.

The conversation drifts from agroforestry to I’m not sure what, all in Patois. I follow along, sowing seeds and not falling down anymore. The blood keeps rushing out of my head and my vision goes dark. I miss being healthy all the time. I suppose it wasn’t Patois all the time, because I remember occasionally laughing along with the women, or interjecting a comment, or at least a “Oui”. It felt nice to be working alongside such nice ladies.

After sowing two double-rows of Calliandra, we go to look at the amazing pineapple and take some photos. Then we go down to the Acacia seedbank and take some photos. We descend to the route. Then Marie-Noelle is appalled that we forgot to take pictures with me in them, so we climb back up to the Acacia and take a few more. On the way down (carefully, so as not to fall), the boy turns to me and smiles. I ask his name. In a whisper and with downcast eyes, he says, Talla. Talla? Oui, Talla Ulrich. Enchanté. Je connais chez toi, he says. Tu connais chez moi ? I say, You know where I live? Across from the church? Yes, he says. Oh, good, I say.

We sit in the courtyard at Marie-Noelle’s and Martine writes up a rapport for their group. We plan 4 (!!!) more farm visits/agroforestry seed plantings for next week. Nina and other sister (?) bring out the pineapples sliced up and they are just delicious. Then they bring out Pomme Pilé for lunch (beans and potatoes mashed together with palm oil and spices). I eat a Cameroon-baby-sized portion, which is a whole plate, and everyone else has mountains. The ladies go off on Patois, so I watch Brell trying to feed Odjile’s baby. Prends! (Take it!) Encore! (More!) Boire! (Drink!) Brell is a pretty adorable kid. He wasn’t speaking at all when I first got here and now he’s a little gentleman of the house.

After an hour or more passes in Patois, I’m getting ready to make my excuses, but luckily the meeting ends and everyone leaves. We walk slowly to the road where we part ways. Thanks, nice ladies. It felt good to be a part of something. I return home wiped out but feeling accomplished.

It’s nice to come home to Cat. He likes to purr and follow me everywhere. I buy him an avocado. It’s his favorite. I mange some pickle-raisin-mayo sandwich because it feels like home, and zone out to some more Dexter. I gather enough energy or self-loathing to wash the dishes that have been sitting out all week. I listen to Devil Makes Three and it feels good to sing along and inside my heart-brain it’s Yosemite feelings.

I think I’ve gathered enough self-loathing to bathe, too. Or maybe it’s just mud.

Marie, Katrine, Martine, Ulrich, Odjile & baby, Marie-Noelle, pineapples. These pineapples grow large because of the leguminous plants. Thanks, Sesbania!

Katrine, Odjile & baby, Marie, Marie-Noelle, Ulrich, Martine, pineapples, Acacia trees in the background. How agro-fores-terrific!

Marie-Noelle and me. Yes, I know how I'm holding the pineapples. What, did you expect my maturity level to increase? Ha. Never.

Willy, Melissa, Nina and Brell. Les enfants de Marie-Noelle. Love them all.

Me and Cat. He likes sleeping as close to my face as possible.

Hammer pants. Can't touch this!

Love love LOVE to you all. XO. Zara.

2010-05-13T14:12:00.004+02:00

On the road to Bakang/Balatsit. A beautiful and evil water-sucking eucalyptus.

Let's start with Monday.

Monday morning I thought I had a water committee meeting to go to at 10. I was puttering around my house, drinking coffee, getting things together, and 10 o'clock is approaching. This is a little strange, because Marcel is usually 20 minutes early (he is the TIMELIEST Cameroonian). I go to open my door and I find a note on the floor from Marcel.

What I understand from the note is that the meeting was earlier and Marcel is there, but I should still come at 10. So I start busting down to Bakang. As I'm walking, I start to wonder if I have interpreted the note correctly. I didn't bring it with me, so I can't check it. It would make more sense that the meeting is tomorrow, dju-dju, the day before market day. And the wording didn't seem quite right to me.

I tell myself that I'm worrying needlessly, to trust myself, and I keep going. I see a really cool bird in the tree, so I stop and try to take a picture for Lizzie. Of course, it flies off as soon as I turn my camera on. But then another one shows up, and they land in a further off tree. I snap a picture of the tree, even though I can't see them. And I got it! I think it is an African Pied Hornbill. Coooool.

Not the best picture, but it was so cool! I'm going to try and snap him again.

I get to the Bakang Chefferie and there is no one there. NO ONE. Roops! But it is a beautiful day, so I walk around and check out all the water points. Meet some folks in the road, learn a little more patois. There are a few minor problems at the water points, but they are fixed by Tuesday.

Upon my return to the house, I reread the note Marcel left me and find the source of my error. I have completely skipped over the word "demain". Tomorrow. Same time, TOMORROW. Oh well.

I see Marcel in the evening and I tell him about my mistake. He confirms our plans for the next day, and we decide to leave at 9.

TUESDAY.

Again, I am puttering around the house, waiting for Marcel to show up. I hear a knock on the door (actually I hear a voice going "Tok Tok Tok", because that is the Cameroonian way), and leave my house only to find Maturin!

He is here to take me to meet the farmer he told me we were meeting last Wednesday. 6 days late? This may be a new record. I tell him that I am going to a meeting right now, but I can do it in the afternoon. I will call him when I get back to the house.

He leaves. Marcel shows up. We go to Bakang. Water Committee meeting. They have finished the 8 slow sand filters the Engineers have subsidized, and we give them money to subsidize 8 more. Marcel lectures them on how they need to get their ISH together. Mostly in patois, so I don't understand, but also in French. Anyway. That tone of voice and uncomfortable squirm are kind of universal. People hate admitting they are wrong, so I'm not sure how much good is done by this.

Marcel asks if I have time to go meet a Gabonaise woman. I tell him yes, because I really have to stop saying NO to opportunities, and it's not like Maturin never makes me wait. (I am waiting for him as I type this. Only 30 minutes late, which is on time for him). We walk for another 30-40 minutes.

And it is SO beautiful. I wish I had taken more pictures. I'll walk out again and snap some. Marcel and I have some good conversations. I tell him I'm interested in working with him and he tells me about some of the various projects he is working on. We talk about finding funding, the Peace Corps, the gap between rich and poor, the obligation to help others. All in all it is very pleasant.

We get to the lady's house and Marcel starts talking to her about getting funding from young Cameroonians in Libreville in order to build les toilettes at the hospital in Bamendjou. I get distracted by the baby and a young girl who is there. She seems to be a little slow (developmentally disabled? differently abled?), but real sweet.
"Voila le bebe."
"C'est vrai."
"Le bebe dors."
"No, il ne dors pas."
"Voila ma maman."
"Voila les bananes."
"Ma maman a les bananes."

I get a call from Maturin wondering where I'm at. Marcel and I leave. I ask him if there is a handicap group/center in Bamendjou, and describe CFRASH to him. He says, no, once a year the government gives some rice to the handicapped and that is it. Bummer.

Maturin calls back and tells me to hand the phone to Marcel so he can tell him where we are. (It takes about 3 tries for me to understand this is what I'm supposed to do. French on the phone is so hard!) Marcel explains. A few minutes later, Maturin shows up on his moto. Guess I don't get to go home for lunch/breakfast!

I hop on the moto and Maturin and I head off further down the road to Bangam. To meet a farmer. But. Imagine my surprise when we get there and end up in a classroom with 20 people, and they ask me to give a presentation. Thank goodness I had just given my intro presentation 2 days before and it was fresh in my head. I speak louder this time and more confidently, but I'm really still working out the nuts and bolts of my presentation.

It is SO much easier to have Maturin there. He translates my French into better French. He helps me with points I have forgotten. He clarifies points that I have not made entirely clear. I answer some specific questions that people ask. We talk about the problems in Bangam and what can be done. There are maybe 3 or 4 people who are really interested, and a lot of the other people are sleeping (totally acceptable meeting behavior). We spend about 2 hours presenting, and leave with some good contacts. I meet the director of the Primary school where we are using a classroom. Everyone is reeeally nice.

Afterwards, one man takes us to get us sodas. My French is pretty worn out, 5 hours deep into the day, so mostly I just sit and sip my small Coca and let the conversation flow around me. But it turns out that this guy is hard not to listen to. On top of having these weird blue eyes (just a narrow band of bright blue in between huge pupils and stained whites), he has just recently returned to village after turning 60. He was a pilot for 38 years. It's hard to understand everything, because I don't have much airplane vocabulary, but I pick up the words ailerons and cruising altitude. Wow.

Anyway, this guy is really excited about making improvements to his village. He is interested in starting a pepiniere, and he has a water catchment and water tower right by his house that he had constructed. Neat-o.

Post-soda, Maturin and I head out, a different direction than we came and I am completely confused as to how we will get back to Bamendjou by heading further away from it. But the road makes a slow loop around and I sit back and enjoy the scenery. There is that feeling in the air, that combination of smells, hot sun, breeze and bright greenery, a feeling I only get in summer, that everything is good and this is a time that I will miss and revisit in my future mind. Aaah.

But also the road is bumpy and I wish I had a sportsbra and wish I did not have diarrhea. Oh Motos. I love/hate you.

Finally at around 3:30 I get back home and fall ravenously into a plate of spaghetti omelet. It is heavenly.

WEDNESDAY.

Head to Bafoussam for banking and shopping and tailoring. My ride there is so roomy, I am in the backseat with 3 guys. Guys have such narrow hips! We are barely touching! It actually feels more awkward than being jammed in with some large mamis, because once you're jammed, you can just relax into the pile.

The trunk is full of guinea pigs. They make muffled, scared squeaks through-out the journey. I can't imagine eating guinea pigs. Who knows. Maybe I have.

Bafoussam, I walk towards the market and stop at a boutique to print some stuff (pictures for the tailor to use, a report Marcel wrote). I decide to hold off on the bank (no need to carry all sorts of money around all day) and search out some pagne.

Oh pagne! Often when I am pagne shopping I don't think very carefully about what I will use things for and I buy the first thing I see and then later I wonder what I was thinking. This day, I have a plan. I go into every pagne shop, and think carefully about the pagne I like. What will I use this for? Is this a design I want to wear? Are these colors I like? Gosh, sometimes I feel silly for having to put so much thought into everything.

In one shop I buy 2 pagne, one nice quality one with a pretty blue starfish design and a cheaper hot pink one. The lady who runs the boutique is from Bamendjou and we have a nice little chat. I keep on into boutiques, still looking for my beautiful chicken pagne, and more fun things. A lot of the stalls are both pagne vendors and tailors. In one I see this amazing(-ly ridiculous) rainbow-y skirt. I ask if they have the fabric. No. They don't.

I find a boutique with the chicken pagne, but it is uber-high-quality and 4 times what I want to pay. (Ah, 2 times, I really want that chicken pagne!) In another boutique I find the ridiculo-rainbow print, as well as a couple other prints I really like. That boutique has lots of little designs, instead of the traditional foot wide repeating designs that I just can't get into. I drop some Gs for 3 pagne. I find another version of the chicken pagne, but it's got these weird misplaced green spots. I pass.

I head to the frip (fripperie/thrift clothes) section of the market, but get lost along the way and find myself in an entirely new area. Oh Bafoussam market. You are so twisty! I find my way out and pick up another towel, I start to look through frip. A sparkly fou (crazy man) grabs my arm and I say "Laisse-moi," and keep walking. Unfortunately, this is a persistent fou. He starts to follow me, stopping where I stop, walking next to me like we are together, telling me how we will be married, how he is secretly a high up politician with lots of sway, how we must form a budget for having kids. The entire market is laughing at us.

It is uncomfortable. I tell him that he is deranging me and he should leave me alone. He does not leave. One or two guys tell him to leave me alone, but he does not listen (usually the fous will stop when someone else yells at them). I try to find my friend Martine in the veggie market to make him go away, but she is busy, so I just say hi to her and continue on. Sparkly fou continues, too. (He is wearing a gold-lame shirt, a skirt over pants, and has a giant plastic diamond in one ear. Sparkly.)

He follows me all the way to the tailor, but does not follow me inside once I go. Thank goodness. It's been like 20 minutes. Oh Cameroon.

At the tailor, I order 3 dresses, 2 shirts and a pair of hammer pants. Come March 31st, I will have the rainbowiest hammer pants! I am so excited.

I'm exhausted, so I head down to Akwa to grab a ginger ale and wait for Liz and Kiki to show up. They are longer than I hope they will be (though I am known to be a wishful thinker) and one of the guys at the bar also thinks that by being irritating he will win his way into my heart and pants. I am really sick of the majority of Cameroonian guys. I need to find a way to deal with this frustration.

He asks where I'm from, if I have a boyfriend, if I'm married, tries to buy me another soda, a shot of tequila, a beer, asks me why I'm so quiet (because I don't want to talk to you!), blah blah blah blah blah.

Finally Kiki and Liz show up and we head to Les Arcades for some food. Again I am eating my first meal of the day in the afternoon. It is a steak with mushroom sauce and fried plantains. Oh yum! My steak is super tough though, and I haven't finished even half of it by the time Liz and Kiki are done. I go bag-lady style and put my unfinished food in a ziploc bag I have in my purse.

Next stop, bank. The line is 12 deep. Ugh. Here is my problem with the bank. If I use the ATM, I only get big notes which are hard to change in village. If I go inside, I have to wait in line for like an hour to get smaller bills. As of late, I've been getting big bills. Interestingly enough, this results in me spending less money. Excellent. Then I can do things like buy 5 pagne and eat a steak.

Supermarket. My splurge this week is some white chocolate.

Home. Buy some mangos at the market. Sit and talk with Jane for a while. Plant an open bed nursery with seeds I've been germinating. Eat.

THURSDAY/TODAY.

It is a public holiday today, the Ascencion. Separation of church and state? Nope. Maturin said he would come get me for a meeting at 9 today. It is 10. The frustrating thing about this is that I am anxious when I am waiting and even though I have time to do things, I can't relax and do them. I will have to be ready to drop them at any time. I need to learn to be more laidback, n'est-ce pas?

(Now it is 4 hours after Maturin was supposed to come. I gave up and left to meet Marcel. Home again and still no Maturin).

Tomorrow I am going to visit another volunteer for a few days. It has been a busy week and I am ready for a little relaxation.

7 of the 8 biofilters in Bakang (the 8th is behind a house). These cost about $30 to manufacture, and Engineers without Borders is subsidizing $20 of the first 16. Unfortunately, for many families, $10 is still a pretty steep price, even for a clean water source. We're working on a solution.

2010-05-09T20:14:00.003+02:00

Productive Day!!

Waking up today was much the same as everyday. I sleep in as long as possible, because it is inconceivable that there is anything more comfortable than my bed. Today, this meant getting up at 9. What a lazy bum I am!

I made a cup of coffee, hoping it would spur me to productivity, or at least deter me from complete sloth. I started downloading a yoga podcast, but this meant I couldn't use the internet for fun and games. What's a girl to do? I finished translating Marcel's work report to send to the EWB. While I understood the report in French enough to get a general idea, translating it into a workable English document was a little more difficult.

As I was finishing up with the translation, I hear a knock on the door and Marie-Noelle's strident voice. I threw on a skirt (somehow short spandex shorts are not appropriate dress here) and answered the door. Shoot, I forgot that she wanted me to go to a meeting today.

She tells me the meeting is now. I have barely got pants (skirt) on and I haven't eaten breakfast or prepared anything for the meeting. I tell her that I have to finish this report before I can go, and ask how long the meeting goes. She says, "Just until 2." (It is now 10:30). I tell her I will try to make it before the end. She says, "Come by 1," and looks disappointed as she leaves. Fair enough, I've kind of bailed on her a lot of times. By kind of I mean actually.

Once inside I look at the report that I have all but finished translating and realize that I have a golden opportunity to actually do some work. And then there is some combination of caffeine, guilt, excitement and having used up all the fun the too-slow-for-streaming-video internet can provide me. I grab my flip chart paper (twice flooded), a box of markers, my tech manual and I whip up a 3-flip chart Intro to Agroforestry presentation. I write out everything I want to say in French, just in case. I make a quick spaghetti-eggs (I'm actually shaking from caffeine, roops!). I change into something more presentable (pajama shirt soooo comfy).

And I walk out the door! And towards the center of town. And behind the Sous-Prefecture. And into a meeting!

It turns out that it is kind of a political meeting and we are in the (unfinished) RDPC building (yes, that is Paul Biya's party). There are three women sitting up on a raised platform, and 8 other women sitting on a bench facing them. (I hear there are normally 25-30 women; my nerves are glad for the low attendance). The president welcomes me and introduces herself. I go around and shake everyone's hands. Everyone goes around and introduces themselves. Each woman is a representative of a different women's group in the area (Bamendjou-Bameka-Bahouan-Batie). I introduce myself un peu. I ask the president if after the meeting I can have 5 or 10 minutes to make a little presentation. She says, "No, it's important, let's do it now."

So I tape up my flip-charts and a little unsteadily make it through my teeny-tiny introduction. They get my "teach-a-man-to-fish" saying and metaphor. After I finish and sit down, the President re-says the majority of the presentation in a much louder voice for the lady who is deaf in one ear. Oops! I remembered to speak slow, but not loud! Marie-Noelle adds a few points that I didn't include. I answer a few questions from the President. She asks what my work plan is. I tell her that if anyone is interested, I can go out to their farm and assess the problems and work with them to use agroforestry interventions. I tell the group I can also go to each of their groups and do formations.

The President thanks me and asks me to come back to do another presentation at next months meeting. She says I can go, and I don't even have to stay for any boring meeting! Yaaaay. We all thank each other and I walk home feeling pretty groovy.

When I get home I decide to plant more of my garden (now there are carrots, broccoli and onions in the ground!) and I clear some brush I left in the path a few months ago. Roops.

Delicious oatmeal. Some internet time. I look up recipes that use wilted lettuce as I've certainly got some. I find some recipes for lettuce soup that look interesting and doable. I get my lettuce out only to find that it is beyond the state of wilt. It has moved firmly into the state of slime. I guess I'll try lettuce soup next time I let my lettuce get past its prime (but not too far past).

My eggplants and cucumbers are starting towards the point of prime-past-ness, so I decide to cook those. I make my favorite eggplant recipe, yum yum, but I quadruple it because I have 4 aging eggplants. It takes a lot longer to cook. But it is the best! You can find the recipe on my Zara Cooks in Cameroon blog here: http://cameroonzaracooks.blogspot.com

What else is going on?

Yesterday was a little eventful. I walked out of my front gate to go buy some bread, but there was a huge crowd standing in the road, and several vans. Jane is there and I ask her what is going on. She tells me that everyone is there for Alice's funeral, and I notice the coffin strapped on top of the van. With some bananas and a spare tire. Alice used to sell veggies next door to my house, but she left a few months ago, I think she was sick and pregnant. I just found out that she died a few weeks ago. This is a major bummer. She was one of my few "friends" around town. And beyond my selfish reasoning, she had 7 kids. Her husband is sick too. I don't know what she died of.

So. Crowd. Vans. Still life with coffin and bananas on van. The vans fill and take off and the crowd stays and chats. Jane screams a little and I turn and see what has scared her. A teeny-tiny fluffball of an unsteady-on-its-legs kitten. I pick it up and scratch its head. "They just look so gross," Jane says. Huh. I've never heard that response to a kitten before! Different world. (I also heard Jane singing the Barney song a few days ago. It somehow sounds nicer here).

Yesterday evening I am washing dishes and Jane comes to my window. "Zara, there is a dog in my house! Will you help get it out?" The dog was in our yard earlier and Jane was throwing rocks at it to try to get it to leave, but it couldn't figure out how. I'm not a fan of dog-rock-throwing, but I think it was the same dog that dug up my one pitiful row of Swiss chard and spinach. I go over to Jane's, she has two friends over and they are all in her bedroom looking for the dog. He has found a way under the bed. We take off the mattress and they try poking at him between the slats. He just hides more. He tries running behind the bed where I am. I hold out my hand and try to make friends, but he is scared and growls. Okay, buddy. We'll try a different way.

I tell them that all the people are scaring him and he just wants to hide, so Jane and her lady-friend go outside, and her guy-friend and I continue to disassemble the bed and prod the dog (who is kind of tiny and really adorable). We finally remove all possible hiding places and provide an exit and the dog runs out and hides in the garden. Poor thang. I can't imagine how or why he got into Jane's house with 3 people in there!

In other (unsavory) news, I've had diarrhea for something like over a month now. I need to go to the health center and figure out what exactly is in my gut so I can kill it. But the idea of going to the health center and waiting and waiting just to poo in a cup and have an awkward French conversation seems so unpleasant. I'm still kind of hoping it'll go away on its own, but, it's been over a month.

Love to you all! Hope your intestines are healthier than mine!

(Also if anyone can explain to me the difference between it's, its and its', I'd be much obliged).

(Also my latest package requests include: one of those cloths you can roll dough on, coriander, turmeric, some liquid Dr. Bronner's peppermint magic soap, and probably some other stuff I can't remember now. Oh, America candy is always nice. I got some smarties and cadbury eggs that were nothing short of epiphanic. And can I say again that everyone who has sent a package is nothing short of AMAZING?! It's really not necessary (soooo expensive!), but it is really nice. Letters and photos are also great. Also thank you letters are sloooooooowly on their way.)

LOVE.

2010-05-03T21:49:00.008+02:00

Qu’est-ce qui se passe? That is to say, what is up?

Last week was tough. I was having some serious doubts about my commitment to Sparkle Motion. I mean, the Peace Corps. The upside is: it turns out that I have an amazing number of family and friends who are loving and supportive and I would be nowhere without them. Anyway. After spending 4 days inside my room crying, I then spent 4 days exclusively with friends, and it is amazing what a difference not being alone makes in a mood. Things are a lot brighter now.

Well. Two nights ago it was raining something fierce. I was watching the waterfall on the steps in front of the house and thinking, “Hmm. I hope it doesn’t flood!” I pre-emptively put a towel at the base of the door, took a few dramatic photos and returned to the e-mail I was writing. I clicked send and looked behind me, and water is pouring into my room. Balls! I snatch up my pile of maybe-dirty clothes (or can I get another day out of them?) and (ever so smartly) snagged my voltage regulator out of the growing lake (no electrocution, lucky me, and it still works!).

So. House flood number two. My room filled with a good two inches of water (it is, as I mentioned last flood, about an inch and a half lower than the rest of the house). Sigh. The worst of the deluge stopped, and the water outside the house receded to not-entering-house status. Time to start bailing! Also, the water smelled really bad. Like feces. I’m sure there was some percentage of poo in that pool. Especially since I watched a two-year-old attempt to drop a deuce in my yard last week. (I didn’t really follow up).

Bail, bail, bail. Tin cup and 5 gallon bucket. How many buckets to bail out my room? 18. I estimate somewhere around 70 gallons of water. Then on to squeegeeing out Lake Living Room, without re-inundating The Great Bedroom Depression. Two hours later, je suis fini! (This is a French joke. The proper grammar is j’ai fini, or, I finished. Je suis fini translates closer to, I am finished/dead. I was. Also I hurt my lower back with all the bailing even though I thought I was using good body mechanics. I’m still walking around like I’m 100).

Also, I was just getting ready to eat when the flood came. So. It was two hungry hours of bailing. But afterwards I made a little tuna-salad with fresh cucumbers and it was all the protein-y deliciousness I wanted. Well, kind of. Tuna cans are kind of small. I also had some oatmeal, because hot and yum, and it was still raining and cold. In case you were curious.

While the flood was frustrating, it was comforting in that it wasn’t my worst day this week. And I think that revelation was indicative of my mood brightening, even in muddy-floody circumstances.

Also, as of today, the landlord has dug a bunch of trenches and erected a barrier, so this should NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN. (Hear that, universe?)

So. Onto something more exciting and productive.

Sunday! I had plans to meet with Maturin (my formerly flaky, but now kind of on-top-of-his-shizz counterpart). He had a meeting in Baham, something to do with his real job, and youth. That was about all I knew. Up early, waiting, waiting. He was only half an hour late on Sunday! Once we got to Baham, we did some more waiting.

The meeting. It was a group composed of delegates from a number of women’s and youth groups in the Bamendjou-Baham area. Maturin conducts bi-monthly (in the every two months sense) meetings to help them with action plans, consult on problems, etc. It was actually pretty cool to see him in that role. He really played up treating everyone as equals, and tried to get the youth to ask each other for advice instead of him. They are also planning a big festival in July, partly celebrating the 59th anniversary of Cameroon’s independence, partly something about what Youth have to say about AIDS, and partly competitions in arts, dance, sport, etc.

Well, this is about 3 hours deep into the meeting, and I’ve been spending the last hour daydreaming about starting a girls group (honestly, after a few hours, my French comprehension is out the window and it’s pretty hard to focus, especially on something that doesn’t actually concern me). The topic of the sport aspect of the festival comes up. People start talking teams, how they’ll be divided, how many games to have. After a while, we elucidate that it is in fact football (soccer) that we are discussing (what else, right?). I’m madly curious inside my brain if these will be co-ed teams. I’m contemplating asking, when one of the women does ask. “And what about the girls?”

“Oh,” Maturin explains, “For the girls, there will be athletisme. Two races of 100m and 40 m. Each town (of 4) will have one girl for each distance.” Wait, WHAT? Hold up. So each town gets to have a team of 16 guys to play 1 or 2 games of soccer, and then 2 girls to run 2 races which won’t last more than a minute? I ask, “What if the girls prefer to play soccer?”

Guess the reaction. Guess it. C’mon. I’ll even give you options.
a) “Sure, girls can play if they want!”
b) “Well, that’s not something we’d considered, but yeah, let’s talk about it.”
c) Laughter.
d) Punch in the face.

Did you guess C? It’s always C. It felt like a punch in the face though. Maturin laughingly explained that at this level, soccer is for GUYS. Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaybe in the future. I felt frustrated. I get it. It’s a cultural thing. Women’s rights here still have a long way to go. It’s hard feeling transported back decades and decades though. It made me even more psyched to start a girls group.

(PS: Remember the girls I played soccer with in Bangangte? They got a team together and they have been traveling and winning games and trophies and even money! Check that out!)

Also, when we paused for lunch, Maturin says, “Okay, now the women will serve us.” And they did. Without pause or question, they cleaned and passed out dishes, served all the food and ate last. I think I was the only person who said, “Thank you,” when I got served my plate. I still get all flustered thinking about this. I’ve also been thinking about how much more difficult it must be here to be homosexual or have a mental illness. Those are things that still aren’t even talked about. Women’s rights have at least got their foot in the door.

(Lunch was fish and macabo in a spicy fish sauce. Yum. Macabo is like a starchier, harder potato. It’s my second favorite tuber here, after actual potatoes.)

The good thing about the meeting was that I met some nice folks. A girl I’d met at the lycee, Christelle, was there and we made plans to get together. I met a woman who is really interested in Agroforestry, who I think already worked with Nura. And I met a lady from Batie, who is a coiffeur (hairdresser) who wants to chill. I would be so happy to work with just women here.

But. After lunch we went to Fovu, the sacred rock site in Baham. It was wicked cool! Giant, giant rocks (volcanic in origin, not quite my beloved granite). They still do sacrifices there. There were tons of smaller rocks covered in salt and palm oil. And some stained with blood (probably chickens). There was a small stream running through that everyone washed their face in (I opted out, feeling exhausted and prone to water-borne illness). The guide told me if I drank the water I would be very fertile and have lots of babies. No thanks! I bet that’s not all I’d get growing in my tummy either.

After Fovu, we went to CFRASH, which is the handicap center in Baham. It is pretty amazing. I have been there once before. There are 17 residents, people with handicaps and orphans. (I realize that the term handicapped is certainly outdated and un-PC, but it’s the term used here, so I defer). They get classes and physical therapy. There is a German volunteer there (Hi Kiki!) who teaches some of the classes. Also, there is a women’s and a men’s atelier (workshop). The women make jewelry and clothes, and the men make raffia-bamboo furniture. They also have a small farm, a porcherie and some chickens.

After the visit, I stayed behind to visit with Kiki and then headed over to Liz’s for some more friend-time. Then Liz and I went back to CFRASH (she visits often and sometimes teaches English there) to hang with the homies. I sat and talked to a girl named Stephanie. She was really sweet, and it was probably the nicest time I have had hanging out and talking with Cameroonians. She told me she couldn’t speak a word of English, and I said she must know at least ONE word, and she said no, no, no. Then she busted out with like 10 English phrases. Smarty-pants.

Liz and I went out for dinner, I got a spaghetti omelette and she got spaghetti and beans. Yum. Then we made some Kalimotxo, or what I call Classy Juice, which is half carton-wine and half Coke. Yum-ish.

Still working on getting my house cleaned up and in order after last week and the flood. I have a meeting with a farmer on Wednesday with Maturin. So. Things go!

I'm just going to say that for the record, Staircase Falls in Yosemite is way prettier than Staircase Falls in my front yard, Cameroon.

I decided to put in a luxurious water-carpet. It's the latest in hybrid water-bed/carpet technology. My bedroom. Mid-flood.

Bailing tools. Bucket 3 of 18.

Giant flat look-out rock. Half the girls did all their scrambling in heels. Color me amazed, encore.

Immense rocks. Zara is happy.

Big cave, full of salt and palm-oil covered rocks. Don't fall on them!

It was really cool to see how excited everyone was to visit Fovu. I'm guessing field trips aren't a real big thing in Cameroon. Interacting with nature usually means farming or clearing land. And I'm not even sure people get to see sacred sites like Fovu very often. It was nice, and not just for me.

Pumpkin guts? No. Palm oil. I'd never seen it look like that before, but I guess that is probably its' oxidized state.

Walking past the edge of Fovu on the way to CFRASH. It was really one of those beautiful days that puts me in awe of just how beautiful is Cameroon.

Here is my new friend Adeline. Maybe she will braid my hair one day!

Some of the amazing handcrafted bamboo furniture at CFRASH.

Gratuitous. I have the cutest nephew! Miss him!

2010-04-22T19:57:00.006+02:00

It has been a long 3 weeks! I've been without internet for 11 days, and getting it back feels like I'm running across a field right into internet's waiting arms. It's very romantic, and laze-inducing.

So. Let's see if we can catch up a little. About a week and a half before IST (In-service Training, a week-long venture I just returned from), my counterpart finally showed up.

Finally! It had been 2 months! And what does he say to me? "Zara, you abandoned me!" Which makes me feel how exactly? It makes me feel angry. Because I have been trying to get in touch with him for a month. Then he asks about the work I have been doing. What work? Alright, half my frustration at this point is at myself for not going out on my own to find work. We make it through an awkward conversation and I don't cry until he leaves. Success for the day.

A few days later I go to meet my supervisor, who I had bumped into on a run. He is not there, because even though he told me to meet him Wednesday, he thinks that Wednesday is Tuesday. Cameroon time knows no bounds. My counterpart is there though, and we have a more rational/less emotional meeting and make plans to do a farm visit with a farmer and meet with a Traditional Medicine Practitioners group in the week before IST, which he has (against my unspoken wishes) agreed to come to.

The day we are supposed to go visit the farmer, he says he will come by to get me at 7 am. I normally get up at 8:30, but I was awake and ready and waiting at 7 am. And 8 am. And 9 am. And 10 am. And 11 am. And 12 pm. And around 1 pm, I head to Bafoussam, because I have plans. Oh, also I was supposed to meet my supervisor that morning. I run into him on the way to get a car and he has forgotten about this meeting. He does, however, call my counterpart and ascertains that he is, in fact, somewhere else.

A day or two later, I go for a run and then fall into a deep sleep. Apparently, during my post-run nap, my counterpart comes to get me for the Tradipracticiens meeting, which he has not informed me is that day. I sleep through it. After I wake up and he attends the meeting, he comes to get me to go see the farmer. We get there and the farmer is not there. C'est la vie, n'est-ce pas? But I take a look around the farm (pineapples, eucalyptus, bush-pigs, guinea pigs) and the farmer shows up eventually and he is real nice and seems excited to work with agroforestry and my mood switches immediately into I-AM-SO-EXCITED-ABOUT-THE-POSSIBILITIES! and I run my mouth about agro-fo and how I'd be happy to subsidize seeds if he would let me use his farm as a demo. I got to hold a guinea pig. It was real soft. They eat them here. I haven't.

Anyway. IST approaches and my anxiety increases. Can I just recommend to anyone who ever has to take a malaria prophylaxis: consider NOT taking Mefloquine/Lariam. It make-a you go crazy.

IST! I head up with Liz. Her bag gets (accidentally) stolen on the way to Bafoussam, but she has a great driver who helps her retrieve it. Thanks, buddy! We caravan up to Foumban and the Baba Palace Hotel. Fancy place. Hot water, private rooms, delish lunches. Thanks, Peace Corps!

On the first day of IST, all the counterparts show up more or less on time -- except mine. I am already stressed. I have a little breakdown in the middle of the session and leave in tears. Luckily I am surrounded by buddies and they take good care of me. I return and eventually my counterpart shows up... 4 hours late. By this point I had planned to do my post-presentation alone, and then he shows up and throws me off again. We have some serious communication issues. I manage NOT to leave crying again, and also we make it through our post presentation without me crying. He makes some bold-faced lies about the work we have been doing together. He doesn't want to look bad. Imagine that.

IST continues with long sessions for 8 hours a day, and then the 31 volunteers reunited from afar spend about 8 hours an evening hanging out. Add in meals and travel (the health volunteers have a different hotel - NO thanks, Peace Corps), and sleep is coming in at about 4 hours a night. This is not a pace I can keep and I eventually admit defeat to sleep and do not get all the hanging out time I crave. But the body needs what it needs!

It was great and amazing to see what all the other volunteers are doing at their posts. Truly. It was really nice to converse with so many friends, to listen to them play music, to play games (Banana!) and to feel at ease.

Alright. Let's get some pictures in here.

Oh wait. PACKAGES!!!!! OH MAN!!! Thank you so much: Mom & Dad, Gail, Barby & Dave, Juli (LJ's mom) and LJ! Everyone was real happy to share in fruit roll-ups and america candy! I am saving the nuts and emergen-c and tea and drink mix and science magazines for myself. Well. I'll share the magazines. Also, Mom, thanks for the next 6 letters I got from you. Also, Micah Bisson, whoa, thanks for the letter buddy! It was a surprise and hilarious.

Ok. Pictures.

This is Mt. Mbappit, or something to that effect, in Foumban. It's beautiful country out there. This is above a rice-farm that we visited. The farm was currently dry and out of season, but it was a beautiful plain that is great for rice. We also visited a rice mill. There was a chicken with chicks hiding under it. I wish I had a picture of that for you. It was ah-do-rable.

Here is a group of beautiful Muslim ladies who are part of the GIC we visited. Also note Tiki, our APCD (program director) on the right, arms behind head. Nobody puts Baby in the corner! Foumban is a mostly Muslim town, like 75-90% (my french numbers in that range are not great), but this GIC has Muslim and Christian members. Good for them. I am always excited to see different religions getting along.

Here is a man who works with a Heifer International project in Foumban. (Mom and Dad, remember than Christmas you gave me a donation to Heifer? It is so cool to see it in action). So, Heifer (HPI) donates an animal and training to a group in a community (it has a very stringent application process). When the animal reproduces, that group/individual has to pass the offspring on, along with training, to another member of the community. Great, n'est-ce pas? I hear that while Heifer is involved it is very successful, but once they are not checking up on the project anymore, it doesn't always go as well.

This project had like 4 cows, though I think only one of them was producing milk, which was their thang. They gave us some cold delicious pasteurized sweet whole milk yogurt drink. It was the best thing I had tasted in a long time. Yum. Thanks, cows, HPI and Foumban group! Also, they were feeding the cows with forage from agroforestry trees they had on the property. Gooooo Agroforestry! Did you know a cow can produce something like 20-30 L of milk a day? Jeezy-beezy.

Our last day, we visited the Palace in Foumban. It has a great museum. We couldn't take pictures INSIDE, but I did get this one of the mural. I like how it depicts the modern Chefs with sunglasses. That's progress!

Here is a partial list of the rulers of Foumban. Note the one who was a ruler for only 30 minutes. Does that pique your curiosity? Story goes, the last 3 or 4 chiefs before her (she was one of 2 or 3 princesses) were not of the ancestral line. She was given the rule so that she could reinstate it to her son. And hence that line rules again.

So what cool things did I see in the museum? A few local written languages (one syllabic, one letter), some wild and beautiful jewelry and traditional clothes and decorations. Some truly eerie relics of violence: The goblet affixed to the top of an enemy's skull. The shirt covered with sewn on tufts of hair from enemies killed (and it was COVERED). The calabash gourd encircled with a web of enemies jawbones.

There was also a whole room devoted to one ruler who was a giant. They said he stood 2.6 meters tall (something like 8+ feet). There were giant clothes and bracelets the size of hemorrhoid cushions. His ceremonial bells were WAY bigger than everyone elses ceremonial bells. And while his name was spelled Mbouombouo, it was pronounced Bobo. Call me endeared! I am curious how much of it is myth. Is he like the Wizard of Oz, or was he significantly larger than the average man? I guess I will never know. (Until I get a time machine).

We also went to the artisan village to buy souvenirs, but it was a little disappointing. Partly I was sick. Partly everyone was real grabby/pushy/YOU MUST BUY THIS. Partly it's a kind of tourist-y area so they were charging SO much more than necessary. Partly because a lot of stuff was imported from other countries. I got a bracelet and called it a day.

I was real sick by the end of IST, from a head/chest cold to the n/v/d (nausea/vomiting/diarrhea for those of you not keen to the nursing abbrevs). I have to say that puking up fish is probably one of the most foul things that I have ever done, and I may have completely lost my taste for my favorite protein source in country.

I'm back at post and things are starting to get busy tomorrow. I very much need to do laundry, and re-clear my garden, and plant my garden, and clean my house, but also go to a meeting and a gathering tomorrow, a handicap fete on saturday, and a youth-program/weekly planning with my counterpart (yay) on Sunday.

I'm still pretty tired, even though I've been doing 12 hour sleep catch up nights. So. I'm not sure at this point what I've already written and what I've forgotten. I'll try to update this a little more regularly/coherently/sanely.

Love to you all!!!!

PS: It is officially rainy season. Au revoir, la poussiere! Bonjour, la boue. (Goodbye, dust! Hello, mud.)

PPS: I've officially ridden a moto in a pencil skirt - forwards and side-saddle. Forwards involved some ankle-twisting, tripping, leg-flashing. Side-saddle is a little tipsy turvy. Pencil skirts are not ideal travel clothes. But I got all my pants dirty.

2010-03-23T20:38:00.003+01:00

well, it's been awhile since i last updated. things have been simmering, and i think it's still going to be some time before the soup's done. that is to say... S L O W - G O I N G.

IST, In Service Training, is less than 3 weeks away!! This is very exciting. Everyone in our stage will be together again for a week of informative sessions. IST will be held a few hours away from me, still in the West Region. There is supposed to be a kickin' palace there that is worth the cultural experience. I've also heard rumors about a pool, but I'm not holding my breath. (Get it?) I'm really excited to see all the people who are in the far corners of the country!

So, Zara, been doing lots of work? No. So, Zara, heard from your Counterpart lately? Nope. Not in about two months. Granted, I wasn't trying to get in touch with him for a month and a half of that. Two-way road. But now I am trying to get in touch with him because I'd really like some help getting in touch with different groups and farmers. Nothing yet. I may try to track him down, but he lives about an hour walk away from me... I'm guessing he won't be going to IST with me (Counterparts come for half the week).

So, Zara, been getting really culturally integrated? Well.. I've been spending a lot of time in my house, and when I go out, often it's to see other Americans. Kinda lame, huh? But the good thing is that when I DO go out, I am starting to feel more like it is home. Kind of. The language barrier is still pretty painful. However, I will miss being able to make a room break out into applause with two words. Especially when they are, "Hello. How are you?" (It's two words in patois).

So, Zara, I hear you went to a pig roast? Sure did, kid! I traveled on up to the Northwest (Anglophone!) with some other Westies for a weekend of pork and imbibery. The trip up was a bit long, about 11 hours all told, though that included a mid-day break from traveling for a cold one. Luckily, since the trip was so long, we missed the actual slaughter of the pig. I hear it was pretty awful though. One guy knocked it out and another guy hacked its' head off. I don't feel real bad eating meat here because I know that it has had a decent shot at life and it was killed in as humane a way as possible. And I miss protein. But I really don't like killing and I think that when I get back to the states I'll be back on the vegetarian wagon.

I played flip-cup for the first time, as did a number of Cameroonians. More people came up the next day and the house was pretty raucous. The pig was delicious. A Cameroonian guy named Danger started quizzing me on agroforestry techniques when I was sheets to the wind. I think I was able to explain them as well as could be expected, but he already knew everything I had to say. I'm not sure what his game was, but I wasn't laughing. At another point in the evening (we were at a restaurant) a Cameroonian guy came and whispered in my ear, "If you go to the bathroom by yourself... BE CAREFUL." I was baffled and creeped out. If it was an outside danger, why wouldn't he tell everyone? And if it was a.. threat/come-on it was creepy. I didn't go to the bathroom alone.

The ride home from the NW was incredibly worse, thanks to a wicked hangover and a crazy driver. I was not confident in my ability to keep from up-chucking, but I made it!! One bus we caught had a No Vomiting sign painted on the inside. Unfortunately the rules were not followed. Some lady in the front puked for pretty much the 2 whole hours. In the car in Bafoussam an old drunk guy wanted me to give him money and go to a hotel with him for a few hours. After 8-ish hours of traveling, I was not amused. The driver, however, thought it was hilarious.

Anyway. After pig-roast weekend, I stopped by to help Wendy with her book project. She is my closest PCV neighbor (10 km?), and a SED (Small Enterprise Development) volunteer who will be COSing (leaving) in June. She has been working to get a shipping container of 23,000 books to Cameroon and it arrived in Bafoussam finally last weekend to be sorted and distributed to... 35? different libraries/schools all around Cameroon. Wow!!! You can read more about it here.

This week Chez Moi, I've been working on clearing my garden. I'm late. Everyone else has cleared and planted, but I am still learning, n'est-ce pas? Anyway. Clearing a garden is a lot of work!! I got all the big stuff chopped down on day 1, and days 3 and 5 (Guess I'm not big on consecutive work days) I got a few rows cleared and tilled. Unfortunately today I ran into a big anthill that i think takes up a third to half my garden. Now the Peace Corps trainers advised us to use motor oil to get rid of ants(this is a bit of a running joke, of course I won't be pouring motor oil into my garden). Suggestions I've received on getting rid of the ants include: destroying the queen (but I might get bad juju unless I go see my Chef?), garlic&pepper, distracting them with sugar and then burning the sugar pile, a giant magnifying glass (2 votes!), lazers (me), dinosaurs (surprisingly not me!) and to give up because ants are collectively smarter than me.

I bought some rat poison last week hoping to get rid of the mice in my house. In french, the packet says Raticide. If it had been mouse-specific poison, it would have said Souricide. Because the word for Mouse is sourit (pronounced the same as the word smile). Which is funny, because Souricide sounds like suicide, and you all know how I like word play. It's funnier in my head, I promise. Well, I put the poison out in 4 places I know mice to frequent and after 3 days there were no visible results. Then on day 4 I almost stepped on a dead mouse. Gosh, I feel bad, they are so cute. As I was throwing him outside, I saw a live mouse run by. The mice are smarter than me, too. Along with the ants and probably crickets, too. I'm thinking more about getting a cat.

Oh yeah, when I was in Bafoussam for the great book-sorting, I also stopped by my tailor to pick up some stuff I commissioned a month ago or so. (Unfortunately, my other tailor's place burned down!!! Ashia. I'll have to get new chicken pagne if I want my chicken dress). Well, what I got from the tailor was not exactly what I was picturing... The dress didn't have the lining, collar or buttons I asked for, but it did have sleeves I didn't ask for! The top was more of a mini-dress, but I still look like I'm pregnant in the 60s and I can wear it with my leggings and I actually kind of like it better. It was way overpriced, and I definitely could have bargained with these mistakes, but I didn't have the energy for it. Oh well. I bet you can't get a dress tailored to fit you for $12 in America. (The plus side, even tho it's not exactly what I was expecting, it all fits GREAT!).

Made ricotta cheese this week to put on homemade pizza, it was pretty easy (though time-consuming and messy) and also delicious. Oh, I made dumplings this week, too, though there was so much salt I think my blood became a salt-slurry. Oh well. We learn from mistakes, right? I also made some tasty fried dough that would have been better with cheese in the middle and Henry made some amazing cinnamon rolls. YUM!!

Tomorrow I am going to a water committee meeting in Bakang, which is the first thing I've done resembling work in a long time. Hopefully there will be some progress on the slow-sand filters. I'll also go and check on the system the engineers set up to make sure it is working.

Oh, walking home a while ago (from Wendy's, in new shoes, which cut my feet UP), I met a nice guy. He is a soccer coach in Yaounde, but is in Bamendjou for a while. He was on his way to ref/coach a soccer game at the Catholic Mission. He's also Muslim. See, why can't we all just get along? Nigeria, take note. He also asked me if I could come out and look at his farm, but I am lacking confidence in my skills and in Cameroonian guys, so I was hoping to get my CP to go with me... I think I need to find a new counterpart. And some confidence.

I'm sure there are a ton more things that have happened in the last month and a half (Women's Day - March 8, I got the pagne in a pre-made caba, said Bonne Fete to some ladies, refrained from partying, had diarrhea instead), but I haven't been writing it down (sorry to you and me), and I'm sure this post is long enough as it is.

Oh, last week marked 6 months in Cameroon!! WOW!!! 21 to go. I've got to get on my game.

MMMMMUCH LOVE TO YOU ALL!!!!!!

Zara

PS: I got packages from Gramma (yum, cookies are amazing!) and Georgia and Monte (those work gloves are so helpful!)... Thank you so much! I know it is expensive, and it means a lot to me to know that you guys are thinking of me and took the time and money to share!

PPS: Oh yeah, and one night it rained so much our whole compound flooded, including half my house. My bedroom is an inch lower than the rest of the house (don't get me started on construction here!), and it got the worst. All my important papers got wet, and my DVD drive is busted. I'm glad the damage wasn't worse. It was a pain to clean up. We re-dug our ditches, so it shouldn't ever happen again.

Here is beautiful Lake My House. The flood also took out a pile of magazines, 3 good books and my new flip-chart paper.

This is what I eat sometimes when I go to Bafoussam. Except normally I have mackerel instead of carp, but I'd never seen carp before so I got it! I think it was the cause of the next week of intestinal distress. See also, the condiment (delicious spicy spices), fried plantains, and the best ginger ale.

Liz and I in our matching Women's Day pagne. I always look like a giant 5 year-old. The pagne says hilarious things like, "Dignity, discretion, efficiency, loyalty" and "Being the cornerstone of all synergies". I wore this out a few days ago and a guy complimented me on it and then told me that because I was wearing a Women's Day pagne I had to buy him a beer. I may have gone off on a feminist rant in French.

The Northwest is mountains!!!

This pig looks like a human back. Creepy, huh?

Here is fufu-corn (what we in Francophone Cameroon call couscous de maiz), njama-njama (what we in Francophone Cameroon call njama-njama) and pig (what we in Francophone Cameroon call porc).

Here is Wendy sorting books with her eyes closed because she is that amazing. I'm just kidding. I'm really a terrible photographer.

Garden, before.

Garden, after Day 1 (i've done 3 more rows since).
Zara, after Gardening Day 1. I think this is what I would look like if I were a Zombie and I just crawled out of the ground. Except if I were a Zombie, I would prefer cheese to brains.

2010-02-23T15:58:00.005+01:00

Last week, my housemate Jane was telling me how strong Nura (the volunteer I replaced) was. How she would walk from Bamendjou to Batie, Baham, Bafoussam, even Dschang and Bangangte. Which is pretty impressive. Bafoussam is a 40 minute car ride. Bangangte is a few hours in a car. 37 miles, according to GPS!!!

While there is certainly a part of me that wants to create my own name for myself here, it got me to thinking. Why not walking? I love walking. So last week I walked home from Batie (95 min). Yesterday I walked to Baham (118 min) and today I walked from Baham back here (125 min). I love walking!

Benefits of walking over taking a moto:

- I notice so many more things! Instead of just knowing what parts of the road are particularly bumpy, now I know where the dirt turns from clay to sand, where there are incredible vistas from the top of a ridge, where there is a particularly interesting tree.

- I get to meet more people! Instead of breezing past on a moto and giving a half-smile from under my helmet or a half-wave from my death grip, I can say hello to all the Mamans working on their farms, the kids walking to school.

- Less dusty

- Cheaper

- Good exercise

- Better for the environment?

Alright, I'm reaching now. I just love experiencing the world as a pedestrian. It was the same in Humboldt and Yosemite. When you walk, you build a relationship with your environment. When you drive, you exist in a bubble. Not to say driving doesn't have it's place. I'll be taking a car to Bafoussam on Thursday. (Downsides to walking: sweat, sweat, sweat! and blisters. and dirt.)

Speaking of existing in bubbles, one of my friends here got a compliment from his counterpart. That he is very un-American, because he isn't as private as Americans tend to be. (This after stopping to enjoy some palm-wine with some guys he had met once). I'm glad for him, but the truth for me is that I AM very American. I value my privacy to a degree that I think honestly offends Cameroonians around me. When I am out and walking around, I am happy to greet people and have conversations, but when I am at home, I close my door and I want my space to be my own. I'm learning so much...

I fell when I was walking home today. I was distracted by a plant on the side of the road and slipped on the gravel and bumped my knee. What a klutz! Luckily there was no one around to tell me, "Patience."

I walked past the Ecole Publique de Batounta (a village or quartier halfway between here and Baham) and it was recess. All the kids shouted Bonjour and La Blanche, and I waved and smiled at them all. I love the kids here. I also kept stepping in potholes because I was distracted by waving. What a klutz!

I greeted the Mamans on the farms with an Olia, Maman (good morning, in patois). Some replied with just a Bonjour or a Merci, and some asked me questions in patois, which I didn't understand. Sometimes they would then repeat themselves in French. You have come? Yes. Sometimes they would go on and on in patois, laughing. I love the Mamans here! They work so hard. And they are so forgiving of my ineptitude in patois, and french, and the culture.

Here is what I know how to say in patois:
Olia - Bonjour
Autzoca - Bonsoir
Nda - Bonjour
On Intia - Bonjour
Tchamba'a - Thanks

While I was at Liz's I looked through a book she had bought about Baham. It had a linguistic map. Tres interessant! I wish there were better maps of the area here. Anyway, we are in the Nguemba linguistic area. Yup.

Whenever I cross the street to Laur's boutique to buy bread or eggs or TP or what have you, her husband tries to teach me more patois. He will say something in patois. At first, I would just say I didn't understand. Then I would just repeat him. Now I repeat him, and ask him what it means. But I forget to write it down and then I forget it. I'm really forgetful here!

Djudju - the day before market day. I don't really have any time to use this word, but there are meetings on djudju.

OH. When I was walking TO Baham yesterday, I ran into two men who stopped me to greet me. Let me say that the last few weeks I have been extremely frustrated with the guys around here - I am not your girlfriend, fiancee, or wife and I have no desire to be. If you really want to be my friend, stop asking me to go somewhere with you and ask about me. I have no qualms about being friends, but you're not treating me like you want to be my friend. Alright. Rant est fini. Anyway, these two men who stopped me were a relief. One had been walking the same direction as me and had stopped to greet the other man. He offered me some kola and the other man suggested that me and the walking man walk together. Okay. It's not as though there was much of a choice, am I going to stop and hide? But we speedwalked and he speedtalked and I tried to keep up with his strides and his french. He asked if I was a tourist, if I wanted more kola, asked me why i was walking instead of taking a moto, told me it is good to exercise, talked about what he was doing but his french was too fast for me to understand. Once we reached the highway, he caught a moto and I declined and it was altogether a (fast, but) pleasant interaction. I was in such a good mood, I greeted the next man I passed. He asked me what I had to give him. I sighed and told him nothing. He kept talking and I ignored him and kept walking. Oh well.

So. Kola, you ask. What is kola? Kola nut. Traditionally significant in Cameroonian culture (and other West African cultures). Something you would bring as a gift to a Chef, or offer to guests. The seed of Cola acuminata. About the size and shape of a large unshelled pecan. Pink. It breaks apart into irregular sections. To do things properly, you would give a section to each person in the group. You chew it up, some people spit it out after chewing, most don't. The taste is comparable to chewing aspirin. The texture is somewhere between a raw carrot and wood. It's high in caffeine! People here also eat it when drinking beer. Beer and Kola is the Red Bull and Vodka of Cameroon, except it's mostly old men who drink it instead of the cool kids at the club. Apparently Kola is good for asthma, hunger pangs, hangovers and depression. But too much of it may be toxic. It's also what puts the caffeine in your Coca-Cola. The more you know.

Alright. All for now. Love.
Zara

2010-02-21T16:18:00.002+01:00

Thunder! It's grey and ominous and thundering outside. Fantastic! It poured rain yesterday for a few hours. On the tin roof it drowned out all other noises. It was the first real rain here since... probably November? The real rainy season isn't supposed to start until April, but I am not complaining about a little cool-off.

Today:

Coffee. Cake for breakfast. Yum. Market day. Irritating guys I choose to ignore. Nice ladies in the market. Carrots, celery, onions, garlic, piment, potatoes, pineapples, limes. Kids I recognize say hi on the way home. Taxes online - confusing with two W-2s, the Peace Corps one is incomplete, my bank is different... I spent 2 and a half hours working on them only to have the browser crash! Aaaah! Luckily the website had saved what I had done and my taxes are filed! I didn't file state tax (again) because they owe me a refund of $25 and it cost $27.95 to file through the same website as free federal tax filing. Anyway, federal refund, too! Yay. Made my favorite lentil recipe here... oh gosh it is tasty and makes me feel like I am home (in Humboldt) and it is healthy. I also made some more hot sauce with piment and vinegar and garlic. Washed carrots and celery and put them in the fridge. Today, so far.

Tuesday:

When I went to Bafoussam, walking from the gare to the town center, there were a couple roadblocks up. I wasn't entirely surprised, I figured that they were just out to make an extra buck. A little further up the road, I see a row of rifle pyramids stretching into the distance. On the side of the road is bunches and bunches of military. There is no way to walk past the rifles without half of them pointing at you. Guns make me really uncomfortable. More uncomfortable than the military guys shouting, "La blanche," and "Ma cherie".

HOWEVER, there were two soldiers walking hand in hand and laughing about something with big smiles on their faces. Reminder: homosexuality is illegal in Cameroon (not technically anymore, but definitely culturally) and hand-holding between men is way okay. But... gosh, America, please let people be openly gay in the military!!! It is real cute! (Alright, there're more serious issues involved in the debate, this was merely my rambly train of thought).

I found out later that all the soldiers were there for the installation of the new Governor of Bafoussam. Who knew? Not me! Or Wendy, who is expecting 20,000 books very soon that the last governor told her he would provide storage and guards for. Plans, who needs 'em?

I ate lunch in Baf while I waited for the Supermarché to open again (they close for lunch). While I was sitting eating my Banane Tapé (unripe bananas deep-fried, smashed and deep fried again) and drinking my Schweppes Ginger, men came pouring out of the bar across the street. Two men are fighting. The shirtless one smashes his bottle on the cement and another man picks him up around his shoulder and between his legs and carries him into an alley to break up the fight. People gather in a semi-circle and watch the mediation, and I leave. It's 2 o'clock.

After the supermarket (no cheese, I spent all my money at the tailor) I get in a car to Batie. There are cockroaches living in this car. Crawling on me. Gross. I peg my pants so they can't crawl up my pants. They were crawling ON my pants, after I peg them, they crawl on my bare ankles. Gross.

In Batie I go with Wendy to observe the business class she is teaching. She is way rad, which is impressive with a class of 30-ish. It is interesting seeing things start to make sense to people. She does an exercise where the class adds up how much a beer and cigarettes and PMUC (lottery) costs over the course of a year. Enough to buy two motos! Some people are very impressed. There are a lot of people here who find money for a beer or two every day, yet think they don't have enough money to do X with. Logic pervades, but there are those who think that life without beer is not really living.

Delicious food made this week: Hummus, falafel, pita, peanut butter chocolate chunk cookies, eggplant/greek olive pizza, cheesy squash pasta, one-egg cake with chocolate sauce.... I'm not the only volunteer who cooks way more than they ever did in the states. I think it's a combination of massive amounts of free time and a longing for home-food.

All for now. Love!!!

2010-02-17T21:02:00.003+01:00

I walked home from Batie to Bamendjou today. I'm not exactly sure how far it is, it took an hour and a half. It was really nice to be walking outside, especially the first 20 minutes where I didn't see anyone. I have more than enough alone time here, but it is all inside my house. It is harder to go enjoy the outdoors and be alone, due to the very regular dispersal of people.

Here are some pictures from my walk, I'm too sleepy to formulate words right now.

Leaving Batie... lots of eucalyptus. C'est beau.

I live across from the giantest church. It was nice to see it in the sense that I knew home wasn't forever away. It still looked pretty far away though.

This was carved in the embankment by the road. I'm not sure what it is. There were more faces, too, afterwards. Kinda freaky.

There's the church again, only a few minutes away!

Here are my feet, dirty and with new blisters. Ow. They hurt.

2010-02-11T19:46:00.000+01:00

Today was 11 February. Also known as Fete de Jeunesse, the translation being something akin to Youth Day (Party Time).

I went down to the grandstand by the Mairie (Mayor's office) to watch the festivities. First, the national anthem, and a really, really long speech. Then, we had several Majorette groups (or minorettes, as they called themselves). Girls from 6 to 16 in matching uniforms doing somewhat synchronized dances. It was incredible (when they were dancing) and hilarious (when they were totally disorganized). Then there was a traditional dance/drum performance from the students of one of the local high schools. Then the parade. For every school in Bamendjou, a flag carrier, a sign carrier bearing the name of the school, and then many children of the school marching in lines, from smallest girls up to biggest girls, then smallest boys up to biggest boys. First all the primary schools, then all the secondary schools.

Let me tell you, Bamendjou has a LOT of schools. Some of the marching was more enthusiastic. Some schools sang songs as they marched. The secondary schools also had signs for their clubs. The Red Cross club had a plant in the crowd who fainted as they went by and they picked him up and put him on their stretcher.

Towards the end, there was also a Tae Kwan Do school who did a demonstration, and then the marching band of 8 finished off the parade.

So. Pictures!! (I took nearly 400, almost all of them of students marching. It was like a 3 hour parade).

Approaching the parade grounds... Jane's teacher friend, hand-holding, a legion of students.

National Anthem. That's the Mayor in the Background.

Check out the one-white glove. The one glove style is not only popular with Michael Jackson, but also the Majorettes of Bamendjou. Also seen: lace capes. Yes, please!

Traditional drums, pre-beating.

Dancers, with shell noisemakers on their legs and athletic shorts on their heads. No joke.

The start of the parade was the Ecole Maternelle, or pre-school. Teeny tots.

Teeny tots were excited about marching, even after standing around and waiting for half an hour. The kids here (mostly) have amazing patience!

Yeah, he's into it.

Kids on the fence watching the parade.

Other clubs included: Environmental Club, Computer Club, Non-Violence Club, and an all-guys Ballet Club from the Catholic secondary school.

Hoop-spinning, fo sho.

The sewing section of the Catholic vocational college. See, there is the pattern and they are all wearing it! I am not sure why the model is white.

Oh, gosh, what was a miniskirt on the other majorettes was floor-length on this minorette.

This makes up for the 400 marching photos. Cool, huh?

Til next time.
Love!

2010-02-09T08:28:00.000+01:00

The internet is dangerous to have. I need to remind myself that it is to be used as a resource, not as a source of endless distraction. Guess which I've been doing more of!

It's been cloudy and cool the last 2 days, much like Humboldt weather, which is LOVELY. Last night there was some rain on the tin roof, and I felt very relaxed.

So in using the internet as a resource to stop using the internet as a source of distraction, I've been working on a journal/lifebook project. I've been doing some reading at zenhabits.net which is great, and working on positive thinking! I need more art in my life. In a doing art sort of way.

Here are some tiny pictures of what I've done:

As part of my positive thinking, I've been reading chakra affirmations. I don't know much about chakras, but I like the idea of focusing on these different aspects of life, and the words resonate with me. It makes me laugh, if nothing else, when I fall over into a bucket and then tell myself, "I move easily and effortlessly." And who doesn't need more laughter?

2010-02-07T12:37:00.000+01:00

Can you take a step forward and back at the same time? Is that a step sideways? Or a little dance, like the Charleston? I digress.

Had a meeting Saturday to go over the applications for the Young Scholar Program. When I woke up Sat, I realized that we still don't have any money, we don't even have the possibilities for getting money in the amount of time we need it (3 weeks) and I felt totally unprepared. I think that it is a great program and it has so much potential. But I also felt like we were going about things the completely wrong way. So I texted Liz and when we got to RIDEV we had a discussion, and we are going to slow it down and rework our plan such that we will start the program in October. This gives us time to: get financing, plan our sessions better, learn how to speak french better, use more feedback from last years program, and we'll have a 6 month program instead of a 2 month one.

What a weight off. But also, the two things that were keeping me so busy last week, the Engineers without Borders and the Young Scholars Project are now pretty low on the horizon. This gives me a lot of free time and less direction.

I'm hoping to get into some more agroforestry related work, like i'm supposed. I'm going to get in touch with my counterpart this week and hopefully we can plan to meet with some groups and farmers to do some needs analysis and plan some formations. I'm also going to expand my teeny tiny tree nursery.

This last week has been pretty tough mentally, and all the other volunteers I've talked to (from our stage) are feeling the same. Huh. Must be the lunar cycle. Ha ha, I am kidding, it probably has to do with culture shock and adjusting expectations. I've also got this theory about alternate universes...

With the delish pine nuts my lovely, amazing parents sent, last night we made some homemade pesto and homemade gnocchi. What fun, how easy but time consuming, how delicious, what a mess. Also got a killer deal on some expired Edam, more than 50% off, not even a spot of mold. Thanks for the tip, Nura.

I've been feeling off and on mad homesick, but it is strange because I think most of the things I am homesick for are more from the past than from home. I would miss them even if I was aux Etats-Unis. There continues to be a wealth of things I spend a lot of time thinking about that I entirely fail to understand. Time does not equal comprehension. Luckily I have some really great friends who let me ramble on and on and on about every thing that crosses my mind.

So we did end up reading through about 14 of the young scholars applications. That America-centric part of my brain was surprised more people didn't say the U.S. when asked where they would live if they could choose. More than half said Cameroon, with some Canada, France, Germany thrown in.

I think the most shocking thing I read was in response to the question, what do you do to contribute to the development of your community? One student listed a lot of things, including that they don't practice homosexuality. What a totally different world!

Anyway. Hope all is well where you are.
Love!

2010-02-02T10:19:00.001+01:00

so february, huh.

yesterday was a frustrating day, which i haven't had in a while. i forgot how lame they are. woke up after a super-realistic nightmare (i dreamed i was HIV positive and was having to tell everyone important to me) and i wasn't sure it wasn't real for a few hours. caught a car to Bafoussam, drunk guy in the car (at 8 am) kept telling me how he was going to get me pregnant and i was going to have triplets. kept giving me lectures on how cameroon is africa in miniature and there are more than 258 languages, and telling me about the triplets we were going to have. I started ignoring him, which is awkward in a car for 40 minutes. eventually he started hitting on the lady next to him, talking about how he slept with other peoples' wives. classy.

got to baf in a rotten mood, and all the hisses and kissing noises from guys (which is a standard way to get someone's attention here, it is just hard to get over how uncomfortable it makes me in my cultural perspective), and it was pissing me off after drunk-car-guy. i went to the bank before the meeting, and tried to use my ATM card for the first time. i didn't remember my PIN, so i kept trying things until it locked me out. it turns out they hadn't given me my PIN with my card. the guy at the bank was all, "why didn't you ask for your PIN?" and i was like, "I didn't know, is it not obvious that i am way out of my element here?" except that it was in french and i wasn't actually so sassy.

so i had to run to my meeting (or hop on a moto, rather) before i could get my card straightened out. the meeting was... frustrating. working in a group is hard enough when you all speak the same language. Instead it is me and Liz struggling with french, and 3 or 4 folks from RIDEV speaking fast mumbly french. Theo was not there again so we didn't have his translating abilities or keeping us on track abilities.

I think I am going to learn a lot from this Batir l'Avenir project. Because we are going about it the entirely wrong way. And there are going to be a lot of mistakes to learn from. We don't have financing for the program yet, which is going to start in less than a month. The way we are planning it is terribly disorganized, the language barrier is intense. During the meeting I went from sitting up straight, to leaning on my elbow with my forehead in my hand, to leaning back in my chair with my arms crossed and glaring. I think the next logical step would be to throw the table.

Things improved. We ate lunch. Grilled fish and fried plantains, yum. Got the bank stuff straightened out, one way or another. Got some expired cheese from the supermarket. Went to the post office to see about getting a PO Box. I had to ask the lady to repeat her instructions about 10 times, but she was nice about it. Caught a moto to my Gare, caught a car back to Bamendjou. Hot hot hot. The driver was nice and opened his door when we hit the paved parts so there was occasionally some airflow.

Is sweat not amazing? Cooling by evaporation. Love it.

When we got to Bamendjou there were approximately 30 people waiting for a car to show up and they started pushing to get in before we could even get out. I had to shove through a crowd, got my glasses knocked off and almost fell over. Survival of the fittest.

Bought some avocados (4 for 20 cents!!!!!) and some ginger, couldn't find any pineapple or veggies, and headed home.

At 8:30, after dark, someone was walking on our roof. Jane and I started talking and they left. She said, "Maybe it is a thief." Feeling safe. Not.

Read for a while and talked myself down and got so exhausted I had to sleep. Of course everything was fine.

Today is cleaning day! Slowly. Did my dishes, cleaned the top half of the kitchen, cleaned out the fridge and did the compost. I still need to wash the floor (Jane reprimanded me), and get all the little piles I've started organized and into non-pile form.

Ate a delish avocado and balsamic vinegar sandwich.

Groundhog day today... think I'll get another 6 weeks of winter? Ha. I miss winter.

Love.

2010-01-31T17:13:00.001+01:00

Alright, just a quick one. January is almost over? That means I've been at site almost 2 months, and in cameroon almost 5 months. Crazy.

So today through some miracle of keystrokes I managed to start my computer, which has been broken for over a week. Yes! Unfortunately, I lost all my pictures from Cameroon thus far, which I hadn't backed up, or saved on my SD card. Stupid. But, c'est la vie. So, now I have a computer and internet... amazing!!!! I have so many more resources to work with now!

Yesterday I hopped on a moto to head to Baham to meet with Liz about Batir l'Avenir. The moto, however, went down an entirely different road than the road I know as the road to Baham. I thought about saying something, but it was a nice day, and the mototaximan seemed nice, so I figured I would just let it ride.

What a ride!!!! It was the most beautiful moto ride I have been on thus far in Cameroon. We passed a sacred forest, which is truly beautiful, a multilayered, crazy biodiverse place with trees covered in fluff and vines hanging down and it's dense dense greenery. I saw a real lawn. I saw a huge-normous Baobab tree (i think). There was a house on the hill with round turret towers that had pagoda roofs. I felt so incredibly happy and lucky to be in Cameroon.

And we even made it to Baham!

Though I discovered a new form of moto-discomfort. About 2 minutes into the ride a bug flew in my nose. I could feel it rattling around in there, but I didn't want to dig it out while on the moto. So I just kind of squished my nose from the outside and killed it, but it was still rattling around in there. After a while it disappeared. I don't know if it fell out, or if it made it to my throat and I swallowed it, or if it is in my brain controlling my thoughts.

Kittens are great. Fried plantains are delicious. I love avocado season. The end.

Love!

2010-01-30T09:58:00.000+01:00

29 janvier 2010

How to become a person of action:
Pur yourself in the position to act as an agent of change, alone in a community in a foreign country. You have two options: Give up and go home, or become a person of action. Also, have a giant fear of failure and publicize your journey very publicly. Effectively, this leaves you with one option.

(Ok, all you logic folks, that paragraph contains at least one fallacy, can you find it? Lizzie?)

Picked up the first of the Batir l'Avenir applications today. Students were turning them in while I was there. One boy, maybe 13 or 14 came in and said in a barely audible voice that his father refused to let him apply. What bullshit, can't apply to a leadership program? Breaks my heart.

Read through the 16 I picked up today (over 80 students picked up applications, ruh-roh, I might be in trouble with my NGO, there were only supposed to be 20, and they already thought that would be a lot to read, but who's to say that only the first 20 people are the most deserving?). Anyway, interesting stuff.

Bad idea: forging all your letters of recommendation. Yes, the first letter L was different on each one, but the rest of the handwriting was exactly the same, and you misspelled disciplined in all of them. And you were the only student to have recommendations from teachers from another school, 2 other schools in fact.

Two of the questions were: in what domains do you feel comfortable? and in what domains do you not feel comfortable? Most people understood the intent of the questions and put their comfort in science, computers, music, etc. and their discomfort in science, computers, music, etc. A few students described how they feel comfortable when they are healthy and with their friends and family, etc, and uncomfortable when they are sick, lonely, etc. My favorite though is the person who feels uncomfortable in the domains of lying, mockery, bad things and delinquency. Touche.

Also, it must be noted that Cameroonian script is as foreign as Cameroonian French. I can barely read it.

Things I see Often in Cameroon that I never (or rarely) saw in the U.S.:
Doing laundry by hand in a stream
Carrying everything on your head
Rickets
Goiters
Deforestation (alright, I saw this often enough in Humby)
A moto carrying 6 people (okay, i only saw this once)
Malnutrition
Kids with hoops and sticks
Lots of missing teeth
Very public nosepicking by everyone, even when they are talking to you
3 & 4 year olds walking several K home by themselves
Slash & burn land clearing, the smoke gets so thick
Muumuus and machetes, often together

Things I saw a lot of in the U.S. that I never see in Cameroon:
Fat Kids
Privately owned computers
cars containing only 1 person
Streets without piles of trash
Bagels

Here is a list of the adjectives most used in describing the students applying to Batir l'Avenir:
disciplined
respectful
hard-working
serious
calm
punctual
responsible

Almost every application had at least 3 of these words, usually multiple times over. So you can imagine my surprise when one student describes herself as:
marvellous
proud
capricious

When asked who is their model in life that they would most like to resemble, the tally is as follows (minus some names i don't know):
Bill Gates (two votes)
Chantal Biya (two votes, the first lady)
Principal
Barack Obama
Mother
Paul Biya (president)
Samuel Eto'o (most famous footballer of Cameroon)
Professor of Ethics
Jesus Christ

One girl aspires to become the first lady of Cameroon. Another received the recommendation that the is good at housework and cooking and will make a good homemaker some day.

Was sick Wednesday. My insides sounded like an 18-wheeler downshifting on the blacktop. It felt like my stomach was in a vise. Better now.

While recovering, I did a word-puzzle that was a cryptogram of different cheeses. It was just cruel. All these cheeses I forgot existed and are thousands of miles away.

Two things i have REALLY been missing this week:
th ocean
warm showers

My french comprehension and speaking is getting noticeably better, although still daily there are complete conversations that elude me. I'm also feeling more at home in the community, I think mostly because I have been out in it so much more.

Been crazy busy this week what with the Engineers, who left yesterday after great success. You can check out their blog at ewb-ud.blogspot.com . I will miss them lots! Thanks guys (Linda) for the reese's and cheesy chex mix and everything else besides! Also busy with batir l'avenir, and preparing for 3, maybe 4 meetings next week.

Just about to head to Baham for more Batir l'Avenir planning. Yay!

Love love love to you all!

2010-01-25T12:27:00.000+01:00

Saturday - regional meeting. In true Cameroonian fashion, though it was only Americans, we got started 2 hours late. Then the meeting was only 15 minutes long. Ha! It was good to see everyone together though, got to see some friends who I haven't seen since Stage! Yay! After the meeting, we got lunch and went separate ways. Wendy bought the best pair of bird feet slipper boots ever. I went to the grocery and got delicious expired cheese and makins for pizza.

Sunday - cold pizza for breakfast, yum, it was pineapple. Met up with the engineers and learned more about the project and discussed more plans for this week and after they leave. I spent 2 hours walking back and forth between my house and the site... good exercise! It was even a little cloudy and cool... high 70s maybe? I met Olivia, the mayor's daughter, who went to school at Johns Hopkins and was the one who learned about the Engineers Without Borders program, prompting her father to write a grant for this water project. She is real nice and speaks like an American, it felt like a little piece of home in my ear. She will go back to JH for her master's. I also met a bunch of the local kids who were watching the whole process. We had some good discussions, by which I mean, I told them everyone's names and they told me theirs and we all laughed a lot. In the evening, I went back with the Engineers to the Mayor's house to meet the Mayor before he went back to Yaounde. He was very genial. I stayed for dinner and watched the first half of the Cote d'Ivoire/Algeria game.

Monday/Today - Woke up this AM at around 6:30, wrapped my towel around me to go bathe, and there was something in it and then a mouse fell down my leg. After it had already run across the room I screamed a little. Silly. Anyway. Anti-mouse efforts will commence. Ate delicious oatmeal, watered my pepiniere, got on the way to town center 45 minutes later than I planned. Ran into M. Etienne in town center, which was great because we are in the habit of missing each other. We talked for 45 minutes, or rather, he talked for 45 minutes. He is an amazing man. He puts all his time and money into making Bamendjou and Cameroon a better place. He prints a free newspaper about events around Cameroon, it was originally a blackboard in Bamendjou, then a paper in Bamendjou, now a paper in a lot of Cameroon. He also started a bilingual primary school with a volunteer who was here in the early 90s. He believes that it is necessary to start teaching french AND english when kids are young, and he believes in having well-educated teachers, not just anyone who wants a paycheck. Unfo, the school lacks money to pay teachers well enough to attract well-educated ones. I guess they also used to provide free school fees for AIDS orphans in town. He said that also he gets some flack in town for working with PC and white people, and his school struggles from that, too. So, good talk, but gosh this place is frustrating for everyone, n'est-ce pas? Tonight when I return to Bamendjou I will meet up with Etienne to see his compound and meet his mothers and children, etc.

Got into a car with 10 other people. It was hot. The road to Bafoussam is bumpy and dusty, have I mentioned? I'v been traveling it a lot lately. I think I block out the discomfort every time so I can do it again and again. I am always surprised by how long and bumpy the route is.

Had meeting with RIDEV, it was good. Things are progressing with Batir l'Avenir. We will get some applications this friday and some next friday, we will read them over and do interviezs the week after that and also make final decisions to announce the students doing the program this year. We will also have more meetings to discuss teh interview format and plan the sessions for this year: where they'll be, what we'll add, subtract, change... C'est beaucoup!

Next friday I am going to teach a high schooler how to use the internet, he has been asking me since I got here for a class in English or Computers. I don't know what level of English he wants to learn, but he knows some very basic computer basics. So I will teach him the internet. What to teach? It is all ingrained in me, I need to figure out how it all looks to someone who has never seen it.

Also have a women's meeting in two weeks to go to, make acquaintances, plan formations, and a meeting du quartier next wednesday.

So. There's all that!

Computer is still kaput, so, bummer. Maybe I will get it fixed next weekend, maybe next month.

Hope all is well with all of you. Much much love!

Oh yeah, and I got mail! Thanks Barby and Dave, and Gail and Grady, and Bristol, and Sean, and Mom and Dad, I've got up to letter 11, which came from SLO. Oh, and I finally got the smaller package of socks. It got to Cameroon Dec 7th.

Love.
Zara

2010-01-23T09:03:00.000+01:00

Busy week, n'est-ce pas? In Bafoussam now for a regional meeting, with all the other volunteers in the West, and a few sneakers from the W. Adamoua.

Wednesday I had a meeting with the students from last year's Batir l'Avenir, and a couple of folks from RIDEV to evaluate their programs (alright, the folks from RIDEV were doing most of the evaluating, i was just trying to keep up). It was very interesting. Two boys did a village clean_up program, that had some success, but hasn't been continued. One boy was going to do a formation on l'informatique (how to use a computer), but the lack of support prevented him from getting started. One girl was going to do pork raising and potato growing, but the people in her group kind of fell apart, so she ust ended up buying something for her church, uniforms for the choir, maybe? She got torn apart a little, because that is really not in the spirit of a communit leadership project. The last girl wanted to work for children's rights, but she wasn't entirely sure how to go about it. So, success rate, less than 100, but we learn from our mistakes, right? All this brings me to think that perhaps the leadership program could use some work before handing over a bunch of money to kids. So. There is that.

I also talked to the Censeur about meeting with the Club d'Environment for planning a pepiniere and eventually planting trees around campus to block the wind and provide shade. Also Liz and the Baham Env: Club want to come visit Bamendjou.

Oh, backtrack, Engineers Without Borders was supposed to get into Bamendjou Mon evening, but they were delayed. They got in Tues Eve, and Henry and I met up with them Wed AM for breakfast, doing a little protocol, checking out the water sites.

Thursday I spent with the Engineers, Dr. Steve and 5 students from U Delaware. Right now, there are 3 solar powered pumps each connected to 3 large cisterns about 1000 gallons each in the communities of Bakang and Balatsit, about a 30 min walk from my house. This trip, the Engineers are planning to create a water tower on a hill between all 3 points, pump water up the hill with more solar powered pumps, and then create a gravity fed distribution system to better serve the communities. They have been coming twice a year since 2007, and will be back in June this year to work more on the tower and distribution system. An awesome group of students, no doubt!

Friday, did badly needed laundry, made banana bread and walked out to Bakang to meet up with the Engineers. So far I have mostly been standing around, translating a little french, and wrangling herds of school kids. But I've also been learning a lot about the water systems. It is really interesting. Makes me wish I was an engineer.

Today, regional meeting. Monday, back to Baf for a meeting about Batir l'Avenir. I have supposed to have been looking for grants for funding, but alas, technological problems!

I got the internet after 4 days of hassle, but as soon as I did, I broke my computer. Hopefully I will get it fixed this week.

Wednesday, the Engineers have a water committee meeting, which I will surely be at. They need to make a community map (hello PACA) to determine where to pipe water to from the towers to assure it will be used. I think I will be helping figure that out, esp. if they do not have time before they leave the country, which is Friday.

Also, Friday, Liz and I will be collecting (hopefully!) the applications for this years Batir l'Avenir, and starting to go over them.

C'est tout pour maintenant, je pense. (THat's all for now, I think).

Love to you all!

2010-01-18T14:47:00.000+01:00

What a week. Things are about to get very busy. Quick recap. Banana bread. Beekeeping. Bacillary dysentery (probably). Too brief?

Last Monday had a planification meeting with my supervising NGO. Started 90 minutes late, the first of five 15 minute presentations went 90 minutes. I couldn't understand much of what was being said. Arguing about semantics? I made my excuses and left to go to Bandrefam to learn how to harvest honey! All the ag volunteers in the West were there, it was good fun, even though we didn't get any honey due to hive problems. It is good to catch up with the other volunteers and compare notes. They have all been doing much more than me. ANd have been more patient with meetings. Richard made it through four 6 hour meetings in a week. Gosh.

Tuesday was market day and I met a couple of farmers who want to work with me but all I wanted was some green veggies and sleep. Green veggies were hard to come by, but sleep was easy.

Wednesday I had a meeting in Baham with Liz and RIDEV to talk to the students who did the Young Scholars Program (Batir l'Avenir - Building the Future). It was good to hear about the students community projects and I understood slightly more. THe meeting was under two hours! Headed home feeling ill... which turned into 3 hours on the toilet wtih a bucket in front of me, unable to hold down a sip of water. Never has the conjuction AND meant so much in the description vomiting and diarrhea. My neighbor Jane tells me this is Africa saying Welcome, and maybe I ate something with fertilizer on it.

ThursdayFridaySaturdaySunday - recovery and house cleaning.

Today had a meeting in Baf with Liz and RIDEV concerning the continuation of the Young SCholars Program. We're going to try to do one, starting in 3 weeks, and a better planned one starting in October. An overwhelming amount of planning is about to take place! Tomorrow I need to track down the censeurs of 2 lycees in Bamendjou and try to make a meeting with the Bamendjou students for Wednesday, so that we can evaluate last years projects and start this years application process.

Also, just checked my e-mail today and the Engineers without Borders program (a Professor and 5 students) are arriving in Bamendjou now, for 11 days and they would like to work ensemble, as well.

Regional meeting on Saturday.

House still not clean.

Digestive system still not entirely in order.

Eek!

But I am excited about everything that is going on, so hopefully I will overcome the overthinking-Zara pitfall and achieve much.

Also, just found out yesterday about Haiti. Gosh. I had two friends from many years ago there doing aid work, thanks be to the universe that they both made it out alive. Unfo, Christa had her foot amputated. I hear she is on the news a lot in the AK. Hope you are all sending positive thoughts and anything else useful to Haiti. There are a lot of people in need there.

All for now. Possible improved internet access soon.

MUCH LOVE!
Zara

2010-01-06T13:07:00.000+01:00

In no particular order:

Christmas tree!

Cat shit on a toothpaste!

Willie building a porcherie, and modeling.

Melissa and Brell!

Madame Marie Noelle & Willie working on the porcherie!

My little pepiniere! Like my little pony. Get it?

New Years Eve emotional photo!

My little Christmas tree!

A dik-dik, I think, at the ag fair. I saw one of these running through my village, no joke!

Kelly and I got our pretty faces on! Happy New Year! Yes she is wearing a dress. Maybe.

2010-01-06T12:51:00.000+01:00

5 January 2010

ON DEATH

I fail to understand death here equally as I fail to understand it at home. The way people mourn here is different. Mourning is public, communal. People gather to share in the grief, as if to say, you are not alone in this mourning. I am here to mourn with you, to witness your grief and your loss.

There is food and dancing at the funerals, is it a celebration of our life, or just a continuation of the community as witness? We are here to feed you in your sadness. Or perhaps, the mourner feeds the community in appreciation of their gathering. But celebration, community aside, the grief is real. Wailing in the middle of the street real.

Anyway. Death. Jane is home, and I thought I would sleep better, but it's not entirely so. We talked about the robberies and she is afraid as I am. She told me it's not like this where she is from (anglophone Cameroon), that in a village near her there were robberies and all 3 thiefs were caught and killed, 2 by burning, I think the other one was beaten to death. And no more robberies. Yesterday she told me one of the thiefs from here was killed, shot in a nearby village. A part of me felt relief.

Yesterday I read an article in the New Yorker about a man on Death Row who was executed, maybe innocent. It was physically upsetting to read about him going to his death, passed over, new evidence unexamined. (Should I mention I have always felt strongly anti-death penalty?)

I don't understand the criminal justice system at home or here.

And I certainly don't understand death.

HOW NOT TO INTEGRATE AND NOT LEARN FRENCH

Stay in your house, unless leaving to meet other Americans. Watch American movies & TV shows. Read American books & magazines. Listen to American music.

HOW TO INTEGRATE AND LEARN FRENCH

... Leave your house. Theoretically.

Turns out the anxiety, fear, laziness that kept me inside my room in Humboldt, Yosemite, Eugene, also keeps me inside my house here in Bamendjou. I think I'm only extroverted when I have a known and friendly audience.

Worked on my nursery some. Did some laundry and ironing. Worked on some agro-fo presentations. Don't know who I will present them to, or with what language skills.

It's harder than I expected, but for different reasons. Namely, me.

6 January 2010

SOrry if this date jumping is confusing. TOday I am in Bafoussam with Liz and Julie. We visited a couple NGOs and did some talking and today I am feeling incredibly motivated and excited about all the projects I want to do. ANd also like there is not enough time to sleep if I want to get everything done. But also like when I head back to Bamendjou I will still need to learn how to leave the house.

I've been working on my handstands. Against a wall. But it still just makes me feel good. Inversions for good moods, n'est-ce pas?

The dust on the roads is awful. Rode in a car to Baf today and was still enveloped in a cloud of dust on the interior, my hands orange when I got out. Last time I took a moto from Baf to Bam, the dust was so deep and slippery we had to get off and walk up a hill. I think I still prefer it to the mud, but I miss the rain. It was cool and humid this morning and it was nice change from hot and dry. It has been looking like it might rain, a little. I hope.

My supervisor came by last night. He is going to call me to go to some reunions. He also asked if I can maybe teach an English class because there is a school who can't afford a teacher. GOsh, what an overwhelming idea. I don't know where to start. We will see what happens.

C'est tout pour maintenant, mes cheries!

Love love love.

2009-12-31T11:45:00.000+01:00

Alright, these are all out of order. I am not devirused, but I tricked my flash drive into letting me use these pictures.

Here is my haul from a market day. From the top: the houe/torture device - 2000 cfa/ 4 dollars. tzo pineapples for about 80 cents, onions for 60 cents, garlic for 60 cents, prunes for 40 cents, black beans for 40 cents, white beans for 60 cents, potatoes for a dollar, guavas for 40 cents. All seems rela cheap, right? But we don't get paid in dollars, and nor do Cameroonians. Nonetheless. Bounty.

This is my rad caba. Feast your eyes on the wonder that is a neon cupcake dress. I feel like the happiest giant five year old when I wear it.

This is me and my muscle, and the compost pit that took me 4 hours to dig, and a week to recover from digging. Darn that houe. My hamstrings look great though.

Here is my host family in Bangangte, the morning of swearing in, and my departure from chez eux.
From left, mon pere Jean, mon frere/cousin Cedric, mon frere/cousin Jores, ma soeur/cousine Anna, mon frere Valdes, ma Mere Berthe, in the front mon frere Joel, et moi.

Here is a crazy looking moth on the outside of my house, n'est-ce pas? I see lots of rad moths. Like the cheeto moth. I'll save that one for another time. When I have a picture of it.

Here is my living room. To the left, the guest room & my room. To the right, the mini-door into the kitchen, and after that, the mini-door into my bathroom.

Here is my little house! The two-thirds on the left is mine, the third on the right is where Jane lives. America garden on the left, Cameroon garden on the right

Agros on swearing in day! With Christina, our tech trainer in the front, and Tiki, our APCD on the right.

The view from my front porch. Those pointy roofs mean that someone special lives here, I think. All the chefferies have roofs like that, but so do other places. I still have many things to learn.

Love love love!!!!!

2009-12-31T10:50:00.000+01:00

Bonne Année, mes amis! That is a happy new year to you!

TO everyone who has left a comment or sent me an e-mail, you are super! Gosh! It is nice to have even a little pixel contact to home. Hi hubby! Hi Georgia & Monte! Hi Gail & Grady! Hi LJ! Hi Mom & Dad! Hi Barby & Dave!

Alright. Let's recap, shall we? I haven't written this up beforehand, so my thoughts may be a little scattered, but darn if i'm not getting dece at typing on a french keyboard!

Christmas. Had mes amis Henry and Christina over. I drew a christmas tree on paper and put it up on the wall. We had arts and crafts time and made ornaments. Dinosaur in a santa hat? check. Andy warhol lady in a wheelchair? check. Pretty poinsettas? check. We made pizza, and banana pancakes, and burritos, and we ate lots of cheese and olives and cake. So, if you are worried about me starving, please don't. If you're worried about my access to cheese, please do.

I also had to faire some protocol in Christmas, which meant a lot of awkwrd sitting and waiting. Met the Sous-Prefet. Seems like a guy. His house is ginormous! Well, at least the living room. He is the authority probably the biggest in town besides the Chef of course. His living room had 2 TVs, 17 easy chairs and 5 couches. Yup. But they still do laundry and dishes by hand in buckets, and cook over a 3 stone fire. Cameroon is just full of contradiction.

On the way to Bafoussam this AM saw a girl in a pink satin dress carrying a bundle of logs on her head. This did not strike me as odd. Everyone here carries logs on their heads. And everyone wears some wacky stuff. Absolutely normal. And yet, when I put it into words, or America context, i find myself... a little baffled.

So, Christmas, big WIN. In fact now, as I sit in the cyber cafe there is an 8-bit electronic christmas soundtrack playing from somewhere. It has been for the last hour. No signs of letting up. Feels like home?

On another day this week I went with Marie Noelle to Bameka to see a baby and meet a farmer who is part of a GIC i may work with. The baby was just darn-tootin adorable, maybe a month or two old. Her hair was so soft, and she could grab my fingers like a champ. Sat in the mud brick kitchen holding the baby and listening to Marie and the baby-mama and her mom and her mom's mom, and an old guy who showed us to their house all talk in Nguemba. It was nice to be around people. The man was bilingual ( well, trilingual if you want to get specific), so we parler-ed un peu in english. Some more peeps showed up and then it was time for lunch. Couscous de mais and cuille. Oh cuille.

Let me devote a paragraph to cuille. I hear that there are foreigners who like this dish. Good for them. Cuille is a gelatinoform, mucilaginous being that one serves by pouring through your hand and then cutting off by closing your thumb and forefinger around it. You take a piece of couscous, which is like cornmeal mush, and wrap it up in cuille, twist it off and pop it in your mouth. If you're coordinated. Or if you actually want to put it in your mouth. Marie told a HILARIOUS story of another volunteer who tried to wrap the couscous raditionally by tossing it and tossed it right onto his head. Ha ha ha ha ha. I began to wonder if accidentally tossing this might be a good way to get through it. Now don't get me wrong, the taste of cuille is alright. It is the texture. People describe it as snot-like, but it is much more viscous. Like egg-whites with a vengeance. I find myself gagging at each bite. When I finally get through an acceptable amount, I try to wash my hands. Ha. Water does nothing but create a slimy goo all over my hands. I resort to wiping it on my hands.

But. To refuse food is rude. Pretty much when you show up at someones house, you can't expect to leave without getting fed.

Anyway. We walked out to the farm, it looked pretty rad, they are digging a canal system to keep it watered in the dry season. The guy talked to me a lot about things. I'll be honest, I pick up maybe a quarter of the words people are saying. Sometimes I think I can piece together the general idea of the sentence, but this could just be me imposing my ideas about what they might be saying onto their words. I know, I know, I need to be more pro-active, ask them to repeat themselves, even if it takes 5 times. But. Gosh it's hard. Sometimes I feel like I've taken an oath of silence, I speak so little and when I do, I am never sure that I am saying what I mean, and it is usually pretty simplified.

Right-o. So we leave Bameka, return to Bamendjou. I greet the chief the wrong way. He doesn't seem offended, but Marie is a bit aghast. You can't just WAVE at the Chief! We go to see a woman who is en deuil, in mourning. We pass a woman's group. They are nice in their matching dresses. One of them gives me a big ignam (yam like tuber). We continue on to chez le Widow. We sit in the dark kitchen. She is upset, and disheveled. Marie explains to me that sometimes when you are in mourning you do not clean, you do not wash your hands, change your clothes. We are given food. I get another ignam to take home. I've also received a lot of beans today, from Marie and the baby-mama's gramma.

Exhausted. Next day, I check to see if my moringa seeds have germinated. Score! 7 out of 11! I make a little pepiniere, just 30 polypots, nothing fancy like sand or manure, just dirt and seeds.
Still waiting to see if any of my pansies or sage or cilantro will come up. Oh wait, yes, the pansies are beginning to! Seeds, plants, wow, what a miraculous thing, eh?

Monday night I am pretty sick. I won't go into details, but let your truly awful imagination run wild. Tuesday I feel like I have been hit by a truck. I take three naps. Make some Gatorade (thanks Nura!), and shaking it up feels like I have just walked 20 miles. EXHAUSTED.

Luckily Wednesday I am better. The good thing about being exhausted is that I have been sleeping through the night. Maybe there are less sounds. Maybe I feel a little safer? Maybe it is just exhaustion.

Wednesday. I try making foccaccia, in my grande marmite. How does one bake without an oven, you might ask? Take a giant pot. Put some little cans in the bottom, enough to support whatever pan you are baking in. Put said pan of baked goods on cans. Close lid to giant pot. Cook. I have successfully made cake here, even! Gosh. The foccaccia turns out alright, nothing special beyond fresh baked bread-iness. I try to do some handstands against the wall, to decent result. I do some yoga outside in the sun. I try to do an Ultimate TaeBo video, but I am laughably uncoordinated. I spend some time dancing around like a spaz.

Gosh, so it sounds like I'm not getting a lot of work done, huh? You're right. I have this concern, too. Well. It's slow going. I've been looking through a lot of Nura's old project materials, writing things on a big to-do list on the wall. What I really need to do is get out, and meet some more people.

One of the priests, he is anglophone, is going to show me around to some schools soon. That will be good. He is very nice. When I left the church (aka cyber cafe) the other day I saw one of the other anglophone priests I have met. He is joking around with a few kids, and he has an infectious laugh. He says, "they asked me why I am so big, I told them it is because I have eaten a whole pig!" and he breaks down into laughter again.

I get asked a lot here what my religion is, what church I go to. I respond that I am a free-thinker, une penseur libre. This doesn't really satisfy anyone. The catholic church is a huge presence in my town. I am not really big for religion, as you may know, and there is a part of me that worries the church is just another part of the Western machine that is eating Africa alive... but i feel like the church in Bamendjou is really a good influence. It is hard to say because I am barely a drop of water on the top of an ocean of culture, which is to say via dramatic metaphor, I don't know what is going on around me. But. They sure are nice there.

Anyway. New Years Eve. I think I might go buy some jam, maybe some pants. I love you all!

Bonne Année!
Zararama

PS: to add to my ever-growing care package wish list: Emergen-C. western africa bird book.

PPS: just read Eat Love Pray. Great book. Makes me want to drop everything and travel across the world in a quest to find myself... oh wait.

2009-12-22T10:07:00.000+01:00

the internet! again! so soon!

in bafoussam to do some christmas shopping, and shopping shopping. the holidays are not the time to start big work projects, it turns out, so i am relaxing and trying to get myself all together.

what is the upside of cat shit on your toothbrush? you can use the toothbrush to clean the cat shit off of everything else in your purse! ha ha ha. it was truly ridiculous. the juxtaposition of cat shit and toothpaste, cat shit and hand sanitizer, gosh, cat shit and everything. i don't think i will be getting a cat.

but then i saw the kittens playing in my moto helmet and it was just the cutest thing! cats may be the devil, irresistible and evil.

successes for this week:
- beat egg whites stiff using just a whisk. it only took 10 minutes. take that, forearm!
- made cake in a marmite oven. it even tastes delicious. i barely burned it!
- planted some pansies, cilantro, sage. turns out the dry season is a terrible time to plant. roh rell.
- started treating some agroforestry tree seeds. so i can plant a few more things in the dry season.
- went over to the house of a lady here. she is very enthusiastic about how much she has worked with PCVs. i was warned she may be crazy, but she has been nothing but nice and welcoming to me. i sat and watched her finish building her porcherie and played with her adorable kids. it felt SO nice to be around some people.
- spent two nights in my house completely alone. the first i heard noises and flipped out with paranoia. the second night i read a woman-centric self help book and slept very well, thank you very much.
- started running again after 5 days off.
- cleaned, cleaned, cleaned. there is still more to clean. i may be an inefective cleaner, but gosh darn it, i keep starting.

went to a fete on saturday, which turned out to be a funeral, which wiped the big, dumb, i-have-no-idea-what's-happening grin off my face. i replaced it with a solemn look that still said, i have no idea what's going on here. lots of talking. the priest spoke in french. a guy translated it into patois, and three words became twenty. there was a marching band made up of a trombone held together with tape, two trumpets and two drums. they played 'when the saints go marching in'. they were pretty good. more speeches. some wailing-type call and response from various groups. half the people left with the coffin. i stayed seated, with the other white people ( my medical officer and his adorable family, the guy from winrock). after the rest of the people came back, we ate, then we danced. it was... fun! and bewildering. and a really long day.

no anti-virals yet, so pictures are still a no go. sorry! i am working on it.

much love to you all, and a very merry christmas. you are all in my hot dust filled cameroonian heart.

zarrrrrra

2009-12-17T10:16:00.000+01:00

It’s been awhile, eh? Excerpts from my life.

25 November 2009

Woke up sad today. Maybe melancholy is a better word. I thought I woke up to the sound of a whisper in my ear – “mer mer”, but when I opened my eyes no one was there. A single piece of gravel hitting the roof. A cold bucket bath. Walking to class a little girl told me I was pretty. But I can’t shake this feeling.
Watched P & H kill two turkeys. It was pretty awful. P slit the first one’s throat, it bled out for a long time, but it was still alive and blinking. He had to cut the head all the way off before it died, even then it flapped & twitched for a long time. The turkey H killed almost flapped free. It was spraying blood. All over. It also twitched headless for many minutes.

29 November 2009

Got back from our last field trip weekend. It was so nice. We went to the Northwest, which is gorgeous. It is mountainous, mountains with roung tops, then geometric drop offs. They look like dinosaurs sleeping. We went to a GIC for the first night. There was a stream and a nice chill in the air. We were coerced to dance awkwardly with Cameroonians. “Now she will do it with the director”, “a succulent lady”, “a responsible lady”. Cameroonian English doesn’t quite translate into American English.
The next night we went to Saboga, a totally creepy botanical garden. It was beautiful, but in some ways it didn’t feel like Cameroon, with the manicured lawns. Also very Cameroonian, very Christian… creepy statues, empty baptismal pool, disparagement of a mosque, maze-like things, a monkey in a cage.
To Do:
Family photo
Pack (filter water)
Clean room
Make plan & to buy list

1 December 2009

It is 5:17 in the morning. My to-do list is untouched. It was meant for a different sort of day. I can’t sleep. As soon as I wake up, I just see this guy laid out prone in the dirt. He ran his moto, drunk, into the corner of the fence at the Bar at 6:35, just as I was about to leave. Everyone ran outside to gawk after the loud bang. I was hesitant to walk around the corner. I don’t like to be a gawker; I didn’t want to see; I didn’t know what to do if I saw. L looked and immediately turned around. “Oh my god.” P was there. Someone called for me but I was hanging back. I went around the corner. His moto, on its side, butted up against the corner of the fence. He is prone, head turned to the side. P & I start talking about moving him. We get H to help. We put him in some form of C-spine and roll him on his back. He is breathing, sonorously. P decides he should be in recovery position. Right. What do you worry about more – C-spine or aspiration? His face is cut up, but not gushing and he is unconscious. Incontinent to urine. Once he is on his side, his breathing sounds clearer. It appears to be deep and regular. There is a crowd of Cameroonians, kids & adults around us. Did I mention there is no ambulance coming? There is no ambulance. We Americans talk about how we don’t know what to do, who to call, whether we should be involved (no, but you walk away). From here, my bad feelings only increase. Protocol is lost, because at the point he goes to the hospital, all spinal precautions, head injury considerations will be lost. If we take him to the hospital we will be financially responsible, and we don’t have a car, or know where the hospital is.
He starts opening his eyes. His pupils are equal but maybe not reactive to light. I didn’t check, just asked L. He was, oh shit, unresponsive to verbal stimuli? He couldn’t speak, or answer any questions. Here we are between a fence and an embankment, a ditch and a latrine. Some Cameroonians start to get involved, moving him, get him into a sitting position, oh this is not how it is supposed to go. He is still verbally unresponsive, holding his left lower leg. It looks like it might be broken. We are looking for how to extricate ourselves from this situation. I told A to get a chair, god knows why, this man should be on a backboard (oddly unavailable at a local bar, or this entire country). Some Cameroonians start talking about a car to the hospital. Many have said he is just drunk. Is he drunk? Probably. But also head-injured, which I try to communicate. This is so messed up. What if we walked around the corner and he was dead? What if his moto had gone 5 feet to the left and hit N? What if I was a good enough person to stay and make sure he was okay and treated in the necessary manner, regardless the difficulty, cost, confusion? I don’t know. He wasn’t, he didn’t, and I am not a good enough person. I walked away. What would Jeremiah do? Not walk away. What would my EMT teachers do? Not walk away. In the U.S. this is abandonment. I walked away. We walked away. What do you do? Earlier in the evening when the patron was slapping his daughter’s face in the bar, what did we do? We sat. We witnessed. Talked about how uncomfortable it made us. But we did not do anything. In Cameroonian culture, some tapping is expected. I hate this. But I don’t know what to do. So I sat. Did nothing. I walked away from an injured man.
If I came to Cameroon to save the world, I am certainly not doing it. I am witness to a different way of life. I am witness to my choices and actions and strengths, but more often my weaknesses. I am not saving the world, I am not even sure if I am saving myself.
Walked home with H, P, L & A. N & A went home the other way. The moon was almost full and very bright, but it was too cloudy for stars. I was quiet. Confused. Guilty. Worried.
I don’t know if he got to the hospital, I don’t know if he is alive. If he is alive, it is in no part related to the actions I took and did not take.
And every time I wake up or try to sleep, I see him, laying there prone.
I still need to pack.
When I was leaving, I had to walk up the embankment, a little kid grabbed my arm to steady me, help me up. I didn’t know what to say to my family when I got home. I wanted to talk about it but I couldn’t. I don’t know how to say in French “a moto crashed”, “unconscious”, “EMT”, “guilt”. Even if I had the words, I am not sure the concept would be communicated… how different it is in the states, how helpless I feel, how I feel responsible for a drunk guy who drove his moto into a fence. My host-dad asked how my day was. I just said it was difficult and went to my room and sat.
My host-mom called me for dinner. I thought about telling her I couldn’t eat, but it was easier just to follow her. When I sat down in front of the food I realized how much I didn’t want to eat. I served myself a little rice & sauce, but chewing it was a purely mechanical act. I told my family I was feeling sick and went to bed early. Tried to distract myself with pictures, music, movies. It kind of worked. I got so tired, but when I turned off the movie and lay down, all I could see was him lying there prone.

7 December 2009

WOW. What a week. Swearing in. Matching outfits. Party time. Sweetness. Hoteliness. Not much sleep. Morning grogginess. Agro-house madness. Departures! No. Many hugs. A few tears. West, we are last to leave. A packed van, piled high with bikes. The Yaounde bus took out a sign with its bikes. A laugh among a tear. We leave Julie on the side of the road to find a car. Aislynn & Kate at the agence. Henry & Christina at the far marché. Liz & I find a car to Baham & Bamendjou. It is packed with bikes lolling out the back. We share the passenger seat. How did I end up with 7 bags, a water filter bucket and a bike? C’est trop!
Drop off Liz, chez elle. Onward to Bamendjou. The driver asks if I am married. Oh thank you, Cameroon, for your awkwardness. I arrive chez moi. I nap for many house. Unpack some. Sleep encore. The travel was much less bad than I imagined, not hellish, but only mildly irritating and overpriced.
Friday. Run. Shower. Breakfast. Organize self. Catch moto to Baham. Mil francs. Beautiful. Bumpy. Baham. Meet Liz on the road. We find a car to Bafoussam. Six cent francs. Arrive at Supermarché Sim, aka white man store. Julie arrives soon after. Much drooling over food stuffs. We walk across Bafoussam to the bank. Bafoussam is much more pleasant by foot than by car (though objectively, still not pleasant). It is sunny and dusty, but on foot I can get my bearings and I am not nauseous.
The lady at the bank is very helpful and speaks in English. Even though we are minus some papers, we all withdraw money successfully. Try counting money inside an envelope in public. Turns out I have Liz’s money and she has mine. We go next door to the other supermarché, while we wait for Kim and Alec. They arrive chez le banc and when all is said and done, we go in search of lunch.
Julie & I split a grilled fish, plantain chips and a salad. I drink a refreshing Schweppes Ginger. Wendy pops by for a while. Quel coincidence!
Alec parts, and we the ladies go to the marché. It is big and maze-like. After asking directions and walking past many overalls, we find the vegetables. Eggplant (real purple ones!), green beans, green peppers, garlic. A treasure trove. Popcorn. A mami tells me that she has the best onions in the market. I am swayed. I buy onions. I have no complaints about them.
We walk back across town to the first supermarché. The day and the sun and the heat begin to wear. I go a little nuts at the supermarché. Pasta! Couscous (the mediterranean kind)! Jam! Honey! 2 types of cheese! Goodbye money, hello delicious. Outside we wait for everyone to finish. There is a soft serve. Cent francs. Yes please! Is it the best soft-serve ever? Hardly. But have I ever enjoyed it more? And with more brain-freezes? Every bite was heaven-agony. We walk to the Gare-Routiere carrying our growing piles of goods.
It is farther than I remember. I carry a bag on my shoulder and a box in front of me, my moto helmet swinging from my hand making everything a little harder than necessary. Upon arrival, I learn that it is not the place to catch a car to Bamendjou. Rather than head back into the melee of Bafoussam, I choose the fast escape and snag a ride to Batie. In Batie, I catch a moto to Bamendjou.
Which do you prefer? A moto forced to go slow on bumpy-forever dirt roads or a moto too fast on pavement? Everyone tells me to choose an older moto driver who will not go too fast. I believe them, entirely, but I have no idea how to pick one driver over another. I tend to go with the first one to call out to me and claim me. The worst way to pick a driver? Probably. But. So far, so good.
Saturday morning. I run, shower, breakfast, dishes, laundry. Henry comes to Bamendjou! Niceness, niceness, niceness. We talk, go for a walk, to town and also out the middle dirt road.
For dinner we make couscous (Mediterranean) with veggies, walnuts (thanks Nura!) and raisins, and also sautéed eggplant. I open the box of couscous to discover bugs. Ugh. Gross. I did not envision these guests to dinner. I try to come off as cool, and try to sift the couscous. The majority of the couscous is too large to go through the sifter. I take a breath and begin to pick the bugs out of the couscous with my bare fingers. For those of you just joining, this is probably the first time I have ever intentionally touched a bug. Happily? No. But I pick little red bugs and white worms out of the couscous until it is acceptably bug-free.
Did I mention that with the mefloquine dreams, I dream about bugs? Trapped inside my fingers, squeezing them out of my cheeks. In the middle of the night I am never sure how unreal they are.
Sunday, I laze. TV and crosswords.
Monday morning, I run. Hundreds of students walking past. All staring. Yikes. I smile, and am glad to reach the fork in the road. On the Chefferie road, there is more dust than people, and I can greet everyone. I trip over myself, I say a few words to some mamans, I frighten small children. Running is good, but at 7:30, the sun is already hot and cars & motos kick up dust which gets caught in my teeth.
Shower. Breakfast preparations. My counterpart stops by. We talk briefly. He has to go to the mairie. We make tentative plans to meet again soon. I eat an egg, a banana, a cup of hot milk, fried dough. Fail a crossword. Wash dishes. Make a grand to-do list. Do some cleaning. Finish a crossword tout par moi-même. Debug the rest of the box of couscous. Organize some shelves of stuff Nura has left. Eat more. Go through my resource CDs. Cook dinner (potatoes and avo). Watch a movie. Become frightened by knocking at gate. Turns out to be Etienne, my cultural counterpart. He is very nice and talks to me in Enlish, but it is still late. I write in my journal. Now it is ten. Was that knocking on the gate again? I hope not. I prefer the daytime. Night alone is… night alone in a strange country.
Last night I stood outside with Jane & we talked about how it is to be in an unfamiliar place. The stars were beautiful, but I do not know them. Yet. Yet.
10 Dec 2009
Today. Woke up before seven after a night of vivid, constant dreams and stomach pains. My hamstrings are still painfully tight after digging the compost pit on Tuesday. I decide a run is necessary: 1. What else am I going to do? 2. I need to get in the habit. 3. It will put me in a good mood. 4. Ow, my hamstrings. Brush my teeth. Go for a run. I decide to run for longer today… my body has been adjusting fine to the half hour runs. Thursday morning, it is very quiet. Head down the Chefferie road and say Bonjours to the students walking to town.
The girl who ran with me the other day gives me a big smile. The big group of high school girls say Buenos Dias, and giggle when I ask them Como Estas? I run past the chefferie. Some kids are not shy and give me such big smiles. I am called la Blanche, ma Soeur, ma Fille, Mami, Madame, Nura and once I think Zara.
I run 20 minutes and turn around. On the way back, I am passed by a boy walking. Oh, how I’m slow. As I start to pass a girl maybe 12, and a younger boy & girl, she says something about la blanche, laughs, and they walk faster than I run. I tell her my name is Zara, not la Blanche. I feel like she is making fun of me, but perhaps I am wrong, and I find it hilarious that they are walking as fast as I run. I say this, and oh my, they are so strong. They laugh and eventually I outpace them. I pass the other boy who passed me and make it home sweaty, red, exhausted and mal au ventre.
I bucket bathe. There is not enough water pressure for the shower today; even if there were I couldn’t face that cold torrent. For breakfast I make eggs and canned mackerel on bread (I’ve been craving protein). It looks terrible, tastes fine and is quite satistying. Also coffee, and the rest of the bread with honey. I do the dishes from the last 2 days and as I finish the water doesn’t even trickle out.
I have missed about 8 calls from my counterpart. I call him back. He confirms I am chez moi and says he is coming. Perfect. I try to dry-wash my shoes. Not much luck. I sit and read about starting a nursery and Moringa trees. I am excited to see if I can get Moringa to grow here.
Eventually Maturin shows up and we discuss many things. We look at my protocol letters and decide to deliver them Monday. I ask where I can find a houe, a machete, sand, manure. I ask about groups I might work with, individual farmers. I ask about the Engineers w/o Borders project, finding tutors for French & Ngemba and making a map of the area.
I stumble on French like I’m eating marbles. Maturin is patient and helpful and I only really catch about half of what he says. He sees my confusion and repeats himself. Encore. Et encore. After a while, I run low on questions and he has somewhere to be. I am free to clean/arrange house til Monday.
Tomorrow is market day. I will get supplies for the week, then go to Bafoussam to meet up with Henry.
After Maturin leaves, I attack the pantry shelves in a slow frenzy of cleaning and organizing. I dust away spiderwebs, spiders and chase weird looking bugs out of my sight. I line the shelves with some pagne I bought and decided I don’t really like for clothes. I find some trail mix! Unopened! With banana chips, nuts, chocolate, raisins! Booty! (thanks, Nura).
As I am trying to put things back on the shelves, I get hungry and frustrated. There are still 3 piles I haven’t returned to a coherent spot: spices I probably won’t use, premade seasoning packets and the mystery bags.
I find the squash I picked from the garden Tuesday still sitting outside my door. I look through recipe books for a squash soup recipe. Decide to wing it. Spend 45 minutes peeling, cleaning, chopping and deworming the squash. Sauté the squash in some olive oil, add salt, pepper, ginger, curry powder. Add some onion. Add some water. Add some bouillon cube. Simmer. While the squash cooks, I go through the guts to save some seeds for planting. When the squash is soft and delicious, I mash it up with a wooden spoon and add a cup of milk w/ a little vinegar. More salt and pepper. It is delicious.
I eat it from a big fat mug, and read the Joke by candlelight. It’s only 4:30, but the sun is weak and facing the windowless parts of my house.
I’m really enjoying The Joke (Milan Kundera). I think I will need to reread it. It’s not a book for skimming, it’s heavy with words and ideas, but hard to put down. Still haven’t finished the Pollan book, which I am also enjoying.
Yesterday, I felt blah. Not unwell, but not well. After my run and breakfast, I took a 2+ hour nap, even though I slept 10 hours the night before. I don’t think it was just too much sleep, I didn’t even really feel like eating. No fever, but no motivation to do anything. I read some magazines, watched some TV. Amazing how I can detach almost as easily here as in the U.S.
I don’t sleep the night through. I toss and turn, too hot, too cold, dreaming vividly, hearing mysterious sounds, imagining a crazy man inside my house. Everything seems too real in the middle of the night. My dreams are so real as to be exhausting rather than restful.
I got real excited looking through the ECHO seed catalog. They have so many things. We get 10 free seed types. I will wait til I know more about here, but I am excited about a high-altitude Moringa variant, Quinoa, some soy variants and a bunch of other veggies, legumes and AF trees.
I go back and forth here, between really excited about all the things I want to do and really introverted and unsure of where to start and afraid I will fail at everything, even making an effort. I don’t think I am alone in this dichotomy, but I am alone at post. It is lonely. I need to find a way to integrate more into the community. Put myself out there. Equally scary as in the U.S., but in a different way. Here I feel more willing to be outgoing, but I feel lost and disoriented as to how to enter the culture and community.
Tomorrow I need to go by Jane’s school so we can go pay the water bill.
There is a definite demarcation on each of my big toenails which appears to be in conjunction with my arrival in Cameroon. Interesting.
Water has been out for 9 or 10 hours. I really need to fill the bidon next time it is on.

12 December 2009

Home again, home again. Met H in Bafoussam yesterday. Went to the market yesterday. Bought potatoes, onions, garlic, green beans, prunes, pineapple, guavas, white beans, black beans, a houe. People were very impressed with the houe. Tu vas cultiver? La blanche va cultiver? Oui, je vais cultiver. Ca c’est bien! Où? Au champs? Oui, au champs. Walked back with Alice. She has 7 kids. Damn!
M & D called. It was good to talk.
The car to Bafoussam was so hot. Never have I transpired so much. Before I got in the car I met a girl who thought I was Nura. She wanted me to take her to the states with me. It turned into a pretty good discussion. Her name is Aurianne (?), she is 19, she studies math & science. I hope I see her again. Anyway. Got to Baf. Drunk man in car asked if I was French or American. I asked him, Qu’est-ce que tu penses? What do you think? The other ladies laughed. I walked to the net café and found Henry.
We went to Akwa (bar/restau district), got some salads, plantain chips, beer. Had some nice convo about our weeks. Talked to Guylene (?). H called his parents, I sat and read The Joke. Some guys bought me a beer, but I refused it. I had enough beer already, and I didn’t know what accepting a beer would indicate. We went to the supermarché to get fixins for pizza. I also splurged on some jam and raisins.
Home. Finally, the water returns after 3 days. I flush. Fill the bidon. Fill 3 buckets. Wash dishes. Re-evaluate water usage. New music.
After 10 PM. I’m exhausted. Bonne Nuit.

15 dec 2009

Feeling homesick. I’m not sure for where though. My life/home has been so impermanent. I guess I am homesick for people and for familiarity. But here is not so strange. Chances are I would be doing much the same things were I in the U.S.. Doing some chores, avoiding other chores, missing people who weren’t near, not interacting with people who are near, wishing I was more motivated, over self-introspecting. Two years is a long time.
Made gnocchi last night. It was a big messy undertaking, I made way too much, didn’t use enough flour, trashed the kitchen, spent all evening trying to keep up with my own assembly line. But even in my mistakes it was fun. That is the good thing about having so much time, I guess, I am even enjoying cooking and cleaning.
Did my dishes. The water pressure today is INSANE. All my buckets are full already though. Finally ran, after 3 days off. It felt good. I went late, after 8, and there was barely anyone on the road. I think I prefer saying hi to lots of people. But nature is nice, too. I saw a rad black bird with bright red under its wings. I am fine in the days, but at night, I am up every few hours with a very unhappy stomach.
Yesterday went and delivered some protocol letters with Maturin. He is working on a calendar for me of meetings I can attend to meet people. Some discussion of who I should be working with. Things are feeling so slow moving. Am I being too hard on myself, not hard enough? I suppose it’s only been a week and a half since I got to post. Patience, Zara.
There is an Agro Fair starting in Bafoussam tomorrow. That would be cool to see, meet up with some other West volunteers. I don’t know if Maturin has anything planned for me tomorrow, tho. Hopefully I will get some manure & sand soon, so I can start a little pepiniere, try out the Moringa seeds, some others. Wondering when I should plant veggies. It seems like dry season is not the ideal time. It is SO DRY. It is hard to imagine that there has ever been rain, or that there will ever be rain again. Not til April or June, I guess.
On the sides of the roads, everything is BROWN. So brown. I thought it was all dead, but it’s not, it’s just covered in a thick layer of dust. Oh dust. So much dust.
Last night when I was making gnocchi, I had a visitor. People love to visit when my hands are covered in garlic. She is a leader of a local group. I guess she was not Nura’s favorite person. She seemed alright, very excited about how much she has worked with Peace Corps volunteers. I am taking it all with a grain of salt. Met my landlord yesterday, too, or rather, my landlord’s brother. He seems alright. I couldn’t understand the majority of what he said. But. He seemed real nice. Going to see about getting the house repainted before I pay rent. Once I figure out how to say that in French.

17 december 2009

it is now. in a cyber cafe in bafoussam, struggling with the french keyboard. you have to shift to type a period. the non-shift option is a semi-colon; do the french really use so many semi-colons? here with some other volunteers to check out an agro expo, prize-winning veggies and animals and all. i think it will be fun. i had pictures, but the virus on my flash ate them. just glad i got the post transferred here. hopefully i will have some for you soon; instead of just 8 pages of text.

love to you all!

(to those of you who have asked about packages - my address is the same, altho i am now a volunteer not just a trainee. glass breaks. tupperware and ziploc bags are always appreciated. nuts are a luxury, like walnuts, yum. some tea or coffee wouldnùt be remiss, gingery or chai type things for tea, pre ground type things for coffee. seeds - flowers or tasty veggies, perhaps. candy, always. magazines. little scented candles if youve got them lying around unwanted. candles and good smells are useful here. if you want to go nuts and rock some toms of vermont toothpaste, i wouldnt be sad. also, jeez, packages are expensive, i really dont expect you to send me any, but if you want to do something nice, shoot me an e-mail. it is really truly good to hear about all the events in your life, little and big)

2009-12-16T16:12:00.000+01:00

meant to have a post but i have been virused. at the catholic church across the street from me, the only internet in this business. french keyboard. baffling. hopefuly more soon, i have an 8 page update of the last month all typed up. see if i can get virus free.

love you all! site is good, but challenging, my familiar challenges and new Cameroon style challenges.

happy holidays!

2009-11-22T10:59:00.000+01:00

Tried to post this yesterday, but the electricity went out. Bummers.

Should you ever visit Cameroon, heed the steps. Even in nice houses and office buildings, the stairs here seem to have been planned one at a time. Their heights vary according to no particular reason, as do their widths, slants & angles. I have yet to fall down them, but only due to extreme amounts of caution.
On the other hand, the main room of our training center is set at two different levels. One half of the room is set about two inches higher than the other. This I fall off daily. (Luckily, a fall of two inches is only mildly surprising).

So, cultural tidbit aside, qu'est-ce qui se passe? What is up? Time flies! Les temps volent. Voler is the french verb for to fly and to rob. I didn't make a connection until now, connecting it to time. A mere dozen days remain for training. Apres ca, we will all go our (kind of) separate ways (my closest PC neighbor will be 15 minutes away by moto, my furthest (and favorite) agro buddy will be a few days travel). I am revelling in the silliness the space of fifteen 20-somethings contains. When I get to site I will be glad to start working & planning in earnest, but for the next 12 days I plan to make the most of mes amis.

This weeks' dinner was a wildly delicious potato gnocchi, pasta & garlic bread with three sauces - spicy tomato, creamy cheese & pepper and basil-licious. We also had sweet tunes and a bonfire. Did I mention we are (talking about) starting an a cappella disco group? I know, right? I am doing (theoretically) mild-to-moderate back-up singing.

Maladies checklist. So far our stage has been full of many of the tropical entrees offered here, as well as a smattering of other mishaps. Illnesses and suspected illnesses include: typhoid, malaria, dysentery (!!! many kinds), mono (?), syphilis (?), insomnia, worms, bike brake lever impaling, chiggers.... and a hangnail. Don't worry. We are tough.

We spent yesterday in Bafoussam, a city of confusion. I can almost guarantee you that I will become lost in this city (it is my regional capital, a mere 30 minutes from my site, and contains such wonders as my bank and supermarkets that sell cheese and peanut M & M's. Did I spend more today to buy a small packet of peanut M &Ms than to buy the two heaping plates of food that were my lunch? Yes. Yes I did. Also, Bafoussam has soft-serve and a pool. So there). I have always felt that I am pretty good at orienting myself and not getting lost, but Bafoussam confounds me. In addition to having a church shaped like a pirate ship, it appears to have been planned by a baby on heavy drugs. THere is no logic. It merely spreads like an illogical fungus. We traversed the city several times over today, and I can barely make sense of the main drag. I take it back. I can't make sense of it at all. It just so happened that every once in a while I would recognize something. Aha! Supermarket that sells cheese! Roundabout of death! Naked crazy man!
The roads of Bafoussam are paved in the sense that there is cement, and one might imagine it intended to be a paved road. Unfortunately, the roads achieve a state of pavedness comparable to perhaps how Vache-Qui-Rit compares not to cheese. Is it paved/cheese? Only in the loosest sense of the word. One learns to appreciate it when one lacks all other options. The "paved" roads/Vache Qui Rit are better than the dirt roads/nothing at all, but not by much. Alright, I lie a little. Vache Qui Rit is way better than the roads of Bafoussam.
Aaaah, Bafoussam, confusing, bumpy, polluted, over-trafficky dirty city. There's a special place in my heart for you. And a special place in hell.

So. Yesterday we went to Bafoussam for a field trip. What did we see?

1. A rad NGO called Winrock International that is working in Cameroon on improving post-harvest methods & technologies. A big obstacle in Cameroon agribusiness is getting food from farm to market. Poor roads, lack of infrastructure, transportation costs, no control over prices, seasonal food availability and worth. A big solution is food transformation. Winrock is working to create awareness, interest & technical knowledge of some food transformation machines. One is a gas powered dryer for drying fruits, spices, fish, etc. Another is an improved type of grain mill. They are doing research now on if the oil-press they have is a cost-efficient solution compared to imported oils.
Winrock finds local metal-workers who fit certain criteria (enough equipment, motivation to market these products, location, etc) and teaches them how to make these technologies (& how to fix them). Winrock also does publicity to increase awareness & interest in the products, like letting an interested party use the dryer for a week to see if it would be a worthwhile investment. Pretty cool. The focus is on the project being sustainable after Winrock is done with it. Unfortunately, the equipment is moderately expensive (like, $400-$600, which is A LOT here, but it is a great entrepreneurial opportunity, and great for food security).

2. We visited another NGO, this one local to Cameroon. They do lots of work with agroforestry related topics, and they love Jesus. We went to see a shop where they fabricate improved cookstoves. What is an improved cookstove? Let me tell you. Most women here (and I mean women, though I don't mean to be sexist, the mention of a man cooking is usually followed by raucous laughter) cook with the three stone method. A giant marmite (pot) is balanced on three rocks and a fire is kept underneath. An improved cookstove encloses the fire & focuses the heat upwards. This improves it in two ways... 1) health, there is less smoke, and 2) conservation, it requires much less wood. At meal times, the air here is straight up SMOKY. My family here has a gas range, but does almost all the cooking over a fire. Why? Traditional food takes a long time to prepare (hours! days!) and traditional families are large. And gas is more expensive than firewood.
Great, right? Except when we go to the shop that is making these stoves, the NGO contact is not there, and the guy left in charge is not impressed with us. He doesn't want to talk to us about the stoves because we are getting in the way of his work time. Fine. So the guy from the NGO gives us a quick rundown while stoveman stands and pouts. Someone asks how much one costs. He shakes his head, refuses to answer and walks away.
Here is a business tip.... if you want to sell something, talk to your clients about it!! I know, I know, sounds crazy.
After How Not to Conduct Business 101, we go to see cane-rat elevage. What is a cane-rat? It is a giant, and supposedly delicious, rodent. It is more similar to a guinea pig with a tail (blown up to grand proportions) than a rat. Don't worry, people eat regular rats, too. And they are also giant.
Anyway, giant rats in cages. They don't like strangers. I have never tasted one. I am still coming to terms with knowing the animals I may eat. Example: my family got chickens. Pleasant! We then had chicken for dinner... Fresh.

All for now, mes amis.

All my love to you, and all the love from Cameroon, too.

-Zara

PS: Bristol, your package was the most amazing thing in the world! Unfortunately, two of the four glass jars shattered. Did I brush off the candy and eat it anyways? Oh yes, I did. No internal bleeding yet. Also, you are the most amazing person ever. It was like Christmas in November in Cameroon. The silly putty and playdoh are especially amazing. You know me. Thanks for knowing me. Thanks for sending me love.

PPS: Those of you who are considering visiting, consider this. Dry season is between November/December and March. I can't have visitors until after March 2010. Probably the longer I am in country, the better we can navigate, and the more cool things I will know to show you. Regardless. I hope you do come and visit me, because we will have a great time.

2009-11-15T14:35:00.000+01:00

Here is some stuff I wrote during site visit.

1 November 2009

First day of site visit. Couldn't sleep last night. Drunk & itchy & feverish. Rain in AM. Diarrhea. Nerves. Took my first moto to the Total (gas station) in Bangangte. "Combien a la station Total?" I ask the old man on the moto who has stopped for me. "Pour vous, cent francs." I put on my moto helmet - glasses off, helmet on, glasses back on, chin strap tight - & I step onto the moto. With my left hand I grip the metal seat behind me with a death grip. I keep my right hand on the driver's shoulder. My helmet bounces between my big pack & the driver's head. Terrifying.
Get off the moto at the Total. Jean-Jacques, the counterpart of Liz is there. Some health stagiares are there. I am feeling like I could spend some more time in bed & on a toilet. Henry & Liz arrive & we part to find a car to Bafoussam.
We wait in the Gare for maybe twenty minutes before we can fill a car to Baf. My first bush taxi. Imagine: A small hatchback. In the backseat, we are four people. It is cramped, but not unexpected. Henry & Jean-Jacques share the passenger seat. I am distracted by texting but when I look up I realize there are four people in the front. I had heard about, but not seen, the under-driver spot. The driver is sitting on top of another person. And driving stick. Props. (This is called petit-chauffeur).
Bafoussam. Yikes. I learn later that it is called by other PCVs, " the second worst place in the world", after Gary, Indiana, of course. My experience is limited to a brief roadside stop & a traverse to one of the Gares. We are quickly shuttled into a car going to Baham. Like before, I get into the backseat where there are already two people. This time, two ladies with hips more prodigious than mine are occupying space. There is not room for four butts. Liz sits on my lap. I am a little worried when the car is being manually pushed out of the lot backwards with no power & a series of clunks & thumps. Miracle of miracles, we move forward under our own power. Only to stop again. Indeed, the car felt a little empty. A slight old man wedges himself in between the driver and the door. And we depart. Did I mention the frequent road stops? Tolls must be paid. And by tolls, I mean some legs are getting greased.
No road flares? Use branches in the middle of the road. A van is on its side on the left of the road. A car is spun around and smashed on the right side of the road. The accident is far enough past that no one is near the cars. Liz and I look at each other & cringe. On va faire comment?
We arrive in Baham. After a few minutes my counterpart arrives on the back of a moto, still sporting his Peace Corps pagne baseball cap. He finds another moto & tells me to get on the first. This moto ride is nothing like my first. This moto ride is nothing like my first. It is maybe twenty or thirty minutes, some of it on washboard dirt roads, some on gready mud, swerving as best we can around giant ruts and puddles. Again, my left hand grips the rail below me as though that one hand has the strength to keep me alive. My right hand on the shoulder of the driver. I'm not sure why. Maybe so he doesn't forget I am there. Maybe for reassurance? My pack is still strapped on my back and my helmet is limited by it & the driver's head. I look forward on the left side of the driver's head. Watching the moto ahead with my counterpart on it gives me an idea of where we will swerve.
I lean forward on the uphill, willing the moto to continue moving. I tense on the downhills when he cuts the power to conserve gas. Free-falling. After a while I feel some level of comfort in the minor leans and sways the moto takes. Still, when I get off the moto in Bamendjou, my legs are shaky.
We stop at the market to see if the Chef is there. He is not. We take a short tour of the market. It is market day, which occurs only every 8 days here. (In Bangangte, the grand market is twice a week, with a smaller daily market). The Chef is still gone, so we hop back on motos to go to (!!!!) my new house.
Oh yeah, I met my duplex-mate at the marche. Her name is Jane, she is anglophone & very nice.
My house is AWESOME. A billion, billion thanks to Nura, who was the volunteer here prior to me (who also left me big shoes to fill). Bam, living room with a set of raffia furniture. Bam, a bookshelf FULL of books & movies and... a scrabble dictionary? and scrabble? and boggle? Bam, a bedroom with a fully made and swanky bed and useful things everywhere and... Gatorade mix? Bam, a second bedroom with a made up bed and... a mini-fridge? Bam... A bathroom with a toilet & a sink & a shower... with running water?! Bam, a kitchen with gas burners & a stocked pantry... with falafel mix? Bam.
My counterpart finds a locksmith to change the locks (PC regs). Then he leaves b/c there is a funeral/mourning at his house. I wander a bit, discovering more treasure (gum, basket full of magazines, french press).
I realize I am incredibly hungry. In my inventory I have: a round of Vache que Rit (laughing cow cheese, the most therapeutic thing I have found in Cameroon, after friends & beer) & a Plus bar (think ferrero rocher, but in bar form, and not quite as nice). I mange the plus bar and make a shopping list. With excitement & trepidation & my new jelly-shoes (all the rage here and why not? easy to clean, easy to dry) I head down the street to the market. It is a 5 or 10 minute walk. I say some bonjours. Enter the market for a cursory lap. In my head I play word games. "Le premiere fois, je vois; le deuxieme fois, je chois." On my second round I buy some things. Onions, garlic, spaghetti, tomatoes, water. One of the boutique Mamis asks me if I am Nura's sister.
Yes, I say. It is my first day. I am only here for a week, but I will return in December to live. She is nice and says she is open every day. Onward. I buy some prunes.

Diversion: what is a prune? Also known as a plum or safout, it is a purple fruit about the size of an egg but more elongated & cylindrical. In the center is a huge seed. There are a few millimeters of flesh around the seed. To prepare it you roast it on a grate over a fire, or dry fry it in a frying pan for a few minutes. It is also known as bush butter. It tastes like some sort of heaven, a hot conglomerate somewhere between artichoke & lemony hummus. Yum.

Diversion complete. I buy some goyaves (guavas) from a girl. There is some confusion. I ask how much for un tas (a pile) & I think she says 150. Okay, I say. She then proceeds to put almost two piles in a sac. The girl at the next spot makes fun of my french and laughs like a hyena. I am not clever enough with french to say anything in response. The girl hands me my guavas, then tells me I am missing 50 CFA. Okay. Fine. Other girl makes fun of me more. I take my enormous bulging sac of guavas and flee the marche.
Walk home. Beat the rain. Cook some prunes. Eat a wedge of laughing cow. Text some friends. Look thru Nura's old stuff. Read her notes from early on. Look through her resource materials. Read a trashy gossip magazine. Get a call from my counterpart that I don't understand at all. Cam-french is hard enough face-to-face but over the phone it is impossible. Something about the meeting I am supposed to have today with my NGO. What about that meeting, I don't know. It is now 45 (or 75) minutes after that meeting was supposed to occur, so I'm wondering if it was cancelled. Truly, I don't know.
I am hesitant to start cooking dinner, lest I be called away mid-chop. (Un petit blague, a joke, chop is the pidgin word for food, and to eat, and also I plan to chop some veggies). (You know I am okay when I am making bad puns).
And thus I sit & wait because I know not what I do, where I am or what to expect. It is a little lonely. I am hesitant to immerse myself in a book or movie because I am not sure I can crawl out of the American culture and back into Cam-life.

LATER
I begin to prepare dinner, peeling and chopping garlic for a tomato sauce. A knock comes on the foor. Jacques, my supervisor at CADEP is there. We introduce ourselves & invite him in. He sits and we alternately talk awkwardly and sit awkwardly in silence. He tells me some about CADEP. It is based in Bamendjou but works in other places, too. They work with agroforestry & also community health. Chez nous, they are very closely related, he says. He tells me I should pick one thing to focus on, that I should do agroforestry work like I have been assigned, that I should have a desk at CADEP to meet people, instead of having them to my house.
He lights up when I ask about his family. He tells me that his father worked with John Granville, who was an ED volunteer here some years ago (10? 10+?). The Granville also worked in Sudan after PC, where he was killed. In the village here, he is a legendary man. I believe there is a statue of him, and they held a large funeral for him.
Jacques also tells me that he requested a man (and I am a woman), that his daughter is la blanche also (albinism is not uncommon) who I can take back to the US and raise as my own, and that when I leave, I can give all my stuff (that I am buying from Nura) to him & CADEP.
I'll take it all with a grain of salt. After he leaves, my night progresses romantically. The power goes out and I cook my pasta by candlelight while listening to Al Green, Stevie Wonder. Nura calls to check on me. I watch an episode of the Office & head to bed with a book. It is the nicest bed i have slept in in a long time.
I wake up a little disoriented and sideways on the bed. Consider the shower, which blasts cold water into a corner behind the toiler, under a creepy spider. I decide a bucket bath is still the way to go. There is also a giant fluffy towel. It is also the first time I can walk around in various states of undress. Aaaaah. Independence.
My voisine (neighbor) Jane greets me while I am bucket bathing. Our bathrooms share a wall which is open at the top 6 inches or so. We can hear each others' music/TV at all times, too. It is comforting though, because Jane is very kind.
I start cleaning my dishes from last night and heating water for tea. Jane asks me if I have gotten bread yet and I say no, and go with her. The bread has not yet been delivered, so we go across the street, where a Mami is making fresh beignets. Jane buys me 4. How nice!
The beignets are delicious and so is the tea. I listen to the Beatles and R&B and now is now.

Thursday 4 Nov 2009,

Sunny. Ran this AM, to the Chefferie and back. Yesterday I ran towards Bakang & back. Getting ready to leave today. Today to faire protocol in Bahouan, then on to Batie to chill with Wendy and Liz and Julie. Friday to Baf for banking etc. with Jessica. Saturday, pool? Friday night in Bamougoum?
Cleaned up the house this morning. I am looking forward to coming back.
Yesterday was the moto ride from hell. Maybe not. It was probably pretty typical. Jostling, jangling. It could have used a sportsbra and a bite guard. My lower back... my whole back felt like death.

The Emotional Processing of Riding a Moto
1. Fear. Oh god. I am going to die.
2. Discomfort. Ow. I wish I were dead.
3. Anger. We spent an hour on the moto and the chef is not even there?
4. Acceptance. Okay I get it. I'm going to be on here for a while. I may die. It will hurt. Oh and it's kind of pretty.

Running is nice. It is very beautiful here. Once I say bonjour, everyone is very nice. Nice Nice Nice.

(Didn't write about it... spent a night in Batie, Wendy made us onion rings, ranch potatoes & salad. It was amazing! Her nickname is Posh Corps, and her pad is sweet. She is my closest neighbor. Also she is hilarious. Friday in Bafoussam we had several meetings. We ate delicious grilled fish and plantains. Ran into Kate in the bank. New banking procedures, ie, draw a map of your neighborhood. We (Liz, Julie, Richard, Kate & I) head to Liz's house for the night and make amazing grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup. She has kittens. And a hot water heater. We are too poor to get to the pool so we bail and head back to Bangangte on Saturday).

9 November 2009.

Played a game of women's soccer yesterday. It was fantastic. Girls from maybe 11 to my age playing. There were 3 or 4 good players, several enthusiastic players and some timid buy happy players. Lots of fun. Julie got SO mad at the guys who were telling us what to do. At the end we did some stretches & exercises. Julie had us do push ups to prove to the guys we are strong. They laughed. I surprised myself by doing 5 push ups. Guess I'm getting stronger. I think it's the laundry.
Cedric, Lauren's brother, was reffing. It was nice of him to do that, and he seemed into it. It shocked me how few of the girls knew the rules- how to throw in, the difference between a goal kick and when the goalie gets the ball. Oh, the ball. It was plastic & only half inflated. That made things interesting. I would love to get these girls some training, a real ball... some were playing in jellies, and ballet flats. Merde!
But like I have believed before, I think that sport is great for girls' confidence & health & empowerment.

TODAY.

High points of the week... getting mail!!! Thanks Mom, I got two more letters and pictures! It was so good to see you and Dad's faces! Nice brussel sprouts and artichokes! I showed off your pictures. Gail, I got your letter! It was AMAZING. I have written a letter back, but I need to rewrite it legibly. Also, thank you for the pictures too. It is so nice to see home.

We had a halloween party thursday. NICE. I made a bunch of masks and hats. We tried to do breakfast for dinner, but vastly underestimated the number of people there. We made pancakes, french toast, potatoes & hash, and eggs. It all got eaten very fast. I bought food across the street to eat. There was much imbibing. I had some good conversations. Took Hana & Jackie home to stay at my house. I slept on the couch.

We went to an elementary school to watch some current volunteers teach some Enviro Ed sessions. It was pretty awesome. They are good at what they do. The kids seemed into it. There were some teachers there too, observing. We made old trash bags into rope, learned about what to do with trash (recycle, compost, burn, down the latrine), and learned about how to treat water. Kids here are cute and LOUD. Don't give them whistles. Ever.

I've been getting along with my family. We have some conversations. The only two I can really talk to comprehensively are my dad and my youngest brother. I love my youngest brother. He is 11, and he is always singing and dancing. Nice.

All for now. E-mail me?

PS: If you are feeling super-loving, like you want to send me a package, packages have been arriving here safely (if a little crushed). Write in red ink and draw crosses on it if you want to be extra-cautious. Some things I would love to get include: walnuts (found some at the house and they were the best thing EVER!), CANDY (something with chocolate and maybe peanut butter, tic tacs, gum (the little 5 packs of juicy fruit hold up well. Other gum melts in the humidity)), good smelling candles you want to get rid of (i never liked them before, but they are real nice for nights without electricity), movies or TV shows(DVD or on a flash drive?), magazines (girly ones? I have a zillion copies of the new yorker), cheese flavored crackers, pictures of home, pictures of you, hand sanitizer, whatever silly thing you can think of.

ALLLLLLL MY LOVE!
Zara

2009-10-31T13:10:00.000+01:00

my home for the next two years? Bamendjou! site visit next week. I leave tomorrow. wish me luck! Text me, call me! More next weekend.

2009-10-24T16:52:00.000+02:00

Cameroon. Life is sporadic, erratic. Good days. Bad days. Got our mountain bikes today. On Thursday we find out our sites. November we do a one week site visit. Visited a fish farm and a beekeeper and a medicinal plant garden on Friday. Have reached the level of french I need. I feel like I am in a valley between English and French where I can't speak either very well.

Alas, today when I have a chance to use the internet, I do not have words. I haven't been writing on paper and it is hard to think off the top of my head. I hope this picture will tell you everything that is happening with me.

2009-10-04T15:02:00.000+02:00

Let's start with a pictures! I stole this one from Richard, thanks buddy. I owe you a game of scrabble. This is the majority of the agro and health volunteers in the JFK airport, waiting for our flight.

Backmost row: Nick, Austin, Julie, Carl, Cody, KK, Harley. Second row: Anais, Andrea, Kim, Tim, Jessica, Liz, Kate. Third Row: Murielle, Kim, Jackie, Amanda, Moi, Stef, Lauren, Aislynn, Paige. Frontmost row: Richard, Paul, Kelsey, Christina, Hana, Henry, Stephen.

This was the view from our hotel room in Yaounde. Bangangte is smaller, with fewer buildings and more greenery, but pretty much the same concept.

I haven't really taken many pictures because as often happens in large group settings, when one person brings out a camera, seven people bring out cameras. So I haven't. But I do plan to steal more pictures from people, and take more pictures. So. Look forward to that.

Also, a shout out to Alec, SED volunteer from June, thank you for letting me (and all of us) use your internet.

A small survey.

What is my nickname here? La blanche. This is the name I am called by everyone in the street. Yes, it means "the white". No, I am not offended, and it is not meant as an insult.

What did I have for dinner last night? Taro. It is a tuber, cooked and then pounded into a paste. It has the texture of soft playdoh with none of the flavor. It was served with a cold yellow sauce and eaten with my fingers. Hmm.

What is my new favorite food? Plantains! What a miracle! I could eat these every meal of every day. Fried, boiled, roasted... YUM! The greens here are also really good, and the beans, and the spaghetti (sometimes served with potatoes mixed in). Eat your heart out, Dr. Atkins, Cameroon is carb-a-licious.

What do I talk about with my family? Not much. Still having some communication difficulty. It turns out that their first language is not French, but a local dialect, hence the strong accents. It also turns out that it is not even local to here. Anyway, here is a synopsis of our daily conversations: it is time for me to wash. It is time for me to eat. They are leaving now. I am leaving now. I have returned. I am eating. I am full. It was good. Okay. Yes. I don't know. I don't understand. I am going to sleep now.

A man came over two nights ago and started talking to me. I didn't understand. My mother is laughing. "He is speaking patois!" She says in French. The man continues speaking to me and laughing. "I don't understand you," I say in French. He continues speaking and laughing and then leaves. "He is so funny!" my mother says in French.

What do I laugh at? The men wearing furry earmuffs in 80 degree weather. The moto drivers wearing puffy jackets in 80 degree weather. Baby goats. The custom mudflaps on motos, with handpainted Adidas or Nike symbols, that say "King of the Jews" or "Very Boy. Very Very Boy". The authenticity of brand names here is not of importance - hence the boy walking through the market, a metal bowl of bananas balanced on his head, the bowl dubbed "NIKE" in blue marker.

Nice: Rain thundering down on a tin roof. The smell of a kerosene lantern. Warm lantern glow in a dark house. A small cat.
Less nice: Rain thundering down on me in the latrine. The smell of a wet latrine. Cold LED glow on the roaches in the latrine. A small poop.

Today is Sunday, which means laundry. Laundry is hard work here. Scrubbing clothes with soap. Wringing them out. Scrubbing them with soap again and pounding them into the cement. Wringing them out. Rinsing them. Wringing them out. Rinsing them. Hanging them up. Waiting 4 days after they dry to wear them to prevent mango flies from growing under my skin. (Alternately, ironing. Actually, both, because I would love to go for 2 years without digging living organisms out of my skin.)

I also washed: my shoes, my floor, my moto helmet. This took the better part of 5 hours.

I am starting to communicate more with my family, just the last day or two. We still don't get real complicated, but it is improving.

LJ, if you are reading this, and I hope you are, I want you to know that they were playing "Call on Me" on the TV one night and it made me real happy.

Do we have electricity? Yes. It goes out often. Pretty much every night, several times. My family has a TV which is almost always on. I don't plug my stuff in very often, because I don't have a voltage regulator (yet) to prevent surges from blowing up my stuff.

Do we have running water? Hmmm. We have a spigot outside. And a well. Call it what you will. Water tends to come out of it, and we have a lot of buckets to put it in.

Do I drink clean water? Yes. I boil it and filter it, or put bleach in it. Sometimes all three, when I'm feeling ambitious. I have been in good health.

Am I learning a lot about Agroforestry? Funny you should ask. Yes! We went on a field trip to APADER on Friday. It is a local farm that does research on improving agroforestry techniques, has demonstration plots, and a nursery. What are the main goals of agroforestry volunteers? Using multi-purpose trees (MPTs), which are just what they sound like. Improving soil quality & preventing soil erosion. Teaching poor farmers how to generate income from agriculture. Teaching kids about saving the environment. So, all in all, pretty awesome.

What is a MPT? A multi-purpose tree may have several of these purposes: Preventing soil erosion, increasing nitrogen content in soil, increasing phosphorus content in soil, creating biomass for compost, food for animals, food for humans, wood for burning, medicinal value, flowers for bees. Cool, huh?

The main goal is to help poor farmers (at our eventual post) increase their yield so that they can feed their family and make enough money to feed their family, and to prevent the soil from being completely exhausted. About 60-70% of the population in Cameroon is involved in some form of subsistence agriculture. There was a big economic crisis here in the mid-80s, early-90s related to the drop in world food commodity prices and the devaluation of currency here. Thus, people grow food to eat. What this also means is that more land gets used by more people. There used to be a fallow period of about 20 years to let the soil regenerate. Now it is more like 5 years, or nothing. Fertilizer is prohibitively expensive. So, we are going to learn how to compost, and teach others to compost. The land here is very hilly, and most farmers plant parallel to the slope, meaning that the soil and soil nutrients wash down into the valleys. So, we are going to learn about contour bunds, which are planted perpendicular to the slope and prevent erosion. There's lots more cool stuff. I'm pretty excited about it.

Anyway, all for now I guess. Maybe I will have more pictures by next week? Love to you all.

2009-09-26T16:34:00.000+02:00

bonjour mes amis. i write to you from qa luxurious cyber cafe in bangangte. french keyboards are a little different: azerty; not qwerty. this will be brief i only have 15 minutes and the internet is very slow.

one: i love cameroon. beaucoup. it is beautiful, the people are nice, my host family is great.
two: this is the hardest thing i have ever done. it is very hard to go home to a family where we do not understand each other very well if at all. i did not realize how intense the language barrier would be. i did a bit of crying over it all but i think i am done for now. it will be a long slow process but i think that i will get there eventually.

my stomach is still getting used to the copious amounts of palm oil, but all the food i have eaten has been delicious.

what is my day like§ let me tell you. i wake up on my big wide bed under a mosquito net. carry my TP out to the latrine behind the house and practice my aim. i am no sniper. this is at six am, but my host family is already up and scrubbing the floors. i brush my teeth with bottled water and spit outside. i bucket bathe in the douche inside; a small room with a tile floor with a small drain. apparently i can also pee here at night, have not tried it. my host mom has breakfast ready for me, though no one else eats any. it is a giant omelet and a baguette with margarine or chocolat. also a cup of instant coffee: i walk to the training center a five minute walk: 4 two hour classes a day with a break for lunch: i finish at four thirty and walk home: rest: try to communicate with my family; have dinner in front of the tv zith ma mere et mon^pere and sometimes my oldest host brother; the other 4 to 6 kids eat elsewhere or at another time; then they do homework while my mother and father prepare baked goods; i go to sleep early and have mefloquine dreams;

all for now: much love: write me or call me: email me for my number; hearing from home anything at all would be really great: REALLY;

i am very happy and healthy;

2009-09-21T16:45:00.001+02:00

Probably the last time I will have a chance to use internet before we move to Bangangte on Thursday. After that, I don't know. Thought I would include some writing I have done over the past few days, which I am glad to have because my brain is currently in that post-lunch lull + week of sleep deprivation.

18 September 2009
We are flying over the coast of Africa! It is finally becoming real to me! Wow. We all crowded around the windows to see, and I got a big smile on my face. My heart races to think that in 4 hours we will land.
Also, props to Brussels Airlines for great food. Camembert? Yes please. I thought I was done with fancy cheese - any cheese - for 2 years.
Our flight from New York yesterday was delayed almost 2 hours, so we spent a good 4 hours or so in JFK just waiting. Once we got to Brussels we only had an hour fifteen to make our connection... and go back through a long security line. Someone finagled to get the 32 of us in the priority line... until a boss came back & rudely kicked the last 8 of us out, told us to go to the back of the now-even-longer security line. We made it through security with 15 minutes til boarding and had to run to catch a shuttle to the T terminal. We all just barely caught the shuttle that dropped us at our gate just as boarding began. A little nerve-wracking? Yes. Separation & delay & english is no longer the default language (tho everyone spoke it). I also didn't have a boarding pass from Brussels to Yaounde. Luckily, they did not ask for one going through security & I got one printed at the next checkpoint.
We are all in various states of sleep deprivation & excitement, but we are on our way!!!

18 September 2009

In Cameroon! Wow. It is amazing! I have seen very little, just what was along the road between the airport and the hotel. This place is green, green, green! It looks very tropical, all sorts of trees I've never seen before, muddy streams, red, red dirt. People are everywhere along the sides of the roads. Carrying buckets & giant loads on their heads, sitting at umbrellaed tables selling bananas & other fruits, walking home from school, playing futbol, riding motorcycles the wrong way. The traffic is intense (though Yaounde is paved). Imagine a 4-way intersection with no stop signs, no stop lights, no lines on the road, no orderly rules, just cars driving through whichever way they can make it. No accidents yet! There are small buildings everywhere selling building supplies (quincailleries), auto supplies, furniture. A man carries one of his shoes balanced on his head and the other in his hands. A few blocks later I see a boy with a shoe on his head & one in his hand. I like your style, Cameroon!
Speaking of, Cameroonians dress very diversly, but stylishly. Men all wear pants, some wear nice jeans. Fancy button-down shirts, t-shirts, a sweater vest & Kangol hat. Ladies wear brightly colored muumuu type dresses, matching blouses & skirts, trendy clothes, jeans, heels on muddy streets. When it starts to rain & red mud washes down the streets in streams, some people roll up their pants, carry their shoes & walk barefoot. Clean shoes & clothes are very important.
Some young men wave at our Peace Corps caravan as we go by. I wave back. I think it will be difficult to move into a more subdued role around strangers. No one really makes eye contact with you, or smiles at you, I've noticed. I unfortunately am in the habit of making eye contact & smiling. I think it makes us both a little uncomfortable.
When we get out of the van at the hotel, there is a gendarme holding some kind of rifle-y gun. I am under the impression he is here for our safety (later confirmed). Still, an unexpected sight. In the hotel is once again our cluster-mess of bags & people. Imagine 32 young adults, each with 3 or 4 bags they've packed their lives into for the next 2 years. We are a big smelly pile. Did I mention we have been traveling for 2 days without a chance to shower or freshen up?
I start lugging my bags up to the 3rd floor. At the 3rd floor, the numbers start at 100. The 4th floor, 200 & finally the fifth floor I reach my room. Two small twin beds pushed together (I have a roommate, she is great, hi Lauren!), a table, enough space to put our bags down & turn around. There is a small bathroom with a sink, a toilet, a bidet & a shower stall minus walls or curtains. There is no toilet seat (turns out to be non-essential, also turns out other people have them), but I am grateful for TP & flushing abilities for a few more days.
Back downstairs for dinner. Our appetizer/salad is half an avocado sliced in a fan with a scoop of tuna, corn & an olive on top, next to two tomato slices. Delicious! Why did I never think of this? I am looking forward to lots of avocado (note: haven't had any more since!). Dinner is a big plate with fried fish, oignons, some sauce, boiled potatoes & a mountain of white rice. Also crazy delicious, but I get full quickly. I've been so anxious the last month I've had trouble eating. A much smaller portion size suffices. For dessert is a plate of some sweet mild orange fruit with lime. Papaya! Tasty.
At the Yaounde airport we came down the stairs to find our Country Director. He shakes all our hands as we walk by & laughs at the gigantic grin I have on my face. We meet more of the PC Staff...
God, Cameroon is so beautiful! I feel super loopy, since I got off the plane.

19 September 2009 7:17 am

Uhhh.... sleepy! The bed was comfy, the A/C worked all night, I got to sleep by 9 but the wedding party (actually the night club) 3 floors down really PARTIED with bumping, BUMPING music til 5 am (a nightly occurrence). Only slept fitfully & sleep deprivation pervades. Brushed my teeth for the second time using bottled water. I need to learn to stop touching my eyes. I do it a lot. Oh yeah - took my first malaria prophylaxis last night. Hello, mefloquine. No crazy vivid dreams yet (at least not abnormally so). Next challenge for the AM - shower with no walls/shower curtains. I think we even have hot water but I am not holding my breath (oh yes, we do).

20 September 2009

Feel like such a shut-in. Not allowed to walk around w/o a national ID card, so not much time spent outside. Very little interaction with anyone Cameroonian. It feels a lot like the first week of college. I know that this will all change soon.

21 September 2009

Yesterday went to dinner at Country Director's House & met his family. What a super-nice family. Giant snails! On the ground, not for dinner. Lots of bats in the sky. A lush tropical backyard, our chair legs sank into the lawn, we ate at tables outside under big tents with colored light strings & burning mosquito coils (oh the sweet smell). The food (and beer) was deliceuse. Typical Cameroonian salad (corn, tomato, onion, tuna, etc), veggie egg roll, fish croquette type thing, fried thing, baton de manioc, green beans, njama-jama, fish. All around enjoyable, everyone in fancy dress. We went to a night club afterwards (the one that shakes our hotel), on a fete night (end of Ramadan). Wild! It was packed, hot & sweaty, the mirrors are steamed up (mirror dancing, obviously) & the fog machine was sporadic and asphyxiatingly dense & sweet. The guys were a little handsy, but I was never (very) uncomfortable. Some were a lot better about backing off when I said NO. I will definitely have to learn to be more assertive in saying no. It was nice to dance & move & experience a little of the culture.

21 September 2009 - now

A bunch of us are all sitting around now on the internet. We had Medical Orientation this morning and got our med kits. Fun! Got a few more vaccinations, had some pain au chocolat, had brief medical intake interviews. My PCMO did not believe my weight and made me get on the scale. I guess I'm pretty muscly. Ha. I kid.

Anyway, we have two more days of classes and then on Thursday we move in with our host families. I am so excited!! It will be nice to be moving forward with learning French and taking classes and living in a community. I am so thrilled to be learning about things that are directly related to something I will be doing. Finally! Our schedule for the next week goes something like, classes from 7:30 to 4:30 (i think), 4 classes a day, mostly language and technical training, but also cross-cultural, medical, safety and security. Saturday is a half day. Sunday is no class. Actually, that is pretty much the class for the next bunch of weeks. In November we have sit visits, which is where we spend a week in our potential site, getting to know our counterpart and the community, with a current PCV host. Super great.

I am still real tired, but I am also so happy and excited. Everyone here is really wonderful and I am glad to have so many new friends that I have only known for 5 days (though it seems like it has been much much longer).

I should have a cellphone this week! I hear Skype is the cheapest way to call Cameroon, though some phone cards are pretty good too.

Also we played charades the other night and it was all good. How bout that.

Love love love! Zararama.

2009-09-19T16:23:00.001+02:00

I'm in Cameroon! It's beautiful!! Green green green & red dirt. We are in the city now, but go to our training site next week. The food is good, the toilets are american and our hotel has hot water & air conditioning! What luxury! The volunteers and staff are great.

I don't know that I will actually get to the internet very often. We will see. Love you all!

2009-09-16T03:27:00.000+02:00

Je suis dans Philadelphia.

I woke up at 3:30 am today to the realization that the sound of the alarm was not just part of my dream. Crawling out of bed was a tragedy, but with a noble cause. Got into the shuttle van at 4:00 am. Listened to the suth'n gentleman tell me stories about bison and i don't know what on the way to the airport. Slept completely on the flight from Eugene to Denver. Arrived in Denver 7 minutes before I had to board my next flight. 70 gates, and 15 minutes later, I arrived in perfect time to board.

Unfortunately, my bags did not run so quickly and I arrived in Philadelphia to find myself traveling very light. Hopefully, theoretically, please, my bags will be delivered to the hotel tonight. On the plus side, I didn't have to wrestle giant bags to the hotel! I also managed to spill half my water bottle in the bag with my laptop and paperwork pertinent to today (though luckily not my really important paperwork). Also, bonus, my laptop still works!

Anyway. Struggle to understand the very simple transportation situation. Finally get on a shuttle. Meet another PC volunteer. We talk. Walk around a bit, find cheesesteaks for dinner. Meet another volunteer. Part ways. I attempt to iron my clothes for tomorrow. Not bad. Not good, either.

Now, I will be passing out. 10 hours of sleep over 2 days is Not Enough.

Excited for tomorrow. And nervous. All my love.

2009-09-15T05:44:00.001+02:00

What's the time? Night before departure time! Boodoo da doowoop boodoo da boowoop. I depart scenic Eugene tomorrow at 6 am. Which means I depart scenic my sister's house at 4 am. Which means I depart a warm cozy bed at 3:30 am. Which is in Slightly Less Than 7 hours. Aaaah, you say, seven hours, a decently restful night of sleep before a thrilling journey! To which I reply, HA. AS IF. Even if I hadn't spent last night in the San Francisco airport wrenching 4 hours of sleep from a couple of chairs in a freezing terminal, I will certainly not be getting 7 hours of sleep tonight!

While I am packed (technically, mostly), my head and probably paperwork is all out of order. I need to come to terms with what I have where -- in my brain as well as in my bags. In fairness to my sister & brother-in-law's generous hospitality, I should probably clean the upstairs which I have sullied with my mess-making. I would like to go through my old photographs to bring along some choice cuts. Showering would be appropriate. Procrastinating at this late hour? A must!

In the last 3 weeks I have not spent more than 3 days in any one locale. I am in a dream-like, fairly delirious state, which I find is conducive to wrapping my head around the journey I'm about to begin. Nothing is real, it's all a dream, SURE, I'm going to be in Cameroon in a few days.

Anyway. The last three weeks have been really wonderful, seeing family and friends and being fed enormous amounts of cake. Mostly the family and friends part was really wonderful. How can my life be filled with so many great people? I don't know. I'm very lucky. I will miss you all. I'll be back though, in 27 short (and medium and long) months.

Enough procrastination. My eyelids grow heavy and yet my to-do list remains. I will be in Philadelphia tomorrow, Wednesday and Thursday. Thursday I will leave for Cameroon. Friday I will arrive in Cameroon. And then...???

(Also, my phone will be thusly shut off on Thursday or Friday).

LOVE!!!!

2009-08-21T03:03:00.000+02:00

On the Peace Corps website, they have language lessons specific to Cameroon. I downloaded them, as suggested, and have been reading the transcript. So far my favorite phrase they have included is: "Ton père est polygame." (Your father is polygamous - informal). Say what? Zara is going to a different country! Also, how would one formally call your father polygamous? And to be honest, it kind of sounds like a yo' mama joke. But. Cultural sensitivity. Polygamy? Cool. Do it. I won't. But you can.

In the section on prepositions, I have two favorite phrases, which I plan to use in conjunction.
1. "Qu’est-ce que tu fais sous la table ?" (What are you doing under the table? - informal).
2. "Est-ce que nous devons aller derrière ce bâtiment ?" (Should we go behind this building?)
I will be sure to use these phrases on a daily basis.

More PC prep today. Dropped a cool hundred on 3 months of birth control (we have to provide the first 3 months of prescriptions). That is generic, too! My insurance covered all of zero of that because I am not due for a refill until the day after I leave. Luckily I had a rockin' pharmacy tech who managed to knock of fifty dollars... bringing it down to one hundred. Current cost of PC expenses through-out the last year? I refuse to add it up. I'm sure it could have been done cheaper, but I am putting myself into the poor-house, on the way to the poor-house in another country.

I also went a little nuts in an outdoor store and walked out with some necessities, but also a travel hammock! Twenty dollars! What a deal!

I drove today for probably the last time in 2+ years. It was wonderful. I was in such a good mood I barely even got road rage when I was following a car going 20 below the speed limit that passed 11 turnouts before pulling over, or when the car in the opposite lane decided to use my lane while going around a blind corner. Regardless, I did enjoy it, so some thanks are in order:
1. LJ, thanks for letting me borrow your car today and all the days in the past. You are my hero.
2. To Poison, Pat Benatar, the Pixies, the Zombies, Steely Dan, other artists on my random play - thanks for making songs that can be sung so raucously in a car.
3. To Biggie, Tupac, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, DMX, Atmosphere - thanks for making me feel like a gangsta without having to bust a cap on anyone.
4. To Digital Underground - thank you for writing the best song ever, "The Humpty Dance". Lyrics like, "I like my oatmeal lumpy" and "Hey fat girl, c'mere, are you ticklish?" make me bow down to your genius.
5. To Highway 41 south of Yosemite - thanks for your gentle curves. You are so fun to drive on.

I have some info for Family & Friends regarding travel and mail that I will be sure to put up soon.

Til then - a plus tard!

2009-08-20T04:54:00.000+02:00

I've been practicing un peu French at work when French guests come in. I am pretty good at telling them the cost of their items in French, and they are pretty good at correcting my pronounciation. I told one couple that I had to practice my French because I am going to Cameroon and they said (en francais), "in Cameroon, the French is not so good." To which I replied, "My French is not so good either, so that is okay!"

I also wrote myself a welcome to Cameroon letter. I already got a response from future Zara. How is this possible? A time machine is invented in the next month. She told me to bring more gum.

Preparations. Wow! So much is going on. I've been working overtime, but no more, because I am really glad to leave my job. Four more days of it - EVER. Ryan and Julia came up for the weekend and with Laura and I we had some pretty awesome lady time walking and talking and picnicking and napping and talking more.

PC paperwork is ongoing. Yesterday I got my ticket to go to Philadelphia for staging. I get to Philadelphia approximately one day early. What does this mean to me? Dance party. After all of 24 hours of staging (business casual - what does that mean? I have what I consider to be a professional t-shirt... no collar though), we fly off to Cameroon via Brussels.

Today I spent packing. It was a day-long, mentally intensive process. First, I made five piles - things I am taking to Cameroon, things I might take to Cameroon, things I am keeping in Oregon, things I may or may not keep and things I am getting rid of. Then I figured out what I am taking on my first week of US travel that I am also taking to Cameroon. And then what I am taking in the US that I am not taking to Cameroon. Then I put the rest of the stuff I am bringing to Cameroon in a box. That took me approximately 8 hours. Hmmm. Perhaps I am not the most efficient packer. Nonetheless, the day of obsessive organizing soothed me.

So. Tomorrow, a drive to town to get a few last items (a prescription, another business casual shirt (non-tee)). Sending off my belongings to Christy's house. Next week: my last week of work, my 24th birthday and my departure from Yosemite. The next week: Outside Lands in SF, a visit to SLO, and then off to Denver. The next week: Oregon and Chicago and back to Oregon. The next week: Philadelphia and Cameroon! The next approximately 114 weeks: Cameroon!

Schmoverwhelmed.

2009-08-08T03:12:00.000+02:00

I have been invited to serve as an Agroforestry Extension Agent (Peace Corps Volunteer) in Cameroon!!! I have been dreaming of joining the Peace Corps since I was a wee 15 year-old. Nearly 9 years later, including an entire year of a slow-moving, arduous, emotionally fraught application process... I am going into the Peace Corps!!!

In case you are wondering about the title of this blog, I will present you with this history lesson from the Peace Corps Cameroon Welcome Book that really stuck with me:

History:
Since the journey of Hannon the Carthaginian in the fifth
century B.C. to Mount Cameroon, which he named the
“Chariot of the Gods,” the country’s fortunes have been
subject to many fluctuations. In 1472, sailors from Portugal
entered the Wouri River estuary and were amazed by the
abundance of shrimp; they named it Rio dos Camarões, from
which Cameroon got its name.

I will be leaving to go to staging in Philadelphia on September 17th. From September 19th to December 4th, I will be in training (technical, language, health & safety) in Cameroon and living with a host family. From December 4th of this year until December 4th, 2011 (!) I will be living at my individual post working as an Agro volunteer!

What does an Agroforestry volunteer do, you ask? Well, it's pretty cool. I will be educating and providing training to farmers about the benefits of agroforestry technologies to improve production, provide windbreaks, renew soil nutrients, prevent forest depletion. I will be helping to establish and maintain nurseries, evaluating needs that can be met with agroforestry, and helping set-up medicinal gardens!

I obviously have a lot to learn myself! I'll also be speaking French and likely another language. Je dois practiquer beaucoup plus! As a Peace Corps Volunteer, I will also have the opportunity to be involved in secondary projects. Some examples of these are setting up women's groups, HIV/AIDS support groups, helping with a running team, teaching about nutrition. Secondary projects seem to cover the area between a community's needs and a volunteers interests/skills. Awesome!

What else? Send me a letter! (Or a care package) I know that it would be wonderful to have a word from home as I am in a whole new country and culture. Here is my address for September to December:
Zara Sykes
Peace Corps Trainee
Corps de la Paix
B.P. 215
Yaoundé, Cameroon
Mail can take anywhere from 2 to 6 weeks to arrive. Be sure to write "Air Mail" and "Par Avion" on the envelope. Mail on boats takes even longer! If sending packages, "bubble envelopes" work best. If sending any food items, put them inside a ziploc bag. This will reduce chances that bugs or rodents will devour them. Number letters sent so that I can determine whether any letters do not arrive (I will do it, too, fancy, with roman numerals!). Theft of packages does occur. When writing the contents of the package on the outside, making it seem undesirable rahter than awesome may reduce the chance of theft and increase the chance that I will get awesome booty from you. I hear insuring packages is not a bad idea. I don't know how expensive it is. I don't expect big packages of love, but I would love to get a short note and a picture of you! I will even send you a Self-Addressed Stamped Envelope (SASE, yeah?) if you want.

I plan to send myself a welcome letter!

So what next? I have 5 and a half weeks before I leave! I have a bunch of paperwork to do for the Peace Corps: passport/visa applications, updated resume and aspiration statement, get loan deferments, work out my financial arrangements for the next few years, etc. I am quitting my job in about 2 weeks, yay! From about August 30 til I go to staging on September 17th, I will be traveling to see loved ones!

I also have to figure out how to pack for two years in 80 pounds!

I am still in shock that I will be living in Africa in two months! Happy shock.

Love!