Polio

Ladies and Gentlemen, Readers and Listeners, Merry Christmas, Happy Channukah, Joyous Kwanzaa, and (a happy greeting) (insert holiday here). This Channukah evening finds me the only Jew for miles around, enjoying my mountain sunset and using what few ingredients I have to try to make soup resembling my mother’s chicken noodle soup (the only vegetables I have are carrots and onions and I’m using beef instead of chicken, but so far it smells good, although, I do have a confession, for bouillon, I used an MSG cube). Having been unable to secure small candles or a menorah, my service tonight involves me imagining a gorgeous, huge menorah and lighting it, while saying the prayers aloud (I have a really good imagination; my menorah is very beautiful). An interesting anecdote: One of the first questions I often get asked is about my religion. Most people just stare blankly when I say Jewish (yes, I am saying it in French), but a few times I have gotten the response “O, well that’s the same thing, like Protestant”. Needless to say, I’ve spent quite a few hours the last few days trying to explain my religion, which, unsurprisingly, is hard with my 1000 word vocabulary (don’t actually know, that’s just an estimate).

People around here are really getting down and dirty getting ready for Christmas. They’ve been preparing since before I got here last week. I’ll be spending Christmas with my neighbors. You’ll get a full account next week.

This week, I’m going to focus on how I spent the last three days. I arrived in Mogode at a very opportune time. On Monday, we started a region-wide (all of the grand north) polio campaign. The idea is that for three days, a team of volunteers go door to door delivering the oral vaccine to every child under 5. It involved this great marking system, marking every house and the little pinky of every child to try to insure no one would be missed.

When I talked on the phone to my mom the other day, her first response was “I thought polio was eradicated.” And it was, in the US. But polio is still rampant here. Polio is a virus for which there is no treatment, only preventative measures (vaccine and good hygiene/water practices). A child who gets polio gets flu like symptoms and can develop paralysis, most notably in the legs. However, polio can strike in most areas of the body and most cases that result in death occur when vital muscles such as the diaphragm are paralyzed. 

When I was 14 and had my Bat Mitzvah, I donated a portion of my gift money to Rotary International, who was sponsoring an anti-polio campaign in Africa. It was an abstract idea back then that I chose to sponsor because one of my dad’s favorite presidents had polio and it seemed like something great to eradicate in the world. When I arrived on Tuesday to start the campaign, I looked at the coolers that all the volunteers were carrying with the vaccines, and, ironically enough, there was the Rotary International logo, campaigning to “Kick Polio out of Africa”. I feel like there was a cycle completed in some way; the money that I donated years ago may have bought the coolers and vaccines that I’m now helping to distribute. For the record, these coolers were older and I have no idea if they arrived with the vaccines or not, and whether or not Rotary sponsored this exact drive, but it felt like a little push of encouragement nonetheless.

So basically, I spent the last few days “helping” the supervisor. On the back of a moto, we traversed our whole health district, bringing more vaccines, making sure everyone was marking houses and children correctly, and checking out the different parts of the district to make sure they were covered. It was very helpful for me because I got to see our whole district, which includes many smaller towns, and explore Mogode while meeting new people. I don’t actually feel like I did a whole lot to help, having been unable to contribute at all (the people we spoke with for the most part only spoke Fulfulde and Kapsiki-another reason to learn as quickly as possible), but I did enjoy it.

On the second day of vaccination, the doctor from the hospital accompanied us out to a little town. It wasn’t until we arrived there that I realized he was coming along to investigate a reported case of possible polio. We arrived at the top of mountain, where this little town was hidden behind a grove of trees. Men were lounging on rugs in front of the Chief’s house as we went into a little mud hut to meet a paralyzed girl. She was about 4 years old, sitting by the door, just staring up at us, confused. When her mother helped her up, I saw that her legs were extremely deformed, creating an X with the lower part of her body. After interviewing her mother, we discovered that she had been this way since birth, effectively ruling out polio. Still, the doctor went through protocol, documenting the case with photographs. As we were about to leave town, another father came up to us, saying his daughter was paralyzed as well. A few minutes later, his 8-year-old daughter came scooting up, dragging one of her legs behind her. She had been sick 2 years before and ever since had been unable to use her right leg properly. The doctor said he was unable to confirm or deny polio just by looking at her, but he suspected that this was indeed a case. He documented this case just like the last, we shared a kola nut with the Chief and left town, as if it was no big deal. It’s just protocol for them: another day on the job. For me, it was like stepping back in time. Polio was a problem for my parents and grandparents. Not for me. Yet, here I am, in Africa, seeing it firsthand. Kinda strange.

It was a great week though. I met tons of people around town and all the Heads of the Clinics in our district. A bunch of different people approached me about possible projects they’d like to see done. The biggest problem in Mogode is water. About February of every year, the wells start drying up. By March and April, there is no source of water in the actual town of Mogode. People can either walk kilometers into the Bush to find another source of water or pay thousands of francs to people who will fetch it on motos. At this point, when I’m considering possible projects, water security seemed like it might be something I’d like to do. Today, the Chief of the Center at Sir (a city close by) approached me about expanding the education program that the previous volunteer had started. She worked with the vaccinator and went out into the Bush with him to give education presentations before every vaccination day to women who rarely go to hospitals and don’t have access to information or education. Again, something I might be interested in doing. This point of my service is all about getting integrated, talking to people, and exploring problems in the community. Advice from other volunteers has been “read a book in the center of town and let people come talk to you”, or “go grab a beer with anyone, meet everyone”. It’s an exhausting period of remembering names, gathering information informally, making friends, and trying to become a part of the community (as much as I can considering I stick out like a pumpkin in a sack of beans). Anyways, Happy Holidays and until next time!

Greetings From Mogode

Salutations to my family and friends. It is the evening of my first day here in Mogode, and I’m sitting down in my own little house, in my own little village to write to my peeps back home. The last two weeks have been a blur of activity. Just a short recap, the last two weeks of training were great. We took a field trip out to the western province to learn about Income Generating Activities such as pig-raising and tofu/soy milk making. We stayed a night in Bafoussam and just had an amazing time. Our last few sessions were busy as we quickly went over what to do on arrival at post, what we should expect, and how to stay safe. Then came swearing in. It was a huge deal. That morning, all of the programs dressed up in their respective, self-chosen pagne (fabric/type of clothing). Ours was a beautiful blue and white design with desert animals all over it. It turns out that it is the regional design of the Western Province, but we didn’t know that at the time.

Heading for the center, we said goodbye to our families’ for the last time. It was nonclimatic in my house. My little sisters accompanied me to the center, carrying my last bag on their head. I had cleaned out my room, left presents behind and said my goodbyes. As terrible as it sounds, especially considering that this family had hosted and housed me for the past few months, I was so happy to leave that house. They were extremely nice people, but the house was just so full of drama. Sisters stole from sisters and ran away. People lied to each other and coveted anything they had bought, defending that they still didn’t have any money (even after the family bought a 100,000 CFA = 200$ armoire). Beatings of the children were something common to wake up to and I was never allowed to sleep in past 7:30, even when I was sick. But they were so nice to me. Except for a small incident when I first arrived, they never took anything from me, they fed me at least twice a day, and helped me learn French. I certainly didn’t have the worst family. Nevertheless, when I said goodbye, I was ready for my own space. Ready to cook for myself, ready to use as much or as little water as I wanted, ready to wake up when I wanted to.

We left Bokito early to make it to Bafia with enough time to drop off the last of our things and make it to the Plaza in time. Most of my stuff had been taken a few days before as the larger items for the people up north was shipped up so we wouldn’t have to deal with it on the train.  The Plaza, which is typically just a grandstand-looking platform and bleachers was decorated and had been covered tents for the teachers, family members (we were allowed to invite 2 each) and the trainees. The PC staff, members of the Cameroonian government and local city officers and honorees were in the grand stand. The ceremony was taped and tons of photos were taken by photographers from different new agencies. Despite my best efforts, I haven’t been able to track either the photos or video down yet, but I’m still working on it. There were a bunch of different speakers, including ministers (of the Department of Youth, and Agroforestry) and PC staff. Three of the trainees did speeches, one in Fulfulde, one in French, and one in Pidgeon English. Extremely entertaining. My favorite saying from the Pidgeon speech: Small small, we go catch monkey (meaning little by little we will perservere). Towards the end, the Ambassador asked us all to stand and take our oaths. We pledged our allegiance to our country and to our mission to protect the Constitution and to do our best to make a difference. And just like that, we were real-life sworn-in Volunteers. I almost wish we’d had hats to through up in the air. It felt remarkably like a graduation.

That night, our first night as volunteers, we celebrated. We no longer had rules of training to hold us back. We weren’t limited to two beers per night or had a curfew of 7 pm. We rented out a club at a hotel (which turned into just a conference room) and some rooms and had one last blow-out for our last night together. We danced, we ate street food, and we tried not to think about the next day, when we’d have to say goodbye.

But Friday came. And as we loaded our stuff into our respective buses, it really was time to say goodbye. Ever since I graduated college in June, I’ve felt like I’ve been floating. I haven’t unpacked all of my bags and was even homeless for a month as I travelled around saying goodbye. It’s become a common thing to leave everything that I know and start again. I finished college and started working full time on an ambulance service, dealing with real life problems 40 hours a week. I was a real-life person. Most of my friends had already moved away and I was living in a different part of Boston with a different group of people (please note: I loved living my sister this summer, this is certainly not a complaint, and I visited MIT often). Then I left Boston and travelled around for a few weeks, saying goodbye and living out of a carry-on. My next destination was Cameroon, where I left everything that I knew and came to a new country with a new language, where everything was unfamiliar. What made it bearable though, was going through the same things with my fellow trainees. We were all having problems with family, language, training, or just Cameroon in general. We went through tough times together and really made great friends. And now, I’m leaving them again. The rug is being pulled out from under me for the last time as I, once again, leave behind everyone I know, go to a completely new place, where most people only speak a language I don’t know yet.  It’s overwhelming. When I sat down to write in my journal last night, there was so much going through my head that I couldn’t write. There was too much to organize and think about.

All of this was going through my head as we said our teary goodbyes in Bafia and headed out to begin our journies to post. I took the same route as last time: bus to Yaounde, train to Ngaoundere, bus to Maroua. I travelled with all the people headed to the grand north and those of us heading to the extreme north said goodbye to people as we dropped them off on the way. The journey this time was much more pleasant as we rented out a massive bus to carry the 9 of us north from Ngaoundere to Garoua to Maroua. We had so much stuff, it was really the only way. All of us have bikes, water filters, two helmets (moto and bike), a huge trunk, and our bags that we arrived with, now much more full with pagne and clothes we’ve had made. We loaded the entire bus up. So much so, that the last three rows were filled with bags that couldn’t fit on top of the bus. So we had a huge bus to ourselves, where, for the first time since in Cameroon, we could spread out and enjoy the ride. It was fun. We bought meat and oranges through the window and watched the landscape change from savannah to mountains to desert.

I stayed in Maroua for a few days, getting some stuff for my pretty much empty house before heading out to Mogode. Maroua was amazing. We took time to explore the city and the huge market. The extreme north is known for its beautiful leather work and the artisan market in town was overflowing with it. Other volunteers told me about bags and boots and even jackets they had had made. We ate like kings! Street meat is a huge thing up there. Since beef is so prevalent, its sold on every corner in the form of brochettes, or skewers, served with a spicy powder (piment). Our last night together we went to the fancy restaurant/hotel in town and got things like French onion soup, tomato and mozzarella salad, and pizza with real cheese! It was freaking amazing. We burned bonfires at the cause and just enjoyed each others’ company.

Then, Tuesday afternoon, we said goodbye and headed to our posts. To get to Mogode, Luke and I rented out a van for all of our stuff. Luke is my postmate, meaning he’s in a town about 45 minutes away, Vite. He is an agroforestry volunteer and super nice. We don’t know each other that well yet, but I figure we’ll have a chance in the next two years to rectify that. Most of the way out was fine. However, as soon as we took the turn-off to Vite, the road got so bad, we were worried the top-heavy bus would fall over. Numerous times we started up one part of the road and didn’t make it, having to try two or three times before getting past that particular obstacle. Eventually, we reached Vite and dropped Luke off at his brand-new, beautiful little house in his really cute little town. I’m actually a little jealous of his post. They have water year-round (Mogode doesn’t- we end up getting water from Vite- I hire someone to get water for me) and it’s a really cute, very small village with really traditional houses, no electricity, and a gorgeous landscape.

From Vite, it was another hour or so (it’s shorter on a moto) to get to my house. By the time we arrived it was dark and we had to get some guys passing by to help me with some of the heavier stuff.

But I was here. At last, in my own little house in the north. It is very empty, but I had done a pretty good job of grabbing essentials before I left town. I made myself a simple dinner and unpacked some essentials before climbing into bed for my first night in my own house.

I never had this much space to myself before. It’s a four room house with two bedrooms, an indoor shower room, and a large common area that is used for the kitchen, dining room, and will be a living room. Outside is my latrine, my outdoor kitchen, and huge compound that I will hopefully turn into a garden. The night before I arrived, NousNon, the dog I’m inheriting from Alice had six puppies. The neighbors been taking care of her since Alice left, so I went and saw them today and they are so freaking cute. Although, I’m not sure I understand this correctly, but I’m pretty sure this is what my neighbor said. Since NousNon is so skinny, she figured she wouldn’t be able to handle all six and killed three. I’m appalled. If I understand correctly, it’s a measure of how Cameroonians think of dogs, and I hope to god I misunderstood. Regardless, there are now only three puppies.

Besides meeting the puppies, I spent most of my day unpacking, organizing, and getting used to my new house. Alice’s counterpart came by to meet me and we talked about what’s going on at the hospital the next few days. Tomorrow, I’m going in to see how the whole operation works and find out how I fit in to it. In the afternoon, feeling a little lonely, I went to town. I sought out some of the women Alice had introduced me to and received such an amazingly warm welcome. They remembered me, invited me into their homes, introduced me to their families, and spent so much time talking to me, teaching me a little Fulfulde and Kapsiki, and walking around town with me. Right before I was about to head home, one women sat me down and gave me dinner, delicious beef skewers with inyam (a root vegetable). She owns a restaurant but wouldn’t let me pay. And it was so good. I walked home feeling so upbeat and welcomed. So many people stopped me in the street to meet me and say hello and welcome me.

Earlier this afternoon, I went over in my head, “Why the f*&k am I here? What am I doing?” I took out some cards that my family had written me that I saved for rainy days and read them. I thought about going home. But now, I know I can do this. This will be hard. Communication is going to be a challenge. Figuring out where I fit it, what I want to do, and what I can do is going to be a challenge. But I’m up for it. The people here are so great and I want to help them. I can make this place my home. What seemed completely infeasible this morning is something that I can definitely do and am looking forward to right now.

Tomorrow, I’m going to wake up early and go to the hospital and explore there. They I’ll walk around the city, meeting people. Maybe set up some tutoring lessons. Maybe go for a run.

The next three months are going to be about learning about this community. I won’t be doing any projects or starting any crazy plans. I’ll be taking the time to figure out what this community needs and how I can help. It’s a big job, but I can do it.

As I sat down to some homemade mac and cheese (my parents and grandparents sent me a care package with cheese in it!) tonight, I felt really hopeful and ready for tomorrow. I think that’s what made sitting down and writing feel doable. It was a long post and full of things that I hadn’t really thought through before sitting down to write. I was talking to my dad the other day about this blog. I was trying to figure out who I was writing for: if I was writing for other people, or for myself. I’m not sure I have the answer in general, but this post, for the most part was written for myself. As a way to process the massive amount of change and craziness in my life and tie myself back to earth. Writing to people back home reminds me of why I’m here, what I can do, the differences between here and there, and that I’m loved and supported wherever I go and whatever I do. So thanks, for loving and supporting me! I love you guys and miss you!

To my friends and family reading this post, I’m getting my house ready for guests! Wink wink, hint hint. 

Arrived at Post

Spending my first night at post in my new house. I'm alive, well, and me and all of my things have made it here safely. A larger update to come soon.

1 more photo

After I took my "weave" out

FOTOS

O yay! Fun times!

Mac and Cheese!

Thanksgiving Football game at the High School

Sunrise in Bokito

Our Thanksgiving Chickens: Before Pic

Thanksgiving Decorations (Thanks Sam's Mom!!!)

Examining the prey

The Deed

The After Picture

The real after picture (I was full for days)

Diversity day dancing

Peace Corps Love!!

That's not even 1/10 of our crap

Sarah and Me!!!!

Swearing in day-In our swearing in pagne!!

Me and Djanabou!

The Ladies of the Extreme North with our Program Director, Sylvie

Santes!! (Health Volunteers) after swearing in

Swearing-in Tomorrow

Blog will be delayed this week due to swearing-in and moving. Tomorrow I will become a real-life Peace Corps Volunteer!

Thanksgiving-Cameroon style

Warning: Graphic food preparations to follow:

So, last week I talked about food that I’ve been eating here in Central Cameroon, native food, food cooked by Cameroonians. This past week, we turned the tables on the Cameroonians and cooked our own Thanksgiving feast within the confines of limitations of various availabilities.

I’m sure your first question is: did you eat turkey? Unfortunately no, there are turkeys here, but they’re expensive and it’s hard to find people who have them who are willing to sell. Instead, we kept with the poultry tradition and went with chicken. This also, surprisingly, was hard to accomplish. Our chicken finders searched Bokito high and low and came back empty handed. Apparently, the chickens wouldn’t be ready in time for our Thanksgiving feast on Saturday. They needed an extra 5 days. Apparently chickens here are only ok after they’ve hit 45 days. I’m not sure what the number of days is in America, but it’s certainly less than that. We had ourselves, a bonified, hormone free, free-range chicken! The downside of this healthy chicken, was it was tougher and stringier than American chicken, and also, once we opened it stomach contents, filled with pieces of plastic and what might have been cigarette butts it had eaten during it’s free ranging…. I’ll let you guys contemplate the merits of this “free range” style.

Anyways, so Friday, our chicken finders managed to procure three chickens from a farm in Bafia. We tied them up, stuck them under a bench in the car (where they proceeded to crap their brains out) and drove them home, listening to oldies and singing along the whole way. Saturday was execution day. After our morning classes, three of the trainees (the same people who were our chicken finders) went out back to begin the chicken preparing process with some of our language instructors and the old man who lives behind the center.

Warning: Graphic parts start here!

Step 1: Hold them upside down. Apparently a blood rush to the head makes the killing less painful and calms them down.

Step 2: Cut off the head. Using a stick with a notch cut into it for our chopping block, the heads were sawed off quickly with a blunt machete. The headless animal was held upside down as the blood drained and the body continued to move. They weren’t kidding about “chickens running around with their heads cut off”. For minutes after the head was removed, the legs and wings kept on going, as if to get away from its fate.

Step 3: Submerge in boiling water. This makes the plucking process easier. Unsurprisingly, Cameroonians never let anything go to waste and the chicken heads were prepared along with the rest of the body.

Step 4: Pluck. This is pretty satisfying for someone who likes to pluck people’s eyebrows. But it takes a really long time. There are so many feathers! We even defeathered the head.

Step 5: A quick grill: Cameroonians, after they pluck, put the chicken over an open fire quickly to allow us to better get at the feathers that didn’t come out easily and to clean it more easily. This was followed closely by more defeathering.

Step 6: Clean the chickens. This is a very large, in depth process. First, the feet are separated. The feet are then skinned and prepared for eating. Then, the chicken is cut, breast to anus. The innards are removed very carefully (if you break the gallbladder, the chicken isn’t good anymore). You have to make sure you get the anus and all of the organs attached to the inside of the body cavity, except for the heart. This requires tugging, cutting, and careful prying. After all these things are removed, you start going through the innards. You remove the gall bladder and throw that out, but pretty much everything else is fair game. The stomach is cut open, the contents and lining removed. Interestingly enough, this is “a part for men only. Women are not allowed to eat the stomach.” We, of course, graciously complied; especially considering the plastic bits we removed from the stomach of one of the chickens. The intestines are then split and cleaned and everything is thrown into the pot to get prepared.

Step 7: Clean the head. Don’t forget about the head! The beak is lovingly chopped up and the neck opened so the esophagus can be removed. This was also thrown in to be cooked

End of Graphic Part

That was the end of our chicken adventure as it was stuffed with tomatoes and onions and shoved into the oven to roast. They turned out amazingly, by the way.

The rest of our feast was also pretty stellar. The rest of the trainees from Bafia came to our Bokito training center to enjoy the day. It was a gorgeous, warm, sunny days and there was so much food! People made hummus out of red beans, fried rice, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes with caramelized peanuts on top, green beans (that was my addition), French fries, guacamole, and tons of other delicious dishes.

For desert, Sam’s mom had sent her some pumpkin pie materials so we feasted. Everyone got a bit of amazing pumpkin pie, chocolate cake, pineapple cobbler, fruit salads, and marble cakes.

Everything was so delicious. We stuffed our faces. I didn’t stop feeling full till the next day. Literally, walking was like churning butter in my stomach. But it was just so good, I couldn’t get myself to put the fork down.

So, needless to say, Thanksgiving was a success. We made substitutions (bush mango instead of apples in our stuffing, garlic bread without butter, ect.) and everything turned out delicious. I was so happy.

As stage is coming to an end (one week left) celebrations like these are becoming more and more important and exciting. We are using this time to build up the relationships that are going to get us through the next two years. It’s just as important, if not more so, than all the time spent learning about Cameroon, it’s languages and its people. And I am making great friends. People I will be able to count on in a bind, I’m happy to report. J

As swearing in nears- I’m getting excited to go and dreading leaving. I’ll be so sad to leave these amazing people. However, we will have IST (in service training) three months into our service, when we should be finishing up with our community assessments and getting ready to buckle down and begin projects. So our time together isn’t over, just spread out for now.

Speaking of swearing in: we have apparently been awarded a great honor this year. Our Cameroonian swearing is going to be featured online… somewhere. Apparently it will be taped, broadcasted, and lots of photos taken for the Peace Corps website. I think it has something to do with the 50^th Anniversary of PC Cameroon, but I’m not sure. I’m also not sure where this video or these photos will be available online. I have heard rumors of the PC website, or CNN, or some other random website. Unfortunately, my internet time and speed is extremely limited at the moment and I haven’t been able to find out where this will be. I encourage you, if your interested, to spend a few minutes on google. If you do find the website, please comment on this blog post so other people can benefit from your awesome googling.

Personal update: I got my first package this week and am feeling loved and in touch with my family back home (thanks for the calls guys!). Although, missing everyone immensely. Cravings of the week: Sour cream and onion Pringles, Gatorade, gold fish, and dark chocolate peanut M&M’s.

Food of Bokito

Life in Bokito is still slow. Thanksgiving is upon the states and I haven’t been this homesick since I’ve left. Thinking of family and friends surrounding a table of my favorite foods at home . However, our little community here is determined not to let that get us down. On Saturday, the other programs are coming out to our little village to celebrate Thanksgiving with our version of Thanksgiving. It’s potluck style, so we’ll see how it goes. J But we are getting some chickens and everyone is pretty invested, so I’m it will be fun.

Since food is the topic of the day, I figured I’d take this blog post to talk about the food of the Center Region of Cameroon. Please note, with Cameroon’s huge ecological diversity, this diet is really region specific. I’ll be sure to update with a menu of the north when I get up there.

Down here in the center, we are in the rainforest. We have an abundance of fresh fruit and vegetables, but a lack of meat (or well it’s available but extremely expensive). We are close enough and have roads that are good enough that we are able to get frozen fish from the coast.

The cuisine has a distinct French influence, including baguettes, beignets, and omelets. However, they have also retained their African roots, including using massive amounts of oil (mostly palm oil) in every meal.

This is my typical fare in a day:

Breakfast: a baguette and a 2 egg omelette with onions, tomatoes and a cube of MSG in it. It is also fried in about 2 inches of oil, sometimes palm oil (a disgusting saturated fat) or vegetable oil. I’ve been able to figure out a system of easting just enough to keep me going for the morning and passing off the rest to the kids in my family. They don’t really eat breakfast, unless it’s leftovers from the night before. (PC informed them we couldn’t have leftovers because unheated food is a breeding ground for cholera and other fecal-oral diseases). So I’m happy to provide them with a few calories before we all head off to school.

Snack time: On school days, during coffee break, an entrepreneurial women has taken to stopping by the center to sell us Pili-pili: the African version of fried calzones. They are awesome fried dough pockets filled with fish and vegetables and MSG. Then we head to the kitchen for our coffee, which we drink African style with sweeten condensed milk.

Lunch time: Lunch is a pretty enjoyable experience most of the time. My family is the acting “lunch lady” at the Bokito training center, so everyday my host sister shows up with a wheelbarrow full of food. This typically consists of red beans, white rice, spaghetti (cooked in palm oil), an awesome cabbage/carrot dish, “legumes” which are often steamed cassava leaves, “ndole” which is another type of green leaf stewed with fish, fried plantains, fried fish, and a tomato sauce. For condiments, we have mayo, MSG in liquid form (Maggi Arome), and piment, the Cameroonian equivalent of hot sauce (which I have of course jumped on enthusiastically). Sometimes theres also fresh fruit for sale. On days when we don’t buy from the lunch lady, we can go out into town and grab a baguette filled with beans and hardboiled eggs, or tomato sauce and onions.

Dinner time: this is the only meal that I’ve really been exposed to Cameroonian style eating as it’s the only meal I eat with my family. Dinner consists of  a starch: often a root vegetable such as cassava, potato, sweet potato, or some other tubules I’d never heard of before called manioc and macabo. If the starch isn’t a tubule, it could be rice, or a “couscous” which is actually more like cream of wheat (corn, manioc, or rice is powdered and boiled to create a paste). The other option (which is probably my favorite, is called “baton de manioc”. It’s manioc paste that has been wrapped in banana leaves and allowed to ferment for a few days. I love it.

In addition to the starch, we’ll have a main dish. This is almost every night fish in a peanut, tomato, or simply MSG broth sauce. Extremely delicious. The only times we haven’t had this combination we had either fried fish, a sauce with beef in it, or this dish called sangha which is corn and cassava leaves sautéed in palm oil

In case you haven’t figured it out yet, MSG and palm oil are huge staples in Bokitotians diets.

The best part about dinner, is watching my family eat. They put away so much freaking food. Imagine a regular sized dinner plate. They will take this and put a heaping mound (let’s say 4 potatoes or 3 cups of rice) on their plate and a piece of protein (very small, and the piece gets smaller as you get younger. Often kids won’t get meat at all in typical households. As you can imagine, this leads to huge malnutrition issues) and tons of sauce. They put that back in 5 minutes flat and can still eat more. It’s insane. I don’t understand how these guys are dying of hypertension and obesity yet. Although, hypertension and diabetes is on the rise here in Cameroon.

Most days I really enjoy the taste of the food here. As long as I don’t think about what’s in it, I’m pretty happy. But, I have developed an aversion to palm oil which has really hindered my culinary experience here. The taste of palm oil actually causes a gag reflex now. And there’s no hiding that taste either. It leaves a coating in your mouth as if you’ve just consumed a whole tub of cool whip. Gross. Anyways, besides the palm oil and MSG, things here are nice and spicy and tasty, just the way I like them. I’m trying to keep my portions more American style and sized, and have so far managed to at least not gain weight. I am looking forward to heading to the north though where there is little to no palm oil and more meat and sometimes milk. I am pretty satisfied with the palettes here, but I’m ready for the change.

Anyways, Happy Thanksgiving! Love to all! Miss all of you!

Handful of Gestures

As life settles down into a routine of PC training again, I’m branching out for topics. Thanks for the awesome suggestions readers. This week, the topic of choice is gestures. Every country and culture have different gestures and signs, different nuances. Living in Germany, I loved how instead of “crossing your fingers” they had “press your thumbs”. In America, we have some great ones, like the middle finger, or a thumb for hitchhiking, vulgar ones such as putting the tips of your index fingers together, or completely innocent ones, like putting your palms together to indicate “prayer”.

            As I start to understand more and more of the language (side note: guess who tested “intermediate high” on their language placement test this week!!!!! I start learning Fulfulde by the end of the week in addition to my French classes.) I start to get a glimpse of these gestures and accommodate my behavior accordingly. I’ve collected a list of some good ones I’ve found:

Crossing your legs: In America, crossing your legs and leaning forward is a sign that you are paying attention. Crossing your legs is a natural part of sitting and everyone does it. Look around the room you’re in right now; how many people are sitting with their legs crossed? Probably a majority. It’s not something we think about in the states, its just comfortable. However, here in Cameroon, crossing your legs is a no-no. Crossing your legs is a sign of disrespect to everyone else in the room. Basically you are saying to them “I am the boss and way more important than anyone else in this room”. When our main goal right now is to try to make friends and integrate this isn’t exactly the best message to be sending across. But let me tell you, this is a hard habit to break! As we’re meeting with community groups in training, I constantly find myself crossing/uncrossing my legs, fiddling with my chair and trying to find some way to tie down my knees to my chair without being to obvious about. I considered just using rope, but I figured that would just be awkward.

5, or palm toward another person with fingers extended: if you start this gesture from a closed hand and open your hand, allowing your fingers to go from bent to straight, you have just completely insulted someone. It’s equivalent to a middle finger here. It means that your mom has “loose” nether regions. Needless to say, this is one I’ve used a lot, especially in the market. “I’ll pay 500 for that, not 1000.” I now understand why the vendors were so upset and never bargained down with me.

Fingertips pulled together in front of the palm:  This is how they signal “5”. Took me forever to figure that out. I was constantly thinking market vendors were aiming their fingers nails for my eyes or something.

Open palm hitting one side of a fist of the other hand repeatedly: while it may have negative or sexual connotations in the states, here it means “beaucoup” or “a lot”. The more there is of something, the more you bang your hand on your fist. This one is used surprisingly often. And by that I mean at least 20 times in every conversation. I don’t understand why people don’t develop calluses on one side of their fist.

Waving: Palm out towards someone while bringing your fingers into your palm, reopening your hand, and repeating: In America, this is a friendly wave across the room, often reserved for cute little kids: “hey cute kid hanging on the monkey bars staring at me why snot runs down your nose and into your mouth!” Here this means “come here”. This led to sooo much confusion on my part. Being white in this country means everyone is always watching us. I often have a following of little children following me around town. Wherever I go, people yell “La Blanche” (the white girl) or my name (PC does not exist in this country). So of course, many a time, kids yelling at me from across the street would get this gesture from me. I was always alarmed and confused when they would drop whatever they were doing to crowd around me. They, in turn, appeared very confused when I didn’t have a good reason for calling them over. An endless cycle of confusion. This is a habit I’m still in the process of breaking. Kids will look through the fence into our center during their lunch breaks yelling our names and so many times we’ll respond with this gesture, only to find handfuls of kids running through the gates to see what we want.

Some of the gestures that I’ve discovered haven’t been visual or physical, but oral. In America, we use things like harrumphing or snorting, tsking, or pssssting. Not exactly words, but each with definite meaning in certain contexts.

Hissing or kissing noises: This is an attempt to get your attention, particularly as your walking by. I most commonly hear this in the market as I’m walking amonst stalls “Hisss, Blanche!”, but everyday on my walk to school numerous guys hiss or make kissing noises at me, trying to get my attention. For the most part, at least in the contexts I’ve experienced, it appears to be used by guys trying to get women’s attention. All of us Americans find this completely and totally annoying. We try not to respond, although occasionally, in a bad mood, I’ll send such an evil look their way, there unlikely to try again for at least 30 seconds.

Clicking in the back of your mouth: This appears to be a sign of sympathy or agreement, very similar to our snapping our fingers when someone says something we agree with. For a while, I thought Cameroonians just constantly had something stuck in their throat.

So that’s our week’s Cameroonian Culture 101.

Tiny update on my life: doing a lot of projects for training. Today we went to the elementary school and did a quick presentation on the fecal-oral route and the importance of washing our hands (extremely necessary, especially considering the cholera outbreak in our town). Learning French and other marvelous things that I’ll hopefully be able to use at post. Did hear a great quote today, perfectly describing my PC experience so far: “The days are really long, but the weeks go by so quickly”. Every day is a struggle, but at the end of the week, I couldn’t tell you what happened with that time! I can tell you that I am happy though. I’m really looking forward to going to post, but enjoying my time here in Bokito with the other trainees and staff members.

Cravings of the week: shepherds pie, beef jerky, good dark chocolate, salami, and of course, cheese. 

Site Visit

Pardon my hiatus last week, but I was busy travelling Cameroon. Last week, we were on Site Visit, meaning we visited our assigned posts, where we will be living and working for the next two years. It is a visit designed to help you figure out how to get to your post, meet any volunteers you are replacing or volunteers in the area, and hopefully meet people you might be working with. It’s a good chance to see the community and your host institution before the second half of training. It ended up being our first taste of freedom here in Cameroon and an amazing experience.

My post is Mogodé. It’s in the Extreme North region of Cameroon (there are 10 regions). The Extreme North is known for being deserty, Muslim, hard to get to, and for having meat (such as beef), which isn’t widely available in the rest of the country (note: no refrigerated trucks). It also takes a butt ton of time to get there. But we got to take a train!

So Saturday morning, 7 am, all of us meet up with our Community Hosts (mine is Genevieve, a young, spunky business women who is going to be amazing to work with). We got on a “Super Amigo” chartered bus (Cameroonian style- so 5 to a seat) and headed toward Yaoundé. Yaounde, if you remember, is the capital of Cameroon where we had our Orientation for our first week here. This time, though, we weren’t confined to a hotel. As our train didn’t leave till 6:30, and we had arrived around 11 (with some difficulties), we were free to explore. We went and had an amazing lunch: salad!!!! which none of us had had since we had been here. I really don’t understand the Cameroonian mentality surrounding fruit and vegetables, but no one seems to eat raw things here, and its been driving us nuts. From there, we headed out to Casino, the import grocery store that has everything a white person living in Africa could ever dream about. On the way, we stopped into a boulangerie for real ice cream and pastries. It was amazing. I didn’t actually feel adapted to Cameroon until I walked into this completely western shop and realized how out of place I felt. Getting that ice cream, while amazing, felt so weird: I loved it. From there, we walked across the street to Casino.

Funny thing about white people in an African nation, they stick out. They are targets. Locals always think we are rich, white people just there to hand out money. Apparently, people in Yaounde didn’t think differently. As we were crossing the street to enter the store, someone ran up to us and grabbed my friend’s necklace from her neck and ran away. It was only seconds, but it was so scary. He left huge red welts on her neck. It was such a reality check. We don’t blend in, we are targets. After that terrible event, we were ready to leave Yaounde.

As we boarded the train, our excitement mounted. The train was an overnight journey and each of us had a bed in little cabins of four people. We were with our counterparts but mostly clustered together. The trip was supposed to last anywhere form 12 to 15 hours, although it has been known to last up to 23 due to multiple derailings: transportation in Cameroon: C’est la vie. This rail system is different from anything I’ve encountered before. There is one path and only one route. Yaounde to Ngaoundere leaves at 6:00 pm, once a day, and Ngaoundere to Yaounde leaves at 6:20 p.m, everyday, once a day. This easy system has an awesome effect though. As you travel north, and make your different stops, everyone knows when the trains are stopping (or at least when they should be stopping). So, tons of vendors come out to the train tracks and are out there, selling local specialties on their heads, through the windows at each stop. We bought baton (fermented cassava), tons of fruit, and a few random things, like honey. Our counterparts were going crazy, staying up all night to bargain through the window for fruits and vegetables they don’t get up north. I woke up in the morning to bags of food literally covering our compartment floor. It was hilarious.

The train ended in Ngaoundere, where we disembarked, met up with some amazing people staff from PC, and tried to arrange the next part of our journey, the bus ride north. Those of us in the extreme north were taking a bus to Maroua, the capital city. So bus rides and purchasing tickets is super strange here. You go up to the counter, and reserve your spot on a bus. Then, as buses arrive, and enough people buy tickets that a bus is full, they call out everyone’s name who made it on the bus. Then there’s a mad scramble to load your luggage and get seats. Needless to say, even after all the spots are assigned, it takes about an hour or so for a large bus to leave. Sometimes, if you’re waiting for a bus to fill up, you can wait for an hour or longer before they even do the roll call.

So, we arrived in Ngaoundere and tried to get on a bus. However, lucky for us, due to a school holiday, tons of people were waiting around trying to get on buses to get back to school up north. We were told we might be on the 3^rd bus. We had arrived at 7:30 in the morning. By the time we left, on the 4^th bus, it was 1 pm. It was also the last bus of the day, leaving tons of people stranded in Ngaoundere for the night. We got lucky. Our little bus pulled away, filled to the brim (again Cameroonian style) and we started out 10 hour bus ride to Maroua. On the way, whenever we stopped, people would come up to the windows, selling food and wares through the windows. Such a bizarre custom but I loved it! We started seeing meat being sold on the side of the rode. As one break, we got out and tried it, and oh my god, best meat I’ve ever had in my life. It had powdered piment (a spicy pepper similar to jalapeno) on it, and I could tell I was going to eat well during my visit. Don’t ask me what kind of meat it was, but it was good.

We arrived in Maroua late at night and headed to the Case: the Peace Corps hostel for PCV’s passing through. We were welcomed by PCV’s, two of them being PCV’s we were replacing, and headed out to town. As soon as we left the Case, I could feel a difference in this city compared to Yaounde. I felt so much safer. There was no one “deranging” (franglais, I know) me, meaning, no one yelling “la blanche”, or making tsking noises to get my attention, or trying to get me to buy anything. Sure, some people watched us go by, but no one bothered us at all. It was completely different from the south. And amazing. The city automatically felt more welcoming and like home than Bafia has ever felt.

Anyways, our night passed with awesomeness as we got to know other PCV’s and heard about people in the area and our posts. The next day, we explored the city a bit as we opened up bank accounts and got smoothies (yay!). I rode my first moto in Cameroon. I’ve been on a motorcycle once before, but I was freaking scared. I climbed onto the back of this puny little bike, with my huge flashy helmet and away we revved through the streets of Maroua. It was already dry season up there, so dust flew up in our faces. As we crossed over a river, I saw that it was almost completely dried up, with people doing laundry in the river bed with the little puddles that remained of what probably is a pretty imposing river during the rainy season. The city was so quaint and much prettier than Yaoundé. I loved it. The PCV’s showed us where we can buy cheese and kitchen supplies, and salads! We ate some grasshopper a woman was selling on her head and basically just enjoyed freedom without a strict schedule in a new city.

Since it had taken so long to open bank accounts, Alice (the PCV I’m replacing) and I decided to wait till morning to leave for Mogode. The journey out there is a bit long. You go an catch a bus (similar procedure where you could be waiting for an hour or so) to Mokolo, which takes about an hour. From there, you grab a moto and head out to Mogode. It’s about a 1.5 hour drive on the back of a moto, through dusty desert on an unpaved, pretty bad road. It’s a butt bruiser. But its freaking gorgeous. You start up, just going up into the mountains, passing cute little compounds with round houses, horses, and the occasional tree. Then all of the sudden, you go over a turn, and there’s a gorgeous valley right in front of you, opening up to volcanic spires and beautiful rock formations everywhere. If I hadn’t been clinging to moto for dear life, I would have taken some amazing photos.

Mogode is also gorgeous. It’s nestled in an almost-valley in between a bunch of volcanic spires out in the middle of the desert, in the mountains. The stars at night are amazing! It’s a small little village with a post office, a police station, a few boutiques, a hospital, some schools and not much else. There’s a large catholic mission just down the street from my house. I didn’t get a chance to meet the Italians who run the place, but I’m looking forward to getting to know them.

The house I’ll be moving into is amazing. The two huge, blue steel doors are the entrance to my compound. Inside is a huge yard. I plan on doing some major gardening/minor farming projects. Since I was arriving at the end of rainy season, everything was turning from green to brown, but it was still gorgeous. Alice had soybeans, corn, tomatoes, and cucumbers. There is an outdoor kitchen that Alice has been using as a doghouse and a pit latrine (real, without a built in throne). My first night there using the latrine resulted in an embarrassing episode involved pee in places in shouldn’t be. I was out of practice, and let me tell you, it’s hard as a woman to squat an pee into a little hole! But practice makes perfect, I’ll get better as I perfect my technique.

My house is beautiful and simple. The small porch opens up into a big kitchen/living/dining room. I have a portable gas stove! Then there is a beautiful bedroom, a washroom, and a spare room that I’ll turn into another bedroom.

There is no running water in my house, so the washroom is just that, a room to bathe and let your bucket bath water go down a drain. My water comes from anearby forage. I’ll have to hire a guy to go and get me giant containers of water on his moto.

Also, I might be inheriting a dog: Kelly (renamed Nous-nous by the neighborhood). She is a gorgeous Cameroonian mutt: a one year old puppy. She is so sweet. Unfortunately, while I was visiting, she came home with a machete wound to the shoulder. Cameroonians don’t really get pets and see dogs as either guard dogs or food. Nous-nous, being American raised, was probably being overly friendly and annoyed someone with a dull machete. Anyways, we patched her up as best we could and she’ll be fine.

I spent my two days in Mogode, exploring, hiking, eating, and meeting tons of people. We hiked one of the beautiful volcanic formations and looked down into Nigeria. We ate local food and made amazing food like lentil stir fry and cucumber salads. I had these awesome local beignets (fried dough things) made from local white beans that tasted similar to chicken nuggets and almost made me melt inside. They were awesome.

I also went and visited the hospital with whom I’ll be working. It’s a small district hospital with a birthing room, laboratory, some over night wards and a non-operational operating room. After 2 years of not having a doctor, three months ago they acquired a generalist who refuses to do even any basic surgery. There were some major problems that the nurses pointed out right away: Cholera, an extremely low number of mothers giving birth in the hospital, diarrhea, ect. My mind was racing with potential projects.

The next day, we went out “into the bush” for a vaccination day with a local village. Under a giant tree, we watched one of the nurses give vaccinations and a small presentation on the importance of breastfeeding to these women carrying infants and small children on their backs on their way to the fields. Let me tell you, this is the difference between first world and third world problems. These women, so strong and overworked, still had a sense of humor while waiting for their turn for vaccinations. Unfortunately, I couldn’t understand it. In the region where I will be working, very few people actually speak French. I’ll have to learn Fulfulde (a language most of the north speaks) and Kapsiki (the tribal language). Many women don’t ever go to school and even more don’t make it past primary school, so very few speak anything other than their tribal language. I have my work cut out for me.

But I’m excited.

Ooo, another benefit to living up north in the desert: funny thing about deserts: there’s very little water. Funny thing about mosquitos: they need water to breed. Yeah, you guessed it; there is very little malaria in the north! I’ll only have to worry about it for a few months out of the year as opposed to every day!

This long update is coming to a close, I promise. We traveled back without incident, making it back to Bokito in one piece, although missing our posts the moment we left. Most other people had a similarly great and welcoming experience in our stage. I will also have a “post-mate”: an agroforestry volunteer in a nearby village (about 15 km away).

This week has been tough readjusting to school and stage. But at least we know what’s coming now and there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. We’re spending these next few weeks just enjoying our fellow stagieres and learning as much as possible before heading off to our remote locations to start changing the world.

That’s a lot for now, there’s still more I’d love to say, but I’ll spare your sore eyes. Miss you all, thanks for supporting me with emails of encouragement, and thanks for reading my long, drawn out editorials on my life. Life is good. Keep on dancing. Ciao!

Photos of Site Visit

Update and Experiences to Come

Kelly-Nous Nous- the dog I might be inheriting

Vaccination Days out in the Bush with the hospital I'll be working with

Me, my counterpart, and Alice (the PCV I'll be replacing)

Rhumsiki- 10 minutes away from my House

More Rhumsiki

Mogode-my new home

On top of a mountain we hiked -Nigeria in the background

Alice's House (we're I'll be living as of December)

Some photos

Typical African Dance

I'm eating a grasshopper!

Packing the car: Cameroonian Style

Bokito!!!

On the way to Boko

The Sante (Health) Program 2011

Maternity Ward at the Bafia Hospital

Some of my Sisters (and my cornrows)

Me and my new Counterpart: Genevieve

My indoor kitchen

My outdoor kitchen

Me in my new caba (terrible picture of me, but the caba is freaking awesome and super comfy)

My room!

The pizza we made from scratch (including cheese!)

Our stage at the Monday Show

On the way to Boko

Stuck in the back of the truck, Cameroonian Style

A town on our road to the North