This is a personal account and does not express the views of the US Peace Corps

Monday, October 31, 2011

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

Saturday, October 29, 2011

Roller Coaster


This week has been one I will never forget. It has epitomized my experience here by being the definition of “ups and downs” while at the same time been so far out of the ordinary, that it in no way can represent the rest of my service here.

This week started amazingly. Everyone was so psyched about finding out their posts (which happened on Wednesday). Monday brought packages and letters from home. Spirits were high as we sat around eating melted Milk Duds and cheese that people’s families had sent from the states. Our language scores from our second language proficiency test came out. I was so freaking excited.

So language proficiency in broken up into 9 levels: Novice Low, Mid and High, Intermediate Low, Mid and High and Advanced Low, Mid and High. In order to be placed in a francophone region, you need to have reached a proficiency of at least Intermediate High in French and Intermediate Mid for Anglophone regions. Needless to say, I started at Novice low, alone with very few other people. My French consisted on “bon jour” and a very few words I remembered from French when I lived in Germany. My goal was to make it to intermediate. I just wanted to prove that I was learning. I was so surprised and elated to find that I had tested at Intermediate Mid! I spent all morning doing my happy dance. I could not believe it. In a mere four weeks, I went from speaking no French at all, to being able to hold very basic conversations and communicating basic needs and wants. I’m getting there! After school on Monday, we all went out for drinks to celebrate. We were in Bafia, with the other programs and all of us joined forces for an afternoon of merriment. There’s a boutique close to the training center that gets a butt-ton of business from us “blanches”. You can imagine how crowded it was when almost 50 of us stormed the place in high moods. Also, a PC Volunteer who is about to COS (Close Of Service= go home after 27 months) sold a PCT (PC Trainee) his guitar. The whole day turned into this marvelous jam session as people passed around the guitar. Really, there is nothing more “Peace Corps” than seating around, drinking crappy foreign beer, signing songs together. It was amazing.

The time to depart came all too soon and all the Santé’s (Health Programmers) climbed into the two cars to head back to Bokito, our small town. Our great spirits held as we had an oldie sign-along on the way back. Journey, the Lion King, and Elton John were bursting from our small portable speakers all the way back. About half-way to Bokito, the cocoa-bean-laden truck in front of us decided to pass the car in front of it. As it tried to get back in our lane, it veered out of control and flipped numerous times. Dust from flying cocoa beans obscured our vision as the truck finally came to rest, right side up, rolling into a car heading in the opposite direction, pinning it between the truck and the guardrail. As our bus slowed, we were so confused. What had just happened? Those of us in the back could only see dust and hadn’t seen what had happened while those in the front were awestruck. It quickly sank in and we mobilized. In our bus were four EMT’s, including myself. We hopped out and ran to scene. You can imagine what this might have looked like. A random road in the middle of greenery with us running into a cloud of settling cocoa-dust, running toward a banged up truck. It was movie-worthy. When we got close enough to see what had happened, we quickly sized up the scene. The driver, who was wearing a seat belt, was stuck in the truck, blood all over him. The four of us scrambled for gloves and materials. Two of the EMT’s were smart enough to have kept small kits on themselves, so between the four of us, we had two pairs of gloves. Two of the boys split a pair of gloves and approached the vehicle.

In a country where HIV/AIDS and other bloodborne diseases are rampant, you can imagine how important PPE (personal protection equipment, including gloves) is. Not having gloves, I ran around to the other side of the truck, to the car, to see if there were any more victims. The people in the car said they were ok, but pointed to a man lying in the group, underneath the guardrail, yards behind us. I ran over, and found someone who had obviously sustained serious crush injuries. I don’t want to get into too many details or too graphic, so I’m going to break this down quickly. The third EMT took the last pair of gloves and took charge of getting this guy into a car we had commandeered. The other two EMT’s had managed to get the driver into the back of the car, with one of the EMT’s in the back, putting pressure on the guys’ head wounds. He was ripping up his shirt trying to make bandages to help to this guy. Between two EMT’s and some Cameroonians who were at the scene and finally made themselves useful, we were able to get the second guy in the back of the car.

Cameroon doesn’t have an emergency system. There was no ambulance or police to call. We were 20 minutes away from any hospital, at least. In addition to these obstacles, in Cameroon, if you bring someone to a hospital, you’re expected to pay for that person’s hospital bills. Compared to the states, it’s nothing, but its quite substantial on a typical Cameroonians’ paycheck. Therefore, after we had loaded these two guys into some random strangers car, no one was willing to go to the hospital with these guys. No one wanted to drive and certainly no one wanted to climb into the back of the car and maintain the airway of the second patient. They argued for what seemed like hours but was probably only minutes. I got so impatient and started pointing to people, telling them to get in the car and go. These guys needed immediate help and no one was stepping up. That tactic had no effect, but eventually, arguing amongst themselves, three people stepped up to drive, accompany, and sit in the back with the guys. They drove off immediately, in the direction of the hospital and the three EMT boys were left in the dust dripping in the victim’s blood.

This was such a wakeup call to so many problems here in Cameroon. A health system that people are resistant to utilize, a culture that basically doesn’t know how to or want to respond to emergency situations, and an education system that doesn’t prepare people for situations like this but instead leaves them helpless. In addition, terrible road conditions (granted, this road was not terrible), even worse driving, and horribly maintained vehicles leave car accidents as the second leading killer in Cameroon (following Malaria, according to our PCT Manager).

As terrible as this experience was, it brought us together and showed us the many areas we could help improve upon in Cameroon. Again, I am seeing why I am here and why our presence is so precious to these people.

Gosh, my posts are getting morbid. I want to reiterate to readers that I am enjoying my time here and loving what I am seeing and learning. What I choose to write about every week is what is on my mind, and therefore, important to me and my experience. They are my learning experiences, whether good or bad. Our presence at this accident probably saved a life. While I am horrified at seeing the worst accident of my EMT career in a country and situation where we had no materials or help of any kind, I am grateful for the victims that people of skill and knowledge were there to help get them out of the car and on the way to a hospital. And I learned a lot that will hopefully help me to make a sustainable difference at my post in the future.

Speaking of posts, I have some great news. After this “down” part of my week, things went back up on Wednesday as we received our post assignments!!! I’m heading to a town called Mogodé in the Extreme North Region. I don’t know much about my specific post, but the Extreme North is known for being beautiful and mostly desert, at least during the dry season. It’s a mostly Muslim area with very traditional areas. Many of the people that I have spoken with who work up there focus  a lot on women’s issues, empowerment and health, which is exactly what I want to do, so I’m extremely excited.

Today, we had our Community Host Workshop were we met our Community Host. This person is someone who is going to help us integrate into the community. There are a well established figure in the community, well versed in the culture, and very knowledgeable about groups and issues of our areas. In addition to our formal Community Hosts, each of us will receive a counterpart in our Host Institutions where we will begin our work or at least our community assessment. So today, I met my counterpart. She is a baller, amazing young women called Genevieve. She told me that I will have to learn the language Fulfulde and the local language Kapsiki (I think that’s it) due to the fact that French won’t get me far up in the extreme north. Apparently, it’s also very much in the boonies. I’m very excited about working with her.

I wish I had more information to give you about my post and Community Host, but I just don’t know yet. This weekend, we’re leaving for our Site Visits. I will be visiting the site where I’ll be living for the next two years, meeting the PCV I’ll be replacing and meeting the people I’ll be working with and people from the community. It will take me at least two days to get to my post. I’m so excited. Anyways, when I return, I will update you all on my post, and everything I will learn about how I will spend the next two years. Wish me a bon voyage!

Love to all!

Friday, October 21, 2011

Malaria: First Hand Experience with Cameroonian Healthcare

So, first of all, thanks for all the emails and questions. I’m keeping
a bank of them and will answer them all, either by email or on the
blog. However, for this week, I have a topic already.
So, I didn’t really explain what I’m doing here. As a Cameroonian PC
Volunteer, my job is “Preventative Health and Community Development”.
I will be working with community groups (kids, schools, women’s
groups, political groups, hospitals/health centers, support groups,
ect) for the next two years with my main goal being raising the
standard of living. I will be given a “host institution”. This
institution is either a local NGO or a health center or hospital with
whom I’ll be working for at least the first few months. It’s basically
a starting point. The first few months I’ll be taking stock of the
community and assessing it basic needs. What are the major problems in
my community? How can I help reduce those problems? It will always
start with education. I’ll be focusing on preventing diseases,
particularly cholera, diarrhea, malaria, typhoid, ect by teaching them
hygienic practices and prevention measures. All is subject to change
though as I see what my community needs.
This past week, we were learning about malaria. We learned how to
recognize it if we get it and how to educate people about how to
prevent it. There’s actually a great program going on right now where
health centers and handing out thousands of free mosquito nets to
anyone who goes and picks them up. It’s a huge deal right now and a
large step towards preventing malaria, which is a huge problem here.
Talking to our families, we’ve found that on average, at least one
person gets malaria a month in each household. One house reported that
people were getting it every two weeks. The locals though have built
up a small immunity. They’ve had malaria since they were kids and now,
as adults, when they get it, its basically a mild cold. Malaria is a
small parasitic disease that is transferred through mosquitoes. If
left untreated, one of the four strains could lead to death while each
of them can result in some pretty serious health consequences.
However, people here mostly know what is it and take anti-malaria
medication as soon as they feel a fever come on. The medication is
supposed to be taken every 8 or 12 hours for a few days, and then you
are completely cured. However, you can always get reinfected. For  us,
many of us who have never had malaria before, it is a bigger deal.
It’s like a really bad flu for us. It starts with chills and serious
body aches and progresses to fevers that spike at 102 or 103. It’s
terribly uncomfortable but not dangerous as we are given treatment for
us to self medicate and instructed to go directly to a hospital (if
possible) if we feel it coming on. We also are all on malaria
prophylaxis, a medication designed to reduce the chances of us
contracting malaria.
However, despite sleeping under a mosquito net, taking my prophylaxis
religiously, and wearing long pants at night (despite the ridiculous
heat here), I contracted malaria this week. In addition to malaria, I
also got a bacterial infection.
So Thursday I started coming down with symptoms. That afternoon, we
got our malaria talk about how to deal with it for ourselves and
recognize it. I swear, as Nurse Anne was going through the symptoms, I
was checking each off in head, feeling like she had specifically
created that powerpoint for me. However, Nurse Anne was not nearly as
convinced as I was and told me to wait a day before seeking medical
attention. I headed home and slept for the rest of the day. The next
day, having no apparent fever, I go to school, only to immediately get
revisited by my fever at a much lower 102. I contracted PC and off to
the hospital we go.
On the way, I was thinking how fortunate I was to be going to the
hospital. How lucky I am to be experiencing the Cameroonian health
system from the other end, to get a taste of what patients deal with
every day. And, now that it’s over, I’m glad I did have this
experience, but it was not exactly stellar.
The first hospital they took me to was the Bafia Public Hospital. The
drive me up and walk me into the emergency room. It looks like a train
station. There are round benches with dozens of patients staring
lethargically, waiting for their turn. I felt so guilty. Being the
only white person in the room, belonging to PC, and having an “in”
with the only doctor on duty (our Coordinator was accompanying me), I
literally skipped the line completely. They called me to the corner of
the room and had started my paper work, which literally was a sheet
from the prescription pad. They wrote my name, age and gender on the
paper and ushered me into the first room. In this room, they weighed
me and took my blood pressure. Weighing me was hilarious as they had
me climb into this huge metal chair that was hooked up to a scale. I
figured they had the chair for those too sick to stand while they were
weighed, however, the way the chair was positioned (the open part
facing a wall) it was so awkward to get into, I can’t imagine anyone
preferring this method over a typical scale. Taking my blood pressure
was nothing special, although (EMT’s you’ll appreciate this) they
definitely blew it up to like 250 and kept it there for a good 20
seconds before deflating slowly. Super painful. Don’t ever do that to
a patient.
Anyways, after that I was ushered back out the way we had come and to
a waiting room in front of two consultation rooms. Both of them held
nurses and had a line backed up. However, as soon I walked up with the
Coordinator, a doctor came out of the blue, took over one of the
examination rooms and led me in. Again, overcome with guilt as I
skipped ahead of some pretty sick people including a completely
lethargic baby. By the way, in Cameroon, especially in public
hospitals, doctors don’t really get to practice medicine. They are so
overloaded they end up becoming hospital managers while nurses are the
ones who do everything except major surgeries. Many health clinic
don’t even have doctors. It’s definitely something I’ll explore and
try to work on during my time here at post. Anyways, so it was pretty
extraordinary that I got to see a doctor and not a nurse. He examined
me and talked with me. His bedside manner: completely lacking. He
obviously had places to go and was not exactly happy to be there. He
was polite though. This is apparently a very big problem in a country
where there is one doctor per 10,000 people. Medical professionals
aren’t very nice to their patients. The room we were in was so tiny,
it barely fit a desk and the examination table. The doctor didn’t wear
gloves when examining and the walls were only about 7 feet tall while
the ceilings were 10 feet high (so much for patient confidentiality;
everyone outside the room could hear what was going on).
Regardless, I was sent to go to a laboratory at a local private
hospital. This place was a little nicer and definitely less busy.
Inside was less crazy and the technician wore gloves (although they
were reused) to take my blood. Again, though, the nurse was not
exactly friendly. The doctor, on the other hand, while he wasn’t
actually working with me, came out of his office to have a hilarious
friendly conversation about how close I was to Barack Obama. The
doctor insisted that I was friends with him and therefore, the doctor
would visit me and I would introduce them. It was great. They were
also extremely efficient. They took my samples at noon and had results
and a diagnosis by 2:30. I made it back to help give a presentation at
3:30.
That was my adventure. The next few days consisted of TONS of
medications, a lowering fever and disappearing pain, fatigue, and
ridiculous amounts of nausea due to the strong medications they put me
on. The first night I vomited up everything I been able to get down
the day (which hadn’t been a lot). After 3 days, I was malaria free. A
day later, I was bacteria free. Quick and simple, for the most part.
So yeah, I got malaria. I feel bad ass about it too. I was the first
in our group to contract it, but certainly not the last. Many people
get it more than once, so I have since taking a liking to long pants
and long sleeves as soon as the light starts to fade. I’m all healthy
now, but I certainly had an interesting experience and am making a
list of things that I might want to look at, explore, and maybe work
on at my health clinic when I get there.
Next week we get our post assignments. I’m so excited! I’ll keep you
posted. Keep your fingers crossed for me that I get a good one! I
don’t really care where I am though. I could be in the South, close to
beaches, or the east, maybe working with Pygmies in the rainforest,
although the mosquitoes would be terrible. I could be in the West
areas which are gorgeous and many of them Anglophone regions , or in
the north, which becomes savannah and then desert, often populated by
Muslim populations. There are so many options; I don’t even know what
to hope for.
So hello and goodbye again from Cameroon. Please keep up the emails.
They give me strength when I feel like I just want to give up and go
home. Thanks for the support and love guys!

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Sundays in Cameroon: An editorial on "leisure activites"

 So when I sit down to write these updates, I argue for hours in my head about what to write about. Hence, I’m opening the floor up for suggestions. If anyone has any particular questions, shoot me an email or reply to this post.
The topic of the week is Sundays in Bokito. Sunday here is a day of rest, in the sense of the word that no one goes to work, however, there is very little rest involved. This Saturday, I asked my host sister if people slept in on Saturdays and she laughed and replied yes. Naturally, I didn’t set my alarm clock and figured I would wake up around 10 or so. Boy was I wrong. After my family had been up for several hours, they decided I had slept enough and woke me up at 7:45. Considering my normal wake up time is before 6, it was still sleeping in, however disappointing.
As soon as you wake up here, you get to work. On Saturdays, I help take care of the floors. The first step is sweeping. Now the brooms here aren’t quite what we’re used to in the states. They are basically thrush tied together to make a short brush. To use it you need to bend down and basically walk backwards with your butt high in the air as you sweep. It’s awesome. After I sweep the whole house (which, mind you is quite large), we wash the floors. Mind you, this is a job that is done every day. Every morning at 6, one of the girls is up washing the floors. This means taking an extremely old and dirty shirt-rag and dipping it and a bucket of brown, muddy water. Then you have to get down on your hands and knees and whisk the shirt around the floor in such a way as to push all the things you’re “mopping up” to the door. Possibly a bit inefficient, but who am I to judge.
After we’ve swept and mopped the whole house, it time for a quick break for breakfast, a huge 4 egg omelet with cassava leaves, tomatoes, onions, and sometimes leftover fish.
Then its laundry time. Laundry here is an adventure. There are no maytag machines or any oxyclean to do the work for you. At the end of the day, if you don’t have blisters and scratches from scrubbing, you’re doing it wrong. Although, according to Cameroons, us american’s will never get it right anyways. As my host sister has been teaching me how to do my own laundry, after about 2 seconds she gives up, sighs in exasperation and takes the article of clothing from me, cleaning it in 5 seconds flat. You will never get it right the “Camermoonian way”.
So to do laundry here, you need two huge buckets, some individual bucket size packets of laundry detergent and the hideous soap that they use for everything over here (the same bar is used to wash dishes, themselves, clothes, and just about anything else they use saop for). All of your clothes are dumped into one sudsy bucket and then the scrubbing begins. The motion that they consider the only way to wash is basically taking the article of clothing in your two hands and rubbing them as hard and as quickly against each other as possible. Your fingers end up being the washing board, your clothes end up getting stretched and clean. After you’ve done this numberous time all of the shirt, then another type of scubbing occurs which includes the whole piece of clothing and I honestly have no idea what they do because I’ve never been able to replicate it. Bascially, they are able to scrub huge amounts of fabric against each other, “cleaning” it. In Cameroon, “clean” means visibly clean, not necessarily actually clean. After scrubbing, brushing and wringing, the clothes are beaten. They are pounded together against a concrete slab over and over again. I’m not sure what the purpose of this is or what it accomplishes, but laundry isn’t “clean” without it. Your clothes are then transferred to another bucket of cleaner water. They are briefly rinsed and hung out to dry. If you have more than one bucket-load, you repeat, conserving as much water as possibly by reusing the buckets.
When hanging clothes up here, you have to be careful. There are insects called Mango flies that leave their larvae on your wet clothes. If you wear the clothes while the larvae are living, they burrow into your skin and grow. There is a horror story other volunteers are telling us about a dude who wore wet boxers after leaving them out all night and ended up having to get 20 mango flies removed from his genitals. Sounds terrible. Anyways, if you take your clothes in before evening and make sure to hang all our clothes on clotheslines rather than bushes or grass, you should be fine. Just in case your not, you should also wait three days before wearing any clothes as that allows all the larvae to die. Or you can just article every piece of clothing you own with the electricity we don’t have. Catch 22.
Speaking of Electricity, we did have some for a short time! But it’s rainy season here, and when I say rainy I mean rainy. I have never heard thunder like I’ve heard ehre. It’s insane. Anyways, three days after we got electricity back and huge storm came in and knocked it out again. Most people in town do still have it right now, but my house doesn’t.
After laundry, your chores are done, you’re clothes are hanging out to dry, and all you have to do is cook dinner later. However, right now, it’s only about 1. So what would you do with your time? You guessed it! It’s hair time!
Every Sunday, my family gathers on the front lawn and does their hair. The first two times I didn’t have a clue what was going on and they got to me before I realized what was happening. Needless to say, after 2.5 hours of painful, tearful, hairpulling this past Sunday, I am currently sporting intricate braids over my whole head. They are very artfully done and sometime very useful. However, when braiding, my host sisters have some things to learn. They’ve never worked with Caucasian hair before. So basically, they take my hair out, tease it terribly so its knotted and terrible to work with and then try to braid it. If they don’t want to get a knot out, they simply pull it out. It’s horrifyingly painful. But I bore it, hopefully for the last time.
Next week, I’ll have to say no and give my poor head a break.
The rest of my Sundays are spent helping to cook dinner and learning French if I’m not going out and meeting other Trainees. It’s an awesome, extremely Camerooninan day, and I love it.
Miss you all, lots of love. Write me with suggestions for what you want to know about!

Thursday, October 6, 2011

Update from Across the Seas #2


I can’t believe it’s been a little over a week since I’ve been here. It feels like months. I want to say we’ve just been going so fast that everything has flown by, but living as a Cameroon is slow: turtle pace slow. You amble anywhere you want to go. Everyone is always late, its expected here. Everything runs at a comfortable place. Even us Americans. So it can’t be that. Perhaps the whole early mornings thing. Cameroon has accomplished what my mother and uncle have been trying to do for years! I finally wake up early. 6 at the latest Monday through Saturday. I get to sleep in till almost 7:30 on Sundays! But that’s only if we’re not going to morning mass, which apparently I’ll be going to this week.
I’ll back up a bit.
Last I wrote, I was in the capital, Yaounde, at orientation. We received shots, survival French, and a few basic first aide and safety classes. We met our Country Program Director and had dinner with the American Ambassador, took care of long stay visas and paperwork. In our group are three different programs for Cameroon: Youth Development, a new program working toward empowering women and basically motivating youth, Agro/Forestry, a program trying to encourage sustainable farming and crops to promote capacity building in communities, and us: Health, a program dedicated to mostly Health awareness and education and basically doing whatever we can to make our communities healthier. When we get to post, we spend the first three months evaluating what our community needs and how we can facilitate a program where the community makes it happen and is able to sustain it. Often, we do more than one project; sometimes we fail, sometimes we don’t. We work with health professionals, youth groups, women community associations, municipal workers and governments, and basically scrounge around for whatever help we may get. But before this happens, before we even get assigned our post, we go through training, called PST (Everything in the Peace Corps has acronyms. A person who has completed training is a PCV, while we are currently PCT’s).
While we were in Yaounde, all 54 of our group were together, doing the same trainings, living and working together. For PST, they’ve separated us. Agro and YD peeps are in Bafia, a big town 2.5 hours north of Yaounde. The Sante’s (us) are in Bokito, a little tiny village about half an hour outside of Bafia. We go into Bafia every week for team meetings, internet, and, for right now, electricity (more on that later).
We are all staying with host families, going to PST from 8-5 everyday where we learn Technical Skills, French, PC Protocol and Procedure, Safety and First Aide, and we receive guidance on how complete our Post Assignments and Projects.
My family is…. Well… Cameroonian. There’s no better way to describe it. I live in a small (by American standards) 5 bedroom home built of concrete bricks with a aluminum ceiling. We have an outdoor kitchen where we cook over an open fire and a “bathroom” where we take our bucket baths. Our toilet is a latrine, and a fancy one at that. About 100 yards from the house, they built a small aluminum shack with a concrete floor. In the middle of the floor is a hole, for, shall we say waste. On top of this hole is an elaborate, beautiful mosaic throne on which to sit. It’s hilarious. A work of art really, dotting with pieces of broken blue tile and perfectly resembling an artistic toilet bowl. It’s exhilarating just to sit on it. Although, I will admit, the African food is not exactly promoting bowel movement….
We don’t have electricity. We should; apparently; however, since we’ve gotten here “a transformer has been blown” and we haven’t seen hide nor hair of electricity. Many of my PST mates’ families have gotten generators and those living outside the city sometimes have electricity, but for now, those of us in the village charge up once or twice a week when we go to Bafia.
Back to my family. Family here in Cameroon is a loose term. Basically the term applies to anyone with whom you share something in common with at the moment. For example, my family calls my classmates my brothers and sisters. They refer to me as their sister. Their friends are often their brothers and sisters. Therefore, it’s a bit tough to discern who is actually related to who in our house, but I think I’ve figured it out. At the top of the tree is Mama Blangine, mother of at least two, and maybe three of the girls who live in the house: Fifi, Francine, and maybe Nellie. Also here are Francine’s three kids, two boys (3 and 6) and a 3 month old baby girl. Then there are also Sandrine and Esther who are, I believe, cousins. It’s a very interesting dynamic and hierarchy. Those closer to Mama have higher priority, while the boys and Sandrine and Esther often eat last, left to pick on whatever’s left. Interestingly, when I asked Esther her birthday the other day, she said she had no idea. I’m not sure she knows how old she is either. I’m not sure how common this is, but some of my PST-mates have similar experiences in their house. In addition to the people who live in the house with us, there are 5+ people who drop by on a regular basis who I’m pretty sure are related in some way, 2 of which I know are other daughters.
While my family is really quite wonderful, there have been some major challenges. Sickness is rampant in my house. Mama Blangine is really sick. The day I got here, she went to the hospital. I don’t really understand what is wrong, but today she left for the district hospital in Yaounde. On the way, she was robbed. My sisters say she’ll still get treatment, but it just is so freaking sad.
On another, slightly funnier note, possession in Cameroon isn’t heard of. People don’t understand owning something or having private things. If someone has something you need, you take it and if you have something they need, they take it. There is much sharing of money and space and things. Needless to say, this doesn’t go over well with our American possessive culture. The families that we stay with did go through orientation and PC has gone through many hoops to make sure our possessions are as safe as possible; nonetheless, there have been a few minor instances of things not being returned until I go and ask for them. My host sister asked to borrow my phone and I found out today that she has used about 2000 credit points on my phone…. I’m not quite sure what I’m going to do about it, but let’s just say I’m going to be more careful.
My room is marvelous. I have a large bed (the only bed size in Cameroon) covered by a beautiful mosquito net that makes it look very princessy, while at the same time keeps the bed 10 degrees warmer in an already squelching heat.
My family has already taught me many things, Cameroonian style. I do the dishes and wash the floor on a regular basis, Cameroonian style (involving old rags, gross soap and not nearly enough water). I am learning to cook Cameroonian style. I did my laundry Cameroonian style (involving detergent, two buckets, a bar of soap, tons of muscle, and pounding my clothes against a concrete slab for a few hours).
The food here is pretty good, but very starchy. There’s a lot of cassava, plaintains, rice, and, surprisingly, spaghetti. Almost every night, there is a fish “stew” which we put over our starch. One night my family tricked my into eating fish head and eye, it was all cut up. Very interesting taste, I certainly won’t be doing it again. They do eat some strange things, one is called macabo, which is a sweet potato that looks like cassava but isn’t. They also eat the leaves of the cassava plant, in a spinach kind of way, but often with fish in it. They also eat “wheats” called Fufu and CousCous (more like grits than cous cous) which are eaten with your hands and often mixed with cassava leaf or beans (there are tons of beans here). My host sister is a great cook and I’m learning a lot from here.
My days I spend at school, trying to learn French as quickly as possible, which isn’t quick enough for me. We have school Mon-Sat with an average of 3 hours of language a day. The teachers are great, and no one at home speaks English, so I’m pretty immersed in French. However, at my level, that is mostly just realizing how much I don’t know. I’m getting there though. In one week, I’ve progressed to sentences and even a little past tense. Hopefully I’ll be moving up to an intermediate level soon, although we’ll see.
So this will be my life for the next three months, until December 3rd, when we get sworn in as volunteers. I’ll be living with this family, going to school, learning French and skills, and preparing for my time as a volunteer. Around week 5, we’ll get our post assignments, based on our language level, our preferences, and what we hope to get out of our service. A lot of people are requesting to be put in different areas of Cameroon: in the north, where its warm and deserty with a large muslim population, in the west, which is pretty developed and you’re almost guaranteed to have water and electricity, in the east, where you’ll be in the rainforest and might get to work with pygmies, or in the south, where you could be close to the beaches or the lakes or some gorgeous landscape. There are 10 provinces in Cameroon, each very different, with different languages, cultures, needs, and people. There are over 200 tribes and languages spoken in Cameroon and each is very different. Basically, someone placed in the north of Cameroon, is having a completely different experience from someone in the South. I didn’t ask for a location preference, but requested my counterpart to be a midwife, one whom I can learn from and work with. So we’ll see what happens. I’m hoping to be in a francophone region (Cameroon has 2 Anglophone regions) but again, it’s up to our awesome boss, Sylvie, to place us where she’ll feel we’ll do the best work.
After we get our assignments, we spend a week at post, exploring and meeting people. After that, we’ll come back to Bokito to finish up training before beginning our awesome journey.
So that’s a huge update, I hope I did everything justice. J Basically, I’m working hard, having fun, glad to be here and missing home all at once. The people I’m working with and getting to know are amazing and I am so blessed to have this time with them. The things I miss most from home (not people, things) are cheese, particularly mac and cheese (Cameroonians don’t make cheese!!! I’m going to try to make some when I start at post), chocolate, tomato juice and American music.
Bokito is gorgeous and I will send photos as soon as I can, although this internet speed can’t support it right now. Just hang in there. There are pictures to come. J Miss you all tons, more than you can imagine. XOXO