It’s been a while since I last had an opportunity to write.
Things here in Mogode have been pretty busy. I’ve been preparing to go to the
states for a month while at the same time, working on enlarging some projects
and beginning others.
Work wise:
· Women’s Peer Education Group: They elected a
board and started collecting money for a group project (yet unknown). They also
came to me yesterday and asked if we could take the group to the next level and
start learning an Income-Generating Activity to help the women in the group.
·
Water projects: I started asking around about
getting a water committee started
·
Health Education: I started working with the
primary school health club. Tomorrow we are meeting to talk about water borne
diseases and how you can prevent them.
·
Hospital: I’m still taking part in the
vaccinations “en brusse”. I’ve taken over weighing babies to track their
nutrition and try to prevent malnutrition. We are also still doing small
educational sessions before vaccinated women’s children.
·
Women’s Literacy Group: A group of women in a
nearby town contacted me to ask me help them start a class to learn French and
how to write. I’m helping them with their lessons plans and materials to get
started.
So basically, I’ve been keeping busy. Since being back, I’ve
really made an effort to learn how to prepare Cameroonian food. I’ve spent many
an evening at a friends’ house “turning” couscous. It’s a lot harder than it
sounds, trust me. My biceps are rapidly developing to handle the new demands.
Also, the rainy season has arrived! The rainy season is
partly to blame for why I haven’t been able to write. The rains wash out the
electricity poles, leaving me without power about 50% of the time since I’ve
been back. The first time it rained was just a few days after I got back to
post at the beginning of April. The whole day looked gray and I thought it
looked like rain. I asked locals:
“Hey,
do you think it’s going to rain?”
“No,
it couldn’t possibly rain. It’s hot. And it’s not June yet.”
Even after it rained that first time, and then the second
time, and then the third time, I would ask:
“Hey
has rainy season started yet? It looks like it’s going to rain again today!”
and they would respond with
“No, it couldn’t possibly rain. It’s
hot. And it’s not June yet.”
That’s what I love about Cameroonians. They can predict
weather down to a day. They know
that every year on February 15th, the cold weather breaks and it
gets hot. The first rains of the rainy season always arrive the first of June. And
the heat will break exactly 6 days after the first rain of rainy season.
Well, considering it has rained numerous times in the past
few weeks (and before that, I had never seen it rain up here), I’m officially
declaring it rainy season; I am disregarding the Cameroonian Farmer’s Almanac
for actual weather patterns. Call me crazy, but it just makes sense to crazy
ole’ me.
The first rain was crazy. I was sitting out in my hammock,
after dinner, reading by flashlight. The power was out. I was enjoying
Mansfield Park (I’ve been on a classics kick-electricity-less nights find me
reading Jane Austin right now) when I took a break to check out the sky. It was
incredible. I mean, I’m from Florida. Despite it’s name as the Sunshine State,
Florida has the most lightning out of any state. I’ve seen my fair share of
lightning: hurricane lightning, heat lightning, streaky lightning,
behind-clouds lightning. But I have never seen anything like this. This was
like someone had taken a strobe light and was waving it around the sky. Every
second the sky light up. I probably didn’t even need a flashlight to read it
was so bright. I’ve never seen anything like it. Soon after that, the rain
started. It absolutely poured. The thunder was so loud it scared the dog. The
rain came in under the door and started flooding my living room. The best part
about the rain: washed the chicken poop from my porch!
The next day I woke, my room was at least 10 degrees cooler.
I walked outside and immediately noticed a difference. Where the day before,
everything was just brown, kitty-littery and dead, little shoots of grass
started coming up out of the ground! The trees were looking less pathetic and
the dust in the air had settled. Since then, it’s rained a couple of times and
my yard, while looking a little untidy, finally has some color in it! My
neighbors are appalled that I’m letting my grass grow (the typical yard here is
swept everyday to keep the kitty litter looking nice and fresh and brown.
Things are starting to look up here in dry Mogode. Although
water is still expensive and a bit hard to find, I’m sure the wells will start
filling up soon and the hardships will ease.
In preparation for my departure to America, I eased another
“hardship” of mine. A few months ago, Luke and I got two chickens, a hen and a
rooster, to try and get some eggs out of them. When I got back to Mogode, I was
so disappointed to not be finding eggs left and right. I figured maybe she just
didn’t lay any. I searched my whole yard, even crawling behind my kitchen
(which is a tight crawl space and a little dangerous because I threw a bottle
back there that wouldn’t open that I’m just waiting for it to blow up. It could
blow at any time! There’s fermented juice in there that’s just creating pressure.)
One day, Luke came over with his friend and they found an egg in the middle of
my yard! Turns out, my dog had been eating them before I found them! I was so
excited. The next day, I had two fried eggs for breakfast. It was glorious. My
free range, organic chicken laid the most delicious tasting egg.
So you can imagine my horror when, a few days later, I woke
to find the chicken dead. I don’t know what happened. I didn’t get close enough
to inspect the body (Luke was coming over, so I just asked him to take care of
it). It could have been sick, or maybe the rooster had been hogging all the
food, or maybe an animal mauled it, or maybe it overheated and cooked from the
inside. Regardless, the chicken was dead. No more eggs!
All I was left with was the rooster from satan-ville (trying
to keep this PG). This guy was evil! A couple of times I slept with my door
open, sometimes in the living room, to try to escape the heat. At four in the
morning, he would sneak in and cockle-doodle-doo in my face! I finally figured
out how to block the door while keeping it open. So then, he would just stand
there, cockling for hours, right in the door. During the day, he would sneak
into the house, get into my kitchen and peck at everything. I would come into
the room 20 times an hour and find him there, pooping on my floor and eating
whatever he could. I would chase him out with a broom only to have him come
back in two seconds later. On mornings when I did sleep in my room, he would
sleep right beneath my bedroom window, cockling of course.
The rooster had to go. Now, fyi, rooster in French is cock.
Le cock. In my frainglais (mix of French and English) state of mind, that is
how I think of him. The evil cock, minion of the devil. I decided long ago that
this cock would grace our table some fine evening, and with the chicken dead,
it was only just a matter of time. So the date was set. Last Saturday, my cock
crowed his last cockle. We had a cock-party. At noon, my neighbor came over and
helped me catch the rascal.
Then we took him next door and she handed me the knife. I
killed that cock. I slit its throat and watched it die. Then we plucked it, cut
it up and then I cooked it. We ate that rooster that night. Let me tell you, it
was delicious. Whether that can be attributed to the fact it’s the first
chicken I’ve eaten in months, or the psychological taste of happiness is an
unsolvable mystery. But he was
delicious! And big and fat. I had fed him well. Since then, I have slept like a
baby in my quiet little house.
So that’s what’s been going on here in Mogode. Saturday, I
leave town for a month. I’m headed to the states to celebrate my little sister
graduating from Tufts University (Go KATIE!!!!!! I’m so proud of you). So this
might be the last post for a while. But I’ll see you all soon!
