Jungle Justice

I'm sure you're familiar with the phrase "street justice;" I'm also sure you're familiar with hyperbole and alliteration and how wonderful they are. I don't technically live in the jungle, but Dimako is surrounded by it/ Call it literary license.

Friday I thoroughly regretted not having a camera on me. As I'm sure you're well aware based on this blog and my France one, I am not a photographer. After one of my favorite French classes ever, I even had the perfect excuse: If you experience life through a lense, you are not truly experiencing life, but observing it.

Anyway, one Friday I had just finished proctoring my first two-hour exam and was waiting on the bell to head over for my second one. I was planning on using the time to grade my exams, but the students were cleaning the teachers' lounge as a punishment*, so I was forced to wait outside and be sociable.

After some time spacing out in a fever-induced haze, I noticed the hubbub across the street at the gendarmerie (police station). There were a couple of people outside holding chickens and the cops were talking to them.

Apparently two former students of the Lycee Technique had been caught stealing chickens.

The cops marched the thieves across the street with the chicken corpses tied around their necks. They were paraded through the school, so the students could jeer at them and hopefully learn not to steal.

All the teachers just nodded and said, "La honte, c'est utile." (Shame! It's useful.)

I have definitely found that to be true in my attempts at classroom management. When I catch my students cheating, I march them to the front of the classroom (in front of 60 or so of their classmates) and point and call them cheaters. I tell the whole class the consequence for their actions - a 0 for the sequence and an hour with their nose on the wall. It seems very effective thus far; none of the same students cheated this sequence that cheated during the last one.

Side note: I've been rereading and rewatching the Harry Potter books/movies. In the first movie, when the troll gets let into the castle, all the students are panicking and screaming and Dumbledore yells, "SILENCE!!!" All the students calm down and be quiet immediately. I would love it, if that happened in my classes. Instead, I am forced to teach my idiomatic phrases with the conditional.

Example: If the students take crazy pills, they will be crazy. If the students hadn't taken crazy pills, they wouldn't have told their teacher, "I love you."

It made it even better that the students in question were 20 15-year-old girls.

*Students here have to do manual labor as punishment - using machetes to cut the grass, working in the school garden, cleaning the offices and classrooms, etc.

Infections I've had in Africa

mystery cheesy-looking arm thing: 1
yeast infections: 6 (Thank you, doxycycline!)
staph infections: 2
e.coli: 1
malaria: 1
ringworm: 4
mystery shits: too many to count

I just want to let it be known that I am a very healthy person:

I eat my veggies.
I exercise.
I sleep 8 hours every night.
I get enough sunlight.
I drink so much water it’s ridiculous.
I get enough protein.

I even take a multivitamin!

And still – I’m sick all the time here. In the past month, I have been almost constantly sick. I had malaria and then I was super anemic, because of either the palu or the antibiotics (could do the research, but don’t care enough to find out). As soon as I was getting done with anemia (a week of beans, beans, all the time followed by at least 5 days of beef for lunch), I get e.coli. E. coli was unpleasant, but not the worst, but it made me dehydrated and grumpy and the antibiotics were hell in a handbasket. I had a weird taste in my mouth all the time and felt like puking or passing out fairly regularly.

The day that I finished the antibiotics, I noticed a few bug bites on my arm looked weird. PCMO later told me it was staph. It was really gross-looking (picture shiny pus-filled bread mold on your arm). It hurt all the time. It even hurt, when the breeze from the fan touched it. That too went away after a week of antimicrobial soap, boiled, bleached and filtered water; and scrubbing with a truly evil (and properly sterilized) kitchen sponge.

I was feeling a little down in the mouth this past week, because my house situation has not improved and I think that walking around in a semi-perpetual funk caused me to literally walk under a black cloud and get soaking wet and get a cold.

Today I went to school and thought about staying to grade my exams there, but I decided that swatting at mosquitoes sounded too exhausting, so I came home and hid under my mosquito net. And here I stay, pajamas and blanket on with a low-grade fever and used tissues all around me.

And I know that this too shall pass…

But geez Louise! I am sick of being sick all the time!

Dr. Mendhi told my concerned parents (this is when I had malaria) that when I come back, I will never be sick again, because my immune system will be just that good. I think right now it’s in bootcamp and it sucks. It’s sore all the time. It doesn’t want to do it anymore. There is no light at the end of the tunnel.

Have you ever been in an exercise class and the instructor starts counting down “5…4…3…2.. just 10 more!” I hate that! Tell me when we are actually almost done! Don’t start counting down, until we really only have 5 to go!

I don’t know if in this metaphor, Cameroon is that evil perky instructor/liar or what. What I keep on hoping is that I am just getting all my sick for these two years done in the first 6 months, so that I can just settle in and relax and enjoy my good health for the last 21 months.

Immune system, I appreciate your fine work – keep it up, you can do it, only 21 more months to go.

Peace Corps Fundraising

Just a brief note to let yall know of an opportunity to help out Peace Corps Cameroon volunteer projects -

We recently put together a calendar of photos taken by volunteers throughout the country and the Friends of Cameroon (an RPCV organization) are in charge of distributing the funds.

Here's just a sample of what you could see in your fancy new calendar! Buy one for every room in your house, so that you can always be surrounded by such beauty!

After all, it's for a good cause...

Order them here!

Going out in Cameroon

As every good American knows, Halloween is party season. Among ex-pats, it seems to be even more the case. In response to this ancestral mandate, the volunteers in the East invited PC Cameroon to Bertoua to Bertoween.

The party flyer promised clubbing, going to a caberet, swimming in a real pool, and of course, a costume party.

Everyone was to stay in the case (the house where East volunteers stay to do banking). My postmate and I arrived on Wednesday to secure our beds. There are 3 double beds and 2 bunkbeds and 25 people RSVPed. It was going to be a shitshow, so I planned to move to my friend Greg's house with my brand spanking new mattress.

Thursday night - Ladies' Night at Grand Palace
Grand Palace is definitely the nicest club I've ever been to ever. It has air conditioning. And it works! The dance floor had some light-up sections and a fog machine. They had a projector, where they played music videos. There were several VIP sections with really comfortable couches and bottle service with complimentary Cokes, ice and peanuts. (I feel like such a club noob going on and on about peanuts, but my club experience has been limited to Neon Liger in Gainesville - less than 1000 sq. ft. of people gyrating and dripping sweat - and the Copacabana in Metz, which was the same thing, but in a basement with latin music instead of dub step)

I walked in wearing my most daring club dress - blue spandex that hit about mid-thigh. I felt like a wildwoman, until I saw what everyone else was wearing. All the other ladies wore stillettos and dresses that cups the curves of their derrieres and ended right there. I am still bamboozled by the fact that they never flashed anyone. How do they do it?!

The best part of the evening - Every ladies' night there's a beauty contest. Two volunteers were judges and one of the COSing volunteers was a constestant. She got 3rd place. The winner for the night and for the month was definitely the tallest woman I have ever seen in my life; I didn't quite come up to her shoulder and I'm not actually short (5'5"/5'6").

Friday Night - the Caberet at Oxygen
Oxygen has some outdoor seating that's great for people and moto watching and the drinks are about average priced. To go inside is to step into a different world, a world of ceiling fans, overpriced drinks and gogo dancers.

The inside is dim and the bathroom is sketchy. To quote a good friend of mine, "I saw a vagina!" This was the response to the question of whether or not there's a ladies' room.

You order your drinks from an angry-faced server, sit on your couches and either watch the dancers or stare off into space talking to no one. The dancers are actually really really good. The East is known for its awesome crazy dancing, so that actually does provide a good amount of entertainment. The "staring off into space talking to no one" is actually the go-to move for most people here, when they go out. The music is generally so loud that to attempt to talk is to actually shout into your neighbor's ear. The sound level of a bar is never a strong deterrent for a loquacious American; this next morning everyone just complains about the noise level in a raspy voice. It seems like when people go out in groups here, no one talks to anyone at all, even if the music isn't that loud; I noticed it for the first time at my Teachers' Day party and the second time, when I was waiting for my car to Dimako with the cats (once everyone realized I was not going to give them the cats).

Are you familiar with the term "ice-ing"? You hide a Smirnoff Ice and the unfortunate who finds it has to kneel down and chug the "Ice." People can get pretty creative with their hiding spots, though a favorite is in the moto helmet, so when you're ready to leave you find it. I've heard of propping it on someone's pillow like a hotel chocolate...and the list goes on.

It's definitely in practice here among volunteers. A recent rule change stipulates that you are no longer allowed to just send one via a server to your victim. It had not yet come into effect, when we moved outside, so Danny had no choice, but to chug. A few minutes later, confusion and mayhem ensued, when a second Ice was delivered to Danny. A very drunk stranger had caught on to the game and wanted to see Danny do it again. I think that's Goal 2 - promoting better understanding of American culture?

Saturday Night - Bertoween
One of my absolute favorite things about Cameroon is pagne. You can get clothing made custom order fairly quickly and cheaply. I spent a lot of time waffling about what I wanted to be for Halloween and as a consequence had no time to have anything made. I even bought some red fabric thinking that I would want to make a cape and be Little Red Riding Hood. Luckily for me and my waffling, a COSing volunteer was putting a ton of clothes in the "Up For Grabs" (free things that you don't want anymore - clothes, bags, shoes, teaching materials, etc). She and I are the same size exactly and she put in a yellow bazin party dress. It fit like a dream and as every Millenial knows, if you have brown hair and a yellow dress, you are Belle from Beauty and the Beast.

We had jungle juice (mystery alcohol in watermelon/orange/pineapple/lime/jello juice...at least no one had to worry about scurvy), sachets (the devil's own alcohol) and a few cassiers of beer. We played beer pong and flip cup, ring of fire and contact. There was dancing; there was some kind of cricket or baseball or kickball thing going on (still confused). We even had a Canadian.

It was a lot of fun and some of the costumes were really good. One girl dressed up as another volunteer and wore a skin-colored shirt covered in tattoos, scruff and hipster glasses. Another person cut his hair to have a mullet and believe it or not, he can actually pull it off. (This may be "Peace Corps goggles" talking...)

Bertoween Weekend in Review
It was wonderful to see two of my fellow stagiaires who are posted in the Adamawa and it was a lot of fun to show them around Bertoua and go through the market.

It should say a lot that I had a good time all weekend despite having e.coli the whole time.

Donne-moi un chat

In Cameroon, there are three ways of asking for things:

1. Donne-moi l'argent ('Give me' the money. Not terribly polite, but by far the most used)
2. Je peux avoir 100 de beignets ? ('I can have' 100CFA of beignets? The question mark is just barely there. It's definitely more of a statement and it's the one that I use the most.)
3. Il n'y a pas de piment?/Ce n'est pas... ('Isn't there' hot sauce? The most polite and a great opening to sending someone to find whatever it is you want. You give them the price you want to pay and if they're nice, they find it for you)

Yesterday on my way back to Dimako, I heard all of them. I had my giant LLBean backpack filled with books and clothes, my moto helmet and a basket full of cats. It's actually my worst nighrmare that it isn't a nightmare.

One of my friends is going to France for a vacation and I am taking care of her cat, Jupiter. George and Jupiter are best friends. They play and snuggle and are pretty freaking cute. If I was better with a camera, I would take a terrible/cute kitten video and set it to inappropriate music and post it on youtube and become a millionaire overnight. Luckily, my mad skills are definitely in other areas, so no one has to deal with that.

Anyway, I am poor right now, because I have bad spending habits and accidentally gifted someone with 10,000 of credit. As a result, I decided to take a car to Dimako instead of my own moto. The price difference is 1200CFA, which is almost a week's worth of groceries.

Unfortunately, I arrived to take the last seat in a car. Normally this would be a great thing - less time to wait in the sun, less time to sweat on strangers, getting home faster, etc. However, just after our car got a rolling start with the help of a few other drivers, another driver started yelling at our driver, so he reversed into a kid pushing a wheelbarrow/shop selling school supplies and then  back into his parking spot. He and the front seat passenger took off without an explanation, so it was just the mama, the cats and me.

This was seriously the most stubborn mama I have ever met. She was also sitting between me and the door and showed very little interest in opening said door and getting out. We waited in the car in the sun with the backseat windows rolled up for at least 5 minutes. She opened the door and we waited 10 more, until she finally decided to let me get out. She encouraged me to leave the cats inside the hot car. Horrifying, right?!

The cats were looking awful - panting, their eyes barely open. I was thinking that my friend would kill me, if I killed her cat on Day 2. I grabbed 50cfa of a sachet of water (a baggie of water) and poured some in the basket with them. I put them in the shade of the car and stood with them keeping a weather eye out for the driver, who was about to get an earful.

Meanwhile, the questions started. "Donne-moi un chat" - "Give me a cat. You have two! I'm hungry!" Yes, they were asking me to give them a kitten to prepare and eat. My host mother, Stephanie, told me that in the East people eat everything, but not to worry they stopped eating people. (That is the sort of statement that makes a person worry.) There's another volunteer in the East whose dog follows him everywhere. He rides to villages all around his town and the dog comes with. He said that at the end of every meeting he has, he asks if anyone has any questions. They ask their questions and then they say "and we want to eat your dog." He told the story with a twinkle in his eye and a smile in his heart.

So far, I haven't had anyone express an interest in eating George - just the occasional person trying to shock me by saying "you know we eat cat here." Easy enough to shrug off; I usually tell people I don't know that George hunts mice and that's why I have him.

It didn't work this time. It just sparked a discussion of what meat was the best. Apparently, cat is significantly more delicious than beef. Je peux avoir un chat? They'd accepted that they weren't going to get both cats, but there was still the possibility of getting one; I had a spare - Why not?

I was forced to explain that I was also taking care of my friend's cat. I didn't have a moment's peace, until I got home. It also didn't occur to me until just now that I was right next to the Ministry of Soya, where they prepare and cook all kinds of meat.

Un petit palu

I may have mentioned that the day I did my Peace Corps application was a rare sunny day in Metz and that I felt inspired by some friends' wonderful pictures of PC life and statuses about digestive issues. I actually looked forward to having the shits in exotic places.

I now feel like a legitimate volunteer. I had an explosive time in a latrine with no door at a bar. Afterwards I did crowd control for Kalene's HIV/AIDS mural project. The crowd control involved story time in French (made the blunder of telling Snow White...) and doing the spaghetti dance.

Because my explosively good times continued for a few days with little relief (from being sick and the guilt of not being useful with the mural project), I called PCMO and went to the hospital for some tests. 'Hospital' is a scary word, but it's just where they keep the doctors. I got a malaria test yesterday and took over a cup o' poop over this morning. The lab was closed, when I got there, so I dropped my "sample" in through the window (it was in a jar!). I immediately had to admit what I did, because just after I let go, the proprietor arrived. Oops.

I came back a few hours later thinking that I probably had giardia (the "joining the club" illness) and found out that I had malaria instead.

I'm taking Coartem to treat it and shouldn't have any long term effects. I've only really had one 'spell' so far of feeling really tired and sweating for no reason. I have what Cameroonians call "un petit palu" or just a little malaria.

They use "le palu" the same way we would talk about a bug or a cold. Because the symptoms of malaria are all-encompassing, you really could say that you have the palu every time you're sick.

You have a headache? It's palu. You have a fever? It's palu. You're feeling sore all over? Palu. Digestive problems? Probably the old palu-d.

Ca va aller.

Zombie

I do everything right to try to make sure that I sleep well.

No spicy food late.
No computer in bed.
Benadryl.
Ear plugs.
Exercise.
Active all day.
Cool bed room.
Routine.

But my neighbors are determined that I should never sleep. I already have all the bars playing their music to all hours, but luckily they're just far enough away that I can mostly block out their music with earplugs (even if I can still hear the bass a little).

This morning my loud neighbors turned on their music at 5:30 in the morning. FIVE THIRTY. IN THE MORNING.

I don't even want to sleep late. I just want to sleep until 6 without having music so loud that the stereo might as well be in my bedroom.

I cannot wait to move. Also, I never thought that I'd miss the nights at Thomas Hall at UF with drunk people shouting and leaving Midtown at 2am. At least they let you sleep in.

Teachers' Day and Amicale

I heard this statistic that says that it takes at least five months in a place for it to feel like home.*

I've now been in Cameroon just over 5 months and it really has seemed to be a turning point. The past couple of weeks I've been dealing with a lot of homesickness and my brain constantly asking me, "What are you doing here?!" in a high-pitched, panicked mental voice. I think part of my difficulties were due to the fact that I never actually answered the question and instead just thought of all the reasons that I can't go home (no job, shame, no job, no job, no plans, no job, no job, etc. Did I mention that if I went home I'd be unemployed?).

In a moment of astounding clarity, I actually thought about what I'd do if I went home. I would study for the GRE and probably do quite well. I would spend a year applying for grad schools and being a substitute teacher and live in my apartment. That is not actually a scary situation.

The fact that I was able to think that through and let myself think of going home as a viable option, which made staying here a decision and not something that I have to do. I've decided to stay and I've decided to do well here. I'm going to do more than get by, because doesn't two years of just getting by sound awful? That was definitely a contributing factor to the homesickness.

It certainly helps that this past weekend I had two (almost required attendance) social events for school. On Friday, we had our amicale, which is a monthly staff social. There's also a financial aspect to it. Everyone has the option to participate in "tontines;" everyone contributes a set amount of money (or soap or oil) each month and one person gets the pot. They rotate the honors, but it helps people who live far away to cover their travel expenses or for someone to build a house or whatever. Everyone also contributes 10,000CFA for the year that the staff votes on giving to people, if they have a baby, get married or there's a death in the family. You can also get loans and use it as a savings account. Anyway, it's a really cool system.

We had a practice amicale at training once a week and it was like pulling teeth to go. We had so much on our plates already that the fact that we were required to go during our 2.5 hours a day to socialize was just too much. Everyone was always a little pissed to be there and more than a little frustrated. Vastly unpleasant.

The reality of amicale (at least at my school) is sooooo much nicer. This week I got there two hours late and the meeting was just getting started. I sat down between Desiree, an English teacher, and Evaristus, an electricity teacher. We drank "white wine" and ate peanuts and listened and gossiped.

Let me tell you a little something about "white wine." Me, I like to drink some cool white wine, when it's hot outside - you get to cool off and unwind at the same time. White wine here, though, is not made from grapes. It's palm wine. It ferments inside the tree. How cool! The flavor almost defies description- it's earthy, a little bitter, a little sweet, kinda herby and it doesn't taste like alcohol....

which explains why my entire staff got really drunk on Friday night. Everyone was yelling and laughing and fighting and drinking and being hungry and the meeting still went on. When it was time for the tontines, the hosting group had to present the money to the winners. The first giver gave this long benediction before handing over the money. Then, I heard my name. I had to give the second tontine. Eloquence escapes me at moments of unexpected public speech. In lieu of the lovely benediction, I said, "I forgot everything he just said, but we wish you well!" I was really happy that the power was out and we had only one lantern, because no one could see me blush. For whatever reason, teaching 120 students doesn't faze me, but 20 adults....

We finally ate at 8 or 9. It was a quarter of chicken, legumes (sauted greens), batons de manioc, bread, more palm wine and red wine (called Casanova. tasted like Communion).

All that palm wine explains why the next day, Teachers' Day, we lost the soccer match against the Lycee Classique and had a very low turn-out for the parade. That's mostly speculation on my part; I was home in bed with a headache. I did make it out to the Teachers' Day party at the Cafeteriat bar. We all had two drinks each, more batons, another quarter of chicken and piment (hot sauce). After everyone digested a bit, we all started dancing and I got some dance lessons from the discipline master.

It was a lovely weekend and it went a long way to making me feel more at home in Dimako. It's going to be a good two years.

*I have no way of verifying that stat because of a combination of laziness and slow internet.

I may have mentioned something about photos....

And I did make an honest effort. I went to the market armed with my shopping list and my camera. I asked the tailor I've been going to, if I could take a picture of her in her shop. She said she wanted me to come back Tuesday (I guess she wanted to wear an even more beautiful pagne outfit). I left her shop and asked this little girl, if I could take a picture of her bean stand. She said sure, but she didn't want to be in the picture. Then, I walked up to the guy who has a shoe frip (like a thrift store). He has these shoes hanging down all tied together like a bead curtain or something. Really cool. I asked him if I could take a picture. When he asked why, I said that my mum was harassing me for pictures, because so far my pictures are just of ankle infections and cats. (Mentioning your mom here is almost a surefire way of getting market ladies to like you, sadly it doesn't seem to work as well with the menfolk...)

He said sure and I backed up to take my picture, preparing to take 50 million to get one clear picture (I am really not good at taking pictures), when all of a sudden, this guy comes yelling at the shoe guy. "What's she paying you? You're letting her take a picture? She needs to motivate you!" (motiver=bribe) "She's going to go back to Europe and sell that picture for a lot of money! She's going to be rich! What's she giving you?" At which point, I step in and start - yelling is the wrong word - speaking up for myself. "I'm not European! I'm American! I'm a volunteer; I'm here to teach, not to make money! It's forbidden for me to make money! Anyway, no one would ever buy one of my pictures! I'm taking these to show my family what my life is like here!"

But the damage was done. The shoe guy looks at me and says, "Yeah, what are you going to give me?" What I really wanted to do was give him two choice words in English and a hand gesture to match, but instead I said, "I'm giving you nothing!" and stalked off.

I'd like to say that I made a great exit, but when you promptly burst into tears, when the spice lady asks you what happened...it tends to ruin the effect. Don't you hate when people are nice to you, when you are just trying to be mad and keep yourself together? Well, we'll see how the shoe guy feels about a good old-fashioned American boycott. So there.



To continue in the vein of Beth expressing herself well in French despite high levels of stress...

The other morning after possibly the worst night of sleep that I've had in country (including the night of the mice and the night of the mystery thing falling from the sky), my neighbor woke me up. I had spent the night before tossing and turning and being wide awake every few hours despite the use of Benadryl. I woke up before 5 and read for a while and managed to fall asleep again around 7. It was my day off.

I was having this wonderful dream, rivaling even the infamous Candyland dream. I had taken a hot shower and was using a fluffy warm towel and walking on the beach (not sure why the beach was between the shower and my wardrobe, but whatever). It was sunny and breezy and the sun was hot. I wasn't wearing sunglasses or a hat and I wasn't squinting. It just continues in that vein, but basically paradise.

I wake up to my neighbor POUNDING on my gate. I get up, get decent, unlock my two front doors and open my gate. My neighbor isn't even there anymore! His cousin is standing there and says to me, "Alain wants to take out the car."

I ask him very politely, "Where is Alain?" I might add that I did nothing to minimize the crazy bloodshot eyes, wild bed head, rumpled clothes and grinding teeth.

Alain finally moseys over to greet me and ask me, if he can get out the car. In reply, to his "ca va? I say "Ca ne va pas. You woke me up. It was not the first time. You know I don't sleep well. This house is in the middle of three bars. This is exactly why I don't want the car in the compound in the first place and it's constantly messing me up. The last time he wanted to put the car away, he said that he would return at 11 and I waited until 2, so I left late for Bertoua. Eleven needs to mean eleven! And we need a new system, where he gives me at least a day's notice to take out the car."

The whole time that I am going on my grammatically correct tirade, he's standing there (bad word) SMILING AT ME. You know - the you're-so-cute-when-you're-mad smile. There is nothing in the world that makes an already angry person feel like steam is coming out of their ears like that look. I spent the entire rest of the day in a funk.


And now to end this thing on a positive note... Using some Legally Blonde logic ("Exercise gives you endorphins. Endorphins make you happy. Happy people don't shoot their [neighbors]. They just don't!"), I decided that I would start working out. It makes you feel better, it takes up time and it relieves in Mambo guilt that you might be feeling.

I have honestly not been having the best of days, but do you know what? I am in a great mood. George farted in my face and I just laughed about it (and promptly put George down and left the immediate vicinity). I got a new schedule at school today and griped about our new crappy schedules with a coworker and I was sorta pumped to gripe with someone. I still have ringworm, but I also made some beautiful eggs over easy this morning and didn't break the yolks.

I'm having a good day and ain't nothing gonna spoil it.

...not even accidentally gifting a stranger 10,000CFA of phone credit.

Confections and Infections

So in training they showed us a graph of how we'd be mentally throughout our whole service. The first 6 months or so looked like someone in tachycardia (thanks, Grey's!) - basically really sharp ups and downs.

Examples of this being: One day after worrying that I was about to "join the club," while locked in the teachers' lounge with the English department and no toilet, I received the most romantic marriage proposal I've had so far. In the same day, I saw a dog die in a moto accident (the person was fine), I cried all over George and within the hour laughed out loud at him attacking a wrapper in my flower beds. It's a little disconcerting.

Warning: Objects may look more attractive in photos than in real life.

Right now, I have ringworm and a staph infection. The staph infection is totally my fault; I just posted pictures of my staph-y ankle from Bafia and replied to a comment saying that I was staph-free. I did not knock on wood; I was tempting fate and here I am with a weird crater looking thing on my ankle.

So that was my morning news. Then, I hung out and watched Back to the Future, read my book, and cuddled with George and hung out with some friends in Bertoua. On our way to go eat fufu and jammajamma, we stopped at the post office to check for mail and lo and behold! I had a package! AND four letters (thanks, Mum, Aunt Analee and Beebs!

I am feeling pretty loved, because not only were there a ton of delicious treats, there were letters inside the package from Mindy, Maggie, and John and Mary! As you can tell from my punctuation, I am riding a wave of excitement and love!

Also, I promise to start taking pictures of pretty things in Dimako this weekend and posting them in a couple weeks. I realize that I only have 13 pictures to show for almost 4 months of being here - and 6 are of George, 3 are of staph infections and none are of my face. I fully intend to remedy that with pictures of banana trees and dogs on trash piles and colorful laundry.

Training

George and I were having a very intensive cuddling session the other afternoon and over the course of the pillowtalk, he confessed something to me.

George's greatest aspiration is to represent Cameroon in the 2016 Summer Olympic Games in Rio.

A little known fact about the Olympics is that each species has their own Olympics complete with different sports. You certainly wouldn't find a sloth doing any kind of race would you?

George is currently participating in a rigorous training program for mousing. It involves racing around the house over, around and under obstacles such as ironwork, rugs, moto helmets, curtains, flowers and people. He has to do pull-ups on mosquito nets. He must hide under the table and attack anything that moves whether it's toes, clothing or something imaginary. He has to jump out of windows and hide in storm drains.

His program includes strength, agility, stealth and murderous intent.

When he catches a mouse or a lizard, he must throw the corpse around for at least an hour to simulate a battle with a more challenging adversary.

Sometimes it's hard living with a critter with such great expectations, but all I can do is support him and give him 2-3 scrambled eggs a day. He needs protein to build up his muscle mass.

Marriage Proposals and Admirers

In the US, sometimes you are walking down the street doing nothing to attract attention and some random person will lean out their car window and whistle or yell something at you. Because they are moving fast, it's generally something very articulate like "Yeaaaaaaahhhhh!!!" or "Hey, baby!" It's annoying, but over so quickly that it doesn't really bother you.

Cameroonians are experts at "deranging" people. If you are female, someone is going to say something to you. If you are a "blanc," someone is going to say something to you.

If you're a "blanc," it's usually something along the lines of "Le blanc! le blanc! le blanc! Hello! How are you? Tomates! Cinquante! Cinquant! (50! 50!)" If the neighborhood is more fulfulde-speaking, you will probably be called "Nasarrah!" You may even be called "le wot" or "la wot" (from pidgin), but that's considered very rude. "Lablanche" oftentimes seems to be more a statement of fact than a way to bother someone. People use it the way that in the US, you might say "Hey you! You with the ponytail!" It's just another identifier.

Now about being a lady and never worrying about being unattractive... The way people catcall here is pretty funny, especially when you compare the experience to going past a construction site at home. It generally goes something like this, "Cherie, cherie, cherie! Lablanche! Tu cherches un moto? Tu cherches un mari! Je veux te marier! I love you!" (My dear, my dear, my dear! White girl! Are you looking for a moto? Are you looking for a husband! I want to marry you! I love you!)

When you translate it, it seems comical and almost sweet. No random stranger in the US would yell at you that they love you and want to marry you and give you a nice house! No one in a restaurant would come up to you and tell you that they have a very nice job and want to provide for you.

On the other hand, when all you want to do is enjoy your juice alone and an older gentleman sits down next to you and wants your email address, so he can write you letters, it's pretty annoying.

If you've talked to me long enough at home, I've probably bent your ear about how annoying it is that some women play hard to get, because it makes people think that when you're being direct that you probably mean something entirely different. Unfortunately, Cameroon is a country of women who play hard to get, so the men here are used to rejection. They don't realize that when you say, "Leave me alone. I don't love you and I have no interest in marrying you," that you actually mean it.

Here are some strategies that could potentially help with the situation:

"I can't give you my phone number, because I don't remember it and I left it at home."
"No, you can't call me. I have a fiance/boyfriend in the US and he's very jealous!"
"No, I can't be with you. I have a very jealous boyfriend in Yaounde. He's a gendarme." *
"No, I like to be alone."

These work on the more polite admirers, but there will always be that drunk, Peter, in the market, who despite all your protests, just wants "to be together with you." **


*Gendarmes are the police officers who are armed with the really big guns.
**This is made all the more confusing by the fact that almost every conversation here ends with "On est ensemble" (We are together). It seems to mean that we're all in this together or that we understand each other.

Comfort Food

French-fried potatoes. Oreo milkshakes. Moosetracks ice cream. Anything and everything produced by Publix bakeries. Fried chicken. Buttermilk biscuits with homemade blueberry jam.

The point of comfort food is that when you're feeling low, either physically or emotionally, you feel better.

I'd been warned by a COSing (close of service) volunteer that after a while, your body just can't handle American food anymore. I may have dismissed her wise words, because she is so well integrated that I doubted that she made sure to keep up her tolerance for high fructose corn syrup and partially hydrogenated soybean oil. I figured that she must only be eating couscous and "legumes" (anything leafy and green). I fully anticipated that I would horde my American food and have a little every week, so that it wouldn't shock my system to get a treat. I also happen to be blessed with a stomach that seems to be able to handle just about everything (besides vodka).

This week I've been feeling a little blue - just a little homesick. I've been here long enough now that the novelty of everyday life (bucket baths, the market, moto rides) has started to wear off, but not quite long enough that I have any close Cameroonian friends. I needed the company of a fellow American to talk to about the good old US of A and to share in the comfort food feast I had planned:

beer batter fried chicken
green beans (you know, with the onions - what I would have given for a ham hock!)
mac and cheese (my one box from the US lasted me just over 4 months)
key lime pie

I made it all from scratch and am thankful to the depth of my soul for the fact that I decided to pack the Joy of Cooking. It was sooooooooo good.

It was worth all the work - trekking all over Dimako to find the chicken, getting a coworker to slit its throat, plucking it and cutting it to pieces, finding a lady to remind me how to gut it, boiling it, breading it, frying it, crying over the onions for the green beans, opening the can of sweetened condensed milk with a machete, etc.

I ate at 2 or so this afternoon; it's now after 8 at night and the smell of the chicken soup (made from leftovers) that permeates the air in my house is making me feel a little sick to my stomach. You know that Thanksgiving feeling? You know you ate entirely too much, but it all tasted too good for you to regret it? I feel that way, even as I lay in my bed dreaming of slipping into a 12 hour food coma.

I think it's happened though. I think my stomach, old Ironsides, has thrown in the towel on American food and craves plantain chips and Mambos (Cameroonian chocolate) for comfort.

Maybe this has to happen for me to settle into life here a little more? We'll see how my stomach and my colleagues' stomachs react to my homemade chicken soup tomorrow. I wonder if its magic is as effective on malaria as it is on the common cold?

Mayos, not Mayo

Mayos (pronounced MY-yoess) is a gorgeous 20 minute moto ride away on the old logging road to Batouri. The road is barely above one lane in size and is a great example of nature taking it back. I didn't really think about how close the jungle (besides vivid images of monkeys making off with my underwear from the clothesline...but that was before I moved here) really is. The road has a veritable wall of mutant yellow daisies at least 10 feet high. The road twists and turns and every now and then you pass some goats and children. At one point you go through a tree so big and heavy that when it fell across the road, they cut it and left the parts.

Mayos is actually a pygmy town. They're part of the Maka tribe. Jon's friend, Gladys, invited the two of us to join him and his brother for a cultural festival and soccer game that Guinness was sponsoring.

They had some traditional music and dancing. One thing that was pretty cool were the percussion instruments; they used hollowed out trees for drums mostly, but a few people used coolers and bidons (really big plastic water containers). The singing was led by an older woman and then a chorus would respond. The women were mostl wearing pagne and had grass brushes tied around their waists, so when they swung their hips, the grasses rustles and shook. The men had grass bunches tied at their ankles, knees, elbows and heads.

After the dance, the local team played against a team from Bertoua. It was a real David and Goliath situation. The players from Bertoua were all over 6' tall and the Maka are less than 5' tall. Guiness was sponsoring the match, because they were doing a program (for the World Cup, I think) about the most unlikely matches. They are also doing a contest to find "the best soccer player in Cameroon," who will get to go to the UK and hopefully get to try out for a football team there. It sounded like such a cool job.

I have to say that Jon and I had a funny reaction to seeing other blancs. Jon had told me that some Canadian missionaries lived in that village, but with their fancy film equipment, it was easy to see that they weren't missionaries. The first reaction is a blank stare and the mental question, "What the poop is this person doing here?" Then, if you're feeling friendly, you might ask them that question out loud (minus all swear words and their mature substitutes) and chat for a little bit. We did just that.

Oh! and the Maka won their match 3-2. So much for unlikely.

Another Restful Night?

As I lay in my bed listening to the chorus of crickets outside, I wonder will I have the night of sleep I dream about? Will I put in my ear plugs and not be awakened by my neighbors at all hours? You may be wondering what has brought on this contemplative mood and I would be happy to enlighten you.

Last night after a huge late lunch/early dinner of (I think) an impressive approximation of eggplant Parmesan, I sat down to reply to some letters (Elaine, Heather and orange Sarah, get pumped!). I wrote, until I was so tired that my eyes just wouldn't stay open, my hand was cramping, George had lost interest in attacking my pen and the candle was down to a nub. I decided it was time for bed. I had saved my bucket bath for just before bed, because while going to bed with a wet head is a definite no-no in colder climes, here it just makes you sleep easier.

I felt refreshed and cool and ready for some light reading - first mistake. I've been reading House of Mirth by Edith Wharton and although it's very well written and I feel like I'm exercising my brain muscles, it is definitely ironically titled. If you read it, your belly will not shake like a bowl full of jelly, because there will be no mirth. I finished that book and no longer felt ready for bed. I hopped on facebook for a bit to recover my spirits and then picked out another book. Forty pages in, I was again happily bleary eyed. I turned off my headlamp, rolled over and got comfortable.

I was just getting to sleep, when it started. The screaming and the yelling followed by babies crying and more screaming and yelling. Some of my neighbors having a fight. The only thing that I understood was about someone leaving and someone staying. I don't really think that's any commentary on my French; hysterical people are hard to understand in any language. This looked like it was going to go on for a while, so back on went the light and out came the book.

They settled down. I settled down. I turned out the light. I was really, really tired at this point, so sleep came easily. I was in that really deep sleep, where it's all dark and quiet and empty.

THEN THE RATS STARTING PARTYING IN THE ATTIC!!!!!!!!

See how startling all those capital letters are? They definitely get your attention. You're confused. You're a little alarmed. You have no idea what is going on!

I fumble for the light. There's no power, Beth! I fumble for my headlamp. It's plugged in, because it ran out of juice from all that reading. I fumble for my phone - lost...who knows? I turn on my computer, the only thing within reach that makes light. In my confusion, I was convinced that the rats were on my headboard. Imagine being pulled out of that deep, dark, happy place by the adrenaline-inducing idea that there are rats on your headboard and maybe even in your bed.

Somehow, I managed to get back to sleep, only to be woken up two more times by those rat raves in the attic.

And then my neighbor started beating a pot or a bucket every two to three seconds for at least fifteen minutes starting before 6am.

You might think that with a beginning like that that the day could only get worse. It actually didn't!

Today was my first day teaching and knowing myself as well as I do after almost a quarter century of friendship, I knew that I had to take a chill pill before going to school and making a horrendous first impression on my students, who I would then be stuck with for an entire year, knowing exactly which buttons to press. I took my time this morning. I made myself some breakfast, pet and played with George, read my book, tidied up and generally did some mental housekeeping.

I was late to school (look at how well I'm integrating! lol), but my students were great! True, I only had 18 of a class that has somewhere between 80 and 120 students and 4 of a class of at least 40, but I think that because I've set the ground rules with these ones, that the others will follow them by example. If you disagree, please hold your tongue and let me hold onto that shred of optimism through the weekend, until the bubble bursts at 7:25 Monday morning, when school apparently really starts.

A Day in the Life

I was going to write a short post filled with quips and tales of being called out for falling asleep in English by the regional head of the Adventist Church of Cameroon during a five-hour-long, francophone church service and inadvertently offending a future coworker by shaking hands the wrong way....but instead I'll walk you through what I do during my day.

(Keep in mind that work starts Monday)

I wake up a little before 6am, because it's light outside and gather up all the tissues that litter the other twin mattress. (I'm on my third or fourth head cold, since arriving in country.) I head to the bathroom and check if I have a bucket of water, before I do my business. I have a toilet, but it doesn't flush, because I don't have running water. I expertly pour the bucket into the toilet maintaining the delicate balance of the right amount of force and the right amount of water splashed all over the floor.

I brush my teeth using filtered water and wash my face with well water. I do my grooming using my sink and a cut-up water bottle, but I know a lot of people prefer to do it outside.

I then get dressed, lock up and head to the market to get breakfast. I eat bouilli and beignets almost every morning. Bouilli is very fine powder that gets removed, when you rinse couscous de mais (basically grits). It then ferments and you make this paste stuff just right, add it to boiling water, wait till it's all creamy and delicious, add sugar and lime juice, and enjoy! Since making the paste just right seems to be beyond my limited abilities, when I'm ravenous, I generally just buy breakfast (10cents worth of bouilli, 20cents of beignets and  2ish cents per key lime) and call it a day!

Until recently, I've been splitting my eating time between the floor of my front porch or the toilet that I didn't use in the master bath. Now that I bought a bench, I sit at my table to eat. What luxury!

After I eat breakfast, I scrub one of the bathrooms, until I'm blue in the face. (Pictures to follow - it looked kind of like a gas station bathroom. You know the kind that the door doesn't shut well, there's no toilet paper and the ladies' is constantly out of order? That kind. To further my point, yesterday my neighbor asked me not to use the only toilet I've been using because it's deranging my neighbors. Evidently, everything that's been so efficiently flushed down my toilet has been sitting in the foot-wide space between my house and my neighbors'. Yuck.)

Once a week, I do my laundry, using buckets and a bar of laundry soap. I found out through a system of error and error that the powdered laundry soap makes all colors bleed. As a result, the only white shirt I brought now has yellow, blue and reddish stains all over it and I no longer have to worry about the fact that I managed to forget all tshirts and exercise shirts in the US.

Bouilli keeps you pretty full, so I generally eat lunch around 2 and make myself increasingly beautiful omelettes with fresh veggies (onions, tomatoes, peppers, green beans, etc), French bread and some fruit. Now that I have this feline of mine, I share the eggs.

In the afternoon, I sometimes take a nap or read for a little while or scrub more or go to the market and talk to the market ladies.

Talking to the market ladies is actually part of my job description. I am supposed to be integrating into my community, which seems to entail talking to nice ladies, politely refusing marriage proposals, and being fed by people whose goal is always to send you home nice and fat.

The power goes out around 6:30 just as it's getting dark. By candlelight (or headlamplight), I make my dinner, eat aforementioned dinner and take a bucket bath. Remember that cut-up bottle? It makes its second cameo here.

I climb into bed after locking up and tucking in my mosquito net and call it a late night, if I fall asleep after 8:30.

(This may seem a little dry after yesterday's post, but I always want to know the weird details of how people live, when I read stories (how people go to the bathroom, how they bathe and how often, what their underwear would look like, would it relate to how they go to the bathroom? periods, where the food comes from, etc) and thought yall might have similar questions, but be too polite to ask)

Curious George

I've revised my best purchase ever from my Hawaiian print reusable bag to George, the cat. 

This evening as I was getting ready for bed, I noticed a terrible gnawing sound followed by an impressively ferocious growl, considering George is so small that he fits in one hand. He and I noticed the mouse crawling down the wall at about the same time, but his reflexes are a bit better. He may have killed one mouse and eaten it and played with another for a while until its escape under my bed. Sweet dreams to me?

Also, (Sarah, this is a shout-out to you, Pekoe, and Chai) those mouse toys are amazingly accurate. George batted the unconscious/dead mouse around for about 20 minutes before he:

a) ate the mouse
b) hid the mouse
c) raised the mouse from the dead, or
d) found a new mouse.

I registered for the GRE recently, so I feel like I should start framing things in the form of multiple choice questions and/or using ridiculously long vocabulary words and/or thinking in syllogisms (what's the grammar rule for lists of three or more things linked by and/or?!). If anyone has any idea what I should do with my life, let me know the school codes for February. Ideas should include, but not be limited to, avoiding malaria, homelessness and prison.

George found a mouse (#3?) a few moments ago and now there is a silence so thick you could cut it with a knife (hopefully not the one that cut my hand and a chicken's throat). I am growing increasingly concerned that the mouse killed George and that I am overusing modifiers.

Will George successfully disembowel a mouse? Will its entrails end up in Beth's bed? Will she ever find a mason to close up all the holes in the walls?

Next Time....on George vs. The Mice!

Ma Propre Maison Propre

Time travels weirdly here and I need to get a calendar. Right now I have no idea, when I moved into my house.

You know how I've mentioned 'Posh Corps'? My house is totally a Posh Corps house. It may actually be nicer than where I lived in the US. It's definitely bigger and has newer appliances.

My house here has two spring mattresses - twin-sized and by their powers combined form a three person bed (that's what they say in French, lit à trois places). Someone recently suggested sharing it with my two Cameroonian boyfriends and I experienced a weird sense of déjà vu. When I was in France, I talked about wanting two French boyfriends to save on heating costs. I don't foresee needing two Cameroonian boyfriends to keep me warm so close to the equator, even though I have actually used my sleeping bag almost every night.

My kitchen is a "modern kitchen." I have two sinks, a stove with electric and gas burners, an oven, a chest freezer, and a MICROWAVE. The microwave doubles as a mouse safe house - not in the sense that it's a home for mice, who are in the witness protection program; it is a place to store all my valuables like peanut butter, almonds and Nutella that covetous mouse burglars can sell for many francs CFA in the black mouse market.

To continue describing my home and provide one of many inadequate excuses for not updating my blog, I will share a story:

One of my first nights in my house, the electricity was out and I had not yet purchased my gas tank, so I ate a partially spoiled and leaking watermelon for dinner. Later that same evening, my favorite sister was talking to me on the phone and I was mentally preparing myself to brag about my dinner (ambrosia of the gods) and getting some bleach from the kitchen, when all of a sudden a terribly fast, dark streak sped from the counter to the stove toward me! My answer to my rhetorical remark, "Guess what I had for dinner?," was a bloodcurdling scream. That may have frightened my lady neighbors, who evidently sleep with their ears pointed toward my house. The reaction of my loving sister? "I'm guessing that's not what you had for dinner." No concern for my well-being. No worries about rabid monkeys climbing in my windows.

Since that fateful night, the mouse and I have become friends. As I ate the most beautiful omelette this world has ever seen, my little friend twitched its nose at me and then hid behind my microwave. It was a bonding experience that will last a lifetime.

Of course, the lifetime of the mouse (mice?) will be over fairly soon, because I intend to get a cat.

All good things must come to an end.

Recipes from the Great Beyond: Part 1

Saturday night, I was all set to kill my first chicken. I had my phone on me, so when my host mom called me on her way back from the market, I could head home. I also had some liquid courage in the form of one of the huge beers here. I was set, but she never called.

I got home promptly at 7 and saw the chicken in the wash basin in the kitchen, quietly clucking to itself. Apparently, Stephanie didn't want to bother me, so I had the beer for nothing!

The next morning I got up bright and ugly to just get it done. I was mostly mentally prepared, but then my cousin said I had to go get a sharp knife. (I had heard from other chicken killers that you have to saw the neck forever to kill the chicken and that was the worst part ever).

I went into my bags looking for my knives. I was told to look for one that was really sharp (or "tranchant," which literally means slicing), so I got the one that I know is really sharp and will never forget exactly how good it is at cutting things (for further information look at The Most Dangerous Game).

I walked around the house and out the door. The sunlight glinted demonically off the razor sharp edge. My host uncle grabbed the chicken out of the bucket. He started to demonstrate how to hold down the chicken - one foot on its wings, the other on its feet. The chicken was clucking sadly and molting constantly.

I took a deep breath and noticed the lump in my throat, as I bent down to kill the chicken, I couldn't help thinking about how much damage that yellow knife can do and how much pain it can cause.

I couldn't help it. I chickened out. (Pardon the pun)

My host uncle cut the chicken's head off and after it finished bleeding out, we put it in hot water, so I could pluck it and take the skin off the feet. Afterwards, I cut the claws off the feet and helped to butcher it. You have to be careful, when you open it up, because if you puncture the intestines, you literally get poop everywhere and if you puncture the stomach, the meat gets very bitter.

Cultural note: The gizzard must always be prepared and served with the chicken or your husband will reject the meal and demand, "What the poop?!"* Also, ladies are not allowed to eat the gizzard (not sure why).

Then you take the chicken and put it on the flames to burn off the "hairs." We prepared the chicken with tomatoes, peppers, onions and of course, Maggi cubes and palm oil. Then the chicken cooked on the stove for a few hours and became the delicious meal we enjoyed for lunch, dinner and breakfast.

*Cameroonian men would not actually say, "What the poop?!" but they might come up with another colorful oath.

Model School - Saints and Sex Ed

I started teaching at Model School last week. The whole idea behind it is that we get to practice teaching before we get to our post, so that we don't have to flounder in our real jobs. They also don't want people to have their first day be teaching a rowdy class of 100.

I'm teaching 5ieme, so the students are somewhere between 10 and 14. They seem to let some kids progress really rapidly and then others can get held back several times (One of my friends here teaches 1ere, which is about 11th grade. She has a student who is 13 and will be starting university before he turns 15).

My first day of class went pretty well. We went over classroom rules, which include (proposed by the students) no boxing, no smoking and no drinking beer. So far I have not had any problems with those rules, though I have had problems with students spinning their books, grabbing each other's butts, throwing things and hiding under desks.

My second day of class ended with me in the depths of despair. I walked out and thought, "What have I done? Why am I here? How did I commit myself to teaching for two whole years?!" When I went into the teachers' lounge and voiced all my woes, my fellow trainees said, "It can't possibly be as bad as all that! I'll come tomorrow and check things out! Sometimes my kids are bad too, but most of the time they're decently well behaved."

On the third day, the sun rose and burned through all the clouds. It was hot and dusty and still and I was sure that I was going to have an Old West-style showdown with my 46 students. I walked into class prepared with a story about Stevie, the most unhealthy person ever (He only eats beignets and chocolate. He smokes all the time. He has 5 beers at lunch and 5 more after school and is constantly constipated). Surprisingly enough, no one giggled, when constipation came up. I was like an Evangelical preacher - Should you smoke? (NOOOOOO!!!! says the Greek chorus) Should you drink beer? (NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!) They were honestly the best behaved they've ever been for me. I only had to put three students in the corner for talking and throwing things and didn't have to send anyone to the Surveillant General (the discipline master, who sends wayward students to cut down grass and trim banana trees with machetes. Yes, they do give weapons to the bad kids here...).

I walked out of class feeling pretty good about my class....until everyone came up to me saying that there was "a special place in heaven for people with classes like that."

Since then, my TEFL coordinator, the vice principal and the principal have all come to lecture my class on appropriate behavior and today I only had two kids in the corner and am only losing my voice a little bit.

I am really enjoying one part of model school, though. Sarah and I are doing a health and environment club and after getting permission from the school administration, we did some sex ed. It was wonderful! We were lucky enough that the HIV coordinator for Peace Corps was in Bafia, so we got free condoms, a female condom and a wooden "model." We started our class by talking about why you need to protect yourself, when you have sex. We asked questions like

"What happens if you get pregnant, when you're still a student?"
                "You have to stop going to school."
"And then what?"
                "No university."
"What happens if you can't do math, because you never learned?"
                "People will cheat you at the market."
"What happens if you don't understand science, because you never learned?"
                "You can't make things grow in your garden."
etc

Then we talked about what to do, if your significant other doesn't want to use a condom.

"But they're not comfortable!"
               "They're more comfortable than having a baby!"
"But they're so expensive!"
               "They're less expensive than a baby!"
"Don't you trust me?"
              "I do, but I want to protect you. What if I'm sick?"
"I'm going to leave you."
              (my personal favorite) "Then go away!"

And then we did some empowering talk - "It's my choice! It's my body! It's my health!"

When we finally got down to practicing putting on the condoms, we had everyone repeat how to do every step and when someone did it right, we all said, "No AIDS, no baby!" and then did the education clap (You do that whenever someone does a good job or to get kids attention).

It was honestly the most exciting thing that I have done, since I got to Cameroon. I felt like it's something that will actually make a difference. Even if one girl (or boy) doesn't get pregnant before they want to, then it's a success.

Where I'm going in the East, teen pregnancy is a really big problem and I'm looking forward to helping people learn to protect themselves and helping the girls realize that they have the power to say no or that they want to use a condom. It was just an amazing experience and it makes all the long hours of training totally worth it.

And God called down a plague onto Egypt....

I have not been enslaving Israelites nor am I in Egypt, but the ant swarm that happened in my bedroom was Biblical.

Yesterday afternoon it was rainy and gross out, so instead of battling the weather to go to the bar, I stayed in and read my book, the Fall of Giants by Ken Follett. It was really really good! Read it today!

I spent a lovely, lazy afternoon in my bed reading and got up around 8:00 ready for some dinner. My little cousin and I set the table and put the food out and tucked in. About halfway through dinner, I was thirsty, so I went to my bedroom to get a bottle of water.

What I saw when I turned on the light was nightmare material. There were ants all over one of my bedroom walls. They were all over my hanging clothes, both of my hats, all of my books, my desk, my toiletries...and the list goes on. There were so many that I could actually hear them.

Has anyone else seen The Covenant? (It's a terrible supernatural teen movie about man-witches that I thoroughly enjoyed watching in high school, because those man-witches were cutie pies.) Anyway, there's this nightmare scene where the main lady wakes up because she feels something on her legs and when she flips up her covers, SHE IS COVERED IN SPIDERS. They are on the ceiling and the floor and all over her roommate.

It's pretty yucky. And exactly how I felt last night. I just stood there. I stood there so long that my host cousin came to see what was the matter.

We sprayed them with insecticide and I felt better, but like a bad hippie.

Cultural Note: Apparently the ants here are not as evil as fire ants and protect against snakes. Also, all insects were thought to be people's ancestors, so you were not allowed to kill them.

Changing Standards of Beauty

In the good old US of A, I think we can agree that at the very minimum, people have to be clean and smell ok and have clean clothes on. And then, for those who hold potential paramours to a higher standard, they'd say that their potential partner should be well-groomed, including having shaved recently and wearing matching, pressed clothes with good accessories and shoes.

This doesn't really take into account things that just happen, because "this is Africa," as Shakira once so poignantly sang. Here only the most high maintenance of men shave their faces twice a week and only the most high maintenance of women shave their legs once a week. Here when your hair is washed, people exclaim over it and demand if you got a haircut or if you did something different. You answer with a smirk, "I washed it." And the exclaiming continues....

We call this phenomenon "Peace Corps goggles."

Here in Bafia my daily wardrobe consists of a dress or a skirt/shirt combo paired with the ever fashionable leggings/socks and sandals look beloved of all German tourists the world over. I then wear my classy sports watch, which beeps at every hour to let me know that I still have many hours to go before I can get out of training.

I have also learned a lot about what Cameroonians find attractive. My host mother is constantly deploring the fact that I've lost weight since I've been here. She says that people will think that she's not feeding me or worse - that she's a bad cook. The night before last she told me that she wanted to make me "bien graisse," which means well-fattened; you would use the phrase for an animal that you wanted to eat. I've also heard that Cameroonians like women "who are more substantial" or "qui a des poids" (have some weight).

Also, strangely enough I think Cameroon may be the only country where big feet are preferred. I was talking to my host aunt and she said that she was jealous of my big feet.

It takes all kinds.

First Impressions

I know I've been saying for a couple posts that I would put up my first impressions of Cameroon, but I keep on forgetting or coming up with more exciting things to say!

En route to Cameroon, I was constantly cold (thin-blooded Floridian) and when I finally stepped off the plane in Cameroon 6 days late, I was finally warm. I took off my 5lb sweater and let my skin soak up the humidity.

I made my way to Passport Control, clutching my diplomatic passport and attempted to make my way to the right booth. The diplomatic line was closed, so I was stuck at the end of the line marked Autres Passeports/Others Passports (not a typo on my part).

I got my bags with the help of my Program Manager and a couple of PCVs (Peace Corps Volunteers. By the way, this organization uses entirely too many acronyms). We hopped into the official Range Rover and left the airport, passing people holding things up for sale. Being from Florida, the land of Disney, my natural assumption was that these must be last-minute souvenirs for tourists.

Boy, was I ever wrong. They were holding up boa constrictors, still filled with meat. They were not souvenirs; they were for welcome home dinners.

In Yaounde, I saw people wearing pagne (think traditional African clothes) of all styles and colors, women balancing plates of bananas, avocadoes, mangoes, pineapples and peanuts on their heads, and houseplants from the US that were 2 stories high.

My first meals reminded me of the kebabs from Metz- sauce blanche and everything!

My second day I was driven from Yaounde to Bafia (where I am now) and I would love to tell you a tall tale about a herd of elephants causing a traffic jam, but I'm afraid the most exciting wildlife I saw were some bright yellow birds that are actually the weaver birds from the Disney Channel original movie "The Color of Friendship." I almost peed my pants in excitement, when someone pointed out their nests in the tree that shades our table at the bar.

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General update: You know how in my last post I talked about the moutemoutes and how they love me so much and that the bugspray is only like piment (the local hot sauce) for them? Well, those suckers not only made my legs look like something off National Geographic and my toenail polish look truly absurd, ....

They gave me a staph infection. Now I'm on two different antibiotics and I think that I'm going to have to be on a third for another infection that's brewing. Vie de merde. BUT I do know how to make yogurt and it doesn't need to be refrigerated, so there we go! Evidently, staph infections are pretty common here, but they're checking up on me all the time. My hope is that I am getting through all my medical nonsense here, so I won't have to deal with any of it later.

Man's Best Friend

You may think that this is going to be a discussion of the differences in the treatment of animals between the States and Cameroon, but you would be wrong.

This is about critters.

I have recently been going through this "everything deserves to live and has a place in the CIRCLE OF LIFE AND IT MOVES US ALL" phase. I can tell you now that it's over. Maybe it's that it doesn't really work in Africa.

Right now, my skin is a battlefield. Picture WWI. Mustard gas. Barbed wire. Pus. Blood. The dead and dying. (I may be taking this a little far, when I don't have my camera to upload the poorly lit and fuzzily frightening picture I took of my ankle last night)

There are these things called moute-moutes and they might look like slightly-bigger gnats, but they are not. Darwin would love them. They eat everything - bananas, pineapples and especially me. When they bite you, it stings a little and you look down and there's a spot of blood on your ankle, hand, elbow, foot, whatever. Then you know that you have a giant raised red itchy bug bite with a liquid filled raised head that sometimes gets bigger than a pencil eraser.

There are also of course mosquitos and ants.

And then yesterday, I found out about blister beetles. This is not something I pulled from Harry Potter. They are real. They land on you and inject ACID into your skin, which then peels up like you have been BURNED BY ACID, because you have. I think I might have gotten one.

Right now, there's a mark a little smaller than a deck of cards on my leg that is a really angry red color and is fevery and now my ankle is swelling...just after I got over have swollen ankles and feet from the heat.

Also, last night went to the bathroom. Dropped trou and got ready to do my business and a massive roach raced between my legs to hang out on the doorway, so I was effectively trapped.

I can deal with spiders. I can deal with moutemoutes. I can even deal with blister beetles, but there is something about a roach that I just cannot deal with. I attempted to kill it using my heavy-duty hiking boots, but pas de chance (no luck); it disappeared into the night.

(More happy things to follow. I'll try to get a picture of me with a million bananas soon)

Tu as bien dormi?

So in Cameroon, there is a particular order that you do all your greetings in. It starts out with "Hello. How are you?" ("Bonjour, ca va?" in the morning or "Bonsoir, ca va?") any time after noon. Then they ask you if you slept well.

My answer on Tuesday morning was "Pas trop!" (Not so much!)

So Monday night, I popped a couple of benadryl to try to get my sleep schedule on Cameroon time, because as my host mother said, "my clock is still in the US." It seemed to be effective...until around 3am, when I woke up with a start, because something was rustling on my Poptarts wrapper.

Now, I don't know about you, but I am pretty paranoid, when it comes to potential critters in my sleeping space. I not-so-stealthily got up and turned on the light. I approached the desk wtih caution. I saw something brownish-grey shoot across the room! Cue adrenaline rush. I spent the next half hour tidying my room and hunting the mouse/frog/boogeyman with varying degrees of success (My room got tidy. The Creature remained at large).

After another half hour of counting sheep, I was finally settling down to my midsummer's nap, when something FELL ON ME inside my mosquito net. It may have been the Creature. It may have been a cafar (a cockroach). It may have been a bobby pin...

The world may never know.

(PS First impressions of Cameroon/Bafia/Yaounde/etc coming soon!)

"Better late and with all your fingers"

The saga of the stitches continues!

Unlike the other members of my cohort, I am not currently taxiing down the runway in New York en route to Brussels. I am also not in Philadelphia, weeping because I missed the bus or in New York, wailing having missed the plane, because I wanted one last bagel.

I have been medevac'ed before I've even left. What does 'medevac' mean? Thank you for asking! For the most part, when a PCV (Peace Corps Volunteer...or in my case PCT [Peace Corps Trainee]) has a health issue, they are treated in their host country. On occasion though, the staff in country doesn't have the equipment or training necessary for something strange or drastic, in which case they send you back to the United States for treatment.

In my case, I obviously hadn't left yet and my stitches aren't terrible exotic (despite the Muppets bandaids), but they decided to keep me in the United States. They didn't want to potentially go to the expense of flying me all the way there and then having to turn around and ship me right back. Also, according to my dad, once infection sets in in your finger(s), you are in a bad place. It's a bummer that I'm not leaving with everyone else, but as they say, "Better late and with all your fingers."

I'll be taking my time here to visit some grad schools, maybe do the rest of the Smithsonian museums, and definitely watch an unhealthy amount of Grey's Anatomy.

The Most Dangerous Game

For those of you thinking that I will now start to describe how I started hunting shipwrecked humans on my private island or a particularly intense game of Monopoly, I'm sorry to disappoint.

I'm talking about the waiting game. These past couple weeks have been a series of highs and lows. It was lovely to get to see almost everyone I hold dear, but outside of that, all the packing and the buying, buying, buying was hellacious.

On Friday morning, the tension came to a head. I woke up at 7:15 am to the dulcet tones of my neighbor's carpool blaring their horn at which point I rolled over, which my dog, Faye, took as a cue to come over and harass me. I gave in after a few minutes of cussing and groaning. I got up, did my business, brushed my teeth and got dressed. While I let Faye out, I took out some more recycling from the night before and watered my newly planted hydrangeas. We both went inside and she had some breakfast. I decided I wasn't hungry yet and felt productive.

I started tidying up my apartment - got the dirty dishes into the sink, hung up damp towels, got the laundry in a pile to to be transferred to the basket (once the clean clothes were put away), etc. Then I decided that I should start going through my Peace Corps goodies my mother got me to get some of the packaging gone. I consolidated a few boxes of pills (mostly Immodium, so I can go from shitting my pants to not at all) and was feeling pretty good.

Then I moved on to the kitchen stuff. Took a tag off a spatula and another off some silicone hot pads (gifts for the host family).

Then I decided to remove the packaging from the knives. We all know where this is going and the tension is building. The stupid teenager decided to get something from the basement in the horror movie despite the flickering bulb and the "weird" smell. Knife number one was a cinch. Knife number two was a little trickier. I held the handle in my left hand and the scissors in my right. Using only dull pink scissors and my razor sharp wit, I would open that knife!

Why, no! Those are not stylish rings!

All of a sudden, the knife cover disappears and blood droplets are falling from the air. Actually they are falling from my hand! AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH! Pressure on the wound! (Thank god for Girl Scouts)

I seize a towel from my living room floor that was somehow miraculously missed in my tidying frenzy. I think: I need to go to the ER stat! I find my keys. I go outside. I attempt to lock the door. Then, I remember that I'll need my ID to sign in. I go inside and find my purse, which I weirdly wear around my neck.

It occurs to me suddenly that I am a well-documented hypochondriac. How embarrassing would it be for me to go to the ER to get stitches, when all I really need is a couple of Muppets bandaids? I lift the towel. Nope! Definitely need to go to the ER.

After a million point turn, I go to the hospital, where after I confirm that I have not been attacked and that my fingers are definitely still attached (twice), I receive 8 shots of lidocaine and 16 stitches (4 per finger).

Learning to eat politely, brush my teeth and dress myself with my left hand have been an experience so far, but I can say that I put on a real bra and cut up ravioli, so I consider myself a success as a human.

T minus 22 days

Yes, it's another blog! The reason for it?

I AM DOING THE PEACE CORPS.

Sorry about the yelling, but it is some pretty exciting stuff! I started applying fall of 2011 on one of the rare sunny days in Metz after getting on facebook and reading about various friends (Peace Corps Volunteers=PCVs) and their assorted bowel problems in Mali, Burkina Faso and Uganda. I was inspired! I too wanted to have stomach problems in exotic locations!

After many moons and issues including translating the fingerprinting cards for the guy with the ink in France and running out of minutes on my cell for my interview, I got an invitation to go to Eastern Europe. I was ecstatic that I got in, but in the back of my head, all I could think was "Russian winter." If Napoleon couldn't handle it, I was pretty sure I was not up for it, but started researching Vitamin D lamps and what kind of outlets the former Soviet bloc uses.

Then one happy day in January 2013, I got a telephone call and an email asking me if I wanted to go to Cameroon in May. The answer was an emphatic, "Yes, please!" on the phone (You have to use that filter for professional settings).

Since then, I have quit my job as a nanny, moved to Jacksonville, bought a quadruplex, become an expert wall patcher, a mediocre painter, and a substitute teacher; and witnessed my first physical fight (it was dirty and involved nine-year-olds).

And the countdown begins....

I leave for Philadelphia on May 26th to do a little touristing and if there is enough time, perhaps reenact some of the more dramatic scenes from National Treasure. On the 29th, I have 'staging,' which is Peace Corps lingo for orientation/policies & procedures/don't get malaria or mugged. I leave the 30th from New York to go to Brussels and then onward to Yaounde. I'm very excited, but am definitely starting to freak out a little. My method for dealing with the madness? Mostly by cuddling my dog and flirting with the very attractive, bearded lanky man attempting to sell me a $350 backpack - the Cadillac of hiking backpacks, he says. Tomorrow, I intend to return and see if it comes with a sunroof, stereo and built-in GPS. Then we'll talk.

Other news from 'sunny Florida,' I am currently being serenaded by so many frogs and toads that they are drowning out the car sounds outside (extra impressive considering we have had almost 2'/about 50cm of rain here in the past week) My house is doing fine, but all 4 of the a/c units are in danger of being under water, my scooter had to be moved and the pond at my parents' farm overflowed its banks and is inside the barn, which is the highest point on the property. Oh, Florida.

At least I'll be prepared for the rainy season in Cameroon?