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.