Now accepting visitors!

I would love to have some visitors! Here are a few articles to pump you up!

A recent terrible CNN article - Don't read this wildly inaccurate article that only talks about two cities. Go down to the comments section and read the comment by Jack for a better picture of the country.

A flowery Washington Post article - Read this one, especially if you are studying for the SAT or the GRE and need to brush up on vocab. Perhaps the writer had a stack of flash cards next to the computer? The comments are also a bit more intelligent.

But really, come for a visit!

I promise this face and home-made key lime pie on arrival.

The food is great and plentiful. If you love mayonnaise, you will love this country! Mayonnaise sandwiches, mayo on your avocado salad, mayo on your spaghetti omelette! That brings me to another local delicacy - the spaghetti omelette. This dish will tempt even the most delicate palate with the crunch of spaghetti, the heat of the piment, the spiciness of the red onion.

A trip to Bertoua guarantees you the best poisson braise in country with gingery condiment vert. Ndole (a type of greens) is available all over and is generally served with plantains or manioc (a.k.a. cassava or yucca). The traditional dish of the anglophone regions is fufu-corn and djama-djama (more greens with something that always reminds me of more solid grits). The goal of every Cameroonian 'mama' is to get you 'bien gros' or nicely fat.

The people are generally friendly and very welcoming to tourists. One of the most common questions I get here is whether or not I like it. The next one is how do I like the food, followed by a quiz of what kind of Cameroonian food I've tried. You could even say that the people here are so welcoming that they don't want you to leave, hence all the marriage proposals.

Travel is getting easier within the country with new roads connecting the capital cities; I'm told that two years ago, it took more than 12 hours to get from Yaounde to Bertoua. Now it takes six. Despite how expensive flights are, once you arrive, the living is inexpensive. It costs me $8 to get from the capital to my town and $1.25 to get from Dimako to Bertoua. An average breakfast of beans, beignets and bouilli costs about $0.50. You would be hard-pressed to put away a breakfast that costs more than a dollar.

In spite of the dearth of pictures, it's also beautiful here. Every road is lined by eight-foot-tall "daisies," giant trees, tiny villages and goats galore.

The wildlife is supposed to be unparalleled. Just in the East, we have the Lobeke Preserve and the Dja Preserve, a UNESCO World Heritage site. Another wildlife possibility here is goat watching, as many a Peace Corps Volunteer will tell you. I recently had an integration success that just warmed the cockles of my heart; while many people can't pronounce my first name, the goats have clearly  been practicing their English pronunciaton every night. When I leave the house, I get greeted by name, "Beeeeeeeeeeeeeethh!! Beeeeeeeettthhhhh!!!!"

As a former French colony, Cameroonians enjoy exceptional vacation policies. I will have my summer break from the end of May to the beginning of September and get special time off to take around visitors, who can spread the word of Cameroon back home.