No Excuses

Wow, I've gotten really bad at this. Everyone told me it'd happen. I'd stop writing, updating. Life would become familiar here and suddenly writing about every little thing wouldn't seem so appealing. I guess in a way that's true. I do feel very familiar with life here these days. Things are normal now which I never even knew existed a year ago. I eat entire meals made of things that would've been thrown out at home. I feel awkward riding alone in the back of a cab. I deal with life and death almost everyday.

Speaking of which, a few days ago I woke to the sound of a dozen old women outside my window wailing, really wailing, and moaning and singing (sort of). Turns out one of the family's (the people who own my compound) daughters, a wife and mother, died over the night in Douala. The whole village was slowly turning out to pay their respects and my house has been ground zero. Since then the whole place has been a buzz with activity; mamas preparing obscene amounts of food, children offering to do chores, and plenty of grieving. It's been a bit trying, but immensely interesting to see the different way people handle this sort of thing here. I know that if my daughter had just died I wouldn't necessarily want to be surrounded by the whole village chanting and wailing about my loss. But it just seems to have been so automatic. People react here, to everything, in such an instinctual, deliberate manner. They are still working on getting the corpse up from Douala, but when they do, there are sure to be some serious festivities.

It's been so long since I posted, so many things have happened. I guess life just kind of sneaks up on you here. You think things move at this lethargic pace, but then you turn around and find that months have gone by and everything has changed. Work is going about as well as I could hope by now. I'm mainly focusing on two big development projects and finding funding for them. One is dedicated to developing income generating activities for my farmer's union to give them some level of self-sustainability. The other has me seriously expanding the medicinal plant garden project at the village hospital which the previous volunteer began.

I finally got a taste of that vacation I've been needing so badly. After the latest steering committee meeting in Yaounde, a few of us decided to join the group of volunteers who were celebrating their eminent departure in Dec at the beach in Kribi. I was excited to go, but had no idea how cathartic it'd be to swim in the ocean, eat amazing seafood, and just get out of my head for a bit. I was skeptical that the place would live up to the hype it gets from volunteers, but Kribi proved to exceed even this beach-snob's lofty expectations. It wasn't amazing or anything, but still, a really nice beach, in Cameroon. The same Cameroon where people burn trash in the middle of town and only a handful of roads are paved. It was as good as paradise for two days.

You know, it felt good to write again. Maybe this thing isn't dead yet. Still, doubt anyone's still checking it. If you are, be sure to check out new pictures under the links on the right. Until next time...?

Connected

Yesterday I welcomed a new addition into the household, internet! So I guess I have no excuse anymore for slacking off on this blog. It's pretty slow, and expensive, but I think it'll be worth it. It may even mean I can Skype from home, which'd be nice.

The new volunteers were up here just last week visiting their newly assigned posts. I got to meet everyone coming to the Northwest and I can't complain. Everyone seems great and I am even getting a postmate, Jacqueline, an older woman who will be teaching at the local university. The dynamic is sure to change a lot with all the new personalities, but I wouldn't mind a little change. It's funny, I feel like a senior (well sophomore I guess) anticipating the new fish.

On Monday, the US Ambassador was actually honored at the palace in my village. It's sort of born out of strange circumstances, but basically she is an honorary "Mother of the Fon (Chief)" in Bambui. Essentially her driver is from my village and over her years here she ended up visiting and Cameroonians being what they are went nuts and handed her the key to the village. She plays a long pretty well though, and since her service is closing soon they decided to throw a big party. Suddenly I was a celebrity too and was invited to join the Ambassador's party. I was even honored with a new country bag, which took the place of the tattered one I'm known to wear around town, much to the delight of the crowd.

Work is still crawling along, though I can't say it's not my fault. It's been difficult to get motivated after all the bumps I've hit recently. I have so many projects just up in the air right now and I'm not really sure where to focus. I've told myself I just need a vacation, but that probably means a vacation within Cameroon, when what I really need is a walk down the lakefront and a slice of deep dish. Guess I'll just have to settle for a scuzy beach and some grilled fish.

Oh and new pictures should be up soon, so stay tuned.

I can't seem to catch a break. I found myself in Yaounde this week because over the weekend I managed, thanks to a muddy ditch, the dark, and my ever-encouraging counterpart, to reinjure my shoulder, dislocating it again. Though it hurt just as bad that night as it had the first two times, I don't think it was a full dislocation because it's already feeling better. The last time this happened it took me at least a month to get back the range of motion I have now. So there's some hope in that. The biggest thing I wanted to gain from coming to the capital to get checked out was the reassurance that there is some sort of long-term solution. The more often it happens, the more likely it is to occur again, and when it means losing the use of my arm for at least 2 months, it's nice to hear that there are options. The orthopedic I saw assured me that there are surgical options, in the US. So I have a decision to make. Live with the problem for the next year and a half and then get the procedure done once I get home, or get medically evacuated home or to South Africa and get it taken care of now. The latter option however would likely mean a lengthy rehabilitation period which would put me in serious risk of exceeding the Peace Corps's policy that volunteers who are outside of country for more than 45 days are separated from the program. The benefits to waiting really outweigh the appeal of instant gratification especially considering that because the injury happened during my service, I'll be completely covered for all costs even after I'm out of here.

The World Cup ended up being a major source of disappointment for me and of course the whole of Cameroon as well. When Cameroon was mathematically eliminated you could feel the shift from anxious exuberation to apathetic disinterest across the whole country. It was really unfortunate because I was enjoying being part of the whole celebration. That's really what it was. EVERYONE was watching the matches and things just shut down when Cameroon played. It was an experience you wouldn't have found anywhere in the US, probably despite how far we may have gone. Even the venues were something to remember; like watching the US-England match out in the bush, in a broken down shack of a bar, huddled around a 15" screen powered by a gas generator. And I can't remember ever being so affected by a game as when we went out to Ghana. It was a heartbreaking, but unforgettable night. There is still some support for Ghana as the typical 'Africa United' mentality holds strong, but I was really hoping to see one of my homes playing through to the end.

All has not been sob stories though. A few weeks ago I hosted 11 other Agro volunteers for a few days for a meeting and mushroom workshop. I think it was a big success and of course we all relished the chance to hangout. But with 12 people in the house for 4 days it wasn't too hard to say goodbye. My program director, Tiki, also made his way to Bambui last week as part of a site tour of all the Agros to visit and assess our work. It went really well even if I didn't feel I had a lot of tangible progress to show off. I've also learned that I'm getting a post-mate from this new batch of volunteers as they are putting an education volunteer in Bambili, my sister village, only about 8 minutes from my house. Supposedly she's an older woman who's tremendously qualified and who reportedly loves to cook, so everybody wins. Then in December, they are putting a health volunteer in another neighboring village, about 15 minutes away, so I'm going to be up to my neck in Americans.

Finally, a big thanks to Mom and Dad, and dear friend Kelly who all were responsible in getting me a brand new computer, camera, and raincoat! I'm especially in love with the camera. Expect pics to make a big come back soon.

Since we last spoke...

This time I think I have a pretty good excuse for falling off the face of the earth. On Monday night, 12 friends and I were mugged just outside the PC house in Bamenda. I don't want to get into too many details here, but if you're interested in what happened, drop me a line. I'm fine, as is everyone else, but I lost A LOT of stuff. Laptop, camera, cellphone (again), flash drive, TNF rain jacket, backpack, lots of other clothes, and I was unfortunate to be bringing my stereo back from another volunteer's house so I lost that too. It's all stuff that can be replaced, but it really hurts that I lost all my work since it was only backed up on the flash drive, not to mention all my music. Luckily I still have my Zune so I can listen to most of what I had.

This has been the definition of bad timing too. I have so much work coming up in the next few weeks. It's already been a frustrating few days trying to get back to normal, but I've had some spells of good luck, like getting an old phone for free from a leaving volunteer. There were so many things I would have rather been writing about right now. Hopefully I can get all of this taken care of and get back to focusing on work.

The other day Austin and I were in a cab in Bamenda. I was sharing the front seat with a Cameroonian (the breakdown for a full cab is 4 in the back and 3 or 4 in the front, the 4th having the driver sit on their lap) and the driver decides he can't shift easily so he moves our seat back. As he does that a guy in the back starts complaining about his leg being squashed. So there's all sorts of confusion as we're hurtling down the street trying to shift the seat back up but it won't latch. I'm pretty distracted at this point so I never even noticed that either the guy sitting next to me or the on in the back somehow slid my phone out of my pocket. There's still so much fuss about the seat that the driver just pulls over and tells Austin and I to get another taxi. The cab leaves us on the curb and drives away and Austin mentions that the whole situation reminded him of the time he had his wallet stolen. So I check my pocket and what do you know, no phone. Looking back it's like all 3 guys had to be working together or something. It was like some minor problem erupted into mass-confusion just to create a distraction and give the driver reason to drop us off before I'd have time to realize I was robbed. I wasn't too upset, this is Cameroon after all, but losing my phone meant losing all my numbers, which has been particularly frustrating because I'm in the middle of putting together about a dozen meetings/sessions. I went to the cell company's shop in town and was able to get them to reassign my old number to a new SIM card and luckily the phone I brought from the States, the one they told me in Yaounde wouldn't work here, does in fact work. So I didn't have to spend anything to get the problem fixed, but now I've got the task of recollecting all my numbers to look forward to. Still it could have been worse.

Labor Day

May 1st was the Cameroonian Labor Day and yours truly was invited by NOWEFOR to march, along with the other volunteers Austin and Carl, in the Bamenda parade. Only with typical Pidgin/Special English creative license, they call it a 'march pass'. Carl was in Yaounde, but Austin and I were there. And we were there at 8:30 when we were told to arrive. You'd think we'd have figured it out by now. People didn't even show up at NOWEFOR's office until about 9:30. Finally we were all shuffled into the back of a farm-to-market truck and made our way to Commercial Avenue (the main drag in downtown Bamenda). Countless groups, NGOs, churches, and the like were amassing in the street. I didn't see one person who looked like they were coordinating the thing so I guess I should be thankful that it only took another 2 hours standing in the sun before we started to march. Apparently we were waiting on the governor and other officials to arrive, which is a pretty typical display of power here. Remind everyone that they are on your time. It wasn't so bad though. My friend Kelly's group was right behind ours and a VSO that Austin knew hung out as well and we all vented together. Still, all that waiting for about 5 minutes of marching and a flyby of all the officials sitting under their cool canopy. I also got to meet Dave, a Canadian VSO who's working with NOWEFOR now. He and his wife are here together, I'd say they are in their early 60s, and Dave seems like he will be a really good contact to have. Especially since I've been wanted to improve the relationship between us and NOWEFOR (i.e. have one).

That's the most interesting thing that's happened this week. I've been getting busier and busier which is good. Seems like some projects might actually start taking shape soon, provided it starts raining...

Ok, I'm getting pretty bad at this aren't I? Everyone told me this would happen too. Eventually I'd update less often, take less pictures, and just generally become more removed from the States. Well they were right. I guess it's the result of becoming integrated into life here; moving further from the role of a visitor and closer to that of a resident. Well, I think I'm pretty much there. Bambui now feels like home and it's getting harder to relate to things happening back in the US. I mean, my sister is graduating very soon (congrats Sara!), and I really wish I was there, but to me, it's like that's happening in some other universe. I certainly don't like that feeling, but it's made me appreciate the things I once took for granted that much more.

I've been away from Bambui for 2 weeks. IST was pretty uneventful, a lot of sessions, some good, some bad, and a lot of socializing. It was good to see everyone again, though I realized that week that I'm not 21 anymore and eating bad, drinking too much, and hardly sleeping just isn't the health regimen it used to be. Foumban was an interesting place, sort of a tourist town with an impressive palace and museum, and lots of artisan shops. Our hotel was really nice as well, though we were all feeling pretty mutinous when the "piscine" they advertised on the sign and the hotel cars turned out to be a pipe dream.

After that first week, I made my way with a few others to Yaounde. I was headed there as a new member of the Agro Steering Committee which essentially serves to represent the volunteers in the decision making and directing of the program. The meetings went well and there were a lot of people coming through the capital so the week was a lot of fun, but good god, I spent a lot of money. It's hard to wrap your head around how much the cost of living is inflated in the city here. Consider I usually spend about 35 cents on a meal in my village. The same plate in Yaounde is going to cost you 4 dollars! And that's for villageois food. If you want to appreciate the exotic options Yaounde offers, you're going to do like we did one night and drop $40, each! That was probably a mistake, but when's the next time I'm going to get to have osso bucco and a nice Côtes du Rhône?

So yeah, went a little indulgent in the capital, but now I'm back in Bambui and I can make up the damage with some frugal village living. One thing I did take away from IST was inspiration for projects and collaborations. I think there's been to much playtime as it is; the honeymoon is over and it's time to get down to business. So now I'm excited about some of the work I want to undertake and seeing what other volunteers are accomplishing at their posts, makes things that seemed impossible a few weeks ago look very attainable.

Though all this "happy to be back" business was nearly stifled when, within minutes of arriving home, I was hit with this list of misfortunes:

-Walked up on my porch to find shards of wood strewn about and see that 'something' had gone nuts and chewed off one of the arms of my bench and shredded my clotheline

-The olive oil I had bought and put in my backpack had come open and marinated my laptop for the whole 8 hour ride from Yaounde to Bamenda (somehow it still works)

-Went to charge my phone and realized another volunteer had taken my charger

-Found that someone, probably a porter at the travel agency, stole my binoculars out of my bag

-The souvenir I bought in Foumban was broken

-Put on my brand new replacement sandals only to have them break

-Went to make some pasta and the pot, a metal pot, split down the side when I put it on the heat

-And then to top it all off, by the time I needed to use the restroom, I discovered I was out of tp, well after all the shops had closed

Really though I was so tired from the traveling, hardly any of this phased me. In the end I'm looking forward to the next few months when I can stay put for a bit and get some real work done. And I'll try to be better about writing, though no promises. :)

So tomorrow's the first day of IST (In-Service Training) and I'm spending the night in Bamenda so I can get an early start on travel in the morning. Looking forward to seeing my group again, but of course as soon as I pulled up in Bamenda I started to feel sick. Feels like a fever and headache coming on, so should make for a fun week.

Dinner turned out great and the rest of the evening surpassed anyone's expectations. I made cajun/southern food, blackened chicken, dirty rice, fried okra, green beans, watermelon, not to bad for my first go round. And definitely one of the most fun nights I've had yet. I think when you plan something to be low-key, it's most likely to turn into, well this...

I found a great place I can go and just get away from things. Up the mountains from Bambui there are some really interesting rock formations and I took the other day to go check them out. But I made the mistake of riding my bike and only got about halfway before I was completely drained and had to walk the rest of the way. The whole ride is straight uphill, so much so, on the way back I didn't have to peddle once. But the place is gorgeous and the views fantastic.

Easter came and went without much fuss, mostly because I hid in my house the whole day. I just assumed given how drawn-out and pointless normal church services are here, Easter Sunday has got to be like the finale of American Idol.

Anyway, here's hoping I'm not sick all week. Take care all

The Bubble

A little while ago I met a fellow American, and fellow transplant Chicagoan named Jarred. He's here working for the Christian linguistics organization called SIL and he lives with some relatives of Jibo's family way out in the hills past my village. Apparently when he comes into Bamenda he stays with an American family also working with SIL. The Jacksons are an interesting bunch; Chris and his wife have 2 daughters, and adopted Cameroonian daughter, another girl from the States visiting, and a female tutor, so it's estrogen overload. Both Jarred and Chris seemed pretty happy to have me there to balance things out and it didn't hurt that I brought a bunch of my movies for them; a nice alternative to the constant stream of Gilmore Girls that's usually playing in the background. Their house is really nice and staying there was like taking a small step back toward the US. I had enchiladas and a bagel and a waffle in the morning. They even have a Wii! So needless to say I'll be returning whenever I need my American fix.

The rains still haven't come back after that brief appearance earlier this month and now the planting season's in limbo. People in village are confused and even getting a little worried. Normally we'd be well into the rainy season by now. I've been getting small tastes of how much work there is to come though. I broke ground on both the medicinal garden at the hospital (at 5:30 in the morning, ugh) and my vegetable garden in the backyard, but in both cases, I'm holding off on actually planting since I'd have to manually water everything.

IST (in-service training) is also coming up in a couple weeks. It'll be nice to see everyone again. Usually ISTs happen in Kribi, the beach destination in Cameroon, but since we're Agros, I guess we need to be somewhere where we can get hands on agricultural training which means we, and the health kids haha, have to go to land-locked Foumban in the West Region. Still it's supposed to be an interesting place with a lot of cultural sites, but it's hard not to feel jipped. Anyway, we'll probably head to Limbe, the other beach, after to celebrate.

Tonight is dinner at my place, assisted by all the great food my mom just sent, so I've got to get to the market and start prepping. I feel like I'm really doing this blog a disfavor since I've got so many good stories I haven't even shared yet, but like my mom said, I'm "doing" and not "reporting" so I guess you'll just have to deal with it :)

Small time

The Fog

Sorry for the long hiatus. The internet has been pretty inconsistent recently. We're convinced it has something to do with the mystery dust that's clouded Cameroon and it seems most of West Africa. No one's really sure what's going on, but of course the speculations and conspiracies are running rampant. One day this gray haze just showed up and blanketed everything in a layer of ashy dust. And it hasn't gone away. The sky is just solid gray. Pretty weird, but I'm willing to bet it's not skin cancer-causing acid rain clouds like the homemade handouts tell me.

I don't have much time to write now, but I felt like I had to update with something. I'll write again soon, but in the meantime here's me conquering a natural bridge I discovered.

So I'm willing to bet that one of my proposed projects is something that's never been done in Peace Corps Cameroon before, maybe not even the entire organization. I little while ago I met a guy who is leading a group that organizes youth events that tend to focus on entertainment; things like singing competitions, art classes, and as I found out, movie-making. I've been looking for opportunities to work with youth (when they say youth here it generally means 14-30) so I decided to meet the guy at his office and discuss some ideas. As soon as I mentioned that I had attended film school and had been working in the industry for the past 4 years, he just about lost it. I actually had the idea a while ago, when Brian, my predecessor, told me he had been in a few local productions, but now it seemed like there was a legitimate way for me to start a film club. The idea is that I can serve as a sort of technical advisor to the group, helping them mostly with improving their filmmaking skills. I've already screened a couple of the films they've made and the are definitely suffering from the same problems all movies here seem to suffer from. Bad, inconsistent audio, lazy cinematography and confusing, underutilized editing. The acting and the stories are definitely in need of help too, but I'm hesitant to get involved in those aspects, as to me, the style of the acting and subject matter of the narrative are what make the filmmaking style unique to its origins. Most movies you'd see here are made in Nigeria. Nigeria is actually the third largest film market in the world behind Hollywood and Bollywood (hence it being dubbed Nollywood). Anyway, I'm confident saying that all of them are family dramas, usually dealing with forbidden love, the clash of tradition and modernism, and always with a healthy dose of witchcraft thrown in for good measure. It's frustrating because there are a wealth of interesting stories to tell here that don't involve a family arguing in a living room for 2 hours until the ghosts of the ancestors show up and kill everyone, but no one seems interested in telling them. Like most things in Cameroon, something is done one way and only that way, why ask questions? Anyway, I'm thinking I'll even be holding some informal classes on filmmaking basics like shot compostion, screenwriting and storyboarding, and editing.

So it seems I actually will be able to put my film degree to some use as an agroforestry volunteer. Another pet project that might do just that as well is something the Training Officer actually suggested to me. I say suggested, but really he volunteered me into the position of making a training video during stage. That idea quickly fell apart though since they really didn't have any idea of what they wanted. But I think it would really be great to have some sort of orientation video to put on the PC Cameroon website for invitees so that they would have a better idea what to expect, bring, etc. So I'm going to propose the idea next month when we have In-service Training and we'll see what happens. At the very least it'd give me a good excuse to travel some more and even visit the training of the next group of invites.

Again I waited way too long between posts and I'm stuck with a whole host of stuff to write about. I shouldn't even try to do the last couple weeks justice because they've been some of the most memorable (for better and worse) I've had here. But I'll give you a run down anyway. Since we last spoke I've been really busy, both with work and socializing. Over the Valentine's Day weekend I traveled down to the West Province near Bafoussam with Jibo for the funeral of my good friend Jacky's grandfather. Funeral's not really the right word though as the guy died 6 years ago. That's generally the way it works here. The surviving family will wait to raise enough cash to throw a huge party that's more aptly dubbed a death celebration. From the pics you can probably get a good idea of what's involved, lots of dancing, food, people in all sorts of colorful finery, and of course homemade blackpowder rifles being fired constantly. It was probably the third or fourth I've attended, but definitely the biggest.

Things just seem to line up here, serendipitously, since I learned that there was a PC party happening in Mbouda, a town on the way back from Bafoussam. So I had the bus drop me off there and joined the party. Mbouda's a relatively large town. I had the my first real Cameroonian night club experience there and it was surprisingly western. It was honestly a bit disorienting when I walked outside later that night and found myself in Africa.

After all the partying I was actually glad to have some real work to do last week. NOWEFOR (Northwest Farmers Org), my supervising organization, had it's big annual general meeting (or AGM, Cameroonians looove acronyms) in Bamenda. My excitement quickly waned though after only a few hours in and realizing I had two more full days of pointless bickering and mind-numbing rambling to look forward to. At least Austin and Carl were there, the two other volunteers from Texas. And I did have a small moment of glory here as well when I caught a flaw in a change the delegates were trying to make to their election process. They wanted to vote in board members before voting for the president ensuring any other executive candidate not elected would have had no chance of even being on the board. It was nice to see they actually had enough respect that they listened to my observation. I didn't realize the effect my speaking up had actually had until a few days later when the guys from my town found me and bought me a round for "making Bambui look intelligent".

Once the meetings mercifully came to an end I decided it was time for another vacation and traveled up to Kumbo, near where Patrick from my stage is posted, to visit some folks including two of Tess's friends visiting from the States. I had always been warned about the ride up there taking forever, but I didn't expect to be ambushed by a band of Juju and subsiquently have our car break down three times. Juju are sort of like voodoo dudes who tend to spend a lot of time cursing people at death celebrations, sort of. Anyway, they jumped out in front of the bus, danced around a bit, and demanded money from the driver to pass. I'm not willing to say anything they were doing had any effect since I'm pretty sure they were just trying to make a buck, but about 5 minutes down the road the driver had to pull over. Long story short here but I actually ended up fixing the car each of the 3 times. It was a simple fix but it was pretty amusing to hear all the other passengers joking about the "whiteman's magic touch". Once I finally made it, the weekend was really a lot of fun and highlighted by horseback riding and getting stuck in the rain! Real rain! It's been 3 months but the rains are finally starting to return which means I should actually start having some work to do. And I can get to planting my vegetable garden.
Ok, so that was a lot more than a 'run down'. What can I say? There are many more stories that fell by the wayside. I'm probably way too lazy for a blog, but I suppose anything's better than nothing, right?

Until next time

Super

Well I won't forget that one anytime soon. The party last week was supposed to be in lieu of any actual celebrating on my birthday. It was a lot of fun, Catherine made great food and an awesome cake (that's me taking a bite out it), and there was a good number of us there. So I definitely wasn't expecting to spend my real birthday watching the Super Bowl live at 3 in the morning in a club in Bamenda.

Some of us decided we would get together and try to stream the game online, but once we were here we decided to hunt down a better option. There's an upscale restaurant in town that told us they got ESPN on satellite so after confirming that ESPN had the international rights to the game we managed to get some more people to come in to town, ten of us in total, and started the long process of trying to stay up till the game started fueled by grilled fish and beer. Gabe managed to line up a cabbie who would take us to the restaurant and then pick us up later which was huge because the actual city is completely dead late at night. So at about midnight we pile in the cab and make for the restaurant. Well, turned out the ESPN was really ESPN Classic and we were sure we had just blown it, but they turned us on to a club down the street, so Gabe and I went to scout it out just in time to catch the coin toss. It was a surreal thing to be watching that game here on a big plasma screen and to interact with Cameroonians trying to figure out what in the world we were watching and why we were so excited. I'd never be this determined to watch a Super Bowl between the Saints and Colts in the states, but you tend to latch on to anything American here. I mean I have a Beyonce poster in my house for God's sake.

Looking back I'm actually surprised we made as long as we did, through the 3rd quarter, without any power failures, but then the whole building cut out. We're still not really sure what happened, since the rest of the street was still lit. Either the place was on a timer or the guy baby sitting us, since were were there long after closing time and everyone else had long left, decided it was past his bedtime and took some initiative. We were able to get home in time, about 4am, to catch the very end online but we missed all the action in the 4th and sadly I never got to see Manning embarrass himself. Still it's always a good night when the Colts lose, right Ash? ;) Needless to say I'm a little exhausted right now so I'm going to wrap this up. We're all still hanging out in the case waiting on the Medical staff to get here from Yaounde with the now mandatory swine flu vaccines. With no reported cases of the virus in Cameroon I'm not sure what the point is, but I've gotten something like 12 shots already, what's one more?

Birthday

On my way through Bamenda today toward Bali and Catherine's place where I was able to convince everyone to convert pizza night into a pre-birthday party for me. Should be fun, I know carrot cake is making a special guest appearance so really we can do no wrong.

I should let everyone know that I've fallen in love here. Or rather love jumped up on my shoulders and licked my face. His name is Tsoni (I think) and he's a German Shepard mix. Cameroonians are all terrified of dogs especially ones that look like this so when Tsoni found someone willing to play he wouldn't let me go. He belongs to a woman everyone calls Sister Heidi, until I steal him. Sister Heidi is a Swiss woman who has been in the country since the early 60s. Jibo's wife was recovering at her home and I stopped by to see the baby, Mohamed now (Han Solo a close second). It's really funny to see a little seventy year old white woman speaking pidgin. It reminded me of that scene from Airplane!. She's terribly nice and very welcoming, so I'm hoping she'll be my jive-talking granny while I'm here.

Apparently waiting for repairmen is a phenomenon that knows no cultural bounds. The fridge I bought last week lasted about two days before it died on me. I was able to convince the technician to come out and take a look at it rather than me having to drag it back to the shop. He decided the motor was bad and after much deliberation I ended up handing the guy 20,000F (about $40) to come back tomorrow with a new motor. Tomorrow came and I hadn't heard from the guy, he wasn't answering his phone and I was sure I had been screwed. But in time honored repair guy fashion he shows up the next day, fixes the fridge and cons another 3,000F out of me. Oh well, maybe it's all for the better because the "arctic wind" sound that was loud enough to drown out my radio seems to have disappeared.

Alright gang, off to Bali. Here's a bonus pic of me schooling a 10 year-old with my mad shooting skills.

I keep waiting to write entries for this thing till I have a good story to tell, but then I pick my head up and it’s been a week or more and I realize just how much has happened. And now I’m stuck with too much to say. I’ll try to keep it brief so you all have an excuse to email me.

Apparently I make it rain baby boys in this country cause my friend Jibo's wife just had a second one. I'm actually on my way to the hospital after I finish up here to see him and try to push "Timothy" for a name on them, that or "Han Solo".

When I was working on this earlier, I had just got home from watching the Cameroon-Egypt match at my friend Elijah’s place. It was a real heartbreaker which went into extra periods where we gave up a really dumb goal and got cheated out of another to go down 3-1. Oh well, bring on the World Cup.

A week ago I was in Bamenda for a regional volunteer meeting and more importantly Austin’s birthday which we celebrated in what I’m foreseeing will become “true Northwest style”. I’ll save the details for an outlet not frequented by my family (just kidding), but needless to say it was a blast. The highlight by far believe it or not was the single most insane game of Cranium I’ve ever “played”. It lasted 2 hours though I think we only got through 2 rounds and 3 of us lost our voices. All I can remember is screaming “It's a Spellbound!” over and over again. Apparently I had taken over the moderator role, surprise, surprise. Anyhow, good times.

This weekend was fun of an entirely different kind as Jibo and I took a trek out into the hills and spent the night with some of his relatives at their compound. Jibo and his family are Fulani which is the Muslim ethnic group. The Fulani generally live in the north of the country but I have a lot of grassland around me and they are traditionally herdsmen so there's a pretty strong community in the hills. I don't know how far we walked but it could have been a good 10 miles. It's unfortunate it's the height of the dry season because everything is brown or burned by brush fires set by the herders. And with all the smoke in the air, it really put a damper on what would have been some spectacular views. But definitely check out more of the pictures.



The piece de resistance was definitely this massive cliff face that is the remains of a huge hill which half of just sort of fell out of the sky. It seemed like a half-crater.

With all the cows came lots of dairy products too and for the first time in five months I had milk and yogurt. 5 months off the stuff must have really given my lactose intolerance a boost cause I was stuffed up like mad, my nose that is. The whole trip was great though and I'm definitely welcome back at the compound whenever I want to ride horses and supposedly there's a group of chimps not far who they live near a bat cave so that's freakin' awesome.



God, what else... I bought a fridge (thanks Mom and Dad). Should come in handy for not getting dysentery from leftovers. Like I said, I have so much to talk about, but I've gotta run.


Signing off… oh and here’s a pic of a frog I grew in my nursery

The big news these days is the Africa Nations Cup which you’ve probably heard kicked off the way any decent African event should, with an attack by insurgents. A bit ironic to me that it was Togo since when we were staging in Phili, the PC Volunteers going to Togo were also there. It’s a shame what happened but definitely the right call for the team to pull out. Cameroon should just follow suit since that horrid display against Gabon. I caught the game at bar down the road with some of the kids in the neighborhood. My sportslife (like a lovelife but more interesting) has really been on a steady decline the past few years. Teams I root for seem to take it as an insult.

Work is really picking up. I’m starting to think I was right to feel overwhelmed before, there are just so many opportunities for projects here. Some things are already lined up, like the medicinal garden at the health center. On Monday I revisited the Presbyterian Rural Training Center in the area and picked out some species I’ll be adding to the garden once the rains come. Then on Wednesday I took my counterpart Charles to meet a man in a town to the north who runs an ag center. Charles is an exec at the farmer’s union in Bambui that I’m trying to push forward. The other man, Emmanuel, has a very successful operation going on with fruit tree propagation, apiculture, pigs, medicinal plants, and garden farming. I’m hoping it can serve as an example for Charles and the others but I’m beginning to see that funding is going to be crucial. Emmanuel says the World Bank is about to drop a 7 year funding project in the region, but it’s tied in with government groups which has Charles sounding skeptical and can’t say I blame him. This is the government after all that I’ve heard floods the market with free-bottle-winning beers right before election season to subdue public unrest. You might assume the opposite effect, but Cameroonians are far more docile drunks than Americans.

I also started my home nursery with a modest 75 plantings, a mix of various agroforestry trees that I’ll use in demonstration plots and donate to farmers. It took approximately 5 hours for a chicken to sit on top of it and put a hole through the roof, but I persevered and rebuilt. Aside from these few small projects though, the possibilities are wide open, something I fully realized yesterday when I met with the Fon. The Fon is essentially a chief, the area’s traditional ruler. It’s funny; before yesterday I had been avoiding going to see him since, to be quite honest, I find the whole state of affairs to be quite stupid. These guys are all over the country, they inherit or it seems are randomly chosen to live a life of sitting around, accepting gifts, marrying an inordinate number of women and fathering an endless stream of children. They love their power which extends primarily to people groveling at their feet and they love to make people wait. Yesterday I waited 3 hours, sitting halfway in the garden, halfway in the open-air thrown room until he had finished breaking up a fight between the town’s traditional healers. Well, my opinion of the man himself wasn’t changed by the meeting, but my impression of his usefulness and the usefulness of the “office” did. To my surprise he seemed generally glad to have me there and eagerly rattled off a list of projects he’d like to involve me in. One seems a bit out my range, being an attempt for the town to generate its own power with a hydro plant, but the other two, teaching sessions at the technical school and most interestingly, protecting a water catchment by replacing the Eucalyptus forest with trees much more water friendly, have really sparked my interest. It’s funny though, he really does think I’m the key to the hydro power project and that’s a sentiment I’m beginning to see everywhere here; that my being here, honestly, being white, it’s assumed that I am tremendously educated and connected. Emmanuel mentioned a similar thing to Charles; that my involvement in the union, simply my presence there, my endorsement basically, is a ticket to success. It all ties into a situation I’m still adjusting to, that is, being the center of attention and suddenly, after years of being a very small fish in a very big pond in Chicago, I’m the only white man in a village in Africa where everyone knows me as the guy who’s supposed to fix things.

Signing off for now,

Bonne Année

First of all I just have to express my congratulations to my brother Dan and his new fiancée Katie on their engagement! Before the news I didn't really think I'd be getting back to the states within the 2 years, but I'm not going to miss the wedding, so you can probably count on seeing me back home sometime next spring. Funny that this time last week I was rushing to get to a wedding here. That was a hell of an experience. 500 something people crammed in a small reception hall all of them holding gifts that they each had to personally present to the couple, in a time-lapse conga line down the aisle mind you. And so many speeches, and songs (note: Cameroonians are comically awful singers). I didn't think I'd ever get out of there, but thankfully the drinks were flowing and I was with my friend Elijah so we made the best of it. Since we last spoke I've also learned how to tap palm wine and of course rang in the new year on the smoke-filled, neon lit streets of Bamenda. You're probably wondering when the whole "volunteering" thing will kick in. Well have no fear, I'm slowly getting started with work. I'm developing a medicinal plant garden started by my predecessor at the health center, and this week meeting with the farmer's union to flesh out goals for the year. I'm also finally breaking ground on the small tree nursery at my home. So things are coming along, all be it slowly, but that seems pretty par for the course here. Taking their time, I'm realizing, is a fine art that Cameroonians have perfected over generations of intense, dedicated procrastination.