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