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.