Settling in

Hi! Sorry!

When I first got my invitation for Cameroon and I poked around a little at some of the current and past volunteers’ blogs, I was shocked at how many glazed over their first few days without going into extreme detail about everything they were seeing, doing, smelling, and eating.  I vowed to be better and to update every day with every detail… and yet, here I am.  A week and a half since my “arrival” entry without having said much at all.  I guess I have to cut those other volunteers some slack – I know understand just how busy the beginning period really is, and how hard it is to maintain a consistent blog!

Last I wrote, we hadn’t even left the hotel in Yaoundé… and now, I am living with a host family in Bafia!  So, much has changed.  We had several days of training at the Peace Corps office in Yaoundé, which was one step better from leaving the hotel, but we still at that point only had two places we could go.  Trainings have been about things like how to use our water filters (yeah, tap water isn’t really a thing here), how to deal with street harassment, how to mitigate crime, what to expect when we head to host families, and other sessions like that.  We also know who to call in case of what kind of emergency, and we’ve been getting tons of vaccinations (including typhoid, 3 separate rabies shots, hepatitis b, and others, in addition to the bundle we all got in the states before ever coming to Philadelphia).  We have met many of the Peace Corps staff members (3 of whom are American, and something like 50 of whom are Cameroonian), and they all seem really nice and cool.  In Yaoundé we ate pretty much every single one of our meals at the hotel, which was apparently not even serving  real Cameroonian food, so we got pretty babied. 

One night, we were all invited to a nice dinner at the house of the Peace Corps Country Director, Jackie, where we met some special guests including the American Ambassador to Cameroon and the head of UNICEF Cameroon, and many others.  There we got to taste some more authentic Cameroonian food, including a dark leafy dish that tasted smokey and surprisingly contained fish, and a dish made from fermented cassava, which tasted kind of like a tangy parmesean cheese- flavored gummy bear.  On that first night, I did not much care for it, but I set out on a mission to acquire the taste for it and I’m happy to say that I succeeded!  Tonight, in fact, I ate an entire long strip of it myself.  It’s important to celebrate the little steps toward integration.

Towards the end of our stay in Yaoundé, I got a cold, which was unfortunate, but comforting in a certain way.  It was nice to feel like I could get sick in Africa and not have it be some bizarre, foreign, deadly ailment.  I was sick in the same way I would be at home and it was no more complicated – and that was comforting.  Of course, it still sucked when I woke up at 4:30 and couldn’t fall back asleep because my nose was running and all I had to wipe it with was the soggy pulpy remnants of previous pieces of toilet paper.  But even that misfortune brought an advantage – I was awake before anyone else and was able to take a shower with WARM WATER – my only since arriving – and the water even came out of the shower head!!  This is something I didn’t know to appreciate at the time, but which now seems miraculous.

Last Wednesday we all loaded up some buses with all of our luggage plus water filters, French textbooks, training handbooks, notebooks, and medical kits which contain everything from advil to rapid malaria tests to dental floss.  Then we set out on the approximately two hour drive from Yaoundé to Bafia.  We all had our eyes glued to the windows for the whole time, as the landscape changed from city to rainforest to savannah.  Bafia is a medium-sized town with several markets, a couple of high schools, and people on the streets at all times.  This is where the homestays and training for the Youth Development (me!) and Environmental sectors are.  The health sector is staying in a town 22 km from here, called Bokito, but they come a couple of days per week for trainings in Bafia.  Separating into those two towns felt tragic – how could they tear us away after an entire week of bonding? – but of course, we will all be in our own separate villages soon enough.

               

Before arriving in Bafia, I got a little bit of information about my host family.  I found out their last name, the fact that I had two parents and four children, and I instantly fell in love with them.  I think all the other trainees had the same experience; each slip of paper said on it something along the lines of, “Congratulations!  You have been adopted by the ____ family!” so it was hard not to already feel loved and in love.

Once our bus arrived at the training center we entered a middle school dance-style room where Cameroonians were all awkwardly plastered to one wall and all the Americans were uncomfortably crowded across the room.  Eventually, we all got paired off and hugged, sometimes warmly, sometimes awkwardly, by our new families.  I was greeted by two of my host sisters, Xavier (who is university-aged) and Ericka (who is 10).  They were both very sweet and helped me lug my incredibly heavy suitcases across muddy unpaved roads to their house.  When I first saw their house, I was shocked by how nice it was!  There was a gate to get in, and many rooms, including a bathroom with sink, toilet, and shower head.  Their salon/living room has a TV and a china cabinet.  I kept thinking to myself, “wow, I guess I really hit the host family jackpot!”  Who expected a western, sit down toilet?? And who thought we would have a television and lights in every room??  And a well in our very own yard??

The family is all awesome.  We were all warned that Cameroonians aren’t used to giving privacy, so we shouldn’t expect any, but my family has been very considerate about that.  They all deliberately avoid my room so that I have some space to myself, and they haven’t been worrying about my whereabouts every minute like I feared.  I am actually the tenth volunteer that they have hosted, so I think they know the drill pretty well by now!  My two parents, Marthe and Charles, are both involved in education and they both speak some English.  Marthe is an awesome cook – sometimes I feel guilty when I hear my fellow trainees complaining about repetitive or bad food.  Charles also has a lot of adorable “teaching” moments with his kids, where he turns dinnertime conversation into a passionate plea for the importance of learning English and studying hard.  When my host brother said he didn’t have any homework, Charles said, “You must assign homework for yourself!”  They have two kids already living outside of the house and they just dropped Xavier off at university in Yaoundé the other day, so there are four kids remaining in the house.  Fitte (spelling?  I don’t know how to spell any of their names.) is a high school-aged boy  - when I asked Ericka and Xavier how old he was, they weren’t exactly sure, but they think somewhere between 13 and 15.  At first he wasn’t all that friendly to me, but now I think he is a total clown and a great brother, and he’s really good about miming things that I don’t understand in French.  Ericka is the next oldest, at 10 – she is incredibly sweet and even made me a necklace the other day!  She is also definitely the most helpful with cross cultural and language questions – she is patient with my French and speaks slowly and answers all my questions like the sweetie pie that she is!  Djiebril is my 8 year old host brother, and he’s awesome too.  He is studying English in school but is too shy to ever speak it with me, even when I ask him to.  Every night he eats so much for dinner that he is in physical pain and claims that he is about to vomit, but then he does it again the next night.  Finally, Michael is my 2 ½ year old brother.  When I first arrived at the house, he almost started crying because he was so scared of me.  I was terribly disappointed – I really wanted a family with some little kids, not expecting them to be terrified by my presence.  Anyway, within just a few days he underwent a total transformation, and now he regularly greets me at the door with a hug, calls my name with lots of giggles, and falls asleep in my arms.

After talking to other volunteers, I realized that having lights and TV isn’t as rare as I suspected – and, in fact, although we have a sink and toilet and shower head, we don’t have running water, so we flush the toilet by pouring a bucket of water in when we’re done, we shower out of a bucket, and wash dishes and clothes and hands in buckets, too.  I had this weird realization that for my whole life I’ve never really USED a bucket before, and now it seems like I use it for everything!

The second night in the homestay, I came home to find that the electricity had been cut.  I guess this happens one or two nights per week – the electricity all around town just gets shut off and so we break out the petrol lanterns.  It felt much more like camping, and much less “posh corps”- the term people use for people with easy and modern living conditions.  The food has honestly all been really good.  Sometimes it doesn’t feel that different from the US, but it is definitely much starchier, and so we sometimes have meals consisting of rice and two types of plantains.  The first night we had chicken, which is apparently very expensive here.  It had a sauce with veggies, ginger, tomato, and garlic, and it was wonderful!  After enjoying the meal, I walked around back for water and saw a pool of blood and a chicken’s head next to a machete.  Oh.  So that’s how we prepare chicken here.

Breakfast has typically been a big piece of break with margarine (not kept refrigerated – it’s amazing the things that don’t need to be kept refrigerated!  I never knew!) and a “café” – which is not coffee, but powdered milk, sugar cubes, and ovaltine.  I’m not sure why they all add sugar cubes to their hot chocolate, but I have been following suit and I’m not complaining.  I go the training center for the morning and eat lunch there, which changes each day but is typically some kind of meat, some leafy dish, and rice, potatoes, beignets, and fruit.  It’s pretty good but very hard to predict the price, ranging from 500 CFA ($1) to 1200 CFA (today! An outrage! $2.40!!!).  They also recently started serving sandwiches on baguettes with avocado, tomato, beans, and vinaigrette… They’re great, like something I would get back home!  Also avocados apparently grow ABUNDANTLY here – one volunteer said she has an avocado tree in her yard!!  And say goodbye to those Kroger prices of 99 cents each – here, it’s 7 avocados for 100 CFA (20 cents).  So excited.  When all the trainees found this out, we couldn’t help but break into applause.

Dinners have been quite varied because my host mom is such a good and varied cook!  I’ve had plantains boiled, fried, mashed with beans, and roasted over a fire.  We had pork kebabs cooked campfire-style, which tasted AMAZING, and several different varieties of leafy green veggie dishes.  We’ve had spaghetti a couple of times and some omelettes which are a little different from American style, but basically the same and delicious.  They put these Maggie cubes in everything, and although I’m not sure exactly what they are, I think they’re similar to boullion cubes.  And they make everything taste better!

A few notable things that have happened to me lately:  I got stung by a giant African bee which can probably kill people.  And I didn’t even provoke it at all!  I was sure that I was inches from death but as it turns out… I wasn’t.  I guess you could call that my first encounter with African wildlife.  Also, last night Djiebril and Ericka presented me with a gorgeous pair of earrings that they bought for me!  These kids are so awesome!  What kind of 8 and 10 year olds do that??  Also, I have some new roommates chez moi.  We were introduced under pretty sad circumstances.  I opened up my suitcase, in which there was a bunch of comfort food from home to ease potential future homesickness.  I grabbed a fruit roll up and started eating it when I realized that there was a hole in the packaging!  Upon closer inspection it became clear that every single fruit roll up, fruit by the foot, and pack of fruit snacks had been raided by my new rodent roommate.  Every single packet of easy mac had a hole in the cheese pouch L  I sadly threw away all the food I carefully selected for the next two years.   Later I saw the offender – the mouse that is now living under my bed.  It was almost impossible to fall asleep with all of the scurrying and munching and scratching.  For the next few nights I slept with earplugs that I got for free at a hostel in Ireland, taking the “ignorance is bliss” approach to dealing with the mouse.  Last night was the first time I slept without earplugs and I woke up at 2:30 and couldn’t fall asleep until after 5 because of the noise and being on edge.  I think this weekend is my time to deal with that little problem once and for all.  I thought maybe we could live in peace, but it looks like that’s not going to happen!

Another recent exciting development: I bought my first African cloth to get a custom made dress!  I’m so excited – it feels like a huge rite of passage to get that first item of tailored clothing in Cameroonian textiles.  The cloth cost 1,900 CFA – that’s $3.80 – and to get a dress made for exactly my measurements will cost 4,500 CFA – just $9!  I will definitely post photos as soon as it’s done!

I know this has been far from comprehensive, but our training schedule is full, curfew is 7 o’clock, which sounded outrageously early until we all realized that we typically are asleep by 8:30.  I speak French at home every day and am learning little Cameroonian quirks, like the fact that no one ever cuts with a cutting board, but instead in their hands.  When I walk down the streets, kids call, “la blanche!” after me.  I shower from a bucket every morning and sleep under a mosquito net every night.  I have younger siblings for the first time ever and chores like doing laundry, dishes, and cooking take way longer than ever in America.  At all times, every trainee’s face glows equally with a combination of sweat, grease, and humidity, but we don’t care because it’s the same for all of us and because there are very few mirrors in this country (which is kind of a blessing when you never feel quite clean).  There are papayas growing in our training center, pineapples growing at a neighbor’s house, and coconuts in our front yard.  We also have two goats, which are adorable, but only pets until they become dinner.

I have had a few days, especially towards the beginning of the homestay, where things felt pretty tough.  I have forgotten most of the French I ever learned, but somehow got placed in an advanced class as a fluke, where I flounder next to essentially fluent former French majors.  Then I go home and it’s more French in a situation which would be awkward even if it were in English.  And sometimes it feels like every single task is hard.  For example, my host mom showed me how to flush the toilet with a bucket of water, but how do I wash my hands?  Do I stick them in the bucket and swish them around?  Or do I pour the water from the bucket over each of them one at a time?  Even when I am assigned the simplest task to help cook, like chopping a leek, I don’t know whether it should be sliced, or diced, or if they use the very end of the plant that looks a little brown but probably tastes fine, and I don’t know how to ask all of these questions in French and I get sick of needing to ask for help with every single menial thing.  But these overwhelmed, anxious days are becoming more seldom.  It feels like slow progress, but my French is getting better and I’m bonding with the family.  I might overpay in the market, but it’s usually by a margin of less than one US dollar.  I still don’t know how to wash my own clothes and have been waiting for a time when my mom can help, but in the meantime, I have been re-wearing all of my outfits and I don’t think I smell noticeably worse than any of the other trainees.  And all the trainees and volunteers I have met have become an amazing support network already.

In the next few days, we get to rank which posts we want to be placed in, and although the thought of going to post was always the most terrifying to me, I’m starting to get really excited.  I’m excited for the Youth Development resources we’ve been given and projects we will do!  I’m excited to have some independence and (hopefully) competence at living in this crazy place!  And every single post and every single region sounds like it has something amazing to offer, whether it’s in the cool highlands and mountains, or the dense jungle with gorillas and miniature elephants, or in the dry heat of the north where there is peanut sauce on everything and I would get to speak Fulfulde.  Wherever I end up, I think there are some pretty cool times ahead. < /cheesy>

Allons-y!

View from the hotel in Yaoundé

Kiddos coming back from the watering hole

Cody and me! #ATX

Taken from the bus on our way out of Yaoundé

Things for sale

The first time I met Ericka and Xavier

Me, outside the training center in Bafia

Look! I'm in Africa!

Michael being cute as always

Michael!

Our front yard, we use clothes lines

Djiebril lookin cute!

Fitte and Ericka hanging out in the salon

Michael, Djiebril, Fitte lurking in the background, and Ericka

Michael hanging out with me in my bed!