A Good Week for Integration

This past week I have finally started to feel like I’m making progress.  After weeks of frustration and moving slowly and no discernible improvement, I think I have finally kind of hit my stride with speaking French.  Like I can crank out sentences and hold conversations without needing to pull out every single word separately and painfully.  Throughout the past six weeks what has been most frustrating is that I have been going to class, living in a Francophone household, supposedly being in an immersion environment, and yet it has still been four and a half years since I studied or spoke any French at all, and I still felt way below the level I was then.  Well, I still definitely do in terms of the one hundred verb tenses that I have completely forgotten, but at least words and some fluidity are coming back.

A closely related phenomenon is that I also feel better about my integration.  I still haven’t explored Bafia as much as I would like to (although I will later this week with my host family!) or met most of my neighbors, but I have started having more “real” conversations with some Cameroonians.  It all started when my host parents’ university-aged son came to visit for a few days.  He was great to talk to because he spoke very slowly and deliberately but I could talk to him a little more in depth than with, for example, my 8 year old brother.  He and I had an interesting debate about whether men and women should be equal and whether women can have power.  And since that one, I have had a few other good conversations with Cameroonians which felt much more like making a connection than most of my previous small talk-heavy conversations.  I’m also gradually getting to know the lady who sells beignets near my house, the woman who sells us lunch every day, and some of the language trainers.  Overall, I feel like I’ve had an integration breakthrough.

This past Saturday my mom came up to me completely out of the blue and said, “Antonia!  Tomorrow, after mass, you will kill a chicken!”  She announced it so directly that I didn’t feel I really had the chance to decide whether or not I had any moral qualms with the matter.  It wasn’t a question; it was just a statement of fact.  So, the next day, after mass, with a big smile on her face, she pointed me towards my victim and handed me a regular kitchen knife.  Fit came to help restrain the poor thing and show me what to do.  Unfortunately, I was unsuccessful at even breaking skin (feather?) after sawing away for 10 or 20 seconds.  Fit took mercy on the poor thing and stepped in, but allowed me to make the final cut, severing its head from its body.  So, that was new.  Yay integration :-/  I then helped defeather it, chop it up, take out its guts, cook it, and eat it.  It was delicious but frankly I think getting pre-killed chicken is a little more up my ally.

Another big step toward integration was gettin my hair did like a Cameroonian.  If you ever thought I would look absolutely ridiculous in cornrows, I have proven you right!!  What looks the MOST ridiculous at all is that the individual braids that hang down are all curly.  After trying (and failing) to desperately communicate “squiggles” in pathetic French to my very confused stylist, I ended up with some slightly wacky waves of cornrows.  It only took about an hour and a half and yes, it hurt (but not too much).  Now I truly look like a Cameroonian woman.  I have also used this opportunity to reveal to my fellow trainees that I do in fact have ears.

I am currently waging a war against the mouse in my room.  I know I said I was going to do away with her weeks ago, but when I started sleeping through her antics and missed a couple of chances to buy mouse traps, I fell into inaction.  In fact, last week I even felt some warm affection towards her when she cutely dragged an entire huge wrapper from a mambo (chocolate) bar out of my trash can, down from my desk, across the floor, and under my bed.  But no.  This weekend I walked in on her ROMPING ON MY BED.  With my mosquito net tucked in on all sides!  I felt so violated that apparently my mosquito net has been totally ineffective as mouse protection.  Turns out, she can come up from under the mattress and emerge within my sacred haven of moustiquaire.  Oh no, bitch.  It is ON.  In fact, while writing this entry I have been chasing her around the room as she rifles through my backpack, frolics on my suitcase, skitters from corner to corner, and generally acts like she owns this damn place.  I have been stomping loudly, hitting the walls and bed, and shining lights at her in hopes that she gets the message that her lease under my bed is UP.  Will update on status next time.

Just to end on a cheesy note, I saw the other day that the plants (crops?  Stalks?  Not an agroforestry volunteer) outside my house are towering high.  I walk past them every day on my way to and from training and I never noticed them getting any bigger, but I know they were barely peeking out of the ground when I first got to Bafia.  And I couldn’t help but think.  Time has been passing.  And maybe I feel like at the end of each day I’m no better at French or living in Cameroon than I was the at the beginning, but bit by bit, day by day, all of us trainees are becoming strong, tall, viable crops that can be sold at the market and cooked for dinner.  Or something like that.  As the Pidgin saying goes, “small small we catch monkey.”  I obviously don’t speak Pidgin (and I think it’s factually incorrect for how to effectively catch a monkey), but as the volunteers in Anglophone regions explained it, it means “little by little, we accomplish our goals.”  And sure, sometimes we have days where we have our first conversation about women’s equality with a Cameroonian, completely in French, and that feels like a big big, but it’s the accumulation of all the small smalls that gets us there.  So anyway.  I’m optimistic.

Oh and if I’m ever having a bad day I just need to look at this picture my amazing sister Ericka drew me and I will feel instantly better!

"A very good family" <3 <3 <3

And now for your viewing pleasure… some pictures!  The first ones are from my site visit to the Northwest and the hike we went on.

In Pidgin, you call this a "bush pussy" 

Hiking in Bali! 

Some school girls wanted to pose for the camera!

The view from Georgia's balcony

Just carrying some chickens on my moto

This is what happened when we sat in on a class at the local high school and the teacher said, "if you didn't do your homework, go stand up at the board."

I know my parents have been very curious - I haven't pooped in a hole yet but I did pee in this beauty.

Living the rugged African life

Passed this guy on my way to school one morning

This is what our house looks like when the electricity is cut, which it has been for 4 of the last 6 nights.

My victim before

Thanks to Djiebril for touching his smeary fingers on the lens before capturing this beauty of Fit, me, the bloody knife, the chicken, and the chicken's head in the bottom left corner.

After.  Delicious!