The End of the Beginning!

            There is landmark in Peace Corps service after the first three months at post.  We have a conference called In-Service Training (IST).  It marks the boundary between the “don’t worry, take it easy, just work on integrating into your community” phase and the “get shit done” phase.  Before IST, you’re not really expected to do any work, so nothing you do can be disappointing.  After IST, you’re officially a lazy, useless, unproductive waste of space.  Unless you’re not.

            Our IST begins this weekend in Bamenda and will go for almost two weeks.  I am SO EXCITED for a few reasons:

1)      To get the gang back together again!  This is absolutely the #1 reason.  Some of my favorite people in this country I haven’t seen for the past three months and that is just unacceptable.  Plus, last night I was realizing how much I miss sarcastic American senses of humor.  I am picturing this conference as 20% hugging, 30% drinking, 50% gossiping, 100% laughing, and 0% boring educational sessions.  We’ll see how accurate that perception is. 

2)      I think for me mentally, once I get back from IST I will start to really buckle down, figure out what work and projects I want to undertake, and start making commitments.  I think I’ll feel much happier when I am getting out more, doing more work, and maybe even – if I’m lucky – being kind of productive.

3)      Bamenda is nice.  It’s kind of a bummer that this chance to travel the country happens to be held in one of the three cities I’ve already been to… twice… but that being said, it’s beautiful, and I know what delicious foods await me.  Plus I heard promises of Honey Bunches of Oats and/or Cocoa Puffs.  So, ya.

But also I’m absolutely dreading it for a few reasons:

1)       Getting the gang back together again.  And hearing about all the wonderful things everyone has already done at their post and why they’re the best volunteers ever and I’m a useless failure.

2)      As previously mentioned, after IST, I will officially transition from being “chill-ly integrating” to a useless failure.

3)      Boring sessions?  No.  Surely there won’t be any of those.  We will be too busy laughing and hugging.

Anyway, I am leaving for Bamenda today.  In fact, I meant to leave already but have been too busy procrastinating doing my post report that was due two weeks ago packing and thus have, in the meantime, read through every text message I’ve sent or received since getting an iPhone, given myself a haircut, uploaded photos from my iPhone, camera, and iPad, and looked through them all three or four times, thought of at least 15-20 hilarious Facebook statuses that I will never post, and written two blog entries.  And they said change was inevitable.  I haven’t changed a bit since high school!

Okay.  Here’s what happened in the past month:

            This guy I know (actually I mentioned him once before – he was the one who peed mid-conversation the first time we met as he walked me home.  I don’t really know his name because they’re hard to pronounce so I refer to him as “that guy… you know, that guy.”) invited me out to the farm with him to see what it’s like.  Although that sounds like about the sketchiest invitation that you’d be so stupid to accept (because yes, man I have spoken to four times, I would love to accompany you alone to an isolated area far from town), I also was kind of curious what the farms are like.  After all, according to my post report which I have almost finished, 80% of Bafang’s residents get their income from agriculture!  So I told him that I was going to bring Lee along too, and we made a plan to go the first weekend of February at 6:30 AM.  As the date approached, Lee and I started to realize that it sounded incredibly boring, laborious, and early.  But I couldn’t sacrifice my close friendship with that guy whose name I don’t know, so flaking out was not an option.  We blinked ourselves awake before the sun and got ready to farm.

            Anyway, long story short, the day turned out to be a lot more fun and interesting than either of us anticipated.  And a lot less laborious because we are clearly incompetent and didn’t even bring machetes, so we watched and did no work at all.  The farm was a 45 minute walk from our rendez-vous point at one of the local high schools.  And when I say “walk” I mean speed walk because that guy had us sprinting there.  (The way back, led by his 9-year-old daughter, was at a much more reasonable pace of a mile or two an hour.)  Oh, and the walk, by the way, was absolutely gorgeous.  Lee and I agreed that it was considerably nicer than then hike we’d gone on the week before, and that we should take visitors this way to show off our post’s beauty.  As we walked we got closer and closer to a river which we eventually got to admire.  By the time we arrived at the farm, there were no sounds of anything manmade and it felt like we were completely alone with nature.  That’s also when I realized that there were tons of ants, no quick routes to the hospital, and I had obviously neglected to bring my epi pen.  But other than foreseeing my imminent death, being isolated and alone with nature was basically a good thing.

First of all, the farm is not at all how you’re picturing a “farm” to be.  You’re picturing bales of hay and big wide flat areas with tidy rows of whatever-it-is, sprinkled with tractors and other heavy machinery.  And maybe a red barn.  This “farm” looked a lot more like a forest.  It was on a pretty steep hillside and there were no discernable paths or organizational systems.  Nothing about it looked deliberate, but the guy/my friend/you know seemed to know his way around pretty well.

            The most striking thing about the day was that it hit me how little I know about the food we eat.  For example, take chocolate.  I have eaten perhaps a thousand pounds of chocolate throughout my life.  Where does it come from?  Oh, I know this.  Cocoa beans!  Right?  But do you know about… cocoa fruit??  Maybe you all do and I’m just really ignorant.  But the beans don’t grow loosely on the tree.  They are the seeds within the cocoa fruit!  It’s yellow or orange and shaped kind of like a papaya.  When you open it, the beans are all covered in a white filmy flesh which you can eat, and it’s delicious!  The most similar thing I can compare it to is passionfruit, except you spit out the seeds in the center.  And the taste is tangy and sweet and absolutely delicious (also, probably most similar to passion fruit)!  I was shocked to discover this.  A wonder of the world and I’ve never known.

            I also got to see coffee growing for the first time in my life.  And that came with its own surprises.  It grows on these trees with white flowers, like berries.  But each coffee bean comes encased in its own shell!  Little jackets for every bean!  I also learned how they produce the red oil here.  Palm trees produce these hard, red… things (Fruit? Bean? Nut?) that you can kind of suck on to get just about no flavor from.  But when they heat a bunch of them, and press them, and boil them, and I kind of lost track of the process but then you get red oil!  And I saw the trees where we get black fruit, and kola nuts!  And all kinds of wonders.  At one point we came to a tree and the guy said the word for it in French, which neither of us knew.  He explained that having this tree there helps protect the rest of the crops.  To explain what it was, he scraped off a piece of bark with his machete and told me to taste it.  At that point I had already put any number of unwashed bacteria-laden morsels in my mouth so I risked it.  I was so surprised to find that the taste was immediately familiar – cinnamon!  And I realized I had never known where cinnamon actually came from and certainly not that it was tree bark.  Anyway, throughout the morning, my mind was blown time and time again and I left feeling more keenly aware of my own ignorance.  So I guess that was a success.

            For the past couple of weeks I was brainstorming a blog entry called “Why Colby is the Best Cat Ever.”  When I looked more closely at some of the reasons on my list, however, I realized it would be more aptly titled “Why Colby is A Cat.”  For example, he likes to bury his poop and was housetrained in just four days!  And, he purrs when I pet him!  He’s wacky and jumps around weirdly and hilariously!  He curls up and is fuzzy and freaking adorable!  But seriously, I was going to write about how wonderful and sweet he is, and how he sleeps with me all through the night, every night, and sits on my lap whenever I’m sitting down, and loves me and is an excellent little spoon.  Plus he resembles me better than anyone in my biological family and we could do the cutest mommy and me act.  But right now he has been driving me absolutely crazy by slashing my legs with 20 claws at once.  He’s playful and it’s cute, but he bites hard and attacks every part of me with all his might.  Plus, he finds it easier to climb up the ladders that are my thighs than to actually make the jump onto my lap.  If you saw my bare legs, you’d probably be more likely to think that I fell into a paper shredder than that I adopted a sweet kitten.  All this aggression and yet when it comes to anything but me, he’s an absolute pacifist.  Birds come every day and peck away at his food.  He crouches, ready to pounce, concentrating hard on the offenders.  “Do it, Colby,” I whisper, because I have a weird sick parental desire for him to become a fierce killer, “Protect what’s yours.”  And then he continues crouching.  And continues.  And acts surprised when the bird finishes its meal and flies away.  Come on, man.  You have NO hesitation when it comes to pouncing on my face in bed.  Luckily, he is still incredibly cute and I’m still incredibly shallow so there’s a pretty strong foundation to our loving relationship.

            Also I went to church for the first time in community as an integration attempt!  The mass was in English but I still didn’t catch any of it because it was early and I paid no attention whatsoever.  But it was kind of fun, in a getting-out-of-the-house-before-noon sort of way.

            February 11 was youth day.  We don’t have this holiday in America, because, as my grandfather put it, “every day is kids’ day!”  To celebrate, there was a march.  I was told to show up at 9 am.  Feeling guilty and embarrassed when I arrived at 9:10, I found that only one student had arrived.  Everyone else got there at ten and the march didn’t start until after 11.  Oh, right.  Cameroonian time.  Anyway, it was a lot of waiting around and looking at the hordes of children dressed in their different school uniforms.  Some people took pictures with me because I’m white, which my students found hilarious.  Local vendors took advantage of the crowds and people circulated selling yogurt, folere juice, frozen sugary treats, beignets, cookies, plantain chips, etc etc etc.  After standing for two hours, I sat down on the steps to gasps of horror that I would dare place my derrière on something so filthy.  Finally, the parade began.  Given that Bafang is essentially one road, I figured we would march down that road pretty much through the town.  Well, as it turned out, we marched about 50 yards, just far enough to pass in front of some video cameras and town officials who looked on.  Can you believe we had an hour of marching practice… for that?   After our strenuous trek, we all took pictures with my iPhone in two or three hundred different combinations of me and students, me and teachers, me and students and teachers, me and students and teachers and the sign, etc.  In general, the composition of the photos is dreadful, but cropping exists and I’m glad to be in them!  I got kind of tricked into abandoning my coworkers to go meet a student’s parents, which I thought would take five minutes but actually took an hour and a half.  However, they were nice, and they fed me, and although I never found my coworkers again, I joined up with Ricky and some of his colleagues to party into the night.  And then exactly 9 days later we celebrated unification day in the exact same way and it made both celebrations feel a lot less special.

            For Galentine’s day on Feb 13, Allison hosted a westies get together at her post in Batie.  Batie is perhaps the closest Peace Corps post to Bafang – it costs only 500 francs to get there and takes about 40 minutes.  The initial party featured such delicacies as breakfast pizza(/quiche), homemade bagels, hash browns, mimosas, and a bottle of tequila that can only have been sent from heaven.  Lots of fun was had by all.  The next day was spent in its entirety with the remaining five of us in a heap of cuddles on Allison’s spare mattress, chatting and passing around the remaining bottles of beer and champagne.  All in all, it was a wonderful time and always great to see those American friends.

            As for how teaching goes, it goes.  I gave a test this past week.  Making up tests is so much fun!  Feeling like I can see exactly what I’ve taught them, and coming up with examples and exercises that hopefully are clear and easy and showcase all the knowledge they’ve acquired.  Giving tests, however, is far less fun.  We learned in social psych class how when students do badly on tests, they say the test was written poorly, and when they do well on tests, they say, gee, how smart we are.  So basically it’s a no-win for the teacher; no teacher has ever been recognized for really writing a great test.  Oh also, all that knowledge I bestowed on them?  They forgot it.  No one studied.  People did terribly and the bad grades aren’t even as frustrating as the actual process of administering the exam, where everyone is mumbling under their breath, speaking in the local language, laughing at me or each other or whoever, looking at each other’s papers, refusing to read the directions or pay attention when I carefully go over each section and what they need to do and then asking me repeatedly during the exam how to complete one section or another.  Basically I hate students and teaching and am feeling repentant for every time directions were written on the top of the page and I didn’t give them a single look before asking what to do.  After several warnings, I did eventually confiscate one student’s paper and give her a zero.  It was a power rush and the rest of the class was much better behaved after that.  Perhaps I would be a very successful teacher if I gave them all zeroes.

            Well other than that, this month has been more of the same.  Good days, like when a couple of killer care packages arrived (Smoked salmon!  Cheese fondue!  “How can that be??” you ask.  “I know!!!!!” I exclaim).  Bad days, like when I accidentally don’t leave my house until after dark and then I can’t leave my house because it’s after dark.  IST will be a turning point for sure.  Let’s see which way it turns!

A Moment in the Market

Before I write anything else, I must share my experience in the market this afternoon.  It was unlike any previous time and I think it’s important to hang on to for whenever the deranging gets me down.

I finished teaching and went to grab something to eat from one of the mamas in town.  I was sitting at one of the bars eating koki from the woman who sells it out front.  This is the exact same place and the exact same koki I was eating one day in January when I first met Julio.  The quick back story:  I was trying to eat lunch and this guy, Julio, came up, sat next to me and refused to leave me alone for the entire duration of my meal.  It was again and again, can I have your number, can I accompany you (wherever), why not, I’m not a bad guy, rinse, repeat.  Before arriving at post I was pretty sure that my skin was thick enough to withstand two years of street harassment and attention.  After all… I like attention, right?  Anyway.  That one day with Julio was the first time that it really started getting to me.  I felt like women here get no respect from the men, and everyone acts like because I’m foreign I owe them something, whether it’s money, food, my phone number, or the time to come share a beer with them.  It put me in a terrible mood and was, after that point, a terrible day.

So today when I was back at that spot, with that koki, sitting at a table by myself, I was already feeling guarded against the potential derangers around me.  One guy offered to buy me a drink and I told him, look, I’m eating alone.  I’m sure you’re a nice guy but I just want to eat alone.  He left me without much further protest.  Then the man at the table next to me wished me bon appetit and I cautiously thanked him, afraid his next move would be to ask for my number.  Next, an older, very drunk man emerged from the bar and wished me bon appetit, several times.  He was kind of trying to talk to me but I couldn’t really understand what he was trying to say through the slur.  Then, the man at the next table pulled the drunk guy over and told him to leave me alone.  Completely unsolicited! 

Throughout my meal, the drunk guy tried to talk to me or approach me several times, and the man at the next table over always stepped in and tried to get the man to sit next to him.  He told the guy, let her eat.  After she eats you guys can talk, but for now just leave her to eat.  It was amazing!  At some point another man sat at the table on my other side and he, too, assumed the role of my protector.  He said to the drunk man, “Why are you bothering her?  People come here to relax, not to be bothered.”  He also complained to the bar’s owner that this man was causing trouble and she should do something about it.

When the drunk man reached out to touch me, the first man said, “What, you’re going to touch her?  If a man touched your wife like that you’d break his hand.”  He even lured the guy away from me by taking his beer and pretending to drink it.  It was all so, so, so wonderful.  I thanked them both and they both acted like it was absolutely no problem, just the normal way to act in that situation.  And neither of them ever asked for my number.

I have tears in my eyes as I’m writing this because I know those men can’t have any idea what it meant to me.  Lately all the street harassment has been the number one thing that puts me in an awful mood.  I know, it really doesn’t sound that bad.  People want to talk to me and they ask for my phone number.  But when it happens every single day, time after time after time, and when the attention lacks any semblance of respect, it wears you down.  It has worn me down.  Worn me down, brought me to tears, made me feel like I distrust all men, and like no matter how hard I work I will never fit in, never truly be respected, and never treated like a normal human being.  And I have noticed that people never seem to step in on my behalf.  A few times, scary crazy people have been talking to me, touching me, and everyone in the vicinity looks on and no one intervenes.  And that makes me hate every bystander who would rather watch the spectacle of the flustered white person than actually help.  But today those two men changed that.  They singlehandedly restored my faith in men, Cameroonians, and humanity in general.  And they did it without knowing how important their actions were to me.

I love those men.

I will remember this moment forever, and let it remind me how simple good deeds can mean so much.

New Addition to the Ginger Family

Well, my lonesome empty house is no more!  As of this past Thursday, I am the proud owner of a tiny, crazy, affectionate, high-maintenance, energy-filled orange kitten.  It truly feels like having a newborn in the house because he keeps me up all night, cries when I leave the room, and makes me worry that he’s not eating enough.  His name is Colby and he’s about as needy and energetic as a kitten can be, which, though exhausting, is really what I wanted.  Once I figure out what he likes to eat (canned sardines seem to be a hit), how to get him to poop outside, and what I need to do to get him to stop climbing my legs with claws at full extension, I think we’ll be very happy together!

I now realize that, for the sake of closure, it might not be the best idea to get a kitten from your next door neighbor’s cat.  It is absolutely heartbreaking that from inside my house I can hear the mama cat crying for her baby as Colby cries for his mama.  One time I came home and saw the mother outside my gate, meowing, as Colby pressed himself against the crack in my gate, trying to get out and back to his family.  I know, right?  Tears.

In Cameroon, pets, like children, are more like members of the household staff than adorable toys for us to play with and spoil.  People still have pets, but if they have a dog, it’s probably for protection, and if they have a cat, it’s probably to kill bugs and mice.  And in fact, most Cameroonians don’t particularly like cats and are afraid of dogs.  I have been taking care of David, Ricky’s dog, for the past few weeks while Ricky has been on vacation.  I let him out for a few hours each day so he can stretch his legs and “ease himself” (as Anglophone Cameroonians put it).  David is the sweetest dog ever and has never hurt a fly, but Cameroonian children still run screaming when they see him approach.  In fact, last week Amadou (the Youth Development program manager) came to make a routine visit to my post to make sure everything was alright.  I saw the Peace Corps car pull up outside my gate.  After a minute or so, my phone rang.  It was Amadou, standing outside, unwilling to enter because David was in my yard and he was afraid of him.  I body-guard escorted Amadou past the ferocious pup and into the house.

Another thing about Cameroonian pet culture is that there is a weird superstition (if anyone has evidence that this is actually true, please correct me) that a cat’s whiskers are poisonous.  They are said to contain something that causes illness in humans.  To protect themselves against it, people cut off the whiskers.  I was at Alima’s house one time when they were cutting all of the kittens’ whiskers.  I tried not to look; to me, this is a form of mutilation.  I have promised Colby that no one will ever clip his whiskers again (despite Alima’s urgings).

Utilities have been going crazy for the past week!  Before one week ago, the longest blackout I’d experienced since Bafia was about eight minutes, and that was the only time power was cut for longer than 30 seconds.  Now we have lost power almost every night for the past week for at least a couple of hours.  I have plenty of candles and there is something kind of fun about “roughing it” in the dark, but still.  I expect better from you, electricity of Bafang.  Plus, water has been erratic, too – for about five days I didn’t have any, but during that time, Ricky and Lee sometimes did have it and sometimes didn’t.  I kept meaning to go the landlord to figure out why I didn’t have it but then it would be cut for everyone and I’d have to wait again.  Finally I got it figured out last night and celebrated by washing my dishes and flushing my toilets, only to have water cut again this morning just before I planned to take a shower.  What is this!!  I feel like I’m living in the bush!

Like any city, Bafang has a small number of crazy people (“fous,” en français) who you always see around.  There’s one guy in my neighborhood who has very few teeth and likes saluting me.  He’s very friendly and harmless but still definitely a fou.  One day last week I was at work, waiting for class to start.  Prisca, the secretary, and I were the only two sitting in the office.  A guy walks in.  I quickly identified him as a fou based on his mis-matched clothes and floral hat.  He brought with him a wall of odor like you wouldn’t believe – as if his clothes had been carefully preserved to retain every particle of BO and cigarette smoke from the past five years and exude them all at once, in our office.  He greeted Prisca, and greeted me, and greeted each of us again a few times.  I wasn’t paying attention to what they were saying for most of the time, but at some point he asked me for money (which Prisca indicated I should refuse, and I did).  She was humoring him pretty well but at some point she started to ask him to leave and picked up the phone to pretend to call the police and have him kicked out.  Soon he started yelling and pointing angrily at Prisca, threatening to smack her or beat her.  I was getting freaked out but she seemed to be doing okay and staying calm.  He walked to the door like he was going to leave but instead grabbed the big wooden rod next to it (used as a portable flag pole) and went at her brandishing that like a weapon.  At this point, another of the teachers had come into the room and the two of them were still pretty calm, whereas I was ready to flip my shit and chase him out of town.  He threw the flag pole down and stormed out as Prisca and Madame Moukam chuckled and shook their heads.  If I had been alone and his rage had been directed at me, this story would have a very different ending (of tears).

A couple of days later, Lee and I were getting a beer at a bar on the main road.  Another of the Bafang fous came and greeted us and sat at the bar with us, one table over, not saying anything but sitting with us quietly.  At some point, a man passing by tried to shake Lee’s hand and our fou jumped up and angrily lunged at him, as if he was committing a terrible offense by trying to greet Lee.  Although that was a major overreaction, we thought of him as our protector after that incident.  After sitting there (fou having resumed his post as sentinel) for a while longer, someone else came by: the same crazy guy who threatened Prisca a few days before.  Then the two of them got into it together and were yelling at each other and one picked up a plastic chair as if prepared to beat the other with it.  This chapter in my memoir will be titled “Fightin’ Fous.”

One thing you may not have known about Cameroon: Recycling is taken to a whole new level.  And it’s not out of some environmentally-conscious desire to save the planet, just to save money.  Bottles have bottle deposits the same way they do in the US, but instead of just paying five cents and probably never turning in that bottle, most vendors will not allow you to leave with a glass bottle.  Or, if you do, you are expected to bring it back within a couple of days (or even bring some empty bottles with you to trade in when making the purchase).  Even plastic bottles are treasured and valued here.  If I’m ever throwing out any kind of bottle or container, I try to set it aside and not burn it because it’s certain to be snatched up by someone soon.  And on the street, people who are selling folere juice or red oil or honey will be selling from all those different containers that used to hold juice or soda or whiskey.  Even Kadji, one of the major brasseries that produces my favorite Cameroonian beer, uses recycled beer bottles from other companies, so you never know what color or shape of bottle your Kadji will come in.

My last random cultural note about Cameroon is that, without fail, every single time someone knocks on my gate and I ask “C’est qui?” (who is it?), they will always, always respond, “C’est moi.”  And to be fair, it’s always true.  But it is so frustrating because why would I be asking if I knew who “moi” was??

This last month or so has very well followed the “emotional rollercoaster” model.  I have had many good days, and unfortunately many bad days, sometimes alternating exactly one by one.  I will spare you details from the bad days for the sake of keeping this blog readable.  In short, I don’t have that much work to do and I have days where I feel bored, useless, unproductive, and like all I am to the people in this town is “la blanche” – someone who is interesting to stare at, great to solicit for money, and even better to harass for a phone number.  But all that aside, let me tell you about a few of the good days!

Last Friday was a feast day at Lee’s school and he invited me to come join in.  I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect from a “feast day,” so I was surprised to find it looked exactly like a middle school dance.  Kids, released from the confines of their obligatory uniforms just for the day, dressed in their finest night-clubby attire.  Each classroom played loud music and students danced beneath pink and white toilet paper streamers.  Eventually, all the kids piled into the gym for an all-day all-night dance party.  As Lee and I sat on a table with some of the other teachers, watching the students run excitedly from one group to another, whispering, gossiping, flirting, enjoying being at school in this unfamiliar setting, I became intensely nostalgic for my own middle school days.  I never thought I would end up on the other side of the party, as the teacher chaperone, looking on but not really partaking in the fun.  It was weird and one of the first times in my life I’ve felt so acutely like a grown up.  I will never have another school dance of my own.  When did this happen???

At some point the student:teacher ratio got a little too high, and the students got a little too friendly, so Lee and I left to find some place to have a drink.  Now, pretty much every single bar in Bafang – and perhaps Cameroon – looks exactly the same: it’s a room with shelves with beer on them, and there are some crappy looking tables, uncomfortable chairs and/or benches, and absolutely no ambiance whatsoever.  It can make it hard to choose between the hundred or two bars when they are all absolutely interchangeable.  We passed one with a group of people laughing at a table outside.  “Well, they look like they’re having fun,” Lee remarked.  Right on cue, the people waved to us and wished us a happy New Year.  We wished them a happy New Year back, and continued walking.  They beckoned us over to join them.  This happens pretty often when I pass people at bars, but I’m always going somewhere or else alone and therefore not about to intentionally spend time with drunk Cameroonian men.  But this time we figured, why not?  We’re looking for somewhere to take a beer, and here’s a friendly group of people we could share one with.  Anyway, they turned out to be a group of teachers from Bafang and a nearby village, and we all had a great time together!  They all struggled to speak English, we struggled to speak French, and they laughed a lot at all of their mistakes and generously at none of ours.  We talked about our respective cultures and teaching and all kinds of other stuff.  There was a ton of laughter and even when I didn’t really understand what it was about, I felt so happy being there that I joined in anyway.  They said that they go to that bar every Friday night, so Lee and I have vowed to go back.

Once the teachers started to leave, Lee and I went across the street to a sort of cabaret/night club.  It was pretty small and pretty empty, but there was at least nicer lighting and some kind of a mood.  We talked and shared more beers, and it was already a wonderful place to be, but then something happened that changed everything and launched me swiftly into a state of pure ecstasy: Total Recall started playing on their television!!!!!!  And not the remake, either – the actual Arnold Schwarzenegger classic!  For those of you who don’t know, this is honestly one of my favorite movies of all time and carries a lot of sentimental value from late nights growing up.  The sound was covered by loud Cameroonian music, but Lee kindly tolerated me narrating some of the best scenes.  As if sent from above to ensure that this would be the best night ever, someone came over from a nearby table and offered us birthday cake in honor of one of their friends’ birthdays.  And it was the most American-like cake I’ve had yet in this country, with actual frosting and everything.  It was great.  At some point, Lee and I got up to dance.  Practically everyone else had gone home and the only people on the dance floor were the two of us and the two Cameroonians working there, a man and a woman.  They were both super nice, good dancers, and Lee and I got to request all our favorite songs to be played.  The four of us danced for a good long time and by the time we headed home I really felt like it was the best day ever.

A couple of days later, Lee and I set out to climb one of the mountains(/hills) that we can see from our street.  Without really knowing how to get there, we scrambled down into the valley area, were stopped by a river that I never knew ran through our town, and re-navigated.  After fighting our way through the bush for a while, we did end up successfully at a summit, with a great view of Bafang and our own houses!  Afterwards, we went to visit the town waterfall, which I had never seen.  As you descend to the waterfall, there is a line in the dirt of red oil and salt, or something, which Lee says is for spiritual purposes.  The waterfall is huge and impressive!  I will definitely post pictures soon.  And then we wandered around that area of town for a while, which is in the opposite direction from our houses of most of town, so it’s pretty new and undiscovered.  We found an amazing boulangerie with ice cream and cake and so many delicious things and reasonable prices.  Then we found an amazing restaurant with a great view, fully stocked bar, comfortable chairs, actual menus… all kinds of things you never see in this country.  We didn’t eat there but plan to return with some frequency.  And then we got spaghetti omelets from a nice man who insisted on only speaking to us in Fefe and then making us repeat what he was saying to learn it.  It was another really fun day of getting to know a new part of Bafang.

Yesterday, John (an Anglophone friend of mine) invited Lee and me to join him on a full-day excursion.  I guess a group of about 30 teachers from a bilingual high school in the Adamoua region came to Bafang to do a sort of exchange with John’s bilingual high school.  Now Cameroonian invites are implicitly all expenses paid – and I mean ALL expenses, including activities, meals, and every leg of transportation even if you’re traveling in a separate taxi.  First John paid for a wonderful, extravagant, so-close-to-American breakfast for Lee and me at that very restaurant we had recently discovered on our own!  Then we met the chief of a village in the Littoral region, who happens to be John’s uncle, and went to John’s school in Foukwankem for food, speeches, introductions, mingle time, and a game of handball between schools.  Next we all headed to another nearby village called Kekem where we met the local sous-prefect (a big shot government official) and had refreshments and mingled.  John pulled Lee and me aside and took us into a room with the sous-prefect and left us there to chat with him.  Though mildly awkward (and I kind of hate being treated like a VIP when I know I’ve done nothing to deserve it), the sous-prefect was really nice and had very well-informed opinions on a lot of issues.  At one point, he started talking about how he loves that in America, although people come from all over the world and have all kinds of different backgrounds and histories, everyone feels united in their Americanism.  I almost got choked up as he talked about it.  It is a beautiful country. 

Later, Lee left the room for a minute, and I immediately went into defensive mode of being left alone in a room with a Cameroonian man.  The first thing he did was ask for my number (surprise surprise).  Then he started speaking slowly and carefully in English.  “You know, Antonia, there is a subject I would like to tackle…” I inhaled deeply.  Please don’t ask me about my husband.  “It’s about religion.  I don’t care whether you’re a believer or not, it doesn’t matter, it’s just… I’ve heard of something that America has… called… Mormonism.  And apparently… these Mormons think they’re Christians!  What’s that all about???”  J Cultural exchanges are so fun!

Anyway, I have been teaching English three times a week.  So far we’ve covered salutations, numbers to 100, writing the date, the weather, and family.  Overall, the girls are really good and fun to teach.  One of my classes is clearly the worst behaved, so that’s not usually a great time, but the other two have been engaged and helpful and cooperative.  Plus, I am so lucky for my class sizes – while most teachers in Cameroon are wrangling 50, 60, or 100 kids per class, my “big” class is 21 (although on a typical day it’s more like 15), and my smallest class is just 8.  It’s so nice, especially for language, because I can have each of them repeat individually and I can call on them by name (or call them out by name, as I have had to do with that rat Linda).  Although I wasn’t thrilled about teaching English initially, it’s great to have something to get me out of the house and keep me feeling productive.

Oh also I finally got to enjoy the fruits of my labor tonight by putting some basil from my garden in my tomato soup!  And, it was yummy!