When it rains it pours

Carrying water from the well on my head for the first time - TRY this! They balance everything - school books, bags of laundry, stacks of shoes to sell. I've seen a guy with a full lunch tray on his head bend down to pick something up without missing a beat. 

Some trainees at the hotel veranda, wearing our newly-received rape awareness t-shirts, which caused quite a stir at the local market

The charming house two down from mine

My host father in the elementary school classroom where he used to be a teacher

Local kids hanging out at our training site

The giant baobab tree I pass each day on my walk to training

Host children peering out the window when we held language class on the porch of a fellow trainee. They wanted to watch everything we did and joined in to teach us songs to remember grammar rules!

       My first experience in an African taxi was nothing short of hysterical. After gleefully rejoicing over the discovery of a bar with cold bottled water and beer in nearbye Bafia after Saturday classes, a few of us trudged into the town center in search of an internet café – I was thinking of you, dear reader! The streets are a riot – chaotic traffic, road conditions in shambles, people selling everything imaginable on the roadsides and off their heads in the middle of the streets,  and shouts of “The whites!”. We finally got set up in a little cyber hut and got online – oh, gmail! Bliss was ours, but it was all a tease. Did I mention we are in the middle of the rainy season? I’ve never seen such ferocious rain in my life – later I would see that at least 14 inches had been collected at home in buckets in what, two hours?! In the northeast I've grown up with whiteout snowstorms - here they have their own blizzards of rain  The torrential downpour put the already chaotic street outside into total mayhem, but on roared the motos, on splashed the children with several days worth of firewood bundled and balanced on their heads.

      Our  power and internet were blown to pieces before I'd pressed "send" even once – I keep getting burned and must learn to prioritize and write short emails. There was nothing we could do – cramped in this little roadside hut, watching the whole world get washed away outside, and with the approaching dark and our village curfew impending. Walking home was out of the question – the road to our village was already a network of pothole trenches that threaten to send you over your bike handle bars if you look up for a moment. Luckily we had our newly minted helmets – Peace Corps policy – which no one but us wears, and which make us look like teenage mutant ninja turtles! We donned them and with the assistance of the kind cyber café guy tried to hail a moto to take us back to our vilages – fruitless!! They all said their motos would be ruined - I couldn't blame them. After a totally senseless wild goose chase for a solution along the quickly disintegrating road, a car across the street was summoned  and we were ushered toward it by the now large crew of men who had taken up the hunt for a willing vehicle to escort our white helpless butts back to camp. After a wildly confusing price negotiation in which everyone but us had a say, we crammed in.

     I was naiively of the mind that three of us would go in back, and one in front, which with our large backpacks and helmets the size and colors of ready-to-burst party balloons would have already been a squeeze. Our first hint at the insanity that was about to ensue was that all four of us, backpacks and helmets included, were made to fit in the back of this tiny beat up European compact car. We were on each others laps at that point, and playing a giant game of twister – who’s arm was even who’s? Four people then proceeded to squeeze into the front seat, into which our appendages were already intruding extensively. Just when I thought we would never make it, the trunk hatch door was opened, and a large woman and her teenage son attempted to cram into the trunk. Except, there was no trunk. Only about six inches between the back seats and this hatch door, which meant that they bent forward onto us, storing their feet behind.

       By now the worst smell of a crowd you can imagine cannot compare to the wet, sweaty mess of this car – oil was leaking out of goodness knows where, rain was pouring in through the holes in the roof and doors, and the whole operation seemed held together by floss and bubble gum. I had the sweat from the boy's temple dripping onto my face – not even dripping, which would imply that there was any space between his face and mine. You hear about chickens riding on people's heads in these situations - I had a full grown person flung over my shoulders! Rain and mud were flying in, but how much better than walking! The roads were absolute lakes with fickle bottoms - the ride reminded me of the computer game "Oregon Trail" where it was always a grave risk to "ford the river". I was holding my breath the whole time (or just could not breathe for lack of space) but we made it - when we arrived I could not even open the door as I was smooshed too closely into it - the driver had to get out, then I just rolled out into the mud. To fathom that a trip to the US for the people who experience this every day might be equally insane is hard to imagine : )