It's shameless and maybe out of line to come out and tell you what I want for my birthday (October 13th), but getting insults to the French and marriage proposals alike barked at me from roadside bars where men have been drinking since dawn has started to wear down my recollection of what is appropriate when...so excusez-moi.
And your birthday only comes once a year, so since I have the added excuses of it being my 25th birthday AND being in Africa where pulling into a CVS is but a fuzzy fantasy, I've gotta make the most of it. For those of you wanting to shower me with love, please know that the bar for what makes me giddy like a 5-year-old at Christmas, like my standards in nearly all areas, has plummeted to unrecognizable lows since being on this planet. I mean continent...wow, really just wrote that.
So, while I have let myself go wild with this list, putting just a couple of these things in a $13 flat rate envelope will make my month, and if past experience is an indicator, I will squeal like a puppy upon seeing even a pack of M&Ms. Heck, I'm not sure my heartrate will be able to handle the shock if I actually see all these things too close together, so please, against your better judgement, control thyself when purchasing.
"A happy volunteer is a productive volunteer", so don't hesitate to consider your boost to my mental sanity a contribution to the promotion of peace and development in my tiny corner of the world. Your encouragement will keep me motivated to share many things with Cameroonians - the advantages of exclusive breastfeeding and birth spacing, the important elements of a balanced diet and a recipe for making preteinlicious tofu, songs, card tricks...but peanut butter, mac and cheese, nice chocolate, these things will be MINE, all mine. Cameroonians don't have a track record of loving our food, so when we try to share they end up forcing down food they don't enjoy, and we end up losing our precious hard-to-come-by ingredients and resenting that anyone would not enjoy something so obviously delicious.
Did I tell you about the time I made Jello for my neighbor kids and they ran around saying they were going to vomit? Another volunteer had a more polite, grown friend try a dinner dish, and even he asked "umm...do you have any salt? ...do you have any...oil?" But I already know what I love, so there is no such risk of disappointment or anticlimax involved. Just the opposite -- I actually scissored in half the first jar of peanut butter I got here just to make sure I could swipe every.last.morsel from the bottom with my finger. So:
Toiletries: Shampoo; body wash; deoderant; nice smelling lotions or sprays - (believe me, I'm not picky on what scent!); Q-tips; toothpaste; razors; toothbrushes; Aveeno "Positively Radiant" face lotion, make-up removing face cleansing wipes, little grabby hair clips (you know the kind I wear, if you don't, skip this one : )
Condiments: Soy sauce; balsamic vinaigrette salad dressing; any salad dressing packets; natural peanut butter; taco/fajita meat seasoning packets; instant soup packets; curry powder (red or yellow); brown sugar; honey; no-calorie sweetener (preferably the natural kind, like Stevia)
Food: Canned tuna fish or chicken - oh protein, how I miss thee; Luna bars (especially Cherry Pie flavor) or Clif Bars (any peanut related flavor); milk-chocolate covered pretzels (like Flipz ); boxed maceroni and cheese (oooh, Annie's brand please!); parmesan cheese; dried lentils; brown rice; granola; any not-super-sweet cereal like honey roasted shredded wheat (take it out of the cardboard box!); nuts, other than peanuts; dried fruit, preferably unsweetened; gummy fruit snacks; tea- anything but Lipton black which I can find here (caffeinated or herbal, loose or bagged is all fine); emergen-c vitamin c packets
Life bits and pieces: Cheap fun jewelry (earrings and necklackes - women love to get dressed up here and I got nothin'); leggings or thick tights to wear under dresses so I don't flash people climbing onto motorcycles - large size, especially black/brown/navy; stand-on-their-own candles, especially scented; fun headbands (cloth or plastic - trying to find cute ways to ward off motorcycle helmet hair); sturdy scrubby (mettalic) dish cleaning "sponge"; American stamps for sending letters back to you with travelling volunteers/Embassy officials; any size tupperwear containers with lids; large Zip-lock bags (the ultimate ant/roach/mouse protection for food); Clorox wipes; non-stick cooking spray; heavy duty drain de-clogger; Tylenol multi-symptom liquid cold medicine, (orange liquid in clear bottle); J Crew/Banana Republic or similar catalogues that have basic women's dresses - we show the pictures to tailors here when getting dresses sewn - its fun!
A few notes on sending:
1) Take items out of bulky packaging, and don't feel the need to add lots of extra padding. The boxes actually don't get too beat up, so no need to pay for a bigger box than the bare contents require.
2) Get flat rate boxes - USPS has a small, medium and large size, the biggest being around $58 last time I knew. Ask for these and avoid paying too much!
3) That's Sister Tess to you. Have fun with drawing crosses on the box and busting out those Bible verses you had to memorize in Sunday School. Try and get comfortable considering snacks and toiletries as "religious materials" when declaring contents. I mean, I find God in food, and will swear I'm in Heaven when I get your package, so it's not that much of a stretch. And for the total value of the contents, think: Limbo - How low can you go?
4) My address is still the same: Tess Marstaller, Peace Corps Volunteer, BP 15, Nkongsamba Cameroun (the French use a "u" instead of the 2 Anglophone "oo"s. Packages generally take 2-3 weeks to get here, but don't worry about the timing one bit.
THANK YOU! The Peace Corps has just told us we are not allowed to leave our posts for three weeks in October because of the upcoming Cameroonian elections and wanting to play it safe should tensions arise (though no one is expecting people to get rowdy, the outcome is already anticipated and generally accepted). That means that I'll be staying close to home come the 13th, so if I can't have friends and loved ones around, hearing from you will be all the more special.
Also, wacky seasons, time warpage and general disconnect mean I frequently have to stop and figure out what month it is (and when talks about preventing cholera or not blaming infant deaths on sorcery get interrupted by Justin Bieber cellphone ringtones, I often have to wonder what year it is too...). Point being, whether it's for my birthday, Christmas, or Easter, I will appreciate any displays of affection, anytime, however modest (remember, I freaked out that a store in my new town sells Tic Tacs). I love letters too and would be thrilled to have an update from any of you!
Thanks again for helping me get to the 1 year mark, I know the next year is going to fly!
September 19, 2011
Celebrating ONE YEAR in Cameroon
Yesterday marked my one year anniversary of arriving to Cameroon as a Peace Corps volunteer! Feels pretty. darn. great. I finished off year one with an incredible jungle hike to some remote water falls, led by a local villager and accompanied by a Cameroonian friend who took all the pictures. It was an awesome adventure and definitely one of those "This is not some fake amusement park Africa. I am really here!" moments : ) More about the difference that a year has made (so big its hard to wrap my head around) coming up, but for now, THANKS for all the support you show through reading the blog, writing emails, sending goodies and letters, dropping facebook messages - no show of encouragement goes unnoticed, they truly keep me going and mean a ton. So don't think I don't need them now that I'm a slightly more seasoned volunteer - the rollercoaster ups and downs never slow down. But thanks to my recent move and all the good energy resulting from those changes, I'm feeling the best I have since I got here and I can't wait for year 2.
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| Please note the Cameroon-shaped earrings! Wearing my pride. |
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