Big News - I'm Moving!

That’s right – the moving truck, ie. the only 4 wheeled vehicle in the region I could convince to schlep me and my load down the treacherous, rain-devastated road out of here, picked me up a week ago. The two married volunteers posted in my nearest small city, Nkongsamba, have to head back to the States earlier than expected, leaving a hole in a key headquarter spot for our region, and throwing open an awesome opportunity for me to transfer there and experience a different side of Peace Corps Cameroon. A side I am feeling pretty blessed I’ll now get to call home : )

5 things I am jumping out of my skin to have at my new post:

1)      WATER!!!!!  The couple weeks before I left were “August break” from rainy season with the sun out in full force and me remembering what my first 7 months at post were like. Stifling hot humidity that makes leaving the radius kept bearable by my fan overwhelming, and a constant search for water. Whole mornings spent trying to figure out how to get water to either flush your toilet, wash your dishes, or take a bucket bath, doesn’t exactly jump start your day! In my new place I’ll have a tap right in my house, and another outside – when I visited, and turned on the tap in the middle of the day, and water immediately rushed out, I could have cried. It is no understatement to say that reliable access to water is going to transform my daily life. I’ll be able to exercise when I want because I can bathe afterwards, if washing dishes is not a stretch I’ll do way more cooking (and trust me, I need the practice - I made the glaze for my going away, and I'll no longer end up trying to wash my hands with copious amounts of hand sanitizer because its the only liquid available.

But best of all, I got to donate the water tank I had invested in to my compound, and the women, who are respondible for washing dishes, laundry and floors everyday and feel the stress of the water crisis even more acutely than I do because they have big families, were overwhelmed with joy. It was such a magical feeling to know that their quality of life will be improved - I think it sweetened the sadness of my leaving for all of us.

2)      2) FRENCH! Oui, oui, my new town is just over the border into the Francophone part of the country, so ten months after having to swallow the pill of getting an Anglophone post when I’d been dreaming of using and improving my French, I am getting my wish : )

3)      FOOD! Nkongsamba has a daily market of fruits, veggies and even meat. Where I’ve been, finding fruit at all is hard, the selection of veggies is small, and most of the tomatoes look like they’ve been run over by a truck they’ve spent so much time bouncing around in one to make it to Saturday market. There will also be way more street food like grilled fish ad avocado/egg sandwiches, daily (I can go days without eating a single ounce of protein, so this is exciting!), and there is even a tiny grocery store where you can find…wait for it…European chocolate bars!! They also do great French bread here, have oatmeal, lettuce, cucumbers, Tic Tacs – I’m gonna go totally nuts!

4)      COOLER TEMPS! If you thought this deal could not get any sweeter, it’s also noticeably cooler than my home in Tombel, being a bit higher up. It’s beautiful too, surrounded by some small mountains, and with palm trees and other lush green jungle flora encroaching on all sides.

5)      TRAVEL! Even though it’s not far from where I am now, the leg I’ll be cutting out makes all the difference to being a manageable distance from some beautiful weekend destinations where there are awesome volunteers and possibilities for collaboration on projects like teaching women how to make and sell tofu out of super nutritious and impossibly cheap soy beans. I am closer to a paved road trafficked by buses heading to the main cities, the water, and the West, my new favorite area – pics below. Also, I no longer have to go through a transit point where the harassment from aggressive men scrambling to make money is nearly unbearable, so that will take a bite out of my residual stress index.

But lest you think I’m turning “Posh Corps”, I hope I can keep up some credibility that I'm toughing it : )  My new house is outrageously infested with cockroaches and also houses quite a few mice, the city is gritty and dirty and covered in mud and trash and rubble, and I'll still be coming up against quite an abrasive, offensive and condescending style of treatment as a woman and especially as a white woman and a foreigner. Rural or urban, water or none, this place can eat you alive if you don't leave the house wearing your protective armour of resiliency, patience, humor and poise! But I know the move is a good one for my life right now, and I can't wait to personalize my house, start some projects, and make the most of the rest of my months.

Here's a bit of what else has been going on the last few weeks and as I transition...

Last week my friend and moto driver took me on a detour adventure into the papaya and banana plantations that flank the road that leads out of my village. We walked all through the groves and came home with some delicious treats. Motorcycle rides along that road, especially in the early morning or at sunset, are stunning and a favorite pasttime of mine from life in Tombel. Yes, there are definitely things I'm going to miss!

The FANTASTIC principal at the local high school where I did several projects last year, sporting the shirt he just got made out of the Peace Corps' 50th Anniversary fabric that I gave him as a parting gift - quite dashing! Many of my most eye-opening and laugh-out-loud enjoyable cross-cultural conversations have been with him, and while I'll really miss our chats and collaboration, I know we'll be friends long after I leave.

The compound women outside my door (yep, it's pretty close quarters!) pounding foufou, the local staple. Won't miss it, sorry ladies, but I'll sure miss you!

The things that are finally working out and improving with my move prove that patience, positivity and prayers for clarity really can pay off! I made seveval of these signs with the art supplies my aunt sent me, and they really help calm my nerves. The quote is from a book of declarations for difficult times that my sister sent me (Transitions, by Julia Cameron) - it is the single most comforting and helpful volume I've ever had in my possession, and I am so grateful to have it!

Hiking down from Charmayne's house to get a motorcycle out of the village...from which I saw my first totally wild monkey running alongside the road (rampant poaching in the bush has actually made them pretty rare).

Is it any wonder I love travelling to other people's posts? The diversity in this country on every level keeps things constantly fresh and intriguing.

Awesome traditional ceremony I got to go to in my friend's village of Bapa in the West - the masks were wild!

Can't go around it, can't go under it...gotta go through it!



Last days at the health center I was working at - bringing posters and pancakes to give to the nurses.



The head nurse who gave me great support during my presentations, and had a song up her sleeve for every topic! Ex: "Balanced Diet, Balanced Diet! Rice and Beans! Rice and Beans! Eat them everyday, eat them everyday. Balanced Diet, Balanced Diet!" That one really had me trying not to laugh at its own contradictions...



I've seen many of these women at least monthly as they go through their pregancy and come in for consultations...we talk about nutrition, vaccinations for their infants, the functions and cycles of their reproductive system, the importance of breastfeeding, treating diarrhea, hygiene, and planning future pregnancies. Most of the women are unmarried, and most of their pregnancies are coming very soon after another childbirth or when they otherwise were not ready for a child.

The fact that I look at this baby of my neighbor's and still think "aww" is rediculous, considering how many times her screaming and wailing right outside my door and bedroom window have made me want to rip my hair out. Still, I will miss this whole family - just in 9 months all the little ones have grown up so much!

Sunset view from my compound in Tombel, one of several gorgeous local views I will miss.

I told my Health Club about the story of Rosa Parks during our discussion on role models (and nearly teared up telling them about how blacks like themselves fought for equality in our country). Then recently I found this picture in a magazine I had, with her story in simple and inspiring words. I gave it to my neighbor Edith - she is such a promising girl and I want her to have strong women to look up to.

The Quaker meeting I grew up attending recently sent several packages of books, toys, stickers, soccer balls, jump ropes...I brought some of the goodies to a local orphanage, and it was like Christmas in July for the kids. We had a blast finding songs we all knew from the hymnal they also included, and just had a really special evening - getting attention and any new playthings is such a treat for them. Thank you Durham Friends Meeting, and especially the Women's Society and my Aunt Nancy for getting this whole initiative together!

Just beaming.

This fellow read the entire book out loud to us beautifully - I was VERY impressed!

Isn't that what it's all about? : )

Coming up: Shocking before and after pictures of my new house, reflections on having been in Cameroon for ONE YEAR (...on September 18th), and what goodies you can send me for my upcoming 25th birthday!

Kinda forget what I'm doing? Recap - from the article I submitted to my Quaker meeting newsletter

Asinge, Friends! 

At just a few degrees above the equator, my Cameroonian village in West Africa can depend on at least one thing arriving with consistency –nightfall at 6:30. Water in the public taps, electricity, phone network, the long promised road repairs, teachers for the new school year – cross your fingers but don’t hold your breath. Electricity has been out for almost a week now, so today I traveled to charge my computer, only to find that riding over broken roads on motorcycles, jungle humidity that keeps clothes damp for a week,  or maybe lizard droppings, have gotten the best of my keyboard – this draft looks like code so may letters aren’t working! I’m typing by candlelight and have put out buckets to collect rain for my morning bath and dishes. My alarm clock will be the bustle of early morning village life – chickens, babies, wood-chopping, open-fire cooking, and neighbors yelling greetings to those trekking to their cocoa farms or hauling water.

It’s all part of the rollercoaster ride as I try and integrate into my community as a Peace Corps health volunteer - the first foreigner to have a presence here in 20 years. The learning curve has been more like a free fall as I get used to hearing “WHITEMAN” yelled as I pass by villagers still taken aback by my presence, keep my front door open despite my desire for privacy to respect the culture of openness, and play hardball with vendors and drivers who instantly quadruple their price with me– I joke that I’m from the Bamilike tribe, known for driving a hard bargain. 

My job, helping this community identify and address their health development needs, has been at once the most rewarding, exasperating, and eye-opening pool of experiences I’ve even been thrown head first into. I’m lucky that cultural exchange is part of our responsibility – I get to learn about their challenges (poor prices for their crops), frustrations (bad roads) and what brings them joy (singing!) as I pick up phrases in Bakossi and we make pancakes. The disempowering effects of political oppression, rampant systemic corruption and few opportunities have been upsetting to watch in action, but have also sparked unforgettable conversations with frustrated moto taxi drivers, high school students aching to study in America, and neighbors tired of seeing local needs ignored by those with power. 

As a health educator I get to work with students from nursery to high school, using games and demonstrations to teach everything from proper hand washing (difficult to promote when any water is hard to come by) to HIV awareness. I relish walking into classrooms and having all the students, in their blue and white uniforms, stand and greet me in unison, and always try and bring them a new song. They love “Amazing Grace”, and I just got to lead pre-schoolers in “This Little Light of Mine” for their parents!

Perhaps most moving of all has been teaching reproductive health to young women who are going through adolescence and womanhood without even basic information. The school curriculum includes no sexual education, though premature pregnancy and STD’s are major problems among youth. The first time I held a seminar for 7^th-9^th grade aged girls and put out a “Question Box” for their confidential matters, I could not hand out slips of paper fast enough for their outpouring of uncertainties. I cried reading them afterward, realizing I’d hit a serious nerve of need that I could actually respond to.  Helping them navigate pregnancy and child-rearing concerns, introducing the benefits of family planning, and sending the message that they can positively influence their own lives is a role I love. Doing so in the context of rampant need and the social and cultural complications I’ve been learning about for years is a dream come true.

Still, the going is slow and the heat, harassment and endless house malfunctions can make crawling out of bed utterly overwhelming. But thrilling moments make the headaches of trying to function where basic functioning often seems out of reach immediately worth it. Last weekend I saw my first delivery of a tiny baby girl, on a wooden bed with just a few basic instruments and one kerosene lantern in the room- breathtaking! Yesterday a nurse and I hosted the first session of a support group for HIV+ women that we are trying to launch – it has taken months to find even a few women willing to share their status with others. Talking about the free treatment available to these women, who have never had autonomy over so much as a dollar, let alone their own health, was powerful. 

One of the biggest surprises has been how and where Western influences have infiltrated daily life. Even those who live on dirt floors and without running water have cell phones, and everyone loves calling just to say hi! Many people dress in the flashy Western clothes available cheaply in the market, yet are still using pit latrine toilets and cooking over a fire…but in faux Gucci jeans and with their Lady Gaga ring tone sounding from a nearby rock. Beer companies’ hold is strong, but stronger still are the sorcery beliefs that are the assumed root of everything from unexplained deaths to higher than normal electricity bills. Daily life is often a chaotic and dizzying moshpit of tradition and modernity. 

The youth of the meeting may have their own views, but I can’t wait for the school year to begin. Kids have been the golden ticket to feeling at home here, and their adoring greetings (“Auntie Tasse, Auntie TASSE!”) and laughter on my porch as we draw and play cards always brighten my day. Mostly, I can’t wait until they return from their relatives’ holiday care so I can distribute the equipment and supplies you all sent through the Women’s Society.  I felt like a five-year old at Christmas opening those packages – what an amazing outpouring of childhood goodies that these kids have never known. My heartfelt thanks to you all – photos forthcoming!

Happy CAM -pers!




There are few things I love more than summer camp! Since getting my Peace Corps invite it has been a dream to bring the fun and memories of camp to Cameroonian youth, who have little to do during the holidays - there is almost no youth programming, and most kids end up vending food to help their parents or going to the village of an uncle or auntie to hang around there.

After several months of trying to plan logistics with our American mindset (that is, a mindset that believes logistics should be, well, planned) we had to embrace the fact that planning ahead is not the style here, and seriously go with the flow. We literally arrived the day of camp opening without one child having registered - we were told if people are going to come, they will just show up - within the first few days. But with the help of my awesome volunteer neighbor Ashley, two great Cameroonian friends we invited to be male co-counselors, a local orphanage/social center, and a lot of lucky stars, we had a magically successful week of health and life-skills education, games, singing, and making new friends. It was an overnight camp, so around-the-clock fun and craziness to manage, and in a remote village with no running water and unreliable electricity to boot! One of the most memorable and enjoyable weeks of Peace Corps so far.

Our girls were precious! The campers elected to call me by my middle name Alicia, since Tess does not not roll off the tongue well here, and Auntie in French is Tata, so all week I was "Tata Alicia". Each evening the girls would bring Ashley and me buckets of water to wash our faces and flush our toilet, and they had to sweep and mop the floor each day before morning meditation. The Center staff said chores are a crucial piece of any education program, and where there is so much manual labor to do and few tools or ammenities, young people always get brought in as working hands.



We played the Alien Game - pretending aliens have arrived who have no idea about male and female differences, so the girls have to explain what boys are, and vice versa. Each group had to present their list, which naturally included both physical and cultural differences, and responses from the other side got heated! We then talked about "sex" vs. "gender" and how a lot of traits of males and females have been decided by society and can morph over time - women "wear skirts" but can also wear pants, men may drive moto taxis, but women also can, technically (amazingly, the one time I did see women driving their own motorcycles was in the conservative Muslim north of the coutry - go figure).

That afternoon I put up "I agree" and "I don't agree" signs on opposite sides of the room, and read statements about condoms being available in schools, women being suitable presidents and leaders, and bride price being abolished. The campers chose their sides, and fierce debates followed! The whole thing was made more dramatic by the absolute pounding rain on the tin roof that amped up the intensity big time. I was so proud of the way several kids in particular expressed and backed up their opinions and held their own, and about some of their surprisingly and encouragingly progressive views about the changing times. We had boys on both sides of the women as leaders argument getting passionate about whether women are "strong" enough to hold major power - it was pretty inspiring to see youth exploring their own changing times.

Giant hoods, lowered head, averted eyes...looks like teenage boys will do anything to avoid facing a map of the female reproductive system! But in fact these guys were awesome, and doing reprouctive health with them was an absolute blast. The fact that it was my first time doing the lesson in French and I was shaky on some vocab and prononciation actually helped break the ice...they had to help me fill in the missing words like sperm and fertilization.

Reproductive education is one of my favorite things to do with youth here - it's linked to so many important topics like self-awareness and confidence, HIV and premature pregnancy, prostitution, better gender relations and, down the line, family planning, which has loads of potential benefits for mothers, children and families here. Most girls and women especially have no idea what's happening in their own bodies and have so many questions and nowhere to get information, so teaching them about menstruation and pregnancy is really satisfying - knowledge is power! I use simple terms, talking about the uterus as the house of the baby that has to build a nice soft bed each month, and how the body uses hormones to send messages to itself. I am trying to get this talk down in Pidgin. Child = pikin. Pregnant woman = mami wey y get big belly! 

Did I tell you about the first time I brought in a model of a woman's reproductive system to a girl's seminar at the secondary school -- we talked about all the intimate details, yet the thing that had them all giggling had nothing to do with the birds and the bees. They thought it was so funny that I used the term "belly button"! They only know "naval" and could not stop cracking up. You never know!

A friend of ours from Buea now runs a small guiding service up Mt Cameroon - be built his way up after an extremely trying start to life, and we were so excited to bring him in as an example of someone overcoming obstacles and making it in Cameroon with a positive attitude and proactive planning. He told the kids all about his struggle to find productive work and stay in school, and several kids said his testimony was their favorite part of the week! We were so glad to have the advice about making goals, saving up your money, and not letting people's doubts get you down come from a Cameroonian.

Behind him is the model we drew illustrating how we can cross the sea of dangerous risks (HIV, pregnancy,
stealing, cheating, drugs, irresponsibility) by building a bridge of positive life skills (like confidence, resisting peer pressure, communication, respect, having role models, and planning ahead) to get us from where we are now to a healthy, happy future. We came back to this many times, talking about how we were starting to build those traits this week, and how sports, team-building, public speaking, healthy competition, and learning new skills are all part of the process.

We had a lot of fun bringing American games like tag and "red rover, red rover" to the kids, and had a whole morning of team sports that was a big hit - here we are doing stretching and warm-ups before soccer and handball.

After the girls had their chance to describe what boys are stereotypically like, I gave the guys a chance to present what kind of young men they ideally want to be. They were to draw a character who represented traits they admire - they found Celtics Player Kevin Barnett on the front of someone's notebook and spend most of the time painstakingly copying him (nice work though!, but they got some good points in there about how he reached success in his career by working hard and staying healthy. I could not have asked for better guys - we all know teenage boys can be tough to engage in this type of activity, but these guys were a joy. I have a special soft spot for the taller boy Sime, who lives year-round at this center and is a bit rough around the edges but has a heart of gold. I can't wait to go back and visit him this year.

While much of the week we had no electricity, one afternoon we hooked up some computers and had children write up mock invites to our cultural night on old school Microsoft Word. It was awesome watching them learn copy and paste, how to change fonts, and how to save...a lot of them had made goals about learning computer skills, so they were excited to get to explore.

What do you do when you have an old volleyball net and want to get a game going? You head out into the jungle and machete down some massive bamboo stalks...

...then cut them into poles and string it all together!

I'll never forget what happened as we were building this court. The guy above who marched confidently into the bush to hack down branches with a machete and haul them back to the field, something I would never know how to approach, then showed me an old tattered dictionary where he remembered there was an image of a volleyball court including the dimensions for the height and distance between the poles. But he had no notion of where the picture was, and started thumbing through the book from page 1. I gently tried to help once he told me what he was looking for, suggesting that it would be beside the entry for volleyball. He agreed that that would be right, but then did not understand the alphabetical ordering of the book, nor where V was in the alphabet once I showed him how a dictionary is organized.

It was so eye-opening, yet is often the case - people who are dressing in Western styles, using cell phones, and who are totally in their element with certain activities, especially labor work, have major gaps in "book smart" education. This often happens with kids who look like they could walk into a US school and fit right in with their stylish shoes and hot jeans, but cannot name the regions of their country, don't know the meaning of the cardinal directions, cannot do basic math, have no idea what a goal is, and may not have left their village in years. In many ways pictures give the impression that things here are more developed than they are because of some visible Western influences like trendy clothes. But knowledge of worldly topics and critical thinking capacity are still broadly lacking, and traditional village beliefs and practices, such as with sorcery/witchcraft, having many children, using traditional healers, and gender equality, are still widespread, even among those that look very 21st century.

A lot of kids have never gotten to know a map, so geography education is also really fun - most of our campers did not know there were seven continents, and finding Cameroon, France, and China was like a scavenger hunt. It was a great feeling when we got them to understand why Russia and Alaska are not actually on opposite sides of the world.

...love this : )

So proud of his work!! All those names in the corner are HIS, the last being etc...! People always seems to have at least six names, including, thank goodness, one Christian/English name that I can attach to and have some home of remembering and pronouncing.

This dish was delicious! All our food was cooked over a huge pit fire (located inside the wood kitchen in the background), a fact that caused a 2-3 hour daily delay in lunch being served, since the wet firewood (we are in heavy rainy season, and even inside, humidity makes everything wet - the new bane of my existence!) took forever to heat up. We also had to be patient with trucks bringing the food crops getting stuck in the mud on the way back from the field. Luckily there was always the option of running barefoot into the cornfield next to the camp, picking some ripe ears, shucking them and roasting them over the fire as a snack - the kids just know how to do all of this stuff and lead the way (like I said, Cameroonians have all sorts of skills I don't!).
Fresh roasted corn - unbelievably delicious. It was our own local take on camp s'mores.

Doing some one-on-one work with Naomi (the last of her five names!) on making goals, something that was an extremely foreign concept to the kids and took a lot of explaining and re-explaining to get across. We ended up with three goals for her: 1) trying out for the handball team at school this fall, 2) learning how to browse the internet on her aunt's computer, and 3) saving up the money she gets to buy food at school to help buy notebooks for her five younger brothers who never have school supplies.
I was very, very proud!

Snack time! These have just been picked from up the street.

It is distracting to me how well-dressed and well-off these campers appear, and how it does not reflect their reality at all. Only a few of the kids' caretakers could pay for the camp at all - severely impacting our budget -, and many come from homes with serious financial strains, as well as many other social issues. Since appearance is so important and people take extreme pains to look good, campers brought their couple nice items, and wore the same clothes nearly all week.

They would wash them every few days, and scrub their shoes every day (clean shoes is perhaps the biggest daily life priority I see here! When I leave muddy sandals around, they inevitable get washed for me, as people are nearly offended - and often openly judgemental - of gathered dirt on footwear. The fact that hand and bathroom cleanliness doesn't seem to matter is more than a bit ironic and frustrating!) When the sun came out the girls would beg to be excused so they could go and hang their clothes out, and when the rain started, kids would scamper off to go and take their clothes off the line.

Ashley and I noticed that as a huge difference from camp in the states, where you take pride and pleasure in getting rugged and grungy (the difference being that it is generally respected that you could and do look decent at other times, whereas here, if you don't look good, you probably can't look good). Despite the much less condusive surroundings, looking clean whenever you possibly can, if you possibly can, is a way of showing status.  



Sippi was that classic priceless camper you want to smack but who just melts your heart - always causing trouble, but making up for it by bringing us together with his pranks and gift of keeping everything light and fun.



Friday night's cultural talent show had some laugh out loud hilarious comedy sketches (Renee in the striped shirt was a total ham), sweet tradiational dances - really cool to see what the kids have already learned to present from their tribes - ...and one boy from the big city doing Justin Bieber's "Baby" with only backup singers for accompanyment. Ashley and I could not even hold it together it was so cute. Music and dancing is second nature to them all - on a couple night when pounding rain was holding us all capture in the dinner building, they broke down in "Stomp" like chaos, pounding on benches, clapping and singing out - it was one of the coolest things I have ever seen kids do.

In the US, we buckle our seatbelts, make sure our headlights and brakes work, get our tires changed and keep the oil fresh to make sure we are safe on the road. When none of those are options and your roads are a collection of muddy craters...you pray! There was a formally led prayer session before Ashley and I took off, accompanied by a truckload of heavily jostled, singing kids sending us off.  

The best part - the kids got to be kids.

Don't even need flowers, just bring on those showers!

Ashley and I debuted our matching dresses (made from material sent as a gift by a suitor!) at a farewell dinner for two wonderful nurses who have been working at the hospital in Buea since September. The restaurant was a little bit of ex-pat heaven in the country's biggest city Douala, including rolls with olive oil, PIZZA, and ice cream -- all enjoyed under a celing fan, giving me a much appreciated break from trying to keep my face from dripping right off in the relentless humidity.


You know you live in the jungle when after a week your bag of ginger is sprouting stalks right through the plastic. I hang my clothes on the line and bring them in at night for three days after a wash, but they still never get past damp - I am actually shaking fruit flies off my shirts before I put them on. The upside? Rain water is now more reliable than my local taps will ever be!



Out of every school in town, the only one to hold any kind of graduation ceremony was...the nursery school? And somehow, even though there is not a single book in the concrete school house and the headmistress's office is made of plywood, robes and mortar boards came out of nowhere for the four-years olds!
I led the class in the song we had been practicing, "This Little Light of Mine", and the other surprise of the day was that all of a sudden the teacher wanted them to sing it with tall lit candles, as they marched. Never having practiced with anything but our pointer fingers, and with synthetic robes and hairdos all around and no protection from the hot wax, the pre-schoolers were now expected to march in line, singing, and waving their candles. No one seemed very concerned about the glaring safety hazard aside from me - I blew them all out when the kids could not focus one bit, then they re-lit them once we were inside.


 My precious neighbor Rea - she was the class prefect (again, surprising amounts of formality in informal settings - the school does not have running water or a bathroom) and gave a speech!



Another example of how important appearance is here - every little girl had a new hair do for the big day, yet many of them had missed school throughout the year because their parents could not come up with the school fees. I find that outside appearance is generally a far higher priority than quality child development - shiny black shoes instead of a notebook and pencil, for example, even at the high school level.



My Health Club crew marching proudly once again during the May 20th holiday, which commemorates the British and French Cameroons joining as one (in 1972) - notably, not a word about the significance of the day was mentioned in my Anglophone town - bit of a sore topic, the whole matter. But hey, at least we got some light shed on another hush-hush issue - HIV.



After weeks of practicing and writing lyrics, the Health Club ladies' performance of HIV songs was a huge hit! The moves, the messages, it all came together and I got loads of positive feed back, which felt fantastic. In a tradition that felt bizarrely like an underage strip tease show, local leaders from the facing grand stand come down during the performance and smother the singers with money, dropping bills onto the heads, tucking them into their clothes...sometimes you want another American around just to share a "is this really happening?!" look. But hey, with $50 collected from around their feet for next year's projects, this girl's not judging.

Business as usual...almost. This is the official receipt I sent as a picture attachment to the Peace Corps so that they could reimburse my bank account, the account that has a crayon-drawn village map on file for my current address.
My lock has broken four times since moving in - sadly, cheap does not begin to describe the quality of products that are available here. Village labor is also not of the most refined quality. The lock-smith, after hurriedly welding the last lock into my iron door, realized it was ill-fit and jutted out so the door would not even close. So he brutally bashed the whole thing, lock, door, and door frame, with a sledgehammer until it was so dented and missahapen that it now slams shut...good enough? That's usually the name of the game. I realize that quality job training and notions of professionalism and customer service are luxeries not to be taken for granted.


School's out for the summer! (I keep referring to "summer", which means nothing here since our seasons don't exist, they call it "long holidays") which means lots of kids with not much to do. There are few, if any, organized extra curricular type activities for students even during the school year but especially now...which is why I can't wait to help lead a summer camp next week! Coming up - campfires, songs, and all the run-around games I loved in my own summer camp days. Still to be determined: can we recreate tie-dye and s'mores in Africa?


A much enjoyed weekend retreat to the ocean four hours away, where I found a cold current coming from this little river. When finding water is a daily stress, being immersed in unlimited amounts of H2O is a priceless form of therapy!

Tomorrow marks 9 months in country, and I have already hit 6 out of 24 at my post! Thanks for your love and please keep it up!  Remember to write strong evangelical religious messages on any packages to discourage tampering, to the tune of "THIS PACKAGE IS SOAKED IN THE BLOOD OF JESUS" - (first person brave enough to do this gets a blog post dedicated to them!)



A little o' this, a little o' that

This is my village honorary grandmother! She speaks only her local dialect and some Pidgin, so we mostly just hold hands and she says "God bless you my child" over and over. Aren't her cateract sunglasses so hip? She had 9 children, but lost 3; the daughter she lives with had 7 and lost 2. This weekend I decided to give her some some much deserved but rarely received TLC - we did a manicure, complete with massage, nail filing, and a granddaughter grabbing the bottle and spilling red paint on my dress (I can't get near nail polish without accidents, just ask my mother). So worth it though, she seemed tickled pink (or maybe a little overwhelmed) by the whole thing. When I told her we had a date for Sunday morning, and came by at 10, she exclaimed that she had been waiting on this little bench since 6AM. <3

Kelly M.'s froggy bracelet is now her charm of health and protection. She just loves it, but corrected me when I tried to put it on her left wrist. The right hand is the proper hand here - I sometimes hear parents scold little ones for taking something or waving or the like with their left hand, and I have to work to remember it for myself.

These girls came over after "sport" to see if they could do any work in my house (God bless them).  After we cleaned out my little back courtyard, I made them hot cocoa from packets you have sent...American goodies really are like currency here.



Meet Ashley, my nearest volunteer neighbor (an hour away on a smooth day), at least for a couple more months! She is the one who ran a marathon up Mt Cameroon - she's also a fantastic cook and has been tutoring me in best recipes for village life...her tomato soup is to die for.
We have had many invaluable conversations on this balcony of hers - I have her to thank for my sanity, though one of our most recurring topics of conversation is how insane we often feel we are going! When I was just sick with a cold, she gave me a can of Campbell's tomato soup that had been snatched up after the American Embassy tossed it. It had expired in Feb 2009 (so canned in what, 2005?). Disturbing? Only slightly. Delicious and soothing? Entirely.



Kitchen Before #1

Kitchen Before #2

Kitchen After! I did this myself, both the painting and the celabratory mess - such a fun project, especially since I have never painted before and don't have to worry much about perfection. The floor, my face, everything was covered!

See that sheet above my stove? If you have any doubt that I mean it when I say your encouragement keeps me going and means so much, here's proof! My friend Kristy signed off with this bit on a recent email, and I turned it into a daily pick-me-up. I have quotes above my light switches, next to my mirror, and next to my front door too.

And when the power has been out for three days? You make pancakes and have a romantic candle-lit dinner for one. Normally I stay out of my kitchen after dark, not just because I hear it's a good diet plan, but because the cockroaches come out then, and when I flip on the switch they scuttle to find hiding places on my shelves...I'd rather pretend they don't exist. That was difficult yesterday when a huge one ran right up my bare arm after I picked up a dish towel where it was hiding to use it as a pot holder. I was holding the pot of boiling water when I felt it around my elbow - I'm lucky I did not burn my hand right off when I jumped. I swear I remain the biggest threat to my own health and safety sometimes...

Students in my high school Health Club coming up with lyrics for the HIV awareness song they will sing at the Independence Day celebration on May 20th.

Having gotten the words down, dance steps were next. Practicing at my house on Saturday afternoon.

The latest chapter in my water saga. Now that water is flowing outside my house some nights, I need something bigger than a bucket to collect it in while I sleep with the faucet left on. After weeks of searching, this blue bad boy was brought in from the nearest city -- yeehaw! Here's my trusty handy-man preparing to stick a hole in the bottom and put in a tap contraption, then I can fill from the top (also tracked down a piece of hose finally) and use from the bottom. I never dreamed I could appreciate the simplicity of running water so much!

A bit of my town, Tombel - it's a beautiful place