So, what's it LIKE?

Loved the village life! Now I've moved up the road to the city, and feel like I've time travelled 50 years. Hellooo modern Africa!

Aside from being eaten alive by mosquitos (we look like our own breed of lepers) you get some straaange bites in strange places at night, even under your mosquito net fortress!

New roommates.

First braids! My new host mom is a beautician : )

Health vs. Agro Sunday morning soccer match in the mud, including Cameroonian staff...they don't mess around

My awesome neighbors during our last night photo shoot

Two takes on Chantel Biya, Cameroon's big-haired first lady. Our Halloween party felt like Christmas in July it was so seemingly out of context! But people mobilize and get it together....we even had a DJ come with speakers from the local bar!

My favorite creative costume! We've talked a LOT about how to make water potable, including through the solar method.

Peace Corpse!

Not the only trainee who loves pink : )

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 : )  



Who's Afraid of the Dark?

At just a few degrees north of the equator, every night feels like summer in the village of Nyamsong - the fruit basket is full, porch relaxing comes after dinner, and crickets and fireflies set the tone. Until suddenly it's pitch black at 6:30, a can't-see-your-hand-in-front-of-your-face so all encompassing that the Milky Way, which I'd only ever seen one after driving up into the mountains of Utah to escape light pollution, is immediately and brilliantly visible over the front yard.

Last night when we got home from dinner in town, where we ate in the dark after the city's power was cut for the fourth time in a week, I could not even make out my house as I approached it, until family and neighbors started yelling "Welcome home" from the front porch, where they were all busily shelling dried string beans without so much as a candle. "Hello, whoever you are...let me go get my headlamp and I'll help". I stumbled into my room, found my keychain flashlight, and went to get my laundry bag to start some overnight soaking. I shone the light back toward the door to guide my totally disoriented self before freezing cold in my tracks. There, frozen too in the light, was a rat-sized mouse with a tail as thick as a toothbrush, perched on the woodden crossbar on the back of my door, and ferociously guarding the doorknob of my only exit like a fragile egg. Nearly peeing my pants and feeling the room start to shrink around me, I wondered if I could wrench my window bars apart and dive into the jungle outside. Seemed more doable than approaching this ghastly looking rodent who, even if I could scare hime away from the door, would surely dive off into the depths of my dark room, only to reappear as I reached into my duffle for clean underwear. I'd already been awakened by a midnight snacker crunching his way through my medical kit and had stuffed rags under my door - clearly I'd underestimated the vigor of African-bred, wall-scaling mutant mice. Luckily, Africans themselves are equally fearless, and when I called my host sister to pound on the door and he scrambled away, the family came in as my evac team and ousted the bugger with lanterns, before the entire porch burst into hysterics over my sissiness. Welcome to Africa : )

Now you didn't think we were going to get to Cameroon THAT easily...!

 

Of course not! One freak downpour at JFK, a three hour delay, a just-missed connection in Brussels, thousands of pounds of lost luggage, and a total lack of provided money and international cell phones later, and here we are finally at a nearbye hotel, one that we got to by taking a ghetto bus, marching down a thoroughfare and climbing through a bunker ditch with a small creek running through it. The next flight to Yaounde is...next Tuesday. So, we've booked flights to another Cameroonian city tomorrow, and are trying to get wired some money to pay for dinner! This has been all on our own, zero PC staff involvement, directions, or defined leadership structure. This scene would be rediculous with one person, with 50 volunteers all carrying their body weight in totally awkward luggage (3 hours later we finally got it back) has been an absolute riot. More soon.

 

This has been awesome. I haven't laughed so hard in a long time, and I can't believe we all just met each other less than 48 hours ago. Welcome to the Peace Corps! And this is the highly developed world we're working with.

Love to all!

Cameroon here I come!

The backpack, Tevas, bike gloves and headlamp are poised and ready. Flashlights, Swiss Army knives, rechargable batteries and a camelback have been torn into and explored. I've bought out the long skirt and loose blouse sections of the thrift store (guess bringing sexy back was never part of the deal). I've got the waterproof watch, rolling LL Bean duffles, headwraps to keep out the bugs, and a fuscia rainjacket all just itching to be put to the test.

After all the paperwork, all the immunizations, and all the well wishes, the time has come! Today I leave DC to head to Philadelphia, where I'll have a crash orientation before boarding a plane for Yaounde (Cameroon's capital) via Brussels on Thursday evening. Internet and phone service will be spotty from the get go, but we'll figure it out.

I can't wait to get started and report back on the adventures - glad to have you reading, this should be a fun ride for all!

More, much more, soon. For now, love and thanks! And yes, my shoes are awesome, it's true ; )

Tess