I think “cold season” is ending prematurely. I haven’t been sleeping with my blanket for over a week. I was mentally preparing for March to be the start of hot season so this is not exactly good news.

Last Saturday I rode my bike to another village for a meeting. Rose and I got there successfully. But, on the way home we had a combined total of 3 flat tires!?! So it took forever to make it back. Reassuringly, we learned that basically every person en route knows more about bikes than we do and received lots of much appreciated help.

Yesterday, I went on another mountain/hike adventure extravaganza. I set off at about 7am with my neighbor and another friend who I think is a policeofficer. We had to ride about an hour to get to the base of the mountain. This time we had definitely left my village and were in another one. Once we got there we found Tikirai’s friends, a father and son who goes to my lycee,, and they agreed to guide us up the mountain. So we set off as a group of 5. The initial part was pretty steep and we weren’t exactly following a path. Our guide had a giant walking stick and a metal tool that looked like Captain Hook’s hook and he was just tearing up whatever was in our path. But my legs are still pretty scraped up from the pricker bushes. When we got to the top we visited this small village there. I couldn’t really talk to anyone there because they weren’t speaking French or even Fulfulde but another local language. But everyone was so nice and welcoming and shaking my hands. Two boys were walking around with radios and getting way better reception than I get at my house, I guess because they’re so high up.

Then about 5 children joined us to climb the final part which was just this huge stack of boulders, making the highest peak in the area. The all took off their shoes and scampered right up the bear rock. I was like nope, I’m going to stay right here. But then they found this crevice and climbed into this opening within the boulders that they somehow coaxed me into. It was pretty narrow and then it ended and the only way to go was up. So I lifted my arms up and they pulled me straight up about 6 or 7 feet. Then all of a sudden we were at the top, and I realized how far up we were. It was an amazing view. Everyone thought it was pretty hysterical that I couldn’t even point to where our village was but once they showed me you could pick out the mountain/hill that’s in the middle of it. You also had a great perspective of which way the road goes to all the other nearby villages. Getting lowered down the rock opening was definitely worse than going up, and it was good to be back on solid ground again.

We went down a different route that was much less steep and took us by a couple of other isolated houses where we stopped to chat, eat peanuts, and have some cold drinks. They took me inside one of the traditional houses and it was crazy how modern everything in town seems by comparison. This house had these long storage containers for grain/millet etc. Then there were different rooms, each with a mini “kitchen” next to it for each wife.

It was was a pretty hot day and when we finally got down and biked back home it was 5pm, making it a 10 hour excursion… I was a little sunburned and very tired out. Just to make things more exciting, when I got home I discovered that there is some sort of problem with my electricity. It sort of flickers when you slap the box outside my house really hard but then it goes out again. Good thing all I had the energy to do last night was get into bed.

Last Sunday morning I went on a hike/mountain climb with another teacher. He made it sound like it was going to be an all day excursion so I was getting ready for Mt. Cameroun part two, but it actually turned into a delightful trip. First we road our bikes about 40 minutes to the base of one of the large mountains that surround the town. I had noooo idea that this whole ride was still part of my town and had he left me there, I would have been pretty hard-pressed to find my way back. (That’s not true… I’m sure somebody would know exactly where I belonged and taken me back… but now I’m starting mission discovering the different quartiers.) We leave our bikes in some woman’s house at the bottom of the mountain, who I realize halfway up my friend has never met before. Anyway, the initial hiking was very steep and a little difficult. But then the ground leveled out and it was more like a hike and less vertical.

We found 2 people on the path who turned out to be students at our lycee. They both actually live in a smaller village farther back in the mountains then we were even trying to visit. They spend the week in town living at a “sari” together with a lot of other students and then only return home once in a while. They knew the lay of the land really well so they became our guides and took us to the “borage,” this huge damn built in the middle of nowhere within these mountains. It just sort of appears out of the blue. Apparently the Germans built it in the 1980s but it’s not necessarily for drinking water. The boys washed their school uniforms in it and talked about the big fish in there. They said its “really deep,” but that’s sort of a relative term… just like how now its “really cold,” although definitely too cold for swimming. Anyways we had a little picnic up on the rocks overlooking the water and then the students continued onward and we hiked back down the mountain. Being the informatique teacher, my friend LOVED the flipcam so we have a thoroughly documented mountain climb… or rather minutes upon minutes of me hiking in my track suit pants and fleece tied around the waist… had to do it.

We saw a pretty big snake en route. Thankfully he was up in the rocks and I declined to follow everybody else as they trooped over to get a better look at it. Alex got a little too excited and recorded about 2 minutes of their argument over whether they were looking at the head or the tail while pointed at a random rock. However, he said it was the biggest snake he had ever seen. The students assured us that it wasn’t the kind that bites though.

Here Butternut is in the middle with her sister and brother who went home with 2 other volunteers.



Here Butternut is all the way to the right.

I forgot to mention that the breaking down train sounded exactly like the monster from LOST. Additionally this problem was inexplicably associated with our particular “vagon lit,” so the crew kept running in and out and tightening this weird box above the door…. Why the box next to our light switch should affect the function of the entire train…? I pulled the sheets over my head…

I also delusioned myself into believing that upon return my puppy would be house-trained and my yard would have a door… but no dice. The neighborhood kids have been making the rounds wishing people “bonne fete bonne fete” for the new year and then you give them candy. Sort of like Halloween…

The “cold” season has definitely gotten underway though. I’m pretty cold when I wake up in the morning and usually put on sweatpants, jacket etc. before going outside with Butternut. Meanwhile, the Camerounians have fleece-lined hats, gloves, one neighbor had wrapped a scarf around his face one morning so that just his eyes were peeking out, sort of like a facemask. My favorite so far is a corduroy jacket that has “Anderson Ice Hockey” embroidered on the back. It only could have been better if it was from Beacon Hill.

The classrooms can be pretty chilly in the morning too. The students try to close up the door and windows, but then you can’t see the board because there’s no lights. So there’s always a lot of squabbling as they try to arrange the windows/doors at exactly the right angels to get the light but not the wind. In an effort to get the students to stop complaining about the cold, the principal told everybody about the snow where Mrs. Kelly comes from during the Monday morning meeting. He tried to convince them that this weather is not actually cold, and is not an excuse for coming in late. But it really is a problem that everybody thinks its so cold, I found out that there’s always several cases of children getting burned from sleeping too close to the fire on cold nights during this time of year.

On a lighter note though, my moto driver, Defache (as in not angry), got Butternut this white pleather collar that’s completely bejeweled/bedazzled/be-grommeted … she looks like quite the little diva. I’ve been attaching her to the tree in front of my house with a chain which she does NOT like at all. So I feel really bad. But sans porte she wanders around the neighborhood. I know she knows her way back home but she likes to hang out with my neighbors who kill chickens and I don’t want her to choke on a chicken bone…

The Journey Home

Debarking the mountain changed the plans yet again (not sure that I’m ever going to feel inspired enough to make “plans” again after everything just falls through) and I ended up at the beach. This was a different beach though, Limbe, it’s not far from the mountain and the sand is a very dark brown from the volcanic rock of Mt. Cameroun. Like Buea, where Mt. Cameroon is located, Limbe is also Anglophone which was probably the best thing we had going for us at that point…. (my legs hurt so much I could barely walk and we had run out of money). The highlight of the trip was when we found a forgotten 5000 CFA note in my beachbag which basically doubled our combined monies and financed a much needed ice-cream sundae later. Our bankcards inexplicably stopped working, so we couldn’t get any more money until the banks actually opened so we had to wait it out.

We visited the beach via a really nice hotel and were thinking things were pretty spiffy, there was a pretty international crowd there. Then a certain something would remind you that you were indeed in Cameroon. Two favorite signs: the first requested that guests not urinate in the dressing rooms and the second advised guests against drinking water from the bathroom tap because of cholera… Oh yeah, that’s what going on right now.

En route back to Yaounde (where the train up North leaves from) we had to pass through Douala, or “the armpit of Africa” as my guidebook so casually refers to it, apparently both because of its humid climate and general reputation. The lady sprawled over half my ribcage in the bush taxi stopped texting on her Miley Cirus cell phone to ask me, “Why are you breathing like that? Do you have asthma?” No psycho, it’s because I can’t get any oxygen in my lungs with you on top of me! I’m not getting back in another bush taxi anytime soon.

The train left late and broke down and I got sick on that leg of the voyage, so when we got into Ngoundere, 18 hours after departing, I pretty much slept for the next 18 hours. (Recovered in time for New Years, no worries). Paul and Chantal Biya even sent me a personalized text message wishing me a happy new year, pretty impressive.

Although my favorite New Years wishes came from a card left on my doorstep by one of my quatrieme students, Bienvenue. His name literally means “welcome” in French and he said he wanted to welcome me back home which I thought was very sweet. The English teacher in me was less than pleased as the card was a) written in French and b) written on the back of the notes he had taken in Monday’s English class…