Easter Weekend

Last Thursday I went out to the ecole primaire where my neighbor and friend Mambih works. There’s only about 6 teachers there and several hundred students. But the kids were all so sweet … at least compared to my 4eme class at the lycee. Anyways I did some English classes with the older kids, sang some songs with the younger ones. Then me and the one female teacher there talked to all the girls about the dangers of early marriage. The numbers are absolutely crazy, when the girls start primary school, they are even more numerous than boys. Then so many drop out, in the final year there there were just 11. Two 14 year old girls had left literally the day before I arrived for marriage. However, while I was there one of the girl’s father came by and explained to the teachers that he hadn’t arranged this marriage, his daughter had run away. I get the feeling that both situations happen but I had incorrectly assumed that it was always the parents’ fault. Anyways the ecole primaire was a ton of fun, the kids were super sweet and hopefully I can work more with them next year too.

On the morning of Good Friday everyone climbed up Baba Simon, the small mountain in the center of town. They stopped along the way to do the stations of the cross.

My friend Martine got baptized at the Easter mass. She had been really excited for this and had a big party at her house afterwards.

It rained for the first time since October last night! First the electricity went out (which was pretty annoying since the teachers at the lycee were attempting to watch a training video from UNESCO,) and then it downpoured for about 7 minutes during which I was soooo delighted. But then the next morning it was humid and horrible. Usually it is extremely hot, but because its dry heat, its not so bad. But today I was just dripping sweat in my classes which were all before 10am … totally ridiculous. Eventually enough rain will come that the temperature will drop a bit, but right now the ground is just too dry and hot for it to make much of a difference.

Spring Break

Me at the crater lake

Friends

Spring break was a great success. We “fled the heat” as the Camerounians are so fond of saying and went down to Ngaoundere. The climate is much cooler there and it is an easy 9 hour bus ride away, nbd. We met up with some friends from other regions and basically just enjoyed the weather and the company. I learned how to play Texas hold ‘em… and won. One day we went out to this big crater lake. There’s a big hotel/restaurant structure built there, but according to my friends back in Tokombere, it all got abandoned because demons were pulling people into the water. We also visited the Lamido’s palace and the grand mosque.

Just a little bit of school left back at post!

Most of my water got wasted soaking into the ground with the broken pipe situation so now I’m back to an empty tank and haven’t been able to convince the waterman to drive across the cornfields again. Occasionally sparks shoot out of my fridge and water has been running out the bottom, but it still seems to be working, which is a miracle cause when the water comes out of the filter it is a bazillion degrees.

Its officially mango season so I’ve been eating lots of those. If possible, there’s even more children in my yard now since they can easily hop my walls and then into Mariam’s, mango trees next door. When they do this during the night Butternut goes crazy barking at them and wakes me up.

Butternut legitimately has the flu. I have never seen a dog sneeze before but she sneezes, in spurts of 4 or 5 even, just like a human. I think part of it must be the heat, this is her first hot season. I’ve heard about 4 dogs in my neighborhood who have already died from the heat. Mostly I chase Butternut around and dump water on her to try and keep her cool, but she doesn’t seem to like this at all, and now I feel bad since she has all these flu symptoms.

It is also probably as hot as it will get (I’m telling myself) …. But that being said, it is pretty hot. My friend found a meat thermometer which was measuring 115 degrees in the evening.