National Day

May 20th is the National Cameroonian holiday, celebrated of course with more marching. Each school has their own uniform and I thought these little kids were really cute. They are definitely better marchers than me and I was happy enough to be watching this parade… Rose and I had seats reserved in the “elites” section which made us feel very VIP.

School is officially over! I’ve finished grading all the exams and filling out all the report cards, hurray! Now I’m just reviewing with the older class to prepare for the national exam next month. There’s also going to be a conference on girls’ empowerment that I’m going to take the girls’ club to in Maroua which I’m really excited about.

The rainy season is just getting started. Even after just one heavy rain, the dirt road that connects my village to the main road completely flooded out. I thought the moto was going to float away we were literally driving through lakes getting back to post.

The water guy still hasn’t come to fill up my tank which is a little worrisome since all this rain is making the field difficult to access. And my fridge broke again. But, this probably means that now the water guy will come since everything couldn’t possibly be working at the same time.

Mountain weekend

So the bad news is that Butternut is dead. She got really really sick for several days and it was pretty awful. They gave her several shots and treatments but she just refused to eat anything. We tried to feed her with a spoon but she did not like that at all. She would drink a little water and then just vomit. Then just when I thought that nothing was working, the veterinarian told me he thought that she would indeed pull through with the latest treatment, but she didn't. Lots of dogs have died throughout the village recently, some combination of the heat/sickness going around. So I'm pretty sad to lose her. Everybody keeps asking when I'm going to get another dog... they don't really understand that I don't want to replace her just like that.

The French family who works at the mission in my village decided that I needed a "change d'air" after all this so last weekend I went into the mountains with them. We walked in for about 2 hours on Friday afternoon. We spent alllll day Saturday walking around the surrounding area. We visited a teacher from the Catholic collage who is originally from a neighboring mountain village. He has a garden set up right next to the borage with all kinds of fruits and he also makes honey.

Life was definitely a lot different in these petites villages in the mountains so it was really interesting to see that. We spent the weekend eating Cameroonian food and sleeping outside which was a lot of fun. It also confirmed that I most definitely speak Cameroonian French, not French French... so it goes.

Anyways Butternut is now burried in my backyard. Mambih discreetly brought over a shovel and then buried her toute de suite because he was worried somebody would try to take her and eat her... so that was not very much fun. But then afterwards it was really sweet because all of my friends and neighbors came over and told them they were really sorry about my dog. She will be missed.