At the zoo

Jacob, Rose and I at the Yaounde zoological garden

We visited the Yaounde zoo. My best friend in village, Mariam, has a brother who works there so she arranged a rendez-vous. He took us on a personal tour and it was really great to meet him.

It was definitely a bit different than American zoos. For example, there was one empty cage with an open door. Outside, a monkey had his hand in through the neighboring cage and was stealing the food from there. But nobody seemed at all concerned about this situation.

Jacob used to be in charge of the lions. However, about a year and a half ago, he was in the lion cage and noticed something wrong with the lion’s ear. So he went to take a closer look and the lion bit his arm. This is as much as Mariam had told me… turns out the lion didn’t let go of his arm for about a half an hour and Jacob was stuck in the cage until someone finally heard him and was able to distract the lion with some meat. His arm is still all bandaged up and he’s got a rod inserted into it.

After the zoo Jacob took us back to his house to meet his family. It was so crazy to be in an actual home in Yaounde since usually everything is just so big and overwhelming. But, their house was in a nice neighborhood and seemed a world away from the busy streets that we’re used to. I got to meet Mariam’s nephews who were so cute and it was a lot of fun.

Singing songs with the children at the orphanage in Nschang.

As soon as we all got the medical a-ok from the mid-service check-up, we decided to go spend the weekend at the beach in Limbe. Turned out to be a 10 hour travel ordeal just to arrive in the middle of rainy season. There were a few minor hang-ups when the bus company lost (but then found) Claire’s bag… and Liz’s faulty dismount from the bush taxi resulting in a sprained foot. But we eventually got there and had a good time. We visited the monkeys at the wildlife preserve, where they also had delicious food. And went to the beach a bit too.

We returned from the beach to attend a big party at the embassy to celebrate the 50^th anniversary of Peace Corps in Cameroon. It was quite the event. First of all, the embassy is this giant fortress of a building overlooking a golf course with a pool, etc. which was definitely a lotttt bigger than I was expecting. Everybody was dressed up and the food was delicious. A lot of volunteers even ended up staying over with people from the embassy where they were incredibly well taken care of and I was super jealous.

… Then came the flash mob. The embassy workers had been working on this dance for a while but they just taught it to us volunteers an hour before the party started. Basically when “Born in the USA” came on, we all came running down the lawn to join into this choreographed dance. Of course, running down the lawn was difficult enough in the heels that Rose and I had bought plus Liz with her injured foot but nobody fell and I definitely think the Cameroonians were surprised. Thankfully camera were not allowed in, otherwise I’m sure we’d be replaying video footage all week.