New (School) Year!

After vaca extraordinaire 2011, I spent about 2 weeks in Yaounde helping with the design of the new Youth Development Program. It was really cool to be a part of the development although sometimes things got a little too complicated and tied up in the exact way objectives needed to be worded etc. which was a little discouraging but overall a good experience and I’m looking forward to coming back down south in October to actually help train the new volunteers.

I have a new cell phone. I upgraded to a 2-sim card phone like all my Cameroonian friends. Now I have two phone numbers, each card is a different company so this way you call the people with mtn from your mtn card and orange calls from the orange number. The best part: The ringtone that came with the phone? “Boom Boom Boom, I want you in my room.” (I wasn’t going to admit to losing another phone but that ringtone is just too good to keep in Cameroon.)

One of the coolest things we did in Yaounde was attend a football match. It was Cameroon vs. Mauritus. It was a little disconcerting since the score was still 0-0 at the half and I thought we were going to have to leave early (the last match vs. Senegal ended in a bit of a riot) but apparently at this point we we’re already out of the competition so the stakes were not so high. Then Cameroon ended up scoring 6 goals and everybody was happy.

I finally made it back to post and my friend Bello had almost completely moved me into my new house. I can’t believe how perfectly the situation worked itself out. Mosquito net assembled, curtains up, literally everything. I was so happy because I don’t think I could have dealt with moving in to a new place and starting the school year simultaneously like last year. The house is pink (!) It has a (nonfunctioning) bathtub and beautiful tiled floors. In addition my friend Mariam, who’s sister-in-law is the landlady, arranged for this furniture to get placed in. So I have a legit couch/chair situation on loan which is wayyyy nicer than all of my other furniture which had been made out of sticks. Most importantly, the house is in the same concession as 3 other houses. There’s the doctor from the laboratory with his child bride and baby in one house, another house is Mariam’s nephew (also a former student) and the last house is one of the new guidance councilors from the school. (Why we got affected 2 guidance councilors when there are not even enough teachers is a little beyond me) All of them plus 2 exceptionally mean dogs, I am very happy here already.

School is underway. Of course I am teaching none of the classes which I was expecting/asked for. I was pretty annoyed at first but It turns out that the principal was actually directing me towards some of the smaller classes (and by smaller I still mean 80) but it does make a difference. It is a little sad though since I don’t have any of my same students and they’re all like madam what happened!?! I also got suckered into doing more hours this year but I won’t be managing the library since that’s where the guidance councilors are getting stationed … its unclear to me that anyone knows exactly what to do with them and I’m a little worried that they’re not going to manage the library well but we’ll see.

Its been really nice to get settled back in and see everybody. The general consensus is that I have “pris des poids” (gained weight) during the vacation. I keep reminding myself that they just mean it as a compliment and I’ve stopped trying to correct them because that just makes them insist more adamantly about really how fat I am!

New house!

My new house! The walls are pink and the floor is tiled, a definite upgrade from the last one. It also came with a sweet couch/chair living room set!


Looking out the back door of my new house you can see my old house, just beyond the cows. The internet is being very slow, more pictures to come.

South Africa

Sharon and I en route to Cape Point

Dave and I at the southern most tip of Africa

Me, not too thrilled to be inside the shark cage

South Africa was a really fantastic trip ! Sharon and I spent a week together in Capetown. We climbed up Table Mountain, visited Robben’s Island where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned and toured the cape peninsula. Then Dave came to meet us and we went wine-tasting and then drove along the southern, “garden route.” There was a shark diving expedition...

We ended up at a game reserve which was definitely the best part of the trip. It was a really cool place that is doing a lot to protect endangered animals. For example, I didn’t know until this trip that 2 rhinos are killed every day for their horns. Some poachers even use helicopters to swoop in and cut the horns off while the animal is tranquilized, then it wakes up and basically bleeds to death. So the reserve has put all sorts of measures in place to protect the rhinos. We did see the rhinos and some baby rhinos too which was really cool. We also saw lions. With the lions we got really lucky because there was some sort of pride war going on so they were all staking out their territory and these great rangers and trackers would just wander into the bush and then next thing you know, there’d be a lion. My favorite animal was the elephant. They wouldn’t seem to be bothered at all by our car, and then it would decide we were too close and start marching towards us, just enough to make the car back off so he knew he was the top guy. It’s hard to imagine that all these animals are so dangerous since they seemed so peaceful. But the lodge wasn’t fenced off or anything so you had to be escorted from your room to the lodge in case something wandered over in our direction. The only mysterious night animal viewing we had though was an alleged kudu spotting seen only by David…. Conveniently the very same night we had kudu for dinner… coincidence?

The other animals we saw were buffalo, zebra, giraffes, cheetah… although the leopard remained elusive.

I could probably write another page about how much I enjoyed the food there but I’ll save that to make my Peace Corps friends jealous. Everything was sooooo delicious though.

A HUGE thank you to Sharon and David for flying halfway across the world & taking me on such a fabulous vacation, you guys are the best!!