The Extreme North

I made it up to Maroua, the regional capital of the extreme north. We took an overnight train and then a 9 hour bus ride to get here. But, since we had so much stuff, the 12 volunteers coming up depoed a whole car to take us up. This was so much nicer because we could spread out instead of being squished together like they usually pack you in. Unfortunatly our driver played the same tape on repeat the entire time, so I now have "Can't touch this" stuck in my head after listening to it about 5 times. I'm trying to buy some items for my house and then going out to post Monday morning!

Officially a volunteer!

We all got sworn in as volunteers on Wednesday, so now I'm official! It was a really nice ceremony and I have some great pictures of all of us in our matching outfits that I can hopefully post soon. Right now I'm in Yaounde, the capital, I just had a hamburger and french fries and I'm getting on the train tonight for the North. I'm spending the weekend at the peace corps house in the extreme north since we won't be able to go to the bank until Monday. Then we're trying to figure out what is the best way to actually get our stuff to post. I have a gigantic hiker backpack, a regular backpack, a rolly duffle, a trunk and a bike... so I think that we might try to take each other to the posts so help carry all this gear. So hopefully I will be at my post early next week, I'm very excited!

The Run for Fun

Saturday afternoon the Running Club put on a 5k race for the kids called "Run for Fun." I was on bike patrol which involved yelling "doucement" at the motos who like to drive really fast. I also put lots of clumps of grass in the middle of the road which is some sort of warning for drivers to slow down, surprisingly effective. This is a picture of me in one of the new tye-dye shirts! (The orange thing around my neck is my rape whistle, its so handy).

Matching Panges!

In front of the SED Training house in our matching panges!

Claire Pange!



These pictures are from Desiree's Bar where we like to hang out after training. The plastic tablecloths are covered in bizarre inspirational quotes in French...

There are officially just 10 days left of training! On Aug. 18th we will have a big Swearing in Ceremony that the Ambassador & the Country Director & all our host families will be coming too. Perhaps more exciting, all 43 of us trainees will be wearing the same matching panges. I'm not exactly wild about the design but I think it'll be an interesting effect. My host mom took me and my Friend Lindsey to her tailor to get this one made so I think its going to be really good. I also asked her to make a tunic style dress similar to an outfit my host mom has so it'll be African style. (The Claire Pange was made with a photo from Anthroplogie and my other two dresses had jcrew models I think.) My host mom also had me measured for a two piece ensemble which I think will definitely be more African in style as well.

We're finally off for our bike ride this afternoon!

ps- In case anyone was wondering, matching is definitely a cool thing to do here.

Tye Dye

Last Sunday morning we tye-dyed! Emily's mom specializes in "la teinture" and she showed us how it is done. She is dying a pange (piece of cloth that you can get made into something) for each of us. I also brought over all these white t-shirts I had that were getting increasingly dirtier everytime I do my laundry in the well water. So hopefully they will become beautiful and tye-dyed and spice up my wardrobe a little bit.

In other news, I got my first package! Lots of bike gear from my mom. I successfully attached it all to my bike using my swiss army knife so I was officially ready for this big bike ride we were going to go on. But then they ended up rescheduling a canceled session for right smack in the middle of Saturday afternoon, ruining the biking excursion. However, we're going to try and go tomorrow. Hoping to see some hippos!

My mom also sent Dr. Bronner's peppermint wash, this stuff is amazing! You can use it for shampoo, toothpaste, laundry detergent or tons of other uses as well. It creates some suds in my hair, unlike the crazy African shampoo product I found at the supermarche that I had to buy a half gallon of. The Dr. Bronner's sort of makes you smell like peppermint though. I figure this is okay since it reminds me of when Cady gave Regina the peppermint footwash to use as facewash in Mean Girls. Bucket baths are also way more fun since I bought a "gant de toilette." This is a washcloth that is shaped like a large mitten...we've spent countless hours discussing their superiority to American washcloths in every French class I've ever taken.

Martial Arts

We had a martial arts specialist come teach the girls club some self defense. (Apparently karate is pretty big here.) Anyways, Lindsay had met the instructor at the bar so given that piece of information plus “Cameroon time” I wasn’t expecting him to come. However, he showed up (on time) and taught this great class. He was super good with the girls and I thought I learned a lot of sweet moves as well. I really wish I had taken a class before coming here but maybe I’ll be able to find one here.

This weekend we had a bbq that did not involve personally killing the cow, and I liked this much better. Martin actually got the meat and got it ground etc. the rest of it just ate it. Way better. It was super delicious, I definitely am not becoming a vegetarian anytime soon. It was actually a pretty American day, because after the bbq we watched a basketball game. American Peace Corps vs. the Camerounians. We had some Camerounians on the Peace Corps team which is probably why we only lost by a little and not an embarrassingly large amount. I was content to film and lead U-S-A chants from the sidelines... and not use my CYO basketball skills.

We’ve started having a Sunday evening yoga class which is the best thing ever. One of the volunteers, Christina, is a yoga teacher and she brought her yoga mat and music and everything so we’ve been having these legit classes here. Since we’re the first Peace Corps group to come to this village for training, they’ve literally been constructing the building around us. The room we've been having the yoga class in is totally open to the outside, so you do your downward dog and look up behind you and it’s just a casual African sunset, so beautiful. It’s also really hot so sort of like built in Bikram yoga?

In other news, I made my first hard-boiled egg Tuesday morning. This basically revolutionized my life, because I hit capacity of palm-oil-fried-egg-breakfasts. I have really gotten used to the “nido” though… this is powdered milk that you mix with water. I started drinking this because I heard that if you didn’t make an effort to have dairy you would become lactose intolerant here. I have no intention of returning to the U.S. unable to eat cheese, ice-cream etc. Nurse Ann says this is not true but I will leave this question to my med school friends? Anyways, the Nido is actually really good for you, it’s enriched with lots of vitamins. So hopefully that counteracts the fact that I’m essentially drinking whole milk … with sugar cubes in it. I don’t really have an excuse for the sugar cubes… it just makes it taste much more delicious. And everyone here puts sugar cubes in everrrrrything. My favorite is when they mix it into this green leafy vegetable. I wouldn't know if that is good because my host mom thinks that and the peanut sauce will make me sick which is really unfortunate because the peanut sauce is awesome. Anyways I crave sugar here all the time and I think it helps you stay hydrated when you have sugar in what you’re drinking so I'm going to continue putting it in my milk.