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!!
Jacob, Rose and I at the Yaounde zoological gardenWe 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.
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 50th 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.
The view from our friend's house in the northwest: a totally different climate than the extreme north!
Pulling pork at the pigroast.
I left post to travel down to Yaounde for midservice training. We stopped at my friend’s post in the northwest region for a visit and a pigroast. He lives in the Anglophone section of Cameroon so it kept taking me by surprise when people were talking to me in English, or Pidgin English. Some things are easy like they say “chop” for food and “snap me” for take a picture, but sometimes it sounds like a completely different language. The pigroast was a lot of fun though and it was cool to see some more of the country/ meet some farther away volunteers.
Now I’ve been in Yaounde since Monday. Even though it’s called “training” it’s really just a series of medical check-ups and appointments with administration to make sure that everything is on track. I went to the dentist, still have no cavities which is kind of a mystery considering how much sugar is added to unsuspecting dishes like vegetables here. There’s actually a lot of free time to catch up with other volunteers who we haven’t seen in a while and do some “big city” things like eat out at a pizza restaurant, delicious, and of course return to the Hilton. (Where apparently I arrived about a half an hour too late to see the star of the Cameroonian football team, Eto’o, who was also there…. Lesson learned: you get what you deserve for arriving late to happy hour!)
Other things in Yaounde have also been overwhelming: like using the washing machine at the Peace Corps house. I think it is pretty practical common sense that when you have separate washing machine and dryer units placed side by side, you would obviously put the washing machine on the left and the dryer on the right…. Anyways I clearly have not used a washing machine since December… and even then I probably wasn’t actually doing a load by myself since there were so many of us at the house… anyways, this time I managed to put all of my clothes and the soap into the dryer and called over a friend to help me start the water before realizing that this was in fact the dryer. And then I felt very silly since obviously they have completely different doors etc. and I had to scoop out all the soap and put it into the washer, but I did finally end up with clean clothes which was an overall upgrade.
