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.
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.
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. 
Last Thursday I went out to the ecole primaire where my neighbor and friend Mambih works. There’s only about 6 teachers there and several hundred students. But the kids were all so sweet … at least compared to my 4eme class at the lycee. Anyways I did some English classes with the older kids, sang some songs with the younger ones. Then me and the one female teacher there talked to all the girls about the dangers of early marriage. The numbers are absolutely crazy, when the girls start primary school, they are even more numerous than boys. Then so many drop out, in the final year there there were just 11. Two 14 year old girls had left literally the day before I arrived for marriage. However, while I was there one of the girl’s father came by and explained to the teachers that he hadn’t arranged this marriage, his daughter had run away. I get the feeling that both situations happen but I had incorrectly assumed that it was always the parents’ fault. Anyways the ecole primaire was a ton of fun, the kids were super sweet and hopefully I can work more with them next year too.
On the morning of Good Friday everyone climbed up Baba Simon, the small mountain in the center of town. They stopped along the way to do the stations of the cross.
My friend Martine got baptized at the Easter mass. She had been really excited for this and had a big party at her house afterwards.
It rained for the first time since October last night! First the electricity went out (which was pretty annoying since the teachers at the lycee were attempting to watch a training video from UNESCO,) and then it downpoured for about 7 minutes during which I was soooo delighted. But then the next morning it was humid and horrible. Usually it is extremely hot, but because its dry heat, its not so bad. But today I was just dripping sweat in my classes which were all before 10am … totally ridiculous. Eventually enough rain will come that the temperature will drop a bit, but right now the ground is just too dry and hot for it to make much of a difference.
Me at the crater lake
FriendsSpring break was a great success. We “fled the heat” as the Camerounians are so fond of saying and went down to Ngaoundere. The climate is much cooler there and it is an easy 9 hour bus ride away, nbd. We met up with some friends from other regions and basically just enjoyed the weather and the company. I learned how to play Texas hold ‘em… and won. One day we went out to this big crater lake. There’s a big hotel/restaurant structure built there, but according to my friends back in Tokombere, it all got abandoned because demons were pulling people into the water. We also visited the Lamido’s palace and the grand mosque.
Just a little bit of school left back at post!
Most of my water got wasted soaking into the ground with the broken pipe situation so now I’m back to an empty tank and haven’t been able to convince the waterman to drive across the cornfields again. Occasionally sparks shoot out of my fridge and water has been running out the bottom, but it still seems to be working, which is a miracle cause when the water comes out of the filter it is a bazillion degrees.
Its officially mango season so I’ve been eating lots of those. If possible, there’s even more children in my yard now since they can easily hop my walls and then into Mariam’s, mango trees next door. When they do this during the night Butternut goes crazy barking at them and wakes me up.
Butternut legitimately has the flu. I have never seen a dog sneeze before but she sneezes, in spurts of 4 or 5 even, just like a human. I think part of it must be the heat, this is her first hot season. I’ve heard about 4 dogs in my neighborhood who have already died from the heat. Mostly I chase Butternut around and dump water on her to try and keep her cool, but she doesn’t seem to like this at all, and now I feel bad since she has all these flu symptoms.
It is also probably as hot as it will get (I’m telling myself) …. But that being said, it is pretty hot. My friend found a meat thermometer which was measuring 115 degrees in the evening.
