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.

A monkey at the wildlife preserve in Limbe.

Our hotel in Limbe. The mountain in the background is Mt. Cameroon which we climbed in December.

All the girls dressed up before the Embassy Party. Unfortunately we weren't allowed to bring our cameras to the party....

Pigroast

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.

National Day

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.

Mountain weekend

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.

The French family who works at the mission in my village decided that I needed a "change d'air" after all this so last weekend I went into the mountains with them. We walked in for about 2 hours on Friday afternoon. We spent alllll day Saturday walking around the surrounding area. We visited a teacher from the Catholic collage who is originally from a neighboring mountain village. He has a garden set up right next to the borage with all kinds of fruits and he also makes honey.

Life was definitely a lot different in these petites villages in the mountains so it was really interesting to see that. We spent the weekend eating Cameroonian food and sleeping outside which was a lot of fun. It also confirmed that I most definitely speak Cameroonian French, not French French... so it goes.

Anyways Butternut is now burried in my backyard. Mambih discreetly brought over a shovel and then buried her toute de suite because he was worried somebody would try to take her and eat her... so that was not very much fun. But then afterwards it was really sweet because all of my friends and neighbors came over and told them they were really sorry about my dog. She will be missed.