In honor of today’s Cameroonian elections, and in lieu of a long, rambling finishing post (yeah, I know that I didn’t blog at all my second year in-country…) that would aimlessly attempt to dissect my two years, make some overly intellectual comments about on-the-ground development issues, and bore you all with more verbose sentences like [...]

Felicitations au Cameroun! Congratulations Cameroon! 50 years and a whopping 2 presidents later (take that term limits!), this West/Central African country, nicknamed “Africa in miniature,” has survived intact in a continent that has not been known to be kind to young nations. Okay, okay, I must satisfy my Anglophone neighbors and friends by noting that [...]

“We [Cameroonians] can cultivate a large farm, only four people can do it. But you people [Americans] are too lazy to cultivate even you garden where you can eat some real ground plant. You people just wait for machines to do every thing for you.” -One of my students writing to his/her pen pal in the [...]

In a country with as much historical tension and linguistic division between French-speakers (or Francophones, who constitute about 85% of the population) and English-speakers (Anglophones, who make up the remaining 15%) as Cameroon, music serves as a truly positive unifying force. Whether it’s sung in the local dialects, like Cameroon’s own makossa and bikutsi melodies, [...]

Life is getting somewhat more difficult. The idyllic image of my post, Dschang, that I might have indirectly painted in my last post is slowly regressing back to the Cameroonian mean, at least in terms of how many electricity and water cuts we’ve been having recently, as the dry season arrives. My ATM card that’s [...]

I know I shouldn’t complain. While most of my fellow PCVs (Peace Corps Volunteers) are living in villages or small towns, I’m in a large city of at least 150,000. While many fellow PCVs struggle with routine power and water outages, I enjoy near-constant electricity and my tap is usually flowing. While scores of fellow [...]

You’ve gotta love kids. Besides having far less responsibility and far less experience in the real world than adults, they also have far less inhibition. As an effective White, or “Le Blanc,” in Black Africa, this fact becomes painfully clear everyday. Predictably, just as I was hurled my daily doses of “Obruni! Obruni!” or “Yevu! [...]

Three months packed full of exhausting labor and tiring sessions, but also with befriending 29 other awesome Peace Corps Trainees (PCTs), finally ended last week. Our training, commonly known as “Stage,” concluded with our swearing-in ceremony last Wednesday, followed by a night of partying at Bangangte’s finest nightclub. We moved up the PC acronym ranking, [...]

Commerce in Cameroon (sorry, I couldn’t resist with that one), and in most of Africa, knows no rules and respects no boundaries. Everyone is a potential customer, no matter the location, and sometimes damn near everybody seems to be a potential vendor. A motorcycle (moto) approaching? If you hail it, nine times out of ten it’ll [...]

Welcome to Afrika! Or should I say, “Africa,” according to linguistic experts. In case any of you are confused, or just lost while surfing the Web, this will be a blog about my experience here in Cameroon as an education Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV). This is week 6. I only have about 98 weeks left. Depending [...]