Hey Everyone!

I'm on a crunch for internet time so here's all the highlights from our stay in South Africa thus far:

-Landed in Jo'burg on the 22 of Dec and went out to a tiny little town in the Free State to spend Christmas with two Cameroonian priests, Father Emmanuel and Father Silvester. They were wonderful hosts and we all (me, Liz, and Julie) spent a fabulous Christmas together. Ended up doing a little volunteer work in one of the Townships in their parish and had a quiet Christmas dinner with a French couple that attended mass in the Town.

-Next stop, we spent the night with a couch surfer in a small suburb outside of Jo'burg. We had a Mongolian BBQ and spent the evening cuddling with a pair of humongous Canadian Timber Wolves (our host was involved with volunteering a a wolf shealer).

- After our night with the wolves we spent the day in Jo'burg center at the Apartheid museum. Got to spend the day getting a better understanding the history of South Africa.

-Off to Cape Town! Took an overnight bus to the Cape and have been staying with couch surfers who live at the base of Table Mountain. Thus far we have... gone to a movie, ate a ton of good food, tried sushi for the first time, went to the beach, went a vineyard, went to the botanical gardens, climbed Lion's head Mountain, went to Boulder's Beach to see African Penguins, hung out with other backpackers, new year's eve on long street and meeting the most incrdible people from all ofvewr the world

Good Morning From Ethiopia!

So it's day two of our grand adventure and I've only got a few min. left of internet to update you all on the happenings of my life in the past 48 hours. I think most of you know this, but I am now an official RPCV (returned peace corps volunteer). It was a pretty emotional departure from village, but after a week of dealing with administrative paper work i felt pretty good about leaving ;)

Just to bring everyone up to speed: Myself and two other volunteers, L and J decided about a year ago to take a cross continental backpacking trip through southern Africa. What started out as simply a "you know what would be cool" dream, has turned into an reality and I could not be more excited. Now I don't know how often I'll be able to post, but I will do my very best to keep everyone in the loop as our adventure unrolls.

Day 1: L, J, and I all made it to Douala after one last weekend at the beach. It was such a nice way to say goodbye to friends and country that has become our home. After we packed up our bags and did one more purge to find the stuff we didn't need we were off. First stop, Douala airport. In a effort to save money we decided to sleep overnight in the airport which for us translated into sleeping in the "luxury" airport restaurant couches and paying a little "motivation" for the night guards to keep and eye on us and our stuff.

Day 2: We boarded our flight and waved goodbye to Cameroon. It wasn't until we touched off that it really hit... this is it, so long to Cameroon. We spent pretty much the entire day flying with a layover in the Central African Republic and Ethiopia. As I type this I have just been roused from my AMAZING hotel bed (thank you Ethiopian airlines!) and and getting ready to head back to catch the last leg of your flight.

More updates to come

-Kate

So it has kindly been brought to my attention (and by kindly I’m referring to the pestering that I’ve been getting on the mom front) that it has been 3 months since my last post… sorry about that. Subsequently this is probably going to be my longest entry to date, because I have literally travelled halfway across the world and back.

Where to begin, where to begin… I guess we should start with camp number one. Since about January myself and a couple other volunteers in my area have been planning summer camps. The easy parts of that were picking locations, rallying the troops, and creating lesson plans. The not so easy part was figuring out how to pay for all this fun stuff. Our goal was to get most of it locally funded and at the time it seemed like an easy enough thing to do. Our budget was pretty small and I figured all we had to do was sweet talk a few “big-men,” offer them a small reception with the appropriate amount of recognition and ego stroking at the closing ceremonies and that plus a hefty portion of guilt-trip would do the trick… HA I was so naïve. As it turns out people are more then willing to say they’ll contribute, but when it comes to collecting the doe… well that’s a different story. Now anybody who knows me at all will tell you I don’t mess around when it comes to people lying to me. I don’t care if you ARE a VIB (very important bigman), if you promise to fund three quarters of our budget and then try and back out because you don’t have a single ounce of dignity in your body… you better believe I’m gonna wage a small warpath against you and your cronies. Suffice to say I may have ruffled a few feathers and burned a few bridges, but I got the money and we were able to do the camps.

The first of the camps was at a primary school situated in between these two tiny villages about 20 minutes outside of Bankim. We ended up pulling kids from what are the equivalents of 6th, 5th, and 4th grade and had about 52 kids in total show up (not too shabby!). The themes for the week were HIV and Life skills with a football tournament built intot the end of the day. Some of you might be reading this and thinking to yourselves, my God, is it really appropriate to be talking about HIV with elementary school kids? I know this because before I moved here I would have said the same thing, but the harsh reality is that many girls drop out and get married right around this age and for the ones (boys and girls) who do go on to lycee (high school)… well lets just say they need to know how to stay safe. With all that being said I think the camp went off well and I know the kids came away having learned some new stuff!

So with one camp down and one to go I deep cleaned my house,* packed up my bag, (which, by the way, is one of those big hiking packs and it totally makes me look like a legit world traveler ☺ ) and headed off to Yaoundé to leave for vacation. With the exception of a minor detail mix-up involving my ride from the airport having the wrong day, my flight state side went off without a hitch. All I kept thinking as I was flying across the Atlantic was, “My goodness economy class never felt so luxurious!” Four meals, 14 hours of bad in-flight entertainment, and 2 days later I was back in the motherland. We touched down early afternoon, and would you believe the first 2 people I came across in America were Cameroonians. The first was my customs officer (not a group of people known for their friendliness factor). Now I wasn’t transporting anything illegal but I was still feeling a touch of the airport customs jitters, only made worst by the fact that officer who’s line I was standing in was giving the man in front of me a particularly difficult time. Not gonna lie, when he said next, and I walked up to his window I was a little bit worried he would give me trouble too.

“Passport. Customs card. Where are you coming from today ma’am?”

“Cameroon via Brussels.”

“CAMEROON?! Parlez vous français?”

“Ya I parlez the français!”

After that we chatted a few minuets in French and he waved me right on through. I grabbed my bags and then headed out to the main waiting area.

The first thing I saw when I turned the corner was a herd of overly zealous people waving American flags and holding welcome posters, and as I was clearly not who they were there to see they all had similar looks of disappointment on their faces when I came around the corner. The second thing I saw was one of a scarce few open seats in the packed waiting area so I quickly hopped on that. No sooner had I sat down did I realize the gentleman sitting next to me was speaking French into his cell phone, and at just about 2 years into my service I could have picked that accent out anywhere. Sure enough, the guy finished up his call and I asked him if he was from West Africa. He said yes, so then I went a little further and asked if he was from Cameroon. He was. The guy asked me how I knew so I told him I recognized the accent (the speed talking at a ridiculously loud volume kind of gave it away too). In true Cameroonian fashion the guy ended up giving me his full life story while I waited for my ride to arrive. So there you have I spend 23 months in Cameroon, come home for vacation, and the first two people I meet are Cameroonians… small world!

I could probably write pages and pages detailing my month at home, but let’s not kid ourselves here… I don’t really want to do that and you probably don’t want to read it, so let me just hit you with the highlights:

1.Got picked up at the airport by two of my favorite ladies who then treated me to a Bacon and extra cheese pizza as my first meal state side.

2.Exactly one hour after that had to ask my two favorite ladies to stop because the bacon and extra cheese were reeking havoc on my intestinal track.

3.Graduationpalooza 2011went down the first couple days I was home. My youngest brother and one of my cousins graduated this year so I got to participate in the whirlwind that was ceremonies, family dinners, and grad parties.

4.My 4th of July was spent on Smith Mountain Lake with the girls and Nanny & crew. As always the Palmers didn’t disappoint. There was water skiing and tubing (without the fear of contracting schisto, a fun little snail parasite that lives in fresh water, permeates your skin, and lays eggs inside of you), fireworks on the lake, corn hole matches, golf cart parades, good southern cookin’, and of course cases of cheep beer. The weekend was a blast, but the whole time I just kept thinking what in the world would Hawoua think if she could see me now. If the being pulled behind a fast moving boat in a blown up inter-tube, or blowing up colorful explosives for fun in the middle of the night didn’t get her, surely the site of everyone in bathing suits would have put her over the edge ;)

5.I was in the Roop/Seager wedding, which what can I say… was an exciting, beautiful, fun, wild time. I was so honored to be in the wedding, grateful I fit into the bridesmaids dress, and happy to see so many people from Tech that I literally hadn’t seen in years.

6.…and just incase I didn’t get enough wedding fun in one weekend, I got to go round two the next week at the Gibaldi/Knight wedding. I think it goes without saying that it was another beautiful ceremony, fantastic reception, great music, and good friends.

7.Last but most certainly not least, I went to the midnight showing of the final Harry Potter movie… yes I am huge nerd, yes I do LOVE the fictional magic world of Hogworts, yes my brothers and I drew dark mark tattoos on our forearms, and yes, yes I did have to go to a wedding the next day with faint outline of said tattoo still on my arm.

So that was my little holiday in a nutshell. It was kind of a whirlwind of visiting people, eating, answering the same two questions over and over again (Well, so tell us how’s Africa? And what are you going to do when you get home?), and frantically trying to fit it all into 4 and a 1/2 weeks, but I had an excellent time!

Just like I knew I was bound for the western world when I caught my connector in Brussels and all of a sudden everybody and their brother’s, uncle’s, sister’s cousin had a smart phone, I knew I was bound for Cameroon when I caught that same connector going in the opposite direction. This warrants a blog spot simply because everything about it was just so absolutely Cameroonian. I found the right terminal gate, took a seat, and no sooner had a sat down did the guy next to me bust out his cell phone and began playing Kiriku (a popular Cameroonian song) off of it. The family across from me kept yelling at their two little kids in perfect Special English that, “You people should stop disturbing or I will beat you.” Then, even though you’re supposed to be near your gate at least an hour before boarding 80% of the flight showed up right as we were supposed to be entering the plane (although I suppose right on time is a major improvement from 3 hours late) which in turn caused a major backup/bottle necking problem at the gate, which of course then lead to a spontaneous yelling/finger waggling match between two large women in cabas. Basically the throw down (which you could hear happening from the other side of the airport) went like this but all in French:

“What are you doing?”

“I’m waiting in line.”

“No, you just cut into the line.”

“No I didn’t YOU cut in line!”

“No you did!”

“No you did!”

“I’m gonna call the police.”

“No, I’m gonna call the police!”

classic.

Once I actually managed to get on the plane it just kept getting better. The large burly gentleman next to me puts down his tray table, unzips his briefcase, and pulls out this old school, 1998 era, oversized laptop that hangs over a good two inches on both sides of the tray. He then he reaches back into the bag and pulls out this DVD. It was at this point in the game that I realized no good could come from this situation, and sure enough as soon as he put in that disk and pushed play it was just as I expected… village home videos. I need to back track just a minute and explain that from my experience I have concluded that were there an Olympic event for filming home-videos, Cameroon would take gold every time. Anytime more then 50 or so people congregate in the same place, I can pretty much guarantee you someone will appear out of nowhere with a shaky hand and zoom happy fingers to capture the event on film. And the best part about is that for the hours and hours of footage they get nothing ever seems to happen. There’s never a father teaching his kid to play baseball who ends up taking one right to the baby maker, and I’ve never seen a kid fall asleep and face plant right into a plate of corn fou-fou, nothing… just people sitting around, or standing around, or if their feeling really crazy dancing around. And always no matter what the occasion the tape will be dubbed over in heavily synthesized Cameroonian jams (which aren’t bad the first time around but after the second hour of listening to it, it becomes like nails on a chalkboard). Now with that being said, my seat buddy put on one of these cinematic masterpieces and cranked it up to full volume. At one point I actually pushed my headphones into the palm of his hands cause I couldn’t take it anymore, but he in turned graciously declined them stating that he wanted everyone to be able to enjoy the bonne musique. After about an hour and a half the guy finally fell asleep, so I busted out my sweet stealthy ninja moves, reached over him, and cut the volume. VICTORY IS MINE!!!… was what I was thinking right before the lady on the other side of sleeping seat buddy elbowed him awake and tattled on me (yes, a grown women did in fact tattled on me to a complete stranger) . Needless to say the volume was readjusted and I had to endure song after song until the computer battery finally crapped out.

The laptop saga was fun but it doesn’t even hold a candle to what happened next. We were just cruising along just getting ready to start making our final decent when apparently the plane’s windshield broke or cracked or something. Whatever it was the happened caused some pretty intense, unexpected turbulence in the cabin, and 99% of the people aboard immediately started screaming and panicking in a hysterical fit. I really thought “well this is it, this is how it’s gonna go down, me and a plane full of Cameroonians… ASHIA TO ME!” Just as I was think this and the hysterics were about to do me in, seat buddy wakes up from his nap, throws his big arms across me and starts in on a chorus of “JESUS SAVE US, DEAR GOD JESUS SAVE US, PLEASE GOD SAVE US!!!” immediately followed by a couple hail Maries for good measure. And then it was over. Seat buddy promptly switched over to “THANK YOU JESUS’, ” let up on his protective-arm-across-the-chest-action (that at the time of turbulence had kept me practically immobile in my seat)) and moved his hand on to my forehead as if to suck the thankfulness right on out of me. The rest of the flight was spent with everyone recounting the time the plane was “jumping too much in the sky”.

After I landed in Yaoundé I spent a day there trying to get re-acclimated and running a few administrative errands, before I set off to Songkolong for camp number two. This camp was the real test. 32 5th and 6th graders under Jackie and my supervision alllllllll day long (and boy let me tell ya, they wore me out!) There were a couple hiccups along the way, but for the most part things went well and again the campers had a really fun time. I don’t know if I would call this a highlight from the week, but definitely the most “interesting” part of the week was giving the boy’s puberty lesson… if you’re trying to imagine this in your head right now… it’s ok to laugh… it was a pretty entertaining situation ☺ All I can say is now I know exactly how my old gym teacher, Coach A. must have felt having to give the girls family life class back in high school.

At the end of the week Jackie and I packed up in Songkolong and I finally began to make my way back to Bankim. When I got back Beamer was ecstatic to see me, all the neighbors came over to greet and ask what I brought back for them, and Sister Julie had prepared a nice welcome home dinner for us. Not a bad homecoming if I do say so myself.

So that brings us to this week. Basically now I’m just trying to get back into the swing of things and figure out what exactly I’m going to do for the last 4 months of service. Piece of cake… right???

* I never understood as a kid why my mom always insisted on cleaning the house before family road trips, and I’m not sure when this started happening, but now I do the same thing…hmmmm… OH GOD I’M BECOMING MY MOTHER! I suppose that’s not such a bad thing ;)

A RPCV who was back visiting Cameroon just recently told me, “You know Kate if you have the right sense of humor Cameroon is a pretty funny place to live”. I agree with this statement 100%. Some of the situations I’ve found myself in over the past 17 months can only be described in degrees of hilarity. Let me paint you a picture…

A few weeks ago I went into the “Big City” to do some banking and run a few errands. Everything was going great, I got in at a good hour, was able to get everything I needed done quickly, but it was the return home that proved to be the real challenge. I got to the car depot only to find out that I had missed my bus by, I kid you not, less then 10 min. I should back up a bit and explain something about public transport in Cameroon. No vehicle, be it car, bush taxi, bus, ect… leaves until it’s full, and by that I mean 8 people in a 5 person car and 20+ people in a 15 passenger mini bus. So what this actually means if you are the poor unfortunate soul who is the first to buy your ticket, is that you then have to wait for 19 other people going the same direction as you before the bus will leave… this can take hours… HOURS AND HOURS AND HOURS, and on this particular occasion good old Cameroon, she didn’t let me down. In the end I wound up waiting about 5 hours, leaving me tired, cranky, but with a bag full of goodies I had bought from mobile street venders.

Now as boring as sitting in a bus station all day is the shopping is a major perk (possibly the only perk). The nice thing about Cameroon is that if you stand still long enough people will just come to you. If you’re hungry, give it a few moments and someone will be along asking you to buy their bread or beignets or cookies, or carrots, or pineapple, or oranges, or bananas and the list goes on and on. If someone can carry it on their head then chances are they’ll try to sell it to you in the streets. And it’s not just food either; you can by shoelaces, cell phone charges, scales, underwear, wallets, toothpaste and again the list goes on and on. It’s kind of like the checkout line in the grocery store. You think you’ve got everything you need until you see a piece of candy or a tube of chap stick that you just have to have and so you end up leaving the store with the stuff you went in for and a handful random stuff you didn’t even know you needed (and chances are you probably didn’t). Some of the volunteers (not ashamed to say myself included) have even gone so far as to make a bar game out of it. If everyone one is sitting around a table and someone approaches to try and sell something everyone will look to see what he’s got, and depending on how interesting it is determines the number swigs everyone will take

Food of any kind, tissues, chap stick, candy, and pens

1 swig

Winter jackets, high-healed shoes, cell phones, sunglasses, belts and underwear

2 swigs

Rats on a string, bathroom scales, 80’s inspired infomercial workout machines, and “the cure” for cancer, HIV/AIDS, and all other incurable diseases

3 swigs

A silly game I know but such is life in Cameroon ☺ On this particular day of waiting at the bus station my loot ended up including a new pair of sunglasses, a two egg spaghetti omelet on a baguette, a piece of pineapple, some fired plantain chips, a roll of toilet paper, phone credit, a page of Hanna Montana stickers for the neighbor kids and a few sticks of questionable looking street meat. Not to shabby if I do say so myself ☺

Alrighty back to the story, so the minibus finally fills up and everything has been tied down on the roof. The guy collects the tickets and everyone plies in only to find out that the driver as disappeared. So then search for the chauffer commenced and by the time someone managed to track him down the Al hajjis (Muslim big men) in the car had decided we couldn’t leave until after prayer time. Fast-forward and hour and were finally pulling out of the station.

Needless to say people were a little tense and a good old fashion game of passengers versus driver had officially commenced. Thankfully though, I find Cameroonians to have a pretty short-term memory and they don’t really hold grudges, so after about 10 min of smack talking the driver bygones were bygones and everyone was asleep. Side note: It never ceases to amaze me how Cameroonians can squeeze and contort themselves into truly uncomfortable positions and still fall asleep almost as soon as the car starts moving (and on bumpy dirt roads no less)… it’s pretty incredible!

We’d been going for about an hour when all of a sudden the driver got a phone call and the car stopped. And just as quickly as everyone had fallen asleep, they were all awake. However, there was still complete silence so that everyone could eves drop on the phone call (not that it was difficult because people yell through the phone… sadly I do this too now… sorry if you ever find yourself on the receiving end). It turns out it was the boss of the bus depot telling us his wife needed to go to Banyo so he wanted us to stop to wait for her to come from Bafoussaum on a moto and catch up with us (which ended up taking about an hour). The silence turned into shouts of anger almost instantaneously. The only thing missing from the angry mob were the torches and pitch forks. Everyone was yelling at the driver until the guy sitting next to me decided to take control of the situation by grabbing the drivers phone right out of his hand and started giving the boss on the other end a piece of his mind. The phone was then passed around the car until everyone who wanted to yell at the guy got a chance. On the phone’s way back up front somebody shoved it in my hand and I just couldn’t resist the opportunity to bust out my angry white girl Pigeon French so I gave him a small tongue lashing too ;) In the end the boss said stop, so we had to stop, but the whole thing was a hoot. Just imagine if you were in the states and everyone was taking turns to pass a cell phone around and holler at a complete stranger on the other end!

After the wife on the moto caught up to us everyone piled back in the bus, shot the women their very best stink eye, and we were on the road again. Just like before everyone was asleep in t-minus takeoff and I thought we’d have a pretty quite ride the rest of the way… oh how wrong I was!

We’d been going for a few more hours when all of a sudden I was awoken by the women sitting behind me who happened to be a very large, very sassy market mommy (actually a friend of mine but I would never want to be on her bad side cause I’m pretty sure she could take me down without breaking a sweat). She was yelling at the driver because he was tried and swerving (although in the drivers defense he could have just been avoiding potholes) Mommy was worried we’d go off the road so she was yelling. The driver was appalled that any women would dare talk to him that way and with that tone of voice no less. One thing led to another, and the driver called her a sorceress, she yelled something back in the local language and the car came to a screeching halt. Apparently whatever the mommy had said MIGHT have been a spell. So then everyone in the car spent the next 10 minuets yelling over each other trying to figure out whether or not our driver had in fact been cursed. Ultimately we switched drivers, but whether this was due to witchcraft or exhaustion… the world may never know ;)

So there you have it, my simple trip to the bank turned into a day of shopping off people’s heads without having to move an inch from my seat, 20 people taking turns to yell at a complete stranger over the phone, and what might or might not have been an act of sorcery. Really… REALLY… how could someone not think this was funny ☺

My house doesn’t have running water, more often then not there’s no electricity, and the family of 50+ bats that live in the ceiling always keep life interesting, but fear not, I’ve got all the REAL necessities covered. I’ve got my Virginia Tech flag, my ode to the Hokies picture collage, and VT oven mitts and hot pads. I’ve got my orange effect t-shirt and several different African fabrics in my favorite colors (orange and maroon of course), a Hokie Christmas tree that I leave out all year round and as a bit of icing on the cake, a dog named after the one and only Frank Beamer. Now, some may call this overkill or even an unhealthy obsession, but for me it’s just being a Hokie. I like to think I’m bringing a part of the Hokie Nation to Cameroon. You know, just doing my part to make the world a better place ☺

When people come to visit me at my house I always welcome them in and sit them down in the living room. Occasionally someone will see the Cameroonian flag hanging on the wall and then they ask me if the VT flag hanging next to it is the flag of my country… I always say no but that it sure would be funny if it was (nobody ever gets the joke but I keep telling it because it always makes me laugh… can you even imagine the look on the faces of the Wahoos if the nation was flying maroon and orange!). Then their eyes wander to the chalk words above the two flags and they’ll ask me, “Who is Live for 32?” (There’s a bit of a language gap and they always end up asking like it’s the name of a person). I smile and I tell them all the same thing. I say “ those are the 32 people who helped me get to Cameroon and I put that on the wall to help me remember to say thank you.”

This weekend people will be flocking to Blacksburg for the anniversary, and here I am in Bankim. I’m smack-dab in the middle of a country that’s in the middle of Africa on the other side of the world, but… I still remember. I remember the sadness, the pain, and the realization that the world is a messy place, but I also remember hearing the names, hearing the stories, and being inspired to really live my life. For that I say thank you ☺

When I first got to my village last year I was getting "harassed" non stop by the men in Bankim. Catcalls, pleas for visas, and marriage proposals made walking through the market less then a pleasurable experience. ***SIDENOTE: my top two marriage proposals are the guy who came to my back door with a pineapple and asked to take my hand(I mean come on I think I’m worth at least 2 pineapples) and the guy who asked me as he was peeing off the side of an 18 wheeler driving down the road.*** At a certain point about 3 or 4 weeks into my service I couldn’t handle it anymore. Anything that had made this new (to me at least) phenomenon endearing and cute was gone and in its place stress taking over in a big way. Finally I decided if I was going to retain my sanity over the next two years I had to devise a game plan. With the knowledge that this might give me bad ju-ju down the road I decided to tell people I had a boyfriend back in the states. After the initial little white lie left my lips I thought to myself “what the hell go big or go home” and so after about 5 minutes this imaginary guy had become big, strong, very jealous with anger issues and liable to come to Cameroon and take on anybody who bothered me.

This seemed to do the trick and people generally backed off, except for this one guy (the pineapple guy to be exact) who seemed to take this news of my made up significant other as a challenge. I can’t be sure, and I don’t know how he could tell but I think he must have known I was lying. He kept pushing me, trying to get me to crack until one day (the day he came to my back porch with the pineapple) he called my bluff outright and asked me if he could see a picture of said boyfriend. This was a pretty big pickle I was in, and I only had seconds to act before my whole cover (not to mention any shred of dignity I had left… it’s all gone now in case you were wondering) would be blown. So I pointed to this picture on the wall of me and some of my friends from college, and gestured towards one of my guy friends acknowledging him as the BF. Thankfully he bought it lock stock and barrel… although ironically enough, it didn’t stop him from telling his mother/entire village that we were going to marry, but that’s a whole other story. After the guy had left my house, I hoped on my computer and sent a email to my guy friend in the picture telling him what had happened and asking him (and his serious girlfriend who I am friends with) to be my fake boyfriend for the duration of my 27 months of service. He happily accepted the responsibility of being my phony sweetheart and that pretty much brings us to yesterday.

Yesterday Hawoua, the 17-year-old wife next-door, was in my house inspecting my packages that had just arrived from Yaoundé. After we had gone through a couple rounds of the game I like to call “let me pick up everything, ask what it is, and ask if I can have it” her attention fell on this small picture magnet. It just happened to be a “save the date” wedding magnet from… you guessed it Fake Boyfriend and his now fiancé. I would just like to add that I am so so so happy for the couple and I can’t wait to see them both this summer… ok back to the story. So as she had taken an interest and had inspected the tiny figures in the picture, Hawoua then asked who the two people in the picture were. Of course I explained that they were two of my good friends from college and that they’re getting married this summer. Then in all my infinite wisdom I was like, “Oh wait, I have a better picture of him over here”, and I pointed to this picture I have on the wall. What I didn't realize was that this was the same picture I had used last year to fend off the marriage proposals... whoops... and she remembered…cover officially blown.

But Wait! The story get’s better… Hawoua then, ready to defend my honor asked me how I could let this other women take "my man"... the claws were out, she was speaking in rapid French then switched to high pitched even more rapid Fulfulde (which I couldn’t understand but can only imagine was something to the effect of “why I ought a…!!!”). I got to tell you I've never seen her so worked up before (except for the time Beamer ate all her maggie cubes). If I didn't think it would have made her even more upset I would have started laughing right then and there. Ultimately I decided laughing at the seething Cameroonian women probably wasn’t a good call and eventually I got her to calm down. I did my best to explain the decoy and why I had lied about my relationship status but in the end I don't think she got it. We’ll just say the concept didn’t really translate well ;)

By the next day all the ladies in my neighborhood had heard the news of my falsified fella. But on the upside I have to say its nice to know all these African mommies got my back... even if it is over a fake significant other ;)

It was two o’clock in the morning when I was suddenly roused from my sleep by Beamer’s “there’s-a-stranger-in-the-compound” barking. After the initial “you’ve just woke up from a deep sleep and now your heart is beating a million miles a minute” phase wore off I laid in my bed straining to hear whatever it was that had startled him. Nothing. And then all of a sudden right outside of my window I heard sticks and buckets being knocked over, then some pots and pans crashing off the back porch.

Now not to scare anybody but every once in a while our local neighborhood foo (crazy person) jumps the fence and makes off with cloths left on the line or buckets, or whatever he can get his hands on. For the most part he’s pretty harmless and luckily for me deathly afraid of Beamer. Normally all it takes is some one in the compound yelling out the window for him to go away or threatening to let the dog lose on him, and he’ll high-tail it out of there.

I waited a few minutes, and even yelled out the window myself but the banging around just kept on, and the more that I listened, the more it began to sound like there was more then one person out there. In fact I sounded like there was a whole gang of them out there. This started to make me nervous so I slid out from under my mosquito net, grabbed my Mag-light and crept into the kitchen with Beamer at my heals.

I wasn’t exactly sure what I was gonna do, but I figured when I turned on my back light and whoever was out there saw me, the dog, and the back end of my Mag-light raised over my head ready to bludgeon someone it would scare them away. I assumed the position, flipped on the light, and much to my surprise instead of a gang of burglars in the backyard stood 4 fat pigs all staring at me like I was the crazy foo. Nothing like a few four legged friends to keep life exciting!

Here are some of the highlights from International Women’s Day 2011:

I was on the panel for the round table discussion where we talked about equality for women. It wasn’t as much a round table as it was a “I like to hear myself talk into a microphone hour (more like 4 hours) but I was in charge of publicity and we had a great turnout so I was pleased ☺

At the food expose one group made "real" American pizza... and it was actually good! Not so good was this traditional dish from the west called “quie” that I politely tried and failed to eat. It wasn’t so much the taste that was hard to get past it was more the fact that it was the same consistency as slime... and I like a good snot-sauce (a.k.a anything with okra in it a.k.a. everything you eat in the Adamaoua) as much as the next person but this was on a whole new level ;) I felt like was trying to eat Flubber… every time I thought I had a hold on it, it would split into five different pieces and slip though my fingers. My friend who was trying to coach with a few tips made it look so easy. She was swinging it around and bouncing it in her palm like a yoyo, but my attempt was just a big, sticky, mess. As much fun as it was for everyone to watch me attempt to take on the quie, I don’t think I’ll be trying that again anytime soon ;)

This years sports day included not only your standard football, handball, and cross country race, but also tug of war, a speed walking competition, and an arm wrestling tournament, which my very conservative Muslim neighbor won... GO Hadjira! You should have seen her, cover from head to toe she sauntered up to the table, rolled up her sleeve, and assumed the position. All I can say is that I’m glad it wasn’t me going up against her and her right bicep… she was doing some serious damage on the other contenders ;)

Lastly and by my terms most importantly, yours truly came in 4th in the cross-country race through town (and in the young women's bracket for that matter). Now this might not seem like a big deal but last year I came in second to last and for approximately one year on a pretty much weekly basis I had to endure listening to people recount the time "Kate came in second to last at women's day." BUT NO LONGER MY FRIENDS... NO LONGER!!! Nothing has made me happier this past month then moving through town and hearing people recount the time "Kate almost came in 3rd place". I'm movin' up in the world people :)

Me and Mama Josephine, who came in first place in the cross country race in which she ran barefoot!

Written March 3, 2011

Death tends to hit us like a ton of bricks, or at least it hits me that way. Since I’ve been here it’s been a constant part of my routine (which I suspect is because for the people in my village death plays such an important role in life) but until yesterday I’ve always been able to push it to the back of my mind. I mean almost everyday someone comes to tell me that someone in their family died or that so and so lost a child or that they would be gone for the weekend to travel back to their village for a funeral… and I’m not exaggerating pretty much everyday this comes up in conversations at the hospital or with friends in the market or neighbors in the quarter (any peace corps volunteer in Cameroon should be able to vouch for me on this account). But in spite of all this I’ve always felt a bit removed from it all. Even when people die at the health center and I’m there it’s sad and I feel for the nurses who were involved and the family, but I’ve never let myself dwell on it for too long. Maybe it’s a coping strategy, or maybe I just don’t want to think about it because that’s too sad, but whatever the reason for the past 18 months I haven’t let myself dive too deep into on the issue.

All of that changed yesterday. I should back track a bit… last week I was making the rounds in the market, and when I went to visit Little Abdoulie at his shop I found it all closed up. I thought this was a bit odd considering he keeps pretty strict hours everyday of the week so I hopped on the back of a moto and went to visit him at his house. When I got there I learned that he was in bed sick with malaria. I ended up saying a quick hello, tried to encourage him to go to the hospital for treatment, and wished him a bon garrison. On my way back home I decided to stop and say hello to Abdoulie’s neighbors Alahji Yaya and his first wife Dija, both of whom are good friends of my and regular members a community group I meet with weekly. The meetings form the last weekend had been cancelled and so it had been a while since I had been able to see either of them. When I got to the house no one was home except for a few kids who told me everyone was at the hospital. For reasons mostly revolving around the fact that the little kids don’t speak French and I don’t really speak Fulfulde I wasn’t able to figure out exactly what was going on, but I wasn’t really worried yet because like I said before, people are always visiting one another in the hospital. I just figured if it was someone they knew, it was probably someone I knew, and I didn’t have anything else on my plate so why not just pop down there to see what was going on.

Upon my arrival I immediately ran into to B and after a few moments of greetings she told me what room “my friend” was in. It turned out it was a friend (a friend named Dzoulika whose 3 year old son was admitted with Tyfoid) but it wasn’t the friend I was looking for. So I kept walking down the general patients ward and then made my way to the maternity ward (forgot to mention Dija was pregnant but still had about a month and a half or so to go). Sure enough I found her there in the second room. She had been admitted that morning with malaria and then diagnosed with a Burili ulcer (flesh eating skin disease that’s pretty prevalent in my part of Cameroon), and was hooked up to an IV drip.

Now, despite the fact that I’m a community health worker partnered with a health center, I still don’t particularly enjoy visiting sick people who are in the hospital. That’s not to say I don’t visit them, I do, but I just always feel a bit awkward, and out of place, and like people are looking at me to do something when there’s honestly not much I can do (I have no doubt that by the end of my service I will have spent an entire two years trying to convince people that I’m not a doctor or a nurse). This was no exception, and after about 10 minutes of sitting on a chair watching this poor women with her huge belly sitting on the bed looking absolutely miserable, and again feeling like everyone in the room was waiting for me to do something, I was ready to head out. So I told her and her husband to please call me if there was anything I could do to help and quickly left.

This was on Thursday afternoon, and by Friday morning I had received a phone call telling me Dija had gone into early labor during the night and was stable now but her baby had not made it. This was sad, but it wasn’t the first time a friend had lost a child and I knew that I was expected to go to the hospital and pay my respects to the family. So I got dressed and went down. When I got there what I saw just broke my heart. I found Dija lying on the bed looking like she had lost the will to live surrounded by half a dozen other women all looking somber. I stayed in the room for about a half an hour, reiterated my offer to help with anything and then headed home thinking about how it must feel to lose a child.

The next day Little Abdoulie told me that Dija had been sent to a bigger hospital about 4 hours up the road, and that things weren’t looking good. The day after that I got the phone call that she had started bleeding again, and they couldn’t stop it so she bled out. I got this phone call while I was eating lunch in my friend’s restaurant in town and I was shocked… i just couldn’t help but start crying. Now, anybody who knows me knows that crying is my go to emotion… infuriation, sadness, happiness… it all comes with me and a side of weeping blubbering mess. However, that is NOT how Cameroonians do things and I’ve found in my experience here that when I do have one of my cries it’s best to do it from the comfort of my home and not in public.

When I got the news about Dija I had no warning and nowhere to go and more importantly no sunglasses to hide the tears that were welling up, so in other words I was a little S.O.L. I can remember sitting at the table staring at my plate of fou-fou and njama-njama in shock. My friend Ibrahim came over to ask me what had happened and as soon as the words left my mouth I started to cry and when I looked up at him all he could say was, “I’m so sorry, but now you have to stop crying. Stop crying before you go outside. You can’t let anyone see you crying. Don’t cry.” Not exactly the soothing words I was hoping for but I don’t think he knew what else to say or do.

That evening I ended up going to visit Aislynn and after some American comfort food and a nice hot bucket bath I was feeling much better. The next day I went back home to Bankim and trekked out to visit Dija’s family. I was expecting to visit with the other co-wives and maybe a sister or neighbor, but when I got there I was shocked to see well over 50 women (which might not seem like a lot, but considering women don’t really ever leave their homes, it was quite a site to behold). There were some that I knew, some that had clearly traveled in from the bush, young girls, and old mamas, and everyone was there to mourn the loss of our friend. I sat down next to a friend and looked around taking in the gathering of women and began to cry again, but this time there was no one telling me to stop, no one looking at me as if I was acting strange, I just felt a simple hand reach out and touch me on the back. We were grieving together. Some days we’re worlds apart, but in that moment we were together… and even amongst all the sadness of the events that had pasted, it felt good.

adolescent cows tied up outside my house who's voices crack mid moo :)

February 6th

I know it’s been a few weeks, but I’m officially back from my blogging hiatus. I do apologize for the lack of updates, but fear not, I have endured punishment enough in the form of a nagging mother via phone, text, and Facebook (love you mom, pestering from the other side of the world?… a whole wheel of cheese?... I’m not even mad… I’m impressed ;)

All jokes aside I guess the real reason I haven’t posted is because I’ve been in a bit of a funk for the past couple of weeks. After New Year’s I went to Yaoundé for my mid-service medical checkup (I’m good to go, in case you were wondering), and then made a quick trip to Ngoundare with a group of friends. Minus the fact that in order to get medically cleared I had to trek across the capital city in a taxi cab with 6 other people in rush hour traffic in the heat of the day with….. wait for it… wait for it… a fresh stool sample (not a particularly high point in my Peace Corps career), I did have a lot of fun getting to spend time with a bunch of my American friends. The only drawback to so much “quality whiteman time” is that at the end of it all, when your back in village and you’re by yourself again it’s like you’ve got to push yourself through the mental readjustments all over again. It’s kind of hard to explain and I don’t know how this is coming across. I’m not lonely or depressed or anything, I’m just struggling to get back into my groove. Here’s to hoping me and the groove get together real soon ☺

However, in spite of my case of the Bankim blues I have been able to get a little bit of work done and I have a great story to tell you, so get pumped! I have this women’s group that I meet with on Saturday afternoons, and for awhile now they’ve been expressing interest in doing some kind of small income generating project. Thanks to the awesome work of some volunteers in the west I got a copy of this book full of great income generating ideas (woot woot Christina shout-out). After perusing the pages I made the executive call that we should probably start small and work our way up to some of the bigger things. With that being said we decided to go with toothpaste. This worked out great, the plan was to make the toothpaste, divide it up, and then end with a quick health lesson highlighting the importance of brushing your teeth and getting your kids to do the same. Here’s how it went down…

Step one: follow the instructions and mix a little baking powder, a little salt, a little water, and a little of this and that together in a big bowl.

Step two: Not getting the right consistency, opt to let the ladies incorporate what I though might be some local knowledge on toothpaste making and so we add more baking powder.

Step three: still not quite right , before I can stop it even more Baking powder is added.

Step 4: “Just a smidge more Baking powder should do the trick… ooops, that was way more than a smidge.”

Step 5: “Well ladies, I think this is as good as it’s gonna get. Let’s divide it up.”

Step 6: Disregard that part where it specifically says store paste in a plastic container and divide it up in small plastic bags.

After everything was doled out and the baggies tied shut we closed in on the final phase. My lesson was going great, I had just finished demonstrating the proper tooth brushing technique, which was basically me trying to convince them that in fact simply chewing on your toothbrush for a hour while walking around the house doing other chores will not actually do anything at all. Then like a little kid with a roll of bubble wrap: POP POP POP POPPOPOPOPOP… all of the plastic bags suddenly exploded splattering everything in their vicinity with a nice layer of toothpaste. Ooops. ☺

Moral of the story; 9 out of 10 dentists agree following the directions is kind of clutch.

P.S. In the time between writing this and posting it online I’ve been pretty busy and I can say that for the time being the groove and I are like this (I’m crossing my pointer and middle finger fyi). All it took was a good old fashioned Cameroonian fete, a nice solid week of work, and a West Adamaoua cluster meeting to get me back in the swing of things ☺

First things first, I want to wish all of you that read this a happy new year and I hope that everyone had a wonderful Christmas. I always get a little bit homesick right around this time of year but luckily I live near some wonderful people and I think I speak for us all when I say we had a very nice holiday… but more on that later.

Before I get into Christmas and New Years stuff I want to take care of this list of things I’ve been meaning to mention on here and just keep forgetting about. I always have this little notebook stashed in my purse and I keep a list of all the blog worthy moments that happen to me so I don’t forget about them later on. However, getting them from the little notebook, into a post, and then on to the Internet is harder then is sounds. So here it goes…the never ending update:

1. Beginning of December was Fête de Mutton (The Feast of the Ram). I had a new party dress made at my tailor’s and made the tour of all my Muslim friends. I even got the watch my neighbors sacrifice their ram. Contrary to how that looks in writing it was actually really cool. The only not cool part was that after the ram was dead and they started cleaning it, in an attempt to be nice and neighborly they started chucking all the unwanted parts over the fence for Beamer to eat. There I was standing in my kitchen when all of a sudden I hear what sounded like a loud belly flop and when I went outside to investigate I found my dog chowing down on a set of bloody, raw sheep lungs and an assortment of other bits and pieces… YUCK. To top it all off the dog ended up burying everything he couldn’t eat before sunset and my back yard smelled like something terrible for a week or two

2. I was invited by some of my Bamoun friends in village to participate in their big cultural festival. Apparently it’s a bit of a big deal because they only hold it once every two years and people come from all over the country and all over the world to watch the celebration. I felt particularly cool because I not only got to watch, I got to be in it. I put on my most “traditional” looking cloths, they handed me a spear, and we all began the march to war. If you want to get the real feel just try and imagine thousands of people dressed to the T, covered in war paint, and yelling and chanting Braveheart style in the streets, and that would be kind of what it was like. It was a once and a life time experience and I’m so glad I got to see it ☺

3. World AIDS Day 2010 was a huge success. Over 3 and ½ days the Mbororo men’s group I work with and myself got a chance to talk to and do HIV education with over 162 people in the market AND combined with everyone who signed the online petition we had almost 300 signatures. Now this might not sound like a lot but I finally feel like the idea I’ve been pushing on the men all year, that if you take the time to talk to people they’ll listen, finally got through ☺ (which is a enormous accomplishment for a group of people who in general feel unheard by the larger population). Thank you for taking the time to singing the online version!

4. Aislynn and I had the chance to meet a very interesting German couple traveling through Cameroon last month. When we met up with them they had just traveled two days non stop from Ngoundere (Regional capital of the Adamaoua) to Bankim and were on their way to Foumban (another 4 hours down the road) Oh and I forgot to mention they were probably in their mid-sixties. I was astonished, I know 20 somethings that moan and groan about taking that road (myself included) and here were these two people, grandparent age, backpacking and using public transport around Cameroon. It blew my mind! After talking to them for a bit we learned that that every year they take a holiday to a new country and from the sounds of it they’ve been all over the world and back again (and not just the cushy parts ::cough cough:: the United States, :: cough cough:: Western Europe). They also told us that the secret to their happy marriage was that they never stopped going on adventures together ☺

5. I had to go into the local jail to talk to a gendarme about something the other day (breath mother I’m not in trouble with the law or anything) and what was blasting from an old boom box? None other then Handel’s Messiah Hallelujah Chorus. I’m not exactly sure what this means, but I found it to be quite comical. On one side of the room was a guy standing in a jail cell and on the other side of the room a very intimidating solider, in uniform, happily humming along to one of the world’s most famous pieces of classical music… only in Cameroon.

6. I am now Hawoua’s official frog catcher. She’s not afraid of bats, rats, spiders, or roaches, (all of which I’ve had to call her over to kill for me and she’s never let me live it down) but something about things that go rib-it scare the living bejeezes out of her. Let me elaborate… a few weeks ago I was in the house and I heard her let out a blood curdling scream (like “there’s and axe-murder in the house” type scream) so I ran to see what was happening and I find her on her tippy toes, bouncing around, and pointing at a tiny little tree frog on her kitchen window. Then yesterday there was a pretty big toad under her last step. It was croaking and she was afraid it was going to come out and bite Rashid (her two year old son). Grant it, it was a pretty big frog, but in any case I tried to convince her that frogs don’t have teeth, that these ones didn’t look in the least bit poisonous and that they’re actually good to have around because they eat mosquitoes. I might as well have been talking to a wall cause she didn’t want to hear it and finally I wound up reaching under the step, pulling out the frog, and flinging it over the fence.

7. Beamer is quite possibly the worst guard dog in the world! The other day pigs were added to the ever-growing list of things he is afraid of (incase you were wondering that list also includes cows, goats, sheep, cats, jingle bells, and rubber rain boots). We were taking our usual afternoon walk through one of the quarters and I saw a pig crossing the road a head of us. Just to clarify this was no cute adorable Charlotte’s Web Wilbur type pig, this was a mean mother sow standing about the same height as my belly button and easily around 200 lbs. In my attempt to steer clear of Miss Piggy I unfortunately neglected to notice that Beamer and I were heading straight for her 3 little piglets. No sooner had Beamer lunged at the piglets, mama pig was coming strait for us. There was lots of angry squealing, and snorting involved, so suffice to say my heart was racing a million miles a minute. I was hoping/expecting the dog to scare it away or at the very least start barking, but no he immediately ran behind me creating a human shield thus leaving me to fend off the angry livestock. Luckily there was a big stick on the ground next to me so I picked it up and with a combination of yelling, stick waving, and very fast backtracking Beamer and I managed to escape unharmed.

8. On the mushroom front I have good news and bad news. The good news is that they started to bloom. The bad news is that only 1 out of 4 bags produced anything and they took a month longer then we were expecting them too (I think the climate is too hot in Bankim). I don’t think this is the best income generating project option for the money it would cost to start up versus the amount we can get to produce here in village, but it was a fun little experiment. Back to square one :/

9. Ok, so Peace Corps has three main goals for all it’s programs in all the countries it works in. Goal 1: sustainable development of the host country. Goal 2: share host country culture with Americans. Goal 3: share American culture with the host country. The following is by far the best goal three quote of all time: (while watching Toy Story with another volunteer and a bunch of kids from the neighborhood)

7 year old Cameroonian child “What’s a cowboy?”

Peace Corps volunteer: “Well it’s sort of like if you could mix a berger (cattle herder) and gendarme (solider)”

I realize this might not actually be funny to everyone but it gave me a good laugh so I thought I’d share ☺

10. Christmas was a bit of a whirlwind between Bankim and traveling to Banyo to celebrate with the other volunteers in the area( but a fun whirlwind none the less!). Some of the highlights included a very successful Christmas party for the neighbors hosted by yours truly, the most awesome frip find gift exchange ever (ask Hunter about his t-shirt and tie), a visit to the Banyo missionaries for what felt like a big family Christmas dinner back at home (not my home mind you… no one was teasing me incessantly and calling me a tree hugging hippie), a Christmas movie marathon (Elf, Charlie Brown Christmas, Love Actually and the Holiday) and a visit from the Raymond family to wrap up the weekend. Now all this was fun but the real highlight, and what I’m sure you’re all wondering about if you read my last post was the Christmas chicken. I’m happy to report that Chicken Little survived the journey from Bankim to Banyo first strapped to the back of a motorcycle and then to the back of a small hatchback Toyota and tasted all the better for it. When it came time to do the deed one of the boys slit the neck, but I pulled feathers out and it’s safe to say I’m a feather plucking pro now ;)

11. Last but not least New Year’s 2011… the start of which marks my 15th month living in Cameroon!!! New years eve was pretty low key. I had a movie night at my house for some of the kids and made them all pizza and popcorn. At midnight my doorbell started ringing nonstop so I got dressed and went outside to see what was up. I knew it was gonna be good when I started smelling burning rubber and sure enough my neighbors were all gathered in the street dancing and singing around a burning tire. Hawoua came out at the same time I did (they were ringing her doorbell over and over again too) but she was being a major party pooper… she wasn’t really feelin’ all the hub-bub. Finally I grabbed her hand and said, “Hawoua! It’s the New Year you can’t start off 2011 by yelling at people, come out and watch all the kids dancing!” She reluctantly can with me and I think (even though she’ll never admit it) that she had a good time ☺

New Years Day was a lot more eventful with visits to friends’ houses and lots of people visiting me at my house. At one point I had in my living room; 2 Mbororo girls, 3 Tikar wives, 2 Bamoum women, Hawoua, and Roses’ 23 year old Anglophone daughter Vera. All of them were pretty young (none were over 25) and being so, acted like a group of catty women (two of the women I think are pretty much mortal enemies and everyone has had to pick sides… I don’t even know what the epic fight was about but I ended up on Hawoua’s side by default… I live with her). I could have cut through the judging vibes with a knife, but thankfully every one enjoyed their cake, popcorn, and juice without starting any catfights. It was a little uncomfortable when it was happening, but after the fact it made me feel not so far away from home ;)

So that’s pretty much everything of interest that I did in December

Ok before I begin this story let me just say that I will never EVER take the meat section at my local grocery store for granted ever again.

Right after thanksgiving my neighbor Rose started to prepare for the Christmas Fete. Now back home if I said this I’d be referring to the Christmas lights, holiday music, and (for all you day-after-thanksgiving-tree-putter-uppers) a decorated tree. However, here getting ready for the fete referred to the arrival of a new roster, who is currently being fattened up and is residing in the compound. I think I’ve mentioned some of my prior run-ins with these winged devils and but to recap, currently my record with them is 2 and 0. The first one claimed my front porch for his territory and didn’t much like me “all up in his space” (I’m referring to the charging, squawking, and puffed out chest that me trying to stand on my front porch incited) and the second one crowed all day right underneath my bedroom window (only my window mind you) starting at 4:30 am (on the dot… everyday… all day). Needless to say I don’t care much for them, but of course the silver lining is that they are mighty tasty ;)

So Rose got this chicken and I started thinking it over and I decided that I would get a chicken for my Christmas too (after all it’s Christmas…. I thought I deserved a little treat). It just so happened that the week I had be contemplating this I was also scheduled to go out and do some work en brousse, which as it turns out is the best place to find the big chickens. When we set out in the morning I told the nurse, Mbokas, that if we passed a place to buy a chicken he should stop. He quickly told me that he wanted to do the same thing, and agreed to help me pick out a good one and get a fair price for it.

We drove around visiting villages for vaccinations most of the morning and at the last place we stopped I met the chicken guy. Well, he wasn’t exactly a chicken guy, but he told us of this friend of his who has some chickens for sale and gave us directions on how to get to his place. I’ll sum up the directions for ya:

- leave the village heading that way (points in a direction the road doesn’t go)

- go until you pass the really big tree

- go past the bush fire (you may have to drive through it (and we did))

- and then you’ll see the guy’s place on the left

By what I can only call a miracle Mbokas managed to navigate the way and about an hour later I found myself haggling over the price of a chicken. The place we were at was a single-family compound (one father, four wives, and a bunch of kids) with a half dozen or so mud brick huts situated in this round clearing. I know this because after the money changed hands the father smiled at me, pointed at the chicken and said, “ok now lets catch him.” To which we spent the next 30 minutes chasing my bird around the place in circles.

In hindsight, I think what happened was that Mbokas bought his chicken first and caught it easily because he had the element of surprise. However, once my guy saw what was going on he went on the defensive and read me like a book when I started coming at him. In the end it took Mbokas, the Father, the 4 wives, and me to finally corner the chicken under what was the kitchen hut. There was one of us on each side and as we slowly started to close in the chicken got panicky and started darting every which way. He was getting desperate and I could tell he was gonna make a run for it soon and try and break through our line. It was at this point that I started praying “Oh dear God, please please, please don’t let it make a break towards me please, please, please, please, PLEASE! I don’t know what the hell I’m gonna do if it comes at me. Please let it go towards someone else.” But alas I was the weakest link and in a final attempt to free itself the chicken came at me full force. Now, I know were only talking about a chicken here but, not gonna lie, it was kind of terrifying. He flew off the ground with his wings flapping all over the place and his large talons aimed at my face, making some god-awful clucking/crowing/desperate screaming sound. Naturally my reaction was to close my eyes, cover my face, and then emit my own desperate screaming sound. Thankfully, the wife standing to my left foresaw my cowardice and leaped out to grab the bird while it was in mid-air. I think the combination of my hysterical screaming and the chicken’s hysterical screaming could have been the most amusing thing to happen in the family’s home in a long time cause after I’d calmed down enough to open my eyes I looked around and saw that everyone else was rolling with laughter at the scene we had made. After the adrenaline stopped pumping I joined them and began laughing myself… after all it was pretty funny (it was like slow-motion T.V. funny, or funniest home movies funny)

So that’s the story of the chicken. After we captured him I rode back to Bankim on the back of a moto with a chicken under each arm and the cooler of vaccines slung over my shoulder. Now the chicken is living behind the house in the outdoor kitchen, it still crows at the butt crack of dawn and it still flaps it’s wings and makes a fuss anytime I get near it but it’ll all be worth it in about a week! I’ll be sure to let you know how the killing/plucking/cooking phase goes ;)

Happy World AIDS Day! I'll be sure to write an update about today later in the week but for now I thought I'd post this short message I sent par request of my younger brother's school group. Enjoy!

************

Hi, my name is Kate Millman and I am a Peace Corps Volunteer in Cameroon, a small country on the west coast of central Africa. I live and work in a large village in the Adamaoua region called Bankim. Accurate and updated statistics are hard to come by, but we have a rough population of about 10,000 people who live in the center of town, and HIV/AIDS is a huge problem. It’s really hard to say exactly how many people have been infected because not only are we dealing with the virus but people are also up against stigmatization. Many people are positive, but afraid to be tested, others are tested and pay people off to say they’re negative, and still others lose their battle with AIDS and yet they go to their grave and their own families are still too afraid to say why. This coupled with large amount of transit workers and prostitutes that move through the area, has created a pretty serious situation in the village. So that’s my home in a nutshell… lots of truckers, lots of prostitutes, lots of stigma, too much fear.

However, even amongst all the fear, all the stigma, and all the despair, hope is not lost. Every time I see a child’s hand shoot into the air to ask a question after I teach a lesson on HIV, I know that child is the future and in the future we won’t be afraid to ask questions. Every time I hear someone from my men’s group passionately explain the need to show compassion to those living with HIV, I know that man is the future and in the future we won’t be afraid to love. And for every couple that comes into the health center to be tested before getting married I know that family is the future and in the future we won’t be afraid to know the truth. These are the things that keep me going.

In today’s world, we have a choice to make; we can choose to feel overwhelmed by the scale at which HIV/AIDS is affecting us. We can choose to turn a blind eye and simply ignore the problem hoping it will go away or someone else will fix it. Or we can empower people to take a stand, seek knowledge, show compassion, and find comfort in the small victories.

Hello Everyone!

I’m working with a men’s group here in my village and we're doing a Red Ribbon Campaign for World AIDS Day on December 1st. The group wrote a pledge together and we’re planning to walk around the marketplace next Wednesday to try talk to people about HIV/AIDS, get signatures, and pass out ribbons to hang on storefronts. One of the things that I’m really trying to show them is that HIV/AIDS is a global problem and that on the 1st all the countries in the world will be united to talk openly about the disease and do HIV/AIDS activities.

Many people in my village think HIV/AIDS is just a problem for poor people in Africa, but the reality is that it affects us all. So I translated their pledge and put it online for people back in the states to sign, and hopefully I’ll be able to show them all the people who took their pledge at the end. If you could take 5 minuets to click on the link below, sign your name and encourage people to wear red on December 1st I would appreciate it a lot.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/KNWDZ85

Thanks for all your support, and have a happy Thanksgiving!

Kate Millman

PCV Cameroon - Bankim

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Here's a copy of the pledge:

WORLD AIDS DAY

1er December 2010

I pledge to show love and support towards those people who are living with HIV and AIDS. I will NOT be afraid of them and make them to leave the community. Instead I will eat and drink with them, play with them, sit with them, pray with them, and help them how I can.

For those who have already left us because of AIDS I promise to honor their memories by praying for them and helping the families they have left behind.

In an attempt to protect my family, and myself I also promise to be faithful to my husband or wife, use protection, and educate my children so we can have a future without HIV/AIDS.

OK all you west coasters this blog is just for you. Hunter (my new neighbor down the road) asked me to post some pictures of Nyamboya for him cause the internet is really bed at the training site, so without further ado here are some shots of Hunter's new digs.

Hunter's House...

JUST KIDDING ;) This is Hunter's real house

Main street / Downtown Nyamboya

The road leading in to town just in case you want to come visit ;)

Greetings to All My State Side Friends,

I apologize that it’s been a few weeks since my last update, but I’ve been pretty busy as of late, and it seems like every time I get myself motivated to write inevitably the power goes out, or I get a visitor knocking at the door, or some other thing happens that takes me away from my task. But alas, I’m forcing myself to sit down, stay focused for a few minuets, and pump out an update (mostly to make my mother stop pestering me :p )

The Work Front:

Work is going well, as I am typing this I have just walked in the door from visiting one of the schools I teach at. I did two assemblies for classes 6,5,4, and 3 (the equivalent of elementary schoolers), and in honor of the upcoming World AIDS Day we talked about HIV/AIDS. I really like the school I was at today. The teachers are so nice and comparatively the children are pretty well behaved, no one got hit on the head or rapped on the knuckles with a stick today so I consider that a pretty good session (don’t worry I’m not the one doling out the corporal punishment;) ). Random comment about the school children; since working in the schools when ever I walk through Bankim or one of the other villages instead of hearing a chorus of kids yelling “Nassara Nassara (Whiteman, Whiteman)” now I’m greeted with “Madame Kate, Madame Kate!!!” which I makes me smile ☺

The mushrooms are growing nicely, they still have a few more weeks before they’re supposed to start sprouting the part you can eat, but from my novice mushroom growing experience they look like they’re on the right track.

I’m still working with the same Mbororo groups and things are still going well with them. The men’s group is organizing a Red Ribbon Campaign in the market for World AIDS Day that I’m pretty excited about. We’re supposed to be drafting an agreement at our next meeting that will say something to the tune of “ I promises to support and help care for people living with HIV/AIDS, remember those who have died, and do my part to protect myself and family from the spread of HIV/AIDS.” The plan is to walk through the market and talk to boutique owners for a few minuets and ask them if they want to sign the agreement, then if they do they get a red ribbon to wear or hang in the store as an outward sign that they are doing their part. It seems like a small thing but my community’s biggest hurdle they need to jump over is just admitting that there’s a problem. If we can just get people to open up and talk about it, even just for one day in December I’ll feel good about what we’ve done. Little Abdulie has really jumped on board with this and with him at the helm I think/ I hope this will really work ☺

NEWBIES!!!

Switching topics for a second, I have to talk about the new trainees that are being sent up here to the West Adamaoua. They had their site visit last week and three of them came and spent a couple of days with me and Beamer in Bankim. Well, mostly they were hanging out with me, because Beamer was suffering from a pretty sever case of Whiteman Overload (he just gets so excited because all the white people he knows aren’t afraid of him and get close enough to actually pet and love on him. Unfortunately four of us were just a little too much for this puppy to handle, so he spent a lot of time outside). So my new neighbors: Hunter is a recent UCLA graduate who’s being posted about 45 minuets away in Nyamboya, Jackie is from Oklahoma and she’s in Songklong about 1 ½ hours away, and then finally Shannon is replacing the volunteer up in Banyo and she’s about 4 hours away. All of them are great! I’m so looking forward to getting to know them better, but so far I think Aislynn and I really lucked out by getting some awesome new neighbors (thanks Sylvie!)

Aislynn and I talked about it before hand and we came to the conclusion that if these guys were gonna survive their first time on the Banyo Road that we all live on and still agree to come back at the end of training we would have to sweeten the deal with some home cooked American meals and a well deserved brake from the homestay situation. For my part I made pizzas with… brace yourselves… cheese (fake cheese, but cheese none the less), banana pancakes, and chocolate cake, and then we went up to Mayo Darlé and had a Mexican fiesta on Halloween (fresh salsa, guacamole, rice, taco beans, and tortillas). I’m sure it must seem strange to some of you, but getting together to eat good food is sometimes the only thing that gets me through a difficult week or a trip on our roads ☺

When they were all in Bankim I took them to see how I work with one of my women’s groups. The women were great. I had made visits to most of their homes the week before to ask them if it was ok to bring some visitors next week and some of them seemed a bit skeptical especially since one of the visitors was going to be a man. So needless to say I was a little bit nervous that I wouldn’t have a good turn out, but to my pleasant surprise I had more women then I’ve ever had at a meeting before, they were all dressed to the T, and they participated (enthusiastically even) throughout the entire lesson. In short they were wonderful! I don’t think any of them will ever read this, but I just want to put it out there… YOU GUYS ARE AWESOME!!!

After Bankim we went up to Mayo Darlé to watch Aislynn teach a workshop on how to make soap. It just magically worked out that the night we were up there was also Halloween, and you know we couldn’t just let that pass us by, so we threw a small fete in Aisylnn’s house. We had pumpkins, candy apples, costumes, and dancing. Aislynn invited some of her friends from the village and they came for a little bit because the word fete was being thrown about, but I’m pretty sure they were thinking, “these are the crazy Americans I’ve ever seen!”, and I’m sure the fact that we were dressed up didn’t help their opinions ;)

After The Darlé we sent them off to their new villages. I met up with them a few days later, took them to Bafoussam, helped them open bank accounts, and then sent them back to the training site. I can’t speak for them, but I had a great time on Site Visit 2010 ☺

Random Little Antidote

This was a story that as it was happening, I just kept thinking, “only in Africa, only in Africa”. Here’s the back-story first. So normally the rainy season ends at the end of September or the first few weeks of October (it might rain from time to time but for the most part the dry season has started to set in), but here we are into November and it’s still raining almost every day. As a result of this nonstop precipitation the roads are in TERRIBLE shape. It’s gotten so bad that if it rains during the night cars will refuse to even set out, and sometimes motorcycles won’t even give it a shot. Huge pot holes and ravines of water crisscross the route all the way up into the foot of the mountains and the trip to Mayo Darlé that normally takes 2 hours at max in the dry season took me 6 ½ hours a few weeks ago. People who live on this route including people in Bankim don’t seem to be capable of going 10 minuets without either commenting on the continued rain or the state of the roads (I’m totally guilty of this too). Now if you get in a car or hop onto the back of a moto it’s just commonplace to say something about the roads, and if you don’t people tend to think there is something wrong with you.

Ok now, back to my original story; after site visit I was coming back home in an agencé vehicle (a 16 passenger van with 25+ people in it) and found myself stopped on the road at a place Aislynn and I commonly refer to as “The Swimming Pools.” It’s right outside of Nyamboya (where Hunter is going) and it got the nick name because there are two holes in the road that are each roughly the equivalent in size to an in ground swimming pool. Just to help paint this picture, in the dry season I stood inside one of the “swimming pools” with my hands in the air and you still couldn’t see me from the road. Were talking massive massive potholes filled with water and mud that eat big 18 wheelers for breakfast. So, on this particular day everyone was stopped because one of these big trucks had jackknifed and tipped over on to its side completely blocking the road except for a small passable part that was playing host to a bush taxi that was sunk in the mud up to the drivers window (so on second thought not very passable). Predicting that we’d be there a while because there were at least a dozen trucks and a handful of agancé vehicles and bush taxis waiting to pass in each direction I got out to walk around and pass the time.

Whenever the road gets blocked like this people from Nyamboya trek out to sell oranges, bananas, peanuts, ect. to people stuck there and the place that a few hours before was nothing but a bend in the road is suddenly transformed into a busy market place with food stuffs from the tipped trucks strewn across the road and mommies and kids hawking their bowls full of this and that. Even though things are pretty lively after about 15 minuets you’ve seen it all and then the boring task of waiting for your car to be pushed/pulled out of the mud begins. Our car took about 2 hours to make it through, but I didn’t really have to much to complain about because I spent the time sitting on a prayer mat in the shade under one of the big trucks with two new friends. (side note: in my opinion the ability to make friends on the fly is one of the most useful skills a peace corps volunteer can have in their back pocket… thanks Dad for passing that one down to me ☺ ) One of them was a driver and the other was an Allahjihi (a Cameroonian VIP) from Banyo. They saw me walking around and when I greeted them in my very very very limited Fulfuldé, I guess they were impressed, because then they asked me to come sit in the shade with them to wait for the car. It was a so surreal and at the same time no big deal… there I was sitting on a mat, an Allahjihi to my left and a huge truck wheel to my right, drinking fresh milk out of a gourd and shooting the breeze with two people I’d just met 10 minuets before like we’d been friends for years. Only in Africa ☺

This week was great, I’ve had legit work related stuff to do everyday and I’ve decided that working with kids is way way way easier then working with their parents. First off if you catch the kids when they’re in school they tend not to misbehave for fear that their teachers will whack them on the head with a stick. Another plus; as of this point no primary school child has asked me to “motivate” them to make them participate. And lastly I think I have a much stronger knack for talking to kids then talking to adults. All in all they’re a much easier crowd!

So to recap on the week, I spent Monday in Tchim, a village about an hour outside of mine, Tuesday in Dekie, about 45 minuets in the other direction, and Wednesday and Thursday in Bankim. In each place I met with class 5 and class 6 students in the primary schools (pretty much the equivalent to 5th and 6th graders) and gave assemblies on germs and diarrhea. The funny thing about the whole week was that in each of the 4 schools (Dekie has 2 schools) the entire day pretty much played out the exact same way. I’d walk in and go through all the protocol with the Principal, and then I would walk into each classroom to great the teachers until I made my way down to where I would be teaching. Upon entering each room all the children would very formally stand up, do a little bow/curtsy thing, and then in the most robot monotone voice you’ve ever heard they would say, “good-mor-ning-ma-dame.” I always responded with a cheerful “good morning!” back at them and then they would look at me like I was crazy.

Once I was actually in the classroom and everything was set up and introductions had been made I would start my lesson off by asking what is a germ, and every time without fail I would get nothing. It’s important to note that I wasn’t getting nothing because they didn’t know, it was more because I was asking them to participate in class. I mean I could have asked, what country do you live in and I still would have heard nothing but crickets chirping. After a bit of harassing finally one brave kid would raise his hand and spit out a textbook response. It’s the response that’s been drilled into their heads but upon further discovery I found that most of them don’t know what they’ve just said. So while yes, in fact, a germ is a tiny organism you can’t see with your naked eye, where germs come from, how they get in to our body, and what they do once they’re in, is something most of the students have never really thought about before, and that's kind of the crucial part of the equation.

So that was my goal for the lesson, and to answer those questions. We did some experiments, sang a song appropriately entitled “Comment es que le caca entre dans la bouche”, and played with puppets and green slime. I have to mention the puppet not only because he’s an homage to my creative genius ;) , but also because he was a big hit in the classroom. His name is Freddie the Fly, and Freddie has bit the dust not once, not twice, but three times this week and yet somehow he’s still managing to hang on. First Freddie was just made out of paper, which was fine until one kid decided Freddie needed to be washed with soap and water to get all the germs off him… I’m sure you can guess how that ended (but hey, at least he was paying attention). After I got back to Bankim I made a few alterations and Freddie got an upgrade to a tape laminated fly with a body of sewn together fabric scraps.

Day two he really held up well until I was on the way back to Bankim and Freddie the Fly literally flew out of my hand and off the motorcycle I was on.

Me: AHHHHHH STOP STOP STOP!

Driver: Hun? What? What happen, are you ok?

Me: Freddie!

Driver: Who? What?

Me: Wait you have to stop!

::moto stops, I jump off, run back down the road to retrieve the fly, and run back to the moto::

Driver: What is that?

Me: It’s my fly puppet

:: Driver looks at me like I am the craziest white man he’s ever met, and did I really just make him stop so I could go pick up a piece of paper?::

Thankfully apart from a bit of my personal dignity, the only thing lost was a few of Freddie’s legs ☺. When I got home I decided to use some pipe cleaner to replace all the legs to make them sturdier and bendy. When I was finished I steped back to take in my handy work and I was pretty satisfied. I figured this was gonna be the finished and final product… but no ☺

When I had finished it was getting late so I decided to hop in the bucket bath and then head to bed, but when I got out I saw that Freddy hat met his match as he was dangling from the jaws of my cute, cuddle, and destructive puppy. At that point I knew it was time to pull out the big guns, and by big guns I mean the Super, Super Plus Super glue (which is actually what was written on the container). It was one of those little bottles where you have to pierce the top with a pin to get it open. Now, I don’t have great lighting in my house so my face was up really close to the glue, and I was concentrating really hard to stick the safety pin in it. When I went to pull the pin out I wasn’t ready for the pressure release and I got superglued strait to the mouth. Unfortunately for me my mouth was open and the glue got all over my front teeth. After the initial panic that my lip was in fact stuck to the front of my teeth was painfully resolved, I got my toothbrush out and tried to get the glue off. I was brushing as hard has I possibly could but alas I couldn’t get the stuff off.

So there I was standing in my living room, toothbrush in hand, contemplating whether or not getting Super, Super Plus Super Glue stuck to my pearly whites was in fact a medical emergency. On the one hand how toxic could it really be if they were selling it on the street, on the other hand the man who sold it to me did pull it off the very top shelf of his boutique and the bottle did have a distinct, bootleg, blackmarketness look to it and what if it ate away at the tooth enamel! Ultimately I decided I needed a second opinion so I call Amanda (volunteer in the south) and she convinced me to just go ahead and call the medical duty phone. I’m gonna go ahead and say that calling up the medical officer (who happens to be bran new and whom I have never actually met) at 10:00 at night to tell him I got super glue stuck on my teeth has by far been one of my more embarrassing moments in this country to date. After I explained what happened he assured me it was probably not a big deal and that the glue would come off after a few days, but that I should try not to swallow any of it when it did start to come off because super glue tends to be toxic when ingested :0 It’s been two days now and it’s pretty much all off, so I think I’m in the clear.

Lessons Learned:

1. Don’t hold super glue up close to your face with your mouth open.

2. Three supers is two to many for any kind of glue ☺

...(no it's not gameday) It's Global Hand-washing Day WOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

Here are few pictures of some of the men's group I work with making table cards in French, English, and Arabic reminding people to wash their hands with soap before they eat. Now every restaurant in Bankim has a card and a bar of soap for people to use in honor of Global Hand-washing Day!

written on Oct 6

::Deep sigh:: Man it feels like it’s been forever since I’ve had a chance to update this thing because I’ve been so occupied these past two weeks. However I’m not complaining because being “busy” is a luxury for Americans living in Cameroon. The pace of life is so much slower here then back home so when that rare moment comes when I can truly claim to be busy I like to relish in it a little. Since I last wrote I’ve been en brousse teaching about cholera (yes the thing that killed little Sarah on the Oregon Trail) as par the request of the district hospital because they’re pushing a big campaign on cholera education. Thankfully we haven’t had any cases in Bankim but that could change very quickly so they’re trying to get everyone prepared. I think it’s a good call because prevention of cholera is pretty standard for all waterborne diseases, and because the look on someone’s face when you tell then you get cholera from eating poop never gets old, I mean never. gets. old. ☺

Things are moving forward really nicely with the mushroom project. I’ve actually just returned today from the west where I met up with a volunteer who showed me how to make the medium they grow in. It was messy but not too hard and I think I’ll be able to handle it on my own now☺ I also met up with The Mushroom Man in Bafoussam. Side note: every time I started to talk to him I couldn’t help but start humming “Do you know the muffin man” except I changed the words in my head to “do you know the mushroom man, the mushroom man, the mushroom , oh do you know the mushroom who lives in Bafoussam” In case you’re wondering, which lets be honest I’m sure you are, the answer is yes. Yes, it is incredibly difficult to appear attentive, professional, and 23 years old with that minorly altered nursery rhyme playing on repeat in your head. In the end I was able to pull myself together, and ended up with a lot of great information and two mayonnaise jars full of mushroom spores. I decided to start a small test run this week with one or two women and if it works go full steam ahead. I know this is an odd request but if everyone could say a special prayer that I have a good mushroom harvest that would be greatly appreciated ;) ( I never in my life would have foreseen myself uttering those words!)

So that was the good part of my Bafoussam visit, but silly me I decided to end the afternoon by eating a street salad. Oh I should have known that was a bad idea from the start but it tastes so good and I never get to eat lettuce so decided to take a chance. I’ll spare you the details but lets just say it was not my lucky day and I spent the night getting very well acquainted with the bathroom floor… BLAH.

The car ride back home today was pretty uneventful except that I was the last one to buy my ticket so I was stuck in the back row with a family of 6 (three on the seat three on the laps and me aka 7 people in a seat made for 4). I had the window seat so it really wasn’t that bad cause I could stick half myself out the window but about three hours in one of the kids got sick. Now, have you ever seen that episode of the office where Pam’s preggers and Dwight makes her vomit by eating a hard boiled egg in front of her and then there’s a chain reaction throughout the entire office… ya well it was kind of like that. The one girl started it and then the other two chain barffed and no lie, it took every once of self control in my body not to keep the wave going…it was gross. I only got a direct hit from one of the three but it was a dozy. Needless to say not one of my favorite memories of Cameroon, but note worthy nonetheless.

Ok I don’t want to finish this entree on a bad/gross note so I’ll end with this one. Last Saturday while waiting for a meeting to start I was sitting with a bunch of women in someone’s living room watching The X-Men with French voice over. (Keep in mind most of these women live en brousse without electricity, so needless to say they don’t watch a lot of television). We turned it on right around the end of the movie when there’s that epic good-guy bad-guy battle in the Statue of Liberty. I told them that I had actually just seen the Statue of Liberty a few weeks before I came to Cameroon and that seemed to interest them a bit. I answered a few questions about it and then we all kept watching the movie. About five minutes later there’s this other scene where Magneto uses his super powers to fly up to the very top of the statue, turn everyone into mutants, and then take over the world. It was at that moment that the women sitting next to me turned and in all seriousness asked, “Can people in America Fly? Madame Kate CAN YOU FLY?” After I finished laughing for a solid 2 minutes I told her that no I unfortunately can not fly even through some days I wish I could (especially the days I have to do banking in Bafoussam)… I’m telling you, I can’t even make this stuff up ☺

This little guy crawled over my foot mid conversation sending me into a gerbil octave freak-out that involved lots of arm/foot flailing and 4 letter choice words. Come to find out afterward they don't bite and they're not poisonous, which means the scene I made was a little overkill.

I have a lot of random things floating around in my head right now, so instead of writing a well structured entry that would make my 3rd grade teacher happy, I’m just gonna throw it all out on the table. Here we go…

I love that thunder cracks here last an entire minute. It’s been raining in Bankim every night for the past week. It’s great because it brings the temperature down and because I then don’t have to pull water from the well in the morning.

Some days it feels like I live in a fish bowl with people constantly watching me. Normally it’s not a big deal, I can ignore it, or make a joke about it. Aislynn and I commonly refer to this social phenomenon as “nassara (white man) watching,” kind of like bird watching for Cameroonians. This past week I bit the dust going for a run. Tripped over my own two feet and face planted in the dirt (they should have named me Grace). I’m fine, minus the scraped knees and palms, but no one in village seems to want to let it lie. I’m pretty sure only a few people actually saw, but EVERYONE has felt the need to comment, some out of concern, some think it’s funny, and others just can fight the urge to let me walk past them without saying something. It’s annoying.

Not to say I don’t love my job but, is it sad that the highlight of my workweek was making a poster on how to prevent cholera and deciding I feel accomplished because I’ve somewhat mastered the art of drawing people pooping in the river or on the side of the road? The best part about is that right after I had this thought Rose came in the house to confirm my suspicions. She said, “Kate, you know how to draw so well. Really, that is a good man pooping right there” ☺ Good thing I have that political science/ history degree.

While eating lunch with the wives next door the three year old, Adela, announced to everyone that I was his wife. I couldn’t help but laugh.

I miss football… well actually I miss Blacksburg and tail gating and lane stadium and Tech Triumph and all my friends. I said this to one of my friends once and I stand by it today. I think it’s harder to miss college football season then Christmas and Thanksgiving. At least for those I can commiserate with other volunteers, but there’s no one near me who really appreciates what I mean when I say I miss football. Slightly unhealthy obsession?… perhaps ;)

I told my mom I want to grow mushrooms with my women’s group to generate income and her immediate response was, “They’re not hallucinogenic mushrooms right?” Oh mother…

I found a CD in the market with over 100 of the “best” songs to hit the states last year. I think Ke$ha might be my new guilty pleasure… I’m so ashamed of myself . On a similar note I recently heard Justin Bieber blaring from a set of speakers in town. What is the world coming to?

My hubby Adela :)

Greetings to all my Stateside Friends,

Well summer vacation is officially over and with that the masses have returned to Bankim and school is almost in full swing. I’ve been told that even though there is an official first day of school (which was last Monday) no one really shows up until the second or third week, and then kids continue to trickle in for the rest of the month. I don’t know about that, all I can say is that if I had 5 or 10 or 18 children running around my house all summer I’d be counting down the days till I could ship them off to school ☺

Life on the home front is going well. Rose and her kids came back last week and she actually brought an additional son with her from village. His name is Louis and he looks about 13 or 14 years old. Apparently the school in Bankim is better then the one in their home village so right now Rose is in the process of transferring him here. I sort of feel bad for him because while all his paper work is being processed (the right people have be “motivated”) he’s stuck at home by himself, and he’s new so he doesn’t have any friends yet. Needless to say he’s been hanging out with Beamer and me a lot this week. The other apartment has been pretty quiet all month. Hawaou left for Banyo to be with her family for the end of her pregnancy right around the same time I left for Germany. Her “lovely” husband has been away the last couple weeks as well for what I understand to be work/play. The neighborhood rumor mill is all abuzz saying that he’s “looking” for a second wife, but I haven’t seen anything… I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. Oh I almost forgot the most exciting news to the compound is that Hawaou had her Baby this past Wednesday! Now my phone French isn’t great so all I really got was that it’s a baby boy and that I’m in charge of spreading the word (which really wasn’t hard, I told one person and within a half an hour everyone knew). I can’t wait for her to come back so I can see the little guy.

Work is starting to pick up a bit, which makes me very happy. For the first time since I’ve been here someone, actually two different someones, approached me with their own ideas and asked for help (normally getting anything going is all on my end). The first person was a guy from the district hospital who asked me to organize some health animations on cholera with the nurses at my health center. Right now there’s a cholera epidemic in the “Grand North” and apparently (I haven’t been able to verify this so it could just be talk) it has recently spread to the capital of our region. There haven’t been any reported cases of it in Bankim but I think they just figure with all the travelers from Ramadan and the start of school it’s better to play it safe. Personally I think it’s a great idea, because the things you should do to prevent cholera also prevent typhoid and dysentery, which are huge problems here. The other person to approach me was my friend Mirabelle. She’s a schoolteacher at the bilingual primary school and she asked me if I could come in and teach some health education to her students this year. Of course I said yes! The other thing I worked on this week was putting out feelers on mushroom cultivation as an income-generating project for my women’s group. I had a fairly productive meeting with our government delegate of agriculture and he seems pretty on board with the idea. Over all work just seems to be picking up and I’m hoping that I can get a lot done this fall.

Let’s see what’s next OH! Ramadan ended on Friday, and there was fêting all weekend for it. The festivities started Friday morning around 4:30. I know this because I was awakened to the sounds of all the kids and wives next door clanking pots, cooking food and generally just yelling at each other as they were getting things ready. I tried to go back to sleep, but it was no use so I got up to go check out what was going on. When I got there all the boys were dressed in the best cloths and were assembling outside the house to walk down to the special prayer grounds on the outskirts of the village. I had to go to work at the health center but when the first big morning prayer was over I walked down to the road with B and some of the other nurses to watch everyone parade back through town… it was pretty cool to watch everyone singing and dancing, decked out in their brightly colored robes.

Later on that day I went over to my friend Dzoulaika’s house to celebrate. She’s the second wife to a man I work with and their whole family is super nice. I did have to laugh though because I got there and was quickly informed that before we could start to make the rounds to visit everyone we had to “get ready”. I was happy to find that “getting ready” to go out is just as much a ritual among women here as it is in the states. I felt like I was back in college with all my girlfriends on a Saturday night…there was music playing makeup being put on and jewelry being swapped back and forth. It was nice to see all the women and girls with their guards down smiling and giggling.

Day two of the party was spent at Little Abdulie’s house. I had a great time, but it was a totally different atmosphere because I was in the “big house” with all the men. We did a lot of eating and it kind of reminded me of Thanksgiving in the Millman/Richards house. Meaning all the men gorged themselves and they laid around the rest of the afternoon, picking at leftovers…the only thing missing was football on TV ☺

My two final thoughts on weekend:

One was an awkward conversation with the man I was sitting next to at one point at Abdulie’s. He told me he had been listening to the radio and wanted to know why Americans hated Muslims. My jaw dropped, there I was in the middle of nowhere in Cameroon, no newspapers, no internet, and yet some how these people knew what was going on back home. I basically tried to tell him that it wasn’t true, that not all American dislike Muslims, and that in fact there are a lot of Muslim Americans. I also tried to explain that in our country our law says that people are free to think and say whatever they want even if it’s not nice, and even if most people don’t agree with them. I don’t know if he got it but I did my best.

Two, on Sunday afternoon I was visiting with my neighbors to conclude the festivities and a bunch of big-wigs from the mosque came in while I was there. One of them asked me if I was Muslim, I said no that I was Christian, to which he looked at me with a big smile and said, “Ca va, c’est le même Allah, n’est pas?” (Well that’s fine, its all the same Allah, isn’t it?” Couldn’t have asked for a better ending to a great weekend ☺

So I know that it’s been a long, long, long time since I updated this thing, but a combination of work, vacation, and a week long power outage have all be contributing factors in my absence from the interwebs. But the good news is that I’m back and ready to spill what I’ve been up to this last month.

The last week in July I was spending my days with about 20 little kids for a summer camp from a village en brousse called Ribao. Aislynn’s big projects this summer were weeklong kids camps and so I volunteered to help her out with the last one. It was great! The community was so excited to have us, and the kids, though initially painfully shy, eventually opened up and got to have a few days where their biggest worry was who won the football game and when’s lunch.

One day after camp was over Aislynn, Amanda, Emmanuel (camp counselor that we brought with us from Mayo Darlé) and I got invited to play in a football match. Apparently the team that was scheduled to play never showed up (word on the street was it was because they were scared) and so the Ribao team held a community match. Let me just say that my football skills probably rival my ability to run a marathon or gracefully dive into a swimming pool, which is to say they leave much to be desired. Even so, we all threw on or cloths to “fair le sport” and hit the field. As kickoff, or tip off, or what ever it’s called in soccer was about to commence all that could be heard was a chorus of locals calling out “Nassara” (white man) and one Kate Millman who could be heard quietly saying a prayer that the ball didn’t come her way. Now maybe your thinking oh Kate, you’re being dramatic… it’s just a game, but no these men play rough and if you get in their way they will run you over. I managed to almost make it through the whole game without having to do too much until it happened. It was a clear shot, the ball was coming right to me, but unfortunately there was also a very large African man running right after it. My team mates were yelling something at me in Fulfulde that I can only assume was something to the tune of “kick the ball white man, kick it!” So I braced for impact, stuck out my foot, and by the grace of god kicked the ball in the general direction I was supposed to. You would have thought I’d scored a goal from the hubbub that erupted from the sideline, but then again I guess it’s not everyday that they see a white women wearing shorts and playing football with a bunch of men.

The last thing I want to say about Ribao is that it is hands down one of the most beautiful place I have ever spent time in. With no electricity, no phone signal, no stores to buy food at, and more cows then people it’s like something out of a different time. The village backs right up to the Nigerian boarder and a towering mountain range that becomes the backdrop to some of the most breathtaking sunsets I’ve ever seen. AMAZING! Blacksburg in the Fall, you’re still number one in my heart for most beautiful places around, but Ribao is officially coming in at a close second.

After the camps I quickly changed directions and flew out to Germany to spend a week with my family. The whole gang was there, Sean, Andy, Mom, Dad, and even Grandma crossed the pond to get their “Katie fix”. It was a pretty typical Millman family vacation, meaning we did some sightseeing, ate some good food (side note I ate an obscene amount of bacon and cheese… no regrets ☺), had some heated discussion about the way the world works, and got lost more times then I can count. It was weird to have things like ice and flushing toilets and water that didn’t need to be filtered and wouldn’t give you dysentery, but somehow I pushed through it ;) I took a hot shower everyday (sometimes twice a day). All in all, I had a wonderful time and my only complaint was that it went by too fast.

Now I’m back in Bankim and trying to get back in the grove, all be it with a few obstacles. First thing is that we are currently in the middle of Ramadan. Everybody fasts from 4:30 am till 6:30 pm and so no one really has much energy to do anything else. With that being said my community groups aren’t meeting, and basically there are no patients at the health center. After quickly realizing that things kind of shut down for this I decided, well if you can’t beat ’em join ‘em, so that’s what I did (or at least attempted to do) I fasted last week but it was more of a 6 to 6 fast because that’s about as much of a “morning person” as I can pull off and still be able to function. It was a lot harder then I thought it was going to be. At 5:00 everyday I would just stand in the kitchen with my stomach growling counting down the minuets till I would hear the little boys next-door at the mosque calling the end of the fast. I don’t know how they do it for a whole month.

The other roadblock is that when I got back people were supposed to have turn in a commitment form for participating in the nutrition project, but unfortunately no one did. When I asked B about it she informed me that the people who came to the meeting were demanding travel per diem and re-imbursement for coming (even though its walking distance and the meeting was only an hour). Where things stand now I highly suspect that the village reps never relayed the information I gave them to their communities, and B wants to give up and try a new project (but with the same people). I haven’t made up my mind yet as to what I’m going to do. On the one hand the root problem of people wanting to work with me because they think I have money and then getting pissed when they find out I don’t isn’t going to go away just by changing projects, but on the other hand I don’t want to can all the prep work B and I did and have to start from scratch. Also I can’t help but think that it’s not fair to the mothers and kids who really need this for me to throw in the towel just because their higher-ups can get over themselves. What to do, what to do?

But alas it’s not all bad news. I did get a chance to talk with Little Abdulie (president of MBOSCUDA) and when Ramadan is over the men’s group I’ve been working with for the past 8 months are going to do some HIV/AIDS peer education with near by Mbororo communities. They seem really excited about getting the opportunity to share what they’ve learned and that makes me feel like I’m actually doing something (which I sometimes forget in light of all the other crap that happens) ☺

P.S. my neighbor Hawaou (8 months pregnant) had malaria (for the second time) when I was gone and was in the hospital for a week. She’s on the mend now, but her baby is way under weight so please if you’re the praying type, say a prayer for her.

Lots to do this week so this is going to be a short and sweet post.

On the home front:

Things are slowly getting better with the neighbors. The husband is still not speaking to me (I'm cutting my losses with him) but Hawou has been much friendlier lately, so that's good news.

Beamer is fine but he escaped off his leash in the market last week. It happened outside my friend's bar and at first I panicked but for the most part everyone thought it was really funny so I calmed down a little bit. One guy even started chanting, "He's Free! He's Free!" In their defense I'm certain that if I saw myself chasing a dog around the market I would be on the ground rolling too. Beamer on the other hand was totally oblivious to all public humiliation and he literally ran circles around me for about 5 min while about 15 cameroonian onlookers all called his name at the same time. Most of them were on their 2nd or 3rd hour of Palm wine and they sounded like the seagulls from Finding Nemo.... Mine, mine, mine, Beamer, Beamer, Beamer. It was pretty funny. The dog was supper confused. Finally, he got tired and came back to me, but the icing on the cake was that he didn't just return, he ran back splashing in all the puddles along the way and fished up by and rolling onto his back into a giant puddle of mud. We did the walk of shame back to the house, me slighly embaressed and him covered head to toe in mud. Oh the joys of having a puppy!

Lastly, I'm in the process of doing a major deep clean of my house because I'm expecting visitors on friday. Number one on the cleaning list is to evict all non rent paying residents a.k.a. bats, roches, and mice. I bought some magic chalk and insectiside... i'll let you know how it goes.

On the Work front:

I finished my HIV/AIDS training with my mens group last Sunday. We wrapped up with roleplays and discussions and at the end of the meeting I felt great. Sometime I feel like everything goes in one ear and out the other, but this time I think everything pretty much stuck. The men seemed to get it and they were really engaged. Four months of work... 100% worth it :)

B and I are having a big meeting with represenitives from all the small villages en brousse on Thursday about a project were trying to start. I'm pretty much working on getting things ready for that all week. The meeting is kind of like the kickoff so cross your fingers that people show up and everything goes alright.

Well my first out of country Fourth of July has come and gone and while things didn’t go exactly as planned I did have a great time celebrating the good old U.S. of A. Aislynn came down to celebrate with me and I decided to invite a few friends over for dinner. The friends are a couple who own my favorite restaurant in town and they have a little 2-year-old girl that is adorable and has a huge personality for such a small person. I invited them a few days ago and they were all about coming over. They even gave me a couple of pineapples to serve and helped me out at the meat market.Ok we need to detour for a second to talk about the meat market. I can now say with a 100% certainty that I will NEVER EVER EVER take the meat section at the local Farm Fresh for granted again. I think the buying and butchering of meat in my village is almost (key word almost) enough to turn anyone into a vegetarian. After asking around I learned that the trick to getting the good cuts is to get there right after they slaughter the cow (it’s also good because at this point the swarms of flies haven’t descended at full force.) Anyways, I got one of my friends whose boutique is right near the butchers to call me when they brought in the meat and then I came down. When I got there she showed me a good butcher and while yes he had the cut I needed he was also selling the head… were talking the whole head fully intact sitting on the chopping block and staring me down… I felt bad for a quick second but then I remembered how good cheeseburgers taste and sadly all feelings of remorse quickly vanished and it was off to step two…. meat grinding. They didn’t have a grinder at the main market so I had to go into one of the quarters to search for this old mama who said she would do it for me. So ya that was the meat market experience… not a pretty site but totally worth it to be able to cookout on the 4th of July!So, like I was saying before the meat market detour, I had invited two of my friends and there daughter over to celebrate the 4th of July so Aislynn and I spent the majority of the day in the kitchen cooking to get ready. Unfortunately, something came up, and I’m not quite clear on the details, but they never ended up showing. I was pretty bummed because we had a lot of food and I had spent a lot of money, but the silver lining was that I invited Hawou over and she and Rashid actually came in to eat burgers and fries with us. Her hubby was gone so I’m sure that had something to do with it, but none the less it was a huge first step to get us out of this awkward funk! One of my trainers always used to say “Nothing in Cameroon works right, but everything always works out all right.” I couldn’t agree more J

Sorry I haven’t updated this thing in awhile but I just haven’t had anything too interesting to blog about. Literally the only thing I can think to mention is that I met the new volunteer who’s being posted in the area and I had a fabulous frip find today. So Wednesday I got to meet the newest volunteer to join the forgotten corner (a.k.a. the western Adamoua ) Her name is Caitlyn and she’s in the education sector. She was very nice and seemed excited to be going to visit her post. We only got to chat for about 5 minuets because she was in route to Banyo, but we did get through the basics… how’s Cameroon? How’s Training? How’s DT? Where you from? Where did you go to school? Well it turns out she’s from Virginia! Talk about a small world. I’m pretty sure the Virginians are taking over this part of the country. We’re 75% V.A. right now… the fact that it’s 75% of four people is only a minor detail if you ask me ;) Second story is about my adventures at the frip. Ok, so you’re probably thinking to yourself what the hell is a “frip”. Basically, it a mobile thrift store that sets itself up at the back of the market every Friday (Friday being our big market day). You know all that stuff that we get rid of during spring-cleaning? Well I guess after the Salvation Army and the Goodwill somehow it ends up here. The guys selling the stuff layout these giant plastic tarps and just dump out everything and it’s pretty much a free for all. Every time they throw some new stuff on the pile or lower the prices (prices drop throughout the day) there’s this spontaneous sorting frenzy that erupts. I’m not gonna lie it can get a little intense. Personally I think most of the stuff isn’t really worth sorting through to begin with, but most everyone else who’s there means business, and they don’t mess around (were talking mamas throwing ‘bows and steeling things out of each other’s hands). Normally I watch from a safe vantage point but today something caught my eye. Well actually it was two somethings. First I saw this pile of women’s winter fur hats and I thought it was really funny (because it’s like 100* here everyday) and then I saw next to it a pile of random suspenders. There’s a guy that was in my stage named Richard who always wore suspenders so I decided to go see if there were any good ones I could score for him. I didn’t really see anything that caught my eye until, Bingo!... the perfect 4th of July accessory… red, white, and blue, stars and stripes suspenders. I bought them on the spot and didn’t even bother to haggle for the price. I already know I’m going to look like a big dork but I don’t care I’m gonna rock those on the 4th like its my job. I can’t wait for Sunday when I can sport the red, white and blue and hold up my trousers all at the same time J

Since the moment I landed in country I’ve been hearing trainers, directors, and other volunteers saying things to me like “brace yourself for the ups and downs”, “get ready for the highs and lows”, “hold on tight it’s a roller coaster ride.” Now, I know what those words mean, and I THOUGHT I had experienced them plenty of times in the past, but it seems I was mistaken. I can hands down say nothing has even come close to topping this week in both good and bad ways. Ok, I think I’ll start with the “Big Down” so we can end on a happy note. If you don’t want to read my ranting skip down to the bottom ;) Without going into too much detail, I’ll just say I had a very loud, very public, and very unpleasant argument with the man who lives in the apt. next to mine. I guess I should explain first that this is a man whose views on gender relations are eerily similar to what most people would identify as indentured servitude and he has probably never in his life had a women talk back to him (needless to say I’m not his type). I should also say for the record that he is an individual and doesn’t by any means. represent all Cameroonian men, just the ones I share a compound with. Ok so the argument itself started over something small (unattended one-year old meets puppy meets face plant into the grass) but quickly snowballed into a full-scale confrontation when he began to address me like he does his wife (aka like an inferior being). With this the flood gates flew open and I let out six months worth of all the things I wanted to tell him but had held my tongue about (it was major case of verbal diarrhea and once I started I couldn’t stop). His first reaction (and mine too for that matter) was shock, then embarrassment, and finally he ended with a good old round of “I have to win this so I’m just going to yell even louder at you even if I’m not being coherent.” Now were in an awkward stalemate. He’s not talking to me, and I haven’t said anything to him (which is hard because we live in the same house), but he’s been telling anyone that will listen to him that I’ve insulted him. Part of me wants him to see that he’s not the only one feeling insulted here, another part wants to take a stand to prove a point, and another part of me wants to go back to our peaceful (all be it just barely) coexistence. I know what I should do, and I probably will do it in the next day or two, but I just don’t want to. So that was that, definitely the lowest low thus far. It’s kind of put a damper on things and it’s been on my mind a lot lately, but it has also made me see that they’re right; highs and lows really do come in pairs. For all the things that made this past week headache inducing I think it was also one of the most fun weeks I’ve had in a while. It started with an unexpected visitor to Bankim. I was in the market last Monday and imagine my surprise when I turned around and found myself face to face with another twenty something year old white girl. Her name is Julia and she’s in Cameroon for two months to work with the Catholic mission. She spent most of her time in the East but somehow ended up in Bankim for a week to finish out her trip. The Mission is right across the street from me so we ended up hanging out a lot, and she was really nice company. I got to show her around town and show off my friends and some of the work I’ve been doing to her. The other big thing to happen this week was the start of the World Cup. Football is a way of life here. Everyone plays, everyone watches the games, and everyone is a fierce fan of the Indomitable Lions (side note: Cameroonians kind of remind me of WVU football fans… they go crazy when they win and they go crazy when they lose). Cameroon played their first match on Monday, and the village literally shut down to watch it. People closed up shop, came back from the farms early and glued themselves to their TVs (another side note: TVs and satellites mysteriously popped up all over the place last week… people literally had satellites and cable installed in their mud brick houses so they can watch the World Cup). The Lions ended up losing to the Japanese 0-1 but I still had a blast watching it. Julia and I went to the “Big Man” bar with some of my friends and spent the game enjoying cold drinks and yelling at the TV. Excluding the fact that I’m on a different continent it was just like downtown Blacksburg on a Game Day J. Now as much as I enjoy rooting for Cameroon and as much as I know Team USA is far from the best, I had to support the Motherland for their opening match against England. It turned out Julia is British and we both decided that it was just to perfect of a situation not to do something fun. Julia procured the use of the nun’s television and we made up a spread of munchies that included tortilla chips, bean dip, guacamole, and bear battered onion rings. The sisters weren’t crazy about the dips, but they really loved the chips. And so there we were; 2 Cameroonian nuns, one American volunteer, one British traveler all enjoying some Mexican food and watching football…talk about a cross-cultural experience ;)

I took Julia to see the lake and these little guys wanted to get in on the picture action

My phone after Beamer decided it was a chew toy

Kind of an awkward picture of me but the only one i got of Julia

Gameday num-nums :)

So I haven't really been in the mood to write in a while, mostly because i've been having a bout of upset stomach, no scratch that it's more like an irate stomach, for the past couple days, and last week there's was no power so ya that's my excuse for the delay. Nothing all that new and exciting has been happening in bankim so i'm just gonna throw a little of this and that at you for this weeks entry.

#1Mat surfing. This has become Beamer's favorite past time as of late and I'm fairly certain it will be sweeping the world by storm in no time at all. Basically all you do is get a running start and then leap onto a prayer mat and enjoy as you slide across the living-room floor. Now, in my house seeing as how there are no rugs or carpets i have chosen an interior design centered around a few of these mats and the dog loves nothing more then spend an evening surfing between them.

#2Cameroon has some of the most Beautiful rainbows i have ever seen in my entire life! Here they call them "roug-vert-jaunes" (red-green-yellows). I thought it was funny.

#3Who would have guessed christmas bingo would have been such a smashing hit in June with a bunch of kids who've never heard of candy canes of Santa Clause?

#4Bernadette is officially a grandma! Her oldest daughter Daisy gave birth to a healthy baby girl two days ago. I went to deliver the customary gift of soap and well wishes today and am happy to report mom and baby look great!

#5I love the Men's group i work with. There just awesome! this a picture of them playing a sharks and mino/freeze tag "ish" game a couple of weeks ago. The best part about it was that they were decked out in their Alhaji boo-boos and still went for it.

The rest are just random pictures i've been trying without luck to upload on to facebook. Enjoy!

Madina, Samira, and I hanging out eating some cous-cous.

This was from last week. At this point we were out of the ditch but still stuck in the mud

Under a tree en brousse, getting ready to do a health lesson.

Independence day celebration in The Darle

this is the closet thing cameroon has to a clarinet, unfortunately for my ears it sounds a lot like a middle schooler learning to play the oboe

This is a Ju-Ju. you know when people tell you they're sending you good ju-ju or they say don't do that it's bad ju-ju? This is what they're talking about. The guy told me this was a good one.

Horse portion of the parade i was telling you about.

Gold robe and a cane... Baller.

Distributing the snake-be-gone sticks around the compound.

Me and Raschid hanging out.

Okay, well not really upside down per say but it was on its side in a ditch. I know that I complain about the public transport in this country a lot, but so many things went wrong on this trip from Bankim to Bafoussam that I just have to share it with you. Here’s the sequence of events:

I went to the bus station a day early to reserve my spot. Bus driver tells me the car will pull out 8 am the next morning. Friday morning I get to the bus stop at 8. I am alone. I wait for 4 hours for the car to fill up, we finally leave at noon.

Come to find out it’s a push start van. Ever seen that scene from Little Miss Sunshine when the family has to park on a decline or get a running start to get the van moving… yup, exact same scenario.

We drive for about an hour and we get a flat tire when we hit a rock that’s submerged in one of the many ginormous mud/water filled potholes.

We drive for another hour and we have to stop for prayer.

We drive another hour and we slide off the road while trying to navigate a particularly muddy stretch. This was actually the highlight of the trip. Let me just preface by saying no one got hurt because a) we were moving super slow and b) we’re always packed in like sardines so it’s not like one could move even if they wanted to. Basically the wheels spun out and we went sideways right off the road and into the ditch. Icing on the cake was that it was the side with the door that was submerged in mud so everyone had to climb out through the windows (as I’m sure you can imagine, me wiggling out of a tiny sliding van window was anything but graceful). Once everybody was out it took about twenty guys and 45 mins. to get it unstuck and the whole time they were all arguing and yelling at each other. Once it was out it only stayed out for about 5 mins. before it was stuck again…and again…and again. The car was stuck in the mud a total of three times with in a 30 min. time frame after the initial slippage. Then all the men that helped push it out (those who weren’t passengers already) demanded the driver pay them and wouldn’t let us leave until he did. Finally he did but he had to use the money that he would normally use to pay off all the people looking for bribes at the checkpoints, which caused problems for us later on.

Everyone loads back in to the car and we drive for a while before we stop for prayer again.

We start to go over the mountains and the car overheats. The solution…pour water over the engine until it cools down. So basically we stand on the side of the road for an hour. The good news is I made some nice friends with the other passengers. One older lady told me her whole family’s life story.

We’ve been on the road about 6 hours when we finally get to Foumban and the road becomes paved- YESSSSSSSSS ☺

We hit Foumbat and run into some problems with a particularly cranky gendarme at customs. He’s looking for a little motivation (code word for bribe) and starts giving this one guy in the back of the car a really hard time about the goods he’s transporting.. We spend another 30 mins on the side of the road while the driver, the owner of the goods and the police officer have a screaming match. Finally the driver ends up leaving the guy there (I hope if I ever have an issue like that they won’t leave me… that’s why I always make a few friends right off the bat)

I can see the lights of Bafoussam in the distance.. quite literally the light at the end of the tunnel and then the car over heats..again. This time we only wait about 30 mins. for it to cool down and then we're off for the homestretch!

We finally make it after 8 ½ hours (that’s a personal record, normally it takes between 4 ½ and 5). As I’m sure you can imagine I was cranky and tired, one, because of the ride and, two the fact that now I was going to have to shell out money for a hotel room because I missed the last car leaving Baf for Baham (where the volunteer who I was trying to stay with lives). But then an amazing thing happened... I checked into my room discovered not only that I had running water but that it was hot and for the first time since landing in Yaoundé 9 months ago I took a nice long hot shower. Now I feel great! It’s truly amazing what heated water can do for your spirits ☺

21 May 2010

Now despite what you might be thinking I have not been catching up on my Sesame Street reruns, I actually just got back from a short visit to Mayo Darlé and up there I am commonly referred to as Quinze… as in the number 15 in French… as in sounds and looks nothing like Kate but is the closest we can get to the correct pronunciation. Now really I don’t care what they call me it’s just that sometimes I forget that I’m Quinze and then I don’t respond right away when someone is calling for me which is apparently a problem. When I was up there on Wednesday Haja, the first wife, decided the best solution would be to give me a village name. I told them to think about a good one and next time I visit they can tell me what it is. I’m kind of excited.

So the reason that I was in The Darlé was because this past Thursday was Cameroon’s independence day and Aislynn invited me to celebrate with her and Josh. Basically it’s the equivalent of our 4th of July except that there are no hot dogs and it lasts an entire week. This year is an especially big deal because it’s the 50th anniversary of reunification and independence of the country. I wasn’t here last year so I really have no basis for comparison, but I can say that Cameroonians know how to throw a party and they pulled out all the stops for this one.

The day started promptly at 6:30 when I was awoken to the sounds of someone pounding at the door, which wouldn’t have been that big a deal had I not been sleeping on the floor about two feet away from said door. Turns out it was Aislynn’s party dress being delivered (side note Cameroonians with a deadline are like me in college with a final paper… they work right to the wire but miraculously they always seem to get it done), so we took that as a sign to get dressed and went over to eat breakfast with the wives. After breakfast we made our way up to the parade grounds to watch the “march pass” and the traditional dances. It was pretty much your standard Cameroonian parade with the exception of the equestrian portion. Despite my personal beef with horseback riding (thank you mother…you know what you did ;) ) it was pretty fun to watch. They dress up the horses and then kids ride them bareback and try to get them to jump back on the hind legs. I’m gonna go ahead and say it’s probably not the safest thing one could be doing with their children, but the effect is pretty cool. Aislynn’s neighbor was riding the winner so that was exciting, and his parents were just beaming ☺. Once everyone had finished marching some of the groups came up front and performed some traditional songs and dances, which was a major crowd pleaser. People take a lot of pride in their traditions here and it really shows when they’re performing and they’re grinning from ear to ear. I love it!

So after everything at the Sous Prefecture finished up we went to a “cocktail hour” at the District officer’s house and did a little schmoozing with the big-wigs (thank you white man status… sometimes you actually are a good thing to have around). I don’t think whoever made the invitations actually knew what a cocktail hour was because there were no cocktails in sight and it lasted way more then an hour, but there was one hell of a spread so I think that more than made up for the false advertisement ;)

Lunch finished and we went to watch the championship football match, because lets be honest, what’s a Cameroonian party with out a little foot? It was the high school boy’s team versus the twenty somethings who called themselves The Hungry Lions (Now tell me that’s not an awesome team name!). The Lycee team (high school) ended up winning 2-1 and no sooner had they finished handing out the trophy, the sky opened up and it started pouring rain. This gave the three of us the perfect excuse to head back to the house to do a little power nappage because we still had the gala to attend that night.

The Gala got started around 9 pm with another round of feasting and then dancing until the wee hours of the morning. Highlight was hands down the opening of the dance floor. So what normally happens is that the DJ will choose random people to pair up and dance together awkward middle school style to some really cheesy slow song and then when the song finishes the floor is open and everyone gets up to dance. Now somehow Peace Corps volunteers always seemed to get picked to do this dance (imagine that) and this was no exception. We each got paired up with some old government officials but then they couldn’t get the slow song to come on the speakers. The only song they could get was this really upbeat song called Kiriku (happens to be one of my favorites…look it up, downloaded it, you’ll love it) which was not at all what they were going for. Everyone was just standing around not quite sure what to do, but then I looked down the line and saw Aislynn rock’n out so Josh and I followed her lead and the next thing you know all the Cameroonians were in on it too. I’d like to think we saved the dance☺

Peace,

Kate

P.S. on the way home from Mayo Darlé I saw an antelope walk across the road, and all the other passengers in the car thought it was really funny how excited I got.

P.P.S. I got in a standoff with a really big, really unfriendly goose the other day and had to be rescued by a Cameroonian. I think the geese here are even meaner then the ones at Mount Trashmore.

P.P.P.S Snake-be-gone = fail… found another snake in the yard

Most of you probably know this, but for those of you who don’t, I grew up in Virginia Beach about 15 minutes away from, and directly in the flight path of one of the East Coast's largest naval air bases, Oceana. As I’m sure you can imagine the rumblings of F-14s, F-18s and an assortment of other fighter jets provided the soundtrack to my childhood. However, like all natives of the area eventually you don’t hear them anymore, you don’t look up when one goes whizzing by, you don’t stop the conversation you’re having, and you don’t even think twice about the fact that a these powerful weapons are flying over your house at the speed of sound.

I feel like things here in Bankim are sort of becoming like jet noise. In some ways this is a good thing, for example my nose has conceded defeat and I can no longer smell B.O. (granted I can’t smell it on myself either so that might not be such a good thing when I come home). I can sleep through and African thunderstorm under a tin roof without any problem, and sitting around in peoples houses while they talk to each other in local dialect (that I don’t understand) for hours is no longer rude, it’s just a friendly afternoon visit with the neighbors.

In other ways I’m not sure that I like becoming complacent or jaded or so used to things just because “that’s the way they are here”. Now when I see two mamas with babies on there backs and large basins of food on their heads walking down the street I don’t think wow they’re only 18 years old and they’re coming back from the farm with their kids instead of back from school with their classmates. Now when people get really sick I find myself more often then not, not looking up, not stopping the conversation, and not thinking twice. It’s like the jets, they’re gonna fly over the house everyday and there’s no stopping them so you just tune them out so you can get work done and go on with your day. Coping strategy or excuse? I don’t know yet. I don’t want to stop seeing the little things or minimize the important things, but I find it’s exhausting to deal with it all, all the time.

Ok enough of that, I’m off the soapbox now ;) Here’s your random little story for the week. I think I mentioned this before, but we’re having a bit of a snake problem in the compound at the moment. I’m sure that it’s because of the rain, and because I haven’t found anyone to cut my grass yet, but between the three apartments we’ve seen and killed 3 snakes in the past week. They’re not huge but still they could probably do some damage if they bit you, so the solution… homemade snake-be-gone. Last weekend I spent about a half an hour with Rose and her kids mixing up this traditional remedy that was one part crushed snake heads, one part palm oil, one part elephant root, and a lot of other parts that I had never heard of before. We mixed it into a paste, rubbed it on sticks, and placed them strategically around the compound. We rubbed the leftover paste around the bottom of the kitchen doors. I don’t put a ton of faith into traditional remedies, and I don’t know if it’s going to work, but hey I figure it can’t hurt to try. I’ll let you all know how it goes!

Well, it’s official, after years of being in the marching band my acquired skill set has finally proved itself useful in a career setting. By this I’m referring to the Labor Day parade I marched in with my co-workers from the health center this past Saturday. I’m not sure why, but people really like to march in parades in this country, any chance to get up in front of a group of people and walk in step, and they’re on it like white on rice; youth day, women’s day, worker’s day you name the people’s day and I can almost guarantee there’s going to be a procession.

Saturday morning I got up early and headed down to eat breakfast with Bernadette’s family and get ready for the Labor Day festivities. I guess I never really thought of Labor day as a big party day, probably because for me it always represented the last day of freedom, the coming of a new school year, and so long to white shoes, but here it’s much more a celebration for “the working man.” All the workers associations make t-shirts or buy matching fabric and then throw these big parties.

Part one of the Fête de travailler (The workers’ party) was supposed to get kicked off at the sous prefecture (kind of like the fair grounds) at nine o’clock, but this is Cameroon and NOTHING ever starts on time so I putzed around for a couple of hours and then right around noon things started moving along. It was the usual opening ceremonies with the singing of the national anthem, big wigs giving speeches, and then the tunes came on. One thing you should know about Bankim is that in the whole village there is apparently only one song that people can march to and so that song is played on repeat for the duration of the procession, over and over and over again (were talking hours of the same song on the same crappy speakers). By the end it’s so stuck in your head that you find yourself humming it all week long, or at least I do ;)

So round one all the groups march around the route on foot, then round two everyone loads up onto cars and trucks and does it again. Highlight of the foot parade was hands down the Bankim Boucher’s association. Somewhere in the brainstorming process they decided that it would be a good idea to march with a cow leading their group. Funny thing about cows is that they like being walked on a leash just about as much as they like being ridden… not one bit! Much to my amusement both were attempted and the entire crowd was rolling on the ground laughing (probably wouldn’t have been so funny if the guy had been gored, but he wasn’t so I felt laughter was the appropriate response). Second highlight of the parade and my favorite part was the moto taxi men’s tour. Aislynn once said that the moto taxis are kind of like bike messengers in the states. They’re all the young 20 something guys who pride themselves in being “trendy” (side note trendy in Cameroon equals R Kelly and knock off sunglasses) and hang out next to their bikes all day trying to look cool and impress the ladies. Anyways this group was the last one in the parade and apparently once around wasn’t enough because they opted to go round two and by the time they were at round three the police were chasing them. While I was watching this all I could think about was that scene at the end of Animal House when the renegade “eat me” cake float breaks into the death mobile and all hell lets loose. Classic.

Part two of Fête de Travailler was a dinner party and dancing. Everyone at the hospital pitched in a little money and some of the ladies whipped up a spread of food for our little throw down. We had the party at one of the local bars and all the invitees (a.k.a. all the important people) showed up to meet us there. Someone busted out a microphone and we had to listen to the same speeches from the morning again (like no kidding the exact same speeches, word for word), but once all the formalities were over and the table was cleared the real fun began. Loud music, lots of booze, and dancing hands in the air like you just don’t care… what more could you ask for? Everyone was eager to show how to dance Cameroonian, which I must say is so much easier then American dancing, and I was on the floor all night. All in all I had a great time and I can’t wait till next year ☺

I’m Back! I know it’s been awhile since I had a chance to update you on all things Cameroon, but you’ll just have to blame that on a combination of power failures and official In Service Training. Also I have to apologize because I don’t have anything super exciting to update you on this week.

I guess I’ll start with in-service training. Commonly referred to as I.S.T. this is where I have been for the past 8 days. Basically it’s a week long seminar were volunteers get a chance to talk about what they’re doing at post, hear from 2nd year volunteers, learn how to plan and carry out big projects, and learn how to get funding for said projects. All interesting and important things to know, but that’s not really why most people start counting down the days till I.S.T. two months ahead a time. The real reason people get pumped is because the whole stage gets back together, kind of like a reunion of sorts. I know it seems silly, and you might be thinking, but Kate it’s only been 4 months since you saw these people, which is very true, but when you go from spending all day everyday with a group of people and then go cold turkey with your American interaction at post, 4 months can start to seem like a long time. Not that I’m complaining about post, but it’s nice to speak English and not feel limited by a five year old's vocabulary, drink a cold beer without being bothered to by the guy sitting at the next table, and just let your guard down, laugh with your friends, which is exactly what I did from 5:30 (when classes ended) till the wee hours every night. It was great to see everyone and I definitely had a good time, but by the end of day 8 I was ready to be heading home, and actually a pretty cool thing happened as I was rolling back into town… I felt like I was home ☺ I passed my house and waved out the window and a chorus of “Kate, Kate Kate” erupted from the kids. It was a warm and fuzzy moment for the books.

With that being said I’m back in town and back to the grindstone, feeling energized and ready to start some bigger projects. I still have a lot to think about before I jump into anything, but I have some ideas mulling around in the back of my head so I’m going to spend the next couple of weeks flushing them out with Bernadette and picking one to focus on this summer.

One final random note that I don’t know how to cleverly work into this post, but that I definitely want to mention…hopscotch. Yesterday afternoon I played the most competitive game of hopscotch the world has ever seen. Seriously if it were an Olympic sport Haua (age 17), Awa (age 16), and Ladee (age 15) would all be gold medalists. I had no idea there were so many rules and that such an innocent game could be so intense. But after an hour of throwing stones and jumping around like a one legged chicken, I had been “schooled” and my mind had been changed for good!

Sorry for the lack of updates, but we are currently experiencing technical difficulties here in Bankim. By that I mean that for the past week and a half we’ve only had power between the hours of 1:00 am and 5:00 am. Not exactly the most convenient time frame for your average resident. On the bright side (although not very bright) I know exactly when the power comes back because my neighbor starts up his big coffee grinder and has his guys work through the night, thus waking me up and giving me a chance to plug in all my electronics for the next day.

So let’s see, what have I been up to? On the work front last week I started a community health and sanitation survey. I have an in-service training (IST) coming up so the goal is to use some of our findings in our report we have to give. Bernadette and I decided to divide the village up into sections and the plan is that over the next couple of days we’ll hopefully visit fifty families from a variety of different backgrounds and then compile the results into a report that can help us to plan effective activities in the future. It’s hard work, but already the results are proving to be helpful, so I’m feeling pretty pumped about that.

In other news I turned the big two three this past Monday. It was fun but low-key. I got to Skype chat with my family at home and received a surprise call from Miss Altice back in the states, so that was very exciting. Birthdays are most definitely not celebrated to the same extent here in Cameroon that they are in the states. For instance you shouldn’t tell a Cameroonian it’s your birthday unless you are ready to give THEM a gift or buy them a drink, kind of backwards from what we do but thankfully my neighbor warned me about this ahead of time so I was armed and ready. Party favors this year came in the form of fried plantains… lots and lots of fried plantains. I enlisted the help of Fadimatou, my 9 year neighbor, and the two of us spent the morning in the kitchen deep frying massive amounts of food, and then in the afternoon I made the rounds to pass them out. I hit up all the immediate neighbors and then my colleagues at the health center and finished up with my friends in the market. I don’t know how good the food actually was but everyone seemed excited that I made them myself.

The real birthday fun came later in the week in the form of a visit from the Mayo Darlé crew. Aislynn and her boyfriend Josh (who’s visiting Cameroon at the moment) came to spend a few days with me, and everyone knows the only thing better then one white person in Bankim is three ;) . I have to say I always love when Aislynn comes; one because I enjoy the company, two because I like speaking American English and not feeling restricted by a five year old’s vocabulary (which is about what I have in French right now), and three because she’s a great cook. In fact, that was her birthday present to me, she and josh made me a steak dinner with potatoes and greens (a real treat since I don’t frequently visit the meat market, which is a whole other story). We asked Haua if we could use her fire pit and did a bar-b-que in the backyard.

It was really funny to watch Haua watch us cook. First we used a big fire where as Cameroonians normally grill on coals, so she kept reaching in and literally pulling the wood out of the fire. Then josh cut the meat into small steaks instead of hacking it into little pieces, and she kept saying, “no no no you’re doing it wrong,” and finally pulled the meat off the grill, went at it with her knife, and chopped it into pieces. So that put an end to the nicely cut steak, but I had to laugh because I know she was trying to help and thought we were going to ruin the meal by cooking in this bizarre manner.

Other highlights from their visit included a hike to the top of our cell phone antenna tower, a visit to the big man bar for drinks, and oven baked pizza. All in all it was a wonderful visit and it was just what I needed give me a push to get through the next week and a half before I get to see all my friends from stage at IST. Speaking of IST I’m not bringing my computer, so this thing will more then likely be dormant for a while. Fear not though, I’ll give you the complete update when I get back into town ;)

Until Next Time,

Kate

It’s official! The count has gone from 17 to 18 next door with the arrival of baby Ibrahim. My neighbor Ieassatou had her baby yesterday evening and both baby and mom are doing great. As I’m writing this I’ve actually just come from visiting and congratulating the family and there is a contagious sense of excitement in the air. Now seeing as how babies have never really been my forte and in the past I’ve lived by the general rule of thumb, "If you can’t hold your head up, I can’t hold you,” I had intended to make it a short and sweet visit, but I should have know better, because nothing in Cameroon is short and sweet.I entered the compound, greeted the husband, and gave him some soap (the traditional baby gift in these parts). Then someone grabbed my hand, led me past an assortment of distant relatives, and next thing I know I’m sitting on the bed with the baby in my arms. Now I’m definitely not the baby whisperer, but I did manage not to drop him or make him start crying (and he didn’t suck out my soul) so I would say overall it was a good visit.In other news I now have my garden up and running (by that I mean there’s dirt and there are seeds in the dirt). It’s just the beginning of rainy season so everyone is scrambling to get their farms ready and I thought, well it couldn’t hurt to try. Normally my thumb is more brown than green, but from what I hear things grow really well in this part of the country, so what the heck I went for it! I enlisted the help of Kerry and Hadison (my 6 and 9 year old neighbors) and in about an hour the three of us had dugout a little garden in the back yard. I planted tomatoes, carrots, and green bell peppers, so now all I have to do is water and wait. Keep your fingers crossed that something pops up.Nothing else all that exciting has been going on. I’ve been working en brousse (in the bush) this week talking about why vaccinations are important, but the normal nurse I work with is out so I’m working with someone else and I’m not exactly his biggest fan. Needless to say it hasn’t been the high point of my week. Hope all is well back in the states. Until next time.Kate

P.S. Thanks Adele and Dave for the Christmas card and ornament. They just arrived and absolutely made my day J

Greetings all! First off I’m sorry that this post is coming so late in the week but I had my official site visit Wednesday and subsequently spent the first half of the week stressing out and trying to get things ready/making sure people didn’t flake out on me. I find that you have to repeat things multiple times on multiple days if you want people to remember appointments or meetings. Thus why even after I had told him two weeks ago, again one week ago, again last Sunday, and on Monday, on Tuesday (the day before site visit) my supervisor said and I quote “Your supervisor is coming tomorrow?!” But even with the short-term memory loss issues my colleagues face, all the prep work paid off because Sylvie (a.k.a my boss) had a great visit! So how it works is, the APCD (head person for each sector) every three or four months will drive through the country and visit all the volunteers for their particular program and do research on new posts. My APCD is named Sylvie and she came through the West and Western Adamaoua this past week. She got into town at about 10 and we went strait to the Sous Prefecture to do protocol with all the important government officials. Only problem was that when we got there, there was no protocol to be had because all the big wigs were out of the office (even though I had gone and talked to them and made appointments ahead of time). It wasn’t exactly how I had hoped to kick things off, but it really wasn’t that big of a deal either and Sylvie didn’t seem to care too much. Next up was a visit to the hospital where we had a meeting with Bernadette (my counterpart) and Hamajida (my supervisor). We talked about the work I was doing at the health center and what kind of assessments we had made together over the past couple of months. Everything went well and Sylvie seemed to be satisfied with things. It was around noon when we left the hospital so we decided to grab some of Bankim’s famous grilled fish and took a break for lunch. After lunch we went to a meeting I had setup with Abdulie (president of MBOSCUDA) to talk about what kind of things we had been doing together. We talked for about an hour and all parties involved seemed really pumped about the collaboration. It was definitely the high point of the visit. I think it helps that Abdulie is such a passionate advocate for his people. Once he gets going you just can’t help but want to work with him! We ended the day with a visit to my Wednesday community group where I gave a quick presentation on water sources and did a community mapping activity. It was short and sweet, and nothing to get super excited about, but I got my point across and proved that I am in fact capable of doing my job, which was the objective. All in all the visit was a big success. The boss is happy so I’m happy J Other points of interest on the work front this week included, seven year old vs. snake, and first time mommy vs. health center staff. Snake first; so I went in on Thursday just to say hello and thank everyone for helping me out with site visit the day before, but when I got there I found everyone huddled around the door to the last room at the end of the ward. I made my way down there and immediately saw what we were all staring at. It was seven-year-old boy who had been bitten by a snake in his concession. It happened 3 days ago, but instead of coming right into the hospital the family waited and used some traditional medicine on it which ended up getting it infected and caused it to spread like whoa! The good news is that they put the kid on meds and he’s coming in every day to get the bandage changed so he should be fine in a couple of weeks, but its frustrating to know that the worst of it could have been avoided had they come straight in. The other run in was similarly frustrating. It was Friday and I was helping out with the CPN visits (prenatal consultations) when we got a first time mother that came in refusing to get vaccinated. My initial thought was, well maybe she doesn’t know what it’s for so we tried to explain that these vaccinations are important to have a strong healthy baby… nothing. Then we asked her why she was refusing and from what I gathered her husband had forbidden her from having a needle pierce her skin. I should back up for a second; a lot of people in the Grand North practice scarification as part of their cultural tradition and once you do that you’re not technically supposed to let anything else scar your skin. Now from how it was explained to me most people take this to mean that you can’t perform the actual scaring ceremony more then once, but some people take it to the extreme, thus why this new mother wouldn’t let the nurses get more then a foot away from her with a syringe in their hand. For me the right thing to do is easy to see, but at the end of the day you can’t force a patient to receive treatment so that was that. Other Random Things To Report My rain dance paid off because the rainy season started Sunday. This is great news because the temperature has cooled off and the dust is for the most part gone. The only draw back is that rain = termite swarms, and at night they come out in full force. Sadly I learned that lesson the hard way when I left my door open and had my kitchen invaded. This week has also been marked by power outages up the wazoo. I’m not really sure what their cause is but the power has gone out just about every night this week and a couple of the days. I am by no means complaining, cause some other volunteers never have electricity, but it has been the talk of the town as of late. Finally, I got a surprise phone call at the beginning off the week with news that my college roommate is engaged! I’m very excited for her, as are all of my neighbors. How do my neighbors know you ask? Well when the power is out at night it’s pretty quite and when I found out I may or may not have done a little excited high pitch squealing, and my neighbors might have thought I was in trouble and they may have all come over to make sure I wasn’t being attacked. Anyways, everyone in my neighborhood is very happy for you Krista!

First a little bit of a work update, Wednesday I met with my Bamoun women’s group and they kind of blew me off, which was really frustrating because I had spent a good amount of time prepping for it. I even went next door ahead of time and told Raschiatou (my neighbor/the president) that I needed at least 30 min. for my lesson and she told me no problem, but then when I got there they only gave me like 5 minutes and I didn’t end up getting anything done. At first I was super pissed off, but then I found out why they cut me off early and felt kind of bad. Apparently one of the women in the group’s child had died the night before. They asked me if I was going to the Duoiy (the wake) with them and I didn’t feel like I could say no, but I was not mentally prepared for it. When we got there the father came out and said something (I have no idea what was said because it was all in Bamoun but according to Raschiatou he was explaining what happened. Apparently the kid was sick for a long time and when he recently got malaria his body was too weak to fight it off). Then there was a round of prayer, they passed around a picture of him, and then 10 painfully long minutes of silence except for the mother who was crying. It was terrible and all I wanted to do was cry, but no one else was and I didn’t want to put any attention on myself. In my experiences Cameroonians have very different ways of expressing grief, there’s no sobbing, no condoling, it seems like everything is internalized, but I would imagine that it’s a way to cope with death, because it plays such a major role in life here. I don’t know that I’ll ever get used to it.On a much much lighter note Saturday I had my usual weekly meeting with MBOSCUDA, the Mbororo women’s group. Can I just say that they are my hardest group to work with because of the language and cultural barriers but they’re also hands down my favorite group of people in Bankim, and this past weekend just proved that once again. So some background; the president of the groups daughter Rahinatou (aka my translator) was sick in the hospital all week so I had been to visit her and I was just trying to make small talk so I asked her how the Mbororo women celebrate Women’s Day and she told me that they don’t and that most of the members don’t even know what it is. From there I decided that that was not good, so with the permission of the Presidents of the men and women’s group we had a small women’s day party during our meeting. We started off by talking about women’s day and how it started and what it was for and then went into why women are important and all the important things that we do to help our families and communities. We ended by eating a chocolate cake I had made and had a dance party with my ipod. Now if you know me you know dancing is not really my strong suite, but because they needed a little encouragement to get the dance party hopping I took one for the team and jumped into the dance circle (“hands in the air like you just don’t care” style). After a few minutes of my uncoordinated flailing everyone was up and dancing and having a good time. The group even taught me one of their dances and when they asked me to teach them an American dance I opted for the cupid shuffle. You can’t go wrong when they give you step by step dance instructions as part of the song ;) Sunday I had an equally successful meeting with the Men’s side of MBOSCUDA. We had pretty much the same discussion but without the dance party. I was so happy with them and I think they actually got my point, or at least I know some of them did. I started off with an icebreaker where I split them into small groups and asked them to pick the one thing that their wives do that is most important, and then I had them act it out in a little sketch. Going into it I was thinking this activity was kind of a crapshoot. I didn’t know if they would be into it but come to find out men pretending to be women is cross culturally funny. Some of them got really into it and it got everyone loosened up and laughing which made it much easier to move into the more serious discussion. We talked about how women’s day started and what it celebrates and why it’s important, and then wrapped it up with a brainstrom about the different ways to celebrate. I encouraged them all to say thank you to their wives, daughters, mothers and grandmothers on Monday. Now in a perfect world I would have asked them to let the women’s group participate in the parade or the sports day or any of the activities with the rest of the women in Bankim, but in light of my recent gender faux pas I was trying to take baby steps so I had decided right off the bat to save that for next year. But then at the end when I asked if their were any questions one of then men (one that’s usually very quite and stern looking) out of the blue asked me how their women could participate with all the other women’s organizations. I was so surprised at first I wasn’t sure I had heard him right so I told them about how to get they could do it and it looks like next year MBOSCUDA will be represented in the festivities. I went home on such a high. I was feeling great! Some days my job is frustrating and hard and seems impossible, but when things go right it makes it all worth it. The icing on the cake was the next day at the official celebration I ran into one of the Mbororo wives who told me her husband came home after the meeting and told her he wanted her to come today J Ahhhh Life Is Good!Last point of interest for this week and probably the most obvious thing to hit on was the actual 8th of March International Women’s Day. It was kind of a two-part affair. The first half of the day was a parade at the sous prefecture and the second half was a food expo in the center of town. If I had to sum the experience up simply I would say it was thanksgiving meets the prom at an outdoor music festival. Except that instead of limos and prom dresses we had motos and less than flattering women’s day fabric (you know it’s bad when yellow is your safest bet). Even so, when the motos pulled up everyone got presented over the speakers and then everybody else took that chance to look at what you were wearing and give you the one over. Personally I think I could have been wearing a potato sack and if it were in the women’s day fabric they would have been ecstatic. Anyways, once everyone showed up (easily a few hundred women) all the big wigs made speeches and then there was a parade of all the women’s groups in the area.After the parade was over everyone migrated to the center of town where each of the groups set up and sell food native to their village or culture group. It was delicious! I ate way too much and I couldn’t really tell you what most of it was, but you can’t say no when some old mama puts a plate of food in front of you. My own contribution to the event was a small booth on how to cook with soy. It went ok, but I think next year I need to get someone to actually cook with it and have food to try because they don’t seem to be quite sold on it yet. I understand that it’s hard to change when you’ve been cooking the same way for hundreds of years, but it such an economically and nutritiously strong source of protein (that God knows most of these kids need badly) that they’re aren’t many down sides to using it except not knowing how. Anyways, it’s now Tuesday and the party is over, and tomorrow it will be back to work, but overall I would say for my first 8th of March celebration here in Cameroon I couldn’t have asked for a better experience!

first annual Mbororo women's day partywomen's day skits with the mens groupThis girl made my day!!!Me and Bernadette at the parade

Hell Freezes Over! Yesterday I sat down to write this but I really didn’t have anything to exciting to say, so I opted to wait a few days and I’m glad I did because I have I got a story for you, but first some background: Monday March 8th is International Women’s day, but in true Cameroonian fashion you can’t just party for one day, you need a whole week of celebrating to lead up to the big day. Thus Women’s Day is actually Women’s Week, and the official festivities started today with Sports Day (kind of like a field day). Also in true Cameroonian fashion the planning process for women’s week didn’t start till today either. Now I’m not complaining, I’m all for a week long throw-down ;) but it does make it hard figure out what exactly is going on. So difficult in fact that one might find herself signed up to run in a foot race through the center of town… Yes that’s right, unbeknownst to me one of my community groups, Femme Pour Christ, volunteered me to represent them in the “cross country” race (they call it cross country here, but It wasn’t as long as a American cross country race. However, it was still far for me; the non-running, walk-loving, Kate Millman. If you know me at all you know exactly what I’m talking about). Anyways after breakfast Beamer and I walk down to the Sous Prefecture (kind of like the equivalent to fair grounds) to watch the festivities. I was planning on doing the March with Beamer and Bernadette so I had my “fair de sport” clothes on, but when I got there to sign up much to my surprise I was given a runners ticket. My initial reaction was there’s no way in hell I’m running in a race in front of everyone in Bankim so they can see me red faced and wheezing, but then I figured if 40 year old mamas can do it so can I (and at least I wouldn’t finish last) Only problem was that I was in the youth bracket so i didn’t end up running with the mamas, I was with the very physically fit (because they work at the farm all day) twenty-somethings. By the time I realized this it was to late to back out, so I reasoned everyone would already be staring at me so what the hell… let’s do this. The course itself was probably about a mile long and it went down main street, through the market and then back to the Sous Prefecture. Not super hard except that because everything runs on African time it didn’t get started till almost noon, so it was HOT HOT HOT!!! About half way through the race I had to run past a bush taxi passing through and they had opened all the windows and slowed down to a crawl to get a look at me. At first no one was saying anything, just staring, and it was kind of awkward because I was running at the same pace as the car, but then i heard a familiar voice. I looked in and it was Haua hootin and hollering for me (she’s on her way to Banyo for her sister-in-law’s wedding). Finally I was reaching the light at the end of the tunnel and I heard yet another familiar voice, only this one was on a microphone. Bernadette was the M.C. for the event and right as the finishing line was coming into sight I heard her on the loud speaker cheering me on. It was cute and it gave me a little extra push for the finish. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but the race itself was actually kind of fun. Granted my performance was nothing to get excited about, to quote an old coach, “I looked like a fright train going in slow-motion”, but I did run the whole thing, and I didn’t finish last (or second to last ... or third to last for that matter J ) and I enjoyed seeing and hearing my friends in the market cheering me on by name. When I walked home later on every person I saw on they way said I “made sport quite well” and that they were happy to see me in the race… total lie about the running, but go for the ego none the less ;) Other events for sports day included a speed walking race, sack races, basket ball (quite literally so, the object was to toss a ball into an actual basket) football, handball, and my personal favorite a beer chugging. The icing on the cake for that one was that the contestants for the chugging event were these two old beignet mamas. So there you have it, it’s officially women’s week …let the festivities being!!! Not a bad way to celebrate being a member of the fairer sex if I do say so myself ;)

Hope everyone had a good week! Lots to report on my end and I’m feeling a bit lazy so please excuse the randomness of this entry. Ok here we go…I.I finished up with the en brusse vacs on Thursday and it was by far my favorite day. I think the main reason it was fun was because it was the first time I’d been to these particular places and they were way way way off the beaten path. We took a moto and I think it goes without saying it was a bumpy ride (almost fell once and we had to get off and walk the bike a couple of times because the path was impassable). The first place we stopped at was a sort of seasonal village called Ngah. Basically people who have homes in Bankim Central (where I live) who have farms in the bush move their families out to Ngah and set up camp for the harvest. Some people do stay there all year around so as a result they live fairly secluded lives, in fact some of the kids have never seen white people before and when they saw me that day they burst out crying. Sometimes this makes me feel a little bad, but the good news is the adults tend to think it’s hilarious and so it ends up being a good way to break the ice. Ngah probably has a total population of 20-25 people according to Mbokas (including kids) and everything is mudbrick and thatched roofed. However, the real draw for me is the landscape. I’m sure it helped that we had a beautiful day for traveling but it was gorgeous. It’s right at the bottom of this huge mountain range and the backdrop is absolutely breathtaking. It was one of those moments when I was reminded just how beautiful a country Cameroon really is. But anyways back to the story… we got to Ngah and it was a ghost town because everyone was out in the farms so we went out and rounded up as many people as we could find and had them all gather together so I could give me schpeel. By day three of this Mbokas and I were like a well oiled machine and my talk on Peace Corps approach to development with Mbokas’ translation went great, so that was a nice confidence booster.Next stop was in Klong and we did the same thing again, but under a tree this time. I felt very Peace Corps cliché giving an animation under a tree in the center of town but it was really fun and apparently well received because afterwards I got to meet the traditional chief of the village and he really liked what I had to say and was pumped about me coming out every month to work with his village. I have to say it’s very encouraging when I go somewhere or when I’m in Bankim and the people in charge are really invested in the well being of their community. It’s not always the case, but when it is it makes my job a whole hell of a lot easier. Side note about the chief of Klong; he was sporting a billabong taxi cab hat. I had no idea that surf brands were so dignified, but when I told him that my friends back in America wore Billabong stuff too it seemed to make him happy.The final two stops were tiny Mbororo homesteads with one or two families each, complete with an army of kids. When we got to the first one I heard someone calling my name “Madame Kate, Madame Kate!” and I turned around to see one of the men I work with from MBOSCUDA coming out to greet me. Even though he doesn’t speak any French and I don’t’ speak any Fulfulde he was still really excited to see me and He showed me around his compound and introduced me to his family. It was encouraging to see how far we’ve come with this particular group. When I first got there I was really nervous and I suspect they were too because Ralph told me I would be the first women to work with them on a regular basis and they practice very rigid gender roles as part of their culture. I know we still have a long way to go (especially after our last meeting, I’ll get there in a little bit), but I think we’ve started to build a little trust which is a very good thing. Random comment about this trip; I saw my first seriously malnourished kids. There are a lot of kids near where I live who are thin and you can see their ribs and there are also a lot of chubby kids with big bellies, but not any that I’ve seen have been textbook malnutrition (Merasmus and Kwashiorkor sp???). This trip though I came across twin boys who had definite cases of Merasmus (shout out to Stephanie for teaching me to be able to identify it J ). So this is what happened, Mbokas was giving vaccinations and I was weighing kids when I saw this woman holding twins sort of towards the back of the crowd. She had one on her hip and one on her back and they were really tiny so I just assumed that they were under 1 years old (we only weigh kids under a year old) and went to ask the mother if I could weigh them for her. She said no because they were too old which I thought was odd so explained we can weigh up to 12 months and she said no that they were 2 and a half. I was shocked… they couldn’t even walk and if I had to guess by looking I would have said they were 5 or 6 months at the most. I told Mbokas about it and he talked to her about it and encouraged her to feed them more and bring them into the Health Center to get checked out but I’m afraid she won’t do it. Looking at those kids and looking at the mother who was stick thin as well made me so sad. I don’t think that she’s a bad mother and I think if she had food to give she would or if she had money to go to the hospital I’m sure she would do that too, but the reality is that she probably doesn’t. I can’t even imagine what it must feel like to watch your kids starving to death. Now I should say that this scenario is certainly not true of everyone in the area and I do in fact know people with big families where the kids are healthy, it’s just that this situation is a reminder of exactly why family planning is so important to talk about.

III.My MBOSCUDA meetings were interesting this week. The women decided to cancel the meeting an hour before because too many of them were sick including Rahinatou , my translator, but they didn’t tell me and I was all ready to go when I found out the meeting was a no go. It was kind of annoying, but it was very Cameroonian. C’est la vie!I had a lot of time to kill now and I was in the neighborhood so I decided to drop in and say hello to Abdulie (the President of MBOSCUDA) to see how he was feeling (he had a double hernia operation about three weeks ago). Turns out he’s doing really well and was excited to tell me that he was going to try and make it out to the meeting the next day. (side note Abdulie speaks English and normally translates for me, needless to say I was excited for him to be there too… communication has been a major challenge without him) He asked me to catch him up with what he’d missed so I went over the needs assessment stuff we had done in the men’s group and then what the women’s group was up to too. He seemed pretty happy with everything and I was happy he was happy, but just as I was packing up and about to walk out the door he dropped the bomb on me. Sometimes I find that Cameroonians have a hard time coming right out with it. They’ll beat around the bush for a long time before they get to saying what’s really on their mind, and this was definitely the case here. I have no doubt he knew what he wanted to say from the beginning, but instead of saying we made polite small talk and recaps for an hour before he said anything.Apparently the problem is that some of the men are refusing to allow the women to go to the meetings because we’ve changed the meeting place from someone’s house to the youth center. Before I got to post apparently the guy I replaced suggested that they could meet there and got permission and a room from the catholic mission, and left me all the contacts to go ahead with the move, so I just assumed that he had talked to everyone and it was ok. Apparently though that wasn’t really the case and now some of the men have concerns.So I sat back down in my chair and Abdulie and I talked about it end came to the conclusion that we needed to bring it up at the next men’s meeting and see what the majority of people were thinking and then go from there. As far as he was concerned the is no reason why the women can't meet at the youth center, but sadly I found out the next day, he is one of very few people who feel that way, and it looks like we’re going to have to nix the plan. Which makes me sad because the facility could have been really helpful (you know, blackboards desks and tables tend to be helpful when you’re trying to learn a new language)It was surreal to be sitting in this meeting listening to men talk about whether or not their wives should be allowed to leave the house for one hour once a week. Finally after about 45 minutes I said as delicately as I could that almost everyone in this room told me the first week during introductions that their goals were to educate their wives and children and that this was one way to get there. I was trying to remind them that you can’t really move forward if there’s no room for even a little change. I don’t know if I got through to them and at some points it got pretty heated. I was worried that maybe this was gonna cause the dynamics between the group and me to backslide a little, but now that a couple of days have passed and people are still being friendly to me and greeting me at the market I think we’ll be ok. It’s kind of like how moms have that magic ability to be yelling at you one min and then pick up the phone and be absolutely delightful with whoever is on the other end.V.Beamer is adjusting well to Bankim. My neighbors are starting to come around to him and everyone comments on our daily afternoon walks. I’ve been taking him for a walk every afternoon when the temperature cools off to give him a chance to get out of the compound and release some energy and people thinks really funny. Normally people only keep dogs to guard their house so it’s a bit strange to see one walking through town on a leash. I had to laugh the other day because just as we were coming back from our walk the kids next door came running out with their goats all leashed up. They were laughing and carrying on say look the goats are like Beamer. It was too cute!The only problem I’m having is that he’s chewing on everything, myself included. I’ve made him a couple of chew toys and given him some bones, but for some reason gnawing on my tennis shoes and table legs seems to be more fun for him. In other news, he has fleas again and I myself have found a bunch of suspicious bites on me which I suspect are fleas as well. It seems inevitable that the dogs going to have fleas, but I need to figure out what to do with myself on this front.VII.We had the first rain of the season yesterday. It was a torrential downpour that came out of nowhere and lasted about 20 min. Afterwards I went outside and the ground had soaked up everything in a matter of minutes. If I hadn’t see it raining with my own eyes I wouldn’t have even believed it. Even so the rain was exciting and its been the talk of the town for the past 24 hours. I have to confess that I’m ready for the heat to die down a little. The mud and noisy tin roof I could live without but it’ll be nice to be able to catch rain water instead of pulling it from the well outside for a change.

MY TIKAR WOLFLots to report this week first of which is I have a puppy. After a short and unfortunate stay in Mayo Darlé puppy has returned to Bankim and is staying with me. Basically unbeknownst to Aislynn the reason there are no dogs in The Darlé is because dogs tend to get stoned to death on a fairly regular basis. After her counterpart’s dog ended up with a large hole in the back of its head last week she decided for his own good, she needed to find the dog a new home. So here we are, I talked it over with my neighbors and eventually we worked out an arrangement so that he can stay in the compound. It’s not the optimal setup because he has to stay in the house or on a chain during the day, but he can run around at night after the final prayer of the day. The issue is that in Islam dogs are considered unclean (I share a house with a very devote Islamic family) so if you get dog hair on you (or you touch someone who touched a dog i.e. the 2 year old, and he gets hair on you), you have to wash and change your cloths before praying (which adds up when you pray 5 times a day). Or if a dog passes over a place of prayer you can no longer pray there. I’m trying to be culturally sensitive and not piss off the neighbors, but sometimes I just don’t get it, I mean the man’s a vet, he works with animals for a living. I’ve decided to just chalk it up to something I’ll never understand and as of now it looks like I have a new four-legged roommate. I decided to name him Beamer and I know what you’re thinking… come on Kate, not the most original Hokie Dog name, but even so I’m pretty sure he’s the only Beamer in Cameroon (maybe even on the continent) so I should get some points back for that ;) Kerry and Haddison, the kids in the third apartment, have started to call him my little Tikar Wolf (after the Tikar tribe) and I find it to be quite endearing.One good thing about having a dog is that now I have a reason to go walking down some of the random paths I’ve wanted to check out. The other day we ended up out at some random person’s coffee farm at sunset and it was beautiful. I can’t even do it justice in words, it was just one of those “Peace Corps was the best choice I’ve ever made” moments!YOUTH WEEKLast Thursday was the official Youth day in Cameroon. The actual event, a 3-hour parade of children marching to the National Anthem on repeat in 100 plus temperatures wasn’t that exciting, but I did enjoy seeing all of my neighbors in their pressed and ironed school uniforms. You could tell that they were really proud of their schools and they were all smiles and giggles when I told them I came just to see them. It was a fun time despite the heat and next year I hope to be able to incorporate some Peace Corps work into the festivities.IN TO THE WILDLet’s see, other things… Oh ya! Mbokas (one of the nurses I work with at the health center) and I took our show on the road this week and went en brusse (into the bush) to give baby vaccinations. We went to two villages on Monday and two Tuesday and then I’m scheduled to go to a couple on Thursday. I’m basically doing the same thing, registering and weighing babies, but this time I’ve been asked to do small animations on child-maternal health. For this month, because it’s my first time, I’m just doing the basic introductions. My name is Kate, I’m American, I work for Peace Corps, blah blah blah. It’s the usual bit but I don’t mind doing it because it's good practice for my French and with working with a translator. I use a storyboard to explain Peace Corps' Approach to development and I have a picture of my family that I pass around which keeps the audience paying attention for most of the talk. I do have to say though that every time I pass around the Millman family photo without fail some makes a comment about how handsome my brothers are, and asks are they married which then leads to someone asking me if I’m married followed by shock, awe and confusion when I say that I’m not. Every time… even in another hemisphere I can’t get away from it ;)IHOP YOU HOPChez Moi (my house) became the international house of Pancakes this week when I doled out enough banana and potato flap jacks to feed an army. I decided since yesterday was Fat Tuesday and I had been promising Haua to cook something for her for months now, Mardi Gras and Free Pancake Day were just the excuse I needed show off my culinary skills (which subsequently are limited to pancakes and spaghetti). So I spent a couple hours in the kitchen and then went to make the rounds with the neighbors in the afternoon to serve up some good old fashion, made from scratch, American Pancakes. I used honey for syrup and they were a huge hit with everyone from the screaming babies to the husbands. In fact I was even invited to talk to the husband of three of the wives in his “Big Man” salon (Cameroonian equivalent to the living room you don’t actually use unless you’re having important company for dinner). It was the first time I’d been invited to talk him and I was a little nervous, but he was really nice and asked (slash told me) I was to teach his wives to make these little American cakes because he liked them so much. When I told him next time I would put chocolate in them his eyes lit up like a five year old (I wanted to laugh so hard, but I locked it up) SHAKE WHAT YOUR MAMA GAVE YA This story is too good not to tell you all, but you’re either going to laugh or scoff so be warned…Last week I met with this new women’s group for the first time because one of my neighbors is the president and she invited me to come speak. They call themselves Femme de Bamoun (The Bamoun Women), and they’re a group of women from the Western Bamoun Tribe who meet once a week on Wednesdays afternoons. They have a small tantine (money collection), but I get the feeling, like most women’s groups, the meetings are held mostly for the social aspect because most of these women rarely leave their homes. With that in mind I really shouldn’t have been so surprised about what was coming. So they took roll, collected money, I gave a little talk, and then the dancing started. For those of you who know me well (or went to college with me), you know I’m a little self conscious about my dancing skills or complete lack thereof (something about the hands, I never know what to do with my hands), so needless to say I was bit hesitant to jump into the dance circle when it started. Unfortunately for me they weren’t buying the old “I'll just sit this one out” excuse and when the polite refusal didn’t work and I was physically lifted out of my seat by a very large woman. I had no choice but to go for it, the only problem was that I didn’t know the traditional Bamoun dance and once I learned it I realized I don’t exactly have the anatomy to pull it off. I should say before I go any further that in my opinion people in Bankim are all about the butt (I think it has to do with the breastfeeding factor), the curvier the better and let me tell you, they know how to shake it. I on the other hand have very limited booty shakin skills, surprising I know ;) After what I felt was enough time to appease the group, I was trying to subtly slip back into my seat when I felt two hands right on my butt and hips swinging them to the beat. I turned around and saw the same woman who pulled me out of my seat to begin with yelling at me over the singing that I wasn’t doing it right, and that this is how it’s done. I was a little mortified at first but when I realized she honestly just wanted to teach me how to dance and also that she wasn’t going to give up until I gave it a full hearted effort I had no other option except to go for it and that my friends is how I learned one of the Traditional Bamoun circle dances. Now there’s talk about me dancing with their group in the Women’s Day Parade for all the Big men and leaders in town, but I don’t know about that one, we’ll have to wait and see.

Well I guess I should be careful what I ask for, because following my complaining last week about things being really slow I had my busiest week thus far. Let’s recap:

Work Stuff

This week I had my usual schedule at the health center (baby vacs and prenatal consultations). Nothing out of the ordinary to report on that front, except that I did get to be in the room with a woman when she found out (two weeks before her due date) she was having twins. Twins in her village are thought to be good luck so she was pretty excited. I’m glad it was a good surprise this time ☺

I also had my normal meetings with the MBOSCUDA groups this week. We did a community mapping activity where I met with each group and asked them to draw a map of their community, and I could not have asked for it to work more perfectly, it was textbook! When asked to draw their community the men drew the town of Bankim with all the government buildings, a detailed marché, the bus station, their shops, and the road in and out of town. When I had the women do the same thing they drew their quartier (neighborhood) with specific households, water sources and the schools their children go to. The maps were totally different, but both had important places on them that could be used to define the community.

I had to split the activity in to two parts and the mens group is a week ahead so when I met with them this week we looked at both maps together and talked about the differences and decided that both maps were good on their own but each was missing something, and that if we put them together we would have a complete map of the Mbordoro community. The activity also helped them to visualize how people living in the same place can still see things differently thus giving some validity to the point I’ve been harping on about making sure we listen to what everyone has to say regardless of age or gender. I’m planning on doing part two with the women’s group this week (the discussion and analysis) and if it goes anything like this week I’ll be thrilled. With the men’s group it was interesting to see them working all this out in the heads, you could see everyone connecting the dots on their own. I think they’re really staring to get it, and for a group of very conservative Muslims to enthusiastically validate the work and opinions of their wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters even if it’s in a very small way is huge! This exercise has also been good for me and my perspective. Prior to coming here I had some pretty heavy preconceived notions about how gender equality would fit into the culture and expected a lot of resistance to new ideas, but I’m finding that if you move slowly and use logic and are sensitive to cultural difference people are open to change (especially the people who make most of the decisions i.e. the men) ☺ I know there are lots of ups and downs that go along with this job but this week was definitely an up!

Final work update is that I gave a small expo on Peace Corps work with a new community group this week. They’re called Ngoo Nde, and they’re a group of Bamiliké from the western province who get together once a week to talk about their problems, speak in their local dialect, and pool some of their money together in a tantine (a kind of savings system). The whole thing kind of fell together by chance when I struck up a random conversation with this man who was sitting at my table at lunch one day. We did the usual introductions and then he told me that he had seen me all over town, but didn’t know what I was doing here or what my work was. I gave him the shpeal and that seemed to suffice his inquire. The rest of lunch we just chatted about this and that, he told me about his work and his family and of course we talked about the weather (the heat has come up in every single conversation I’ve had in the past two weeks. It’s all people seem to be able to think about and understandably so it so freakin HOT!) Before he left he asked me if I wanted to come talk to a group he is a member of and I jumped on the chance, and that’s how I ended up at their meeting last Thursday.

Ok so I lied the final final work thing I did this week was attend a district meeting at the Central hospital. It was all the head nurses of all the small Health Centers in the district (there are 11) who get together at the beginning of every year to create an action plan. In reality it’s all the head nurses who get together to read the action plan from the previous year and vote to continue it into the current year without any discussion at all. One could sum up the meeting in three words long, boring, and unproductive. As for why I was there, I went to hand out a short survey to get a feel for what I could possible talk about when I go en brusse to visit their communities. So that was work for the week.

Youth Week

Youth week started this past Thursday. In training they told us that it was just one day for Cameroonians to celebrate school children, but turns out all the activities are stretched into a week long party (Cameroonians know how to get their party on). Each day a different school puts on a culture show at the Mayor’s office and all the big wigs come out to watch. I myself have somehow wound up in the VIP seating at all the events I’ve gone to thus far (Does that make me a bigwig? Oh God, I hope not!). They also have regional handball and soccer tournaments all week and each school has a couple teams that compete to be in the championship match on Friday. The winners of Bankim district will go to play in Banyo, and if they win there to Tibati, and if they win there up to N’goundre (The Capital of the Adamoua). My neighbor Rose who lives in the compound with me is the coach for the handball team at her school and apparently her team is undefeated. They have a game later today so I told her I would try to go watch. I think there are some definite opportunities for collaboration with the handball girls and their coaches and me. The 11th is the actual Youth Day and from what I gather there’s going to be a parade and singing and dancing, eating, and drinking all day at the center of town. Most of my neighbors will be there so I think I’ll go watch the happenings with them.

The Injury Report

Last week I was waiting for a meeting to start at the hospital and one of my friends came in with her baby who’s been sick for about a week with a fever. Eventually the husband decided they should take the baby to the hospital and the nurse ended up diagnosing her with Malaria. She’s on some medicine and on the mend but she had to stay over night at the health center for a couple of days, which adds up financially. I think she’s back home now but she’s still not at 100% so keep her in your prayers this week.

Next up my friend Joseph was in a moto accident. Thankfully he was wearing a helmet and is fine except for a fractured collarbone. I was visiting Bernadette’s house when we got the news so a big group of us decided to go and visit him at his house (giving someone space to recoup is in no way a part of the Cameroonian culture, it’s more of a rubber-necker mentality). But with that being said, I’m really glad we went because while I was there I got to meet Bankim’s traditional healer and I got a chance to see him do his thing. It was quite the ordeal and all I’m going to say is it included a chicken, some herbal oils, 30 min. of resetting the bone, and then wrapping with a bamboo splint. The actual act itself was interesting, but what really impressed me was that Joseph didn’t make a peep the entire time (no pain killers mind you). Were talking 30 minutes of resetting a bone and he didn’t so much as flinch. All I can say is Cameroonians must have an incredibly high tolerance for pain. Even women don’t make any noise during child birth. Aislynn was telling me that she was sitting in on a meeting at her health center in Mayo Darlé while someone was teaching the nurses how to time contractions and they were saying because most women don’t make any noise you have to read their faces for pain and flinching. But it gets better… some women (Fulbé especially) don’t even do that so you have to actually put your hands on them the whole time they're in labor and feel for the actual muscle itself contracting. God I’m glad I’m not a Cameroonian woman! Yikes!

The last injury to comment on is my very large mysterious thumb blister. It’s no mystery to me, I know exactly where it came from, but no one else does. The wives have been asking me about it all week, but I haven’t told anyone what actually happened because it’s kind of embarrassing. Of course not telling them just makes them want to know more, but I know if spill the beans for two years I will never ever hear the end of it (I still hear stories about funny things past volunteers did years ago from these women… they never forget). No, this one is not getting leaked out in Bankim, but because it is a pretty funny story I’ll fill you in.

Early last week I was visiting the compound next door and all the kids were playing football out in the common area. I had been there for maybe and hour when one of the wives told the girls they had to stop playing and do their chores. One little girl named Fadimatou (who’s probably about 9 or 10 years old) disappointedly plopped down next to me on the stairs with a big bucket of dried corn and started to pop the kernels off the cob so that they could take them to the mill to be ground into flour. I felt bad for her because kids don’t really have much time to just be kids and it’s even truer for the little girls, so I asked her to teach me to it too. At first she was a little hesitant but after a some coaxing and me acting silly and attempting to teach myself she came around and showed me the perfect technique to get the most kernels off at a time. After she felt my kernelling skills were up to snuff I asked her if she wanted to race and we made a little game of it. I really only planned on doing maybe a dozen or so before heading back home, but when the other kids saw us laughing having fun they all wanted to get in on the action too, and of course they didn’t want to race each other they wanted to race me. One hour and what felt like 100 ears of corn later I finally got back home and soaked my blistered thumb in some hot water. Even though my right thumb has become a small point of interest, and eating fou-fou with my hands is a challenge for the time being, I would do it again in a heartbeat to hear the kids laughing and having fun ☺

Good news, I eventually found a dog, and the puppy hunt has come to an end at last. I went back to the monkey man’s house because he said he would show me where I could find some others, but then when I got there he had decided to sell me his instead. It worked out great, I made a new friend, and found a dog for Aislynn all in one fell swoop ☺ After a bit of haggling over the price we took care of the particulars and I rigged up a leash, tied it around his neck, and set out to walk home. Only problem was that he didn’t want to walk…he literally wouldn’t move, so then I had to pick him up and carry him home. When I walked through the market on the way back I stopped to say hello to some of my friends and they all loved him. But I don’t think they got that I wasn’t keeping him because all this week they’ve kept asking me where my small dog is.

When I got home Stacey the sheep almost had a heart attack. She came right over to puppy and me and started stomping her hooves. I think if I hadn’t shooed her away she might have trampled him. I’ve never really witnessed emotion from a sheep but I can tell you she was pissed! After that Haua and Hadijia came over to visit. They were funny because they’re both afraid of dogs but starved for anything new and excited to be at the house so they came straight over to check him out. They would slowly inch up close to the puppy and then as soon as it would lunge at them they would jump back screaming and run around the yard like little kids. This went on for about half and hour and I’ve got to admit it was pretty funny to watch. I feel like they both had to grow up so fast so it’s fun to see them let loose every once in awhile ☺

I had originally decided to leave the dog outside for the night because he wasn’t house trained, but then we have the well and there’s no cover for it and I was afraid he might fall in. I ultimately decided to let him in the house, but first I gave him a bath because he was really dirty! Puppy didn’t really like getting a bath too much, so I had to enlist some help from the kids next door to hold him down. All I can say is that he is truly a Cameroonian dog because the whole time he barked and howled and eventually caused a crowd to form. My neighbors kept asking me why in the world I was washing the dog and when I told them it was because I was going to leave him in the house for the night it just made them look at me like I was even stranger (dogs don’t generally go inside people’s houses in Bankim and they never get bathed) . We spent the evening in and I have to say it was fun to have someone else in the house with me even if that someone did pee on the floor and keep me up whining all night.

Nothing else all that exciting happened this past week until the weekend. Saturday I got to Skype chat with the parents and a friend from college. It was great to see and hear from some familiar faces ☺ My neighbor came in while I was chatting , and he speaks pretty good English so I asked him if he wanted to say hello. He probably only said 2 sentences if that but he was so excited. By the time I got home every one of my neighbors knew that he talked to my mom and they wanted to know how everyone in the United States was… like everyone… one of the wives asked me if I could talk to R Kelly through my computer. Side note: as terrible as R Kelly is he has a surprisingly large following in Cameroon.

The only other thing I can think to report on this week is that the water pump in my part of the village broke this past weekend. I should backup a bit. Most people in Bankim get their drinking water from one of three or four legitimately constructed pumps, and for everything else (bathing, cleaning, etc…) they use water from their own wells or rivers. Now when I first got here and started asking about water sources everyone I talked to told me, “Whatever you do, don’t drink the water unless it’s from the pumps.” I played along and asked them why and they told me it’s because there are microbes that will make you sick in the water. I was really impressed because clearly the people I talked to knew about water borne disease (props to previous Bankim PCVs). But then when the pump broke they all went back to drinking dirty water without filtering it first. There’s this little stream by my house where the cattle herders stop to let their cows rest and it’s also where people drive their motorcycles (and the occasional car) to clean them. The water is really dirty it’s got manure and motor oil and who knows what else in it, and while the pump was broken some families were coming here to fetch their water. The good news is the pump was fixed the next day and the whole thing turned out to be a good teaching opportunity (I taught my neighbor Rose how to filter our well water for drinking) but the bad news is that getting information out there is a whole lot easier then changing actual behavior and it looks like I’ve got a long way to go.

Peace,

Kate

So I had a regional meeting in the provincial capital of the west last weekend. Even though I’m technically in the Adamoua it’s really difficult for me to travel to our capital, so Aislynn and I have joined up with the west for regional stuff. The place we met is called Bafoussam, and it’s a very big bustling city with aggressive vendors and lots of traffic (with no traffic laws mind you) that takes me 5 hours to get to on a good day. The only two things that make traveling to Baf worthwhile is that it’s where I do my banking ($$$!) and they have a huge outdoor market where you can find just about anything. Literally I found chalkboard paint, an iron, fabric, a cake pan, a soccer jersey, and parsley all in the same place! The place is freakin enormous and it’s a maze so it’s very easy to get lost. I recommend the buddy system. The time before this Aislynn and I were shopping in it and at one point we ended up in a part of the market where you couldn’t see the sky anymore and everything was black lighted and they were selling some pretty scandalous cloths… SKETCHY ! Needless to say we hightailed it out of there.

The meeting itself was on Saturday morning and it was fun because I got to see some of my friends from stage. It was great to get together and share stories and it seems like everything is going well at post for them. Oh ya and we also did talk a little about Peace Corps stuff, since that was kind of the point. It looks like the higher ups are thinking about creating an office for us in Baf, which will be really nice for those of us who have to travel a long way to get to the capital.

I got back to Bankim on Sunday and since then I haven’t really done too much work work, but I have been keeping myself busy with a little something I like to refer to as Puppy Hunt 2010. Here’s how it started; Aislynn has been talking about wanting to get a dog for the last two months, and her counterpart was supposedly looking for one, but it’s proving very difficult to find one in Mayo Darle because in general Fulbé don’t really like dogs. So I decided to find one for her here in Bankim and give it to her as a birthday present since her birthday is this week. I had no idea when I started my search that it would end up being such an adventure. The first place I went was at the house of a friend of one of my favorite vendors, Juliette. There were indeed puppies there, and they were so cute they made me melt a little on the inside, however they were two days old, so a little too young to take home. From there I left puppy litter number one with my new friend Martin and went to checkout litter number two. When we got there, there were two dogs left at about 2 months old and they were just adorable, the only problem was they were both females and I definitely needed to find a male. Here’s my logic; one if it gets pregnant in Mayo Darle no one will want the puppies cause they don’t like dogs, and two getting a dog neutered is very invasive and dangerous and pretty uncommon so no one will do it according to my neighbor the vet. After litter number two I was walking back into town and ran into another friend who told me his older brother had some small dogs and so he took me to see them. Turned out when I got there, there was only one dog left and the owner wanted to keep it for the farm so he wasn’t selling, but the visit wasn’t a total bust, because now I can officially say I have seen a puppy and a monkey wrestle. The monkey was ahead the whole time. I think it was probably the opposable thumb and the prehensile tail that really gave him the advantage. At one point I bent down to call the puppy over and play with him and the monkey came over to. Ultimately I decided not to touch it because images of the movie Outbreak kept flashing through my mind as it got closer and closer. The family kept saying oh it’s really friendly, but I opted not to take my chances.

As of Tuesday night the search continues but I’ve got a good lead to go on after work tomorrow with puppy number 3/monkey owner. I hope I can find a dog soon, but even if I don’t Puppy Hunt 2010 has been a great way to meet new people and visit them in their homes. Who knew looking for a dog could be such a great way to integrate?

One final thing for this week; Monday Cameroon lost to Egypt in overtime so they’re out of the African Cup of Nations, but not before I got to debut my new number 9 Lion’s jersey. I put it on and my neighbors loved it. I ended up watching the game in town at this little restaurant and I think the jersey earned me some major “street cred” with the 16 to 20 something boys in town. I had to laugh because one of these guys told me he thought if I was willing to wear a Cameroon jersey and root against white people (the Egyptians) then I must really like Cameroon a lot and that made me ok. Hey whatever it takes to integrate right… ☺

Hello to All and Happy Humpday!

I hope the week is treating everyone well and that you enjoyed your day off. Obviously no one celebrates Martin Luther King Jr. Day in Cameroon, but I decided because I had nothing on the agenda that I would take a mental day to recoup from my busy weekend and chalk it up to MLK!

So this past week I experienced the nationwide frenzy that is Cameroonian football, was a guest speaker at a women’s conference and met with the Imam. The Imam (and I’m not sure if I’m spelling that right at all) is the head of the Muslim community, sort of like a Pastor or Rabi from what I gather. The one here in Bankim is really old and I don’t think he runs the day-to-day things in the actual mosque anymore, but he is a very highly respected figure within the community. From what I gather about him he used to be out and about within the district but nowadays he does a lot of teaching from his home, which is a very humble two room mud brick house he graciously invited me into for our meeting. He’s been living and working in Bankim for the past 60 years and he’s a treasure trove of information. We talked (Abdulai, the president of MBOSCUDA, translated for me) for about 45 min about this and that, my personal religion, why I was working with Muslims when I am a Christian, my life in the states, Peace corps, the health situation in Bankim, and how we can work together. Overall it went really really well and I think he’s a great person to have the support of. Very interesting man with a lot of wisdom to share!

Friday around noon Bernadette and I headed out of town to be special guest speakers at Les Femme Pour Christ annual regional meeting in Nigambe Tikar. I have to say the ride there was an adventure all in itself. The first leg of the trip is about 20 minutes by motorcycle out of Bankim until you hit water. When you get to the river you had to wait for enough people to gather and then they loaded the bikes, passengers and all the luggage on to a big canoe and paddle across. When we get to the other side we changed drivers so that we could take two bikes and be a little bit more comfortable and then head out into the bush. There are no roads between Bankim and Nigambe Tikar so the moto drivers follow the paths that the cattle herders use. There’s nothing out there except for them and their cows, and the occasional very small village where you can stop and buy gas. After about 2 hours of this we reached our final destination. The group put us up in a nice room at the home of a woman named Lucy. She was a wonderful host; a bucket of hot water to bathe with and good food to eat, it felt like the Ritz, that is minus the spider as big as the palm of my hand living in the latrine :-) The conference itself was a lot of talking and reporting on things from the previous year, mini sermons, health education by yours truly, lots of singing and of course in true Cameroonian fashion lots and lots of eating. Most interesting meal of the weekend hands down was the snake. I don’t know how big it was to begin with, but it easily fed 20 people nice size steaks, so I’m venturing to say it was a big mama. I can’t say that it’s my protein of choice (it had kind of a weird smell), but the taste wasn’t bad. It was somewhere in between fish and chicken. Saturday it was show time for Bernadette and me. We talked about an hour on family planning. Bernadette took the first half to explain different types of contraceptives and such and then I finished up with the benefits and a small demo. I was really nervous about my French, but a friend named Evangelist from Bankim translated into Tikar for me and it seemed to go pretty smoothly. The only hitch in the program was that a lot of the women were past their childbearing years and they already had big families so it was kind of moot for them. I think the solution is to highlight the role older women play in teaching their daughters and nieces and grandchildren etc… about the benefits of family planning. The other thing that kind of blew up my spot was when one women asked what my husband thought about this and then I had to tell them that in fact I wasn’t married and I have no children, (in the words of Andy I felt “like such a poser”) but I think I managed to save face a little by saying that when I do start a family I’m going to use family planning practices. In the end I think it went well and once my part of the weekend was over I got to spend some time relaxing and taking in the scenery. Bernadette grew up in Ningambe so her mother and a couple of her brothers and their families, and a ton of cousins all still live there. After our talk we spent most of the afternoon and evening on walking around meeting and greeting all of them. We even stopped to watch some of the African Cup Ghana vs. The Ivory Coast) in “the big man bar” with one of her brothers. It was really wonderful to see Bernadette in her element; she is just such a genuinely awesome person, people just flock to her no matter where we go. I’m really glad that we get to work together!

Sunday morning there was a closing ceremony that was part of the church service followed by a big lunch to conclude the weekend. Sunday also happened to be the big market day in Ningambe so of course we couldn’t leave town without making the rounds down there. I am really glad that I went though because I met some Pygmies and they said next time I visit I should come see where they live. Totally going to take them up on that offer. Definitely a “my life could not get any cooler” moment! After a round of goodbyes that took about 45 minutes to complete we headed out of town. We couldn’t find two separate motos this time so we had to share. It was me, Bernadette, the driver and our stuff which included 2 duffle bags and a chicken all on one bike. It wasn’t the most comfortable ride of my life, but I certainly wasn’t the only unhappy camper aboard. The chicken was not particularly grateful for the joy ride either and when we stopped once it tried to make a run for, It didn’t get far because it’s legs were tied together, it kind of just hopped around clucking pathetically for a few minutes until the driver could chase it down. It was a pretty funny scene to watch.

Finally, this week was the start of the African Cup of Nations and the entire country has been overcome by football frenzy. It’s what everyone is talking about all over the village and each night they project the game on the side of a big building in the middle of town. So far Cameroon is one and one. They lost to Gabon and won against Zambia< There’s a lot of hype for them to live up to because they qualified for the World cup and they’ve won the African cup 4 times in the past. I’ve been watching with my neighbors, but I think the next match I’m going to venture into town with a friend who promises to keep the drunks from bothering me. We’ll see how it goes… the crowd gets a little rough in Bankim once the sun goes down Wish me luck!

Until Next Time,

Kate

P.S. GO LIONS !!!

Well after a 3 month hiatus and much anticipation I finally got my mail this week, and I definitely hit the jackpot! I want to say a big thanks to those of you who wrote letters and sent care packages. They were a wonderful surprise, and the delivery absolutely made my week. I let Haua try some of the junk food like the Pringles and M&Ms, but she wasn’t impressed. (Side note: I’m finding that when people in Bankim don’t like something they come right out and tell you. Brings the saying “cut the crap” a whole new meaning. It’s certainly abrupt but I find it somewhat refreshing) Work related this week I had a couple of meetings and I went into the health center on Wednesday and Friday for vaccination days. Not a particularly busy week, but enough that I had at least one thing to do a day. Friday was a hard day. I met a women who came in for a pre-natal visit complaining of major stomach pains and when the nurses checked her out they couldn’t find the baby’s heart beat. My heart broke for her. They ended up admitting her to do an induced delivery and there were no complications, but when I saw her and her husband heading out of town on Sunday morning she didn’t look good. I don’t know her name or even where she’s from, but I’ve been thinking about her all week and I hope she’s doing ok. On a much much lighter note I did have a pretty hilarious encounter Saturday morning with three dancing men and a fish. I had just walked out my front gate to head into town when these three men came running at me. At first I was a bit freaked out, then I was confused, then I saw a group of people laughing behind them so I figured they were harmless and quickly came back into the yard and shut the gate on them. The three of them were decked out in traditional garb with headdresses and beads and these shell legwarmer looking things that made noise when ever they moved, and they were dancing and singing. One guy had a small fish in his hand and he kept waving it front of me saying “take the fish, take the fish.” Well I was stuck (literally they were blocking the door) and I didn’t have any other options so I just took the fish hoping that would make them leave, but my taking the fish sort of had the opposite effect. Instead of leaving they told me I now had to give the fish back with a little extra ($$$). I realized then that these guys had totally bamboozled me. There was no way I was giving them money after tricking me so I decided to wait them out. Unfortunately for me they made a similar decision and plopped down in front of my gate and started singing again, but this time louder. In the mean time all my neighbors had come out and there was a crowd of onlookers forming. Rose (the Anglophone two doors down) came over and explain that a notable from the village had died and these men were collecting money to present to the chief in his honor, and also that they wouldn’t leave until I gave them something and that they would stay there all day if they had too. Finally about 15 mins after the whole thing started my level of embarrassment overcame my desire the win and I conceded defeat and gave them back their fish with 100 CFA. Lesson learned… never take the fish!

HAPPY NEW YEAR! I hope that everyone back at home had a great time welcoming in 2010. I spent the holiday visiting Aislynn in Mayo Darlé and I had a great time. It definitely wasn’t a conventional new years eve bash but it was fun. I mostly say that because there’s only power in The Darlé from 6 to 10pm each night and while we contemplated staying up till midnight to do a count down, ultimately we decided against sitting in the dark for two hours and went to bed. The next day was a lot like my Christmas experience; lots of eating and visiting with people. There was only one major exception to this and it was that there was no drinking. There’s apparently only 1 bar in Mayo Darlé and not a lot boozing, mostly because it’s a heavily Muslim community and none of them drink alcohol. Needless to say Bankim’s rowdiness factor is unmatched by Mayo Darlé (a thing good and bad thing I would say). As far as work goes, this week was pretty slow. I had one meeting and I also attempted my first very small intervention at the health center. Neither one went exactly as planned but both left me feeling like I did at least a little something. The mini project at the health center came about because I had been noticing that not a lot of the babies coming in are actually getting the Measles and yellow fever vaccinations because of a blip in the system. Here’s how it unfolds, kids come in at 9 months for the last two vaccines (measles and yellow fever) but in order to open the vials you’re required to have at least 10 of them there, so you don’t waste the vaccine. What normally ends of happening is that there are almost always less then 10 and no one tells the mothers that they’re not giving the vacs until the very end of the day. So then you have a handful of mothers that just wasted 4 hours of their day waiting for nothing, and now their being told to come back next week. You can see why mothers aren’t very likely to return the next week and risk the chance of a repeat. If they don’t come back then the problem just keeps repeating week after week and no one ever gets the shots. I had been talking about maybe consolidating all the 9 month olds by only giving those two specific vaccinations once a month, which would hopefully increase the likelihood that there would be enough babies to open the vials. The nurses I talked to seemed pretty receptive, so I set up a meeting with the chief nurse to see if we could implement it. We decided to consolidate the particular vacs to two Wednesdays a month, which wasn’t what I was hoping for but it was better then nothing. I’m hoping this will help at least a little bit. The other work related thing I had this week was a meeting with a women’s MBOSCUDA group that is the sister organization to the mens group I’ve been meeting with. When I got to the meeting place I met the president and said hello and she said hello back but that was about as far as the conversation went because she doesn’t speak French and I don’t speak Fulfulde; our encounter should have been a warning about what was to come. While I did have a translator I couldn’t get her to speak above a whisper and she had her hand in front of her mouth when she talked to me which is a sign of respect which I appreciated, but subsequently made it very difficult for me to understand her ( I couldn’t be mad because she is sweet girl who is doing me a huge favor by translating and I know it’s a part of her culture). On top of the language barrier I was trying to explain the Peace Corps approach to development, which is some pretty heavy development theory, but I feel really important to go over at the beginning. I had worked to simplify it a lot and it seemed to go over ok with the men, but the women were giving me blank stares. A very odd feeling came over me about an hour in to the meeting. I was frustrated but not mad, and I can’t say I’ve ever experienced one without the other before. The meeting was hard and I wouldn’t call it a success but I was happy and not too discouraged when I got the end. I think it was mostly because the women who came are so excited to be there and they seem like genuinely motivated people. Even though I don’t think they really got anything I was saying and even though I couldn’t answer most of their questions because I couldn’t hear/understand what my translator was saying I still felt pretty good when I left. I know that next week will be better (even if only a little) and I know that this group of women see their potential and are very determined to succeed, which gives me a lot of motivation. Someone said the following to me when I first got in country and it fits perfectly for how I’m feeling right now “They say in Cameroon nothing works right, but everything works out alright.” The rest of the week was pretty much just a bunch of down time and I spent most of it hanging out with the neighbors. I think I’ve finally got them all figured out: There are 4 families that are my immediate neighbors. Two are in my actual walled in compound; a husband and wife with a 1 year old and then a single mother with a little girl and boy who are both at the primary school. Then outside my wall there are two more families. One has a father (the school inspector), 2 wives, and 12 kids ranging in ages from high school to infant. The other family is a father with 3 wives and a total of 16 kids with the same range. The father of this family runs a training mosque where people send their boys to learn about the Koran and how to call prayer. Needless to say there are kids all over the place all the time. Surprisingly though they’re growing on me and I actually think I might like kids… I know it’s shocking. (Side note: the baby staring thing is kind of a moot point now, because being that I’m the only white person in the district it kind of means that everyone stares, so I’ve gotten over that one) I’ve taught the kids some games and they really seem to like “duck duck goose” (except that I changed it to “goat goat sheep” because it’s easier to say in French) and red light green light. Originally “duck duck goose” was a bit problematic because they kept picking me as the goose and I was getting tired of running around, but after a couple go arounds they got it and I got a break from being chased in a circle. So that’s about all that’s new with me here. Hope all is well in the states! Peace, Kate p.s. I think I’ve got a lead on a P.O. Box for letters and padded envelopes that’s closer to me but I’m still working out the kinks so keep your fingers crossed!

Hello Everyone! Season’s Greetings From Cameroon, or as they say here, joyeux noel, and happy ex-mas (yes we really do say x-mas here and we really do spell it with “ex”, I’m beginning to think that Cameroonian English spelling might actually be worst then mine. Those of you who know me well know that’s saying something!). I had a very busy week and I would love to tell you about all of it, but that would take forever so I’ve picked out three major highlights and were gonna go with that for this week. A CAMEROONIAN CHRISTMAS The first one is obvious, last week we celebrated Christmas. Aislynn, the closest volunteer to me (about 2 hours away) came to visit for a few days and we both had a great time. She got here on Christmas eve and we spent most of the day at the market visiting people and using the internet. When we got home we walked across the street to visit the nuns and find a Christmas tree at the catholic mission. The story of the Christmas tree is actually kind of a funny one. Last week I was over there and I commented on how nice looking the sisters’ tree was. It was a fake tree with lights, and tinsel, and ordainments. It was a little Griswold”esqu” but I know they worked hard on it and they were very proud of it because as a general rule of thumb Christmas trees are hard to come by in Cameroon. When they asked me what mine looked like I laughed and told them I didn’t have one, but I did tell them that I had a green wall I’m my house and that I had drawn a tree on it in chalk. They looked at me like that was the strangest thing they had ever heard and told me, “That was no good” and then asked if I wanted to go cut down a pine tree branch from the property back behind the mission. Of course I said yes, but asked if I could wait till my friend came to town, because I knew she would want to help. After dropping off the goodies we had bought in town we walked over there at about 5:00 pm to begin the search. The sister’s were excited to see us and quickly rounded up two little boys to help us out. So there we were, 2 Peace Corps volunteers, two Cameroonian kids (one of which was wearing a screen print t-shirt with Leonardo Decaprio’s face on it) armed with a butcher knife and my little Leatherman’s tool and we were off to find the prefect Christmas tree. We walked all over the grounds for about a half and hour till finally we found it, the prefect branch. One of the kids rigged up this forked stick to pull the branch down and then I hacked away at it with the butcher knife till it came free. It was a pretty funny scene to behold. The two kids were hanging on the branch to bend it down, I was chopping, and Aislynn had the camera to document the whole thing. All four of us were cracking up the entire time. With our prize held proudly in our hands we headed back to the house to put the tree in some water. We had to cut it back a little to fit it in the Tangui bottle we were using as a makeshift tree stand, so we used the extra to make a wreath. It was getting pretty late by this point and time was of the essence so we quickly changed into nice clothes and caught a moto out to the protestant church for their Christmas eve service. I had been invited to both services (24th and 25th) but made the executive decision to just pick one. The service turned out to be really long so we ended up skipping out after an interesting rendition of silent night. The next day for the first time in 22 years I woke up on Christmas morning without Andy and Sean jumping on me to get up. Without Christmas quiche, no stockings, no Christmas bow on the dog, no feeling jipped because I got the practical gift and not the trendy fun gift the Sean and Andy inevitably get each year. It was strange, but not in a bad way, just in a dang I’m a grown up now and I’m living on my own in Africa kind of way. In the spirit of giving I decided to give myself some extra sleep and didn’t get up till 8. Crazy I know! I tried to sneak out of the house to get Aislynn’s present from next door, but she woke up as I was walking back in with it. So much for the element of surprise. We had decided a couple of weeks ago to exchange small gifts so I gave her a bracelet I found in the market and a bouquet of wild flowers that were in a vase I decorated with fabric scraps. She made me a chocolate cake (AMAZING!!!) some apricot thumb cookies, and butterscotch brownies. It was amazing; best Peace Corps Christmas present ever! Her birthday is next month and now she’s set the present bar pretty high. I’ll have to think about what can beat a chocolate cake, no food though, my culinary skills are pitiful compared to hers (actually they’re pitiful compared to everyone’s). We ended up spending the morning decorating the tree and just relaxing (it’s the most Charlie Brown looking tree you’ve ever seen, but I love it), and then in the afternoon we headed out to visit with people and checkout the scene in town. The first stop was with one of my neighbors named Etienne. He had asked me a while back to stop by for a visit, but when we got there I quickly realized that come over for a visit actually meant come over for lunch, we’ll be waiting for you. I was already full from the late breakfast we just finished, but in Cameroon it’s considered very rude to refuse food. So I did my duty and ate something. I say something, because I’m actually not quite sure what it was, but it was definitely some kind of meat and meat’s expensive to I knew it was a big deal. After lunch we hung around for a little while, till it became clear the palm wine was working its magic and we decided to move on. Next stop was chez Teresa. She had invited us to stop by the day before, but in usual Cameroonian fashion she wasn’t there when we got there. We asked around as to her whereabouts and ended up running into one of her kids who walked us to their house. When we got there the party was in full swing. Teresa was so excited to see us that immediately she invited us in, gave drinks, and fed us yet again. After my third lunch I was pretty sure I was going to explode if made to eat anything else. The two of us hung out with Teresa for about and hour and then we all decided to head to the market together. Walking through the neighborhood was fun because all the children were running around in their new outfits and the parents were visiting neighbors, and enjoying the holiday. It kind of reminded me of a giant block party. When we finally got to town it was a mad house. People were in the streets everywhere laughing, drinking, and eating. It was like a giant street festival. While Aislynn and I were walking around taking it all in we ran into this guy who was taking peoples pictures in front of his Christmas tree. The tree was decorated in pink toilet paper and we both looked at each other and decided this was way too good to pass up so we stopped for the best Christmas card photo opt in the history of Christmas cards. We made one last visit with the nuns across the street and guess what, they insisted that I stay and eat something. Thankfully for my digestive tract it was only cookies and juice and not another full meal. I think I would have cried if I had to eat lunch for the 4th time in one day. After a little small talk we came home and retired for the day to watch Christmas movies and let the food coma set in. I have to say for my first Christmas away from home it was a pretty great one! A PEACE CORPS CONFIDENCE BOOST Sunday I had a meeting with a men’s community group that I’ve been visiting with since I got to town. This Sunday was a big deal because it was the first time I actually did any real work with them (I had been observing up to this point). I decided to do some basic background on myself and the Peace Corps approach to development and so on, but I was really nervous because it was the first time I ‘d run a part of the meeting, and I was attempting to do it in French. Long story short I didn’t finish with everything because they started to call prayer in the middle of my talk, but what I did get through went over really well and the men seemed to be fairly receptive. I knew it hadn’t been a total bust because at the end I asked for questions and instead of the usual blank stares I get at this point two people actually asked me questions, which I was actually able to answer! THE KATE SONG This is just a funny story that makes me feel like I’m doing a good job integrating into life in Bankim. So Monday afternoon I was in town and I walked by a small shop with two big speakers out in front of it. I wasn’t really paying much attention to it, I just figured the music that was playing was a CD or something. But then I heard my name in the song, and then I heard them say the local word for white man (Nassara). This is pretty much how the song went… “Kate, Kate, Kate, Nassara, Nassara, Nassara, Bevenieu du Bankim. (repeat. for the whole song)” I quickly realized that in the shop there were two guys with microphones doing a karaoke type activity, so I popped my head in, told them I was a huge fan of the song and then went on my way. The next day I was eating lunch in town when I hear the song playing again at about 100 decibels in the bar next door. Turns out they were recording it the day before in the little shop and now there’s a tape being circulated around Bankim with the Kate song on it. Never have I laughed so hard in my life!

Merry Christmas Eve’s Eve, So I didn’t really do a whole lot of Peace Corps work this week, but I definitely did stay busy running errands and visiting with people. I did start off the week with a visit to Banyo (bigger town about 4 hours up the road) to finish up all my protocol with the head government and military officials and now that’s finally done J The trip was pretty uneventful but the rides there and back were very entertaining. For those of you who know me well, you know that I used to suffer from a fairly severe case of nervous passenger syndrome (I blame all those years of driving with my father… love ya dad), but no longer! Public transportation in Cameroon has completely cured me of that, and I am convinced that there is not a driver or car left back in the states that I couldn’t handle now. So here’s an example to illustrate my point: the morning I left for Banyo we started off with 8 adults in a small 2-door Toyota hatchback of some sort and it was a tight squeeze. We had only been on the road for about 20 min when we stopped to pick up a family of 5. I kept thinking you’ve got to be kidding me, but no, no they were not kidding and 10 mins later I had reached a new personal best for public transport in Cameroon; 10 adults, 2 children, 3 chickens and all our luggage, all in the same 5 passenger 2 door compact car (but to be fair one of the guys was sitting on the hood of the car, so he wasn’t technically in the car as much as he was on the car). So there I was with 11 other people, and livestock, and a baby with mashed bananas all over it’s hands and face sitting on my lap, and I started to laugh. The guy next to me asked me why I was laughing so I looked at him and said, “What else can I really do in this situation?” We rode like this for about an hour on dirt roads. On a different note we’ve had some changes to the compounds population. First the devil roster is gone. I can’t remember if I’ve written about him yet, but the short and long of it is there was a roster in the compound that I’m pretty sure was the spawn of Satan himself. He had it out for me. Every morning since I’ve been here he would stand right under my window and start crowing at 4:30. I’m a firm beliver that 4:30 is an ungodly hour no matter what species you are. That bird is the sole reason I had to resort to sleeping with earplugs and now I can’t sleep without them. Anyways I got the last laugh because we ate him last week, and let me tell you revenge never tasted so sweet (pun intended). With the roster gone I guess word got out that there was a livestock vacancy at my place and we quickly inherited a new four-legged friend, a baby sheep named Stacy (after the volunteer before Ralph). I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this yet, but my neighbor is a vet and apparently when I was gone at work a big heard of cattle and sheep came through and there was a newly born sheep that couldn’t keep up with the rest of them so he was given as a gift to Abdulihi. It is so so so cute, if it wasn’t so dirty and buggy I could totally get behind sheep becoming the new dogs, but alas it is dirty and buggy so I enjoy watching it form the porch. When Stacy the sheep got here it wouldn’t eat anything so Hahu and I cornered it, grabbed a hold and bottle feed it some Bouie (hot corn milk stuff) I don’t care for it much, but it did the trick and now it’s eating on it’s own. Let’s see what other things did I do this week? Oh ya I decided to put in a little manual labor of my own, so I put on my boots, barrowed a shovel and started to dig a hole for compost. The ground was really hard because it’s the dry season and when my neighbor came over to see what the crazy white girl was doing she tried to convince me to wait and try again when the rains come. I really didn’t want to wait 4 months so pushed on and it paid off. After about an hour I had a textbook looking compost pile I even went and cut down some palm fronds to cover the hole with and keep the animals out. All my agro buddies would have been proud ;) About 5 hours after that, (I was still feeling pretty good about my little compost project) I went out back and caught Stacy the sheep eating the palm leaves. Oh well it was a valiant effort. Anybody got any ideas on how to keep my four-legged friend out of my compost? Nothing else terribly important or funny happened for the rest of the week except that I did finally get to do a computer skype chat with my mom and dad. We got the video streaming up and running so that was pretty cool. Though I did have to explain to the other Cameroonians in the room why I was talking to my computer and how it was talking back to me, but once they understood they thought it was pretty cool too. One of my co-workers even got a chance to say hello to my mom and dad, and he’s been talking about it to anyone who will listen all week. At the moment I have forgotten my skype name, all it says is Kate Millman, but once I figure out what it is I’ll let you know. I think that’s all for this week. I hope that everyone has a wonderful Christmas. See you next week, same time, same placeJ Peace, Kate

*** Devil Chicken and Stacy the Goat... I feel like i live on a farm :)

Greetings All! So first things first, welcome to my mother’s faithful email army, and to everyone else (if there is anyone else… I’m starting to think mom and dad are the only one’s who read this thing) thanks for the interest. I’m sorry to say but I had to cut her off, I know some of you might be sad that the weekly emails have seen their final days, but I realized last week that if she dictates our weekly phone calls into emails, I’ll be left with nothing of interest to share. So, thank you mom for keeping everyone updated of my Cameroonian happenings but as promised I’m going to start updating this thing regularly. One story that I forgot to write about last week, but that is definitely note worthy was my official presentation at the Lutheran church last Sunday. Upon my arrival to Bankim, I quickly realized for all its diversity, religion runs this town. To speak on diversity, in my neighborhood alone, to the right of my house is a Baptist church, to the left a mosque, directly across the street is the catholic mission, and I work for a Protestant health center. Needless to say balancing the Peace Corps’ a-religious stance, the religious spectrum in Bankim itself, and my own personal beliefs is proving to be no easy task. On a lighter note when I showed my counterpart, Bernadette, a picture of all my VBUMC friends she decided that it was of the upmost importance that she officially present me in church the following Sunday. I asked what exactly that entailed and she said all it was a quick introduction so that people in the community would know who I was. Pretty straightforward, pretty painless, so I thought… Turns out Bernadette is a church elder which means that she sits at the front facing the congregation, and you guessed it, I got to sit right next to her which meant for the next 4 hours (and no that’s not a type-o it really lasted 4 hours) 500 pairs of eyes were on me like white on rice. Besides the fact that it was in French I couldn’t tell you a lick of what was said during the service because I was afraid to move. I also don’t think anyone in the congregation could tell you what went down because they were pretty intent on watching the strange new white girl the entire time. I totally get the fishbowl analogy now. When it came time for introductions, Bernadette gave me a lovely intro and then unexpectedly through the floor to me… YIKES! No one told me I had to say anything! and I didn’t have anything ready! (side note; it’s super hard to bullshit you’re way through things in another language) So I mumbled out a quick couple words and then sat down sure that everyone was going to think I was a bumbling American idiot. I couldn’t have been more wrong! All this week people have been coming up to me in town telling me they saw me in church and welcoming me to Bankim. I couldn’t have asked for a better outcome, and thanks to my 4 hours of fame at church I feel like the integration process has gotten off to a great start. As far the rest of the week, Wednesday I went to the clinic to help with the baby vaccination day and got peed on by an squirmy 6 month old baby boy, Thursday putzed around and hung out with the nuns at the catholic mission, and then Friday went back to the clinic to help out with prenatal visits. That was pretty cool, because I got to sit in on all the ultrasounds. One woman came in from a village way out “en brusses” because her midwife told her that she felt the baby’s head in two places and was worried. Turns out after the ultrasound they realized the women was pregnant with twins. I immediately wanted to go over and tell the mom-to-be congratulations but decided to wait on her reaction first… still waiting… by that I mean there was no reaction at all. It was strange to me, I thought either she would be really happy to have two healthy children, or she might be really worried about the extra mouth to feed, at the very least some sort of emotion, but alas, nothing. Saturday I got a nice surprise when another volunteer on her way to Yaoundé for her close of service called me. She said that her bush taxi had broke down about 10 k outside of Bankim and so she was getting in a small car headed to town where she was going to wait for it to get fixed, and did I want to get lunch with her. Of course I said yes and so I spent a couple of hours with her chatting about this and that and picking her brain about things she had done during service. When I got home I decided to take a bucket bath because I was going over to eat dinner with my neighbors that night and I knew they probably wouldn’t approve of the dirt tan (seeing as how they bath three times a day). So I got the water ready, striped down, reached for my towel, and had it half way around me when I saw something move on it. At first I thought it was some sort of mutant mouse-like- tree-frog, but then quickly realized it was actually a bat. I threw down the towel, grabbed some clothes, and ran to my neighbor’s house. No one was home, so I went to the next, again no one home, so finally I left my compound looking like a hot mess and went to the one next door (where I hadn’t officially introduced myself yet, I only knew a couple of the kids). I found one of the wives and was like, “hi I live next-door and I need one of the little boys who live here, I know there’s a bunch of them.” In hindsight it probably wasn’t the best idea to go up to a complete stranger and ask for their little boy… oh well live and learn. The wife asked me if I was ok and I sad yes, but that there was an animal (whose name I didn’t know in French, so which in my Franglish came out as, and I quote, “the thing that’s like a bird, but not a bird because it has hair, and flies at night”) in my house and I needed help getting it out. After about 2 minuets of contemplation I guess she decided I wasn’t deranged and so she called for one of her sons to help me out. Thirty min. after that, with the help of a 12 year old Cameroonian boy and my baseball cap we corralled the bat out of my room, out of my house and back into the wild. You know how people sometimes say, “this isn’t funny now, but it will be someday” not true in this case, here it was funny pretty much the entire time. I guess it’s a good thing I finished up with that series of rabies shots last month ;)