sorry that i made ya'll so nervous. it really wasn't that bad. the pills start working within an hour and you are back to walking around the next day. malaria only kills when you do nothing about it, also the pills that i am forced to take once a week (well not forced but required) keeps it down to a managable level. plus i know what to look for and to get help fast. that was just my last little gift from cameroon. an illness. but having had it before and having access to immediate help is the only way to live here. i really was not too concerned about it because i have been good about taking my prophalaxis and avoiding too many mosquitos. but you can't really avoid them.

here is a little more info on it:

There are four types of human malaria Plasmodium vivax,

P. malariae, P. ovale and P. falciparum. P. vivax and P. falciparum are the most common and falciparum the most deadly type of malaria infection. Plasmodium falciparum malaria is most common in Africa, south of the Sahara, accounting in large part for the extremely high mortality in this region. There are also worrying indications of the spread of P. falciparum malaria into new regions of the world and its reappearance in areas where it had been eliminated.

The malaria parasite enters the human host when an infected Anopheles mosquito takes a blood meal. Inside the human host, the parasite undergoes a series of changes as part of its complex life-cycle. Its various stages allow plasmodia to evade the immune system, infect the liver and red blood cells, and finally develop into a form that is able to infect a mosquito again when it bites an infected person. Inside the mosquito, the parasite matures until it reaches the sexual stage where it can again infect a human host when the mosquito takes her next blood meal, 10 to 14 or more days later.

Malaria symptoms appear about 9 to 14 days after the infectious mosquito bite, although this varies with different plasmodium species. Typically, malaria produces fever, headache, vomiting and other flu-like symptoms. If drugs are not available for treatment or the parasites are resistant to them, the infection can progress rapidly to become life-threatening. Malaria can kill by infecting and destroying red blood cells (anaemia) and by clogging the capillaries that carry blood to the brain (cerebral malaria) or other vital organs

the most common type in cameroon is cerebral malaria, i do not know what type i had because they do not tell you. but due to the headaches that i was having... assumptions can be made.

not to worry though i have doctors here ready to do whatever to help me get better. i do my part they do theirs. not to mention that it is already gone. it only takes 3 days.

peacebwahhh

i woke up at about 7:30 feeling cold. i thought nothing of it, i had written it off as nervous. my last doctors appointment was to be at 8:00 so i was a bit rushed still feeling groggy and cold. they reviewed all of my health issues and also told me that they can not give me a certain type of medicine for malaria that is supposed to be taken in the last two weeks of the month after i get back to the states (does that make any sense?) i thought cool more shit for me to worry about later. i went to get a hair cut and take a nap before my last interview. i must of slept about 3 hours and woke up again at 13:00 (1 pm) i got up and puton my suit to go to my last interview. if any of you all get the chance to have a tailor made suit do it they can be soo comfortable. when i walked into the office you would have thought that i was a diplomat everyone was suprised to see me dressed up. but i figured, hey i went throught a lot to have you all put my pin on some ratty ass t-shirt. i guess i should explain the pin, the pin has the flags of both america and cameroon over the peace corps symbol. actually a nice pin. so i go in for my last interview asking me about my service. ups downs what would you do different? i hate those types of questions. the brother pined me and i thought i would cry, two years three months done already. i have really grown here and i will not really see all of how untill i get back to the states. i left the interview feeling cold again. it was still a few hours until i was scheduled to go out to dinner so i thouhgt that i would take another nap. here is where i start to worry. i am wrapped up in a blanket and shivering, i start to sweat and i have goose bumps. my temples feel like there is a vice closing in on my head which is not at all helped by the cough that i have developed. i ask one of the other volunteer if it is cold in the room or if it is just me. "nah man i think that is just you" finally i get someone to feel my forehead and see if i have a fever. she looks at me and says go see the doctor (since i am in the peace corps office there are doctors). i walk up to the doctor and say you need to take my temperature. 102.6 i am burning up. as soon as she said that i have a temp of 102 i knew that i had malaria for the second time. this time is worse. last time i just had really bad diarhea. i was one unhappy camper (jessica says hi). luckily the drugs that they give you for it start working fast.bwahhh

Young man: have you ever shot a gun?

Me: yeah

Young man: did you kill him?

Me: uh, let me clarify, i did not shoot at anyone it was in a room designed for shooting.

Young man: but you have sold drugs before, right?

Me: no

Young man: you’ve done durgs before, like crack?

Me: nah man nothing more than marijuana and i dont do that anymore!

Young man: are you a crypt or a blood?

Me: neither

Young man: but you were in a gang n’est pas?

Me: no, never, not my style

Young man: i read this book that talked about the young black man in american and it said that all young black men did these things and now your telling me that you never did this stuff!

Me: yeah look cousin, because you see it on TV and in these made up destructive videos that they show on trace TV does not mean that all the black men that you will meet in your life are into those things. We are really a diverse people and it is only a small minority that gets into those things.

Young man: then you really are white! Cause the real black people in america have guns and sell drugs!

I could not believe that this kid who is in college (university) and had all these myths sloating around in his head. I mean i knew that these types of myths exist but i never thought that it would get to the level that they would write a book about it and publish it as the truth. I could not get angry at him because he has never been to the states and never really had the chance to talk to a black american. The videos and the movies and the music have really shown the worst image of us to the rest of the world. Now they do get some positive images of us from shows like The Cosby Show and Fresh Prince. But they are still bombarded by fifty cent and jah fool (rule).

Other than being asked if i am a common thug things here are going well. I have been keeping it hidden that i am about to leave mostly cause i dont want people to start coming to my door asking me what i have to give them. Here it is all about what type of gift you have to give. My landlord has been harrasing me for my TV(and i dont even have a TV). He stops me once a week and asks for the appliances that are in the house and i have to repeatedly tell him that i am not sure who they will go to yet. He wants something to say that he was a good landlord. DUDE YOU DIDN’T DO ANYTHING!!!!! But he is not the only one. My counter part is looking to have me hook him up with a woman before i leave. He wants a white one but a black will do if i have one to give him. This dude is so slimmy!

I found out that the girl that i taught to bead has taught her family and now all of them are making small items to sell in the markets. Ya’ll have no idea how good a feeling that is. As for her herslf she is getting better by leaps and bounds. She has even gotten herself a few markets of her own. Last weekend she made 7000 francs (about 15 bucks). Dosent soune like much but when you have a salary of 20.000francs (about 40 bucks) a month then every little counts

Leaving this place is going to be hard. I have less than two weeks and i have not even begun to strart packing. My house is a wreck. I have not cooked in over 3 weeks and i have not beaded in about the same amount of time. This sucks. I hate packing, love traveling but hate packing. And it is not until you have to move that you realize how much junk you have aquired over a small period of time.bwahhh

well we cant say i have not tried. this is the third time i have tried to send my blog and since this is the new internet cafe in Loum (opened the day before i leave) they are afraid of my flash drive. not sure why but it is kind of a pain in the behind cause the entry that i would like to make is a lot longer than this one and a lot more interesting. oh well i am leaving here tomorrow (i hope).

there was a problem with the electric company wanting to pay me back... like ta hear it? well here it go.... i went to have my lights cut off with all the proper papers. the man that worked there told me that i should give him the papers and that they will come to take my meter and pay me back the money that it took to install the counter. it cost me 30.000 francs. i was cool with this just so long as i got all the papers and i got my money. he put the papers in a folder and the folder in a desk. then went to "lunch". i was a bit nervous but i was not going to worry myself about this. i came back later to find out that "lunch" was in Douala (qn hour and a half away) as is his house and the majority of his work. i called him to ask what the deal was, "you know that my work was much here in Douala and i could not leave, i will be in Monday to arrange that problem". the weekend goes by and now i only have a week to get all the papers together and get out of town.

when i get in that monday morning he is "sick" and can't come to the office. i am starting to get the idea that this dude wants to take my 30.000 a lot of money to lose to one person who is "sick" (i still think that he was full of shit.) finally i get them to trun off the lights but they tell me that i can not be reimbursed. two days go by of me going to the office and all they have to say to me is that he is not in. finally i go to the head of the office and explain my story. he tries calling the man but he has turned off his phone. he tells me that he will fix the problem by thursday (yesterday)but that i need to come back at 2pm. i come at 2 and the office is closed and he too is in douala. now i am getting angry. the problem could be easily solved, it was nothing more than the fact that the papers need to give me back my money were locked in his desk and someone else could have signed the papers and paid me back. so last night i asked my friend if i could borrow his crowbar to "fix" something. he said yeah and gave it to me. i went ot the office with the expectation of getting 'postal'and opening that desk. the head guy showed up and the first thing out of his mouth to me was. we are going to pay you back without the papers just give me your last reciept and your identity card! so i got paid back without the use of the crowbar. cameroon i hate it and i love it!bwahhh

yeah yeah yeah, i know that it has been a really long time since i have written. i have no excuses(we'll just call it blog-blocked). i have really been in a world of my own. you all have no idea what it is like to sit in a room by yourself and think about moving back to america with no money no job set up and so many people looking at you saying "what is peace corps and why the hell would you join" then again maybe some of you do... still not 100% sure as to what i want to do but it will involve the thing that i should have done a long time ago... jewelry.(did i spell that right shame i want to practice the profession and cant even spell it.) things will be tight for a while but i guess that i will figure out how to sort all of that out. but since i have been here there are a few people that i need to thank...

first up my mother- yeah i know it is cliche but she has really been great to talk to mostly cause of her interest in africa and the fact that she really enjoys seeing and hearing about the things that i am doing here.

second- i self ra- even though he got mad junk to talk, this is really the only consistant letter sender. i have to admit when i am feeling all alone and depressed the novels that he sends as "letters" really help. also he sends some of the best CDs. and i have to admit that he made me feel bad about forgetting mothers day and fathers day.(my father read your blog and he REALLY felt proud to see that you wrote about him!) big-up!!!

third- this woman i have not spoken with since the day that i had my going away party but it is my 8th grade LD teacher (hmmm i didn't know that he was learning disabled) we'll call her miss kay. but i read the letter that she put in my book before i came over the other day and i saw how supportive of me she has been over the years. suprised that i was able to stay in touch with her. i have to send her a e mail.

fourth- afrodorky- (aka ebonyqueen) someone that has appreciated me and watched every move i make (ok not every) but she is the reason that i behave at times. love ya.

ok that is enough ass kissing...

i still have not gotten the package my mother sent me in march which means that it is probably stolen. if it is i wish death upon the goat of the man that took it. i will see you and your goat in HELL!!!! mail here really is not as bad as in some other countries. but since the govmnt dosent really pay employees here for months on end they start to pick through the mail that is coming in. i am suprised all the time that things actually make it to me here. i will ask again tomorrow but i am not too sure that it has arrived.

i have my last french test tomorrow here in yaounde. it will be interesting to see where i come out as. a lot of people have told me that i have gotten better but i dont see me making it that high. maybe i am looking at the glass half empty. on va voir!!! it is hard to believe that i am now tri lingual (pijin english is a language of it's own) i switch from language to language easily sometimes i dont even notice which language i start and finish in. but my english is terrible now. who ever said that a second language will make your first better is a goddamn lie!!! even typing this blog i have had to ask 12 or 20 tiems hau to sepll smilpe wdors. i maen it rlaely iz jsut p sahme!!

the beading project is doing pretty good the girl is not where i want her to be but she is making money and learning something new everyweek. i want to get her designs better before i go and she has been slow to pick up. maybe she is showing her dependicy on me to figure out the tough stuff but she needs how to make those brain cells work. hell i'm leaving soon.

the bank... well i stop by for an hour or two every now and then. i can waste my own time very well and do not need to leave the house. no one really says anything. they dont know that i am leaving next month cause i have not told them. it is an effort to avoid the constant request for gifts and to keep hood niggas out of my house when i am not there. they are looking to have my non existant TV but i have told them over and over that i do not have a TV and do not want one!!! i would like to keep that up when i get back to the states but i know that that will be very difficult to do since so much happens on TV. we will see how much discipline i can muster up to stay on that path. i read more book cause of it, but i digress.... my counter part is leading the charge on my house feeling that he is the most influential person in my life since coming to cameroon but has only seen my house once and that was the old house. i am interested to see what he will try to take. i want to leave in the middle of the night so that no one knows that i am gone till it is too late. aint nothin worse than some beggin folks!!!

bye for now i will write more later...

oh yeah ole shorty from my cool date has not spoken to me since. win some lose some!peacebwahhh

due to the piss poor management of this blog new management will be taking over soon. thank you for keeping in touch and stay tuned for the new tropnoir!!!bwahhh

I was finishing up teaching English here in douala and had a few errands to run before getting back to Loum. I ran quickly to the market to buy ripe plantains to eat for about the next week to week and a half. I took my time getting to the car park because I just knew that I would not find a car that was near full and would have time to drink a beer and eat a bit or two before I got back into the car and waited some more. To my surprise when I got to the car park there was a car that had just filled up and was getting ready to go. It was a 70 seater bus with 70 people in it and ready to get on the road. I ran to one of the workers that I have gotten to know and explained that I was in a rush that one of my children was sick (they don’t seem to understand time unless there is illness or blood involved) he smiled and said “ donne moi ton argent,” I handed him the money and he ordered me on to the bus. I entered and with the dumbest look on my face that I could said “ there are no more seats” he smiled again and told me to hold tight. He ran off and came back with a small wooden chair to put in between the aisles. I took the small chair and began looking for where I would sit. The first place that I went to sit down this girl says ever so politely. “ Don’t sit there it is too hot back here go sit somewhere else” I got ready to give her my usual ‘fuck off’ but I looked up and she smiled from ear to ear with the biggest whitest teeth that I have ever seen. Yeah I was mesmerized. So what did I do… picked up my chair and carried my ass to the front. Hell I got no game!!

So we finally get on the road and the driver is obviously looking for some money. He starts loading on more people as we get on to the road. He got about 15 more people on to the bus, which of course made the bus hot. And the windows were helpless. So he opened the double doors to get a good breeze flowing. Then he started back into the same foolishness that all Cameroonian drivers seem to do (I swear that they are taught to act like fools on the road at driving school… I mean they ALL do the same dumb shit… but I digress) he drove too close to a parked Mack truck and clipped the door and the woman on the road next to the truck. The glass on the door shattered and made a big enough noise that he had to stop. When he did all the passengers got out of the bus and sent to survey the damage (as if they can do anything) that is when we told the driver that he’d hit someone. “ I’ve hit someone” he said with false concern only hoping that it was not serious enough that he could be asked for money. But wrong it was bad enough that he had to go and take the woman to the hospital. I, the moral American, started complaining about the way that people drive in Cameroon and a few other people chimed in. I turned to see the same girl with that beautiful smile. The conversation degraded into the same bullshit complaints about Cameroon and I was out. This chick I guess was on the same level with me and we started talking about it. Like half way through the conversation she asked “ tu est. ne dans un pays Anglophone” I just smiled and said yes my country is English speaking but I am African (my usual lie that most Cameroonians can see through) she gave me that smile again and said “ what part of America are you from” (she saw through that one faster that I thought she would) so I was back to square one. Just trying to continue our conversation while we were waiting for the police to come and get the buss drivers information (this took over two hours to just make a photocopy). It was hot and I offered her a drink. I thought that I wouls be in for it there cause she could have asked for the most expensive beer they had and drank the joint knowing that she would never have to deal with me again or if she did deal with me again that I would be rolling in money and take care of whatever she wanted. (sugar daddy I am not!!) but she didn’t she got a small soda and drank it real slow. (I got the most expensive beer that I could on the other hand but that is neither here nor there.) we talked about a lot of things the only thing that really stuck out was when we started talking about Cheik Anta Diop. I was amazed to find that she not only knew the name but knew a little bit about what he wrote about. (since I myself don’t know that much about him the conversation did not go all but so far). I got the digits and said that next time I was in Douala that I would come and see her. But I have to say that she has not asked me a lot about America (a country that I am tired of talking about) out side of the normal small questions that we all have about other countries.

fast forward

I finally got home and I called her about a 3 or 4 days later to tell her that I would be in Douala this Saturday and that I would see her when I came. She said cool and that she would call me. I was expecting her to beep me and I would have to cuss her out for that shit cause that really is becoming more and more of a pet peeve. But she called me and asked what time I would get here and if I was in a rush to get back to loum. Of course she got all the time I had to give since she called me and I was not busy.

So this morning I got to douala a bit early and did my English lessons and was determined to finish at about noon. I got done at 2. I called her and she told me to wait where I was and that she would come and get me in about 20 minutes. I got ready for the long wait cause 20 minutes in Cameroon is really one hour. But sure enough 24 minutes later she pulled up in a taxi and was like “sorry I took so long.” I wanted to kiss her right then and there. She was running a bit behind and knew that I was waiting on her and she even apologized for the 4 minutes that she took extra because of traffic. (this is VERY rare in Cameroon).

She asked me where I want to go and I was like this is your town you tell me where we are going. she offered to go to her house first and then to go to a baptism at a friends house. I was like “ just take me where there is food!” (What?! I was hungry). She gave me that smile again and laughed a little and said lets go to my friends first cause she will have food. She asked if I knew what a baptism was and of course I was like “ hell yeah” but then she threw the twist on me. It was a muslim baptism ( I didn’t know they baptized) this was bound to be good. We caught a cab and I got my money ready to pay the cab, expecting at any moment that she would be like, “pay the man” but she paid. I swear jesus must of opened the door for me cause normally in Cameroon if I want hang out with a sister they are expecting me to pay all. ( and I even brought enough money this time to cover all costs). This girl was mad cool. At the baptism she kept feeding me until I had to give her an angry look to get her to stop. Her response “ I want to see you gain two kilos in front of me” (don’t ask how much that is I just don’t know). After all that food I got put to work with a video camera and a new mother pushing for me to film everything. I got a bit fed up with her (the mother) towards the end but it was still cool hanging out listening to the wide array of languages.

After that we went to her house. She lives with her cousin who works some where and all this girl has to do is go to school and stay out of trouble. They had more TV stations than I have ever seen in Cameroon. I watched a little CNN and then got tired of seeing white people. So we cut out. We must of walked about two hours in Douala which is not exactly the safest city in the country. And we talked about nothing at all. Which was the best part we just talked about whatever came to mind. I got a phone call from my friend here who was driving around and just happened to be near by he told me to wait and that he would come pick me up. While waiting I kissed her on the lips and said the dumbest shit I have ever said “that what I have been waiting to do” but she got me again “ was that even a kiss” and she kissed me a bit more intimately. My friend passed and picked us up. He thinking she was a hooker offered of she wanted to come back to the house. When she said no he was like “ is she sure?” I looked at her with those eyes that say “are you sure?” she smiled again and said she was sure that she did not want to come back to the house with me. I gave her that same look again (what I had to try?!) we droped her off where she could get a taxi home and she kissed me on the cheek and told me to come to her house before I left Douala. I hoped in the car and we took off. I called about 15 minutes later to make sure that she got home ok.bwahhh

“Magic cream!”

“Magic cream!”

“Magic cream!”

MAGIC CREAM! I had to keep myself from messing with him about the fact that he was selling magic cream. But this man was pushing hard to make a few sales claiming that it could cure most of the minor STD’s. I pushed past him and bought my 100 franc ticket to catch the bus to cross the bridge. The line was longer than usual and it was begining to rain and there was a lot of traffic. I really did not want to get caught in the rain in Douala. But i had no real choice in the matter so i waited as it started to rain with the rest of the commuters. Once i finally got on the bus it was still only drizzling. The buses all have lights in them so i broke out my book and started to read. (motorcycle diaries by che guevara... yeah i know the movie just came out...). we arrived at the bus station on the otherside of the bridge and it started to rain a bit harder. In a rush i ran to the first full taxi i saw cause i did not want to wait for a long time for the taxi to leave. In my rush i just opened the door and the guy in the front seat where i was trying to get in looked at me like i was crazy and got out. ‘nah brah you aint got to get out for me, i was just trying to take the place next to you’ he noded his head and motioned for me to get in. Now all this time i have not see the driver. As soon as i get in this old man got in the drivers seat. This dude had to be pushin 165 years old. He pulls out these glasses that have got to be as old as he is and looks at the dash board to see the dials and almost as slow as he could he put them away and adjusts his eyes to the road. By now i am thinking to myself “you’ve got to be kidding.” This old man takes off at warp II as all the people dash off the the side of the road (matrix style), i am thinking to myself that i am going to have another car accident bring it up to 3 in cameroon. This dude decided to go some route unknown to me to get to the car park. The road was not paved and there was nothing but motorcycles on the road. He kept looking in the back seat at the girls in the back i guess trying to get a phone number (old men here never admit to the fact that they cant handle a 20 something year old girls in bed). He turned the car with no smoothness, jerking the wheel from side to side hitting me from time to time. Just then my phone rang it was someone that i did not want to hear from so i hit the end button so that i did not have to respond to their call. He looked at me “ arent you the one that gave them that number?” he was right but i could not let him know that. The girl called back but i still did not feel like hearing her shit, i hung up again “ you should really just support and talk to her” “ but papa i am supporting, everytime she calls i have to reach into my pocket and see a phone number that i dont want to see then i have to go to all the pain of hanging up on her” he laughed as we arrived at my destination. She called again. I hung up again and put the phone on silent.

My man king came through my crib with a stack of about 10 books. I dont kow what to do with myself i have been chain reading and he just brought me more to feed my addiction. I finished the da vinci code a few days ago. I read it in one day. I woke up at 6 am and did not eat, leave the house, or bead until about 6 pm. Good book. They are going to make a movie of it. I hope they do it some justice.

text message: are you around

in loum why?

because your supposed to be in yaounde(a five hour trip atleast)we are all on our way to the directors house to have dinner with the ambassador!!

not too sure how i got the dates mixed up but i did and it was VERY embaressing. this is our last conference. i will finish up with peace corps on august 20th and then do some travelling and come home. not real sure yet what i think of leaving here but it is coming anyway and i cant stop that. i feel joy and sheer terror at the thought of going back to the united snakes. i dont hate america, and being american is not a bad thing it is just that i really dont like the place. i mean here i can get tired of work and leave, go to a bar have a drink (at any time of the day) and sleep it off for the rest of the day. *sigh*bwahhh

well not for about an hour. but i am in the capital getting some dental work done. if you have not heard anything from me it is because i have tried typing things up numerous times and in the instance that i attempted to publish it notoriously something would happen. loss of power, satelite giving out, or just the server itself not responding. i really hate computers some times. the last thing that i typed up just never went through.

i have been relitively busy. my projects seem to be taking up some form of speed and order. i have been chain reading books like there is no tomorrow. and i have been traveling, all of course against peace corps rules mostly because i have no more vacation days left. we have our close of service meeting next month and it is time to get ready to go home. funny for the first time in my life i have no idea what i want to do and how i want to do it. i have been researching jewelry schools and figuring out which one i want to go to. (yeah business school is basically out, it will be there when i am ready). working with the bead group has given me the will and want to go to jewelry school and do what i have wanted to do since i was about 12. i have also gotten more of a chance to work on my skill as a beader and i really think that that will have to be more of a hussle when i get back to the states.

i was supposed to coming back to the states to have surgery on my arm done but they kept reinforcing that if i was to go back that they would automatically put me out of peace corps. so when i get back to the states i will have to have surgery on both my teeth and my arm. that will suck but since i have no idea what i want to do then i have more than enough time to figure it out and get going. i will more than likely go to jewelers school for about 4 or 5 months and then start making my own jewelry to sell and buy my equipment.

well i am at a loss for words right now i will have to write more next time i am infront of a computer. peace love ya'll.

ebonyqueen89 glad to see that your spanish is so good.bwahhh

yeah it had been a long time since i have posted anything on this site. i have been sort of busy but not that busy. just trying not to go too stir crazy here. i have a bad tooth that i think that they will have to remove. i woke up this morning and the whole side of my mouth was swollen. but since i have free medical i can call a doctor for any thing.

me: ahhh doctor there is blood on my knee

doctor: mr. wooling that's just a scratch

me: are you sure doctor?!

doctor: yes mr. wooling

me: well ok doctor thank you doctor!!

i was trying to get them to fix my collar bone. i had it x-rayed the second week that i got back and the bone is healing funny. it is over lapped. but they kept saying that if they send me now that i can't come back to cameroon. so i decided to just stay here and do it when i get back.

i got stuck next to a jehovah's witness today on the trip here. he thought that he was slick in trying to get the conversation started. see. i was reading my book and i saw him whip out the watch tower in french, but the whole time he was eyeing my book trying to read the english in it (this is a bilingual country so he had some level of english). now he did not talk to me directly and i thought that maybe just maybe i would not have to deal with this dude and that shit but he tried to be slick. there was another jehovah's witness sitting in front of him with one of their many publications written in all the languages of the world (well not all but most) he asked her to see it and started flipping through it. then he said in english. "do you read english" (as if he did not see the toni morrison book that i was reading). then asked me to read the page written in english. i took one look at the book and said "no way man un un you aint gonna get me to talk about that shit" this of course through him for a loop because he didn't really speak any english just a choice few phrases. we wound up talking anyway but not about jehovah. hard to believe that they follow that shit even here. oh well.

there was a man selling vampire stakes on the road side today. he wanted 300 francs for some bits of wood that looked like the scrapes from the fire wood that he was cutting that morning and arley even sharpened. " they say on france international that vampires dont exist but i saw one last dry season at the hospital in njombe" was his main selling point. honestly i wanted to buy from him just because he had the balls to go out with some sticks and sell them for 300 francs. i mean he didn't even sharppen them and he still sold about 3 of them. all he had to do was dip the unsharppened sticks into a pile of dung and then he would have beeen selling shit on a stick and selling them as incense.

well it is late and i need to be up in the morning for my dentist appointment so i will write more tomorrow.

peacebwahhh

Four things that i do in Cameroon that would get me shot in the USA!

1. telling someone to fuck off: i do th is quite regularly and they all seem to think that it is funny. Maybe i have a bad accent or they just enjoy being told to fuck off. The other one they like is the expresion “your mothers p-----“ i have not as of yet used this one but i am anxious to find out the result.

2. telling a girlfriend that she has to clean my house and cook for me: i get told at least once a week that if i have any girlfriends that they must clean my house and cook for me. I still have no girlfriend but this is definitly a good reason to have one. Ok so I may only get slapped for this one.

3. sitting on someones car: wether it is a toyota corolla or a BMW you can press your butt cheeks on any parked car, and infact when the driver shows up all you have to do is ask if he is leaving. If he is then he will apologize for taking your seat and then leave.

4. showing up at someones house and asking the man of the house “ what has your wife cooked for me today”: not always worded as such but all you have to do is show up and ask what time is dinner and what is for dinner.

This past week was interesting. After i finally got out of yaounde i got back home and all of a sudden i found a number of people looking to get me to do some work with them. It really makes you wonder “what took you all so long to figure out that you had some need for me to come and help you” i mean after i have been twiddling my thumbs for the past 19 months everybody wants me top work with them on one project or another. I really dont mind helping out (seeing as how it is my job) but they really waited until the last minute to even ask. Oh well i have no plans on losing any sleep over it. As a matter of fact i have been getting up at 10 o’clock every morning and sometimes just never leaving the house. Sleeping half the day and reading the other half. I guess that since i really dont go out a whole lot any more i dont have that many interesting stories to tell now. Hence the phrase “ you should get out more often”

Beggars or hoes? which is worse? Both are looked down upon by the general society. I would venture to say that i feel that beggars are worse than the prositiutes. Prostitutes are at least willing to give of them selves as a last attempt to get what they want or need. Beggars feel that for the sake of humanity you should help them even when many of them are unwilling to help themselves. Some might aruge that they may not be able to help themselves, but look at the prostitiues that had nothing to use to get them where they want to be and they use their last resource. This topic hqs been on my mind for quite some time because the other day i was in a bar at about 9 pm. There was a hooker kind of going from table to table looking for a john to pull a trick with. At about the same time there was a woman just begging for money, she would come up to the table and just hold out a small bowl with the sadest expression that she could muster up. I saw less desperation in the will for survival in the beggars face than i did in the prostitute’s. I guess it is a matter of what we hold sacred to our selves. Not to say that the beggar should go out and “turn a few tricks” but rather that person should look for every possible means of taking themselves out of the pain they are in. I am so used to going to the big cities and seeing the women sleeping on the street sending their children out to harrass whom ever was on the street for food money. To me that is pretty low and it is sad because the people who would love to give money begin to just trun a cold shoulder (is that spelled right). So i guess it’s hoes up beggars down. Plus the fact that I just cant stand no beggin negros!!!!

The other thing to remember is that in the states we look at prostitutes as women looking for money to get crack heroin or god only knows what else. Not the case everywhere. Infact the majority of the prositiutes here are looking for money to feed their families and they do it with a clear consiance. Can say that i blame them. It is the oldest business and a commodity that will always sell. If it is too hard for them to find a job that covers all the bills that are necessary to raise a family then they hit the streets and the bars. Now who is really to blame in that type of situation? The women selling themselves? or the men buying? If you really want to come down on someone it is really a two way street and the men are just as responsible.

So enough about sociteties outkasts.

Yo any of yall ever read Geminin by nikki giovanni? Yo this sister was breaking down the story of the 24 elders in this joint. I really had never read anything by her before so i was suprised to see how much she hated the whiteman then. Not too sure if she still feels that way. I remember going to see her at TCC in norfolk and she ripped it. Her poetry was on point so i will have to look for more of her stuff (so if any of you should feel the need to send something.....). J

Got a call this morning that I am going to be recognized as one of the African Americans that have been working with business and HIV. Not real sure how I got on the list but I will take it!! The project has not been going as I would have hoped but the one girl that is working with me on a regular basis has really been hard away at work. Hell she doubled her income for this month with the bracelets that she made. But for some reason I still have to pay for the beer!? Women…..

Oh yeah I finished 1984 the shit was hot right to the end I wont put more info on here about it you have to get the book. I decided to read some “billy shakes” I am starting with hamlet. But I want to read Othello since they say that it is about a Blackman.bwahhh

so i have been here a week now and it is almost back to normal. i have been here in the capital for about 4 or 5 days and the internet has been working for about one day (today to be exact) they said, and i saw, that my clavical is really deformed and it borthers me when i get real active. i was going to lie and tell them that it hurt worse than it actually did but that would not really have gotten me anywhere. man pete always tells me that he is going to beat the nice out of me.

but it is getting better to be here and to see the roaches that live permentaly in my bathroom sink in the holes used to keep the sink from over flowing, they never come out you only see their antennas. to see the mice that eat my food when i leave it out at night and have to throw it all out in the morning. to go back to avoiding phone calls from girls that i... (well maybe i should not go there) :). to get back to washing my clothes by hand, seriously that is the best way they have a washing machine here in yaounde and i had to wash all of my clother twice just to get them close to clean and some i still had to wash by hand.

i guess why i really like this place is because it is so challenging, being from a rich country where everything ( just about) is easier and where things were and still are easy for me. to live where i have no net of friends to back me up and to take care of me in a hard time or place even though i will never go to them for help. i have proved something to the one person that matters... me. i proved to myself how strong i can be. that inspite of my father being aginst what i am doing i have gotten him to understand where i am and got him to bring my family there and to bring me there. i have shown myself that i can beat many of the odds and stick with all of the hard times and challenges that arise in my life from time to time. i get scared every morning that i will not stick with this and quit and come home, but every night i look at the day that has just passed and say damn the blackman is god. for real i got john blaze shit!! but i always check myself by the challenges that are to come.

since i have gotten back i have been asked to help with 2 relatively large projects that can take up quite a bit of my time. one of them is a bit more promising than the other because i can work on some of the business theories that i have learned and put them to practice. i figured that i want to travel when this is all said and done and if i play my cards right i will go to europe or the islands and stay there for a month. (sorry after tasting cold weather again i have no desire to live in that climate again... nothing personal).

i realized that i have respect from men that i have always had respect for. those that have always been my big brothers really showed love for me and for what i was doing. to feel the respect and love of my parents that even though they do not agree with everything that i do or say they let me be and still support me. to feel how my sister looks up to me and to see the influence that i have on her is enough to make me straightin up and fly right. if nothing more that is all the reason for me to finish this. i also learned that the more love i show people the more love they will show to me. so where's the love?? (sorry just another Jay-z quote). yeah one month in the states was all i needed to give me the strengh to continue.

see before i left for cameroon i was waiting on someone to tell me that i was all that and that i will do well. but that is like waiting on midnights sunshine. it just aint gonna happen. (unless you live where the sun shines all the time and that place just dont exist for the blackman)

peace ya'll bwahhh

yeah folks i survived about 3à hoursworth of travel with pigeons in the baggage claim men in all leather business suits and some whiteboy telling me he needs 23 dollars. new york is so strange. it was like deja vu to be back in cameroon all the familiar sites, the smells, the languages, the food, and... i am already sick of this shit. i went to the bank and that same bitch was there grilling me but this time there was money in the account. but she took 2 hours to count the money of the 2 people in line ahead of me(i reeeealy hate her). but i have a real good cure for my feeling of hating this place.... i 'm going to the beach. i deserve a weekend after my month long vacation. hell i am a peace corps volunteer and we often have nothing better to do.

but it was good getting home and seeing people. i had to cut out without calling or contacting anyone else cause i was having second thoughts of coming back so i needed not call one person more i will see them all in august or september. i am stillreflecting on the things that i have seen and done while i was in the states and i will definitly haveto write it on my blog asi look back further on the vacation. i know that a lot of things have changed but i was glad to see that the people i thought would elevate have elevated and the people i said would be at the same point or at a lesser point are doing just that (unfortunately). i was gladto see all the new babies and to hold them and give them back to thier parents (soooo gladi aint got no kids)

but i will write no more today. i have reading to do. yo the book 1984 is hot!! definitly if you have not read it yet then you need to read it soon. oh yeah checkout my sisters bolg it is ebonyqueen89.blogspot.com.

lovze yall

fo shizzle bwahhh

Five reasons why my family is like the cosby show

1. my father eats a lot and really likes food. of which my mother tries to get him to stop.

2. the first son of the family is dashingly handsome.

3. my friends are always looked upon as a part of the family.

4. everyone is educated or working on getting getting that way

5. strong sense of family.

five reasone why my family is not like the cosby show.

1. no one can control my fathers eating habits.

2. the dashingly handsome first son can't figure out how to dash himself a date.

3. my friends are like family but they cant go in the fridge.

4. there are no doctors in the family (but we have a hopeful!!)

5. as children time out was never a real punishment if it was not preceded by an ass whoppin'

bwahhh

that first 'e' should have an accent on it but that is happy new year in french. and i hope that it has gotten of to a good start for all 5 of you who read this. i went to DC with the family in my fathers new car. it really was not all that exciting that is one of those things that you have to be in the drivers seat to really enjoy it. all i did was sleep. i got them to drop me off in DC and go hang with a few friends and i too the train to get to where my parents were. we have this 'tradition' where every year we get together with one of my fathers old college buddies and eat lobster at midnight. when i was younger i looked forward to it cause it was a reason to travel and to see (we will call him uncle buck) uncle buck. well now that i am older uncle buck is a loud and obnoxious prick. i really cant stand that guy. when i got into the car with him he started in on me living in africa

uncle buck: SO WHAT DO I CALL YA NOW THAT YOUR AFRICAN?!

me: how about cerrone?

uncle buck: SO HOW ARE THE WOMEN? YOU GETTIN ANY PUSSY?

my father (oh yeah he was there too): oh the women are georgous....plenty of pussy everywhere.

it was after that comment that i decided to act as if i had had a bad day. discussing pussy with my pops is not my idea of a good conversation, we dont always agree on the way women work. so the rest of the night i really just hung out with my mother. i have come to the conclusion that i am a mama's boy. not in the sense that i am a sissy but that i would much rather spend most of my time with my mother and that i have no problem relating and talking with my mother. for instance...

mommy: i got my bill for my surgery, it came to 23 thousand and some change. (she had her uterous removed)

me: that's some expensive pussy!(i got chased for that one luckily she could not catch me to slap me, but she did throw something)

i am glad to see that she is feeling better and moving around. i did not have the time before i left cameroon but i wanted to get her a uterous carved out of wood to replace the one that they took out. she would have loved that.

so new years passed. i dont really make resolutions cause it usually just winds up being something else that i dont do and stress myself out about. better that i just not do those things.

but before i end this one i have to give a big shout out to A* cause i dont think that i have ever met her in person but she always responds on the comments to my blog and that is cool to see. thanks

peace ya'll

bwahhh

the choices that my father narrowed the car down to was between the BMW and the porsche. he got the BMW, X5 suv. big car that uses a lot of gas but that was his choice. it was funny cause he offered for me the chance to drive it from the lot to the house and i had to turn it down. not that i would not like to drive a BMW (cause i really would) but more cause i did not want anything to happen to it. my mother and i waited a while for him to get the paper work together and finally my mother got tired and was like she had to go home. i wound up driving the lexus home (the second time i have ever driven this car) cause she was too tried to drive. on the way home we talked about how all of my parents children are very down to earth. that while we are all raised upper middle class we really do not act like it and are not snobish of the fact. not to say that if a person does not look closely at us that they cant see it but that it really is not something that we push. truth be told other black people from the same socio economic class get on my nerves. i can remember being a bit ashamed of the fact. but when i got to a certain level in my growth i began to see it a bit differently. because this is where i want to see a whole lot of other black people at. big (and i use that term losely) families, nice houses and nice cars. to see my people living the way that they want, with pride in their past and an eye on the future. i guess i really want to see everybody get thier piece of the pie(wether that be american pie or someone else pie). i respect my father in that aspect (i know i be complaining about him a lot) he really came up. and when i come up to the same level i will want to do whatever makes me happy, in so far as it does not bother my family or others around me. i mean this dude went from living in his fathers house when his father had no car to having 5 cars in his drive way (yes they all run) most of those cars are luxury cars, a boat, the biggest house in the neighborhood, and 4 children that are all on the right path. so i got to give it up to the brother when he makes a move that all of us in the family look at and say "is dat nigga crazy" cause he probably is saying the same thing "am i crazy". but aint that what it's all about? working hard and taking care of business and enjoying ourselves when we can.

but ya'll can be assured that i will remain myself. i dont intend to tell folks (outside of the 5 readers of this blog... big up to the new people that have been reading this) that he got that car. and ya'll definitly wont see me pushing that thing any time soon (or at all). to tell the truth i was suprised that he let me drive the volvo at all since i came back for a visit. i used to be that that was my mothers car and that i could not drive it unless my mother asked me too. but since she was sick and she has a new car i guess he figured it was cool for me to drive that.

and in honor of the ODB and the wu tang clan ( who has droped off seriously in my opinion) i will end this one with a classic quote from them.

"cash rules everything around me C.R.E.A.M. get the money dolla, dolla bill ya'll...."

peace bwahhh

you would think that since i am living somewhere that has internet that i would write a little more often. not so, i have goten so lazy about this and a numberof other things that in cameroon i am normally thinking about doing for a week in advance before i can write a word. i guess this is supposed to be the culture shock that you go through coming back home. quite as it is kept, the culture shock of being home is harder to deal with than the shock of another country.

x-mas eve i went to a party with a bunch of senegalese people. it was interesting to hear some of thier music and see how they dance. they seem to hold a little tighter to their culture than cameroonians do. the party was supposed to start at 12:00 but these are africans and nothing starts on time. people started showing up at about one and the food showed up at two. no one had a plate until three and it was a mad rush for the food. not from lack of order and civilization but from the extreme hunger that over took half of the people. there were mad girls there(and this time i did try to have a little game but it went no where, there is always next time). when i got invited i thought that this would be a party like a cameroonian party, meaning that there would be large amounts of beer to drink and a lot of food. but i had forgotten that senegal is a country that is about 95% muslim. nobody drank a drop of alchool and the men really did not dance all that close with the women. but it was still fun, i got home at about 5 am on christmas day and went to sleep.

my family woke me about 10 to open all three of my presents. my father is a big supporter of christmas and when you have that as the person really driving the festivities it is hard not to get a little caught up into that 'spirit' (for lack of a better term). i really am not into christmas but i do enjoy being around my family and not to upset them too much i try to participate in some events. take for example, my brother just walked in the door and my father has called all of us to come and watch him open his gifts. but to make matters worse, none of us have bought him any gifts. just my father. he is really pushing for big family gatherings and closeness of family. which i am down for but i dont think that it needs to be forced.

my father REALLY likes having family around and talking about it and using our past as a catalyst for our futures. my only discute with that is.. that by living in the past will we never see the future. will we never move on (one moment i have to go down and watch my brother open his gifts.) how long will my family continue following the religion and ways of their oppressors? my father at every open opportunity throws out that "being christian is a part of my history". it is really kind of obvious how much it bothers him that i am not a religious person and that i am not into the same things as him. i try to show him all the time that that stuff aint really a part of our history, before the enslavement of our people. but i guess that is really just a lost cause. he really pushes a lot about how my ansestors were leaders in their churches. and how the leaders of the churches were the leaders of the black community. this is cool and all but how long will the devices used to enslave us be continued to enslave us in our minds. look at the history of every country that was colonized, they sent the church first. and now this same church is "leading" us. but to where? true freedom of our minds? i dont think so! "read nigga read"

it is snowing and cold. some times i long for africa. it is funny to think that we here as descendents of africans have a tendency to glorify africa for what we want it to be and not what it is and what it has become. i think that we really do a dis service to ourselves and to our brothers and sisters over there by thinking that this "mother land" is perfect in everyway and not addressing the problems that exist. but i too felt this way and it took being in africa to be there. because for real you have to love black folks to remain in the struggle for our freedom. it really is not that easy because your helping someone that does not know that they have a problem. sort of like AA, but only for black folks. where is the drop squad when you need them?

bwahhh

so i went to the club with my man iself. of course i dont know the name of the club since i really aint into clubs a whole lot but i am trying to learn. it was the usual scene, a sausage fest, about 5 women all of them dressed like clowns and iself trying to embarrass me by any means necessary. this dude went up to these sisters and forced me to take a picture with them. now i will admit if the girls were cute he might not have had to call me twice (cause truth be told i really dont have any game). but these sisters was just UGLY. and one of them was wearing those "call of the wild stilettos". whats up with that? and these dudes with the furry coats, and big hats? i saw a brother in a pink shirt and pink hat (big of course). have the terms of masculin just changed. is this all a part of that metro sexual shit. yo these dudes look gay to me. and the sisters just look hiddieous, furry boots?! the DJ decided to have a 'drop it like its hot' contest, what is it about dudes (and the fat lesbian) that makes them give money to a girl for shaking her body? is it just that you got to see a girl move like that? dont you think that money could be better spent? (big up to iself for trying to steal that sisters money, wish you didnt get caught!) i will never fully understand the strip club mentality. yo but both the groups that we went to see ripped it. funny cause i knew a number of the brothers that was performing that night and all of them have gained weight. that seems to be the trend around here. getting fat and having babies. for real if they aint gained a few pounds then they got a new child. my father says that that is because this is a rich country (he wants me not to go back to africa) and that that is just part of the deal with a rich country. even though i know a lot of people that are fat in africa with a lot of children too, but that is neither here nor there.

i have been back a week now and it is begining to feel normal again. i went visiting a lot of people and i can definitly see where i have grown and where i have not. my father is looking to buy a new car (i cant figure out why) but he asked me to go with him to look at the new cars. this is new it has always been hard for me and my father to really connect when it comes to material items but for some reason i could feel him when we were looking at the cars. there is some nice shit out there and some not so nice shit too. it was funny cause i was teaching my father how to bargain and i dont know the first thing about buying a car. he kept starting with the highest price that he wanted to pay. i told him to start with a lower price so that when they start to harrass you for a higher price then you will have no problem adding a little more money. the other thing is that you have to be bold with these dudes. car sales men are slimmy and they lie a lot but you can always see when they are lying (unless they are really good at it). man i have seen 4 or 5 sales me in 2 days and i could tell when all but one of them was lying.

i met my sisters boyfriend. and i like this dude, i think that he is good for my sister. he is a bit rough around the edges but i see a lot of potential in him. i am thinking of taking him out one day. he has a lot of personality which is good for my sister cause they match each other. this brother aint the most attractive, but most of my ex girlfriends and all that attractive. so that is cool and he is taller than i am (which aint sayin' much). but i was impressed and i look forward to spending some time with him. heis the type that even if they dont stay together that i would like to see where he ends up in the long run.

"is a son ever mature in his fathers eyes?"

that was my man 'eldridge cleaver' in my village/town

aint that the truth?! bwahhh

so much has happened since the last time that i have written. so i will start with when i left yaounde and went to Dschang.

i finally arrived at Dschang and the couple that i was staying with was a little busy but they welcomed me either way with open arms. i picked up the few things for my parents and went back to their house and slept i was real tired from the fiasco that had happened. the next day i went and checked my e mail and took my time getting to the car park. i got to the car park at about noon and at six o clock i finally had to go back to their house and spend a second night causei had spent about 6 hours in the heat and the dust trying to leave and get back to Loum. so i spent a second day there and got back to loum in the afternoon. that night i went to see mrs mollet and my fever just shot up all of a sudden. i went home and tried to sleep it off but the fever never went down and then i started having diarhea real bad on top of that. i called the doctor in the morning and she told me to go to the hospoital and get them to do a stool sample and a blood test.

hospitals in africa are a nightmare, many of them are just so undermanaged that as soon as you walk into the door you start to feel better.

doctor: so mr wooling what seems to be the problem?

me: well i had a real high fever until i saw the way you all let the animals off the street roam throught here....

and that is really just about how you feel. i got to the hospital and this place was actually clean it was just that you had to wait a really long time. fortunately on of the girls from my bead group works there and she was willing to help me get through the long lines, past the sick and dying old ladies, crying little children and just all the hard luck cases...and should i feel bad about this?... HELL NO man when your sick you just want things to be over and done with. when i finally got to the lab part of the examination everybody was like:

everybody:there is a stool sample, did you bring any with you

now i am not the most educated when it comes to medical matters but i know that you are not expected to just walk around with some shit on hand just incase you should have to do one of these tests. and what exactly was i supposed to walk around with this shit in??

the lab assistant was a bitch, the doctors were all drinking at 8 in the morning, when it came time to do the actual stool sample there was a sudden onset of constipation for an hour and a half. funny part of the whole thing was this nurse that was working there. she was cute, pretty face, pretty hair, cute shape. but she had long feet. and then had the nerve to wear red shoes. yo if she had worn a yellow one piece with some white make up and a red wig she would have looked like a certain restaurant clown. the lab results took a long time to come back it was malaria. funny but it did not feel that bad, i was expecting a lot worse but they said that i got it pretty early so there was not much to worry about. i told my father when he called and he gave me that moment of fear that every parent gets when they hear that their child was in danger. so i decided that i just should not tell my parents everything that happens to me cause for real i really did not expose myself to that much danger.

"every generation needs a new revolution"

Thomas Jefferson

that was a good one tommy.i cant agree with him more. i feel that we a generation need a cause to stand for and fight for. as a people i am begining to think that we are refighting the battles that our parents fought in blaming the whiteman. true that the whiteman has done a lot but not so much that we can not get things together ourselves. the real fight is within us as a people.

"the modern revolutionary is a business man"

i said that one (yall didnt think i had it in me!!)

2 days before i left cameroon i had to go to Tiko to pick up a bag and make a connection with someone to change my money into euros. well i got the bag and called the woman to make the change of money and she was like she cant helo me unless i have a bank account with her bank. i was pissed cause she had just told me the day before that she could do it and not to worry. i told this to the woman that was giving me the package to bring to the states and she was like

her: oh you can do that here in Tiko, just come to the legal wedding of my daughter and after that we can chang that money, it will only be 15 to 20 minutes.

well that was the kiss of death cause the wedding took 4 hours cause the judge showed up 3 hours late and then was not organized. but at least they gave me some food before i left and i got my money changed.

the sad part about the wedding is that there was a whiteman there apparently from england marrying a cameroonian. not a big deal but the judge changed the entire language from pidgin to grammar english just for this whiteman. i wish we would stop selling ourselves short. there was this one guy who was marrying this woman and he did not even bother to learn the language. there were 20 people there and he changed the language for this one person. this was just pure and plain kissing ass of the whiteman. which has earned this judge a place on the.....

Sambo files: i didnt even get this dudes name just that he will now be called. His Honorable Sambo....(insert his name). that was just ridiculous that he changed that entire service of all those people so that he could understand. i feel that he really should have just gone somewhere else or learned to speak that language.

bwahhh

so the ticket situation is finally over and i found out that i will get paid for 2 months qnd not one so things will be a bit easier. this has been a very stressful past couple of weeks. i hated to be sitting in public for everyone to see me stressed out but it also helped to have people there to buy me beers and stuff trying to help. big up to all of you word is born i thank yall a lot for that.

i left the capital yesterday. it was a bit late cause i was travelin with this girl named rachel, yet another real cool chik she is from the bean town. i got to come up with a nick name for her as well. so we got a car to bafoussam and the bus driver drove like a bat out of hell. he went to pass someone and almost hit the dude in moving back to his lane. i was not happy about that but we mad it alive and well.

bwahhh

my friend tiffany insisted that she take me out to eat and have a few beers, this girl is really cool. shes half japanese and white and a handful of good times and laughs. she was in the accident with me and has become a good friend after that. funny thing is that i never knew that she lived so close to me. i had to go to a funeral (well i did not HAVE to go)in the town next to hers so i took the ride there and it was only about a 2 hour ride. so i know now that i can go there and come back in the same day. i am going to cook for her... hopefully i dont kill her with my terrible cooking skills. i still have to come up with a nick name for her. big up sweetheart.

but what i wanted to say is that while we were out eating my father called and said that the first thing in the morning i am to go to SN Brussels and pick up my new tickets. "your supposed to get no hassle from them!" in that hard core italian gangster style of talking my father has when he gets mad. i felt the relief that i needed like i had just taken the infamous "chill pill" (hey do these really exist?). not sure if the second beer helped but i felt lighter. tiffany is going to be my sugar mama tomorrow and i will get the chance to take her out to see as much of yaounde as i possibly can. man was i relieved.

oh yeah i never took the time to explain the beer here. the other day i complained of my stomach hurting with my diarhea, my man Iself sent me a comment that said that i should drink beer. well self, the beer here only comes in 22 ounce bottles so you get a lot of it and the alchool content in them is higher,65, and in cameroon "he who does not drink is not trust worthy". and so there are a lot of alchool related problems. the most i can put down in a sitting is about 4 maybe more, four is all that i can say with dignity, cause after that people start to wonder about you! when my father was here he had and few and my brother and i were drinking with him and he had me in stitches because he just was being hard core father about the fact that he was drinking with us (an experience i will never forget) and after his second he realized that the beer here was stronger. my brother and i out drank him, cause he went to bed and we ordered another round.

i think that i will travel for a minute after i finish peace corps. i want to go to chad (thats tchad in french) and visit a sister that was here in peace corps when i first joined and get some good food, and see the rest of cameroon. i am going to go by train and by public transport. then i will go to senegal, not sure how much this will cost me but i got to do it, by hook or by crook. i had wanted to go to egypt but figured that was too touristy and figured that would be much better with the woman i marry so that i have someone to share the experience with. but i figure it like this i have a pretty good control over the french language and i can speak pijin english so i should be able to go just about anywhere in sub saharian africa with no problems.

oh yeah folks... the best magazine to read is the economist. it is a british publication that has mad information. we as black people need to be better informed (yeah i know 'there he go again with that black stuff') the magazine does not just cover business issues it covers social, political and much more. it has much needed information and it is european so it is a bit more critical of the american government. only thing is is that it can be expensive. but there are always some good articles on the internet.

watched the ferinheit 9/11 again last night. but this time we watched the out takes and stuff and there was one where this dude was straight grillin' condoleza rice. you could tell how slick she was being, which has earned her a place in...

the sambo files;

so from now on out she is in the same boat as sambo combs(read p shity), and her new title will be : madam sambo rice. yo this dude was gettin on her about the meeting that she had with bush about the threat that osama bin posed on the american public befire 9/11. she straight wiggled her way out of every question. boy can she shuck and jive for the white man 'you go girl' bwahhh

now... having to sit in the peace corps house here in yaounde i get be be around a lot of peace corps volunteers. not always my favorite crowd but i put forth every effort to be nice, and some of them are quite genuily my friends. but those that are not take every opportunity to say some strange shit about me. for example, i said in passing to a few volunteers that i feel the AIDS is a man made virus and to be specific it was the white man that made it. i heard last week that i just do not believe that AIDS does exist and that i am teaching cameroonians that. or how about today when i was told "i heard that you inherently hate white people" now i dont know a person on this earth that is born hating another person. so they are always so suprised to find out that i really do not hate white people and many of our views and interest are the same. now that is not to say that i always say the right thing around them or to them, but the guy who made that one up had never said so much as 3 words to me. why is it that when a black man is not willing to give a little soft shoe and really say what is on his mind about race issues they get scared. i am starting to feel like i am beating a dead horse because everytime i am around they only want to talk about race issues. i guess they want to change my opinions or my views, not sure. it is so bad to the point that i can not meet someone new without them asking.

"who is the black guy that hates white people?"

this is a very popular line in the middle of conversations because they do not know that it is me until they ask. and as soon as you say something that is a little aginst what they like to hear then you are a militant (ok i do have some militant tendencies) but without hearing you out they judge. oh well i did not come here for them and i really respect those that take the time to get to know me. the rest can fous le camp.

it is always nice to have one person come and sit and talk about something else. like last night i talk about womens issues and it was a really good conversation. it is about one of the best conversations that i have had in a long time. we even talked about some books that we have read and what we thought of them. and it did not turn into a black and white issue. that was fun. bwahhh

not sure how i managed to post that last one 3 times. the computer i was on kept showing that i had not sent the file off properly. or maybe it was the french.

so saturday i went to the bank, i have been broke like i have never been broke in my life i have been living off the of about 5 dollars for the past week. my bank book said that i have 67,000 francs to get out from the account. so i went to the bank on the last bit of money that i had, hoping that nothing would go wrong. i got there about an hour after opening and the one cashier is the one i have been beefing with for the longest time. heres why... my 'green card' or residents permit has my name as wooling kenneth which of course is backwards. so when ever i sign my name she starts

cashier:'this is not you, if this was someone else i would have to call the bank manager!'

me: ' but you know that it is me and we have already discussed that the card is wrong but the police will not fix it!'( i have tried but without me paying for a new one they will not fix it.

cashier: 'i will do it this time but you have to get this fixed'

me:' yeah ok whatever'(i think this to myself)

this happens the same way everytime that i go. i hate dealing with this woman, she really gets on my last nerve. so this day she got me good. i wrote the check out for 45,000. i took it too her and for some reason it was as if she knew that something was up cause she didnt give me the usual run around. she just shook her head and began running the check. now i got side tracked for a second and turned around as she was litterally throwing all of my paper work at me saying 'you dont have any money in this account' and she said it lound so of course everyone in the bank is looking at me.

me: 'what are you talking about there is 67,000 in the bank book where did the money go?

cashier: 'you have to keep 50,000 in the bank at all times

(this is really a smart idea but just agravagating)

cashier: 'i can give you 17,000, would you like that'

me: 'yes i will take that' (hell i am really broke i have been eating nothing but spaghetti noodles for the past week)

cashier: 'would you like that in 1,000 notes?'

me: 'no give it to me in 2,000 notes' (trying to save some dignity)

cashier: 'how about i give it to you in 1,000 notes!'

me: 'please god just let me ease my finger through this glass!!!!'

you could see that she was enjoying every minute of that. she gave me a stack of 1,000 notes just to really rub it in. 17,000 is enough to hang out at post for a week or two but not enough to travel on and i needed to get to yaounde to pick up my air plane tickets. she really enjoyed that one cause when i saw her this morning all she did was give me a small smile. i have to work on not being so open mouthed, i started saying any and everything on my mind wiether good or bad. and it has really found me some rather embarassing situations.

i guess it is when things really get hard that we really start to figure out what we want to do to organize some things. so i had to take a long walk after being really embarassed in public and looking at everything else that is going wrong around me. i thought back on a conversation that i had with my man Pete;

me: 'man cameroon is eating me alive'

pete: 'eat it back'

best advice yet. so i have been laying my plans to get back on track and get things in the right order. that is once i figure out what the right order is. on my walk i started talking out loud to myself 'man whatcha gonna do?' i just kept saying it over and over and over 'whatcha gonna do?' and i said that after everything that was going wrong in my life now. and i got a lot of shit to do. living here is not easy. survival of the fit only the strong survive. and i plan on surviving.

book of the week: paradise by toni morison, have not yet finished reading this one yet but it is something that i really have to keep up with. by that i mean that i forget sometimes what she was talking about, and have to go back and re read some of what she is saying. but over all interestng. i will sum it up later. shes a good writer.

sambo sightings....

rap mogul sean "sambo" combs was sighted in cape town south africa for a chatrity concert for HIV and AIDS in africa. funny for the longest time i didnt think that p. diddy knew where africa was or let alone how to get there. yeah i know it was for a good cause and all but they really could have left him out. what a fool he is up there singing 'we aint goin no where...' hopping around on the stage like a bafoon. but money talks and right now sambo combs is making plenty of it. i wonder how much he got paid for being there.

quote:

'between saying and doing many a pair of shoes is worn out'

italian proverb

let me know if yall are feeling this site and whati can do to inprove it. that is... all four of you. and thanks for commenting. iself!!! you got mad jokes:)i have decided that my relationship will no longer make it on to this site. even if nobody reads it!! :)

bwahhh

man last week a was about the hardest week that i have ever been through. everything that could go wrong did. the gas ran out while i was cooking in the middle of the night. the report that i had to e mail i couldnt do because the e mail cafe was closed. the battery in my phone some how puffed up inside of the phone(something that i was quite shoked to see). and the original blog that i had typed for today i could not get this computer to open the damn thing. so this week i am just taking it easy and getting things together to travel. i know that i have a long fligt but it will be worth it.

i am for the first time in my service worried about my diarrhea. normally i dont worry about it no matter what color or consistancy it does not bother me. so long as my stomach does not hurt it does not matter. well this last week it hurt!! not sure what it could be this time but what ever it is it should be fun to cure. last time i had ameboas, that was a week of no drinking and of really funny feelings in my guts. forreal this is a hard place to live. when even the food you eat wether clean or not will give you something.

still nervous about riding in cars here. the car that i took today was a toyota land cruiser and the chauffer drove like a fool. dodging holes in the road at break neck speeds. some how i think he was drunk. the people here dont really see beer as a form of alchol but as a form of food. so it is nothing to have a beer before a long trip, or during that long trip. they even give beer to small children. i will be at a friends house and they will call the small children around to give each of them their share of the beer. all you can do is laugh when some six year old is telling you how handle your hangover.

"le langue est une vheicule de la culture" french proverb

i think this cant be more real. you can see in just the way that hte people speak and carry themselves that they would much rather be french than black.

so i was in douala with a few brothers. we figured since one of the brothers family had come for a visit and he had to see them off that we would go there to hang out after his fam left. there were 2 white volunteers there as well but we left them there to see his family off the the airport. when we got back they were sitting with these other 2 white dudes chatting. we walked up to the table and the other 2 white guys got up quickly and bagan to rush off not even saying hello. we had spoken to them and from their accent we could tell that they were american. they chose to continue to ignore us at which point i thought it was the job of the other 2 volunteer to point us out and introduce us. they did not and could not understand why we left to another table.

"why are you all over there?"

so you all can have your space!

huh?

well we are not the right color for your friends!

are you saying that charly is racist?....

*time lapse*

look just cause charly sleeps with the prostitutes does not mean that he likes black people.

(then i had to say some thing stupid) just cause i fuck a white girl dont mean that i love em...

that other volunteer got up from the table talking about how uncomfortable he was. but hey who said you were supposed to be comfortable. get over it!!bwahhh