I went to a really amazing wedding last month. Mimi, the eldest sister in my homestay family (where I lived for my first 2 months in Cameroon), married Thomas, a guy from a near-by village who is studying in Germany to be a doctor. It was in like 5 parts over 2 weekends. The first weekend was all the traditional stuff. We went out to the traditional home of the girl and the families publicly argued over the bride-price. It was strange and predictably frustrating to the female American that accompanied me. There was a lot dancing and eating too. It was nice.

The next weekend we all went to Douala (the biggest, most developed city in Cameroon) for the more "conventional" parts of the marriage. The morning began with a legal ceremony presided over by like the 5th deputy mayor. He started out by reading the "relevant laws." He pointed out that the loaws gives rights and duties to both husband and wife. For example, he said the husband has the right to pick where the woman lives, but has the duty to give her enough money to eat and feed the children. (I thought that was nice.) I was very concerned that the cermony was going to be nothing more than a sexist rant, but I was pleasantly surprised. After reading the relevant laws, he says something like "Well, those are the laws, but they are outdated. A modern man needs to understand and respect his wife. So, I want you (the husband) to cook and clean on the weekends so that you understand the troubles of your wife." And so on. It was really encouraging.

After the legal thingy, there was a reception at the bride's fam's house. It was yummy. More photos, more sitting, etc. In the afternoon there was a church ceremony. It was very similar to something you'd see in the States. White dress, tux, pastor, too long, etc. The one thing that was very different was the amount of singing. They had 6 choirs take turns singing. It was too much. But the service was beautiful. And it was nice to be in a church and not feel like an outsider.

Following the church service, there was a reception at the home of the groom's fam. It was more of the same: fried plantains, various meats (which I still don't eat, BTW), rice, dancing, sitting and staring, etc.

Then the night turned wild. Wild, I say! It was now time for the VIP party. Yes, V.I.P. I was able to secure a few tickets to the VIP Reception through a ruthless combination of guile and being the bride's only white sibling. The reception was one of the coolest things I have ever seen. It was beautiful. It took place outside in a wide, grassy courtyard surrounded by high stone walls. The courtyard was ringed by white tables and chairs. A red carpet stretched from the entrance, through the open middle of the courtyard, to the Table of Honor, where the bride and groom eventually took up residence. A large buffet formed the de factor edge of the de facto dance floor in the middle of the courtyard. A DJ played a combination of 80's pop and peaceful gospel. An MC announces the arrival of the bride and groom at 10pm, fashionably late. The Wedding Party, until then just milling around, kicks into gear. They exit the courtyard and return accompanying the couple. As they approach the red carpet, the song changes. It is faster and louder. The best-men and brides-maids part, forming two lines on either side of the carpet to permit the couple to pass. Then the music hits and the wedding party begins to perform the dance that they have been undoubtedly been practicing for weeks. Many spins, dips, jumps, and twirls later, the couple is seated at the Table of Honor and the eating begins. And so it goes. Bizarre and beautiful.

Later in the night, after my 3rd trip to the buffet, the music abruptly stops. Everyone looks around for some explanation but nothing comes. Then, the MC runs to the floor and apologizes for the interruption. With a wry smile he says that someone has a song they'd like to sing in honor of the couple. Out of nowhere, a pudgy, 50-something gallops into the center of the courtyard and the crowd erupts. I am confused.

It isn't til he starts singing that I know who it is. It is Bamileke Boy! I know that no one reading this has any idea who Bamileke Boy is so I will try to put it in context. Bamileke Boy showing up to a Bandjounais wedding is like Elton John showing up at your cousin's wedding. They are both a little gay, a little over-the-hill, but still quite well-known and able to put on a fun show. Bliss.

Here are some pics:

Thomas & Mimi at City Hall after being legally married.

Here is Mimi at traditional ceremony being "given" to the Thomas' family.

Mimi's mom, Tim (another PC volunteer), Thomas, Mimi, and Me at bride's fam's house

Gaelle (Mimi's little sister) & Me

Couple at Church

Me & the Cutest Little Kid Ever!

Bamileke Boy Shaking My Hand!

I have noticed that Cameroonians in the English-speaking regions are generally much more Christian than their compatriots in the French-speaking regions. I am not sure why this is the case. Perhaps it is because in the modern era the most ardent missionaries were protestant and the French-speaking zones were dominated by French Catholics. Or maybe the Bible is just more persuasive in its original English ;) Anyway, the point is that Cameroonians from the Southwest and Northwest Provinces (where they speak a pidjin form of English) are generally far more interested in religion, more likely to call you a pagan, and more often have religiously-themed auto accessories.

Take the sticker in this photo as an example. I found this stuck to the dashboard of a taxi I was in the other day. The driver was, you guessed it (or maybe not), from Bamenda (in the Northwest Province.) I was confused, then a little frightened, but then entertained. Sometimes things are lost in translation.

It says: "I am covered and protected by the blood and wounds of Jesus."

Sing it, Brother!

I had lunch today at one of my usual haunts. Those of you that know Papa Sam's also know that I love his meals and his goofy grin. Today, Papa Sam and I were chatting it up when an old man lumber in to the restaurant (I use the term loosely, as this restau is really only a 10' by 10' cell with three tables.) Papa Sam introduced the man as the former mayor of Baham (my village). I talked to the Mayor for a long time. He had a slow way of speaking - and I appreciated that.

The former 4-term Mayor told me that when he first came to Baham from Doula in the 1960s it was very undeveloped and had only 3 schools - all primary schools. There were no paved roads (now we have 2!) and no water or electricity. He worked at the Mission and in the first 10 years he opened up 3 more schools, petitioned the government for a public school (HS!), and had the town incorporated as a real city.

The most interesting thing he told me was the story of how Baham became a Departmental capitol. (A department is sort of like a county.) He said that in the late 70s and 80s there was a strong push for decentralization. At the time, Baham was part of the Mifi Department, headquartered at Bafoussam, but there was a general feeling that having Bandjoun, Baham, Bangou, Batie and Bayangam in the same department as Bafoussam was too difficult. The administration in Bafoussam was over-stretched and the people of these other towns wanted the power and money that would come with the status as a Chef-Lieu de Departement.

Then as now, many important decisions about what happens in village were taken not in the village, but in Douala and Yaounde. Generally, the wealthiest, most powerful villagers move away to the big cities, but still have very close ties to their villages. (Some even hold chieftaincy, while living 200kms away.) The Mayor tells me that the elites of Baham convoqued a meeting in Douala to discuss a campaign for Baham to become the head of a new department. At the meeting, no one volunteered to be the public face of the campaign and everyone refused, forcefully, to take the symbolic gesture of publicly presenting the petition to the Governor. Everyone, they said, was afraid that they would be assassinated by agents of the competing villages. The other villages, too, couldn't find anyone to take up the mantle of making their village the capitol. So, for 6 years, no one from any of the front-runner villages officially expressed interest in the status change.

Finally, the Mayor says, the elites of Douala said that if he didn't do it, then he wouldn't be allowed to run again for Mayor. (Cameroon isn't and wasn't a democracy in the sense that everyone has a fair shot.) He reluctantly accepted the task, wasn't killed, and ate rice and beans with me today at Papa Sam's.

It kind of reminds me of Iraq.

The other day I got my hands on a relatively recent copy of The Economist. That particular publication is a bit difficult to come across in Cameroon, so I was very excited. I was reading about the North Korean missile tests (I told you it was relatively recent) and I just couldn't put it down. Even when nature called, I just ported the old Economist into the bathroom with me and installed myself atop the pot. I was reaching the climax of the article as nature stopped calling so I didn't want to break my reading stride. However, I have some decency and self-respect: I gave myself a courtesy flush while I stayed planted on the toilet and reading. That was a big mistake.

The thing about my house is that I have running water, but shitty plumbing. I didn't realize exactly how shitty until I was deepening my knowledge of Asian geo-politics on that fateful Tuesday morning. That morning, still camping on my toilet, feet firmly planted on the floor, reading about US troop numbers in Seoul, I realized just how bad of an idea that courtesy flush had been.

My first clue that something was wrong was the bubbling sound. It didn't inspire too much fear, as it originated not in the bowl but in the floor. I was more confused. I wasn't scared until I felt the unmistakable creeping of 2 month old feces enveloping my feet. As the plumber later explained, I had a clogged pipe about 12 feet from the base of my toilet and poop had been building up for... well, for however long it takes to fill 12 feet of pipe with shit. (Those of you asking how I could have not noticed the smell of even an 11 foot poop build-up have obviously never served in Peace Corps.)

But the disgrace was just beginning. I have become pretty confident in my French ability in the last year. So, while calling my landlord to explain the problem, I didn't relaize that I didn't know some of the key words for this conversation (like "flush", "pipe", "drain", and "crap-covered-shins"). I didn't realize, until later, that what he heard was something like this: "Hi, Chief. This is Andy. I need help. I go pooping. I try to make poop fall. Poop falls. But then poop comes back. Poop comes from ground. I have poop on me. Poop no stay falled."

A plumber came, fixed the pipes, cleaned the poop, and life went on. I stood in the corner reminding myself of my Cameroon mantra: Nothing works, but everything works out.

Here some of the pics that we took in France. We (mom, Casey, and I) spent 5 or so days in Paris, 5 or so in Nice, and 2 in a village in Northern Burgundy, with a French friend that I met in Cameroon.

Looking cool in Nice.

Nice is an international village

Casey, Ma, and I posing in front of a traditional French bathroom ;)

We were actually at the vineyard during the grape harvest. We didn't help.

8 seconds after this photo, I pushed him into the Seine

I think mom had a crush on Aurelie (a French volunteer that I met in Cameroon)

They wouldn't let us down to see the Holy Grail, but at least we saw the Mona Lisa

"Let me give you a hand" The concepts of “privacy” and a “personal bubble” cannot be easily explained in French. I have had many problems expressing to my Cameroonian friends that sometimes I don’t want to be touched (not that way, Sicko) and that sometimes I want to be alone in my house. Physical contact here between members of the same gender is very common: it is not unusual to see schoolboys or co-workers with entwined fingers. On the other hand, the privacy idea is very strange to most Cameroonians. They assume that if I am in my house for more than an hour without a visitor, then I must be lonely and they should knock on the door for a chat. It was annoying at first, but now I have learned to manage it. I usually entertain for awhile, but when bored I tell them that I need to bathe or that I have a meeting. They may not get the hint, but they leave. Anyway, the cultural divide on these two issues came to a head a few days ago. I was standing outside of the micro-bank where I work chatting on the phone with someone. As my conversation was wrapping up, a teacher I know from the local high school walks up. I am standing on a little ledge and my teacher friend is, like most Cameroonians, fairly short. His head comes up to about my belt level (given the difference in height and the ledge). We talk for a second and then he says, “Your zipper is open.” Before I go do anything, I found myself standing at the main intersection in my village with the 3rd ranking teacher in the county grabbing my crotch and easing my zipper back into place. I thanked him sheepishly and went back into the bank. ** "The weekend to end all weekends" The weekend of October 28th did not promise to be the best weekend ever. I was scheduled to take the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) test on Saturday morning and I was really stressed. My nearest PC volunteer friend and I had been studying a lot for the test and were both taking it the same day. We decided that the best way to handle it the test was to study a lot in the weeks before but not do any studying the day before. Also, we concluded that we had to book-end the GRE with fun events. We both play a lot of basketball here, so we planned to play basketball the afternoon before the test; we both like splurging, so we decided to splurge on sushi the day after. It couldn’t be claimed that the basketball went off with out a hitch, but it was still great. We are accustomed to playing in our provincial capitol, where we are among the better players. As the GRE was to take place in Yaounde, the national capitol, we had to play basketball there, among the big boys. I had played there a few times, but never on a Friday afternoon (which is the busiest, most competitive time-slot). When we arrived, a guy I know from the courts greeted us and said that we’d be welcome to play in about an hour and a half but that – and he was polite about it – we would get our butts kicked. We wanted to play so we decided to stay and watch the giants battle. Most of these guys were huge and we were intimidated. After an hour or so, my boy came through and informed us that we would be playing the next game and that we should warm up. My post-mate and I, plus another scrawny American that we know, were joined by the two biggest, strongest, scariest guys on the court (I think the court community was trying to compensate for our white-ness) and faced-off against the team that had just won the previous match. The game went swimmingly. We lost but the whites held their own and we earned the respect of the players. Plus, I hit a three. It was sweet. After the game we went back to the volunteer transit house at the Peace Corps office (a.k.a. the Case) and watched a movie and hit the hay early. In the morning, we indulged in cornflakes (a luxury here) with sugar and bananas (not a luxury here.) The test kicked off at 8:30 at the American Language Center in downtown Yaounde. Our proctor was an I-take-no-shit-from-you Cameroonian-American women decked out in traditional attire. The test here is a different format than in America. In the States, you take the test in a computer-adaptive format, with questions being selected based on your previous responses. Here we are forced to take the paper-based test. The advantage of the paper-based test is that you can go back and change your answers. The disadvantages are that you are there for 4 hours (versus 2 hours with the computer-based) and that you don’t get your scores for 7 weeks (versus immediately after you click “Finish” with the computer-based.) I feel like I kicked the test’s figurative ass. (I will delete the previous sentence after December 11th if my scores sucked.) To celebrate our triumph (or at least getting the failure over with) we arranged with the other volunteers in Yaounde to go out to a nice dance club. I wasn’t much of a club-goer in the States and I rarely ever go here, but I had been out once before in Yaounde. The club is owned by a American-educated Israeli. When you step inside it is like a little slice of America. They play Western music (not to be confused with Country Western, which sucks) and serve real drinks and have strobe lights and DJs and tons of ex-pats. Five of us ended up heading to the club around midnight. It was Jessie (a volunteer from near me) and her Cameroonian boyfriend Jerome, Ata (a volunteer near Yaounde), Charles (my post-mate) and me. We split a bottle of Grant’s Whiskey and danced til 6 in the AM. It was fantastic. At 1pm on Sunday I woke up, had a bowl of corn-flakes and watched a few episodes of Alias on DVD. At 3, we went out for a beer with an ex-volunteer friend who now works at the US Embassy in Cameroon. At 6, we went to the only All-You-Can-Eat Sushi bar in Cameroon. It costs 10,000 Francs, which is about two days wages for a Peace Corps volunteer. But, Oh, Lordy, Lord, it is worth it. Our buffet strategy was simple: we load up on food immediately and then play it cool. The first step was straight-forward enough. We just ate a crap load of delicious raw fish. The playing it cool part was a little more complicated. We created (from the three of us) a rotation. Each of us would take turns loading up a communal plate that was reloaded as soon as it was empty. All the while, we were playing Scrabble. (Thanks again, Mom and Casey, for bringing me that travel Scrabble game. It is really useful.) We left at 11PM and didn’t eat again until dinner on Monday. Best weekend ever! ***"My Computer Works Again!!"My laptop is very old. It was actually a high school graduation gift. It held up pretty well, earning its keep all through college. Right before I came to Cameroon the screen started to act up. It would go black unexpectedly and required a restart. I almost didn't bring it with me. At the last minute I decided to take it. For the first 3 months it worked ok, then the battery suddenly died. About a month later, the screen stopped working all together. I borrowed a monitor from the bank and had connected it to my laptop. Battery-less and screen-less, my computer was rarely used.

Then I got a call from my post-mate. He was in Yaounde and had found a laptop in the "up-for-grabs" room at the volunteer transit house. The computer wouldn't start up, saying that there was no hard drive detected. He asked if I thought I could fix it. I said, Maybe. A few days later he rolls up to my place with a Dell Latitude. I determined that the motherboard was cooked and broke the bad news to him. He suggested that I try to install the screen (which was working fine) in my computer. I dismissed the idea, as too difficult, but he left the computer at my place anyway.

I was feeling daring early one morning and couldn't sleep. I decided to give it a try. I took the screen out of the Dell, which was easy enough. I was happy to find that the screens were the exact same model. (God bless, Samsung's dominance of the LCD market.) Unfortunately, while the image input cables were the same, the power cables were not.

Disappointed, I weighed my options. I could cut the adapter heads off the power cables and try to swap them. Doing this risked breaking both screens. I didn't know (but I assumed) that the voltage was the same. I also didn't have wire-cutters or electrical tape. I determined that since the Dell was dead anyway, and my computer was rarely used, I should go aheard and risk it.

So, using a kitchen knife and adhesive tape, I spliced the Toshiba screen power adapter onto the Dell's screen and slid it into my laptop. Crossing my fingers, I hit the power button and heard a terrifying sounds: frantic pre-OS beeping from my computer. I re-tried and it worked. And it worked. And it worked.

Lucky me.

So I haven’t posted anything to my blog for a long time... because I am lazy and not that interested in keeping people up-to-date. Nonetheless, I will oblige my many forsaken readers with a pithy post. This summer was mostly centered around two projects: Pre-Service Training (PST) and the “salle de formation.” PST is 10 weeks long and is designed to prepare new volunteers for life in Cameroon. My PST, as you will recall, was held in Bandjoun, about 10 minutes from where I live. This summer’s PST was held in Mbalmayo, near the capitol Yaounde. There were something like 50 trainees (15 in the business development program; the rest were teachers). My involvement in training wasn’t too extensive (I gave 4 sessions to the trainees, totalling maybe 6 hours of actual instruction) but PST was still central to my summer. Each trip to training (3 of them) took a week of my life- the transit system here isn’t wonderful. Also, I spent the last two weeks of May in Yaounde at the “Training Design Workshop.” The “salle de formation” (Training Room) is a project that I have been working on with the cyber cafe in my village. The idea is basically to have a room with computers and to offer free or very inexpensive classes to villagers so that they can gain some marketable skills. It has been really difficult working with donors, landlords, etc. Current status: the room has been built, electricity hooked up, etc. But we still don’t have computers. The NGO will tell me “tomorrow” when they expect them. We are waiting. *** Vacation I am leaving village tomorrow morning (Tuesday) to go to the capitol. From there I will catch a plane to Paris. I should arrive by Friday morning in Paris. (Knock on wood.) My mother and brother will be there. We are planning two weeks in France. I am really really really excited. I may let you know how the trip went. *** Future Projects I have officially changed my post from the corrupt bank where I previously had worked to another bank (which I hope wont end up being corrupt ;)). We have developped a marketing plan to promote savings, etc. to the more rural, isolated villagers. We will kick it in to gear when I get back from Europe. I also have committeed to teach 4 hours a week at the Catholic school in my village. It is a boarding-type school for very poor, abused, oppressed, etc. girls selected by the mission. I will teach computers and typing to the youngest (~14 years old). I am very excited about this too. I hear they have pygmies. I am not sure how involved I will be with the local high school this year. The school was recently “promoted” to the status of “bilingual” high school. This promotion doesn’t give the school any extra money or Anglophone teachers. It does, however, require them to offer classes in English. The administration has already requested that I teach computers, English, chemistry, and physics. I declined. (What do I know about teaching physics!!?) If, when I return from Europe, they still lack a computer or English teacher (which is likely), then I will pick up some hours. We’ll see.

I have read the following books since I landed in Cameroon. (Actually, I have read more, but I am really bad about writing things down, and other volunteers are constantly raiding my library. :))

54. Hominids by Robert J. Sawyer (F) – Imagine that there is a universe parallel to our own where Neanderthals are the human species that succeed and that they have developed advanced physics and that they have accidentally sent one of their own to Canada (in our universe.) Did you imagine all that? Good. Now you can write Hominids. ***

53. Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer (NF) – Immediately after graduating college, a young man with a seemingly bright future refuses to get a job, stops communicating with his friends and family, wanders the country for a few years – sleeping in ditches and eating free handouts – then decides to live alone in the extreme wilderness of Alaska. His emaciated body is found a short time later. What the hell went wrong with this kid? Well, this book takes a stab at answering. ***

52. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by JK Rowling (NF) – The war is raging, but life at Hogwarts continues as normal until [STOP READING IF YOU DON’T WANT ME TO RUIN THE BOOK FOR YOU]…. until…. until…. Harry sees Snape murder Dumbledore. Crappy. ***

51. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by JK Rowling (NF) – With He Who Must Not Be Named back, Dumbledore is forced to reactivate the Order to protect the Wizarding Community from the evil Death Eaters. I hope the good guys win! ****

50. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by JK Rowling (NF) – The remarkable account of Harry’s 4th year at magic school includes dances, wizarding tournaments, and the rebirth of the Dark Lord. Yay!! ****

49. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkabhan by JK Rowling (NF) – In his third year at Hogwarts, Harry has to face the threat of an escaped murderer bent on killing him… but he also gets to meet his godfather. ****

48. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by JK Rowling (NF) – This is the second installment of the amazing true story of Harry Potter, the Boy Who Survived. I didn’t know a book could be evil until I read this book. ****

47. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by JK Rowling (NF) – This is the real-life story of a dirty Brit who, at the age of 12, is informed of his magicalness. He goes to the world famous Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardy. Adventure ensues. **** 46. Mao II by Don DeLillo- I had heard this book was amazing, but I was disappointed. It is the story of a creepy old writer, his hangers-on, and a photographer doing uninteresting things and speaking in contrived "insights." The settings, character descriptions, and introspections were was well written. Generally, I liked the characters, but the plot was boring and the book was too short. The main character dies after like 150 pages (I just ruined the book for you) and then the book putters out. But maybe I just didn't "get it." **

45. The Stranger by Albert Camus- This is the cliched story of a man, unaffected the recent death of his mother, who murders an unarmed Arab on a colonial beach. This is supposed to be very "existential," but I felt like the philosophical musings were a little thin. I still liked the book a lot though. ****

44. A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving- This is the story of a bible-thumping midget. It was so funny, so sad, so wonderful. John Irving is, quite simply, a much better writer than I am. **** 43. Les Contes by Ray Bradbury- This is a collection of Ray Bradbury stories- with a twist. It is a “bilingual edition” with the English original on the left side and the French translation on the right. It was really convenient to read in French and not have to thumb through a dictionary every time an author speaks figuratively. I love it! **** 42. Collapse by Jared Diamond (NF) – I was disappointed by this book. After reading Guns (see below), I was really excited, but I felt like the arguments in this book were already widely known. This book didn’t add much to my knowledge, except a painfully detailed understanding of the Norse in Greenland – which I don’t actually think should be consuming valuable brain-space. Still well-written and well-documented, Collapse just didn’t do it for me… but maybe I was just not ready to read something so evidently ominous. *** 41. Animal Liberation by Peter Singer (NF) – I was a pseudo-vegetarian when I started reading this book, but now I have resolved to abandon even fish and eggs. This is nice blend of documentary coverage of the practices of intensive agriculture and animal testing in the Western world, and of a philosophical critique of “speciesism.” I was more persuaded by the philosophical arguments – which ultimately conclude that “sentience,” defined in terms of having individual interests, should be the criterion for respecting an entity – than the accounts of factory farms and cosmetic “toxicity tests,” because I couldn’t finish certain chapters in those sections, for fear of vomiting. Seriously. Read it and then, unless you are a douche or a vegetable, you will become a vegetarian. ***** 40. Holy Blood, Holy Grail by Three Guys Whose Names Escape Me (~NF) – Dan Brown liked it so much he pretends he wrote it!! Wahoo! Actually, I am not convinced that Brown deserves to lose this case, because his book was better-written than this one, which is saying a lot, because my dead cat constructs better prose. Regardless, this book is mostly about history – the history of the Jews, Jesus, the Knights Templar, the Merovingians (like Dagobert), the Carolingians (like Charlemagne), and this random French dude (who creepily implies he is the direct descendant of Christ.) It was cool to learn about the Ancient France and to hear the background for The Da Vinci Code (although they rarely ever mention him), but I have never seen so many typos in a book, even one published in Britain (and they think that there is a y in “tire.”) *** 39. The Middle East: A Brief History of the Last 2,000 Years by Bernard Lewis (NF) – This offered me the opportunity to fill in the second most embarrassing gap in my education – the first being my illiteracy. I knew nothing about the history of Islam, Persia, or the Ottomans but, now, after reading this incredibly readable tome, I know more than you. Na na Na na Na. **** 38. Peddling Prosperity by Paul Krugman (F) – Further evidence that Reagan, Buckley, and The Wall Street Journal (of the 1980s) suck at life. I feel like I know more about how to lie to the American people about economics and jobs and growth than I ever would want to know. Plus, I hate the Heritage Foundation. **** 37. The World According to Garp by John Irving (F) – This booking frickin rules the school. Garp is a child conceived by rape – his mother raped a brain-dead patient in her charge – who goes on to be a semi-famous author and the bane of some crazy feminists. It is hilarious, bizarre, sad, and wonderful. Read it! Now!! ***** 36. The Jericho Sanction by Oliver North (yes, THE Olivier North) (F) – Story of Russians tricking Americans into causing Israelis to bomb Iraqis. It may be a true story after all. ** 35. 1001Pitfalls in French by James Crew & Daniel Olivier (NF) – I treated this book as a sort of “100 Things You Must Do Before You Die.” I have already performed around 800 of these errors. I will soon be able to say that I have truly accomplished something. *** 34. Congo by Michael Crichton (F) – This is the true story of evil apes. It is why I hate nature and eat apes. *** 33. Islam by Frederick M. Dennis (NF) – A brief intro to the religion that is so “in” right now. I think it was a good overview… but I have nothing to compare it to. Perhaps he lied about the religion. I wouldn’t know. *** 32. Enigma by Robert Harris (F) – This historical fiction recounts the adventure of a nerdy British cryptologist in World War II. While he works tirelessly to decode the German Submarine Code – Shark!!! – he is surrounded by espionage, murder, and pseudo-Victorian stuffiness. Not great, but sort of fun. ** 31. The Great Unraveling by Paul Krugman (NF) – Collection of his NY Times columns grouped by topic and then sorted chronologically. There are topical intros which provide even more continuity. It is really cool to watch such a smart guy develop such a passionate and reasonable hatred of George W. Bush. **** 30. Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut (F) – This is a collection of his early short stories. It offers a different, even darker view of Vonnegut’s intellect. **** 29. Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond (NF) – This “environmental account” of human history from 13,000BC to the modern era is frickin’ awesome. I told someone it was the best book I had read in college, so she said I should read it again, and gave me copy. Read this book! Come on, read it. It won the Pulitzer Prize, after all! ****** 28. The Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell & Dustin Thomason (F) – This is the story of Renaissance scholarship gone awry on the Princeton campus. Murder, fraternity dances, and house-fires complicate the attempts of 2 undergrads to decode an ancient book. It is The Da Vinci Code meets Cruel Intentions. *** 27. Secrets, Lies, and Democracy by Noam Chomsky (NF) – Critical take on American domestic and foreign policy in the 80s and 90s. (Mostly domestic.) **** 26. Deadeye Dick by Kurt Vonnegut (F) – Darkly humorous tale of a family of Nazi-sympathizers, murders, and corporate executives, culminating in the destruction of, well, most everything. **** 25. What Uncle Sam Really Wants by Noam Chomsky (NF) – Treatise on the post-War foreign policy of the United States. Very critical, very well-researched, very Chomsky. *** 24. Siddhartha by Herman Hesse (F) – Interesting fictional fusion of Eastern and Western philosophies. Tells of the soul-searching of tormented Indian man in ancient times. **** 23. The Rachel Papers by Martin Amis (F) – This – “the best teenage sex novel ever written” – follows the love life of a brilliant, crazy, and “emotionally unavailable” 19 year old British boy who is preparing to attend Oxford. It is touching, funny, sad, and great. ***** 22. Larousse de la Conjugaison (Poche) by ?Larousse? – French grammar book with focus on irregular verb forms and exceptions to the rules of conjugation in the standard verb groups. It is the first book I’ve read in the French language! Wahoo! ** 21. The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield (F) – It is a bunch of new age malarkey, but it was interesting. The story of the magical, ancient Peruvian manuscript with the secret of happiness is kind of cool, but the prose is laughably unsophisticated. ** 20. Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut (F) – True story about how a plague in 1986 effectively wipes out humanity save a rag-tag bunch stranded on the Isle of Santa Rosalita. A ghost (yes!) follows the evolution of this last human colony for 1 million years, then writes a book about it. ***** 19. Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut (F) – Bizarre, provocative, and captivating story about an American spy in World War II who is accused of committing war crimes for the Nazis. **** 18. Dress Your Family In Corduroy by David Sedaris (NF/F) – Collection of hilarious essays by this master of neuroticism and wit. **** 17. An American Spy by Christopher Hyde (F) - This book is sort of lame. It is about a JAG officer and a reporter/undercover intelligence officer who tumble upon a conspiracy by an American Colonel in Britain to sell state secrets to Hitler. There are inexplicable cameos (seriosly) by James Bond, Sean Connery, James Buchanan, and Ian Flemming. * 16. Rising Tide by John Barry (NF) - This historical non-fiction tells the story of the great Mississippi flood of 1927. It focuses on three things: the dynamiting of the levee outside New Orleans to “spare” the city from the flood, the empire-building/protecting of the Percys in Greenville and the politicking of then-Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover. The narrative is great, as is the interweaving of personal stories, and the thing is incredibly well-research. It covers the history of government policy towards the river, the impact of the Civil War on the region, and the dynamics of race relations throughout the south. It will be very interesting if you lack an understanding of this era. **** 15. Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris (NF/F) - Series of short, semi-autobiographical essays by a wandering, confused, drug-doing, witty, charming, caring, gay, bizarre man. It is insanely funny, like stand-up comedy without the Carrot-Top! I literally couldn’t put it down- I read the thing in one sitting. ***** 14. On the Road by Jack Kerouac (F) - This novel describes the travels and adventures of an American man and his buddies in the late 1940’s. It contains the best prose I have ever read (it is amazing) and, as the previous owner inscribed in the copy that I just read, “It makes you want to live!” ***** 13. Chromosome 6 by Robin Cook (F) - Dumb, but fun story about a medical-experiment gone awry, unleashing - not only a strangely charming, but murderous transgenic race of proto-humans in Equatorial Africa - but also a ridiculous quest by a NYC Medical Examiner to uncover who really killed a mid-level mobster and just why is liver was missing. ** 12. How the Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill (NF) - History book explaining the fall of the Roman civilization to the rise of the medieval nations with a spotlight on the role that Irish monks played in preserving classical culture during Europe’s Dark Ages. You’ll learn the differences between Celts, Visigoths, Gauls, and Goths; the differences between Angles, Saxons, and Britons; the real story of St. Patrick; why St. Augustine was sort of an ass; why Charlemagne was sort of cool; and why I am proud to be an O’Connell!! **** 11. Portuguese Irregular Verbs by Alexander McCall Smith (F) - Lame, plot-less novella about a neurotic and self-obsessed German philologist, which is really just a bunch of loosely-related chapters retelling mundane things happening to this uninteresting character. I think it is supposed to be a comedy, but I sure didn’t laugh. * 10. The Whole Shebang by Timothy Ferris (NF) - Easy-to-understand summary of the sciences of astrophysics and cosmology from the time of Aristotle to modern string theory. Explains the Big Bang, cosmic expansion, why there are likely more than a few universes, black holes, a little bit of string theory, and the concept of time. *** 9. The Beach by Alex Garland (F) - I hated this movie - mostly because of Leo - but loved the book. Tells the story of a marginally-crazy young man’s quest for excitement in the form of the perfect beach. Having found the idyllic community of travelers on a deserted Thai island, the boy watches it fall apart, only to realize that the island’s descent from heaven to Lord of the Flies is outpaced by his descent into psychosis. ***** 8. The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides (F) -An anonymous boy-narrator explains how and why he and his friends were obsessed with 5 sisters who eventually committed suicide in a quiet, suburban neighborhood. I haven’t seen the movie, but I hear it exists. I can’t imagine it was as good as this book, which I really liked, because the subject and style both seem hard to cinematize. **** 7. The Alchemist by Paul Ceoholo (F) - Mystical (like mysticism) novella recounting the life of a Spanish shepherd boy who follows omens, and the advice of a magical king, to Africa in search of his “Personal Legend”: a great treasure. The story is very short, interesting, and thought-provoking with, as my friend Jesse said, limited applicability to my own life. **** 6. So, You Want To Join The Peace Corps? by Dillon Banerjee (NF) - Formatted like a series of Frequently Asked Questions, this book provides a decent starting place for those considering joining the Peace Corps. And, hey, it was written by a volunteer who served in Cameroon! ** 5. Essential French Grammar by Seymour Resnick (NF) - Short book outlining the grammatical nuisances of the French language from the perspective of an English -speaker. Simple-to-follow, short, and focused on conversational application. *** 4. The Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (F) - Surreal story of time-travel, psychosis, and everything in between, revolving around the Allied bombing of Dresden in World War II. Really fucking cool. Nuff said. ***** 3. Rick Steves’ French by Rick Steves (NF) - Basic survival French handbook with focus on words/phrases that tourists most need. I imagine Rick Steve doesn’t really speak French.* 2. Dark Star Safari by Paul Theroux (NF) - Funny and insightful tale of a real-life solo trip “overland across Africa” from Cairo, Egypt to Capetown, South Africa in 2001. I read because it was about Africa, and I am glad I did - it was easy-to-read and hard to put down. **** 1. The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene (NF) - Science book for the general population explaining general relativity, quantum theory, and then focusing on string theory. Not too tough to understand, but it may send you digging through your garage for your college physics book to brush-up. ***

I can't believe it, but it's already been one year since I started life as a volunteer with Peace Corps in Cameroon. I haven't really sent out many mass emails as I'd have liked to, but I thought I better send one out for the 1-year mark. Things are going very well. Work is going well, I've made friends, not too many enemies, and I have yet to contract malaria (I think). My house has running water and electricity (and this doctor has promised to give me a fridge in a few days, which will totally change my life!). There is a cyber cafe in my village, Baham. And the bar behind my house (20 metres behind) has a TV where I can comfortably watch the World Cup and drink cold "Amstel". I even taught the guy at the "hotel" near my house to make pretty decent French fries. Life is good. :) Of the 11 Small Business Volunteers that arrived with me in June 2005, 5 of us are still here. I don't think I'll make is back to the US during my service (which officially ends in August 2007) but I plan to go to France and mooch off my family this fall. Anyone who is going to be in the greater Europe area this September should contact me. My Work I was initially assigned to work at a small, micro-finance bank but I quickly moved away from that project. The relationship was untenable because of corruption, a lack of motivation on the part of my colleagues, and the distance between my house and bank. After I moved away from working with the bank I sort of sat at my desk and spaced out for a while. I visited some beaches, rode some trains, crossed some deserts, etc. before I decided to find a new project. But instead of finding A new project I found several. I work a lot with the cyber cafe. In fact, they have just raised enough money to open a computer training school next to the cafe. They are going to train villagers in computer basics and I will help with some of the more advanced things. I also plan to use their facilities to teach some basic marketing and accounting classes in the evenings. I also taught a series of classes at the high school. I taught like 100 students - 5 to a computer - the fundamentals of Word and Excel. The school year is over now and the computer lab is sitting idle. I am trying to get permission to use the lab to continue teaching, but the bureaucracy here is even crappy than there. I hope it'll work out. I think they want me to offer a bribe, which I won't do. Then there is the Handicapped Center in Baham. In Cameroon the government doesn't provide very many social services, particularly to the handicapped. Also, until about yesterday, there was still a big problem with polio. As such, there are tons of people who were crippled by polio and now have no support from the government. The lucky ones are supported by their families. The unlucky ones are usually on their own. 11 years ago, the parent of one polio victim in my village started a Center to provide care for the handicapped people of Baham. It is pretty cool what they do there. I have been working with another volunteer, an Agricultural expert, to help them feed themselves. We have helped them plant new, more sustainable crops and I am in the process of designing them a website, so that they can solicit volunteers, funds, etc. from rich, snooty French people. There is also the Farm School. This is a local NGO that brings together like 15 villagers from around the county every year and teaches them the newest techniques in sustainable farming. The students are nominated by their villages, with the understanding that they will share their experiences with their neighbors, and live at the Farm School for about 7 months. I worked with them to incorporate budgeting, planning, accounting, etc. into their curriculum and helped the Agro volunteer to introduce them to new species that might be useful. Living in Africa The best part of my job is simply living in Cameroon. Every day brings something new. I am always meeting new people, shooting the breeze with friends, going to visit a new business, or going to a different village. I had a difficult time at the beginning socializing with locals, because, while I spoke French decently well, it was still difficult to understand them - there is so much slang in our use of language and context is so crucial. Now though, I feel totally at ease hanging out with people and I understand almost 80% of what happens! :) Cameroonians are overwhelmingly hospitable. Harassment can get really annoying in the big towns (or with drunken villagers). People love to point out that I'm white (and obviously loaded). I can now say "white" in like 10 languages. Seriously. Mostly people in my town have gotten used to seeing me. Once I learned how to fight back and the appropriate ways of laughing back at people, it really improved. I now know how to say "black" in 7 languages and "leave me alone, asshole" in 4. That has earned me a lot of street credit here. I am really, really lucky to have lived with a great family during our training in Bandjoun, and to have then been posted to a neighboring village. I get to see my homestay family quite often, especially the father, Victor, who actually works in my village. They are amazing and I have become very close to them. I'll really miss them when I do have to leave. The Near Future I'm going to be helping to train the new volunteers this summer. They just arrived this week and I hope to help turn them into lean, mean PCVs. I will be organizing several business skills and computer skills seminars this summer, as well. We are also trying to organize a week long basketball camp (I got a basketball!) at the "basketball court" (a dirt lot with a post and circle of rebar atop it.) This summer I will also continue working with the Handicapped Center, the Farm School, the Cyber Cafe and, hopefully, the high school. I am going to be studying a lot for the GREs this summer. I don't know if I want to go to Grad school, but I am leaning towards it. I'll at least take the test to see how dumb I am. Other than that, I'll be reading, visiting friends, and playing soccer and basketball. I'd love to hear more from you all. I have updates on some of you, but I want more! Have a great summer!!

I posted this "Wish List" a few weeks ago:

Things I wish would materialize in my mailbox:

4 AA rechargeable batteries 1 Team USA Soccer Jersey (to wear while we win the World Cup in June) Copies of The Altlantic Monthly, The New Republic, The Stranger, Seattle Weekly, Sports Illustrated, etc. (I need American culture) Oxyclean (my clothes are "rusty")

News regarding the Wish-list:

*I realized that I wasn't going to get a jersey in time to wear it for the World Cup. So the other day I decided to frantically look through the market in my regional capitol for the TeamUSA Jersey. Cameroonians love soccer. Unfortunately, I think TeamUSA is the only jersey they don't have in Cameroon. But, lucky for me, my mom called me that same day. She began the convo with "Blue or white?" I was confused, but she persisted. Finally she explained that she needed to know which color jersey to FedEx me. I choose blue, since I will be wearing it away from the States. I think she is sendin batteries too. :)

**I received this email from a friend from college. "Hey buddy, The purpose of this email is to let you know that I will be contributing to your mailbox in the near future as my collection of New Yorkers is scattered around my room the way beer cans were in college. As for my Maxims I am sending you, the heat of Cameroon should unstick most of the pages. Later, xxxxxx xxxxx" I have elected to x out the name of Garret Park in this email, because it might embarass him.

***This story is only loosely related to the wish-list, but I had to tell it. Megan sent me a copy of The Stranger (newspaper) before Christmas and I just received it yesterday (May 10). On the cover there is a picture of two Pikes (Tuttle and Handjob). The funniest part is that she didn't know that they are my friends. Small world. I open up my mailbox in Africa and find a copy of a Seattle paper... with my friends on the cover. It made me smile. And move. ;)

So, I was with two other volunteers yesterday and we had a really sweet day. We worked all day. We gave trainings on how to use a certain set of leguminous trees that improve the soil and can be used to feed livestock. It was pretty interesting. We did the session in the morning at a "Farm School" where they train peasants to incorporate more effective techniques into their activities. In the afternoon, we did it at the Baham Handicapped Center. This place is really sweet. It was set up 11 years ago to care for polio victims who'd been abandoned by their families. It lives on donations, selling the artwork the residents make, and eating the products they produce on the farm. They seemed really receptive and I was really, really impressed with all the work they do. Plus, there is a hot Swiss girl there... but she has a financee. Regardless, I think I am going to make them a website so that they can solicit donations from abroad. I'll keep you posted.

After all that work, the Directrice of the farm school invited to take us out to dinner. When we get to the restaurant, the nicest in my town, the Chair of the local development committee is sitting outside and buys us a round, thanking us for the trainings. Afterwards, we eat the best fish and chips I have had in Cameroon!

The Directrice left us (after treating to dinner), so we decided to wander through town and see what was happening. On Main Street (or what I call Main Street, since nothing is named as far as I know), we were called over by the VP of the town bank (not the one that I had worked for). He buys us a round and we have a weird conversation. He sings the praises of polygamy. Some highlights: "You aren't a real man if you don't cheat," "If we 4 were your wives, Andy, and you decided to make me have sex with you, then they wouldn't be mad," "The problem with Americans is that they think women are only good for sex... We know that you can make them work on the farm or clean the house too," and "I have a with here (in Baham), one in my village, one in Yaounde, and one in Paris. So, it'd be easy for me to be faithful if I wanted to. But I don't want to." We left.

We were walking back to my house when I noticed that Kim, the Korean nurse who works in my town, was sitting with another Korean woman at MY BAR. I wandered over and screamed profanity to startle them. It was funny. The new Korean introduces herself, saying in French that her name is Viole, which translates into English as "Raped." I assume she meant Violette (like the flower), but her language skills were sub-par. More on that later. Anyway, Raped offered to buy us a round, since she knew we are poor PC volunteers. At this point, I realize that Raped is really drunk and can't speak either French or English very well. (Although, I bet her Korean is killer!)

We accept and lead her to a more expensice bar, to milk her for all her worth. Twice during the subsequent conversation, I almost choke on my drink. First, when she says that here favorite part of Cameroon is to "fuck waza." In hindsight, I know she was trying to say "Park Waza" (a big animal reserve), but at the time it was shocking to here a drunk 33 year-old Korean women in ultra-tight jeans screaming "Fuck Waza" in my village bar. Second, after I responded to a question with "No, I don't have a girlfriend," she informed me that she doesn't have a boyfriend either, but does have many (in English) "men for sex." The comparatively polite, composed, and respectable Kim intervened at this point with some very loud and angry Korean. I don't know what exactly was said (my Korean is rusty), but it had the effect of silencing Raped for a while.

Because it isn't safe for women to travel at night, I walked the ladies to the center of town to find a moto to take them home. When I returned, my two PC friends were sitting at a table with a bunch of Cameroonians. As I approach, a stranger at the table asked me what I was drinking, and then ordered me my next Amstel. We all then argued politics and business. It was a refreshingly grown-up conversation.

Overall, it was a great day. 1 free plate of fish and chips. 4 free beers. And the eternal right to say I worked with crippled kids in Africa.

I have a big workshop/meeting thing next week in Yaounde. So, I thought I'd come early to Yaounde and stay at the "Case" (rhymes with Boz) for the weekend. The Case (de passage) is the volunteer house at the PC Cameroun HQ compound in Yaounde. Volunteers generally love it because...

1. The Case has hot water!! It may not sound like a big deal, but that is only because you people are greedy, well-equiped, SUV-driving, Iraq-invading, hot water heater-having Americans. If I want a shower, then I have to come to the Case; it is the only place I know to find it that won't require me to buy a plane ticket. I do have a bucket at my house. Sometimes I boil water, then mix it in the bucket to get a nice shower temp melange. Then I stand in my bathroom and dump cupfuls of showerish water over my head, pretending I am in the first world. I do this about once a week. But here, at the Case, they have real showers... and a bath, which I may just try.

2. The Case has high-speed internet. The Peace Corps Cameroon HQ compound has some kind of high speed trunkline and they let the volunteers patch in the three computers in our mini computer lab. You can download music, movies, etc. and put them on your IPOD... or even burn them to DVD. (Yes, the Case has a DVD burner!) I especially like that the lab (and, ergo, internet) is available 24 hours a day. With the huge time difference between here and the USA (now, 8 hours between here and the West coast) it is nice to be able to log on to AOL Instant Messenger at midnight... as you freaks begin to return home from work.

3. The Case has a nice DVD library and a TV. The TV isn't particularly nice and the DVD player is on its last leg, but the 200 odd DVDs still get watched. Often. Also, Gob bless Steve Jobs; volunteers now download TV shows from Itunes, Kazaa, etc. (Lost and the OC are particularly popular) and then burn them to DVDs. I am almost caught up on Lost. ;)

4. The Case is a free, safe place to stay in Yaounde, offering us access to the wonderous restaurants of Yaounde. The Case, like all US Govt properties in the 3rd world, has a veritable army of guards (some with assault weapons) patrolling the heavily fortified and isolated grounds. I feel completely safe, and in Yaounde, which is a tad scary, that is exceptional. (I heard a French lady was shot in the face the other day.) Anyhow, I still like Yaounde, because the best restaurants in Central Africa are here. There are a few Chinese restaurants (one with a buffet!), a place that sells falafel sandwiches, and even a sushi bar (seriously!) I love eating here... and then going home to the safety of the Case. Sunday, I think I will go to the buffet. They even have fortune cookies. Actually, they don't. They do have sweet and sour sauce though. No they don't, actually. Oh! But they do have black Cameroonian waiters that speak English with a Chinese accent. Flied Lice!!! I shit you not. It is priceless. Yeah, I am definitely going.

5. The Case has a washing machine and dryer. The laundry situation here in Cameroon is pretty dire. Detergent is hard to find, thus we use cubes of crappy soap for washing everything from laundry to dishes to faces. Also, washing with your hands is really hard (or so the child-laborer I employee tells me). And as the dearth of paved roads quickly and thoroughly dirtys every square inch of cloth that leaves my home, my wardrobe gets rather nasty after even just one sporting. But, the Case can come to my rescue. I didn't bring a single article of clean clothing on this trip. I just loaded up my bag with the dirtiest of the dirties and spent the better part of last night doing laundry. (And, yes, Mom, I did separate out the whites.)

6. The Case almost always has several volunteers to hang out with. Sometimes being a volunteer is really lonely. Depending on where you are posted and your coolness, you may go months without seeing another Westerner. And, as much as a hate Europe, Europeans, and anything Euro-ish, we can still relate much better to them in most settings than we can to Cameroonians. It is great to have the opportunity to discuss our lives here with others who share a similar, outsider perspective. And with Americans, it is even better. With other Americans, you can complain about Cameroonians AND about Europeans. Thus, the Case rules. There are always people here (and only Americans, because it only admits PC volunteers). It sleeps 30, but averages (I'd guess) 5 per night. Still, seeing 4 other Americans, for a PCV, is like waking up at a mall if you are my mom (which is to say that it is awesome.) We watch movies, play scrabble (in English, Baby!!), drink beer, whine about Bush (the President), share our "the first thing I'll do when I get home is..." speeches, etc. Overall, it is fun to be here.

Three cheers for the Case!!

Funny

So I was in the Adamoua province on my way to the Chadian border (a really fun little trip I took last month) and I had two funny experiences. I had been staying at the home of my friend (another PC volunteer) in Banyo, Cameroon on the Nigerian border. It was already well-known by then that bird flu was in Nigeria, not far from Banyo. The government of Cameroon, in typical fashion, didn’t do much of anything to tighten border controls (but perhaps standard bribe rates did go up a bit.)

Anyway, I am waiting in line to buy something near the “bus” (mini-van) station and this man approaches me and asks if I am from Baham. Because I am, in fact, from Baham I say “yes.” He informs me that he has seen me around town there; he runs a local restaurant in the market. Being polite, I pretend to now recognize him, and ask how he is, what he is up to, etc. Without a grin or a wink or any indication of guilt, he informs me that he is on his way back from Nigeria, having purchased chickens for his restaurant there – since “they are much, much cheaper there now.” I knew then and there that I would soon be getting an email from the US Embassy telling me that bird flu had arrived in Cameroon. I received such an email yesterday. Thank god that I don’t eat bird flesh or feces… not anymore, at least.

The other funny thing that happened on the way to the forum… er, in Banyo, involves a cute little language called Fulfulde, which is spoken by the Fulani Muslims of the Sahel all across West Africa. My friend who lives there speaks the language and one day she introduced me to her neighbor in Fulfulde. I have no idea what they are saying. From my end, I hear “Blah blah blah Andy.” “Blah blah blah Andy? Hahahahahahahaha.” “Blah.” “Hahahahahhahahahah.” “Blah blah blah?” “Andy blah blah. Hahahahaha.” “Hahahahahaha.” “Hahahahahahah.” “Hahahahhahaha.” “Hahahahahhaha.”

I thought they might be plotting to eat me or something so I interrupted (in French) and asked what the hell was so funny. They weren’t negotiating my demise but instead relishing in the fact that “Andy” is roughly slang in Fulfulde for “breasts.” My name means “tits” to a couple million Africans. Sweet.

Serious

So my position on foreign aid to the governments of and the NGOs in poor nations has evolved a lot lately. I used to be appalled by the fact that the US gives hardly anything to foreign aid compared to other advanced nations, but now I am not sure that it really matters – except from a PR perspective. I don’t yet have a clear position articulated, but I thought I would lay out some of my concerns and observations.

First of all, I think that most aid is really counter-productive. From what I have seen here, most aid money is diverted (stolen) by corrupt politicians and businessmen and NGO directors (really). This money is used to by them nicer cars & bigger houses, and to generally fatten their coffers. If it is the government directly, which it often is, then this money is used to bloat government payrolls and budgets, encouraging an expansion of the sickening nepotism everywhere around me. Overall, almost all of this money ends up propping up elites and their friends/family and not helping the poor. This entrenchment and deepening of inequality causes a sense of hopelessness in the population and seems (if I remember anything from college economics courses) to hinder economic growth.

Additionally, there is a real sense of entitlement here. Not a day goes by when I am not asked “What did you get me?” and “Where is my gift?” And it isn’t just the really poor. Relatively wealthy people are just as likely to ask for hand-outs here. It has inspired a fun little game among PCVs where we try to generate the best replies to this annoying hhabit. I often assert, “I gave it to you yesterday… You owe me a gift today.” and then walk away. It confused them.  And the average person here even feels that Cameroon is entitled to more money from the West. So many times, I hear, “You Europeans need to give us more money. We are poor. Give us money.” Aside from the fact that I am not European, I hate this.

Maybe you are thinking: “They are right. We need to give them more money.” If so, see above, then consider this: the sense of entitlement here really fucks with even internal Cameroonian activities. Driving through any city of Cameroon you will see thousand of half-built, abandoned buildings. Also, in many stores here you will find, for example, not a single can of tomato paste or peas, but 10 crates of toothpaste – enough to satisfy a village as hygiene-minded as mine for some 5 years. How are these related? Well, they are both symptoms of this sense of entitlement. These buildings aren’t finished because the owner was hit with an “urgent” request for money from some third-cousin or something in the middle of construction. As this loan, was never repaid, the building sits idle and unfinished. These shop keepers know this could happen to them, so rather than hoard cash or build half-buildings they buy huge, slow-moving inventories. “Sure, Cousin Stan – you said your name is Stan, right? – good. Sure, I’d love to help but I just bought this carton of 10,000 plastic ID-card covers and I am not going to have any cash until they sell. Sorry.” And you can’t hide your money in a bank because (1) banks steal from people here and (2) everyone in town can find out your balance by sending a beer across the bar to the bank President.

Okay, I have lost interest in this post, but you get the idea. Shit, man!

Biographical

I have stopped working at the bank. They were a tad (lot) corrupt and they weren’t really interested in improving their operations. So, I told my new boss (cool guy, American, just got here, but had been a PCV here) the situation and he said to stop working there unless they do some sort of grand gesture and apologize, stop sucking, etc. Since that won’t happen, I have had to rethink my working life here. First, I have started teaching much more at the high school. I had been teaching computers for two or three hours per week. Next week, I am scheduled for 12 hours. If I like it, then I may just keep it up. Also, I finally wrote the curriculum for the internet course I will give at the cyber café. Since it is so hands-on, I want to work with another volunteer. My friend Conan is going to come up and help one Saturday soon. I am just waiting on him.

The other big thing I am planning is a regional “Business Plan Competition.” The idea is to get a bunch of PC volunteers to travel the region doing free weekend workshops on how to start a business and write a business plan. Then, participants would have until X date to draft business plans and submit them to these board of judges. They would select the best few and the winners would receive partial financing of their project. I’ll let you know how it works.

Mountain Cameroon and the cast of Meteorite Man

Mount Doom!! Mwahahaha!

So I climbed Mount Cameroon over the Christmas Holiday. In fact, I celebrated Christmas at 10,000 ft over a bowl of burnt rice and plastic baggies of whiskey (charmingly called "sachets"). As depressing as I make it sound, it was one of the greatest experiences of my life. Roughly, we covered 55 km (34 miles) in the five days. We walked through lava fields dating from as recently as the year 2000. We walked for 6 hours through elephant tracks in the jungle and, while they aren’t as big as savannah elephants, I promise that forest elephants still leave quite an impressive trail of destruction. We never actually saw an elephant, but I think we heard one and then we definitely heard the chimpanzees screaming at something (probably the elephant.) Walking on their trails was convenient because the brush was cleared, but a little stressful. We had to be quiet so as not to scare an elephant into, well, killing us. Our guides told us all to wear hats (Richard had to wrap a shirt around his head) so that if an elephant saw us, we could throw the hat down on the ground, leaving the scent-driven and semi-blind elephant to attack my sweat-soaked headings while we ran for our lives. And, all joking aside, a Peace Corps volunteer’s mom was killed by an elephant here in 2002. So, I wore a hat, but never had to use it.

“Summit day” was roughly divided as follows: 5 hours struggling straight up, 30 minutes at the top gawking and patting ourselves on the back, and 4 hours really struggling straight down. Going up the last stretch was a nightmare, because this mountain has a nasty habit of getting incredibly steep and sandy (yes, sand!) as it gets higher up. Also, as we were some 11,000 ft up, breathing deeply was not too satisfying. Nonetheless, the view from the summit was worth it. (See pictures in my yahoo album.) On the way down, we struggled down a new slope on the other side of the summit for two hours until one of the coolest things that has ever happened to anyone (ever) happened to us. We came to this (huge!!) sand-slide stretching almost straight down 1,000 meters and some 80 meters wide. Naturally, we followed our guides lead and basically skied down the slide. It was so awesome. The sand was black-gray because it was volcanic, and fluffy because… of some reason. Anyway, it was so cool. You could actually slalom like you were skiing. It was such a great relief from the left-right-left-right of climbing.

Happy 2006! Would you like a side of ass in your face?

For New Year’s Eve we went to the Night Club owned by some American. Being a crew of white people, we were given the table directly in front of the stage where the bands were playing. It turns out that privilege has its privileges. The bands weren’t good at all, but they were having a good time and so was the crowd. Each of the bands found a way to include the whites (the freaks at table 9) into their performance. At one point, the fat, tightly-clothed, bleached-haired Rodney Dangerfield look-alike’s scantly-clad backup dancers were grinding their respective money-makers in the faces of my fellow Americans. (Not the Jack Lemon movie, but actual people!) I was, fortunately, flanked by the two girls in our party and hidden behind the table. It was the most unique New Year’s Eve ever. No count down, no kisses, no champagne (but we did drink Bartell’s and James Wine Coolers!), etc. But you don’t get high school-quality bands entertaining a thoroughly satisfied crowd of drunks at the nicest club in any American city.

Ramblings: Depression, Power, and Love

Here is a (crappy) poem reflecting my moody. It is called Dark.

Dark, light, day, night,

Life is this, am I right?

Sleep, wake, eat, drink,

Avoid knowing the truth, don’t think.

Dark, light, day, night,

Life is this, am I right?

Work, stress, hurt, die,

Will happy come to us if we try?

Dark, light, day, night,

Life is this, am I right?

Tunnel, day, coming to be

There is the future… Don’t you see?

Literary Analysis (not really):

The last month has seen the advent of heightened loneliness for me at post. I wasn’t about to let it get the best of me. So, after eating unhealthy amounts of Snicker’s bars and reading countless David Sedaris rants failed, I decided that, being naturally bellicose, I ought to launch a more aggressive offensive. I decided to spend awhile (climbing a mountain and beach-bumming) with several American friends and some native cicerones.

The hours of silent hiking and sunbathing, however, made my mind gravid with ideas of the future. My own uncertainty about what I ought to do now and after Peace Corps hectored me for hours. “Should I go to grad school? Which degree should I pursue? Should I stay in Seattle? Or even in the U.S.A.? Why get a degree when I could get a job? What is my ultimate goal? How do I define success?” I even felt incipient doubt about staying in the Peace Corps. “Am I being productive here? Is being here improving me? Could I serve better elsewhere?” I knew these doubts were inimical to both my happiness and any hope of answering the previous questions, but I simply couldn’t get them out of my head. I needed a personal guru, a nestor among wandering and wondering youth, but Punkie Brewster was in New Jersey shooting porn, so I was stuck with my own analysis.

Thus, I was forced to feed off my own psychological probity: internally voicing my best-left-unthought thoughts. “Nothing really matters. I am confident I can succeed no matter what I do. Then, why stay? Why go back to school? Why get a job at all? Why not just write a novel? You do like to read? Drop out and write a book in mom and dad’s basement! You could go home and live prodigiously. You could do anything I want. You have been living off pasta and iodized water for 6 months. And for what!? You could do more good at home. (Could I?) Well, hell, you could do something at home… and could eat well doing it.” What is the provenance of this new doubt? Why is my stentorian conscience saying that I have it all wrong? Why the sudden attractiveness to America’s sybaritic ways? (And why do old black men here straighten their hair and dye it blond?)

Perhaps it is because it is so hard to accomplish anything here. Every two steps forward results in 3 steps back. Want to teach a computer theory class? Good luck. “We’d love to have you teach a computer class at our high school. And, you won’t charge us anything? That is great! Be here on Tuesday at 3.” “You have on unheard message. ‘Andy, this is Cephas at the high school. We have to cancel your computer class. I didn’t get around to notifying the students. Maybe we’ll try again after the New Year. I’ll get back to you… maybe.” Do you want to offer an “Intro to the Internet” class (for free) at the local cyber café? Fat chance. “We’d love to have you run a class. It would really boost business and be great for the community. I just have to have the Council of Advisors rubber stamp the plan. Our next meeting will either be in January… or July. Probably July, unless it rains, then maybe August. I’ll let you know. Hang tight ‘til then.” Do you want to write credit policies so that your bank’s Board doesn’t have to do it? “Our first order of business is to vote on these credit rules… Great, they pass without objection. Our second order of business is to give all of the available credit to members of this Board without regard for the policies we have just adopted…. Okay, so overriding our own policies and national and international law, we approve stealing the money from the poor of this village. We are really taking this “lutte contre le pauvre” to the extreme! Good work, fellas! We can now have a really kick-ass after-party. Let’s all pat ourselves on our thieving backs.”

Or maybe it is because there isn’t really anyone to talk to about the problems here. You certainly can’t talk to the locals about it. “Oh Andy, I’m so sorry that the bank you work at stole all MY money. It must be really hard for you. Did I mention that I haven’t eaten anything but plantains since March? Oh yeah, and my brother just died of malaria and I’m pretty sure my girlfriend gave me HIV. But, yeah, sucks to be you with that whole ‘imperfect workplace thing.’ Do you think you could get me a job there? I could REALLY use the money - antiretrovirals cost an arm and a leg these days.”

I suppose I could turn to the other volunteers for some apollonian discussion of my problem, but that too poses problems. Namely, we are all a little dejected. (Well, I certainly hope I am not alone.) I think whenever we get together there is a sort of unspoken cease-fire: I won’t ramble for hours about my feelings and problems if you don’t. It works out well I think. I think if one of us started seeking advice about our deeper emotional dilemmas here it would turn our Bacchanalian weekends together into a pathetic cry-fest of confused one-upmanship. “Six million? Wow. Well, my boss stole EIGHT million francs from our village.” Perhaps it would work one-on-one but certainly not in a group. But I foresee issues with that as well. I think one-on-one complaining between volunteers here might devolve into sickening obsequiousness or, even worse, genuine emotional understanding. Either way, I have chosen a completely different strategy: living entirely in the future.

All I have been thinking about for the past few days are things in the future: my trip to Kribi next week (a popular beach resort), writing a novel (or even poems), acing the GREs, going to graduate school, moving to Europe or America, becoming Supreme Chancellor of the New World Order, etc. (Typical stuff for a maniacal suburdan American, I think.) Preparing for these things seems to make me feel better, but it certainly doesn’t occupy all my time – I have plenty left over for drinking baggies of whiskey under my kitchen table and trying to find my two missing cats (I think the neighbor ate them). And, there is still only so much reading, writing, thinking that one can do to prepare for something before you actually have to do it. And that is the problem. Doing things is never satisfying in the long run. Climbing the mountain was great, but it is over. Writing a book would be great, but when it is over it will be over. Kribi will be great, but it will be only 5 days. Graduate school will be a wonderful challenge, but it will finish before I know it. Everything ends once it starts. Perhaps that is why I can’t decide on what I want to do. What should the book be about? What degree should I pursue? Which approach should I take to community development in my village? What will be the best way to get into politics? Well, as long as I don’t know I can continue to think about it, but once I decide I have to do it, and then it will be over. And then I will be left to think of new things to do in the future (which will also be ephemeral.)

So, which good endures? Is there anything that will please me forever? I often think the only way to stay interested is to constantly accept new challenges, but I can’t take any challenge seriously if I think it is ultimately irrelevant. Possibly that is why I find politics so intriguing. A political race is a challenge with consequences which (may) endure. If you win, then you can change things for everyone. But, conceived as such, is power an end in itself? If so, then the circle begins anew. If not, then what ought one do with power when they have it? (Is anyone else thinking that June 7th would be great as International Andy Day!? Or, even better, the seventh day of the month of Andy could be International Happiness Because Andy Was Born This Day Day.) Is it enough to win or is a real victory found in actually deserving to win? I know I want to have power, because I love to win, but I also want to deserve to have power. But I don’t know what it means to deserve power, but I do know that I can’t believe that power is self-justifying. What objectively denotes merit? I certainly hope it is charm and Irish last name-ness. But, if it isn’t, what should I do to deserve my (future) successes?

Or is it love that endures? I certainly hope so. People to me, however, seem too fickle to stay in love for a long time. People change rapidly, they grow apart, they grow within, they shrink in other ways, and their ideas die and are reborn. (Think of the dynamism of Oprah.) What then is it that one loves about another? The me of today is certainly not the same me that was 2 years ago (and I can’t imagine the same me will be here when Hillary Clinton is elected President). So if someone were to commit to me, conventional wisdom would have it that they commit to the present and future mes. But is that reasonable? If we know we change (and in fact generally encourage it) then how static must we be to make love tenable? What core self must we guard sacred? How much can we change before the pact of love is implicitly violable?

We admire people who continue to love a spouse after an accident dramatically alters their personality. (The previous sentence regards Henry.) We abhor people who abandon a previously active and mercurial loved one who is emotionally and physically crippled by, say, an avalanche. What would we think if someone just decided that they would stop being funny and witty, even though those traits are some of the most important to their better half? Would it be wrong to leave the unfunny, but still kind Michael Bolton look-alike? Or what if a man moved across the world and could no longer communicate regularly with his love? Would it matter why he became distant (literally) or unfunny or crippled? If they consented to the change is their loved one off the hook? “Your husband is no longer entertaining because he consciously decided to be a dolt; therefore you can leave him even though you said you loved him” versus “It is wrong to leave your retard hubby because it wasn’t his fault that the nail gun misfired into his frontal lobe. You must stay with him ‘until death do you part.’”

It seems that this notion of consent is a bit weak. Did Johnny-No Jokes choose to want to not be funny anymore? No, you can’t choose your desires. He can’t choose to not think (whatever his reasons) that he should stop making jokes (maybe he found God or Gaea or David Koresh) anymore than his soon-to-be ex can choose to want to love an unfunny losers. The heart wants what it wants. (Stepdaughters sometimes included. Right, Woody?) But if that is the case, then love is not just practically, but also necessarily (and rationally), impermanent. That is far from a comforting thought. The solution, it seems to me, might be to distract yourself from these pesky logicalities and, instead, focus on the infatuation which seems easy enough to rekindle and the social pressures against divorce and promiscuity. If you never think about the reasonableness of your beliefs and actions, then you will never experience the ennui of knowing you are leading an arbitrarily determined life, but you will also never get any closer to the truth. Pick your poison.

So, Cameroon is eagerly awaiting the results of the recently completed national census. So are international organizations such as the WHO, World Bank, and UN. Most of those interested are hoping to use the census data, much of which sought to discern what the population knows about HIV/AIDS, to construct a more effective regional campaign to stop the spread of the plague. In a couple weeks, then, the wheels shall begin to turn and a new strategy will soon-after be revealed.

But, until then, maybe the government could adopt my strategy: take down these damn "anti-" AIDS signs. The sign is hilarious for an American (or maybe a Brit) until they realize that most people here don't speak English. Most of the Cameroonians I have asked understand the first four words: The Nation Needs AIDS. After that, they are confused. The "X-free" construction just doesn't make sense to them (even the Anglophones.) They don't talk like that and they don't understand it. And, just from a marketing perspective, the first four words are the largest, and "-FREE" is on a separate line from "AIDS." As a result, there are a significant number of Cameroonians who believe that the government has launched a large PRO-AIDS campaign. Wow. Try again, Mr. Health Minister.

My friend Jesse and I have these crazy ideas like trying to make ketchup with powdered chocolate instead of sugar (because we didn't have sugar) or like heading off on a 10 mile hike up a mountain at midnight (in Africa). Recently, we have been throwing this one around: a 10 month trip from Cameroon to Beijing, by land.

The "plan" looks like this: leave Cameroon in August 2007 when our service expires and head to CAR, DRC, Sudan, Egypt, Israel, Iran, and Afghanistan. Then we'd spend several months in India, hopefully sleeping in ditches and meditating under Mango trees (I'm reading Siddhartha right now). If Rohit is there, as he should be, then I plan to offer Jesse as his man-servant. From India, we would cross South-East Asia eventually stopping in Vietnam, where Jesse's girlfriend's family lives. We could stay there for a while eating rice and looking for POWs. After that, we'd head north, maybe even to Korea and Japan (if they aren't yet at war) before settling in Beijing where we will scalp tickets to Olympic events. I figure if I sell 10,092,232 tickets to the velodrome (which I hear is being designed by those Swiss guys), then we should be able to afford to fly home. If not, then we can always serve as mercenaries in the coming China-KoreaS vs. Japan war. I don't care which side I fight for, which I think would make me an excellent mercenary.

So, there are some questions that we must answer. For example, how can we get from here to Beijing with no money? How do we plan to communicate when neither of us can read or write language, let alone languages based on proto-Farsi? Won't we need to cross thousands of miles of territory where the indigenous populations hate America? Shouldn't we be scared of SARS, bird-flu, rivers of benzene, and Richard Simmons? Don't we need to surrender our Peace Corps passports 3 months after we leave Cameroon? Isn't this crazy? And, most importantly, how many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop?

If you have the answers to these or any questions, then please keep them to yourself. This is a journey of SELF-discovery after all.

Everyone has been asking me what I need sent from the states, and, after all, it is almost Christmas, so I thought I’d write a wish list.

Below are the things that I want but cannot get here in no particular order:

A book about Eastern philosophy, preferably an anthology of original texts (used is better)

A book about cryptography and algorithms (used also)

Powdered cheese sauce (I have heard one can buy this in bulk, but, if not, then buy Mac ‘n Cheese and send the sauce packets. Don’t spend money mailing pasta! It is much cheaper here.)

Deodorant (Any gel or solid is fine. I’m down to 3 bars and the only kind available here is Axe Body Spray)

Movies on DVD or CD (I can watch them on my laptop!)

Copies of The Stranger, Seattle Weekly, and The Daily

Pictures of friends, family, acquaintances

A world map that I could hang on my wall

Anything (books, CDs, etc.) to help me study for the GRE and the Foreign Service exam

Flea collars, so I can get a cat

A CD of new, popular MP3s (I want to keep up with pop culture, so that I will still be good at Jeopardy and Trivial Pursuit)

Underwear and/or boxers (size 32 waist)

These are things I DON’T need sent because they are available but that some people have said they might send:

Candy (except Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, which you should send, candy is available in the capital)

Soap

Medical supplies (PC gives us everything we need)

Also, don’t worry that someone else might send me the same thing. There is apparently a very active post-Christmas black market exchange amongst volunteers. 

My address is: Andy O'Connell, Corps de la Paix, B.P. 215, Yaounde, Cameroon

So I joined a tontine. For the uninitiated, a tontine is an ad hoc financial and social group (sometimes called an "amicale") common in Cameroon. Here is how it works. The eight members each pledge to bring X amount of CFA (that is Cameroonian for "dollars") to the monthly meeting for the next 8 months. After everyone has pledged and forked over the money for month one, we drew numbers. The person drawing number one gets 8 times X CFA in month one (today), the person with 2 gets it month two, etc. until everyone has had a turn. Additionally, the group makes loans to its members at a rate of 10% per month. Lending is completely voluntary. If you have extra money and so desire, then you can offer it up to the loan pool. After everyone has said how much they are willing to put in the loan pool, then people announce their intentions to borrow. If more money is desired than has been offered, then the group decides by majority rule which loans should be approved. Loans must be paid in full at the next monthly meeting. Also, whoever is getting the "benefice" that month (ie: whoever has the turn to take home the big money) provides food for the whole group. Everyone is responsible for providing their own drink.

The group is designed to allow people the opportunity to buy something large when they "take home" the "benefice." In the states, we might take out a small loan or borrow from our parents, if we need more money today than we actually have. But it is rather difficult here to get a loan (although my bank is trying to help) and parents can barely get by themselves. In the states we might also just save up the money in a bank account until we had enough for whatever. Here, however, it is expensive (relatively) to get a bank account and the collectivist ethic makes it more difficult to refuse a loan never-to-be-repaid to a starving, unemployed cousin. Thus, people in Africa have much more trouble amassing a large sum of money even if they have a relatively large income.

The tontine, then, is a powerful financial tool for the poor, allowing them to invest in their peers directly. Social pressure is used to ensure integrity and repayment of loans, as members are very close-knit. I just hope that everyone brings their buy-in when it is my turn to "faire le benefice," because I want to buy a matress.

So HIV/AIDS is a big deal and, accordingly, Peace Corps has made HIV/AIDS awareness one of its primary goals globally. Every volunteer is encouraged to do something to stop the spread of the disease. I took my first proactive step last weekend and helped with an AIDS education seminar in a village outside of Dschang. It was quite an eye-opener. It was two days, with boys attending on Saturday and girls on Sunday. The kids were all high school-aged or so.

The state of their understanding of the topic was amazing to me. We did one activity where we asked them to guess the HIV infection rate in Cameroon. The real answer is somewhere in the mid-teens, best anyone can tell. The kids threw out confident claims of rates ranging from 10%-100%, but most everyone thought the rate was around 70%. This gross over-estimation suggests to me that they at least understand that the crisis is severe, and that someone has been talking to them about HIV/AIDS in a constructive manner.

But, whatever there education on the issue had been, it was at best spotty. The kids knew some things that a reasonably well-educated American adult might not. For example, they were certain that tears could not carry the HIV virus and that breast-milk could. (Both of those things are true.) However, they were certain of some other things that were frighteningly innaccurate. Some of them, for example, thought that a virgin couldn't contract HIV the first time she had sex, so condom use that time was unnecessary. Another believed that it was necessary to wear a condom over your testicules. (At least, he is in favor of some form of condom use.) One inquired as to whether you needed to use a condom each time you have sex with someone or if you only needed on the first time with each partner.

Crazy shit.

So I decided to post a story that I was going to keep to myself. It wasn't that I had wanted to keep it a secret and it certainly wasn't that I thought this gem was too good to share - I, for one, think that humor, like influenza more enjoyable then you share it with others. No, my motives weren't those. It was just that my grandma reads this blog, and she is old. She isn't old in the sense that she helped with editing the original manuscript of The Origin of Species. And, no, she didn't vote for Hoover (she was for Al Smith.) She isn't even afraid of computers (or this prior-restraint dilemma we would not face.) She just hates profanity, as all self-respecting grandmas do. And, you see, this story involves profanity. But, after much reflection, and the rave reviews of my favorite focus group (mom and dad), I have decided that since (1) this story doesn't involve my (prior) use of profanity (although there are quite a few stories that one could tell from that domain) and (2) this story is really damn (sorry, grandma) funny, I must share it with you, my faithful readers. (Note: I have no reason to believe that anyone other than mom and dad read this blog and they have already heard this story, so typing this is rather narcissistic.)

So here is the F-ing story:

There is this girl that works for the internet cafe I frequent/work at. She speaks wonderful Parisian French (which I didn't used to care about) but painfully broken English (which has always been a bother.) The other day she came-a-calling at my house. As I don't know how to entertain visitors who don't speak English, I sat on the other side of the room and pretend to be busy with bank work, while she rifled through my things. (There is no word in the French language for "privacy." Really. Look it up.) She settled on my photo albums and began looking through them, occasionally asking "who is this beautiful woman?" ("My mom!"), "why are there 25 people in this kiddy-pool?" ("It's Greek Week!"), "Why do you have a picture of the Unabomber?" ("That is my dad... And he was acquitted!), etc.

I had settled into a nice rhythm of tersely answering pointed questions while pretending to be occupied with real work. This rhythm was violently shattered when she came across a picture of some friends at a hi-lighter party at the frat from this past year. The picture is composed of my friend Greg with his arm around my girlfriend Ashleigh (stay away from her, ass!) in the party room at Pikes. The black lights cause their white shirts and the hi-lighter (TM) handwriting on them to glow contrast dramatically with the dark background of the party.

The quite backdrop of my living room was dramatically contrasted by the eruption of my laughter the moment after she read what was written on Greg's shirt. She, in the perfect Eddie-Murphy-in-the-movie-Coming-To-America accent, loudly stated:

"Fuck me! I am a vir-gin!"

I prit-a-near (that 'word' was for you Grammy!) cried from laughing joy when she said it, and was so relieved when I realized that in French I couldn't (read: 'wasn't obligated to') explain what she had just said. Instead, I did what any self-respecting American would do, and any self-respecting grandma would endorse: I told her I didn't know and that she should ask her Aunt, the English professor.

I love Africa.

Some wonderful people (you know who you are!) bought me a laptop when I graduated from high school. It was a Toshiba Satellite 1805-S253, and it reminded me of a loyal steed: it worked hard, didn't drink too much water, and had a 3-year warranty. Well, 3 years is way up and I am in Africa anyway (where Toshiba Computer Systems of America oddly doesn't have a Licensed Service Provider.) So, like all good things, this little laptop stopped being quite as good.

Since moving to Africa (only 3 months ago) my laptop has developed three minor problems that I’d like to briefly discuss (with heavy use of sarcasm.) First, my screen has some issues with displaying video. I am not here using the word video in the narrow, provincial sense (movies, films, etc.) but in then broader and, I feel, truer sense of the word (any images whatsoever!) It isn’t so much that the screen doesn’t show any images, it is just that often it chooses to show the same image for extended periods of time regardless of what I do, the image of a “black bat on a dark night.” (For those of you that are slow, I am saying that my screen doesn’t work sometimes, that it just “goes black” sometimes. And for those of you that are fast, I am also quoting a movie starring Michael Keaton, but you knew that.) The screen does sometimes work when I “cajole it,” a process involving a lot of cursing and banging on the screen. However, all is not lost, as I am getting good at typing in the dark, and the screen cuts off one of the five routes that mosquitoes could use to attack my wrists while I type. (That is 20% less malaria per hand!!) Right now the screen is working, it occassionally goes 5 hours without blacking out (which beats Drunk Steve personal best by some 2 1/2 hours), so I may seize the opportunity to watch movie later.

Second, my battery has a minor problem. It seems that it doesn’t actually store energy anymore. It isn’t that the battery life is short or anything. It is just that it doesn’t store enough energy to turn the computer on or sustain it through a power flicker or even light up the LED indicator which shows that a battery is attached to the computer. Fortunately, the electricity grid here in Cameroon is far more advanced than that in the United States, making use of the perfect combination of Atlantean super-conductors and Narnian magic. In fact, since I have lived in this house the power has only gone out at least 4 times EVERY SINGLE DAY. But, because I don’t want to over-state the quality of the grid and I believe in full disclosure, I must say that my situation may not be typical, since I live in the same building as the power company in my town, suggesting others may (I stress “may”) have a less pleasant experience with electrical reliability.

Third, the sound card decided that only the left channel would work (even on the headphone jack). And today the right channel started to go in and out. “Cajoling” works a little bit here also. This isn’t funny at all. I’m serious. Don’t laugh at my discomfort.

I love Africa. (I just wish someone here knew how to install (or even sell!) a laptop sound card.)

This post will be two quick stories.

1. GODDAMMIT

So, I was having a down day and then it was followed by another down day. Fortunately for me I had a collection of DVDs that had been calling my name for quite some time - 24 Season 1. You see, I fell in love with Jack Bauer, Tony Almeida, David Palmer, and the whole 24 crew last year. I had missed the first 3 seasons, but my special lady (the girl I love!)(Ashleigh, btw) bought me the best gift ever for christmas, a little doohickey called TIVO, and it empowered my TV watching. More importantly, it let me participate in Monday night drinking marathons without needing to worry about forgetting important plot points in the latest installment of this wonderful counter-terrorism epic. Alas, before leaving for the wonderful jungle highlands of the Cameroon, I made perfectly legal copies of the 24 season 1 DVDs that I borrowed from a charming young lady at Pi Phis. So, when I was feeling down late one night, unable to sleep, I decided to give one a spin. Needless to say, 20 or so hours later I was completely engrossed in the tale, and then shattered by the realization that I forgot to bring the sixth and final disc for the season.

It was very sad.

But there was light at the end of the tunnel. I texted my computer savvy, swash-buckling brother and told him my plight. He answered the call to action, promising to expedite shipment of not only "24 season 1 disc 6", but the entirety of "24 season 2", and a nice assortment of (legally copied) blockbuster movies including "War of the Worlds" (which was released after I left for Africa!)!!! Now all I have to do is wait for the Cameroonian Postal service to process the delivery, the Peace Corps Cameroon mailroom to notify me, and a suitable excuse to visit Yaounde to pop up. Then, I will finally know whether Victor Dreisin will in fact be extracted from the secret prison buried outside Los Angeles and how Kimberely Bauer handles the drug charges she is facing! God, I can't wait! All and all, I estimate that I will be able to finish the first season in 6 weeks or so, which is 17 weeks faster than if I had to watch it un-fold on network TV (they have one two-hour special each season.) And, they say Africa is behind the times.

2. HAHA, they're dumb with language too.

I had lunch at my counterpart's parents' house in Bahouan today. We ate couscous (which isn't what you are thinking) and cabbage stew (which is.) It was pretty good. They thought I was weird when I used silverware to eat my food - custom is to eat couscous with your hands. Nonetheless, all was going well. I was enjoying my now-standard level of discomfort - I understood only half of the conversation that was in French (50% of the total conversation wasn't even in French... they speak "Bahouan"), there were five anonymous children staring at my from UNDER the table, and they were visibly frightened I wouldn't like the food. And then it happened.

Edmond, my counterpart from the bank, asked if I wanted to watch a movie. Since lunch breaks here, at least at the bank, are two hours I thought it might not be a bad idea. And even if I couldn't understand the dialogue in the movie, I could pretend I was paying attention to it, and thus avoid the duty to converse with the people present. (I make it sound like I don't like them, but I do! It is just taxing to struggle through a foreign language ALL THE TIME. I have become rather quite here. So, be nice to exchange students, they probably were cooler in their homeland.) I didn't even ask what we were going to watch, nor did I care. But boy was I happy when they popped in some VCD bursting with MTV Music Videos! I was thrilled not so much because I knew the words to many of these rap songs, but because they knew the words or - more accurately - the sounds made by the words. I assume (read: hope) they didn't understand the meetings of the words. If they had, then it was certainly strange to see an entire (extended) family sing (in unison) "I want some of your cream in me." I 'bout died. I love Africa.

One of the first days in Cameroon I made the classic mistake of asking a waiter to blow me. It was really only a mistake because I didn’t know I said it, not because he didn’t deserve it. After all, he did deserve it. What the hell was he doing in the middle of his country not speaking my language? I mean, if you make me speak another language, then how can you be shocked when I proposition you?

I wouldn’t have known I’d screwed up - save the shocked, but all common looks – if I didn’t I have one of those annoying friends who “speaks superior French,” as the Official Peace Corps Language Examiner so smugly concluded. Although, if Tim hadn’t been there – swallowing R’s and being generally froggy – then I may have ended up someone’s bitch.

It turns out that the verbs “excuser” and “sucer” are pronounced very similarly and that – as a lazy American – I mumble the “eh” sound at the beginning of some words, occasionally leaving a restaurant full of people convinced that I, too, noticed the powerful-looking lips of the food service staff. Tim salvaged the whole thing by saying (in French) something charming or witty, but I didn’t understand: I didn’t speak French.

Fast forward two months and I was on the other side of the “horribly-inappropriate-American-saved-by-more-fluent-American” tale…

Setting: Amity Bank, Bafoussam, Cameroon (West Africa, Southeast of Nigeria)

Motivation: Opening our bank accounts.

Characters: Moi and Will O… no, too obvious and I don’t want to embarrass him, let’s call him W. O’Nan.

We enter the bank and notice that, to our surprise, it isn’t half bad. We had been told the customer service was its strong point, but I was just happy it didn’t have dirt floors. And computers, they had computers! It even had more than two employees; I counted six. It was extravagant.

I alert the door-greeter lady (seriously, they had one) of our pure, account-opening intentions. She directs us to a desk (with a computer!) and a sleepy-eyed man appears to walk us through the process. He informs us of the basic requirements, including the requirement that we always have $100 in our account, a bitch of a minimum, considering that over-draft protection had been my best friend at good old U. Bank. Alas, we had no choice and proceeded.

Remember now, this is all happening in French, and I understand like 80% of what is happening, which means Will, as we will soon see, understands less. Also remember, that I am not particularly nice. I genuinely enjoy making others uncomfortable; not really pain-stricken, but uncomfortable nonetheless.

So, Will says something marginally comprehensible in French, but the walking-dead customer service agent is confused. I, still speaking the rudiment Franglais to which Will aspires, understand him and translate for the employee. Understanding, he reflects on the way Will had tried to word it and lets out an innocent little chuckle. I can’t blame the guy. I, for one, love it when Korean exchange students say things like “I want to love your dog.” (I’m never quite sure they don’t mean it.)

Seeing an opportunity to bond with a stranger over the misfortune of a close friend, I say something like, “Sorry about my friend. He isn’t going to learn French until he masters English. We are all waiting.” The man says something slightly belittling and I let out a hearty, exaggerated laugh – they like that here. Will picks up on the general tone of the conversation and seeks to defend himself. Big mistake.

“Shut up, my friend,” Will thinks he says. “My friend has a very strong lips,” he actually shouts.

Our representative of the notoriously-homophobic Cameroonian population politely asks for clarification.

Will – the sudden silence in the crowded bank informing him of his mistake – turns to me for assistance. I begrudgingly oblige.

Will takes the opportunity to sit silently for the next 30 minutes, while I occasionally remind him that he just came out in front of the bank. Will is from Kentucky, making the whole mistakenly-shouting-he’s-gay thing even funnier for me.

Things were wrapping up, and maybe Will wanted to get back into the good graces of Cameroonian culture by implying he had some serious drinking problems. So, as we leave, rather than asking if we can use our bank cards at the Amity Bank branch in Yaoundé, Will loudly inquires: “May I go to Yaoundé bank and drink there, please!?!?”

I love Africa.

We had our first provincial volunteer meeting on Saturday in Bafoussam. Despite my apprehension – I don’t like meeting, especially ones whose purpose I cannot readily discern – it was a blast. The meeting was pleasantly informal, being held at the only restaurant in Baf where (lucky us) one can buy draft beer. It was more an excuse for all the old volunteers in the West Province to get together to catch-up, and introduce themselves to the newbies (Jesse, Tim, Tara, Will, and me). We quickly dispensed with business and then proceeded to hangout for the next 15 hours! We went from Les Arcades (the draft-beer restaurant) to Anna’s (a volunteer in Bafoussam) house to a bar across from Anna’s and back to Anna’s. I got to know a lot of the volunteers pretty well, notably spending a bunch of time with Rich, Anna, Megan, Natalie, and Maggie.

Sunday was the game pitting the Cameroon Lions (the national soccer team here) against the Elephants of Cote d’Ivoire. You need to understand that soccer (football) here is sort of the national culture. There are some 200 distinct linguistic/cultural groups in Cameroon. There isn’t even a national language to tie everything together – they do everything in French or English – with the official linguistic divide splitting the country roughly East (French) – West (English). The religious situation isn’t any more uniting: The north is mostly Muslim, while the south is Christian. But football, football is everywhere. Football is everything. Everyone loves it, everyone watches it, and everyone plays it. And it isn’t like the states, where all the kids play little league and then quit sports at 12, or switch to tennis at 13. The only sporting option here is football and even most old men here play in soccer leagues. And the Lions aren’t just a soccer team, they are the pride of the nation – every Cameroonian knows that the only reason any European or North American has heard of their country is because there soccer team is historically great. And a Lions’ game isn’t just a Lions’ game, because, you see, the Lions don’t play but once every 2 or 3 months, and they are playing to qualify for the World Cup, which is the most important sporting event in the world. (Sorry Super Bowl fans, the World Cup is infinitely more popular.) Oh, and did I mention that if Cameroon lost this game, then they were basically (but not mathematically) eliminated for the World Cup and that the Ivory Coast is the only African nation in their group ranked higher in World Cup prelims?

So, given that cultural context I was really excited to see how Cameroonians – particularly men, and in bars – would act when watching this Lions game. And, I was not disappointed by the show. I decided to watch the first half at a bar in Bafoussam with Tim, Will, Jesse, and Anna. Anna knew a lot of people at this particular bar, so we were treated particularly well, and encouraged to engage in the random hooting and hollering that commenced some 45 minutes before the game even started. And when Cameroon scored and early goal, the man who nearly knocked my down running around with a Cameroonian flag quickly apologized to me and instigated a goal-celebrating chest-bump (which, until then, I didn’t know was international) with me. High fives and hugs finally simmered out some 5 minutes after the goal. And the trash talking was great. We at said-bar were fortunate enough to be in the company of 3 Ivori ex-pats who almost certainly didn’t enjoy the game as much as I did. Everything from “Ivoriens cause malaria” to “Ivoriens cause yellow fever” was thrown their way. At least, they have the couper-decaller. (Sorry, you wouldn’t get that unless you were a hip West-African, like me. J)

At half-time Tim, Will, and I went to Bandjoun to finish up the game at Chez-Guiewi (my home-stay family!) We arrived a little bit after played had resumed, so didn’t know that the Ivoriens had opened the half with a game-tying goal. If I had known, then I certainly wouldn’t have said, with a big smile as I entered the door to the house, “Papa Guiewi, ca va?” because I would have expected the angered “Ca ne va pas!!” response that it prompted. A tie here would do Cameroon no good, because they were already behind Cote D’Ivoire in the World Cup standings, and as the two countries are in the same qualifying group, only one of them can go to the World Cup next summer. So, the mood at Chez-Guiewi was decidedly less upbeat. The kids, having retreated from the living room to watch from the dining room, for fear of their dad yelling at them, quietly greeted us, but Papa wasn’t welcoming, instead dwelling on the impending demise of his precious Lions. But the Lions were to live to fight another day, because with something like 8 minutes left in regulation (a mere blink in a soccer game), the Lions pieced together another goal, giving them a 3-2 edge, and leaving only lowly Egypt between them and the World Cup. The celebration of hugs and high-fives and screams at the Guiewi’s spilled over into the “street” (mud path outside) and then to the a in Bandjoun. The whole town came out to celebrate. It was spectacular and, if I hadn’t stayed up almost the entire previous night, I might have joined in more actively. Instead, I just watched and learned.

Then Monday I just relaxed. I read the entire book How the Irish Saved Civilization by Cahill before I went out for lunch. After lunch I decided to clean and do dishes and laundry. Then Papa Guiewi stopped by and offered to take me out for a beer. I obliged, but didn’t socialize for more than an hour with his Cameroonian friends, before returning home to start reading Chromosome 6.

But today was a really good day. I totally impressed the staff at my bank in Bahouan. On Thursday, I had told them that I couldn’t come in on Friday, mostly because I didn’t want to. This turned out to be really bad for them because their computer system crashed Friday morning and they had tried and failed to bring it back on-line all weekend. They didn’t want to bother me this weekend, so didn’t even alert me, which is polite – I guess – but foolish. So, I arrive today to find out that they have basically been shutdown for 4 days and they beg me to try to fix their computers. They run some sort of custom Oracle-based database application server, which is way over my head, but even further over their heads. And, their tech guy lives in Yaoundé, so can’t come up until Friday. So, reluctantly I agree to look at the system, assuming I’ll probably make it worse and have to return home to flee the embarrassment. I look at the application configurations (which are all in French, I barely understand, and I don’t alter), run a virus check (which finds nothing), and try System Restore (which crashes twice and doesn’t ultimately succeed.) But when I return from the bathroom, my counterpart who had wandered in while I was away to check progress, runs and gives me a hug and thanks me profusely. Apparently, he tried the application again, it worked, and he assumed I did it. And, seeing as my French is bad and I didn’t want to explain that I’m a phony, and that I want to be respected, admired, etc. here, I just let him keep on congratulating me. Then, I took a half day. I love Africa.