How many times have I told each and every one of you I would update my blog?! Well...7 months (or more...who's counting) later, and the day has finally come!!! Although my stories may be old, or already heard by you my dear lovely reader, here they are, enjoy!

I wanted to atart by saying to everyone I saw while home during the month of June, THANK YOU! Prior to boarding the plane back to the states, I can say I was full only of excitement...the stomach twisting almost fearful kind of excitement. Upon the incredible greeting at the airport (with obnoxiously larg sign:>) and the first sight of several of the most important people in my life, I realized everything was pretty much the same as it always has been. And to me, that is a very good thing. I feel like my stay at home took away a lot of my worries, like "what if I don't feel like I really belong in the US?", or "what if my experience here will make me angry at the way of life and people in the US?" etc etc... all the complicated round about thoughts most of you probably prefer not to read anyways. Seeing the majority of friends and family in my whirlwind US/WI Tour made me only more excited to return home, to the people I can relate to, to a place where I feel motivated to work and be out in the public, and to somewhere where most of my good memories were made. In all honesty, I miss everyone already, and can't wait for about 4 months from now, when I can see everyone, or at least be forcing you all into regular contact with me again!:>) Thank you so much for all the generosity and lovelines and I will see you soon!

And now to start a few stories, bear in mind since I havn't written since early December, these are incredibly old...

I'll begin with the ever-popular animal and insect incidents!

First: I had my first, and I think only, scorpion meeting. At least I think it was a scorpion. It was about three inches long and looked kind of like the insect form of a lobster crawling around on my floor, so I made the assumption. I saw him lurking by my shoe shelves...and didn't know what to do about him. I know nothing about scorpions, except that they sting, but do they also jump, or flip, or execute other equally complex and terrifying moves? To solve this conundrum, I let him be (why also a male reference?) and just watched my feet, flipped over my shoes before putting them on, and tucked my mosquito net tightly under my mattress at nightime. In two days time, he had disappeared, and I'm still alive to tell about it, so I guess it worked out for the best!

I also had my first and seriously I hope only up close and personal snake incident (you may of heard this story but it seems to be everyone's favorite). It was laundry day, so the night before I had set my clothes in a pile right in the middle of thefloor (I do this so I have to do them...washing jeans and queen sized sheets in a 20 Liter bucket is not the highlight of my life.)

All the next morning, I took things periodically out of the pile, selectively avoiding jeans and sheets, and did my wash. The pile remained in place as I continued to avoid jeans and sheets and opted instead to wash the windows. During which time I walked back and forth past the pile approximately 42.5 times. Upon completion of the 42.5th walk by, I stopped about 3 feet away from the pile and turned to contemplate my plan of jean/sheet attack. Imagine my surprise to see a long black snake staring back at me! He (male again?) was clearly as surpirsed as I was, and he turned and, I can only describe it as ran, into my pile of laundry. At this point I yelled.

Placide, who was out of view of all this in the living room, stifled a laugh and asked me if it was a mouse (my anger and skittishness when mice run at me is not well understood:>) I replied by yelling :NO IT WAS A SNAKE" I didn't hear anything untile he was already out of the house screaming for all my neighbors to find sticks. Within a few seconds, I had several neighbors in my living room, with their respective large sticks. My landlady, a daring woman, whipped out her stick and gave my laundry pile several good smacks, at which time the snake bolted out with its head raised up off the ground. He was no match for my landlady though, who with several more direct hits dispatched him for good, and then dragged his body across the living room floor and out the door, leaving a nice trail of blood. Following this, Placide couldn't stop looking around at every noise, and he told me he was never coming to my house again...now I guess he understands how I feel abut mice! Typist Dad's Note: From Kate's description of MR SNAKE I think it was a Black Tree Cobra!

And finally... the last night I slept in my bed before heading up to Yaounde to take off for my trip home, I was nearly asleep, with my mosquito net (aka anti-invader protective bedding) all tucked in tightly. Suddenly, I felt a tickle like something was crawling on me, really quic, all the way from my should to knee. Thankfully I sleep with a flashlight under my pillow, just in case such things occur. Sure enough... a big cockroach was by my feet, running all over inbetween my sheets. Guess he(?) just wanted to say goodbye.

And then onto the ridiculous, outrageous and uncess art things people find it obligatory and often hiralious to say:

Exclamations from passing motto drivers are usually the most out there. One night while walking with Placide behind my house, a random man drove past and just screamed "get her pregnant!!!" it was awkard.

Then another day I was coming back from a morning run and came accross a bunch of my neighbors sitting out by the road, staring teh day with a nice glass of alcohol. My landlord looked at me, sweaty and full of mud and said "You should have been a boy"... what does one say in reponse? Thank You?

Another series of incidents happened when I was in Yaounde, walking from one bus depot to another. This specific area of town is known as one of the most intense and when you are white and have a large bage, the situtation is not made any better. In addition to the usual grabbing, pushing, pulling and name calling, one guy stopped dead in his tracks, sized me up and then loudly to his friend, "her body is perfect for having babys". Once again what do you say? Shortly following this, a young guy walking towards me, reached out, said "wow!" and slapped my chest.

Now this clearly requires some action. So I turned around as fast as I could, raised my hand as if to slap him and took a few steps as if to run at him. Clearly, he was not up to defending his actions and he took off running the other way, as everone around him laughed.

And then onto a more depressing and not so laugh-off-able situtation. I hate to have to tell this bad story, without sarcasm, but they're part of life, right? I was at my favorite omelet place one morning. As always the place was packed full, and with only one omelet man, Jackson, working,

service was slow. Also as per usual, one guy came up and sat down next to me and started harassing Jackson to work faster, that he had been waiting forever, taking eggs for himself from behind the counter and putting them in front of Jackson, etc, etc... I started getting extremely irritated by this guy, I was hungry too! Usually, people do this little harassment routine and then sit tight because, I don't know, maybe they see there are at least 5 other people waiting, who got there before them. I decided to politely tell this guy exactly that. I said "excuse me sir, but there are people who have been waiting longer than you"... apparently 1) that was the worst possible thing to say to this man, 2) he was having the worst day of his life and I stepped into it, or 3) he is the most terrible person to ever have walked the earth. I'm gonna go with option 3. He exploded at me like I have never expereinced. Which is saying alot since I have had every type of reaction to my existence, including several explosions of anger and hate...but this one took the cake. He went on and on "who do you think you are white lady", "Why are you even in my country", "You are doing nothing good here, go back to where you came from", "Why would you ever talk to me like that"...etc etc. in the loudest screaming voice, using racial slurs excessively, not allowing me one word in edgewise..so I could say what I wanted to "I am a volunteer, working for your country for 2 years for free, and yes, as a matter of fact I would REALLY like to go home, thanks for the fantastic idea, buy me a plane ticket and I'll be outa here tomorrow!" Also this whole time, he kept turning to several of the men at the omelet booth and asking them for confirmation on his ideas. Several of these men are people I see here many times a week, and Jackson himself I would consider a friend. Not a single person stood up for me. No one told this guy what I was really doing here and to leave me alone. No one said a word. Instead they just laughed and laughed and laughed, kind of nervously, until the guy calmed down and I had a massive tears in my eyes. I have no words to describe this situation now.. it was one of the times I would prefer to forget. I cannot say how angy or hurt I was accurately as someone who came here intending to do good things, and who honestly WOULD rather be back home and not around the anger and hate so often misdirected at me. It also bothers me that when I type this or explain it, it always sounds so nominal. I guess I'll just say I hope that I never ever happens again to me,or anyone. So, there's the bad story of the day... with minimal sarcasm.

Now for some stories around the village, to re-lighten the mood:>: Around Christmas time (wow I feel guilty even writing that, it's so far in the past) the Ebolowa market filled up with lots of imported cheapo plastic toys, "made in china" is the common mark. I noticed a lot of plastic dolls in the style of Barbie, that is to say white and blonde. One day shortly after Christmas Day, when several of the more well off families and given out gifts, I saw a woman I know and her little girl in town, with Barbie-esque doll in tow. The woman called me over and let me know that her little girl upon receiving the doll said first thing "I'm going to name it Kate!" no wonder everyone around her calls me "Poupette" (doll).. thanks to those "made in China", white skinned blonde dolls, being sold in Africa.

The kids around my house have also been as cute as ever. One little boy named Weston walked over onto my back porch one morning.... when I did my usual routine of attempting to look mad and yelling at him to stop looking in my windows, he showed me he was carrying a gigantic knife. I know kids around here, for the most part, can be trusted with sharp objects (machetes, files etc) but for some reason a 3 year old carrying a knife the length of his arm freaked me out a little! Needless to say I grabbed it from him and then carried him and the knife back to his house. His little sister, Lucress, also really loves hanging out on my back porch... she's the only one far too young to know better, so I usually let her(plus she's also too short to peep in my bedroom window anyway). One day I was in the kitchen and I heard her making noise outside the window. The she just started yelling happily "Gate-ah, Gate-ah, Gate-ah" ( which is how most kids pronouce my, obviously difficult first name). It was the first time I have ever heard her say another word besides "Mama"... it pretty much made my name. My name was someone's second word! Now, when she sees me sitting out back, she'll come around the corner with a big smile on her face, arms open, and plop right down on my lap. Last kids story...my 9 year old neighbor Laticia would come over on and off to watch TV or just hang out some nights.

One night we got into our "9 year old and 24 year old hanging out routine", which consists of me asking every question I can think of and then running out of things to ask and putting in a movie.

Anyway I ended up asking her when her birthday was. She answered with a confused "I don't know", I should ask my mom" . Imagine that ..what 9 year old in the states wouldn't know their birthday and make use of it accordingly to amass as much cake and gifts as possible! The she told me she had to go to the bathroom. I said OK, assuming she would go to my bathroom... but no, she turned to to outside to the latrine. I assured her it would be OK to use mine and showed her the door. A few seconds later she shyly called me in, and pointing to the shower drain in the floor, asked me if that's where she should go. I told her that she should use the toilet, and then quickly realizing that my house has one of 3 toilets in the village, asking if she knew how. Happy to report, she figured it out. Guess it's all what you're used to!

Stay tuned for the next blog edition, including more really old stories about work and travel!

Below is a writeup of Kate's 2009 Environmental Bike Tour of the South by Abby Rose Hyduke

What do a tropical rainforest, Lady Ponce and broken derailers have in common? The 2009 Environmental Bike Tour of the South Region of course! Now is the time to congratulate the 12 successful participants of 191 Km, from Ebolowa to Kribi Environmental Bike Tour.

The EE members conceived the project as a way to raise awareness in the South Region of the awesomeness of their surroundings. Eight Agroforestry and three Health Volunteers and one staff member, Donald Wirsey, participated in the actual execution of the trip, though many more were involved in the planning.

To prepare, Kate Legner & Mengan Conway, proud citizens of the route, worked tirelessly to setup morning programs in primary schools of the five target villages.

The additional volunteers, hailing from the Northwest, West, Littoral and Center Provinces, met in Yaounde Sunday, May 10th, before heading down to Ebolowa together in a van overflowing with trees, market bags of school supplies and bicycles. Along the ride from Yaounde to Ebolowa, we remarked upon the absense of farms and the richness of the thickly forested landscape, and with it the enveloping breath of sweltering humidity. We enjoyed our first meal together at a local restaurant in Ebolow, the delicious traditional dish Sanga, while being serenaded by the erractic beats of the South's own Lady Ponce.

The next day was not spent cycling, but in the classroom for our first day of environmental fun. After preliminary introductions, by the ever professional, Megan Convay, Nura Suleiman proceeded to explain the theme of the tour, "What is a Rainforest."

We were surpised to find that most of the students, aside from some geniuses in Kribi, didn't realize that they were indeed located within a living breathing rainforest.

Caitlin Scholl & Ben Wixson broke out the world map and made sure the students understood where rainforests are found and led a song to help the class remember the continents - even Antarctica and Australia. David Hanson, Danny Quinn & I explained the different levels of a food chain and enhanced comprehension through a predator prey tag game. David Hanson was repeatly tagged and devoured by 10 year old girl predators when he participated. Megan Conway was tagged by the director of the primary school in Bipendi. Jessica Coloy, Emily Haines & Nura Suleium led a sobering game highlighting the competition for natural resources amongst animals with increased human encroachment on dwindling habitat. Seth Shapiro, Megan & Kate held integral roles in keeping time, efficiently guiding groups between work stations and keeping our bikes safe during recess time.

The second portion of the program focused on the effects humans have on rainforests. Danny Quinn arranged a trash sorting contest and explained to students the value of compost; Cailtlin tirelessly demonstrated the importance of keeping our water sources clean; Emily emphasised the concept of recycling and showed the classes one more way we can reused plasltic bags by braiding them into multipurpose ropes.

The program culminated with a reflective activity, in which the students foliated a paper tree with ideas of how they could continue to protect the environment in their daily lives, followed by the presentation of a bag of school supplies, generously donated at the urging of Jessica Colopy's mom and several trees to be planted for shade and beautification at a later date.

In the afternon we introduced ourselves and our misson to the clubs UNESCO and Amies de Nature at the bilingual secondary school and helped them create an action plan for the following school year, as well as create goals for their own futures. The first day of teaching went off as smoothly as we could of hope for, we took it as an omen for good things to come.

The second day was devoted entirely to biking the longest stretch of the trip, 72km from Ebolowa to Lolodorf. We had hired a vehicle to transport supplies and Donald, David & Caitlin had done quick checks on all our bikes the preceding evening. We were invincible as we rolled towards Lolodorf, turning off the paved road onto a decent dirt road. Unfortunately our bikes were not, as the condition of the road degraded and mud created form the previous evenings shower clogged our gears and derailers, mocked the efforts of our aspiring brakes, and coated our wheels to the point of eliminating traction. By 9am, the first of us were arriving at the 30km mark, followed intermittently by disgrunted cyclists and broken bikes. A good three hours was spent removing mud from delicate mechanisms and preliminary reparations by our saviour, Donald Wirsey. Everyone agreed that the second half of the ride was much more agreeable, but we rode into Loldorf much later than anticiapted and exhausted. Donald sedulously worked on the bikes the entire next day and joined by Caitlin and David after a smooth morning program.

The 17km bike ride to Ngouvayang on the fourth day was a breese at a consistent decline through patches of thick forest and past sleepy villages. Ngouvayang was my personal favourite stop of the trip. We stayed at a guest house located at the Catholic Mission Hospital, powered by solar panels and overlooking the breathtaking Ngouvayang Mountains. There was a boarding school on the hospital camps for the children of the forest dwelling "pygmy" tribes who graciously performed traditional dances and songs for the volunteers after the mourning program.

The 33km ride to Bipendi was equally effortless and we setup for the night at another private boarding house, before heading to the school and being surprised at the record turnout for a Saturday program. In the afternoon we split into 2 groups. One group took care of creating a priority needs list at the Lycee and the other group decided to incorporate the boarding school into our program. While the volunteers demonstrated proper technicques for planting a tree next to the preschool, the kids demonstrated that proper way to throw a spear at a rolling ball.

Shown up by the children, the volunteers broke out a Frisbee and educated the population on proper disc throwing. Bipendi might just be the hottest little corner of the South Province, so we headed out as early as possible to complete our final leg of the tour.

Giddy, with the taste of victory, the purported 68km Kribi left us undaunted, despite what I would personally consider more hills than it should take to get to sea level and we all arrived, more or less in one piece before noon.

The final day's program was greatly assisted by the collaborating Ministry of Forestry & unfortunately abbreviated by the schools preparation for the 20th of May. We were unamimously impressed with the level of enthusiasm and engagement from the students at both the elementary and secondary schools and agreed that Kribi is not a bad place to culminate a triumphant, yet physically demanding week of work. Though I personally vowed to never ride a bike again several times during the trip, I have since had a potentially misguided change of heart.

In total, we can estimate that 300 students from Ebolow to Kribi were able to participate in our interactive program and directly benefit from the increased knowledge of their unique ecosystem. Over 200 secondary students participated in afternoon programs and were exposed to community needs and priority ranking techniques, drawn from PACA resources. Teachers and directors of participating schools were present with resources in the form of school supplies and manuals of potential EE activites, and trees, not to mention the numerous conversations with people who were curious as to the meaning behind our traveling spectacle along the way.

Many thanks to all who helped bring about the realization of the epic event:

PC Admin, especially Sylvie Ngoube for her enacious support with PCPP details.

Agroforestry APCD, T. Tkik Manga.

Megan Conway & Kate Legner get the extra props for being stellar cordanatrices and for their indefatigable optimism.

David Hanson & Caitlin Scholl for not only teaching, but also volunteering as bike techs along the way, Caitlin for putting together the resources manual.

Gabe Albin for the spectacular t-shirt design.

Jessica Colopy's mom for donations of school supplies from the states.

All the people who pledged their support through PCPP, especially the Legners.

Our driver and guardian angel, Emmanual, the participants themselves, volunteers and school children included.

Most importantly, Donald Wirsey who not only fixed our bikes tirelessly, but also reminded us all of the countless rewards that follow sucessful conclusion of a good challenge.

Dear Noah, Thank you for thinking of me to visit with your flat body. You had quite the adventure here in Cameroon! I am only sorry that my response will be getting to you much later than your teacher had requested. Though, I hope by the time you get this e-mail you will still be able to share the story and pictures with your classmates. “Flat Noah” arrived in the country of Cameroon in the first week of May. Cameroon is a country on the West Coast of Africa. If you look at a map of Africa, you can easily find Cameroon by looking at the part of the coast which curves inwards, and looks like it is in the armpit of the continent. Flat Noah arrived in the capital city of the country which is called Yaounde, you say this like “yah-oooon-day”. This is the city where the most important members of the government, and even the president live, just like in the US capitol of Washington DC. Our president here is called Paul Biya. From Yaounde, Flat Noah traveled by bus to my home in Ebolowa. If you look on a map you will be able to see the capital, Yaounde, as well as my, city which is located further to the south. Upon arriving in Ebolowa, Flat Noah arrived just in time to participate in a great adventure with me and several other friends of mine. My city, Ebolowa, is in the South Region of Cameroon. In this country we have 10 regions, which are kind of like how the US has 50 states. My region, the South, is a very special region. It is one of the 2 regions in Cameroon that is mostly covered by tropical rainforest. The rainforest we have here is known as the Congo River Basin rainforest. It is the second largest rainforest in the entire world, and I am lucky enough to live there! The people in my city and surrounding area are called the Beti people. This is just a way of naming this group of people who share similar languages and traditions. The main languages Flat Noah heard on his visit were a language called Boulou (say “boo-loo”), and French. If you want to practice saying “hello” in these languages you can say “bonjour” in French and “mbolo” (say it like “em-bow-low”). Flat Noah got a chance to see a lot of the different people in my village as well as several different animals. He saw farm animals who get to roam around free here, like goats, pigs, chickens, and dogs and cats. He also saw many big insects like grasshoppers, spiders, cockroaches, and other wild animals like lizards, grey parrots, and even a monkey who lives in the neighborhood! After Flat Noah had a quick visit in my village he waited with me for the arrival of a few friends, who are also volunteers in the Peace Corps like me. One of my projects that I have been working on while volunteering in Cameroon is Environmental Education. This means that I go into schools and work with kids like you and your first grade class and teach them about different things in the environment. Some friends and I had the idea that we should use our bikes to travel to different villages and different schools around my town of Ebolowa. Since we are in the rainforest, we wanted to teach kids about the rainforest, how people sometimes hurt the rainforest, and what people can do to help protect it. Most people here love the forest, but it’s a struggle for them to be able to farm and provide for their families while also protecting the natural resources and animals. We decided to ride our bikes because this way we could travel further, but not have to use cars and create more pollution or use gas. Thus, Flat Noah got a special seat on the handlebars of my bike for the entire bike trip! We started in Ebolowa at my house and then visited 4 other towns, which you can also try to find on your map (although some of them might be too small to be written). During the next week we visited Lolodorf, Ngovayang, Bipindi, and finished in Kribi. Flat Noah got to ride over about 100 miles of the most difficult roads in the country, some that cars can’t even use. Roads that pass through very thick parts of the rainforest, pass waterfalls, go through tiny villages, and finally come out at Kribi which is a city on the Atlantic Ocean. Here he got the chance to see beautiful beaches, more waterfalls, and see the sunset over the Ocean. It was a good way to end Flat Noah’s trip to Cameroon! I will attach two pictures of Flat Noah on his trip. First is of Flat Noah with me, and our shared bike. This picture was taken on the road between the two towns of Ngovayang and Bipindi, in a very beautiful part of the forest. It may be hard to see, but there is a large waterfall in the distance behind all the trees. It was one of my favorite spots we passed on our trip. The second picture is of Flat Noah and several village children in Bipindi. Many people noticed Flat Noah on my bike and called him my “little brother”. These kids were interested to see your picture and hear the story of Flat Noah. Thanks for coming on our bike trip! Good luck finishing the school year and have a great summer! -KateP.S. Flat Noah had a difficult ride and got a little muddy and worn out by the difficult trip, so I am unsure if you would like him returned to you. Let me know and I can send him back if you would like!

My travel stories!

The month of November was chock full of traveling…looking back at my calendar I realized I slept in my own bed about 4 times. It was nice though to get out of here for a bit, and I had a lot of good…and as always…interesting experiences.

NORTH

In the beginning of the month I took a trip up to the northern regions of Cameroon. To get up there it's a bit different than the travel I'm used to…we took a train, which left ON TIME (unheard of). It was great because the trip ranges from 12-15 hours (exceptions for breakdowns/derailment which aren't all that uncommon) and it takes place at night, so doesn't take up any daytime hours. We didn't want to splurge the extra 20 dollars for the sleeper cars so we ended up in first class…which compared to the buses and cars we're used to was extremely comfortable: own seat, cushy seat, bathroom, etc, and also avoids sharing your seat with a goat or chicken or unknown baby as occurs in 2nd and 3rd class. Thing is, I always underestimate Cameroonians. A big group of gendarmes (police) were sitting in the back of our car and felt it their right to scream about dowries and women's role in a marriage until 1 am while the rest of the car was trying to sleep. And when I say "scream" I'm hardly exaggerating. The train took us up to Ngaoundere, which is in the Adamoua Province. From there we immediately got on one of the more familiar modes of transport and made our way up to Lake Lagdo in the North Province. We stayed at this AMAZING hotel…I think by American people standards it would even be considered amazing. Beautiful lake and scenery with a room overlooking it all, great flowers and little huts all over the property…if that's any kind of explanation. I started it here and then continued the rest of the trip asking everyone for a "Peace Corps Discount"…and ended up getting some pretty fantastic prices! Sadly, swimming here was out of the question since the lake is reputed to have given 3 volunteers Shistosomiasis, and about a mile down shore we noticed a giant garbage dump situated ½ into the lake along with 2 enormous dead and bloated pigs floating around. It was one of those times where the difference between the haves and the have-nots was glaringly clear. When we awoke in the morning you could hear baboons snarling (like dogs) on the hillside right beside the hotel. I "scanned the area" (thanks Dad) and located the baboons on a rock relatively close by…pretty cool.

After Lake Lagdo we continued up north, passing thru the North Province and it's capital city Garoua…really hot and pretty dingy. We stayed long enough there to drink these amazing fruit smoothies at a restaurant next to the bus depot. I'm not sure why the South has yet to discover smoothies…there are fruit trees everywhere…the North really has this down. Made my life. We ended up in Maroua, which is the capital of the Extreme North Province. Maroua was beautiful! Of all the cities in Cameroon it is a definite that Maroua is the most clean, most beautified, and also the people were relatively chill. For our first day in Maroua we hired a Land Rover and a driver to take us to Lake Magga, which is a lake forming part of the border between Cameroon and Chad. We were traveling in style, each in our own seat in this comfy vehicle…and the reactions of people in the villages we passed were apposite: several kids running after the car and asking us for money and school supplies. It's obvious the impact that "whites" have had in this area versus down by me as far as the increased frequency of "aid" or handouts and how people up there have learned to expect it. Aside from that people were also much more welcoming and not as into the derogatory remarks. Also…who knows the cause and effect of all of this…I appreciated the differences in culture up there for the time being, but (how sad is this) I have adapted so well to the culture in the South I started to miss being able to yell at people, tell it like it is, and insult them to get my point across. I got myself into a fair share of awkward situations up in the North when I would start screaming to make my argument. No wonder they call us in the South "savages"! :>) Anyway…Lake Magga…we hired a pirogue (like a wooden canoe) to take us out on the lake in search of Hippos. We spent about 2 hours out motoring around in the extremely hot Sahelian sun before being told by our guide that we could "enter into the reeds on foot with water up to our chests to find the hippos but it was almost sure that we would get seriously hurt or bitten" and subsequently deciding maybe it wasn't worth it. Now, I never understand the international waters stuff…where one country ends, where another starts, but whatever I'm saying I was in Chad! On the way back we stopped at Pousse, also on the border, and visited the market there, trying out lots of different new foods along the way. The return trip was not so luxurious as the trip out. The rear tire decided to start falling off. I don't know much about cars, but the nuts and bolts holding the tire on were stripped or something of the like and every 10 minutes or so the tire would start making a horrible noise and we'd have to stop and retighten everything. At one point our guide decided to change the tire completely, and we decided to not stick around for the rest of it. After 5 hours to cover about the distance we'd done in 30 minutes we decided to find alternative transport. No customer service with these "tour companies" and guides. The guide stayed with the car. Danny and I got a ride in a Sonel (power company) truck hauling a million light posts on the roof, with 8 people in the pickup truck cab and me sitting next to a really creepy man that strongly resembled those flying monkeys from the Wizard of Oz. Jessica and Rachel got a ride in the back of a truck bed. Becca got a ride on a motto… We all made it home MUCH later than anticipated. And then of course ended up paying full price for the "tour" in addition to the other 3 girls having to pay the truck and motto that picked them up. The next day we spent in Maroua visiting the art market there and buying lots of leather goods and some silver, 2 of the crafts the area is known for. It happened to be the day after US Election Day, and I cannot even express how excited everyone was about Mr. Obama's win. The ENTIRE day and pretty much the whole rest of the week people put aside all exclamations such as "WHITE!" and instead would just yell "BARAK OBAMA" after us down the street. Big improvement in my opinion :>) The following day we headed out to Rhumsiki, which is reputed to be one of the more touristy places in Cameroon…we did see a fair share of white skin. >From Maroua one takes a car to Mokolo, a small town en route to Rhumsiki. The cars to Mokolo weren't of the highest quality, but clearly since we were having luck this trip; we got a car with some sort of overheating problem. At one point we stopped and had no clue what was going on (people never really inform you, like "sorry folks, we are having some technical difficulties" is something I have never heard in this country full of "technical difficulties" :>) ) until the driver lifted up the front seat to access the engine, poured a bunch of water on it, and thus created a scalding hot water geyser that sprayed a bunch of the passengers. He never even said "sorry"…jerk! From Mokolo we debated with a big pack of motto drivers about prices (this was really frustrating in the North too…they KNOW whites have money and REALLY try to rip you off) to get to Rhumsiki, and finally took off on a long motto ride out to this village that borders with Nigeria. Rhumsiki ended up being fantastic. We stayed at another really nice hotel, WITH A POOL!, and an incredible view and a hot shower, and all these amazing things. Rhumsiki also boasts a restaurant called the "Vegetarian Carnivore" which features nothing less than vegetarian food. I could not believe this. We ate there both days we were in town. 5 courses: fresh bread with corn/rice/wheat flour and dipping sauce, salad, squash soup, vegetable pizza, fries, and fruit…all homemade of course, and so far from everything! It was great. For our full day in Rhumsiki we hired a guide to take us on a hiking trip. We didn't know what we were getting ourselves into! Started early and hiked around and down into the valley, the area is very hilly with lots of rocky outcrops, extremely picturesque. At the bottom of the valley we visited several homes of villagers who did some small crafts and bought souvenirs. After that point we climbed back up a pretty steep ridge, in the heat of midday…fatiguing! Then we decided we wanted to continue to cross the border of Nigeria, which our guide told us would take roundtrip about 7 km. This was a lie…several hours later, after crossing into Nigeria and walking through a whole bunch of random villages and farm fields, we had covered 33 km (!!!) and finally made it back to the road leading us back to Rhumsiki. The blisters lasted for about a month after. (That is NOT a lie!) Holy cow…thank god for the pool. Following this the guide came back to the hotel to find us and drag us out to watch the sunset from a ridge up the road…this man had ridiculous energy! We returned the next day to Maroua and spent one final day walking the tree lined shady streets, and visiting the art market. We even ended up at a restaurant that boasted hamburgers like McDonalds. Oh…globalization…

From Maroua we returned to Ngaoundere, passing through a "national park" and seeing several baboons right next to the car along the road. We spent 2 nights in Ngaoundere, visiting a few volunteers from our training group who are working up there, before continuing back to Yaoundé…and then home. Overall I really enjoyed my trip, even if purely for the fact it was nice to stick out like a sore thumb a little less and be able to do things like swim in a pool and buy things without worrying about everyone in town knowing about it! I told my neighbors I was going up there to "work". I'm such a liar.

Cultural Festival

A few days after returning from the North I left to take part in the Moghamo/American Cultural Festival, which was a result of the hard work of my friend Seth, a volunteer in the Northwest Province. Seth had been working on planning and organizing this event for several months and we all expected it to be pretty cool, but it was incredible! By the end of the day there must have been over 1000 participants! It took place at a soccer field around which they built booths for Cameroonian and American (us Peace Corpsies) to present pretty much anything we wanted. Most of the volunteers had booths related to their area of expertise; Kim and I did a soy booth. The Cameroonians also had similar informational booths, as well as booths displaying art, music, culture, and selling food. In the middle of the field there were performances most of the day consisting of things either culture deemed important to present. Mainly: dancing. It seemed like every single person was in traditional dress and or came out to dance in a variety of different traditional dance groups. My eyes started to blur by hour number 3 of traditional dance presentations, but then again, the Cameroonians weren't all that impressed either by our renditions of a Michael Jackson performance, a Peace Corps rap, or the American football demonstration. What they did like however was the hip-hop dance that I and 7 other volunteers performed…oh what an interesting experience that was. Having learned the dance about 2 hours before, I could never imagine myself going up in front of several hundred people to awkwardly dance in America…maybe this country has really done great things for my confidence…or given me the inability to realize when I'm making a huge fool of myself! We were to go on "stage" to start our dance after one of the many traditional dances. It was later in the afternoon when things started to get a little crazy (example: some guy with a torch was dancing and went nuts running around trying to light another guy on fire…), so when they told us to just hold off a second because they were about to sacrifice a goat as part of the dance, we thought nothing of it. Suddenly one of us realized what this "sacrifice" really entailed, and THANKFULLY I looked away in time to miss if. The large dancing group had split into 2, one group grabbed the goat's legs, the other grabbed the rope that was tied around its neck, and then began a rather gruesome game of tug-and-war. Due to the fact I missed the actual tearing off of the head, and only saw the man running at me with the bleeding headless body, I can talk about the incident without gagging! As soon as the goat was cleared we were given the go ahead, and making our way with difficulty to an area free of freshly spilled blood, Ludacris started singing, and we started dancing…Just another day in Cameroon. Other fascinating tidbits we taught Cameroonians were the Macarena and how to do the wave around the stadium…clearly the only important aspects of our culture :>) The night prior to the festival we had the chance to perform in our band for Seth's village. We charged 200 cfa (40 cents) admission and donated our 20 dollar earnings to a local farmer's group. The performance was pretty hilarious. We ended up screaming to be heard and then just playing the same songs over and over (same as they do with their radios) as everyone got crazy and danced and danced. I relinquished my plastic tambourines to pickup dancing for a backup dancer who couldn't make it. It was a lot of fun and exhausting! We were also given the opportunity to meet Seth's fon (pronounced faune), who is like the chief of his village. He hosted a big dinner for all the band members and we got to see his collection of leopard skins and take pictures with him (without touching him…even if you shake his hand it's considered VERY disrespectful) …exciting eh?

Journee de Soja

Following the cultural event I traveled back down South, and then even deeper south, to the town of Mvangan, where 2 volunteers are located. I visited last year, way back during training, when I came to Ebolowa on site visit. This was the place I'd gone that has up to this most recent visit remained one of my most dreaded car rides, and thus I hadn't been back since. This time around I couldn't even remember what I'd been complaining about…granted they had redone the roads (filled in the washout areas to the best of their ability) and I got a ride there and back with the doctor of Mvangan, and then the police officer, in their nice comfy cars…and it only took 2 hours! Compared with the 6 or 7 last time, it was fantastic. This is the post of the other agroforestry volunteer in the South, and she planned a "Soy Day" event that I attended. The event itself got pretty frustrating for her…a lot of promises that weren't fulfilled and people that didn't show…it was interesting to make the comparison between how 2 events (the Cultural Festival and Soy Day) take place due to the 2 very difference cultures they take place in. Oh South Province… She ended up putting up some posters and giving a bit of information out while selling some soy recipe books. The coolest part was the food tables she'd set up. Originally 10 women had agreed to come bring in their soy foods, but we ended up with 2 (which we were thankful for)…and everyone bought and sampled a variety of foods the women had made to include soy. Aside from the Soy Day event, I spent time with her and her dog (Kenya, who came from my neighbor Billy a year ago). Relaxing in a small town environment like that was really nice for a change and I'm going to go back very soon!

Kribi

Lastly, finally, and briefly…I got to travel to Kribi, the beach town in the South, for the In-Service training of the business and education volunteers who arrived this past summer. I got my travel, food, room at one of the nicest hotels there…all paid for so that I could come give a half hour presentation about the Environmental Education Committee. I swam, ate a lot, sat out by a bonfire…relaxed for 2 days…very nice! My presentation went really well; due to my current guardianship of Kim's computer I even made a PowerPoint! Technology, I tell ya. I am surprisingly more at ease talking in front of groups of people after having to do it in French all the time…and the business program director even complimented it! Very proud of myself… :>)

SO…those are my travels!!! Now you see why I separated this into a different blog post! Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year...while most of you are suffering in the cold I'm sweating myself to death sitting in my house...we need to find a common ground!!!

Conversations with my landlady always take an interesting turn. That may be an understatement. The other day she came over to "chat with me", which usually ends in her demanding money for rent, water, or power for several months in advance because she needs it to 1) send someone to school 2) buy a rabbit cage 3) fix her husbands motto etc… The most recent conversation took place after she had been out in her village with my landlord and Billy and his wife, to solve the village problems with sorcerers. After a brief explanation of the ways one sorcerer was ruining everyone's lives, we went into depth on the topic of "what is sorcery?" According to my landlady there is a very big difference between white people and black people sorcery, although both types are only performed by godless heathens. Black people use their supernatural powers to hurt other people: kill unborn babies, give people malaria and AIDS, etc… White godless heathens use theirs to do things like build those crazy vehicles that can fly across oceans we call airplanes, and create that insane technology which allows us to speak into a receiver and be heard across the world we call the telephone.

My homestay brother is still in love with me. He was on a streak of calling every night, and occasionally every morning around 3 AM for over a month. I was in the habit of silencing every call or answering and pretending I couldn't hear him. (You may think this sounds mean, but TRUST ME it becomes necessary) Suddenly he stopped. I breathed a sigh of relief. The next day he tricked me into picking up my phone by calling from my homestay sister's number. He berated me for never answer his phone calls. I used my newfound Cameroonian ability to lie through my teeth, and told him some very detailed circular story about how I lost my phone, didn't know his number, etc… He then asked me to marry him. I didn't understand the word he used, so as usual (when I don't understand) I respond "oui". He got really excited, his voice raised a couple of pitches and he asked "REALLY?! You want become engaged with me?!". I think I may have responded "oh crap". I then shot him down in not such a nice, or eloquent, fashion, and quite possibly broke his heart. Sorry Paulin.

My bike training was going well for a while. My bike fell into disrepair about a year ago, when my postmate's door fell on it (common problem, I know). I decided to keep using it, and just wearing myself out not being able to switch gears in going up hills. Eventually this made me angry enough and I took out my tool kit in attempt to repair it myself. The gear system on a bike scared me. I read about it in detail and then attacked it with my wrench. I was so incredibly proud of myself when I hung my bike from the back of a chair and it switched from highest to lowest gear smoothly and quickly. Then, without warning as I downshifted something got stuck, I couldn't figure it out, and now…my bike doesn't switch gears at all. Great. :>( I then started using my postmate's bike…which has a set of problems less advanced than mine. I enjoyed biking initially, I thought that if I were going faster people would have a harder time seeing me coming, have less time to think of evil things to say to me, and also be unable to touch me…seeing as how I would speed by at 12 mph instead of walking at 4. I didn't think about however how much of a spectacle a bike becomes…and the fact that going that much faster forces me to pass just that many more people. Interesting things have happened. My favorite story happened as I was making my way up the enormous hill at the entrance to Ebolowa. Two teenage boys started yelling things about how tired I looked and how hard of a time the white girl must be having. I commented back I'd like to see them try it…and one came over to me and started running behind my bike with his hands on my seat and pushed me all the way up the hill! I thanked him and went on my way. My not so favorite story happened as I passed through one village which has afterwards become my most hated part of the trip. Everyone in this village seemed to be on the road this one Saturday, and the majority of people yelled mean spirited things at me, or laughed at me, or just called me the usual white people names. I was getting really angry, as that frequency of "harassment" tends to make me. I passed a group of 3 guys on the way to the fields, and one thought it would be hilarious if he swung his machete along the ground right in front of my front tire like he was going to take me out, then tell me to go bike in my own country, then laugh evilly with his buddies. Oooooo I got steamed. I didn't stop though, but continued on thinking of all the comebacks and things I should have said back. Some people!

The neighbor kids will always be my best friends. My favorite 2 neighbor girls are back in village for school, and along with them come the little boquets of flowers every couple of days, or the completely unripe tiny fruits they pick off the trees, or any other number of interesting objects they find in the road. One day Laticia came running out to great me with an armless, legless Barbie doll, with the blond hair missing in patches all over the scalp yelling « Kate, Kate, this looks JUST like you ! »...well...thanks Laticia, I'm just another appendageless torso with a pretty face ! Within the first 2 months at my house I had told Laticia and Michelle that if they happened to find a four leaf clover, they would in fact have good luck for the rest of their lives. They searched and searched, and came up to me more than once with a 3 leaf clover, with one of the leaves ripped in half. Sadly, I was unfooled, as I'd tried the same thing more than once as an 8 year old too. I'd thought they'd pretty much given up or forgotten until much to my surprise, a few weeks ago Laticia showed up at my door about as over joyed as can be and presented me with a real, live, 4 leaf clover ! Crazy how close that brought me to tears how she'd remembered that this whole time ! Another similar incident happened with this 6 year old kid named Arnold who was always stopping by « Kate, give me a car. Kate, give me a bike » who I would respond to with the « no, YOU give ME a car ». I'd mentioned this story to my parents who had brought him a little toy car when they came to visit, but then Arnold was away in his mother's village for the summertime and I hadn't gotten a chance to give it to him. He came back one day and was SO excited to see me, I was kinda amazed he liked me that much even without the car... He came up to the door telling me he had something for me and I needed to come get it right away. I told him to bring it back to me, and sure enough...he shows up with a tiny blue plastic car ! It was another one of those moments where I was amazed how this kid had remembered and thought of me... not only did he bring me the blue plastic car, but he also returned with a headless Buggs Bunny figurine...quite the gifter eh !? I'm a lucky woman. And the last neighbor kid story for now...one a little more sad, is about Dorien, the 4 year old brother of Laticia and Michelle, whose family always teases him that he will marry me. Dorien and I get along fabulously, and I'm sure I've mentioned him before. He's always hanging around my porch and in general just being the cutest kid I've ever seen. Lately he's been coming over more and more during the day to draw and color. One day I was pressed for time (this doesn't happen ever, I feel really awkward even saying it) and he kept knocking and knocking and I used my « firm adult tone » to tell him to chill out a second and come back later, and he quietly says « but Kate, I want to come over because I'm all alone at my house »... and sure enough, the entire family had left him there alone...which pretty much broke my heart. He's come over a few times before in a really rotten mood, and I've tried to cheer him up with the usual, no fail coloring book or bouncy ball, and he won't have it... when I'll ask him why not, and what he wants, he'll just say he's hungry and wants to eat some food...break my heart again. This most recent time I asked why he wasn't in school this year, like last, and he said that he didn't have any clothes to go in ! I feel so bad about this boy...but it's one of those situations where I really want to help but absolutely cannot put myself in the role of benefactor for the entire village (which it would quickly become)...just really sad to have to see him suffer because of it ! I'll just keep supplying him with my leftovers and coloring on the front porch. I think I might try to start teaching him to read and write as well ! Not too young is it ?!

The neighbors of others can be slightly less sweet…take for example my postmate's recent experience : So, I myself have entertained the idea once or twice of getting myself a dog, something to keep me company and give me a reason to leave my house and go for a brief walk everyday. It's funny though how one's perception of pets changes when you are in a country where people actually feed and clothe themselves before Fido and will kick Snowball for the slightest indescretion…I decided I wouldn't be a loyal enough pet owner here in Cameroon and my dog would end up flea covered and fight scarred like everyother. My postmate, having a softer heart than my own apparently, decided to adopt the cat of the volunteer who was leaving right as she came in. Luna was a sweet enough cat, as cats go in my opinion…she left me alone :>) Luna had her own door into my postmate's house : a hole thru the window screen, so she could come and go as she pleased : fraternize with the hardcore African cats and all. A month ago my postmate ended up being away for about a week. It had never before been a problem for Luna, who would feed herself with an unlucky lizard, frog or mouse when the mood struck. Sadly, Rachel came back one day to find no sign of Luna…a few days passed and worry grew to suspicion. Rachel began to ask around. Eventually as she asked her neighbor, « Have you seen Luna ? » she received the information, « oh yeah, that fat white cat ?! The family down the road ate it. » Lesson learned : don't get too attached to your pets.

Spider stories I haven't yet shared !!! The spiders that decided to commit these acts were of course all the bigger creepier oncs...or maybe it just seemed that way. And sidenote...I'm not even afraid of spiders...but their invasions into my personal space in the following incidents were unacceptable. 1) I got back from a run one morning and sat myself down on my floormat to do some stretches. Along came a spider, unbeknownst to me, until of course I felt a tickling travel up my inner thigh and disappear into my shorts. Fantastic. I jumped like I can't even explain and ripped off my shorts and flung them at the wall...problem solved ! 2) I decided to go and read in bed for a bit one day. My pillow had been in the living room (on the floormat), so I brought it with me. Apparently nothing should ever be on the floormat. I put my arm up to rest my head on my hand and I catch the sight of something out of the corner of my eye. Sure enough, big silverdollar sized spider perched on the back of my hand ! Once again, some sort of flinging action took place, and he was outta there ! He was like 6 inches from my eye. I can say with 100 percent certainty, he was not pretty 3) I went to the bathroom in the middle of the night. I was clearly a little out of it and not in spider avoidance mode (it's really a state of being). I lifted up the toilet seat cover, sat down, and felt the familiar (due to the shorts incident) tickling sensation as a spider made it's way down my back, then my leg, until I could finally reach it, initiate flinging sequence and rid my body of it. Now you see why I feel so violated ?! Creepers, figuratively and literally.

On the animal/insect subject, my favorite, I had a pet frog for about a week. I named him Munich. He lived in my bathroom. He was very small and rather attractive as far as frogs come. He kept moving around and would be the most exciting part of my morning, figuring out where he had gone to. One morning I found him on the shower handle, one morning on the back of the toilet, once just chilling on the side of my shampoo bottle, once on the door frame, and then once a crash woke me up in the middle of the night...I got up to investigate, and sure enough...there he was, sitting next to my plastic vase of flowers he'd apparently decided to leap at and spill all over the floor. The next day Kim came over and tried to capture him in her hands...he was never seen again. I still blame her for his disappearance.

Continuing on with frogs... I've started dating a guy in Ebolowa (weird way to introduce this news...sorry...more interesting though right ?!)...and I find it very entertaining the things and the way people say those things to their « significant otther » For example, in Cameroon it is always ok to tell someone they've gotten fat, or that the food they made tasted like crap...we all know how this goes over in the states, and I've had to explain more than once that I was raised in a place (where maybe even to our detriment) we learned « if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything it all »...thanks Bambi. So the other day this significant other of mine touched my cheek and told me « your face is very smooth, it feels exactly like a frog ». hmmm....thank you ?!?

I've seen some monkeys !!!! I saw one while I took a water break while biking, running down the trunk of a tree. Then the other day I went out to a new farm with Serges and was immersed in a monkey party...there were at least 10 little onces jumping and swinging around the trees right infront of me. That was pretty cool. Also, on my recent trip to the North of Cameroon I got the chance to hear and see, right along the road, several baboons ! So...FINALLY after living next to the rain forest all this time I saw some monkeys in the trees and not just in a cooking pot.

I'll talk about my work a little bit... Biggest thing that needs to be mentioned before any of this...something that's been really hard for me to get my head around in recent weeks, is that Kim (you all should recognize this name by now...pretty much my other half for the past year...workwise, mental healthwise, funwise, everythingwise) has decided to leave her post and move up to the Northwest. Selfishly, I'm very very sad that she's not going to be down here anymore. I have a LOT to figure out and change, since to be honest, almost every project I had going on was with her ! Unselfishly, I am glad that she's going to go somewhere where people actually do work and aren't evil to white girls ! :>) She will almost definitely be happier up there due to all of that ! Thus, once again, selfishly, I am jealous and want to go myself ! :>) So...since that news we've been in the process of trying to reorganize our bike tour, a lot has to change due to her village no longer being on our route, etc... I've been doing some running around to various ministries and schools delivering protocol letters about the event and asking them for support, etc, etc. Kim and I had started visiting the 2 schools we were going to give environmental education classes to for the upcoming months, and so now I'm going to be doing the actual lessons alone...which actually terrifies me. I am afraid of youth in large numbers...especially since each class is around 80 kids ! We had to nix the school in Kim's town, so now I'll just be doing 2 primary schools in Ebolowa. I'm very excited for one school, the director and the teacher I'll be working with have been the most active of anyone I've worked with here so far (besides Serges and Hans) and it's made me remember what it feels like to be excited about a project because it might actually succeed ! I'm continuing my soy work. Kim and I made a pretty darn good soy brochure, I'll use it now to hand out at formations and the informational table at the market I want to do in the spring. We attended a cultural fest put on by my friend Seth in the Northwest (thanks to everyone that donated) and had a soy table there also. I'll talk more about the cultural fest in the next blog entry. I also just attended, and kinda helped, with a soy day the other Agrofoestry volunteer in the South put on this past weekend. She did a lot of work with getting women there to cook a lot of different foods and present on nutrition, planting, etc... Aside from that, we had our Provincal Meeting in the beginning of October and as usual, it was nice to see the few volunteers in my province and share ideas and work stories. Sadly, since that time, Kim as well as Christine, a volunteer in the town of Lolodorf, have decided to leave the province. We' re down to 5 of us, by far the fewest of all 10 provinces in Cameroon...it's sad :>( The south is a tricky and interesting place. Lastly, at the end of September I celebrated my one year anniversary with Cameroon with a group of volunteers at the beach...always wonderful !

SO....those are my short personal anecdotes that are much too personal and not really short! :>) I will be writting within a week to finish up summarizing the past few months with stories of the travels that I've done lately... didn't want to wear you out by making it an all-in-one thing...suspense !

LETS ALL WISH KATE A HAPPY ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY ON SEPTEMBER 22, 2008 IN CAMEROON!!!!! YEAHHHH!!!

MOM & DAD LEGNER

From Kate,

Here is a link if you're interested in sending money to one of Kate's fellow PC Worker Seth's Cultural Event...Per Kate "its a bunch of us going up there and our band will be performing, as well as all of us presenting and having little booths with info for people to come visit and learn...Kim and I will be doing soy... so if you want to sum that up and post this on my blog it'd be great!i'll also be asking for money from people for the bike tour and for my water project in the future...so tell people not to go all out...like 5-10 bucks is cool if people want to donate

https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=694-118

They can also search for it on the peace corps partnership website by country or project number: 694-118. The total amount we're asking for is under $900, so if everyone participating gets a few people in the states to give 10 or 20 bucks, it should be no problem. The money has to be in by the end of October, though, so kindly do your soliciting in a timely fashion."

I am fully aware that I haven't written to all of you for about 2 months…but I also realize that I am no longer ever in the mood to write for some reason…thus we have a conundrum! I hope everyone enjoyed my parents' blog entry and I think they definitely a great job of summing up what was one visit chock full of new experiences and strange/funny events for them. I was glad to have them here and I think I can say on everyone else's behalf, those who met them here, they were happy to have had the opportunity to meet them also. Upon my return to village after dropping my parents off at the airport I was asked "ou est ton papa" (where's your dad?) several thousand times by everyone and anyone I didn't even realize knew my parents had visited. I continue to remind them that my mother also visited and to us Americans we ask about both parents at once…and since I spent more time in my mother's body in the first place don't they think she's important as well (yes I actually tried to say that in French) Then I got shamed by several other people for not bringing my parents to visit them in specific, because they had prepared a meal/fruit/a gift/etc… to give to them. I think most endearing was Billy (as usual) who each and every time he came to my door during the past 3 weeks has asked me "has my brother called, how is he doing?" So, Dad AND Mom…you made an impression on everyone and I'm sure for the remainder of my stay here you will be a topic of conversation, in a good way, and help to humanize the odd white girl in town. As far as my immediate material benefit from the visit…it's been great living the high life, eating things that include peanut butter (in all forms and recipes I can think of), blueberry pancakes WITH maple syrup, starburst jellybeans, chocolate that doesn't taste like plastic, chemical powder lemonade mix…so so SO fabulous. When my mass stockpile of processed American food runs out it will a sad sad day. Kim and I often talk about how odd it is that we have these intense cravings for the most horrible of American food that we either never ate in the States, or know that we shouldn't… I wasn't even really raised eating much of the stuff, as far as Americans go I guess…but oh sugar, chemicals, and transfats…why do I crave thee.

I have been feeling a lot more normal lately, in the sense I'm finally feeling that I have friends I can act normal around, ie not constantly worry about all the issues race/money/perceptions of me influence all my interactions. A few weeks before my parents got here I gave my phone number out to a random guy after 5 minutes of conversation for the FIRST time. My reasons include 1) after finding out I was American he spoke in flawless American English, slang and all (I have heard probably one other Cameroonian capable of this) 2) after I said I was from Wisconsin he said "you must love cheese" and asked if I went to the UW 3) him and his friends are starting up a fair trade cocoa business in Ebolowa. I was astonished by 1 and 2, and 3 was just plain interesting…thus…phone number! :>) I ended up hanging out with him and meeting his other friends later that day…we went to some guys house to play some traditional game where you throw snail shells like tops at other snail shells (I wasn't very good). Turns out his IS an American…went to school at the University of Miami for 6 years, married to a woman there…etc…but wow it was fun to speak English with him. He's currently back in the states, but in the time since then I've hung out with his friends quite a few times, and although they don't speak English in the same way, I feel like I actually have friends, kinda my age, similar viewpoints (even on religion with 2 of them…NON EXISTENT here), etc etc etc... it's just GOOD, and rare to come by. Only one had been driving me crazy with incessant phone calls until I said STOP IT NOW, and he did. He's also the one that has a small sports car, a small fluffy dog, a diamond nose ring, and owns at least 2 hotels and night clubs. I keep telling everyone he is truly the "male Paris Hilton of Cameroon", if you can picture that…it's not far from the truth…interesting guy. I have been hanging out as much as usual with Hans and Serges, and they continue to always be there when I need them as well as always up for going to the bar for countless beers (I still can't keep up, not that I ever wanted to try). I spend so much time at the bar between these two groups of people and all their acquaintances, my entire college experience was the equivalent of a brief training session. Serges has pretty much become my new counterpart (Obam just hasn't been around and has been causing more headache than help when he does show up). Serges is excellent at organizing people, actually listening to other people's concerns and adjusting himself to them, and he works his butt off. Serges=sanity. :>) I've also spent some time with a female friend in HIV/AIDS group I attend meetings for…although there was a misunderstanding between us when she told me she was coming to my house to spend the entire weekend with me (including nights)…and I told her I thought she was joking…and she got angry…thus I funded beer and fish that night…buying people off… My neighbors are as interesting as ever. One guy, who's always full of promises (he promised my mom and dad a dance party or something of the like that never happened), came one day asking me if I would like to eat caterpillars he would collect for me, and what hair type and color of caterpillars I preferred (how does one answer such a question)…I told him: yes, I would try them, and to me the hair type and color are not a determining factor in my caterpillar culinary selections. Or, to not lie to you, reader, about my French abilities, I said "yes, I will taste, but not eat a plate, and it doesn't matter what their hairstyle is". He then proceeded to inform me that the last time he ate caterpillars he threw up all over the place…he definitely does not have a career as a caterpillar salesman, needless to say. He clearly forgot to bring me the caterpillars, but upon telling Hans and Serges that he had mentioned it, they forced me to buy some to taste in town…which I did…and I have to say they were the most difficult thing yet for me to eat here…the hair, the bulging eyes, the bajillion legs. Bleh.

WORK! Kim and I have been busy with soy formations…we are starting our rotation of formation (presentation), planting, cooking with a few new villages near me and near her and then a few small groups in both places…so it's been relatively busy with that, since we are once again at the beginning of the planting season here. I've also outplanted a few of my Moringa trees in one of the nurseries we had started, and everyone in the village was following us around begging for a tree for their yard/family. I had a meeting in Yaounde last week for the Environmental Education committee, and now I am apparently co president…pretty much because no once else offered…so me with another girl are in charge of organizing the committee and setting our goals, or whatnot. Our biggest thing will be the bike tour I mentioned in passing a while ago. I think it'll actually happen! We are in the beginning stages of organizing it and we're thinking the route will start in Ngoulemakong (Kim's town), go to Ebolowa, then to Lolodorf (another volunteer's town), then to Kribi (the beach!). Along the way (this isn't concrete AT ALL) we will teach a few brief courses on environmental topics to school kids and to teachers, with the goal in mind that they will continue something (like an environmental club or whatever) after we leave. Since we're estimating about 20 volunteers on the tour, it's going to be a major undertaking, planning wise. Kim and I just tried to complete our lodging/meals logistics and budget…this would be complicated in the states, here it's like 5x more complicated. BUT if we figure this out and pull it off we will all be very proud of ourselves. On the environmental education note, Kim and I are also planning and starting to organize classes we are going to try to teach, once a month, at a grade school in her town and a grade school in mine…which I'm excited about…I feel like I'm finally ready to step into a role as teacher (or even adult) in this culture. Lastly, of note (I don't think I mentioned this yet), my friend up in the NW province has organized a "cultural festival" for November at which the band will be playing. I have to practice up on the tambourine! A bunch of the volunteers from my training group will be there, and we're also all going to give presentations on various topics…clearly mine will be soy!

And for my last story…my house and it's continual water adventures. Someone decided to drive 2 enormous bulldozers down the strip of grass/hill behind my house to flatten it…and create a strip of muddy muddy garbage covered land with lots of stinkiness and flies. I'm not sure why this required TWO bulldozers since the area is about 100 feet long, and I'm not even sure where this machinery CAME from! But clearly it remained in this state, and then when the first big rain of the season came, the hill was moved even closer to my door…the water came down insanely fast, the soil was compacted and completely cleared of all vegetation…a virtual mudslide ensued INTO my kitchen…I do not joke when I say that the mud was ankle deep in my kitchen, and there I am trying to get the mud out of there so it can't spread to the rest of the house, while running outside to push the water RAPIDLY flooding onto my little porch and into the kitchen, while also trying to dig a trench with my hoe next to my porch, while also crying with rage at the stupid bulldozers. It was ridiculous…understatement of the year. The next morning my landlady sees the state of things and although I think she was trying to comfort me, telling me to "have patience" is not the correct word choice to console at a time like that. She fixed things up that day after I recounted the story. But the bulldozers are still there, broke down, and 3 dudes have been behind my house for 2 straight days revving the engine and sitting outside (and looking into) my bedroom windows. I guess they are putting houses in this narrow little strip of land…incase my house wasn't already the loudest/most public place on earth…I'm sure more stories will come from this!

ONE YEAR ON SEPTEMBER 22!!! Ayyyy

Cameroun ~ A Country of Contrasts as told by Mom & Dad!

Our title sounds like one taken from a geography book but contrasts is certainly what Cameroun (French spelling) is. From its spectacular scenic beauty to its horrendous slums, from opulent office buildings in its capital to its mud built farm buildings, from its honest and friendly people to the occasional shouted ethnic slur “La Blanche ….” ( means the white …. ), from simple Cameroonian food to American Pizza and milkshakes to name but a few of the contrasts this country holds.

But before we continue we want to say how proud we are of our daughter Kate. She came to this chaotic country, to a new posting, with a loosely defined project and is succeeding. She learned French as well as some of the local language BuLu, impressed those she works with and met, and became a part of an extended family. When we walked with her through the market, the vegetable lady to the police officer stopped and hugged her. Part of her project is to introduce Soy to the Southern Province. Soy not only provides much needed protein for people but also puts nitrates back into the slash & burned soil. Kate is also one tough bargainer (one of the best) when purchasing anything. In this country it is something that always has got to be done, almost the extreme. We are truly proud of our strong and independent daughter!!

But back to Cameroun.

Our first impression was the attractiveness of the people in the South Province. Nearly all people are fit, lots of muscles and few pot bellies, probably from all the walking and exercising in the farming they do. And what great tans they all have!! We were also surprised by the abundance of food in Cameroun. Cameroun has two growing seasons and nearly everyone has a small farm. The markets are full of tomatoes, onions, beans, lettuce, bananas, and plantains to name a few. This is definitely one African Country that feeds itself. A very impressive quality of the people was their honesty. One can leave a package in most places and when you return for it, it will be there. If you need change you can give a larger bill to one of the locals in the market, they’ll disappear and reappear a bit later with the correct change. These people can also balance anything on their heads, I saw one individual in the capital of Yaoundé who had 3, 5 gallon buckets balanced on his head, one on top of the other. Even small children can do this without spilling anything from the large plate they are balancing. Speaking of children, they are everywhere. Cameroon is a very young country full of kids. Even the smallest are self-reliant and often cared for by another child not that much older than themselves. The ones in Kate’s village really enjoyed the candy we brought to give them.

Another impression was the beauty of the rainforest that is the South Province, a forest so dense that one cannot walk through it. Wildflowers and birds were abundant, but because of the denseness of the forest few animals can be seen. Many of the house plants we grow are found in this forest. African Grey Parrots flew overhead while black & white crows cawed at you The temperatures were stifling for us a times, but rain did not interfere with any of ours plans as it was the dry season. We found it funny that this is considered their winter & we saw people with coats on and babies bundled in northern winter clothing even with temperatures nearing 90 degrees. I was usually the only man with shorts on as long pants were far too hot for me, but not for them.

But one thing that concerned me (dad) was the transportation. Moto Taxis (motor cycles) are everywhere. You pay a small fee, get on the back and hold on. Sometimes up to 4 people can be seen riding on them. I haven’t been on a motorcycle since I was a teenager and the speed concerned me as well as the weaving in and out of traffic that occurs. Yellow Toyota Taxis are also everywhere, no drivers training exists in Cameroon and it shows. Again 4 to 5 people can be squeezed in the back seat of these small vehicles with nearly as many in front. Few of them are in good condition, with many having no shock absorbers left and little suspension. Buses are the main transportation between cities. Again 4 people are squeezed in seats designed for 3 and traveling between the cities can take hours. One gets use to sweaty and sometimes smelly individuals. But the children will always sit quietly, which in America would never happen under these conditions. Most bus companies also will not leave until all the seats are sold (time is not a concern here) so you wait until that happens (although we did experience a bus leaving on us when we were in the toilet). Luckily Kate screamed at the bus driver until he stopped. The roads in the south are really nice but in other parts of the country they can be extremely pot holed. Holes big enough to swallow a taxi! Travel in these buses is also extended because of the practice of building speed bumps near every little village or town along the way. Of course this slowing brings out all the people trying to sell food and just about everything else to the passengers they can. I even saw an individual with toilet seats around his neck for sale! Of course toilets are few and far between in this country. Usually just a hole in the concrete, which you are expected to use without falling over. No roadside rest stops in his country. Hotels also vary greatly, but the price is always reasonable, except of course the Hilton in the Capital.

One irritant in this country is the near constant police stops to check IDs. I’m not sure what they are looking for. When we handed them our passports few officers checked the visas page we had, but seemed more interested in the other places we had visited as they paged through our passports skipping over the visa section. On another negative side we did have an officer propose marriage to Kate even with us in the car. This seems to happen to Kate a lot. I can understand why she feels this behavior offensive. We were glad she gave this officer a smart retort. I asked her supervisors “do all Cameroonian men propose to a woman the first time they meet her”? He replied she would be a status symbol, well our daughter won’t be a status symbol for any lowly police officer.

Television in this country is unique, especially the occasional English language station as most are French stations. In the north there was even subtitles in English on an English speaking station. The only reason I could conclude was because the local people spoke Pidgin English and maybe needed help understanding common English.

We were hosted for meals by Kate’s supervisor’s family, her host family and a local village. The food was Cameroonian food, which although good can be a bit bland. We balanced this with meals at Italian, Chinese and American restaurants. While we ate at the Chinese Restaurant we heard the constant sound of someone pounding metal. The waiter told us it was a bird whose name was spelled B A T. These bats were the large fruit eating variety known here as “Flying Foxes”. Their flight is quite impressive in the air.

One of the people we met was Kate’s friend Billy. He lives in Kate’s compound with his wife and family. He farms as well grows nursery plants. He presented us with the most magnificent arrangement of tropical flowers we’ve ever seen. Billy also assured us that Kate is safe where she lives and even brought the local police officers to introduce them. We’re glad of his concern for Kate as well as his quiet friendship with her. We also met many of Kate’s fellow Peace Corp Volunteers, who were all interesting and dedicated.

We traveled to the north and the west provinces and spend three relaxing days at the Atlantic Ocean Beach in Limbe. These beaches are made of black sand from nearby volcanoes. Being nearly on the equator the water is warm, unpolluted, does not smell fishy like other ocean water and seems less salty. I don’t usually like swimming in the ocean but this place was an exception. Earlier we traveled to the southern border of Cameroon, touched the border of Equatorial Guinea and had a drink in Gabon.

On the way back to the USA we were upgraded to Business Class from Economy Class on the first flight, from Yaoundé to Zurich on the Swiss Airline. Having never flown in this class we were surprised by the drinks and food offered as well as the concern for our comfort and the large reclining seats, of course all good things must end and on our last flight we were assigned to the middle of the airplane between two individuals. Somehow our window seats were changed to these seats. But the man who sat next to me proved interesting. He happened to be a young priest from Switzerland studying in Chicago for a year. You know me and my attitude about priests but I was cordial. During our conversation he mentioned that he had been in LA two years ago and a mutual friend had him meet Ashton Kutcher. Evidently Ashton took him around to his 4 clubs, a few parties and he stayed in his apartment. To return the favor he invited Ashton to his monastery near Zurich. Ashton spent two days in the monastery where few of the monks had ever heard of him. The priest told me Ashton had trouble with the silence & lack of recognition. While Ashton was at the monastery, Demi Moore (his wife) had a bit of plastic surgery in Austria, one of many according to the monk.

It was hard to say “Good-Bye” again to Kate for another year and we thank her for being able to cope with two parents who at times were infant like in their ability to communicate with the locals. We feel much better about her in Cameroon after meeting her friends and co-workers and experiencing Cameroon for ourselves. We are now considered part of her Cameroonian family. We fully support her in her role as a Peace Corp Volunteer and know it isn’t always easy. We also want to remind her that even small changes can have a lasting impact in many ways for years to come, some unknown at this time. Ahh Kates we are proud of you!!

Mom & Dad Legner

Wow, it's been a long long LONG time since I've last written and for that I apologize! I have use of Kim's computer currently so that makes it a lot easier to type this up…but I'll try to be more on the ball…AFTER my parents trip here! It's really very soon, they'll be leaving the states in only a week and I will be meeting them at the airport in yaounde next Tuesday. Wow. I've made some plans for while they're here that I'm pretty excited about. My friend, Leo, who I work with at Mefoup actually has a car and has offered to drive us all down to the border of Cameroon and either gabon or equatorial guinea, where there is apparently a huge market and maybe we'll get to just step over the line and say we were there! While down in Mefoup they'll get to see us harvest my soy field there too. We'll also be spending a day or two with my homestay family, none of which I've seen since I left bangangte in the very beginning of December. My homestay mother is very very excited and told me we will all be staying at the house…we'll see how that all turns out. Then we'll be going to Bamenda (my favorite place in this country), possibly Foumban ("art capital of cameroon"), and Limbe (the beach). Around Ebolowa everyone is getting excited for their trip here as well, Billy is planning "a surprise" for my parents, we have lots of stuff being planned by Hans and Serges, and a couple of the other volunteers will hang out with us while we're near their posts. Needless to say I'm quite ready for them to be here!

Aside from that I'll start this blog post by sharing my two recent incidents of intense homesickness… Get the sad stuff out of the way :>) The first was this past Saturday when I went down to Mefoup. It ended up being a late day and Leo drove me back around 7:30 at night…so by this time it was already dark, the temperature was down to an astounding 68 degrees already (this is the coolest time of year), I was sitting BY MYSELF in the front seat of a nice car with a sunroof open, wearing a seatbelt too! Windows open…cool breeze…driving past people burning their fields next to the road reminded me of the smell of campfires…I almost felt for a second like I was in the states on a summer/fall night. I always love the smell of that time of year and just that feeling you get with the wind in your hair and the cool air all over the place! (I'm not too good with the description here, you know what I mean!)…It was all very sad in the end when we pulled up at the control gates to town and someone yelled "la blanche" in my face. Then the next incident was that Sunday. I was at home and Billy was talking about these "Wisconsin badger" jerseys we're still going to have made (by the way my team is apparently unstoppable…they've won every game they've played!). So he was talking about an example for what to model the jerseys after, and he showed up at my door with this dirty ripped up really old school letterman jacket, that sure enough, is red and white, big picture of bucky on the back, university of Wisconsin, badgers…everything. I almost burst out crying on the spot, which would have been hilarious and far too awkward all in one moment…so instead I tried to smile as big as possible and adequately express my amazement that this jacket somehow ended up in my village…in Cameroon, by way of Wisconsin. Just like myself I guess. Pretty crazy.

Let's see…I hate getting to this point where so much has happened between now and the time I've last written that this post will either get really long and detailed or just not say all I want it too, and neither option is suitable…I'll begin where I left off last time. It was a few weeks ago now that I was up in the West province for the environmental education camp. My friend Jessica was in charge or planning it and she did an excellent job of getting everything set up and inviting kids. We ended up having a relatively good attendance of between 7 and 18 kids everyday. We discussed the full range of environmental topics, which was clearly a test of our French ability, but ended up going pretty well. A few of the kids were those kids the teacher would probably write on their report card "a pleasure to have in class" if this were America…they showed up every day, participated, pretty much could finish our sentences for us…it was great to have them there and by the end of the camp we were having a lot of fun with them. Our last day we made jumpropes out of recycled plastic bags and then spent an hour, us 4 white girls, with about 8 highschool boys doing double dutch…which made for some good pictures! While up in the West I stayed with either one of my two friends Nura and Jessica. Compared to my house, which is only a 45 minute walk from Ebolowa on a nice paved road (I really got lucky with this), they are both between 2-4 hour walk from town on really crappy (read: MUDDY) roads from Baffousam. When I was up there is was the very start of the rainy season in the west…actually I'm pretty positive the rain came with me, since every day it just poured, what seemed like constantly…the roads were horrible! To get to Jessica's house mottos won't even brave the road when it's like this so we spent most of our time walking to and from the school where we had the camp, town, and her house. It's in interesting game of concentration, balance, and calf muscle endurance when walking in mud of this type…especially in flipflops. I completely destroyed my one pair that had been on their last leg. I bore holes all the way through the soles in several places due to the opposite forces of mud suction and my leg strength :>) We also got to spend a day in Foumban, an artisan city really close to Baffousam. A really fun group of us ended up going and we did a lot of shopping, my favorite purchase of which were these small bronze statues of pygmy witchdoctor looking man and woman…they make me laugh everytime I look at them…aka: good buy! We also went to the sultan's palace in Foumban. The sultan is just like the chiefs in other towns, but the Bamoun culture here places a lot of emphasis on him and he's overall just a really important guy (like my summaries of such things?!) There is a museum in the palace, which is incredibly well put together and the most actual museum like place I've been to in Cameroon, complete with a musical performance at the end! Nura's good friends with the chief of her village, who is apparently good friends with the sultan, so we had an "appointment" to meet him. This ended up falling through because at the moment we were there it was a big celebration for the graduation of a new Koran class. We didn't realize this until we were in the middle of it and the streets leading out of the palace were closed off by a mass of kids singing and chanting. So we were cornered, and ended up sitting in some apparently (but unknown to us) restricted area in front of the palace. We subsequently got scolded, asked to move, and then approached by the sultan's wife…who…ended up being from the US virgin islands (I think that's what it was) and speaking PERFECT American English! She was great and arranged for us to sit behind the sultan in his private quarters while we watched the graduation ceremony! What an experience, kinda unprecedented! Good day trip :>)

My trip home from Baffousam was also very interesting, and surprisingly full of good events…I decided to take a private car from Baffousam to Yaounde…in hopes it would take about 4 hours instead of the 7 or 8 buses sometimes take. To do so one stands by the side of the road out of town and gets these "chargers" (random guys) to flag down passenger cars going your way. I was getting really annoyed with these guys because they wouldn't let me flag down cars, and they were doing a really bad job at it…so I decided to work for myself, and sure enough, after about 10 minutes (versus an hour and a half with the guys) I chased down a car (literally) and got a spot in the backseat. Although I was between 2 big guys, one of which kept demanding I get a drink with him in Yaounde and putting his arm around me, the trip went quicker then in the bus and I got dropped off right in front of the peace corps office in Yaounde when we got there! Once in Yaounde I waited for a taxi to the depot area for the buses to the South. A man on the curb next to me was going to the same depot and ended up helping me find the taxi. The whole street of the depot area was closed off, for some reason I don't understand, requiring everyone to get out of the taxis and walk with huge loads of stuff to their agency of choice. For me this can be a very taxing experience, since harassment in the depot can get really really intense. It was exactly as I assumed, in the ¼ mile I had to walk I had all kinds of things yelled at me, all parts of me being grabbed, guys surrounding me…etc…so I decided to try something I hadn't yet used, and caught up to the man that had helped me and been in the taxi with me. I put my arm in his and asked if he would be my husband for 10 minutes. He was great, he just said sure, and then flung people dirty looks, and walked all the way to the depot with me…then just left me WITHOUT asking for my phone number! Fantastic! So once at my agency waiting area things went equally amazing. I made friends with the bathroom attendant, got to pee for free! Then all the workers kept calling me either "sister" or "madame" instead of the usual "baby", "white", or "my dear". THEN most exciting, I bought myself a roasted ear of corn some boy was selling, and turn around 5 minutes later to see him standing there offering me another. Some guy sent me an ear of corn, yes, in the same manner one would send someone a drink in a bar…but then he left me alone too! It was all very nice. When we finally all got on the bus and moving it turned out all the streets in and out of Yaounde were closed off too. My bus was abnormally organized and someone suggested that everyone put in an extra 100CFA for gas and we take some backroads to try to get out of the city. An hour and several rough roads later, we ended up JUST on the otherside of the blockade, and to our joy and the gawking of several groups of police and over 5 miles of backed up traffic, we ended up being the only bus on the road for several hours that was moving! So all these things that could have gone wrong, actually went right. I was very happy. The only bad thing was that someone decided to put their dog in the trunk of the bus, which was right behind my seat, and everytime we hit a bump or took a quick turn the poor thing wailed its heart out right in my ear…

That's the trip then!

On the homefront! A select few of my neighbors have been driving me crazy! A new man is living right next door. He started out blasting Celine Dion all day long, which was harmless enough, but now he has moved on to blasting Cameroonian pop music with VERY loud bass from 6:30 am to 11 pm…and is making my head explode…the cinder block walls don't do much in the way of holding in sound I guess. Then in the last few days people have started taking over the one private area I had…the back of my house. Call my feelings "American", but I like to be able to sit in my house with the curtains open and not expect someone to be directly at the window in every room. I have one lady doing her laundry outside my kitchen window, in the back of my house, the kids peeping in the 2 front windows, and then most recently 2 women will come take turns showering inches from my bedroom window at 10 pm! I looked out the first time I heard the water in the bucket to see what was going on, and sure enough! Naked woman on my porch…why?! On a positive note, I've gotten shelves built into a corner in my kitchen and a corner in my living room, and now I think I'm FINALLY done getting stuff to furnish my house and can spend my money on travel! The shelves look great though, and Kim, Hans, Serges and I celebrated them by bar hopping during the day, for 8 hours…full time job, drinking in this country. Sadly, my 2 favorite neighbor girls are gone for a period of time. I think one might be gone permanently to go to school, but her sister, my water getting buddy Michelle, will hopefully be back. I miss these 2 girls a lot, and I'm sad they left while I was up in the West and didn't get to say goodbye. They were sometimes the only people I would really have a conversation with for a full day! :>( Lastly in the village, there is a female police officer who always likes to talk to me about my running…she does a hilarious imitation of how I run, sidenote…but then one day I passed by her at the road barrier with Hans and she told me 1)that I have pretty feet and 2) that I should marry her husband too so that I can stay in Cameroon with them and we can run together…so, first FEMALE proposal?! It was odd.

Work related things have been slow as usual since we're now just starting the soy harvest. I met with a woman's HIV/AIDS support group the previous health volunteer had started in Ebolowa to discuss starting a soy project with them, and possibly starting an animal raising project too…the woman I'm in contact with from the group, Deboise, is this fantastic, kind and very intelligent person who I'm really excited to work with if anything gets off the ground. I brought my landlady back some information from Baffousam about animal raising as well, and she's already started building cages for rabbits. We started harvesting one of my soy fields at the village Lo'o…I really like harvesting, you just rip the entire plant out of the ground and put it in a basket…it's kinda like pulling weeds…but with nutritional benefits! ;>) We're going to try to organize a cooking with soy class there for when my parents are here. We've also been keeping tabs on the Moringa nurseries we started, and moved one of them that wasn't getting enough sun…Water project is going slow, rocks were collected a long time ago, and an area near the river was cleared for sand, but no work has been done since then. I think I need to step it up and start pushing things along. My other 2 soy fields will be ready to harvest within the next month, and then we'll have cooking classes for them too…and then after that it's time to start clearing land and planting again! At Mefoup there has been some bad luck…least seriously, we had planted a plot of beans and corn right next to the plot of soy. The beans were completely decimated by something, there is not one single plant left standing…so that was depressing…but at least it didn't affect my dear soy! But more seriously, there was a woman at Mefoup, Pauline, who was suppose to be my go to person, the woman in charge of mobilizing the other woman and organizing our work days…she was killed in a car crash a few weeks back…so the village was very affected by that…incredibly disheartening. Sad note to put at the end here. Obam, however, has fully recovered and returned to village last Monday, he can walk again and is almost as good as new! There's the work report in a nutshell, and I hope not too scattered.

SO! That should be about all! Hopefully summed up accurately and at a readable length for you! :>) Bon voyage to my mom and dad!

Salut! At some point I'm going to write an entire blog post in my really poor French just to drive everyone a little crazy…but I guess I'll be nice today…

I have much new and exciting house news! First and foremost of which is that I often have water…in increasing increments of time too! It started out being 2 or 3 times a week between the hours of 7 and 8 am, but recently has been pretty regularly on in the mornings. Granted only the pipes to the faucet in the kitchen have adequate water pressure, but it's SO incredibly nice to have enough water to flush the toilet daily if I need to, wash my clothes more often, etc…actually it's taken a lot of pressure off me, not having to analyze how much water I have/use every minute…I'm very very happy! In addition to this, the plumber came over and installed my bathroom sink, it's pretty much just a shelf because the drainpipe goes out onto the bathroom floor, but nonetheless I have a place to put my toothbrush and soap! The electric company also finally came out and fixed up whatever the problem was with my village's power lines…so we have electricity again after 3 weeks without! I went through a lot of candles and a lot of freaking out coming home after dark with the mouse/rat on the loose. Lastly inside the house I have ordered myself some fine wooden shelves for the kitchen and living room (a place for my million books, I've finished over 30 novels already in Cameroon…seriously…I have too much time), they've been a long time coming but hopefully will be installed soon! (these are the highlights of my home life :>) Neighborhood is the same old same old…I had my first theft: my porch lighbulb! (what?!) My landlady and I had an in depth conversation about my work here, etc… (I really like this woman…she's stopped pushing the religion stuff, and has been very helpful just listening to me and understanding) and she's really interested in starting some sort of animal raising project. I think we'll do cane rats (just big rats), rabbits, and chickens, and I'll apparently help clear the area, build cages and teach people how to care for them (aka: I have a lot of research to do). I've slowly been getting to know more and more of the village and getting increasingly comfortable being out and about, even though there are always the random men drinking palm wine and yelling things at me on the corner. My one neighbor man who is usually in the drunk crowd felt it his duty the other day to tell me "Kate, you have added the pounds" (literal translation for laughs) and walk towards me puffing out his cheeks, holding his arms out to the side, like an elephant or something. Always nice to hear, and fun to explain how that is the absolute LAST thing you should ever say to an American woman! Lastly "in the neighborhood" I had an interesting moment when I heard someone walking right behind my head out the window while lying in bed one morning. It's usually one of the kids just asking for me to yell at them to get out of my "espace privée" but they weren't being sneaky enough…so come to find out (by turning around) that some random man has chosen this spot to stand on my back veranda and pee into my "yard". Men here are ALWAYS doing their business along the side of the road, right infront of you, in the open…but seriously dude…my bedroom window?!

Random news: I cut off all my hair! Ok, not all…but a lot for me! It's just to my shoulders…thus A LOT cooler and less dirty constantly in this hot dirt/bug covered land! MUCH easier. I decided to do it one day after a bucket bath at Kim's house, when it made me so mad I decided to punish it with scissors. Between Kim and I and a dull scissors it actually came out looking pretty nice, I even put layers in myself! Also random: my postmate left about 2 weeks ago for the states…it's quite an exciting thing for all of us here…just to hear how her perceptions of things have changed, how life there feels after living here, etc…not to mention the fact she'll bring back things like peanut butter and maple syrup! She'll be there for a total of 4 weeks, so in reality she'll be back in not to long now. I'm a bit jealous…

Work has been touch and go recently. I think it's because it's between planting and harvesting, so it's felt kinda slow again (but then again, when doesn't it?!) I spend one day with Obam traveling ½ way down the road that goes from Ebolowa to Kribi, really really muddy (up to my shins at times) and scary on a motto, to see how one makes palm oil and to see the palm plantation he helped to start up there. The next day we were supposed to head out to the village Lo'o to check up on the soy fields…and Obam "forgot". I've been getting increasingly frustrated with him lately after a variety of happenings because he seems to lack follow through with projects and he has difficulty explaining things to people in a logical way, etc…and it's interfering in a big way with getting anything started…so this was kinda the final straw and I decided just to not try to get projects started with him anymore. And then…he got sick…I'm not sure what it going on now, since I'm out of town, but he has been pretty sick for over 2 weeks. By this I mean, he's been bedridden and now I think is hospitalized! I visited him a couple of times while he was still at his house but after that no one really knew which hospital he had gone to etc…I feel really horrible about everything, and since I don't know a whole lot of medical French words it's frustrating because I'm not really sure what's going on…but I'm clearly hoping that he pulls through it as soon as possible and that whatever treatment he's receiving is doing what it should. It's one of those times when the reality of illness and related problems in this country become so evident. My supervisor Hans has also has quite a streak of bad luck…stolen motto, phone, laptop (laptop this past week), and his wife had a motto accident about a week after having their new baby and dislocated her shoulder! Sometimes…

Otherwise, work…I had to attend the south province agriculture department meeting. This was kinda hilarious, but kinda absurd at the same time. I was in this "board room" with the 20 most important agriculture people in the province, all men, for 5 hours. Then after this I had to go to a party with the 20 men and drink and dance with them (I had to do the usual awkward first dance with Obam), and be asked how they could get "UNE volontaire" (a FEMALE volunteer) in their village…etc…I did however win over the delegate of agriculture for the entire province by jokingly counting the number of beers he drank (6 bottles of guiness in 2 hours)…so if that's anything?! ;>)

One relatively big work thing is that we've started the water project out at the village Lo'o. We had another meeting where we evaluated how to better the current water source while building the new one, and to make sure that everyone in the village was on the same page with how work was going to go. The week after that we started work…6 men in an assembly line of sorts, standing on the hill of a river bank passing enormous rocks up to collect in a pile. I'm pretty positive I'm going to use this project as one of my "Peace Corps Partnership" projects…this means I'm going to be asking all you for money to help support building this water source…wait for it!

Also, relatively big news…Kim and I just had another training for soy at a village, Oveng, near her town (17 kilometers on bad roads/motto again) and it went the best of all the ones we've done so far…we felt the least nervous/the most effective. We're looking forward to starting a community farm and several individual farms with this village in the big rainy season (starting end of August). Plus we got 3 pineapples, 2 huge regimes (stalks?) of plantains, and bushmeat as gifts… :>)

Lastly in the work category, I received some Moringa seeds (it's a tree) during my in service training in April. This tree is really popular in the North of Cameroon and Nigera, Senegal, etc… but is completely unknown here. It's called the miracle tree because it's leaves and seeds are INCREDIBLY nutritious, and commonly used in for many traditional medicines…so I thought it'd be a great time to try to grow it here. So with Hans and another CEAC (this is the organization that I work with, there are 5 separate offices in the South province) office are starting at least 3 nurseries and using (or attempting to use) different conditions (varying amounts of water, shade, whatnot)…science?! (I didn't think it existed here, but we're trying) I helped plant one nursery the other day, filling plastic sacks with dirt with 5 small children and a 70 year old man…so we at least have 51 potential trees! I'm crossing my fingers that these grow.

SOOOOOO that's about it for me! I apologize as usual for the amount of time between my posts…but motivation and no computer always let me down! I'm on my way to Baffousam tomorrow for a week long environmental education camp I'm helping another volunteer with…AND I'll get to swim in the pool there! Plus plus plus.

This upcoming weekend is my 9 month anniversary here…I'm 1/3 done! WHOA

Hello hello! Special treat for everyone after this blog entry…wait for it!

Certainly been in and out a lot lately…feels like I'm never really home for more than a day at a time! I spent some time up in Kim's (I'm just going to use her name because I am with her too often to not!) town for the independence/unity celebration…I don't really know what it is about…I think Cameroon combined all their political holidays into this one week or something, at least that's what it seemed like!

Kim held a writing contest as part of the celebration. I helped. Haha…this included us getting omelet sandwiches, telling other people to get everything ready, and then showing up to hand kids paper and sit around and read for 4 hours while the kids wrote about their futures and the future of their country. It ended up going pretty well…but after the first 2 hours the 8 year olds started showing up, and since we didn't specify age from the get go, we ended up with about half of the papers full of drawings and phrases like "I want the president to be president forever". Also, only in Cameroon during an "official" contest like this are you disrupted by events such as the goats making too much noise outside and a crazy drunk women coming to the door at 8 am and yelling things at everyone inside. A few days after the contest we gave out prizes to the winners at the "soccer game for unity"…since everything was very unclear, we assumed that Kim would just stand up, say a few words, and hand out the bags of tee-shirts. However, this whole contest idea was rapidly taken over by the "officials" in the community, they gave a big speech, made the kids stand in line for applause, had random people including myself (without even informing me they just call my name into the microphone!), the mayor, the delegate of agriculture…etc…hand out the prizes and get photos taken with the winners…in front of the entire town…awkward times pretty much sums it up!

Another "event for unity" included a march. For this we showed up to the center of town at 6 am…they pack about ½ the population into one vehicle, we get on mottos, and drive 10 kilometers to the northern border of the south province. Once we get there all the women are told they need to have an obligatory medical exam. Of course, this means there is one man from the hospital with a blood pressure cuff and a stool. No one forms a line, but just a big pack and a few women get their blood pressure taken after some pushing and shoving. They never got around to us (or half the other women for that matter) so I guess it's a good thing I'm not afflicted with hypertension?! After this we do some stretching, which looked to me more like line dancing…I just took pictures…I guess it's also a good thing I'm not a sufferer of stiff joints. :>) Then we are distributed our free gift! Tee-shirts! We were so excited about the tee-shirts (I always am)…but we soon discover that they do not say anything exciting like "march for unity" but are instead plain grey XXL. Very sad. However we did get cloth, hand written numbers to pin on our backs! The march itself was just fine, but I have NEVER seen a cameroonian walk as fast as all these people did, either unity is a highly motivating purpose or there was a big cash prize for the winner! Our goal was to not be last so we wouldn't be deemed the weakest and further the stereotype of weak white people. However, somehow kim and I got stuck between the 2 big groups ahead and behind us…and thus were easy to pick out of the crowd. This clearly inspired 10 mottos to encircle us as we entered town at the end of the march and follow us into the gauntlet of waiting spectators screaming things at us and cheering. Once again, all I can say is…awkward!

We also attended the "unity parade"…which starts 2 hours late, and consists of all the school children from town and the surrounding areas wearing their uniforms and marching 200 meters across an open field in front of a stage where all the important people (and us) sit. I occupied myself by taking pictures of other unsuspecting spectators. Lastly, we had to go to the sous-prefet's party (a guy with a rank somewhere above mayor). Parties here are THE MOST awkward of all awkward situations. We enter the sous-prefet's living room as we are announced by a man on a microphone next to the door. We then take seats in chairs which line all the walls of the room. Music blasts, no one talks, everyone stares at each other and waits for the food. The food is served 2 ½ hours after the party has "started". We eat. They clear everything away. Then the awkward first dance takes place. They choose people at random (I swear sometimes they know who absolutely does not want to be called and then choose you) to dance the first dance in pairs they select. Of course Kim and I get called and have to dance with 60 year old men. The dance lasts for 30 seconds. Everyone laughs at us. We sit down and contemplate how soon we can successfully escape unnoticed. We stay 10 more minutes before deciding, the answer is NOW!

Aside from all the eventfulness due to unity…I've done a bit of work around my village. I had a meeting about a water project at the village Lo'o. Silly me assumed that when they asked me to come for the meeting, that I would be solely an observer! I got there, sat down, and everyone was just staring at me until someone told me to start. So…I guess I can say I winged it…because I have NO IDEA how one does water projects! But now I guess we are building a water pump. Haha… Other than that, Kim and I went to the village Mefoup to do a soy presentation and had record attendance of 43 people! Everyone seemed pretty into it and a lot of people requested recipes books a fellow volunteer made. Clearly however, after the meeting the first individual to come "ask a question" is a 50 year old man, who comes up to us and whispers in horrible English "I want a woman to marry"…seriously, if only I could be a man in this culture for 5 minutes!

Lastly, last thursday was my 8 month anniversary with Cameroon! Not like I'm counting or figuring this stuff out or anything, but in one more month I'll already be a third done with my service. Woah.

SPECIAL EDITION!!!

Pests and Food Products

I wanted to describe the ways in which the pests in my home affect EVERY SINGLE food product I own in order to gain your pity and make you oooh and aaaah at the tiny ecosystems I find in everything from my flour to my zesty blend spice container. We will start with everyone's favorite…ants. There are 3 main types of ants I have identified in my home. We have the large biting black/red ant, the small blank ant, and the tiny orange ant. Tiny orange ants are by far my largest frustration, and have been deemed to be worse in my house than any other volunteers in the South (this is the part where I garner your pity). Now, my prior knowledge of ants led me to believe they only liked sweet things: candy, pure sugar, syrup, etc…this is OH so wrong. Ants consume all food indiscriminately in my home! An onion slice falls on the ground, within 5 minutes…covered in small orange ants. Butter, keep it in it's covered plastic container in a Ziploc bag…2 days later when I use it again…boom full of ants (and often black fuzzy mold). Bread, eat ½ a baguette, but the rest in a Ziploc bag…next afternoon when I want to make a sandwich…wham ants…inside every crevice, those holes which normally make bread so airy and delightful are simply a labyrinth of fun for the ants. And on and on, even spices! They ate my rosemary. I wanted to cry. The little ants are handy in one respect though, they eat other dead bugs. I kill a cockroach, and throw it outside my door, within an hour the thing it entirely gone! The large biting black/red ants were the invaders of my sink during their migration past my house. Oddly enough they usually are only out and about now at night and have a very defined path along the edge of my back porch. Recently something has lured them into the kitchen at night (in far smaller amounts, thank god) and they have been doing evil things like eating my bananas THROUGH the peel. WHY?!?!

Next on the list we have mice. I only saw one in my house that one time (when it did a sweet back flip in my kitchen)…however they are known to be at large due to their lack of discretion in eating my food and pooping in a specific corner about once a week behind my bed in the middle of the night (sneaky little jerks). Mice enjoy chewing through plastic and eating labels off of containers. Ziploc bags left too long with something in them…corners chewed off by mice. Small spreadable cheese in wrapper, in box left too long…chewed through by mice. Cinnamon bottle with apparently delicious label (I bought it…I guess I found myself drawn to the container as well, but didn't think to taste the label)…chewed up by mice. Even the skin on onions get gnawed off by these guys! I repeat…jerks!

Moving on…we have other insects that like to lay eggs. I enjoy pasta so I bought a small bag. I ate some and put the rest in a Tupperware container to store for 2 weeks while I was gone. Who'd have thought this could be a bad idea?! When I opened it next, there were huge bugs who had burrowed inside of the pasta tubes and were living half imbedded in the pasta! So…you know what this means…bugs that size can't get into a Tupperware container in any other way than by eggs…thus every time I eat pasta I'm getting a good dose of bug protein in egg form! Other egg layers include the maggot like things in all flour. My flour is always in a Tupperware too…but that doesn't stop these guys from going about their business havin' babies by the second in my food. Before using flour here you have to put it all through a fine sieve to get out all the bugs, their larvae, end eggs. However, I'm pretty sure the sieve isn't small enough…oh well…it'll maybe stop me from eating raw cookie dough?! One cool thing about the flour larvae is that they make paths down the edges of the container in the flour…kinda like those ant house/maze things kids in the States have…and I like to observe them…and then eat their babies. Maggots also find themselves into almost any fruit that gets a little too ripe on my counter, and I've, on more than one occasion , forgotten to take a good look at my guava before biting in and have gotten a mouthful of fruit + little worms! Yum.

…are you grossed out yet?!...

Lastly we've got the mold. And since fungus is neither plant nor animal, I allow it to be called a pest! With no refrigeration you can imagine that food is quick to rot…but wow, I sometimes find myself pretty astounded at just how fast mold can take over a tomato that was good just the night before, or grow on my dishsponge if I don't bleach it every few day, or inside a container of spices I guess I must have stupidly stuck a contaminated utensil into?! On a sidenote, un-food related…mold has even grown on my pants folded up on my shelf! Humidity…I tell ya!

Alright! That's it! Enjoy your lunch ;>)

First one is mine...second is my lovely guest blogger Kim

Hello! Sad news to start: my postmate's computer died, so after this one (I'm using another volunteer's laptop) my posts may be far less eloquent…since they are oh so eloquent now! :>) Since I last wrote I've been staying busy, in relative terms. I've planted some more soy with the women's group in my village and given them a presentation about it, and then also planted with a man that lives close to me. The second day I was out planting soy with the women's group we had to clear the land of tons and tons of really tall brush and random other fallen branches, etc… This was fine, and kinda fun, just whacking at things with a little hoe and ripping roots out of the ground and throwing them on a pile. After that we started to plant, which includes taking said small hoe and tilling up the soil. Somewhere within these two actions millions and millions (I would like to say I'm exaggerating…but seriously A LOT) of tiny little flies were disrupted from their in-ground homes and were not pleased. We got ATTACKED! Since the only parts of my body exposed were my hands and face…there was some serious biting going on in these areas. All the other women got really bitten up in the same spots, but…leave it to white skin to be the skin that puffs up and gets all red, and also, leave it to me and my insect loving skin to be bitten in places like my EYELID?! I took a picture of myself as proof…I looked like I got into some intense fight and didn't come out on top. I took myself some Benadryl and passed out for 2 hours before presenting myself to the general public (aka walking outside my house) for commentary on my weak skin. Other than that I attempted to hold a meeting at Mefoup to give our soy presentation, south of here. It was pretty disappointing since we spent a good deal of time in transit (painful transit) and arrived to be informed that everyone had thought the meeting was in the morning. For our efforts (and pains) the 85 year old man whose house we use as our meeting place regaled us with a song about his generation, his wife gave us a live chicken to kill and eat at our leisure, and we got to meander around the village being yelled at by various people for being white! I always find the trip to and from Mefoup one of the most interesting. In order to leave from Ebolowa you have to go to the southernmost point of town to find a car. Finding a car includes standing there, having half the city scream things at you, mottos pretend to run into you, never understanding what's going on, and then finally just getting into a car with 7 other people and off you go! Most recently some guy kept trying to grab my arm and my bag to throw into the car…in order to fend him off I spun around and yelled "If you touch me one more time, I am going to hit you VERY HARD!" and then smiled sweetly…in response he took up some posture straight out of a karate movie and burst out laughing at me…but then went away! So hey…it worked out! The depot for cars (if you can call it that, it's kinda just a big muddy parking lot) always has a surplus of bush meat available. The past few times I've seen a couple of pretty big dead monkeys and an enormous snake for sale. I asked about the monkeys and sadly at 8,500 CFA (like 20 dollars) I couldn't afford it. I need to take a picture of this, I would have found it incredibly sad and disturbing prior to my life here…as I'm sure most of you back home would, and it's interesting how this has just become something normal… Other work things…I went to a party at FONJAK (the organization I really want to work with) and almost had the opportunity to go with them to Campo Ma'an…the national park in the south. Sadly I couldn't because of safety reasons (and since they got into a car accident on this same trip I guess it was a good thing?!) But hopefully at the end of this week I'll be able to work with them since I'll be going up there again. Lastly work wise, we had our provincial meeting in Ebolowa last weekend. Most of the volunteers from the South came here, there ended up being 7 of us total (2 were missing) and we just talked about what we've been doing so far, possible collaborations we want to do together, and then went out in white people force to the nightclub and danced in an impenetrable white people pack. It was a lovely time! :>)

Around the neighborhood it's been pretty good. In the weeks since last returning from Yaounde, I had to laugh at how many people told me things like "where have you been, I thought you went back to America" or "why didn't you come say goodbye to me if you were leaving for so long" or "I heard you were in Bamenda, how was the weather?'…and it wasn't just my neighbors or people who this could possibly be seen as a normal thing to ask. People like the lady who sells me tomatoes at the market, the man who works at the post office, the man who works in the bank, the guy down the street I talked to once in my life…News spreads quick around here! But I guess it is good people would notice if I just disappeared! I've been spending lots of time with the neighbor kids as usual. We spend one afternoon cutting up old plastic bags and making a jump rope out of them, which I tried to explain as "recycling"…but I'm not sure if the term made much sense. Also, they now use the jump rope for other things, like tying it around their heads and then tying themselves together and then running in circles around my house?! Hey…at least it's being used?! :>) My landlady kept coming over and yelling at me that the water was running and I'd keep telling her it wasn't (the fact that it's was not coming out of the tap led me to this revelation which she would not accept even when I showed her!) so we went and found the plumber and sure enough, now there it a hole in the pipe way down the road that needs to be fixed. I harassed the plumber into coming over and finally attaching my sink to the wall (it's been sitting on the floor for months) and he told me he would only come do it for me because I don't have any money, but not for my landlady, because "she is rich". I didn't understand the logic, so I agreed as usual, and then…he didn't show up! So the water situation remains as it apparently always will be! BUT the furniture situation has drastically improved! I am now the proud owner of 4 chairs, a coffee table and a small couch made out of raffia (it's kinda like wicker furniture)!!! I've been enjoying sitting off the floor as of late! Something exciting, one of my friends has started to sell food during lunch time right across the street…I can get ½ of a small fish and a bunch of rice for 100 CFA…which is like 20 cents!!! VERY exciting! Other exciting news: apparently my chief is a sorcerer and kills people. This is what the children have been telling me. And since when Peace Corps staff visited me we had to go talk to the chief, the chief now greets me when I see him on the street and everyone exchanges glances and casts shameful stares at me! Lastly in the house I came upon a lizard in my kitchen above the door treating it like a bathroom…excreting from his lofty perch onto my counters and floor. So what did I do except…video tape it…oh it's a great film!

And…last bit of random news…I met the American missionary couple whom live in town, they invited my postmate and I over to have dinner and watch some movies. I could not believe the things they own (I will make a small list for you): tile floors, oven, refrigerator AND freezer, hot water heater, microwave (first one I've seen in Cameroon), TV, DVD player, real mattress, CAR…it was insane, paradise on earth. We ate cheese and lettuce, drank diet soda, had cake…AMAZING…but it felt very foreign! It kinda scares me to think if all that already felt so out of the norm how coming back to the states will feel where those things are commonplace…but it also made me feel like I was more "integrated" into the lifestyle here, since I've been feeling like it's all too cushy most of the time for me anyways…

Alright…this has been a very very random assortment of news, but thus is life! Thanks for reading!

GUEST BLOGGER!!!

Out of Context

This place is weird. Or maybe it's not. Maybe I'm the weirdo. Who knows? Regardless, the following are some scenes from my life here. In the context of America they are ridiculous. Here, it's called Tuesday.

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Dining Out. The other morning I went to an omelet shack with Kate, another volunteer who lives just outside of Ebolowa, our provincial capital. She's from Wisconsin, by the way. This becomes obvious immediately after talking to her, even when she's not wearing her giant cheese-head hat. Anyway, omelet shacks. Kate and I went to Jackson's (full name: Chez Jackson's International Club—ha! Jealous?) because he makes the best spaghetti omelets in town. We each placed our order—une oeuf spaghetti, si vous plait—but Jackson's new omelet intern told us he was out of spaghetti. Now in America, this would have been crushing news. Or actually, in America this probably wouldn't have happened, because in America they worry about pesky little things like 'customer service' and generally order enough supplies to see themselves through the day. But whatever. I am not bitter, because I may not be in America, but Cameroon is not without its culinary advantages. Certainly in America you are not allowed to say 'Mais la femme là-bas a le spaghetti. Il faut lui demander'. And certainly in America the omelet intern would not then go over to the lady next door and, USING HIS HANDS, take some of her spaghetti for us. Mmm, spaghetti omelets. You people don't even know the value. (Grandmaster Flash, that was for you. Hi!)

* * *

Working Relationships. After a pleasant brunch, Kate and I headed out to Mefoup, one of the villages outside of Ebolowa. (I like to think of them as suburbs because it's hilarious but probably only to me because I live here but trust me—comic GOLD) We were supposed to give a presentation to a group of farmers on the magical properties of soy. Kate talks about the advantages for the soil and I talk about the nutritional benefits. For example, did you know that one kilo of soy has the same amount of protein as three kilo's of beef? C'est incroyable, n'est pas? And let me tell you, harvesting soy is a lot less messy than butchering a cow. Although I'm sorry, I personally can't get behind soymilk. Drinking beans freaks me out. I try not to judge others though. Where I come from that will get you kicked right out of the coffee house. Oh dear, it's seems I have digressed. I'll be honest—I can be a bit of a digresser as a rule. I apologize. Soy! Farmers! So we went, at 14:00, because that's when Kate had set up the meeting for. Only when we got there, there was just one old woman on the porch. Because for some reason all the farmers thought we were going to be there in the morning, not in the afternoon. So they had all left hours ago. A disappointment, but truthfully—not an entirely unexpected one here in the Dirty South. Meetings rarely go as planned. But that is not the point of this rambling, practically incoherent story. The point of the story is this—we left that house with a live chicken in a bag! The woman had planned on preparing the chicken for the meeting, but since we so rudely showed up four hours late, she just kept it and gave it to us. Fan-fricking-tastic. I never received live poultry after meetings at my old job. One time I got this cute little notebook and pen set, but that was a total fluke.

* * *

Getting Rides. (Side note to all parents, and other people who are generally inclined towards worry—none of what follows is considered weird here, or dangerous. It is not hitchhiking, which I would never do because I've seen those movies and I know what happens to girls to hitchhike, the hussies. It is simply a system of transportation that involves flagging down random vehicles in order to convey oneself from one location to another. OK?) We took a cab out to Mefoup (and by cab I mean one of the seemingly endless supply of Toyotas held together with wire and hope) so we needed to flag down another cab to get us back. Only there didn't seem to be a lot of cabs going by, so we started walking in the direction of Ebolowa. Only it was the middle of the afternoon so it was REALLY FREAKING HOT. No worries. We'll just walk up to a complete stranger’s house and ask to sit on their (mercifully shaded) porch for a bit. AND THIS WILL BE CONSIDERED PERFECTLY NORMAL. It will also be considered perfectly normal for two old women to come out of the house and stare at us. And I mean STARE. Hello! We are just a couple of zany American girls trying to stay out of the sun! Thank you for letting us sit on your porch, and no, we don't mind at all if you stare at us in a what might be considered a maniacal manner without blinking for five minutes straight! Would you like to look at the live chicken we've got in this bag? At first, whenever we would hear a car approaching Hans (Kate's co-worker—he often comes with us to translate our presentations into Bulu) would run out to the road and try to flag it down. Four cars passed him without stopping. So I tried. Four more cars passed! Of all the nerve! I mean honestly, sometimes when I'm just walking down the road cars will pull up alongside me randomly and try to convince me to get in. (Because in addition to being white, I also apparently appear both easy and stupid.) But now, in our moment of need, I can't get a car to save my life. Clearly, this was a job for a blond. Sure enough, Kate was able to get a car to stop—although I was gratified that two passed her before one finally pulled over. The chicken in the bag went into the trunk (and by 'trunk' I mean the space under the hatchback door that didn't latch) and we climbed into the car. Which at this point already held four other people. We drove about 50 feet, and then pulled over to pick up an old man and his 3 large bags of plantains. So now there were eight people, three bags of plantains, and one bag of (live) chicken in the car. Perhaps I've misled you into thinking we were in a station wagon with my mention of the hatchback. No, we were in something that resembled a Geo. Four people in the back, four people in the front. In Cameroon, not even the driver gets his own seat. And all the cars at stick-shifts. Ha-zing! I probably don't need to mention that perceptions of personal space are a little different here. Mostly because the concept of personal space doesn't exist. Bon voyage!

* * *

Lying. I lie to people constantly, and for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it’s because a strange man is hitting on me and I think it prudent to mention that I already have two husbands, and that my father requires at least 15 goats for my dowry. Sometimes its because I don't know how to say whatever it is that I actually want to say, so I just say something else. Something completely different and also maybe completely untrue but also more easily expressed in French. For instance, I might say that in America men do all the laundry and cooking. Technically, perhaps, this is not true. But it's easier than explaining that in the States gender roles are quite blurred due to the dramatic social changes that took place in the 70s and 80s and as a result domestic chores are distributed based on a complex and continuous process of discussion and experimentation throughout the lifetime of any relationship. Also it blows their minds when I say it, and that is kind of fun. And finally, sometimes I end up lying completely by accident, because of my habit of just saying 'oui' whenever I don't understand what is being said to me. I'm pretty sure I've told a number of people that they could come to my house for dinner, and not once did I actually mean it. It's possible I've also accepted a number of marriage proposals, but even with the abundance of rock-hard abs in this country, I don't actually plan on walking down the aisle with anyone. At least not at this point in time.

* * *

What's new, what's new…I have had an incredibly busy past 2 weeks…so a lot I guess! I'll start with all my recent fun transportation in Cameroon stories! In one week I had about as many travel problems as I can hope to ever rack up in such a short period of time…2 breakdowns of buses between Ebolowa and Yaoundé in the same week. The first one occurred right as it was getting dark, we broke down in an area without cell phone reception, and everyone on the bus was in "I hate white people mode". We ended up having to wait 4 hours, during which I tried to win over the bus population by using key bulu phrases such as "Ma kobo bulu tchithcoi" (I speak a little bulu) when they were saying things about me they thought I couldn't understand. After which the volunteer I was traveling with and myself got white people privileges and got to hop on a bus before everyone else, which I'm sure reverted the bus to I hate white people mode once more! The second break down occurred 4 days later, this time only 30 km from Yaoundé, and it took 3 hours for the replacement bus to be sent! I made a friend during this time that later really helped me out getting a taxi and a decent price at night in the city…which is pretty iffy at best! In addition to the break downs I foolishly forgot my ID card while going to work an hour away one day. The first stop by gendarmes (police…they stop cars constantly at roadblocks they set up to "check ID cards"…it's a very pointless process that increases travel time drastically and is really only used to pad their own pockets) went fine and I got waved through with a look of disapproval. On the way back from work I was with my supervisor and another man I work with…we got stopped…I tried my "I'm stupid and left my card at home excuse" and the gendarme started shaking his head disapprovingly. This for some reason infuriated the man I work with and he stood up, started yelling, gendarme was screaming at him, no one was listening to me, I was almost crying…big buff men in uniforms with large automatic weapons freak me out…eventually he called over HIS supervisor who took one look at me and told everyone "yeah I know her, she's the white girl who lives at Ngalane"…thus lessons learned: 1)living at a police barrier has it's perks, 2)DON'T forget your ID card at any time 3)don't yell at scary men with guns.

Two weeks ago I had my week long IST (in service training) in Bamenda, in the Northwest Province. It was a pretty intense week, time consuming mainly…11 hours a day of being locked away in a hotel for meetings…most of which were things we'd gone over already or things that once again weren't exactly applicable to us volunteers in the still forested part of the country (this has irked me continuously during trainings and frustrated me to no end when actually trying to figure out how to get work started…) We did get to do two mornings of "field work", namely, visits to two different agro forestry centers that really had their stuff together and were incredibly beautiful places. Aside from the meeting/frustration aspect for me, it was really really wonderful to see all the volunteers from the agro training group who I hadn't seen since going to post in December. Not a single one of us has left the program since we all met in Philly, and I'm pretty sure this is some kind of record…all 22 of us still in for the long haul! It's a really good dynamic within the group and there are several people who continuously give me sanity and perspective…thus leaving was once again the hard part! However, after IST I went to a village near Baffousam in the West province for a quick stay at my good friend's place with a few other people…I had intended on going back to Bangangte to try to visit my home stay family, but ended up being scheduled for meetings in Yaoundé the next day so had to leave the West. The next 4 days I had meetings in Yaoundé, to be a "contact volunteer"…so when the country falls apart my post mate and I are responsible for getting a hold of everyone in the South province and then they all get to come hide out at our houses. I also had meetings for the Environmental Education Committee, which I just joined. The latter made me feel the most productive, and it was a lot of sharing of ideas and whatnot. Another girl in the South and I are going to write up something for the Environ. Edu. Manual on medicinal plants and bush meat. We are also, this is the grand idea, going to organize a 100 km bike tour (clearly ending at the beach in Kribi) in the South where we leisurely ride along and stop at villages to discuss environmental issues…big goal…but they do this in the North to discuss AIDS…so we are going to adapt it! :>) Another great idea we talked about while all together is the band…we have a gig!!! (I'm never saying that again, I feel like a weirdo…I got to use something like "performance" or maybe "musical presentation experience"?! ha-ha, ok, no better), but anyways, I think it'll be in November in the Northwest, and we're going to raise money for some farmers organization my friend works with up there…I'm excited for that!

Back home…coming home was weird…kind of hard in a few ways, but I did miss my house, my immediate neighbors, Obam, Hans…etc… My little neighbor has taken to picking bouquets of flowers for me (and for any other volunteers that come to visit)…so she picked me a huge one right when I got back. I also was greeted with the news that my soccer team won the finals match! Which is a big deal…and I couldn't be there for it, so got scolded. I had gone to the semi finals match before I left…let me tell you, still awkward. Whenever the guys scored a goal they would all run over to me, kneel on the ground and kiss my feet! I took to hiding my head behind my friend’s back like a 5 year old and giggling like a middle schooler. Then my neighbor, Billy, told me he is going to be sure we have the jerseys made for summer vacation (when the soccer tournaments start over and apparently get really intense)…they will say "Wisconsin Badgers" on the back (which still no one can pronounce, or for that matter even remember) and then worst of all he's putting "KATE" on the front in big letters…nope…no self promotion there at all! I also had a great conversation with my landlord's son, who is my new best friend…since while discussing culture and racism he told me that he would never marry a white girl, and would not marry me no matter what…WOOHOO!!! Never have I heard such a thing out of a guy's mouth in this country, so thus, we are best friends ;>)

Lastly, work wise not a whole lot has happened around Ebolowa since I've been in and out so much the past few weeks. I did finish planting soy and beans and corn at the farm far south of Ebolowa; saw a water source in need of improvement there, which my supervisor wants me to make a secondary project. Upon return from Yaoundé we had an apiculture (bee keeping) training session in a village right near my house. It was REALLY interesting and I learned a lot…it got dark before we could finish though, so we're planning on having another where we finish building the rouge (bee hive/box whatever thing) in early May. So…that's about all! But one last thing of major importance...my parents are coming to visit!!! They'll be here starting the end of July for 3 weeks and we're looking into trying to go somewhere else to do something very touristy...like a safari or whatnot. So that's definitely something to look forward to! The power just went out, so I must quickly get off my post mate’s computer before I use up all the reserve battery!

Hi! Sorry it's been an incredibly long time since I last wrote...and much has happened since then! Work wise things picked up the past week, I have spend 2 wednesdays planting soy with a small group of women, and getting massive blisters which I display to all my neighbors with pride and then tell them I must work harder than them because I have more injury...sometimes they belive me :^) planting here is backbreaking work, that is for sure, and I'm worn out after a little over an hour each time...but for my labors i receive compliments such as "wow, you are solid" which I enjoy. I spent another Wednesday with the health volunteer near me giving a soy formation (presentation) and although I was scared to death it was really nice to have her help me. Hans also came and translated everything into boulou, so I think we did a relatively good job. People were taking notes and we made them summarize what we had presented...it seemed like a lot learned...I suggested a cooking class after we harvest the soy in addition to the formation as well. 2 Thursdays ago I had a meeting with an NGO in Ngoulemakong, 45 min north, FONJAK. I was REALLY impressed, very organized, environmental conservation and scientific minded...all things I dont see too much of! They even had a copy of 'An Inconvenient Truth' in French...so that told me a lot. Also very nice people, so I'm hoping to try to start working with them. That Saturday I had a "meeting" (aka drink 1.5 liters of pop and a glass of red wine while sitting at a bar for 4 hours with 6 million people) with Hans and the Leo, the man who I visited in his village a month or so ago, and I will be planting soy and beans with some women in his village this Saturday, and we'll be looking to start a fish pond there possibly. Lastly, I went to a metting with the women of my village, Ngalane, and am trying to get them to start a soy field with me also...one lady has become my friend at the market and is always firing Boulou at me rapidly and relentlessly.

At home I didn't have power for a solid week, which was really only annoying because I couldnt charge my cell phone, and thus did not have an alarm clock! I entertained myself one night by watching a fly keep buzzing buzzing buzzing around my candle flame until it lit itself on fire and fell to a noisy death in flames on my floor. I went to the 'Wisconsin Badgers' first soccer game 2 weeks ago, and let me tell you...it was awkward! Billy introduced me as the president of the team (made worse by the fact they were all a bunch of teenage boys), everyone applauded, then a bunch of dudes ran off the field midgame to shake my hand immediately upon scoring a goal. I always use the kids to make myself feel less awkward. For example, when they brought me a chair; pretty much a throne, to the sidelines and made me sit in it while everyone else stood around, I made 3 kids share it with me and we built stick houses on the ground. Although, not a good idea to not pay attention to the game because I had to ask if MY team won at the end...whoops...i've never been a sports watching fanatic. After the game my landlord and Billy came to my door offering an enourmous glass full of whisky, which I denied by telling them I would die if I drank it!

I had a site visit with the Peace Corps nurse...and I have to say, I never had and don't think I ever will have a job where they ask you things such as "have you been drunk in country" and "how do you flush your toilet" and expect answers! My postmate and I went out to dinner with the nurse and the PC driver and then, EXCITING, the shelf man was out along side the street and PC drove me home with shelf number 2!!! moving up in the world...now my clothes are off the floor; and not molding! Since the start of the official rainy season I've been enjoying the market...TONS of fruit, including mangos, pineapple, bannanas, watermelon, papaya; guava...and prices are ridiculous (compared to this type of fruit in wisconsin) example, I just bought 12 mangos for 500 cfa, so a little over a dollar...I love it! We've also had lettuce, avacados, zucchini and eggplant regularily...an avacado is 50-100 cfa...so what like under 20 cents...wonderful!!!

So, thats all that's been going on lately! I need to regain my enthusiasm for writing on here; and you people should ASK ME QUESTIONS to motivate me!

Hope all's well!

Happy St. Patty's Day and Easter all…weird weird weird with every passing holiday!

First and foremost I HAVE RUNNING WATER IN MY HOUSE!!! Granted there are a few problems: toilet doesn't work, no bathroom sink, water is nasty brown color…but hey…I love it! SOOOO exciting to wash my face from a faucet instead of a cup, and I haven't yet used my shower (the water's been cut 2 of the 3 days I've had it) but am very very excited for my first non-bucket bath in my house! I'll be honest though I'm going to miss going to get water, it was always at least something to do and gave people a better opinion of me as the not so weak white girl. Plus I will miss the bonding time with my dear water buddy Michelle.

Secondly, I wanted to preface this post by saying that I am feeling sort of at a lack of stories. My life here has become just that, my life, not as interesting to myself as you all tell me it is and not something I myself always deem worth writing about…and although I've always been good for the telling of pointless stories, I don't want to be boring to all of you! Therefore I wanted to ask if you have any questions about stuff here. Things I haven't included that you've been wondering about, things you want to hear more about, etc…You can also tell me to stop repeating myself so often and that you are sick of stories about insects or whatever if you feel the need. :>) If so it'd be great if you could post them as a comment to this post, and I'll periodically check and progressively respond to them all. If you don't want to post it on here, email me: kate.legner@gmail.com.

Last weekend I spent a bit of time with the volunteer a bit north of me, we did some research for my soy presentation (which, by the way, has been postponed till next week….of course, but I made a pretty sweet poster and game) and I enjoyed my time with her as I always do. Her counterpart forced me to eat Fausse (not sure how to spell this)…which are grubs on a stick. Horrible horrible texture, to all those of you who say the texture of tofu is bad, eat a grub. Also horrible horrible texture when it gets stuck in your teeth and re-enjoyed 2 hours later…gross gross gross…definitely gave me credibility when I told my neighbors about it though and now they have offered to also prepare me crickets, because oh, I love eating bugs.

Here in Ebolowa, I've started taking Boulou classes with the counterpart of my postmate. I've had 2 now, and they are quite intense. I have difficulty with language always and taking a one on one class in French to learn Boulou is tricky tricky. I used my knowledge to tell my neighbors I was going into town and they were SOOOO happy, cheering, etc…but now they think they can speak to me in Boulou at all times, which causes some interesting conversations:

neighbor: "blah blee boulou blah"

me: "eh?! Ma ké sicolo." Translation: "what? I'm going to school"

neighbor: "Téké. Bleh bloo blah" Translation: "no. Bleh bloo blah"

me: "bye" Translation: "oh my gosh I don't understand anything you say ever I'm leaving"

Other things in village: I was forced into an hour long conversation with my landlady about Jehovah…I was honest with her and shared with her my feelings on things, etc…but she's still convinced she's going to change my mind and wants to sit down and read the bible with me…even though I told her several times I really didn't want to. This was even after I tried to buy her love and forgiveness by knitting her a potholder with a heart on it. Haha… I've also been cross stitching like a fiend, and still finding it awkward that within 5 minutes of me sitting out on my bench on my porch I have an entire gaggle of children standing around me just watching me with great interest. A few days ago though one kid brought over his own needle and thread and was fixing shoes on my porch with me… I have officially named the youth soccer team the Wisconsin Badgers, and my neighbor Billy is checking into getting jerseys made…that say "Wisconsin Badgers", though I forgot to tell him the appropriate colors, I requested one also. The Ngalane men's soccer team had their first game yesterday…I ended up going. It went something like this: little neighbor girl asks if I'm going, I say "sure, a soccer game, what the heck else do I have to do" (I say this in Boulou obviously, haha, JUST KIDDING), Michelle my water buddy screams, jumps up and down with this news, and then proceeds to be my constant companion all night, half the village piles into 2 vehicles, I clearly get the place of honor in the front of the car while about 30 people pile into one van…we go to a village a half hour north of Ebolowa, watch the game, I get mauled by mosquitos, the people who don't know me yell things at me, I back talk, we pile back in the 2 cars drive 3 minutes, get out, everyone gets handed pieces of sugar cane at some random house, I of course get an ENTIRE cane which is far taller than me, we go into the house, I have to sit in a chair, everyone gets a spoon and eats something out of a big pot, 2 minutes later we all run out, pile back in, and off we go!

It was pretty fantastic however since everyone we were with from my village did the utmost in protecting me and making sure I wasn't left behind…it was really really nice and I felt like not so much of an outsider…no matter what I looked like to the other village there. I had a similar feeling when I was coming through the village where the volunteer lives north of me on my way back from Yaounde a while ago. We had stopped at the barrier and I was in a big bus next to the window. I heard someone yelling my name over and over…and way up on a hill next to the road was one of the little girls in the village who always comes to talk with the other volunteer and I. It's such a good feeling to be known by name and recognized like that, instead of just always being the anonymous white girl.

The rainy season is in full swing, and this means power and water cuts constantly. Oddly enough, I have come to look forward to the power being cut around 7 most nights because this means no Cameroonian pop music blasting behind my bedroom until 2 AM and picking back up at 6 AM on the dot. I light my candle, read a book, then go to sleep to crickets instead…quite nice. The rain also means my running has taken a bit of a blow. Now my route choices are as follows 1)harassment on pavement into town or 2)scenic forest with 20 extra pounds of mud on my feet. So far I've chosen the mud, but almost killed myself sliding down hills, and have almost wanted to kill myself from the extra mud stress! Don't take that seriously. I also took a really muddy back road into town one day just because I had heard that that's where it went…I told Obam this and he thought it was hilarious that I would do something like that just because, and he himself had never been down this road (even though it is about 1/4 mile away from his office and right near his village)…I always think it's crazy how people here think I'm so crazy for doing things like: going for walks, finding things outside like cool rocks or whatever, and even reading…

Work has been as usual, I worked with the soy "group" on Wednesday and we finished clearing the field, and now will be planting this Wednesday. I have a meeting with an organization in Ngoulemakong (where the girl is north of me) this next Thursday and am really interested in what they do and hoping (with all my fingers, and toes if possible, crossed) that I'll get to work with them…they really have their stuff together and the woman I've been in contact with is Anglophone. Other than that, Obam's been getting a little bit too laid back about stuff in my opinion, and I created these calendars that I'm going to force him to sit down and fill up with ideas of things we can do…hoping this will spark some kind of work…

Thanks for reading as always and post me questions!!!

It's been a relatively busy past week and a half! At home I've spent a lot of time waiting around for the plumbers and watching them tear up several of my walls and floor (I really wanted to do this part, they just went nuts with a big hammer). Sadly I just got stuck doing the clean up after the plumbers stole my only cleaning rag! But… I do not yet have water because the pipe to the bathroom sink is just a gapping hole…so in theory I could open the main valve and sprint to my bathroom to catch the spray from the pipe in a bucket, then sprint outside and turn it off…I'm almost thinking I just prefer the walk to the source! My neighbor flowerman has been in top form lately, I had flowers in every room of the house: kitchen, living room, bedroom AND bathroom! He also added another plant to my porch and told me his idea is to fill the ENTIRE porch with plants…he's got one side of the house down, 2 to go! I do however feel a bit guilty since he makes my little neighbor girls carry the water for all of these plants… My landlady found mushrooms somewhere at the market, huge delicious ones and gave me a lot…the second time I've gotten to eat them here, and this time not out of a can! Very very exciting. Lastly, house wise, I had my first mouse/rat entry. Somewhere between the hours of 8:00-9:00pm on Wednesday, March 6, I set foot in my kitchen simply to brush my teeth, little did I know there would be an enormous mouse/small rat (I haven't decided yet but definitely bigger than a mouse) freaking out when it saw me. I almost had a heart attack because obviously it scared me as much as I scared it, but I watched it from the safety of the doorway to see where it would go. In it's insanity it ran into the wall at top speed and did a backflip, which lightened the mood a bit, and then squeezed out under the crack under my door. He has not been back!

In the neighborhood, I decided I wouldn't put up with the random guys around yelling things at me. So I started yelling things at them, including the harsh insults like "You are impolite!" Due to this I made friends with a neighbor woman who was happy I said it because "that guy bothers everyone". My one neighbor man has enlisted my help with the naming of the town soccer team, he told me it should be something from my home, so yep, Wisconsin Badgers…eh, what else!? :>) Lastly under this topic of discussion, I was sitting on the steps of the small deli in town waiting for my postmate and friend, and a little girl (7 or 8) came up and handed me a coin. Now, these steps are usually where the poor/homeless people in town come to beg because it's considered one of the "white mans stores" (aka expensive)…but what?! Never so far in my life in this country has someone given ME money because they thought I was poor! It was the cutest thing…but I returned the money to her with lots of "Mercis".

Travel wise, I got to go to Yaounde Thursday thru Sunday and saw a LOT of people from my training group that I haven't gotten to see in far too long. We did amazing things like going swimming at the Hilton pool (which was incredible…just swimming period, but the place was soo soo nice), getting drinks at the Hilton happy hour roof top bar on the company tab of an old volunteer who was in Yaounde for business, going to a Rasta drumming show where I used my tambourine skills…it was all around a very excellent and real vacation!

Work wise, I have started working with my supervisor's nephew, who lives in a village a 45 min walk from my house. We had a meeting this past Monday, attended by 15 people (this is a TON) and then this Wednesday I met them in the field to help clear the land after it'd been burned (moving burned up sticks and grass clumps from ground to large pile for 2 hrs). We are going to be planting soy beans next Wednesday…so if anyone has any information on this, send it my way. I have no clue! I have to do some research. I also, next Wednesday, have to give a small training session to these people on soy, nutrition, usage…etc…and although I spent way too much time being excited about Tofu (you who know me know this to sadly be true) and eating it in all forms in the States, I don't know many concrete, easy to explain things about the soy bean itself. SOOO…this will be interesting, but I am really really excited (along with nervous) to give a presentation and feel like I accomplished some tangible thing. I like the nephew a lot, he's worked with several Peace Corps Volunteers and gets it when I try to explain how I'm thinking/feeling about something. On of his neighbor girls who worked with us was friendly, and my age, which together hasn't been common…so she now has my phone number and we are apparently planning her a birthday party in…November…?!

Missing everyone!

My neighbor boy, Dorien, we have high five and waving contests.aka: BEST BUDS

The goat that lurks around habitually,notice his poo on my porch. A beautiful grasshopper ... Wow I love my camera! We hiked up to one of the big hills in Ebolowa and this is the view awayfrom the city. Foggy picture and I'll try again.

Flowers my neighbor Billy gave me.

Biggest spider in the world.

My neighbor Billy's farm. Billy & kids are just visible.Deforestation!

Weird run down resort on my way home, has a lake with boat house, hotel/barbuilding and this bizarre & creepy statue.

What most street look like when it rains here.

Me in the woods when we kinda got lost.

Notice my hiking apparell.

Catholic Mission on the way to my house. I

never realized it was this enormous until I explored it!

Alright, I'm going to start with the recent situation here, not the best of news, but as of now everything is calming down and we are all feeling pretty positive that all will return to normal shortly! Not sure how much has been in the news in the states (I'm guessing very little), so I will be your Cameroonian news source! Last Monday/Tuesday things started to get a little iffy in Douala, Yaounde, and a few of the provinces in the western part of the country. I think things initially started because gas prices rose (and here any little bit affects them a lot more ultimately than I think it would us in the states), followed by a price rise in a few goods, such as the price increase of 50 CFA on bread. Not sure how one thing led to another but a few strikes and riots broke out in the aforementioned places, as far as I know 17 people were killed in Douala, people were marching in Bafoussam (in the West) burning boutiques for demonstrations etc., and most transport agencies around the country were closed due to roadblocks. In my province, the South, there was no sign whatsoever of any problems, only a 100 CFA more expensive taxi ride out to my house and lines at the gas stations due to the gas shortage/prices, which is actually not at all uncommon. So my post mate, another volunteer in the South and I have spent the last week being torn between messages from fellow volunteers in the affected areas, messages from the Peace Corps administration (telling us to pack our emergency bag in case we would need to quickly be evacuated), and the lack of problems we've noticed here. It's been only rough mentally for us, trying to believe one day that we're going home for certain and the next morning being told that everything is calming down. It's so weird to think that potentially I could have not seen a single problem in the country yet be forced to leave before I've really accomplished anything! So...interesting week. I know a few people have mentioned they're worried about me, but please take this as my way to inform (with the little I really know :>)) and get things written down truthfully, and that when I say I feel perfectly safe and sound that I'm being honest! I'm sure there are much more dangerous places to be in the US right now!

It's been nice to have the other volunteer staying with us here in Ebolowa for a while. She's the other Agro forestry volunteer in the South, so we met up a few times with Hans my supervisor and discussed some work related info. And did a little tour of the market with him. Obam has his motto fixed, but then was without gas, so we haven't gone anywhere for over a week now. I'm going to get pushy this week about planning some meetings, etc. with both Hans and Obam...so watch out! :>) The other volunteer and I did some exploring out around my house, aka getting lost in the woods. We walked out into the forest, me thinking that the trail would lead to a road I sort of knew the location of, but over an hour later and we finally made the call to turn around, and then after a few tries found our way back. I took some pretty incredible pictures of bugs, which I’m overly excited about and will definitely post for all of you to enjoy as well,count on it! It was nice to have her around to go exploring, because that is definitely something I don't think I can do out in the middle of the forest alone! We also went to the bank because I noticed that money was randomly (and RAPIDLY) leaving my account. I demanded a statement ("give me a list of money in the account"), filled out 3 different transaction slips, signing each at least twice (I don't understand their system), received my statement and proceeded to yell in broken French "this is too expensive, you did not tell me, you are taking my money"! After a bit of time and after everyone near me in the bank had stopped to observe me (which, hey, that happens pure and simply upon my entry into the establishment.) the bank man explains to me that here it apparently costs (close to 10 dollars USD,.that is way to much in the states!) each MONTH just to have an account, and proceeded to laugh at me saying "ahahahah Legnar, Legnar, hahahaha". Oh well, the next day I saw the bank man on the street and he was back to kissing my cheeks, no hard feelings.

Things with my neighbors are good as usual. I received 8 bananas from my neighbor girl that was previously angry at me, and at least 20 from Obam, trust me, I will have no problems with potassium any time soon. So I've been working on ways to use them all up, including making banana bread. The first batch I distributed among the neighbors and everyone really liked it a lot (which is kind of unusual, most often any food we've tried to prepare for them is received by a look of disgust, little do they know their food is actually the grosser ;>)) so my neighbor requested my recipe for his birthday 2 days later. I offered just to make it for him, and he was very excited to receive it...he said "thank you" in English, if that exemplifies anything?! He then gave us a big piece of fish head to enjoy, and some palm wine, even steven. My landlady and landlord both just got back from Yaounde (they had been stuck there due to lack of buses running) and I am told she has pieces to fix my water problem...I hope! Although there's been no shortage of rain the past few days, and thus no lack of the resultant lake in my kitchen! I need to figure out a way to direct kitchen flood water directly to flush the toilet...

Hope you're all doing well, and please be rest assured that I AM FINE!!! :>) (but sometimes sickeningly honest).

Happy Leap Year!!!Where to begin? I'll start with the most recent event because it sticks in my mind most readily! For the past 3 nights between 11:45 and 12:15 I have been woken up to strange noises right outside my bedroom window. Animals, I initially thought might be goats, but they were not making the usual goat noises (oh I am oh so familiar with every part of their being) more like some random huffing noises and sniffing around in my compost pile. Then whatever it was (I think there are 2)takes off at a full speed sprint around the back and side of my house on my little cement "patio" and it sure didn't have hooves, and goats DO NOT run that fast. So initially, the first night I was absolutely terrified. The next night I was slightly scared and then last night I got all excited trying to figure out what it was but still haven't had the nerve to just go to my window, lift back the curtain and get a sight of it with my flashlight locked doors and a mosquito net(surprising even how much the second one) give me quite the sense of security against whatever it is maybe tonight I'll be at the "courageous" point and take a look! Other random animal news: the parrots have been out and about by the office I work near, it's really cool to hear them and then see them flying in the forest. There was also a group of enormous black birds with really long yellow beaks that I took some time to watch. My bird knowledge here is seriously lacking but I'm excited for the rainy season when the birds will beout (and hopefully the little monkeys) in full force for some entertainment. Lastly, there are a pair or lizards (largest ones I've seen in my house yet) that have begun to live in my bathroom. they go in and out of a big hole that was left in the plaster by someone who didn't attach the showerhead to the wall very well. I'll often walk in in the middle of the night to see just a lizard head poking out of the wall at me. This comes with its downfalls (hard to imagine downfalls with lizards living in the bathroom eh?) including lizard poop on my bathroom walls and floor.

Work wise I've have THREE (heck yes) semi productive days!!! Tuesday Obam and I planted a row of yams just right behind the office (I'm thinking it's suppose to be an example garden of sorts). It wasn't alot but it was extremely exciting since I finally got some blisters, a backache, and dirt under my fingernails…WOOHOO!!!! The feeling of doing actual physical work was pretty wonderful. I kicked Obam's butt with the shoveling part of this and everyone still thinks I'm weak;>) After planting, Obam and I went to the little "bar" that's right next to my house and had some interesting conversation about medicinal plant people around town. Some guy who can transfer a baby from one woman to another with no surgery needed, and some other woman who can put some plant over your eyes to make you see all the spirits (he said"fairies" but I'm thinking more along the line of spirits was meant)around you. I told him that, being an American, and a pretty scientific minded one at that, I would need to see this before I believed him. He told me they wouldn't trust a white girl seeing this stuff so I guess I'm out of luck. The baby thing would be pretty amazing however, and I'm disappointed. He also told me we'd go tothis tourist (here that doesn't really mean the same thing it does elsewhere) place like catacombs where you walk through the graves andend up leaving having been marked on the skin (I think he said with ashes) by the dead people. This is also something I'm waiting to see - interesting! On Thursday we had planned a meeting out in avillage near me. Obam shows up late, his motto broke the day before. Now that causes a few problems, since it's his (and many other's invillage) only way of transport and he doesn't have the money to fix it until mid March. So we ended up walking to the village, getting there an hour and a half later, and having everyone "forgotten" about the meeting again!!! So third strike. But, as we were passing back through, walking home, we spotted the leader of the group we were suppose to meet with. He spun some yarn (is that even a phrase my English is beginning to escape me not and I think I'm making things up a lot) about how he had a headache and forgot about the meeting and was sleeping and yadda yadda. Obam gets very frustrated with the situation and sometimes I feel he makes it worse but who am I to say?! It's been his life for far longer than mine and I know already it's driving me a bit crazy! So, then on Saturday,in a random way I went out to a village towards, and close to, the border of Equitorial Guinea, with this guy that I'd met in Bangangte and who'd been keeping in contact with me since then. He's a really wealthy man, head of some organization in the West province (I always am weary ofthe money/power thing) but I was happy to see that every weekend hegoes back to his village and uses the money to fund projects his GIC(organization) does. He took me on a tour of all the different projects he currently has going: orchard, palm plantation, variety offields with different crops, cocoa plantation, he's even attempted rice (which I've never seen here. He once again fell into the routine of praising me and being amazed that I'd walked about 2 milesthrough the forest (WOW) which actually starts to get on my nerves abit, everyone thinking I'm weak constantly with no grounds for the assumption, besides the white skin but I got over it:>). He wants me to help him build a fish pond (which I have NO IDEA how to do) so I suggested we raise Cane Rats instead (it's a little rodent thing,kinda like a guinea pig that people raise to eat) because its one of the (only) things I have a small book on how to do correctly. He seemed ok with that though! He seemed very eager to work with me, which is a nice change and since he has the money to do projects, and the land it seems like it'll be a good starting point for me. Needless to say, this was exciting! It was his birthday as well so we hung out with his family, I met his 88 year old father who walked around in a bathroom all day giving me little plastic packets of whiskey, and we went to a bar where I ended up with his 2 year old niece sleeping on my lap for an hour. I also met the guy who is the head of the south division of the (pretty much only) television channel in Cameroon,which was also random! No water yet at home but I think I would miss going with my ever increasing entourage of neighbor kids to the source for water. I taught my favorite little neighbor boy how to give "high fives", so every time I come home he yells HIGH FIVE and runs at my with his palm in the air. I like kids more in this country than in the states (I know that may be a bad generalization to make so I'm sorry!). Maybe it's because they are my only friends…haha…yeah but they are definitely more well behaved and listen extremely well. Well,that's all for now, feeling a bit more hopeful on the workfront,it increases a bit each week, and when I have an actual project started and going I will be SOOOOO happy!

Kate and Friend

Neighbor Children in a Guava Tree,

Girl in front is Kate's water getting buddy.

Hard to believe that at the end of this week I’ll have completed my 5th month in country!!! Time is actually going relatively fast when I look at it that way! This past week was full of little odd events so it felt busier than most…oh don’t worry, you’ll hear about them!

Work: Last week Tuesday Obam and I went out to en brousse, again with the goal of meeting with a set group of people and yet again being forgotten about. Thus our “work” consisted of once more driving around the villages stopping every 50 feet or so to talk to someone! We visited 2 different medicinal plant ladies and continued to prod them about starting a potential garden, but they were full of excuses as the woman last week had been. It’s slightly frustrating…these women live within less than a mile of each other and refuse to work together (to make their plant collection easier in my opinion) or share their knowledge with anyone to pass it on (I asked Obam and he said they’ll die with their secrets…slightly romantic but what a pain to everyone who could benefit from what these ladies know!) We did convince one of the women to work with us to make tapioca and that was about it! We visited a banana/piment plantation which we had seen before as well. I always do a lot of standing around thinking (kind of :>)intelligently in English but speaking like a 6 year old in French…I always feel as if everyone must wonder what I am doing there. However, I had a shining moment when Obam asked all the guys at this plantation why potatoes couldn’t grow in the South and I raised my hand…ooo..ooo…pick me pick me… and knew the answer!!! So maybe I gained some credibility?! Haha… Lastly, we stopped by to talk to the chief of Obam’s village…who was a really cool guy, we talked about elections in America (Obam felt special because his namesake was doing so well) and Obam told the chief how I was going to cut off all my hair and give it to all the village men that bother me as a consolation prize…

Other random, slightly productive “work wise” events took place this past week also. I made a trip up to my neighbor’s farm…which is absolutely ridiculous. Up the face of practically a cliff to get there (won’t mention DOWN…) through the forest, and the field itself, on a pretty steep slope, was just in the process of being cut down…it looked like a tornado had just come through and thrown gigantic trees everywhere (cut by machete only mind you)…giving me reason to see why the “burn” phase of “slash and burn” is always necessary. I can’t believe the amount of work that goes into a farm like that, and it will probably only be used a year or two at most. I ended up carrying down a big jug of palm wine down…no matter what’s going on in this part of the country, you can always count on the palm wine!

I also was invited by a neighbor to attend an agriculture meeting of some sort (I’ve made it a rule to usually just say yes when invited to anything) but tried to go and couldn’t find anyone…seems to be the going trend! Then a man came by (I’m never quite sure how people always figure out so easily where to find me at all times) and had a big argument with me, telling me I should find him funding from organizations in the states, and me telling him I will work with him only because I’m not here for solely that.

Other random visitors have included 3 policemen in one day…beat that…

House: There was a lot of excitement early in the week, my land lady was around and really gung ho about getting me running water, so I was getting psyched up about it. 3 plumbers later, 3 days, lots of mud and water all over, and she tells me the water will start that night…so I wait…and wait. I get tired and just decide to go to bed…5 minutes later I hear the telltale trickle, and excitedly rise to find a leak in my shower and a massive and growing lake in my kitchen. The pipe in the kitchen wall was leaking nonstop (rapidly)…so I had to call me landlady in the middle of the night, make her walk way down the street to turn off the main, as I stood guard in my kitchen with my trusty squeegee flinging water out the door for an hour. Needless to say, no running water :>( I was so looking forward to actually having enough water to flush my toilet fully and completely for the 2nd time (I did so the first last weekend when it rained enough to fill my buckets RIGHT outside my door!!!) I also had a gigantic spider (as big as my hand and a very quick runner) on the loose for most of last week until last night when it decided to enter my bedroom and make it’s way toward my bed did I make my neighbor girl come in and smash it (I just can’t kill something that large! Like killing a mouse with my hand…) The goat that entered my kitchen has been lurking around (sadly I recognize him), he likes to walk around my house on my porch, leaving droppings as he goes, and relax in the sunny spot next to my front door. He decided to pay me a visit once again as well, but this time walked into the living room from the front door like he owned the place, and looked at me questioningly until I jumped up and chased him out.

I’ve also renewed my popularity with the neighbor kids by sharing my nail polish. I’ve given at least 12 pedicures and an equal number of manicures to children ranging from 1 to 21, including 2 little boys. For which I received some thanks and the compliment “The house of Kate is pretty and her teeth are clean”…thank you small child!

Other: I ran into my supervisor and his nephew in town at the end of last week (it’s always amazing how this happens) and was convinced by them again that they have a lot of work to do with me and we will start making a schedule soon…heard that before too…but it’s always nice to be “reassured”. Lastly, Cameroon played in the Africa Cup finals against Egypt and (don’t tell any Cameroonians) I voted for Egypt with my phone company’s text messaging game…and I won over 3000 CFA (which is A LOT of phone credit …last time when I voted for Cameroon I won 9). Phone companies in the states should take a hint from those here…they wish me a merry Christmas via text message, have half price text messaging in February, and have betting on soccer games…I don’t see how things can get better than that!

Hiiii!

This week has gone incredibly fast, hope the same for everyone back in WI dealing with the snow and cold, and hope it's letting up a bit!

In the last week I've gone out to the field TWICE! Last Friday Obam and I went pretty far out into the bush and ended up at this amazing house: big, huge porch with white arches, really nice "yard". We got a tour of the yard and the area surrounding which included a little stream that circled the house and was filled with these beautiful ducks floating around and under a makeshift bridge. I felt like I was in a fairy tale, or as fairytalesque as Cameroon can get. We had a meeting at the house with a few people who were trying to form a GIC (pretty much just a group of people working with the same goals) to grow manioc. The conversation was a little bit hard for me to follow, what with switching almost every word to Boulou, French, Boulou, French and then changing topic just as often. Safe to say I ended up catching about 5 minutes of the entire meeting. Then as I'm completely just tuned out for lack of comprehension the guy sitting across from me looks directly at me and says (in perfect French clearly) "What is the most important thing about raising pigs"? Now pretty safe to say I could not answer that question correctly if my life were on the line among English speakers,but he acted a little perturbed that I did not know the answer and will probably think of me as the white girl who doesn't really know anything! However, everything ended just fine with me leaving after drinking 2 glasses of palm wine, some homemade orange juice, and receiving as gifts 2big sticks of sugarcane, 2 pineapples, and 13 bananas!

I also went out to the field on Wednesday. We were to meet with a tomato growing GIC, but the guy simply forgot, thus we had nothing to do! We ended up just driving around the villages, and saw a lot of people I had met before, so I didn't get harassed quite as much (or not that I understood at least :>). We visited a primary school out in the bush and determined that Obam and I are going to help them have an example garden in the back school yard, and I told Obam I wanted to give a lesson on environmental issues, which he seemed excited to help with. I also asked about medicinal plant gardens, and although none really exist we went to visit an elderly woman (I'd met once before) who knows pretty much everything about every medicinal plant and herb and is responsible for helping women from around Cameroon give birth and care for problems during pregnancy and in infancy. She spends hours every day out in the bush collecting plants, and I think it would be really interesting to just follow her around for a day and listen to all she knows! Lastly, we visited a basket weaver (after my constant prodding) and I told him how much I wanted to learn and he told me I could come by on Sunday, collect materials with him, and drink palm wine All in all, this was the most productive I've felt yet since I felt like I knew some people and had IDEAS!

Things at home are going just fine. I haven't gotten any more furniture yet, since I have not felt like trying to move it to my house! But I'm used to how it is now, so it might be a while. My postmate has been having problems with her water running continuously and not turning off, so I have been going there to do my laundry and take showers (aka: being lazy and not carrying water on my head, and getting to use an actual shower instead of bucket and cup. She has too much water and I have none! My neighbor kids still are bringing me plenty of fruit: guava and papaya.My neighbor man has added 3 new plants to my front porch display, made me a new flower arrangement for inside (really enormous pink rose looking flowers), and found me a massive birds nest (it's an intricate candy cane shaped thing…I have no idea what kind of bird it is from, but he came in and hung it on my wall for me. I have plenty of house decorations! I think however that my neighbor girl (22 year old) is angry with me, this is evident by the fact that her minimum of 2 visits a day to my house have stopped and she no longer demands to know where I am going at all times or requests to come with me, which, hey, it's kind of peaceful! But I think it all started with this police man who sits at the barrier right by my house who started asking her to ask me if I wanted him to be my boyfriend. I told her no several times, she asked for my phone number which she subsequently gave to him without my permission (and I've come to find out once a Cameroonian man gets my phone number I do not stop getting calls). I told her how much it bothered me and I also told her she needed to stop asking me for things all the time which since my birthday she has kept up! I always feel a little horrible not giving things, since obviously I can afford things even as a volunteer more easily than a family of 12 living off of one person's salary. It's hard to rationalize when the Peace Corps tells us to say we are volunteers and need to change things via actions that will be sustainable after we are gone and not through material handouts. So I felt like a huge jerk telling her to stop asking me for things, but I decided to make it known I can't just start giving out stuff to her and everyone else and hope she'll eventually realize why?! Maybe that's asking way too much…

In other marriage proposals --- I have heard possibly the best reason for me to marry: "You should get married because if your mother had not married you would not have been born", now if that just doesn't want to make me marry immediately I don't know what will! I also have received a pick up line: "you look like Barbie" thus still contemplating shaving my head (ok, not really).

Lastly, I went with my postmate to watch the semifinals of the Africa Cup (Cameroon vs. Ghana) with a French missionary couple in Ebolowa. Cameroon won!!!! So now they are on to the finals --which has everyone around here extremely excited --soccer is definitely their pride and joy.

So, all's well, hope you feel the same!

Everyone is wonderful on birthdays...I have some damn good friends and family

here’s my post

Another week passed! I spent the whole of last week in and out seeing a lot of other volunteers…which was quite a nice change. After leaving Yaoundé I visited another volunteer and we spent time doing crafts like old ladies while sitting on the porch and people watching. I finally got my cross stitch kit in the mail (thanks mom and dad :>) so I worked on that a lot while she knit…it was great. We went for a series of long walks (and I mean LONG…how else can one pass the time)and explored the forest, etc. She's always wonderful to spend time with and share stories about all the annoyances and happenings since we're at the same point in our service and because I swear she is the long lost twin of my dear WI friend, Jennifer Eileen. :>) She had a small short term invasion of grasshoppers in her latrine, and we spent further time watching lizards on the walls of her house hunt wasps (real life National Geographic, honestly now). She said these things don't usually happen when I'm not there and called me the Pied Piper of Insects,which I'm going to have to agree with. We went to a bar to watch the Africa Cup when Cameroon was playing, things were a little crazy. It reminded me of Badger games actually; when Cameroon scored a goal the entire town was screaming and running around. It was slightly sad to leave and come back to post to once again be alone in my big house! However, it was nice to see there had been no massive ant invasion while I was gone and the second I got home my neighbors got all excited and were very happy to have me back, kissing me on the cheeks and hugging me like crazy. The next night my landlady pulled out a massive jug of palm wine (complete with many floating deceased insects) and I sat on my porch with a whole bunch of my neighbors drinking it, pulling bugs out of my teeth, and hoping once again that cultural integration is really more important than the risk of intestinal parasites. I was once again nominated to the children's section, due to my lack of eloquence in speech, and learned Boulou (the patois in Ebolowa) with the 3 to 8 year olds :>. Learning a foreign language in a foreign language is interesting but the pure and simple fact that I am white, desire to learn Boulou, and can say "Mboulou, on nem voy" (Hello, how are you?) and "mmvoo" (dog) gets people very excited. I also just learned how to say "You weren't raised right" and am extremely looking forward to using it for the first time when the situation presents itself.

My birthday was yesterday, thanks everyone for the emails, calls, and messages. It started off pretty interesting since it's kind of weird to have to go around telling people "hey, it's my birthday today" without feeling like you are asking for something, I didn't really bother with that too much (which I subsequently got yelled at for). It started off with me going for a walk which my two neighbor girls decided to join me for, for the first time (they wanted to "do sports" like I do), we walked about 3 miles, I bought a roll of toilet paper, we visited one of their grandmothers and I got handed a baby again, and then we took a motto back home (4 people on one!). Once we got back people started asking me for things, which here I guess is kind of seen as ok, but I was a little angry (aka: it's MY birthday, why should I give you stuff mentality). So after giving out a banana, a packet of my precious Crystal Light drink mix, and 1/2 a bottle of my cooking oil, I am at the front door and hear a loud crash in the kitchen…unusual. I went to check. Nothing less than a massively fat male goat is on my counter eating my baton (mashed up manioc wrapped in leaves)!!! I had seriously left my back door open for no less than a minute and apparently this goat had a very fine tuned sense of smell… So that was pretty hilarious. For my birthday night I went out with my postmate, her neighbor, and his friend from the university. The friend was informed that he could not hit on me, under no circumstances, with punishment of severe injury and he didn't! Also, since we were with 2 guys, all the other guys stayed away and not once did someone yell "white" at me or say anything to me, or grab me or hit me in any way. It was WONDERFUL!!! We ended up at a bar/dance place and danced for quite a long time, which I have not yet been able to really do in this country (due to the aforementioned common occurrences. I also got a bunch of text messages from people that had been in my training group with me, and 3 of the girls that I'd gotten close with called me (after 11 pm you get unlimited talk time for only 180 CFA~40 cents!!! WOOHOO!!!). I got to catch up with them for a long time. Overall it was definitely a very good birthday, I hand the turning point to the goat. :>)

Kate on her front porch of her new house.

Kate's custom-made bed.

Kate's livingroom.

Kate's bathroom.

Peanuts to eat.

Kate's ant invasion.

Hi all. It seems like I've talked to a lot of you recently, so I'm sorry for any story repeats, but it's been good to catch up with people via email/messages/whatnot. I'm definitely in a "I'm missing people a lot" sort of mood lately, so it's always wonderful to know what everyone is up to and that you all still exist!

I'm currently in Yaounde, I came here to get a vaccination, and will be heading back south later today. It's been good to be here with 2 other volunteers from the south and just watch TV, eat pizza, and take hot showers (TWO!!!)...so yeah, not really roughing it right now (or ever for that fact) :>) The past week was the same old same old in Ebolowa...lots of time spent reading, hanging stuff on my walls (i've put up every single picture and old calender page i own now...so i started DRAWING artwork for my walls, i got so bored :>). I even started reading the French dictionary (i do not recommend this to anyone as a hobby) and let's see, I'm probably somewhere around what "armadillo-armistice" (ok, i made that up...but haven't made it past the a's, that's for sure)...i'll let you know how my progress on that keeps up. :>)

I went out to the field one day last week with Obam. We visited about 3 farms that were way out in the bush, so we did a lot of hiking. The guy that lead us around was very impressed that I could hike through the woods, he told me I must be very habituated to their way of life. It's always interesting how they think white people are the...weakest link... Obam always has to defend me, clearly by saying that "she does sports every morning, she is strong". Obam has also started telling everyone who wants to marry me that they are required to sign a contract for a limited term 2 year marriage and that marriage is conditional upon one's ability to speak fluent English (clever...) In order to get to one of the farms we visited we had to cross these 2 rivers...now one was ok, it was like 8 feet across and a log was laying directly on the water, and I had a walking stick. The next...oh man...it was a log just a bit wider than my foot, about 10 feet high, over at least 20 feet of rushing stream. Obam held my hand and we went step by step, but that was pretty intense (especially with my nice new non-water proof camera in my bag, obviously my thoughts at the time, along with, I think i'm going to die)...apparently next time i'm to do it with basket on my head and baby on my back like the women here...we'll build up to that intensity level. Speaking of Obam, I LOVE HIM. He is wonderful...really. (sorry if i already raved about him, but it'll continue) We get along fantastically and he's incredibly patient and generous with helping me constantly. He's also just hilarious, and it's great because i feel like i actually have a sense of humor in french when i try to joke with him (and that hasn't been easy to come by here). We also had a very "in depth" discussion about things like land tenure, slash and burn agriculture, and leguminous tree species. Interesting as all hell, I know. I was proud of myself.

My neighbors are still wonderful (with a few exceptions as I will explain...) My landscaping neighbor guy is keeping up with watering the plants he put for me on my porch, and even made me a gorgeous flower arrangement for my house randomly the other day (see pictures!!!) He's also helping another volunteer in the south look for a dog, which is nice of him. His 8 year old daughter, Michelle, is my water getting buddy...we walk about a quarter mile to get water from a spring and then carry it on our heads back. I've done this about 4 times now and the last time was the first my arms didn't completely fall asleep and feel like they were absolutely positively going to fall off. It's also fun because cars come flying around corners at you, and then get super stunned/excited to see "white girl carrying water" and start honking and waving and making like they are going to hit you, and you have to master the quick move off the street so as to not be run down but also not spill a drop of water (because then passerby will laugh at you and call you weak white girl, you spilled water) I pay back Michelle with things like scraps of bubble wrap (which i explained how to use by laying it on the ground and jumping off a step onto it) or little tacky plastic hair clips I brought from home. :>) My landlady came back from her place in Yaounde for the weekend and brought me this massive bag full of bread (which 5 days later I still have not been able to finish)...and then after she was all nicey nicey looking at my photo album with me she whips out all this Jehovah witness reading material and goes into a LOOOONG spiel about how to read it correctly. And (how thoughtful) she even brought me a bible in english. It's such an awkward situation...she's so nice to me and then she gives me stern talking tos because i'm not as religious as she wants me to be, and i can't be "culturally insensitive" (or downright rude like sometimes i just wish i could be)...so i have to listen to this...and don't know what to say to get out of it! AHHH...I just wish this would never come up here! She also (while looking at the photo albums) finds a picture of me, which I actually thought was just fine, and says "You used to be fat?"...THANKS... I tried explaining maybe it was just the clothes or whatever and she says "No, you used to be fat like this". I changed the subject. !

My house has been great, I really like it and I like my plants and the colors, it makes me happy every day. And I might get running water in the next few months, Obam said he saw the pipes somewhere (i'm not sure where, but i guess they are destined for me and he could tell) But...then things happen like...ANTS. I had 2 more invasions. One was fine, it was just outside again like the last time. But one morning I walk into my kitchen to find my sink FULL (i mean FULL) of ants. Ants in big lines/packs all up and down the counter top...everywhere. I, of course, first things first, ran to get my camera to take a picture of the sink (which Obam thinks is hilarious and mentions daily). I then took out my trusty bottle of petrol and threw it all over them and so began the 3 hour process of ant killing/ant cleaning mayhem (without paper towels or running water this can be a bit interesting...), pretty sure the kitchen will never smell the same again and that I lost a few hundred brain cells with all those gas fumes. I also got bites up and down my legs and back, even one in my armpit?! And those things can BITE, I killed one and examined it pinchers, ow, pain. I don't know what it was that I had eaten and (shoot me now) accidentally washed down my sink drain...but the ants were down the drain as far as I could see...attracted to something. Since this time I do not pour any food scraps or dishwater into my sink, I have no desire to wage the war again. I'm actually petrified that when I return after Yaounde my entire house will be full of ants. Which is quite likely... I do wake up every morning to even find my toothbrush covered in the little benign (that's debatable) ants. Maybe for my next blog post I will have compiled some anatomically correct drawings of the different ant and spider species in my house for your independent study?!

alright, that's it! you know i'm long winded when i can make my blog posts this long and i'm really doing a whole lot of nothing :>)

hope all going great for everyone everywhere

Guess who's been productive?! MEEE! Well…productive for here.

Last Tuesday Obam took me out "en brousse" (into the bush) to go visit a bunch of tree nurseries and farms/farmers. Clearly he told me we were just going to "see" them, so I wear a dress and sandals and then we end up hiking all over half the country through the forest…it was pretty neat though. I met a lot of people, everyone is related to Obam, and I like to make fun of him for that. My favorite part was this palm plantation (they grow palms like crazy here to use the fruit/nut for palm oil…which was my staple food in Bangangte with my family). The plantation was enormous and tucked back away from the road…it was beautiful actually…just all these lines of palms and moss and ferns covering the ground below, reminded me of Jurassic Park. We walked all the way through it and came out on this hillside that had been completely cut down and was just a mess of fallen trees and brush. From the plantation, as well as everywhere else (my bedroom) you hear nothing but chainsaws day in and day out. I'm not sure if it's picked up recently due to the dry season…but it's interesting, as Obam said "this is truly deforestation". I even got woken up one morning around 4 AM by the sound of an obviously enormous tree cracking and crashing to the ground. On Friday, we went out to Obam's village and started pegging (setting out sticks to represent where the trees will go) in the forest for a banana farm. We hacked off two raffia fronds with a machete, guesstimated 3 meters, cut them, and then used them to create equilateral triangles and place trees at the corners. The definition of "doing what you can with what you have" as the Peace Corps likes to preach. I asked a lot of questions about the future farm, and Obam said they will just clear the whole area in order to plant the trees. Now call me a romantic…but I am not comfortable with this idea…coming from a country where all I've learned my whole life in school is that "cutting the rainforest is b-a-d bad". Especially when I saw this huge Baobab tree that I fell in love with. Which Obam told me the wind would knock over onto a nearby house…if you've ever seen the base, and most likely roots, not one of these, that isn’t likely…add to the fact I've felt nothing but a light breeze in this country to date. So after these 2 excursions I'm starting to get a little bit confused about what an agro forestry volunteer is doing in the rainforest. Agro forestry is suppose to be about PLANTING trees in and around fields to improve the soil, prevent pest damage, etc…and here in the South people are at the point where they feel the forest is doing more harm then good and it's a constant battle against it (it's not a problem in the West where most volunteers are, and the forests are already gone). Thus, not sure how some young kid from Wisconsin is going to do anything somewhere where everyone clearly knows more than I do! Ahh…the internal struggles of a Peace Corps Volunteer.

Everything at my house has been going very, very well! My neighbors are excellent, even the girls my age (which is usually the group that hates me the most here), and the little kids have finally stopped looking in my windows. As much…now they knock on my door several times a day to bring me fruit. One day I got a papaya, 2 little green things I gave to someone else (sh..that's a secret), a cassmangue (I have no idea in English), and TEN bananas! They just didn't stop! Now in addition to my landlord, and the neighbor right next door, the man across the street calls me his daughter. And random things occur, like him and my neighbor "father" coming to my house in the middle of the night drunk and yelling at me for not letting them see me before I went to sleep, and telling me they only know I am alive and safe if they see me with their own eyes…(Luckily, having just left Madison, WII can handle drunken men better than the average Jane). Going to and from Ebolowa and my house can be an experience. You either have to wait out front for a motto by the police barrier…where I swear everyone within 5 miles congregates…or walk in until you find one. I usually choose the later…I like to avoid feeling awkward at all costs, which does not come easy here! The last 2 times I've gotten a cab have been adventures in themselves. First time we turn the corner and come across a motto accident, and pack 4 bleeding, yes…bleeding, people into the cab with the 4 of us already in it to take to the hospital, cab a.k.a ambulance. Then I get picked up by a cab with a lady driving, I'm pretty sure, the first time. From experience, the first time driving a stick…oh what a ride. Today I chose to walk into Ebolowa, to "put myself out there", as they say. I have to pass through a small town called Nubelle, which is just one stretch of road packed with people all the time. I get harassed when I'm in a car…but I decided to buck it up and just walk through. I survived. I've also started running again, and I'm going to do the same route for about 4 weeks until I've seen everyone on that stretch of road and I won't be bothered (so I think). Since I've started running my neighbors and Obam talk about it all the time. "Kate, I saw you doing sports this morning at 6." "Kate, you were up so early." "Kate, you are very athletic"…They also know everything else I do at all times, practically before I even do it. "You left last night to eat dinner in town, and then you came back this morning at 6:30 on your bicycle." In case I didn't know or forgot anything I did on any given day, I have at least 20 other memories to help me out!

Furniture wise…I got a bed! I had ordered it 3 weeks ago and it was finally finished. This is how to transport large items works here. I go to the carpenter, there is my bed, assembled on the front lawn. He disassembles my bed. He says he will go find a cab. He disappears for 15 minutes. I stand on the curb being yelled at by passerbys. He returns in a cab. I make cab stop at gas station to get change for my large bills. We drive 5 minutes. We get stopped at a police barrier (think, board with nails) for 2 minutes. I am told 1).I am white, 2). I am pretty, 3).Would I like to marry him? No. We drive 5 more minutes. Me and the driver hold the bed frame through the windows to the roof of the car. We stop at my house. Driver and carpenter and small boy child carry my bed parts into my house. Carpenter assembles. Carpenter asks “Are you married?”. I need to buy myself a fake wedding ring. THE END

Lastly, on a personal note I know some of you will appreciate, some of you will hate me for, and some of you will wonder who is this random girl in Africa who would take the time to write about this. My feet are amazing in this country…I wear shoes constantly (think, ant/cockroach killers, hookworm/chigger protection) and I have never seen my feet so beautiful. Those of you who know them…you would not be able to pick them out of a foot line up. Alright, I leave you with that! Thanks for reading!

I'm all moved in!!!

Best news ever!!!

My house is very nice, but very, very empty. I currently own a mattress and a shelf for furniture. Oh yeah; and a plastic floor mat thing, if that counts!? However, my landlady gave me 3 dining room chairs to use, although I almost like sitting on the floor better and using the chair as a table.

One thing I have learned incredibly quickly...my house is an insect paradise. Bug stories always come first on this blog! In the 3 days I've been there I've gained a new pet spider at least every hour. I don’t like to kill them, they are too big to be smashed and besides, they eat all the evil mosquitoes, so we are currently coexisting just fine! Then, I opened my trunk, which I had moved into my house a week prior to my installment, and holy man, I was dumb, I put a bunch of food in there: nuts, dried fruit, etc. Double plastic bagged AND sealed in my water filter...but alas; when I opened the trunk, what do I find but 3 cockroaches (who had pooped all over everything---necessary detail) and thousands of little tiny ants. The ants thankfully didn't get into anything that was still in its original package, but I had a whole bunch of nuts I was saving and let me just say, ants enjoy almonds. They were eating them from the inside out...which was kind of cool to see, but made me really mad and I went on an ant killing spree. THEN...something even more ridiculous. This morning I was in my room reading and I hear my counterpart yelling about something outside my door...I go outside and the porch, roof, ground EVERYWHERE is covered in these big ants, which I stupidly step into while not paying attention; and get bitten on the feet, and one crawled into my dress and bit me on the thigh...evil. It was one of the most incredible things I have seen, honestly...rivers of ants, literally, everywhere. My counterpart found some gas (I'm not sure how, since there is a shortage still here) and sprinkled it all over the outside of my house...it kind of worked.... more or less, I'm just going to smell like gas for several days :^)

Although I was initially a little irritated with my landlord for being so putzy with my house. I've realized that they are excellent people. I mean, they provided me with curtain rods, screens in the windows, and light bulbs...which in this country is pretty much unheard of! My land lords sons get me water...way more than I can actually use in fact. And I just met my landlady for the first time last night and she gave me a big pot (which I think I’m supposed to use for a bathtub) and a TON of peanuts from her farm. She told me they were my new family (people here really like to say that I think) and I have a good feeling anything I need will be taken care of. The other family that lives (pretty much in my front yard) has 9 kids, which can be a curse at times, like when they come looking in my windows when I'm trying to change, but also a blessing, like when they help me light matches (because matches here are ridiculous and I swear created for only Cameroonian use). The flower/landscaper guy I mentioned before really came through...he is in the process of filling my front porch with plants...I think when I left this morning there were about 8!

Lastly, I had to mention cleaning my house...talk about easy! The floors of my house are slanted towards the front, so I filled a big bucket with detergent and water, threw it all over the house, and then took a big squeegee and push it all out the front door...it was fun, and I think my floors would make an excellent slip and slide. Ill have to repeat this process to get rid of all the dead ants. :^).

Love, Kate

Happy New Year!!!!

Or as they say here "Bonne Année!!!"

Can’t believe it's already 2008, hey, I return in 2009...time is flying no?

This past week has been relatively low key (aka: no work!) but it's expected here around the holidays, no one does much of anything! I spent New Years with fellow volunteers and had a wonderful time. We hung out with a volunteer's counterpart who is 25 and absolutely hilarious, and we had some of the most in depth conversations I've had in French thus far (read: politics, history, perceptions of other cultures...). We ended up attending a wedding, where we were for the New Year's countdown. This was my favorite wedding I have been to thus far, since we only did the reception part of it, we just ate and danced. Playing token white people at anything official in Cameroon we were the most popular people there: having a camera to take pictures, being the most awkward dancers. After New Year's Day I left Ebolowa to come to Cameroon to have a dentist appointment. Everything went fine and the dentist spoke English, which was kind of a relief to me. I don't know too many words to say "Hi, I chipped my tooth, I think I have a cavity, my gums hurt...etc...". Ah French vocabulary...everything turned out well, she sanded my tooth and then had me come to her office so we could "chat"...and imagine what was comes flying down the wall, under the desk and at my feet...a cockroach!!! Seriously, these guys love me, everywhere I go.

Other things: I was told that I smile too much at all the wrong times...and I thought people here were just rude a lot...apparently I'm just too nice! I had to describe how Americans are taught to smile and brush things off so as to not get upset and display anger to people we don't know very well. This wasn't understood and I was told that for people to take me seriously I need to stop being so smiley...I don't want to! :>) Ha-ha

The volunteers who come to shop in Ebolowa, and I have become friends with a lot of the random people in the market...it's kinda nice...2 of the girls got gifts, and one guy got me a gas bottle for my stove for about 10 bucks less than the going rate...good connections! It's crazy how even in a larger city like Ebolowa so many people know our names already...and aside from the "la blanche, le white, and ntangyan" (all terms for white person) that I get called several times a day, Kate is now being added in, which is nice.

I started going for walks around my post mate’s place right before it gets dark (the only relatively cool time of the day) and had a pretty wonderful time when I got accompanied by 2 of the neighborhood kids. I'm not sure who started it, but we spent 45 minutes showing each other all the tricks one can do with their body: cross your eyes, wiggle your ears, spread your fingers apart keeping the outside two together...etc... You would be AMAZED at the number of thing Cameroonians do not know how to do...cross their eyes?! I spent at least 2 years of my childhood doing that alone.

My counterpart is getting excited to start working, which makes me happy...since all we've done thus far even slightly related to work is go visit the Prefet and the Governor's office. When I return to Ebolowa I hope to have him help me finish moving into my house and then do nothing but productive things for...at least a day...big goal, big goals, got to reach high. He did come over one day and scold me for not telling him I was moving my stuff over the first time, he told me it bothered him very much....whoops. He then invited me and 2 other volunteers out for drinks and that was the longest I've ever talked to him for. He's such a cute old guy, and he made me start thinking. He said if I got a dog, he would take care of it for me when I left. I WANT a dog...a constant friend and something living to sleep next to my bed that I trust to help me avoid malaria medicine paranoia...tempting, tempting...I'm going to have to evaluate how Obam cares for animals (all I know so far is he taunts the monkey in the cage outside my house...not a good start Obam...)

Alright, HOPE HOPE HOPE I move in tomorrow...PLEEEEAAASE!!!!

Hope everyone had a great new year! Kate