It hasn't rained in three weeks. My garden is slowly dying and outside is desolate like the dead feeling of a desert. Clouds of dust pick up like when I played softball and in a strong wind you'd have to turn your head and cover your face to escape the twister. You can literally smell the dust. I taste it while walking to school or riding to Bafoussam. It's like you are breathing with your nose in the dirt. It's far worse than I feel like it was last year. This rainy season was brief and less intense than my first year. Some days I feel like I'm 100% sure I want to extend and others I feel 100% certain that I can't wait to get the hell out of here! This morning while walking to class I realized that after my trip home I'll only have about 6 months left and it blew me away. My time is really... over. Have almost two years really gone by since I've been here? Sometimes it feels like nothing is changing but then suddenly it occurs to me that so much time has gone by. I guess this is all a part of the Peace Corps story. When you're in it, though, you just are. You're just unaware of so much. This is the busiest time of the school year. Between correcting countless tests and essays, calculating averages, completing report cards, while at the same time planning lessons, executing classes, and putting together a weekly program of about 4 hours with the Girls' Club each Sunday, I'm exhausted. I rarely have a moment's time to reflect on the fact that it's all coming to a close and when I do I feel overwhelmed at the thought of it. Anyway, this is why it's gotten so difficult for me to keep up with the journal. Where to even begin it... Well, I went to Yaounde at the end of October to meet with the Country Director for Peace Corps about getting married. After 3 weeks with the 9 page questionnaire from the State Department about "Who is Claude" we finally sent it in yesterday. We expect to hear back in 2 weeks or so about whether they have 'approved' us. After that Claude will have to go to Yaounde as well to meet the Country Director for final approval and that will complete the last of the first round of hoops we have to jump through. After that will be registering for our wedding in Cameroon and then the Embassy. So much is unclear at this moment. I'm finalizing my grad school applications and analyzing all my options. It's tough to imagine not coming home all at once with Claude in tow but I fear it is a possibility. My official Close of Service is in August but usually people begin leaving about 2 months before the date and that is the last group's departure date. If I wind up heading for grad school in September I'll no doubt be leaving in June or July. I am applying to schools in New York, Massachusetts, and Colorado so there will be a process of coming home and then scurrying off to a totally new city... again. Sometimes I freak out at the thought of all the things I'd be adjusting to all at once. I panic a bit and think the best thing to do is STAY HERE! In March we will have our Close of Service conference and I will probably at least apply to extend. That will be around the same time I'll start hearing back from the universities so at least I'll have choices. If I am accepted to a school I may be able to defer for a year if I choose to. If I extended service I'd likely be going to another part of Cameroon and doing a different type of job. It could be with an NGO, which would probably be a really good experience for me. But then, the thought of moving in this country is dreadful, especially to stay for probably less than a year. Not to mention that here we are so central and close to Claude's family. I have adjusted to one way of life and it would be like starting over in some ways. Lately our power has been out pretty regularly and it's made me half mad. I can't imagine winding up someplace that has even fewer resources than the West because I really lucked out with this post. You don't realize how much electricity and water completely shape your existence. I guess if there was anything appropriate to write about on Thanksgiving- this is it! Rumor has it that the power outages in Cameroon are because they export electricity to other bordering countries-- and since it's being exported they pay more! Most Sundays there's no power but it's mostly only during the day and comes back on as soon as it gets dark (which is really early in this equatorial region). Sometimes, though, it goes off at other very inconvenient times. I've gotten used to reading and cooking by candlelight but I cannot get the gumption up to actually sit down and grade papers or do schoolwork when there are no lights. As it is I'm already exhausted after walking to and from school and then being on my feet in a classroom, talking, writing on a chalkboard, and trying to control 60-80 brats. If the power goes out- forget it-- my day is over. I fall into bed lately sometimes before 9 o'clock. Water is much less reliable than power. We don't have it more often than we do. The first months were the toughest with this because it's a matter of a figuring out how many water containers you need to get through the times the water's off. Sometimes I had to pay the neighbor kids to go and carry water. Doesn't it seem so strange that a ten year old child can carry my water bidons and I can't? Well, I can but not very far and not at all gracefully or comfortably. They just plop them on their heads and off they go. It's genuinely a feat of nature. So, now I have about 265 liters of water storage and as soon as you start hearing the hissing from the pipes you have to line them all up and get ready. It's a blissful event every time. During the rainy season it's a dance of buckets inside, buckets outside. At the first menace of storm clouds you rush it all outside and right back in at the buzz of the faucets. We had two REALLY dry months in which I buffed up from my trips to the well. Forty pulls to the top for each 10 liter bucket. All of it has become somewhat second nature now. Survival. It's rare I have to panic about it like I did in the beginning. It's weird to think in two weeks I'm just going to take a vacation from it all in the US. How this simple little fact really makes my reality so outstandingly different from everyone else around me. In the end for me, it's all just one big adventure and for them it really is... just this hard and hopeless. I hate to say that it's hopeless. It sounds so pessimistic. More and more pessimism is what I seem to feel. The problems of education are so infectious. Like ignorance is truly a contagion in the society. Uneducated parents breed complacent students and so on down the line. Worse, parents who have so little ambition or direction themselves have so many children they can't take care of that neglect becomes a serious epidemic. Recently I have witnessed so many cases of this and felt so discouraged.So often children are taking care of children. I'm not talking about teenage parenthood either, I mean leaving the infant with a 5 year old for hours at a time. A couple weeks ago I was walking down to school with next to a mama and we stumbled on a crawling baby who was about to make its way into the street, crying on the side of the road by himself. The mama recognized the kid and saw the older one who must've been about 2. She explained that their mother had gone out so I wound up taking the two of them to a seamstress next door but they were literally all alone. I told her that in my country you would lose your kids in a heartbeat doing that and she said, "Of course! It's not for nothing they created nursery school!" I was happy to at least have this person to relate to about it but I still couldn't imagine anyone thinking this is okay. The other day I was grading papers on the porch and kept hearing a baby crying. I kept thinking it was a little girl in the street and didn't think anything because most of the neighbor kids are boys. Finally I realized it was coming from the compound and went to investigate only to find the three year old and my favorite baby who's 9 months just hanging out by themselves. I sat with the baby until his mom got back and got filthy dirty because his diaper was wet and he had snot, dirt, and tears all over his face and clothes. A few weeks ago when I was putting fliers up all over the village I spent an afternoon pointing nursery schoolers to the side of the road as they walked home. This will probably shock most Americans but here it's perfectly normal for a two year old to walk to school from a mile away all by himself. The funny thing is, they ARE a lot smarter and more independent than we give them credit for in the States but at the same time, a lot of parents here are just very, very lucky that their kid makes it home everyday. Anyway, I'm very much looking forward to a retreat home for a happy occasion for the first time since I've been here. I absolutely cannot wait to spend time with family and friends. The thought of being next to the fireplace with the forbidding cold outside, hot chocolate, warm company. It's so exciting but also kind of sad because I just wish my fiance would be there with me. But hopefully soon enough. Can't wait to see everyone!

Lately whole entire months are passing by and I seem to keep forgetting that they have. Like- September... I keep thinking it's still then. Work life is so loaded now that last year actually feels kind of like a walk in the park, though I have to say that this year's schedule gives me far more pleasure than that did. Girls' Club has been off to a good start and we seem to finally be establishing a consistent circle of girls who participate every week. They are even noticeable braver already than they were a few weeks ago and it's really exciting to imagine the changes I might actually see in them by the end of the year. My classes are going much better in most respects though some things seem simply unavoidable. I do feel more in control than last year, despite the protests from students half my size as I am kicking them out of my classroom, I feel righteous or something! I am trying to maintain a formation each month with the village women though this has begun to feel like more of a chore than a project. It feels in many ways like a pointless endeavor which serves little purpose except to eat up my time and money and encourage women to stop and ask me for a variety of things constantly. On the other hand, I have also been keeping busy by just trying to spend more time with neighbors or coworkers or other friends around town. Nowadays I really don't even notice the long silences I used to want nothing more than to avoid at all costs. I will probably make a lot of people feel very uncomfortable when I get back to America. As November creeps up I realize that already in just another month and half the bulk of the school year will be over. After December is essentially referred to as holiday season because literally there is a holiday that seems to warrant a whole week of slacking off every few weeks until May. As I filled out my first round of report cards for the first sequence today I couldn't help thinking how before I know it I will already be going to my Close of Service conference and thinking about transitioning back into American life. Or will I... I'm not asking that question to allude to a decision I've made but simply decisions that are actually available to us and that I have certainly already thought quite a lot about. For as long as I can remember I've had a plan. A very specific, to the T picture of exactly where I was going in my life. Any veering off track was a huge disappointment for me and only pushed me harder to correct my steering back to where I'd been headed before. For a long time I think that plan really kept me from falling in love or even looking for real love, or from settling anyplace. I didn't want to be safe, not until I could be here, doing this. Security may have been too tempting to turn away from, and I had just started feeling a bit too comfortable in Los Angeles when my invitation to Cameroon finally came. After Peace Corps my plan was always graduate school and once I had a Master's, that was where I finally had it in my head that I could loosen my collar and take a few breaths and stop worrying so much about being right on schedule. Maybe this whole scheduling thing in the first place was subconsciously my biological clock rushing me through all my adventure before starting to focus on my children's adventures. Whatever it was, after grad school the plan just sort of dropped off, like the way people imagined the world did when they thought it was flat. I had a lot of hopes for how it would all shake out-- perfect husband hopefully debuting around age 27, great job after school allowing me to do pretty much everything I hoped to in going to school for so long to begin with, and at 30-- babies! I have allowed myself so little flexibility in this plan that I almost constantly have this feeling of someone frowning at me if I even just THINK about making a tiny adjustment. Retrospectively I guess I can say that I was raised primarily by 3 very strong women who instilled a lot of very specific ideas in my head about how my life should go in order to pass muster with them. Now one of those women has already passed away and my mother has really let go quite a lot and begun encouraging me to make my own choices. Yet, somehow I still feel this strong pull for approval, for support in every way. At 26 I'm still not sure I have any better idea of what I'm doing than I did at 16. I wonder at this point if we ever quite figure it out. Without planning it, though, the reality is that my plan has bumped a tad off course. Not in a bad way at all, in a very positive one, actually. As it turns out, I am in love, in a time in my life when I had put my guard down and absolutely least expected it and with a person who, being literally from another world, is not the easiest to be so organized and programmed out with. I have been waiting to announce it because we have to get the Peace Corps' permission to follow through with our plans, but I also don't want everybody I know to feel completely shocked or think this was a totally abrupt decision for us. So, Claude and I hope to get married. And quite soon, actually! Hopefully around January. Obviously this puts a bit of a monkey wrench in all my best laid plans for what's next. And actually, no part of me is even discouraged about continuing on the path that I'd hoped to. As far as grad school, I have been working already on applications and the pressure is on to get them wrapped up before visiting home in December so I can ship everything off by then. Even the total bureaucracy that our marriage is forced to take on from the Cameroonian side to the Peace Corps to the Embassy, all feels like it's own little part of our interesting story. What's really beginning to pull my away from the burning desire to do everything the way I always pictured it is the realization that when you are always looking so far ahead, and feeling that push into the future from behind, sometimes I think you forget to notice the present and appreciate all the pushing you did in your past to go to it. After nearly a year and a half in Cameroon, the idea of how difficult adjusting to life back home might be is not lost on me. After all, after spending only 4 months in Senegal I was a wreck for nearly a year upon my return. After being here so long sometimes I notice things about my own noticing of things that makes me laugh. Like, for example, sometimes I think to myself while walking around the village- "Wow! What a clean child! How on earth did that kid stay so clean!?" Or, "Sheesh, that family has a baby bouncer! How chic!" The thing is, I used to see the kids here in their utterly filthy clothes, playing with cars they made out of sardine cans and flip flops cut into wheels and I felt so sorry for them. I felt this gnawing need to cure poverty, to fix everything, and I guess I thought fixing everything meant wearing your Sunday best and having really nice toys! Sometimes I imagine all those ads for Save the Children and all those other charities where the kids are painted in this sad, awful light of hopelessness and instead I think -- hey, that looks just like my neighbors! I mean, it's not that their situation isn't sad or that I no longer comprehend why it's sad. In fact, I think I comprehend better than ever WHAT is actually sad about it. And, on the other side of that coin, what is actually sad about American life that actually is quite present in life here. Some days I yearn for nothing more than grocery store aisles (lame, right, but when I was home with Grandma and was able to sneak out of hospice for a couple of hours, I literally poured over every aisle in Kroger!), iced coffee from a drive-thru window while riding around with the car windows down, nights out with friends, time in laughing and being together with family. I miss those things as basically a constant but the thing is, I know it's there and I know that at some point, be it near or not too terribly far, I am going to reenter that world whether I like it or not and probably be utterly consumed by it and even more probably at some point be very much detached again from this world that seems at present so familiar. Lately I just keep asking myself, will I really be ready for that in another 10 months? It's funny. So much of life gets under your skin here. Like my electric bill for about $16 when it should be about $3. Or the neighbor kids that are even at this very moment, crying hysterically. The kids in the classroom that seem impossible to silence regardless of the ultimatum or punishment presented to them and who sometimes make you just want to scream out "I DON'T KNOW WHY I'M EVEN HERE!" Even the expectations of total perfection from Peace Corps and the community. The trying to fit in someplace where you will always inevitably stand out. The gas tank running out right in the middle of cooking dinner. I could go on and on. So many things that you wish away nearly everyday of service. You just imagine that bright day in the future when you will hop on a plane and leave all those crying babies and aggravations someplace under a blanket of clouds. The thing is, those frustrations melt away the moment you step off the plane. Even going back to the States to deal with Grandma I realized how I was going back to a place that hadn't, in essence, changed a nip, and yet I feel I have changed in every way. How can you reconcile that and will I really be ready to in just 10 more months... or less if grad school is really going to be my next move... and not to mention with a new husband who is learning the language and trying to catch up on the formal education that is so hard to come by here. All of this is neither here nor there because I really have no idea which path I will choose and there are a lot of unknowns yet that will play into that decision-making process. But, a couple things I do know- now is a good time to open my eyes a bit wider and really see where I am, what I'm experiencing right this minute and to finally put down the heavy load I've made myself carry of such a continuum of personal expectations.

And, it's back to school already and somehow refreshing to feel a part of this school culture. A culture that must be at least somewhat existant in every country as formal education becomes the international norm. This period where life settles down and gets more serious and regulated, not just for the kids but for everybody. It's so comforting to find familiarity in seeing the same little ones toter off to primary school in their often filthy dirty farm clothes with giddy, determined looks on their faces, often joyously greeting me in French, English, or Ghomala and sometimes just staring at me in astonishment and wonder while tripping over their own feet. To meander down the hill while the morning fog is burning out of the valley and the layers and layers of mountain ranges begin to slide into view one by one while casually chatting with last year's students. It's so marvelous to be back and to have a sense of ease and calm. To feel less pressured to do it all and more confident about doing my piece well. I have started this year an entirely different specimen. I have just learned that I've been approved for the small grant I applied for to run my Girls' Club this year which is going to allow us to do so much more and dig so much deeper than what I did with them last year. I spent half the summer putting together a comprehensive program that begins with self-esteem building through a myriad of life skills like good communication and relationships, preventing early pregnancy and HIV, and being a leader, role model, and professional in the future. Our first meeting is Sunday and is the most enthusiastic I've been about anything at all since Peace Corps service began. It truly feels like my biggest chance to make a lasting impact and I can't wait to get going. I've been working with the village women more and more and now that I have a key to the community center and women stopping me all the time telling me they want to come to the next formation I feel quite official. School is still school and it's as challenging and frustrating as they warn you it will be and then some. This year is definitely easier than last year because at least I knew what to expect and went to the school administration to specify my desires way ahead of time. This means that as far as my classes go, I have 2 different levels this year rather than the 4 I was covering last year, my classes are Monday-Wednesday, all finishing by 1 in the afternoon, and I chose the levels I had the least issue with before. Unfortunately this kind of bit me in the ass because as it turns out I inadvertently chose the 2 largest classes of the school this year. Logically I could not have imagined this scenario. Last year I had 1 5e class of 62 students and I made the most progress with them than any other class primarily because I had them 5 hours per week. I requested to take them on again because though I wanted to stay with the same kids in the next level, I knew they were going to get mixed in with the other class which was quite notoriously the worst of the school last year. I avoided the 3e class because that was the biggest class at school last year with 85 kids and I knew a lot of kids might be repeating because it's an exam year. As it happens, I walked into both 3e classes today to find them remotely empty as compared to last year whereas my 5es are both classes of 83. The other class is that of the oldest students from last year who I have gotten to move up with. This year they will take another important national exam and it's nice to work with them again. It's been interesting to have some of the kids who are repeating who didn't have me last year because my students seem to be far ahead of them. These kids are much older and discipline is something I can control on more of a casual basis so far. The changes I recognize in myself in just a year are quite dramatic. Standing in front of 160 intently staring eyes last year I felt like more of a peer than a professional. Sure, I had just spent almost 3 years giving highly wonky presentations to oftentimes far more intellectual individuals than myself, but this audience was an entirely different ball game. TEENAGERS! Somehow the latent adolescent desires to be accepted and liked as one of them came burning back to life. I remember Claude saying to me as I attempted to fly out the door in my Reefs one morning, "Non, non, non; You cannot wear those to school; no one will respect you". This year is all about the respect. No more ignoring all that very wonderful advice from our trainers about starting firm and getting softer. These first few weeks of school are crucial for striking as much fear into the hearts and minds of Cameroonian children as is humanly possible without physical abuse. Not only that, but having SOME clue about where I'm starting with these students in terms of language ability takes a HUGE load off stress wise. It made putting together the academic program a ton easier and it makes lesson planning far easier. Now I'm trying to equip the students with as much vocabulary as I can jam into their already overwhelmed brains so when I speak to them in nothing but English all year I won't get mummified stares and chaos in return. Other than all of that everything is just moving along. I have been kind of wrapped up in lesson planning, grant writing, and statement of purpose avoidance these last couple weeks but I'm trying to make an effort to kick it at least a few times a week with the neighbors. Today I indulged in that pasttime with my favorite baby buddy Joel, who is already 9 months old and is growing like a weed and is the happiest and most amazing baby I know. His little delighted smile whenever he sees me melts my everything away and I go into this entire world of baby-mania when I'm with him. Now he's at this age where he's beginning to get cuddly and when he wears himself out from continuously darting his head and eyes about being curious about everything all the time he briefly rests his head on my chest and I feel the strongest desire to be a mom that I ever have. The Cameroonians would love nothing more than that! I few weeks ago I was sick and Diane hinted that I was pregnant and I could tell the thought of it made her feel more connected to me. It's an equalizer here, being a mom. It's what makes sense to them. Being a professional, being an independent, decisive, opinonated woman, that all seems like planning life out while life itself is passing you by. Like a popular song here says, "Life is beautiful; you most not complicate it." God, at 26, unmarried and no children on the horizon in the next few years- what the hell am I even living for! There's always so much more to say about life here, life in general, and just everything but it's past 10 and I plan on getting up at 5:30. Respect comes with getting to school BEFORE your students! I have a better internet connection now thanks to my ever attentive mother. Thus, I promise to write more and hopefully to add some pictures soon! Oh! Post script: You may be wondering about the name of the blog changing! Basically, I named my blog before I came to Cameroon and "Tubab" is a Senegalese term for a foreigner. Now that I've spent over a year here I figure it's time for a more culturally appropriate title- "Dok" means white in Ghomala and is the term villagers call me relentlessly in the street.

“Who indeed knows the secret of the earthly pilgrimage? Who indeed knows why there can be comfort in a world of desolation? Now God be thanked that there is a beloved one who can lift up the heart in suffering, that one can play with a child in the face of such misery. Now God be thanked that the name of a hill is such music, that the name of a river can heal. Aye, even the name of a river that runs no more. Who indeed knows the secret of the earthly pilgrimage? Who knows for what we live, and struggle, and die? Who knows what keeps us living and struggling, while all things break about us? Who knows why the warm flesh of a child is such comfort, when one’s own child is lost and cannot be recovered? Wise men write many books, in words too hard to understand. But this, the purpose of our lives, the end of all our struggle, is beyond all human wisdom.” -Cry the Beloved Country

Forgive me for being a slacker (still) after all these years. Again two months have passed and I have neglected to write a single word to tell anyone about my movements on a far away continent. The truth is, I haven’t been slacking quite as much as in the past, I’ve been working quite a lot and living quite enthusiastically, which sometimes doesn’t permit a good run at writing.

It’s hard to believe that in 2 weeks my long break will be finished and I’ll be back before a classroom of obnoxious hooligans, but in some ways I’m rather looking forward to it. Since July I have been somewhat all over the place and the pieces of time I’ve spent at home have been more focused on relaxing, planning next school year’s activities, and really spending time with people in the village. Mid-service was fun, I got to see a lot of volunteers I haven’t heard from all year and relax a bit in the Yaounde house. Afterwards was back to village to plan a regional meeting I hosted and then a training on tofu making the next day in my village, both of which were a success!

Getting across the halfway point threshold has birthed a whole new energy and tolerance for everything I’m here to do. It’s also inspired a lot more focus in lieu of frustration. I guess development work in general has this effect. It took the entire first year to really get my feet wet, stop cursing, and try seeing what the hell needed doing and how to do it. Now with just a year left, I feel more willing to step away from my own world to make things happen knowing that soon enough I will get to step back into it for good. This means sitting idly with my neighbors even when all they’re doing is passing the time, talking in mother tongue and watching the kids play. It means buying more villagers a beer when the whim hits rather than begrudging their request.

Early this month we took a weekend in the East with the Gym teacher from the high school and a group of kids who attended a sports camp for three days. Unfortunately most of the East I got to see was from the bus windows but the trip as a whole was really an adventure and it was fun to be a part of it. Claude wound up running into a friend he grew up next door to and hasn’t seen in 11 years and he helped show us around including renting a moto to tour around a bit with. Since being back I’ve helped run two summer camps that were a great hit and really felt meaningful. They provided great preparation for my work with Girls’ Club this year and I can’t wait to get started.

This is the first time Claude and I have been apart for a while and it’s good to have some time to reflect and process things. In the coming weeks I will hold the second formation for village women, which is far less intimidating than the first. I ran into the school supervisor yesterday and he informed me he’s already back working so I will go Monday and try getting my classes put together. I have much different standards this year than the last and do not wish to be surprised with teaching classes that I will loathe.

Spending a lot of time recently with other volunteers, all in efforts toward work, has been really gratifying. It’s surprising how much being able to deeply discuss all the myriad craziness that is life in Peace Corps has a cathartic effect. It even helps to steer the ship back to shore, to remind you of why you did this in the first place and inspires you to push through the muck. Regardless, there are still days of great questioning and frustration. Luckily for me I’m just someone that never lets myself off easily in anything, I believe in finishing the fight at all costs, so, it never crosses my mind to throw in the towel in moments of fluster. Yet, sometimes I wonder if I’m not a complete lunatic for desiring to leave the sunshine of Los Angeles to come collect my water from a well, or walk through mud puddles in the market. To spend my little money in attempts to satisfy the high expectations of strangers. To risk life and limb in so many ways you don’t even put together until a year of living it and hear so many many stories and witness so many horrible things that you sometimes pray for it to end as quickly as possible. Lately my fears have risen. Maybe it’s turning 26 or being in love for the first time, or perhaps it simply really is due to the build up of testimonies of horror. I myself have witnessed 2 motorcyle accidents right before my eyes, a boy recently struck by a car lying on the side of the road in his bloodsoaked t-shirt. A student passing away, another passing into a state of unconscious consciousness for an extended time, stories of young people from village dying in motorcycle accidents- one just at the market. Other volunteers talk of what they’ve seen, children struck by motos, one killed by a volunteer’s bus. Stories of illness that kills quickly and unbiased. Even stories of sorcery inflicted on others in ways indescribable and nauseating. There is fear of witnessing violent acts like that of mob justice or domestic abuse. The other day several volunteers and I declared how absolutely afraid we are alone in our homes at night. So used to 911 and a virtual army just a few seconds away after a phone call, the thought of having almost no reprieve is horrifying in and of itself. Not to mention being a particular target for offense. Having to be on constant guard is a sentiment that didn’t even escape me when I was visiting the States last. In fact, it was hard to believe that I could sit on my front porch and perhaps no one driving by would even notice me there.

Yet, through it all, behind the blackness of the paranoia and anxiety, there is this sliver of hope at breaking through something. Making a tiny crack in the shell of all this chaos to bring a little more order. A hope that you will happen to survive amid the unpredictability to bring forth a little change.

There’s little else to update on. As the second year strolls in it’s no longer just a curiosity to examine the future after Peace Corps. My recent inquiries into grad schools left me surprised that there’s a rush to start applying already for next fall and to submit before the end of the year. I should also add that Claude and I are talking about marriage, which is very exciting and terrifying at the same time as I envision a complicated year of travel arrangements and visa hoops to jump through. But, contrary to what I’d imagined before getting here, there’s rarely a dull moment in this life.

July 1st, 2011

“What had to be seen was that the Chris I missed so badly was not an object but a pattern, and that although that pattern included the flesh and blood of Chris, that was not all there was to it. The pattern was larger than Chris and myself, and related us in ways that neither of us understood completely and neither of us was in complete control of.

Now Chris’s body, which was a part of that larger pattern, was gone. But the larger pattern remained. A huge hole had been torn out of the center of it, and that was what caused all the heartache.”

-Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Wow, July 1st. When I was a kid the adults in my family always told me that time would only pass more and more quickly the older I got and it turns out they were right. I have been in Cameroon a year already. Christmas feels like it just happened when in fact it was already half a year ago. My first year of teaching is over and I’m finally settling back into village life after two whirlwind trips to the US in the past 3 months.

Life, in fact, could hardly be more different than six months ago. I feel like I’m in an entirely different place. I was running into the first group already heading back to the States in June and it was so strange to feel like I’d hardly gotten to know them and now they’re already going back to their American lives. It seems like I just got here and was looking at them like the wise volunteers who already seemed to know so much more than I could imagine knowing about surviving in this strange place. Now that group of people is my group.

Yesterday I had this really funny experience. My colleague invited me to lunch to meet his older sister and nieces who live in Massachusetts. The younger daughter is 17 and the oldest is 21. They have been in the States for the last 8 years and the youngest girl has drastically more American habits than her older sister. When she speaks French it’s like hearing another volunteer speak it and when her aunt was calling her to come do something from the other room and she asked her mom, “What, is it like, if someone calls you, you have to go, you can’t say you’re busy?!” I had to laugh hysterically at this.

They were amazed that I had acclimated so well here and in fact while they were talking about how much things cost at Whole Foods, I felt more connected with the world of picking fruits and nuts from a tree. She served me pesto and broccoli and they were so surprised when I said I was growing broccoli and spinach and arugula in my garden. The youngest daughter said I am brave.

Since getting back to the village life has been easy like Sunday morning. In fact, I have absolutely nothing to do and it’s strange and blissful and also terrifying because I haven’t had absolutely nothing to do in like… 4 years. Grandma’s passing has settled in me much more calmly than I ever expected it to in the lifetime I dreaded it. She has graced me with serenity in her absence and I really feel her with me all the time, perhaps more so than ever while she was alive.

Claude and I are about to celebrate our first year together in just a couple of days and we just seem to get happier with each other everyday. It’s something I never imagined could be so simple. We have created balance and fairness in so many areas of our lives from the music we listen to the food we eat. Being from such different backgrounds, everything is a negotiation, and after a year of practice I’m happy to say that it just keeps getting easier to get along.

I’ve been trying to catch up on the myriad things I had longed to do from September-March like writing back friends who’ve sent things, reading and cooking more, visiting other volunteers, and doing my secondary project work. Unfortunately that last part has been a disappointment up until now. Since Bafia my hope has been to organize the women here. In fact, they already are organized, but to provide them with something that may be able to help them. Over time the patterns I seemed to notice indicated that they could be most helped with income generating projects. My community host has been on board to help me from the beginning so he says, but usually I guess he just talks a lot about it and doesn’t do much of anything to make it happen. Actually since I’ve been here he’s done things like not include me in meetings and gatherings and then asked me why I didn’t come as if I had some telepathic way of finding out it was happening. After going to talk about work a couple weeks ago and winding up having dinner and a beer with some others and he, work was merely mentioned. I went to his house a few days later and told his wife to send him over to see me or have him call me so we could discuss organizing and he never showed up. I finally called him and he told me he’d be here at 9 the next morning. I set my alarm (since now that it’s summer break I sleep in!), and, after a year of adapting, I made enough breakfast for everyone and Claude went out for baguettes and coffee. At 9:30 with the eggs already finished on the stove I called him again and he told me he’d be here in one minute. An hour later we decided to eat and shortly thereafter Claude watch him ride past on his motorcycle, not even seeming like he intended to stop.

I don’t know if I offended him in some way or he isn’t completely enthusiastic about my agenda which is fixated on women as well as certain behaviors that probably he’s involved in, like marrying a child and having kids with her. Either way, I’ve abandoned these high hopes of large gatherings of women or a large, ongoing project with them. I would still like to organize a few small opportunities for them to get information about different activities that could generate money for them but I’m basically convinced at this point that most of them will do nothing with it. Thus, my primary focus now is really on improving the scope of work of Girls’ Club next year and really trying to get the entire staff on board with the objectives of the group.

Outside of all that, though I don’t know if I can say I’ll ever really get used to the 24 hour analysis of every behavior, word, change in my body (the teenage girl from the States yesterday told me with disdain, “Everyone keeps telling me how much weight I’ve gained!”), and the calculation of every minute I spend inside or outside my house, I have finally started to adopt the attitude of not giving a shit about pleasing everyone or even what they think of me at all. I feel like I go out of my way to be generous to my direct neighbors. I am constantly giving them baguettes or other food when I‘m out. I baked them cornbread and printed out tons of pictures for them from the States. I give the kids candy, pencils, and sometimes toys. Yet, they still constantly leave garbage all over my yard or in my compost pile and stomp on my garden. One of the kids even dug up all my first tomato plants and moved them to his own hidden garden. This may sound cute in a way until Claude called the kid out on it and he responded, “What have you ever given me?” My impression is that is not the talk of a 7 year old but rather, most likely, the adults around him.

I try to be sociable but mostly I just feel like this alien from outer space with them. That’s not to say I feel like that with everyone in the village because I’ve finally actually started developing some solid friendships with people, but these neighbors in particular just seem to have no respect for me. I think in some ways the way I handled the problems with water and electricity were less than completely tactful and they still hold it against me. They also don’t like that I tend to step in when a child is screaming bloody murder on my stoop or directly outside my window. A few weeks ago when all the kids were taking a turn on one of the younger ones who’d stolen food after I’d already told them it was enough, I huffed outside ready to really shake some fear into the kids and felt totally embarrassed when their mother came hobbling out of the house, having obviously instructed them to beat him. She never looked at me or spoke a single word for minutes until I retreated in shame back into my house. I’ve finally just decided I need to live and let live. Now if I hear screaming, I just try to turn up my own music and I don’t so often open the shutters behind the house that looks into their compound, even if that means being constantly told that I’m always locked up inside.

Today the chief’s wife drug Claude around when she caught him walking to buy bread. She said she was afraid to walk alone at night but I think she actually just wanted to investigate our life because she’s incredibly nosy. She talked all about the two times that she told me the Chief wanted to see me, forgetting that I didn’t come because she never called in the evening to tell me to. She said I’m not social and don’t go out. All this she primarily thinks because she personally gets on my nerves and thus I avoid her. She is the type of person that has absolutely no qualms about asking all variety of personal questions, even in front of strangers, ranging from how much money do I make to what does my boyfriend do all day. She also loves to ask me to buy her a drink when she catches me out, something she’s done since the very first time I ever saw her. She has never once bought me a drink and she is married to the Chief! She constantly asks me to buy her a wig of real hair the next time I’m in the States as though there are myriad wig stores on the streets of America and they are practically giving away wigs of real human hair. She also stabbed her own friend in the back because I was always buying my phone credit from her and she came and tried to convince me to buy it from her sister instead. The lady is obsessed with her moderate celebrity or something and I can tell it just drives her crazy that it doesn’t impress me.

Next week is mid-service and pretty much my break is already half over. Before I know it the school loop will re-run, and I hope this year will run much more smoothly than the last. In the meantime, je suis la, I’m living life and taking a breather. Regardless of what the rest of the village seems to think, I think I deserve it and, whether I’m inside or outside, nothing I’m doing is all that much different from what they are.

“We were sitting at the kitchen table in our usual spots, my mother drinking her usual decaf tea with Sweet N’ Low, me with my usual mug of English Breakfast and sugar. Even though I hadn’t lived at home in four years, all it took was an oversized mug of microwaved tea and a couple of Reese’s peanut butter cups to make me feel like I’d never left.” - The Devil Wears Prada, Lauren Weisberger

As I prepared myself for my first real vacation since being in Cameroon at the end of March, my mother began calling with updates from home regarding my grandmother’s failing health. In February while I was in the capitol for the GRE they found that her cancer had migrated into her lungs, what the chemo had successfully prevented the last 5 years. We knew this news was bad but they restarted her treatment and waited to see how it went.

She frequently felt lousy after her treatment and this time was no different, the family thought at first. It turns out she had contracted a serious infection that wound up placing her in the hospital a couple weeks later. As she had already had a treatment or two, her immune system was too weak to fight the infection and a month later she was still in the hospital. Her body, it seems, has gotten too tired. The very same day I planned to travel my mom called to add that, in addition to Shingles, a yeast infection, and the C-diff, she was having congestive heart failure and had barely eaten in weeks. Thus, two days later I was on a plane back to Ohio.

The day I arrived Grandma had been moved to a hospice facility. John and Adrienne picked me up from the airport and we went straight there. Her room felt peaceful and warm, like a nice hotel room that first night. It was so nice in some ways to be back with the family, despite the circumstances. Those first few days at the facility were the toughest because she seemed to be suffering a great deal, unable to swallow or even suck on a straw, moaning constantly, waking up every 2 hours. I hated to see her in that state but to our surprise, just a couple days later she was sitting up, eating a lot more, talking a lot more, and having less pain. She was pretty clear about not having any desire to die right now.

The family was under the impression from the beginning that if she’d just start eating again she could get strong enough to go back to chemo, since they discovered that the first few treatments had in fact been working.

Post continued May 22nd

It has been three weeks since I began the last post. Time feels completely nonexistent lately. I have been back in Cameroon all this time. I came back to the same flood of work I had left behind only now all the more confusing because it’s exam period and school is ending and it is more chaotic than ever and it‘s all coupled with the most grievous event of my life.

The whole village was happy to see me, greeting me with even greater smiles than when I’d first arrived. Many people stopped by to welcome me back. In some ways I have been comforted and other ways exhausted. Exhausted by the constant analysis of my every move. The constant knowledge of where I’ve been, why, and the barrage of questions. Last Saturday Grandma passed away. It was a very bittersweet weekend, for some reasons I won’t discuss here. Claude and I were going to a wedding that night. We had gone out for a walk and I’d actually left my cell phone at the house. I figured Mom had his number if she needed to reach me.

I came back to get ready for the wedding and saw two missed calls from her. Before I could even process anything she rang again and I answered. I could tell her voice seemed timid and searching. Trying to figure out where I was before she broke the news.

Though I’d known she was dying it came as a surprise. Having been present in the hospice for a month and watched numerous patients coming in and passing away we had picked up on a sort of evident process that seems to occur so that the family has enough time to organize and come to the bedside of their loved one before they’re gone. For mom the call came in the middle of the night and 3 hours later Grandma had already passed away. Mom wasn’t even there either because Grandpa hadn’t been feeling well and they had to take him back home.

In some ways I feel the world has shifted like the movement of the tectonic plates during an earthquake. How can life ever be quite the same again? My grandmother was a second parent to me. She never missed a major event in my life, she never faltered in support of my every ambition. She was a wonderful friend, mentor, listener, and she always made me laugh. Even in those last memories with her in the hospital I was deeply moved by her spirit of strength and resilience; always refusing pain medicine and talking as if at any moment she would be right back to her old self again.

To be so many miles away and grasp that she’s really gone is tough. To help myself get some finality and to support the rest of the family I will go back to the US again in a week to attend her memorial service. With cancer everyday is a gift. You are really just fighting against time. We always knew that. We stayed positive, especially Grandma did, and we tried to come to terms with what seemed the inevitable end of her story. Yet, even after 5 years of familiarizing yourself with the idea, and even after seeing her so at peace in those last weeks, you can never prepare yourself for how deeply and sharply you will miss the person.

The people here deal so commonly with death that they seem to, in some ways, to have developed a certain indifference to it. Every weekend most of the people of my village are attending a funeral or assisting a family who’s lost someone by sitting with them through their grief. Sometimes I feel alone because, though they offer their sincere condolences and comforting words, how can they really fully understand the depth of my loss when their families are so large and so often parents play such a distant role in their childrens’ lives? I know in reality that loss is loss and everyone in the world has a different definition of what family is but in the end, it always is the most important thing to most people in life anywhere in the world.

Being thrown back into school has been frustrating. The Cameroonian system feels to me like putting a newly walking baby at the bottom of a mountain and then telling them to climb up. The expectations are so outrageous that it’s discouraging even for me. I have been so busy with writing lesson plans, writing tests, grading, averaging, and filling out report cards since September that I’ve had very little time or energy for much of anything else at all. I have a hard time getting the villagers to understand this. Many of them comment on me not being constantly outside, socializing with everyone and walking all over the place. I think having a job with scheduled hours makes it harder for us to relate.

The other day for a couple of seconds sitting in my living room, I could hear birds outside and I had to cry. I know that I always talk about how peaceful it is here, and that is true, but not necessarily in a literal sense. Life here is centered around a culture without cars. Therefore, people live far more congested than generally in the States. On a daily basis there are very few moments of actual peace and quiet in my life here. In the morning I can hear babies crying, dishes being washed by my neighbors outside, kids running around getting ready for school. In the afternoon it’s still babies’ crying, people walking past talking loudly, motorcycles and big trucks that, on the dirt road, make my whole house shake until I can hear the window panes rattling, and before too long, the barrage of students broken free from school and noisier than ever. At night there are… you guessed it, babies crying!, the neighbors sitting around having dinner or chatting, everyone getting their baths, fighting and screaming, or doing their final daily chores. Often when I want to sleep I can hear the music all the way from the market, a good half mile or more away, like when you’re next to some teenage bonehead’s bass, and then the straggling drunks that roll home talking much more loudly than usual at wee morning hours. If it’s raining it’s louder than ever because the rain pounds on the tin roof with such vigor. Last week there was an evangelical church in town that sent a guy out all over the village with a megaphone, enticing people to come to what seemed to be an almost- all night- long service involving loud preaching and lots of dancing and drums.

This is everyday in a nutshell. I usually try to fall asleep by around 10 and by 6 or sometimes earlier, the rooster has already crowed again to wake up and repeat. I have so very little free time and yet feel so much pressure from neighbors and colleagues about ‘inviting them out’, (which is code for, when am I going to buy them a drink?).

Sometimes I can’t distinguish what of my frustrations are probably felt by every single Peace Corps Volunteer and what must be individual to my experience. On an at least weekly basis people ask me when I’m going to invite them out (A.K.A. when am I going to buy them a drink), when I’m going to invite them to my house, when am I going here or there and so on. People seem to have this unalterable impression that I have an endless stream of money, despite how many times I have explained that I don’t probably even make as much as many of the Cameroonian teachers do and happen to be buried under the traditional American Shitpile of Debt. Though they never see me out except on occasion having a beer or two, they don’t see me traveling all over the place or always having new things. My house is pretty simple and they only things that aren’t I didn’t even pay for but acquired. My house isn’t even paid for by me personally.

This week I’ve done nothing but the last of the year’s calculating, ranking, and preparing for class counsel. Somehow people offer their support but then seem to expect you to snap right back to normal. Friday is my birthday, which I happened to casually mention to a couple of my colleagues who informed me that this means I have to buy a bottle of expensive whiskey and they are going to come to my house to drink it. Later one of them even tried to embellish a little more about how usually people invite people over and prepare chicken and all kinds of things. Now I seem almost obligated to have them over, in fact they are literally just telling me they’re coming and since one of them is an administrator at the school it would be a bit taboo to refuse them. So, by the time I have a second to finally take a breath and process that Grandma is really gone, I will be packing a suitcase to fly home and really say the most painful goodbye of my life.

Alas! This is why you haven’t heard from me in a couple of months but, I’m still here. Life is more bizarre than ever but there is also a lot of hope for bright things ahead. So, we keep on moving. And talk about life really moving and a shaking, Grandma’s memorial service is exactly one year from the day I arrived on Cameroonian soil. All I know for sure is that Grandma always supported every ambition I ever had, as crazy as a lot of mine are. For whatever reason I always believed I had to do this whole Peace Corps thing before I could really get on with my life, my future, my family, so here I am. One thing I do believe, as frustrating as all the commotion and noise can often be for someone so accustomed to a healthy amount of ‘me-time’, it will probably be what gets me through this period more than anything else ever could.

“It is surprising how many great men and women a small house will contain.” -Walden Henry David Thoreau

I would be lying if I said that I had lost all track of time lately or had forgotten to write. In fact, my internet access has even been more constant than before since we managed to locate a tiny portion of the house where we can manage the faintest connection. The truth is life has just begun to feel a bit routine here and so the inspiration to write, though it is here all around me all the time, has somewhat dissipated.

Life is still chill and without too many problems. I took the GRE in February in Yaounde which was way harder than I’d imagined and was quite discouraging, especially reading an entire study book in the months prior as well as cramming with a few other girls in the Volunteer house for 3 consecutive days before the test. The good news is that everyone else also found it difficult. We’ll see in just a couple of weeks whether I actually stand a chance of being accepted to my first choice graduate program or not- fingers crossed!

Since the test I have been trying to really fixate on my secondary projects in the village. We are expected to do something called PACA (Paticipatory Assessment for Community Action) to establish the needs, resources, and motivators of the community for our projects to be sustainable. Unfortunately we didn’t receive any useful training on that during Pre-Service and therefore my own research and planning of it feels a bit like Alice’s rabbit hole. On the other hand, my Girls’ Club has become quite a hit and I am now working on having a summer camp with a small group to teach AIDS prevention and things like Family Planning and Life Skills. More and more I feel that working with the younger population of the community may be more valuable than with the adults.

I have been dealing with a rather frustrating problem in my house since before going to Kribi in December. My landlord’s son installed my power when I first moved in and my “divisionary” electric meter has been in his wife’s house behind my own. At first my bills were somewhat reasonable but then he started bringing me totals of 3 times what the other volunteers pay, and that was before I even had a refrigerator. When my Program Director called him to explain our policies he simply rearranged the charges so that the total was the same but that now it was coming from my water bill rather than my electric. I refused to pay and my boss had to come and work it out with us.

In January I wound up paying him a remaining balance, still much higher than I should’ve had to, but at last we signed a contract with him stating that the electric company themselves would come and install a meter on my house and that after January 31st I would no longer pay any bills that were not from the company. I also discovered during this same meeting that I have been paying the water bill for his entire compound as well.

At the beginning of February he came again with another outrageous bill, after having refused to take my offer for the remaining balance which was actually owed. With that I talked to my Program Director and he agreed that I could move. I found a house that was absolutely BEAUTIFUL, in fact, probably too much so. We thought that the guy was going to let me rent but, in typical Cameroonian fashion, he was just saving face. Cameroonians have a highly annoying cultural tendency to say they will tell you tomorrow or they need to do something with someone before giving you a response, yet never, in the end giving you one. Their way of avoiding the potential discomfort of saying “No’ outright.

Finally the electric company came yesterday and discovered things were not correctly installed and called him a “bandit international”. Already his kid came again today to do something with the power, which I refused.

Though I admittedly spent about a week dreaming of my new life in the (probably most) impressive house in the village, without dozens of children screaming and wailing nearly every second of the day, I have come back down to Earth now. In fact, I am reading Walden at the moment and it makes me realize how much less we really need than we convince ourselves that we do. Thus the reason we are perceived as rich by most of the world. Sure, the majority of us may be “making ends meet”, living “paycheck to paycheck” or just “scraping by” each month, but in most cases it is probably because we have consumed relative to our income to the point where there is hardly any breathing room. In reality, if people lived in a less superfluous way than we are accustomed to we would probably have thousands of dollars stashed away in bank accounts for a ’rainy day’.

When I first got here there was an ongoing list of things I just had to have in my head at all times. New sofa, refrigerator, guest bed, a variety of more luxurious food items that can only be purchased in the city, including highly priced olive oil. I saw certain other volunteers’ houses and felt pangs of envy because they chanced to fall into homes that were akin really to those we are used to whereas mine has wooden doors and windows and concrete floors, no kitchen sink, and a filthy paint job.

After 7 months in my village it’s easier to differentiate the needs from the indulgences. Now my 170 CFA per month (around $300) salary does actually feel quite rich. After accumulating all the must haves like my stove, bed , a kitchen table, and buckets and bidons for water storage, I have been able to budget to easily have around 40 CFA ($80) left at the end of the month, money a whole family here could probably live off.

After months of sitting on only my wooden or plastic chairs, or, worst of all, in my bed which is essentially a piece of foam already smashed down to practically nothing allowing the body only the sensation of the 2x4s supporting it below, I acquired Christine’s love seat, sofa, and coffee table. Now I feel almost ashamed of the luxury.

Finally I realize that I don’t necessarily have to drink coffee every morning, and on my days off a warm mug of it in my hand while reading a book on the veranda is one of the most exotic and enjoyable experiences I can have. When I allow myself to steal 300 CFA (less than a dollar) out of the week’s budget for a bar of Mambo chocolate, I carefully stash it away until just the right moment in which I break off each piece one by one and let the sultry richness of it melt on my tongue. A few times a month I buy Claude and I bottles of Top soda or a box of wine with dinner and it feels like New Years Eve.

We are programmed to believe that success is always obtaining more. A newer car, a better house, nicer clothes. I think success is a lot simpler than that. Being far from home and thinking back to all the complicated drama that so often exists in the world of excess makes me wish only for the simple joy of a belly full of good, natural food, the warm company of someone you love, the familiarity of a place you’ve made yours on the planet, and peace and contentedness of the present moment. I wish that could be the new idea of luxury in our country of constantly chasing our tails; always pursuing that which is just beyond our reach.

After 8 months in country and already more than 5 months in the village, there are times when it’s easy to forget that I’m even in Africa. Apart from the immediate surroundings, which I’ve adjusted to as anyone does a new environment after some time, and the fact that I am pretty much the only person with white skin that I come in contact with most days of the week, the nuts and bolts of life here seem perfectly natural. And, though people do talk of it, allude to it in offhanded ways, the suffering that is all around me is hardly evident in their friendly greetings, their seeming joy and carefree natures.

Yesterday, however, I was reminded of the realities which I myself escape by my myriad medical examinations, vaccinations, check-ins, extensive education of threats and preventions, and unlimited supplies and care that comes courtesy of the U.S. government to each and every Peace Corps volunteer. While walking to pick up report cards from the office a student in my youngest class stopped to inform me that one of their classmates had died. Though I don’t know all of my students by name, (especially the girls, who are obliged to shave their heads making them difficult to distinguish), as soon as he spoke her name I could see her wide eyes and bright smile shining from the back row of the classroom. I went to say a few words to the class quickly and was surprised to see that things seemed to be carrying on as they would on any typical school day. I mentioned it to some of the staff as I tried to share the initial confused shock and grief that is so unfamiliar to me.

I got little to no reaction from anyone and felt angry when the Discipline Master, who Claude later explained to me should normally be responsible for organizing the students and informing the school of the loss of a comrade, came to ask me to help them plan the Fashion Show for the Youth Holiday next week. Shortly thereafter and 2 hours before school had even terminated they brought out a sound system and started blasting music on the campus. By then my 5ieme class, Olive’s class, was to begin. I went and offered a few words of condolence, asked some details of the cause of her death, and requested that a few students guide me to where she lived so I could greet the parents, offer my support, and ask permission to come to the burial.

A virtual troop of students started walking with me and, deep in reflection, I was practically at her doorstep before I turned and realized that we had accumulated in such a way. I asked the students to stay behind, envisioning that a family who had lost their child less than 24 hours before would be in such a delicate state that a mass of students was wildly inconsiderate and could be a horrible reflection on me in the village. I insisted that 2 students join me and the rest wait, but upon arriving I realized that a crowd was already gathered there. One of my older students greeted me and stood to lead me to what I thought and hoped would be Olive’s parents. To my surprise it was her little lifeless body wrapped in a bed sheet, laid out on the family’s kitchen table under a chalkboard with equations written on it. Apparently all the students, knowing their own culture better than I, disregarded my demands and were all behind me in the room before I knew it. I am not sure whether the students or my gesture, or the two things combined with their grief led all the women assembled there to move into the room with us and begin singing and crying with such emotion it could have vibrated the house. They approached the table and I understood they were telling Olive that her friends and teacher had come from school; they shook her little body as if to wake her and cried harder when their pleas were answered by her silence. Her mother stroked her face and called to her, “Tata Olive”.

My students, who while walking in the road seemed to bear a cold indifference to the loss of their classmate, now began crying, some even sobbing, as well. Even the boys had looks of fear and confusion on their faces and I felt at home suddenly among their pain. Finally, there was the intense sorrow I had expected to find since the moment I heard the news. Finally, the commonality of our humanity was before me; pain, a reaction to death I could make sense of.

We stayed there like that for an undetermined amount of time. I felt a combination of confused, awkward, sad, and somehow more mature than just a few hours earlier as I wanted to reach out to the young girls who were clearly examining the mysterious finality of death for the very first time in their short lives.

Walking back from her house the girls were very somber. They too, I am certain, had grown older in a matter of minutes. I was happy to have Claude here when I got home to turn over the whole thing with him. I kept seeing her face all last night, in the classroom, and then on that table. Her body looking just as healthy as in the class last week. I found her homework on my desk, her words written there by her hands not a week before. And now she’s dead and I can’t quite make sense of why. When you ask people here the cause of someone’s death they always just say, “an illness”. Apparently Olive fell sick over the weekend and by Monday night she was no more.

It is here where true poverty rears its head. Poverty that prevents a family from providing their child with medical care. Poverty that prevents them from understanding why or how their child is gone. Poverty that allows for the possibility of other deaths, because we cannot even learn if what killed her was actually preventable to begin with. In the face of so many unanswered questions, it is simple to comprehend why many people here explain away death by saying that it is simply God’s design, or even more say that it is sorcery, that someone cursed that person and that is why they have AIDS or whatever it may be.

I take a lot of time to try incorporating basic sanitation education, nutrition, and general health in my lessons. A couple Saturdays ago when I was trying to explain so and so “died of” to one of my classes I tried to make them understand that in our context it is always important to know how someone died because you can gather statistics and possibly change the habits of the entire culture if there are seen to be lots of deaths from a particular cause. A student responded that life is just as long as God wills it. I asked him why then do people live longer in my country, does God love us more than he does them? That seemed to sink in.

Well, somehow Christmas and New Year’s have come and gone along with my much needed and much appreciated break from teaching. Already I’ve been back in the thick of it for nearly two weeks and feel less patient with the job than I was for the first part of the year. Luckily I’m told that the first trimester is the longest because there are so many holidays for the rest of the year. I also apparently neglected to notice that the 2nd trimester had already begun before the break began meaning that next week is already time to test students again.

The break was certainly interesting and mostly good. Kribi was beautiful but we didn’t have all that much time to enjoy that aspect of it. It was great seeing the whole group again. It’s amazing how just a few months together in training really did bring us close and to see everyone again after seeing mostly Cameroonian faces everyday was more enjoyable than I’d even anticipated. I, however, was one of the few if not only lucky individuals who did not encounter any major issues while there. Over half of the group was incredibly sick with a myriad of maladies and most of the people who were not ill wound up being robbed at gun and machete-point at the beachfront bar we spent most nights in. Had I not been feeling a little sick to my stomach myself that evening I too would’ve most likely been involved.

We had negotiated to take a free personal day after the seminar had finished but with all the bad vibes floating around I decided to head out on time and meet Claude in Yaounde. I was disappointed to get a rather cold reception from fellow volunteers when I brought him into the volunteer house, especially considering that I had just been asked in Kribi to speak about my experience dating him and how it effects my relationships with the other Americans.

I suppose in some ways I can understand that a lot of people view the volunteer house as a space to be completely American and escape the natives for a day or so, but Claude isn’t like some traditional Cameroonian elder or something; in fact, I have more in common with him than I do with most of the other volunteers. When we left the house I was angry but Claude took it in stride. He said that not everyone joins the Peace Corps for the same reasons and I realized that he’s right. I signed up to be here because I really believe in the idea that human beings all over the world don’t differ all that much from one another. When I am with Claude I hardly even think about our many differences because most of them seem pretty peripheral to our true selves. I spent Christmas with his family and I couldn’t have felt more at home if I was with my own family. They discussed, joked, bickered and appreciated one another the same way any American family might.

I felt a little left behind when all the others were talking about their big travel plans to Mt. Cameroon and other tourist spots but in the end I really enjoyed the break and I think in the long run being with Claude will get me a much more intimate look into Cameroon than probably most anyone else. Plus, I still have nearly 20 months here and I don’ t need to be in a huge hurry to see everything I possibly can. To me, the holidays are far more about the company you share than where you happen to land and I am glad I made that decision. I also got to see my host family and many of the other people I got to know during our time in Bafia. They were really appreciative that I thought of them, especially those who had not heard from their volunteers since they went to post.

Another perk of being in Bafia again was getting to load up my internet key for a couple of days and Skype with Katie on Christmas morning and a bit with my family in West Union that night. Unfortunately we lost our connection before our traditional 12 Days of Christmas singing but it was great to be somewhat a part of the celebration just the same. Since my mom discovered that the phone company doesn’t actually have the international calling package they misleading sold her a month ago she is going to help me pay for internet at the house soon. Hopefully the connection will be decent enough to Skype some more because it is really amazing! Claude got so excited that he picked up the laptop and ran off with it, giving Katie a tour of his house!

I came back to discover that my closest American friend here has flown the coop and gone back to the US for good. Since being here I haven’t spent too much time with really any of the other volunteers aside from her since getting to other villages is pretty much an unavoidable pain in the neck so the reality that she is no longer here is still setting in. At least there are plenty of other people in the area so I can still catch up with them if I feel the need to. I spent the first day back in my classes going over a new list of class rules that I assembled during the break based on my ‘on -the- ground internship’ known as the first trimester. Unfortunately I don’t know if I can ever fully undo the damage that I did by coming in to class being so carefree and lighthearted. Probably the worst mistake I’ve made in country is not heeding the advice to start hard and get softer rather than the other way around. It’s funny, I’ve been watching The Wire the past couple of weeks and there is a guy who gets a teaching job at an inner-city Baltimore middle school in one of the seasons. It’s unbelievable how much his job in the classroom is like mine.

I decided that I wasn’t punishing anyone harshly enough for them to take me all that seriously before. Sending them out required always more distraction from class to ensure they would actually go to the Discipline Master; forcing them to put their nose to the chalkboard, though they don’t enjoy it, didn’t seem to do the trick. I have concluded that once kids are exposed to harsher forms of punishment it is extremely difficult to have much effect on them when you are trying softer approaches. One day I forced a few students to kneel, asking them if they preferred the Cameroonian method, even though it is actually outlawed. It didn’t matter anyway because I felt horrible that I compromised my own principles out of frustration and vowed to never do it again.

Finally I designed a plan to force the worst behaved students to stay after school with me for an hour on Tuesdays. Last week I made 3 kids pick up trash on the campus, whining and complaining all the while but eventually seeming proud of their work. Yesterday I had accumulated about 30 delinquents, though, and without someone to help me the only thing to do was to form a sort of detention. Since the whole concept is new to them I couldn’t get them to shut up or do work until finally the Discipline Master happened upon us. I was so frustrated and angry and he could tell so he too became angry with how the kids were disrespecting me. He called on one of them to explain why he was there and come to the front of the room. He picked up a 2x4 that was on the floor and hit the kid on the butt. He was about to continue beating him but I stepped in and explained that the reason they were there was because I didn’t like beating.

The entire day all the kids who I’d arranged to have after school followed me around complaining that they wanted to do their punishment during school hours rather than after school because there was a traditional dance in the village center that only happens every 2 years. In fact, my youngest class who I am with the last 2 hours of the day got in a lot of trouble because of a (rather clever) stunt they pulled when they rearranged the whole classroom to wash the floor before my class so that I would have to send them home early. When I stopped the Discipline Master he looked at me and said that sometimes you need to be savage to get your point across. I looked at everyone in the classroom and said, “Is that what you prefer? If everyone comes up and takes their 5 beatings you can all go to your party.” Everyone refused and when the Discipline Master left a series of them raised their hands to ask for forgiveness and I didn’t have another problem for the rest of the hour with them.

Some days I feel like teaching English to a bunch of Francophone village kids who barely even know French is pointless. Especially since they don’t seem to get over half the material no matter what. But, since coming back from the holidays, I have noticed some improvements. The things I’ve worked the hardest to drill in seem to have finally stuck and I feel proud of their work and my own. This week and last I had decent turnout for Girls’ Club even though now it is only my own students who come. They have started to open up to me more and are asking questions. Last week I talked to them about feminine hygiene and today we had a mini-sex education lesson. Next week a fellow volunteer is coming to do a yoga class with us.

Our time in Kribi really inspired me to begin some income-generating projects with the women of the village but I’ve put everything aside from my primary responsibilities on hold until after I take the GRE in February. I have been studying everyday and being reminded of how much I hate/suck at math. I only hope I can perform well enough on the other parts of it to outweigh how poorly I’m almost certain I’ll do on that section. It’s hard to believe that it’s already time to be doing something like that to get prepared to go back to a life in the US. It’s funny, some days I dream of being back there where I can wash dishes in a kitchen sink and take a shower without a bucket and a cup but at the same time I know that when I do get back it’s going to be a major adjustment and in the end I’m going to damn sure miss it here. Ever since my first time on this continent it’s been under my skin. It’s a place that just changes you in ways you can’t explain. Maybe it is that being back closer to the way humans were designed to be, farther from all the technology and instant gratification. Where, when I think of my loved ones I’m forced to sit down and actually write them a letter instead of just sending them a text message or a face book chat. Where I have to appreciate every single drop of water that falls from the sky, every positive interaction with someone, where every indication of minute progress in any sense is a blissful reward. In fact, I think on the whole I was far more stressed out and miserable when I was suffering through making payments on time, rushing from meetings, sitting in traffic jams, and attempting to balance the scales of social and professional life without losing my mind, even despite coming home to a host of modern luxuries designed to make life easier and better.

10 December 2010

“I missed not working and I felt the death loneliness that comes at the end of every day that is wasted in your life.” - Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

At last I am free to break from the pressure of the suffocating workload I have been becoming accustomed to and come up for a few breaths of fresh air. I’m not sure what I anticipated when I volunteered for the Peace Corps, I certainly imagined there would be difficulties. I think I envisioned they would be of a different sort, however. I thought I would be learning to live without electricity, suffering through too many quiet hours to myself, boredom like I’d never known before. I guess I believed that the students would be mesmerized by my presence and so appreciative that they’d behave somehow differently than children normally do.

We have passed the six month point and some days I can hardly believe it. Home feels like such a familiar place in my mind but the thought of going back there at some point a year from now seems strange. Walking into the world of technology, skyscrapers, paved roads, running water, filled with so many apathetic individualists seems overwhelming. The world of restaurants, movie theaters, rollercoasters, and so many luxuries my students can’t even wrap their minds around.

Contrary to what I’d pictured, the real challenges have been far simpler such as the insane amount of work that teachers have here. When I first got here I did not understand why more students didn’t dream of becoming teachers as so many youngsters do back home but now I understand that it is hardly a glamorous and rarely a rewarding job to have in this country.

The first several weeks of classes in September I spent poring over the insanely dense national syllabus and combining it with the teaching program designed from the painfully lousy textbook to create a more logical schedule that I can also work thematically into a program for development. The past few weeks I have been teaching AIDS prevention and nutrition in my classes, for example. I plan to also teach about politics and democracy, sanitation and disease prevention, budgeting and saving, the environment, human rights and more. With this kind of agenda before me my impact feels far deeper than if I just taught English grammar 15 hours a week.

Due to the horrendous amount of bureaucratic work that is associated with the end of each sequence (half a trimester), we began testing about 4 weeks into school. That means I have to write tests for all 4 of my levels, then correct all 278 of them, most of which have some incomprehensible composition I must try to make sense of and evaluate fairly. Once the tests are corrected we have to average all the students’ grades, fill out several forms associated and then sign out the report cards while on the campus and fill in each one by hand with the students rote grade, the weight of the class in their studies, the weighted average, and then a remark based on their score. I was given the work of class master at my school even though Peace Corps encouraged us to refuse to do it because it doesn’t correspond well with our trainings out of town and is a lot of work we weren’t really trained to do. Given, though, that there are 13 teachers at my school and 13 classes, it would seem rather bizarre to exclude myself from a responsibility that every other teacher has, and it would also mean doubling someone else’s work. Thus, yesterday, for the second time in 3 months, I spent 6 hours in my living room calculating averages for all the subjects for my class of 54, giving them once again a remark based on their overall work, calculating the class average as a whole, and then ranking each student in the class. All things we have been using computers to accomplish in the States since before I was even in Kindergarten. Thank God I complained so much and threw a mini fit when I was originally assigned the biggest class in all the lycee.

So, this morning I will finally take my report cards into school, do a few minor corrections and walk back home in the mindset of my 3 week vacation being underway. On Sunday we head out for Kribi, a tourist hotspot on the beach that promises to be beautiful, at least somewhat relaxing, and to serve up delicious seafood. On the way home I will meet up with Claude in Yaounde, recover my package filled with much longed-for spices and clothes from the PC headquarters where I will perhaps use the uber luxurious washing machine and take a hot shower, then travel with Claude to visit friends and my host family in Bafia, where I had my training. The thought of all the free time I have to enjoy my surroundings for the first time really since arriving here is utterly blissful, and I’m very excited to have some quality time with my boyfriend where I’m not running off to work or too busy grading homework and planning lessons to pay much attention to him.

Other than the workload I have found that the biggest challenges are in dealing with things like seeing my neighbor beat her 2 young children mercilessly with a tree branch while they fall to the ground in their attempt to run away screaming. Yesterday a girl was beat at school, something I had not yet come across here. I initially thought I should just ignore it but to my own surprise I went right into the Discipline Master’s office and asked him what was going on. I told him right away that I didn’t approve of it and that it was illegal but that was really my first reaction from the shock and anger I was feeling. I headed toward the Principal’s office immediately to take it up with him but he was out and that allowed me a few minutes in the teacher’s lounge to blow off steam before I again approached the Discipline Master and spoke to him rationally about my concerns.

Our conversation was frustrating. At first I was trying to give him courtesy and respect by allowing him to finish his thoughts, but then I noticed that each time I tried to speak he had more to say. It occurred to me that my allowing him to silence me wasn’t going to get me anywhere so I finally insisted he let me finish. I know I made no impact on him whatsoever with my little speech on how even a child who may have stolen money from her parents has rights and how the Cameroonian government outlawed corporal punishment for good reasons. He even gave me a little tap on the butt to demonstrate where they hit the kids reminding me as well how inappropriate it is for a grown man to be hitting a little girl in the same way.

Despite all that, I did understand where he was coming from to some extent and I tried to rationalize that it is not a frequent thing at my school so at least they seem to be reserving it as the harshest form of punishment. Perhaps if some of the seriously delinquent children that I went to school with had gotten a red buttocks every now and then at school they would’ve straightened up a bit. He said a student that is too wayward needs a serious wake up call so as not to become later a threat to society.

Many of the kids here are essentially raising themselves. Their parents are in the bigger cities and come back here only occasionally. In the light of all that it stands to reason that the school stepping in to align children better and fill the gap their parents leave in their absence makes sense. In a land free of law suits, rampant accusations of pedophilia, and where people look at everyone’s children as their own, it is difficult to form a solid argument against their case. It still gives me a bad taste in my mouth but hell, my grandmother was beat, my mother and father, and they turned out alright. I certainly feel that the beatings are too brute, especially when given by an angry parent, even so emotionally charged that the parent seems out of control. In that way I cannot stomach it. Yet, after the event yesterday and my conversation with him, I actually did feel calmer, I did see his point of view. That doesn’t mean I condone it or like it but I accept that not everything here can be as progressive as things back home and in a country where government is another word for corruption, where people find democracy to be a joke, it’s also a joke when you come out preaching to them about what is illegal.

My lungs have been seriously suffering in the last month and a half as the rainy season came to an abrupt halt and the dry season has started kicking up dust reminiscent of the Grapes of Wrath. I was happy to hear that Christine is suffering the very same symptoms that I went to the clinic for; the dust must be responsible.

I spent Thanksgiving with she and Claude at her house, we had a meatless meatloaf (way more delicious than it may sound), lumpy mashed potatoes (anyone wanna send me a potato masher?), and banana bread. Now that I have a loaf pan and a good understanding of the Dutch oven I have been baking loads of cornbread and banana bread for all the neighbors who’ve given me loads of things since I’ve been here.

I have so many other things I could add but, it’s simply too much and I should really heat up my bath water and get my day started so I can be on time to meet Christine at the bank this afternoon. Happy holidays back home! 2011- wow! Didn’t I just graduate high school??!!

November 11

“In the Huerfano you live at the mercy of the sky. Dry Creek’s been dry for two weeks, and the spring box didn’t refill last night. The wildflowers fade and curl, and when the hot wind blows, dust flies up in the meadows.” - A Memoir of Life in the Counterculture: Huerfano, Roberta Price

It is difficult to believe that the holidays are already just around the bend, especially when I walk outside everyday and see absolutely no signs to remind me of them. After 2 ‘winters’ in Los Angeles I have become accustomed to hanging around in short-sleeves right before Christmas but there was still Jingle Bells playing in the Beverly Center in October. It’s fascinating to be living on a school schedule again and it seems to make life move much faster than countless hours spent at a desk in my office. Not to mention how much busier I have become lately.

In addition to teaching my 4 levels 3 days a week I have started a Girls’ Club at the Lycee. That eliminated one of my free days completely since it’s right in the afternoon and breaks my time into highly inconvenient pieces. I was also approached by some women in the community regarding an organization they’ve been attempting to engineer with the other ladies of the village. We’ve gotten together several times now to toss thoughts and ideas around with whichever women come to the meetings. I also started offering Saturday classes 2 times a month to all my students so I spend 4 hours almost every other weekend letting those who come tell me what they’re struggling with. It’s really become the day I enjoy teaching the most because my classes are a bit smaller, there’s no faculty around, the kids are less over-excited and more at ease, I feel like I’m really listening and helping them more genuinely, and the environment is more personal.

Teaching has been getting easier, finally. After attending a seminar for English teachers in the region I feel more like I’m on the right track and fear less that I’m failing my students. I have stopped worrying so much if I speak French to them and feel like they understand far more because of that decision. I finally feel like they get me a little better and I notice that I’m finding my rhythm with them and kicking them out less frequently. They seem to have noticed that I accept far less than I did in the beginning of the year and respect me for it.

At the seminar I spoke with a national inspector who told me that the national syllabus is the most important guideline for my classes, which is what I had thought initially until the staff at my school told me that the textbook was the priority. I explained that I was skeptical of that considering that not all of the schools in the country use the same textbook, but they insisted. I was feeling so frustrated and trapped in the idea of having to teach from a text that is lousy to begin with. Using it as the guide gave me very little freedom to teach the way I want to teach. Luckily, because of what the inspector told me I have now found a good balance using the textbook and my own syllabus that I wrote when first getting into the village.

Unfortunately, in a few weeks I will be forced to coordinate with the other English teachers at the school to write the tests for the class levels that we share. This means that I am unsure of how my students will perform considering that I will not be permitted to design a test that reflects exactly what I’ve taught. To prevent all my students’ grades from dropping considerably I have been giving lots of homework and I will give points to those who attend the Saturday classes as well. Unfortunately this also means I have an insane amount of homework myself in grading them! Reading an essay in elementary level 2nd language English is much harder than it seems. Props to all my French teachers over the years for that!

When I’m not running off to do something work related someplace or to a language lesson, I often walk out my front door and stand on the side of the road waiting for a raggedy old station wagon to come bumping along, squeeze me in (literally), and go into the regional capital or to the village next to mine to stock up on goodies. Bahouan is one of the smallest and least known villages in the region and doesn’t appear on the map. The market is only every 8 days and there really isn’t too much to offer aside from the usual stuff I can get at the local shops anyhow. Therefore when I get low on certain things, need to go to the bank, or just want to chow on something more exotic than the typical veggies I find here, I spend the majority of my day off getting toted around, negotiating prices, and wandering all over the place acquiring stuff.

Cameroon is known to be a bread basket in Sub-Saharan Africa. In fact, before coming here I read that if they ever closed their borders or had a natural disaster like a drought, many people in the neighboring countries would run the risk of starving. Now that I’m in my own house and have my gas stove, (automatically lighting, thank Heaven!) I have gone back to my vegetarian diet. It’s been a lot easier than I anticipated and even all the teachers at the school are not at all surprised when I don’t completely load my plate with chicken at our staff meetings.

I can find all sorts of vegetables here; some incredibly familiar and some totally new. Most days I’ve got tomatoes, onions, leeks, basil, celery, snap peas, carrots, and green peppers in the house. It’s a treat if I go into Bandjoan and buy romaine lettuce for a salad but soon I hope to be eating some from my own yard! I’ve found beets a couple of times but think they must be out of season now. There is eggplant, zucchini, cabbage, potatoes, avocados, guava, pineapple, okra, bananas and plantains.

New things include “batons” of manioc; I am not sure exactly what part of the plant they even are but they are incredibly unappetizing in appearance. In fact, I was absolutely disgusted by them when I first arrived here. They come wrapped in banana leaves and are gummy in texture. They are a clear, whitish color with a grainy appearance and really have no taste at all but somehow I have taken a liking to them and snack on them frequently when I get home from school. There is also something they call prunes which is nothing like a prune but more like a tiny avocado but hard. If you fry them in a bit of water and oil they soften and then you eat the skin and the green or white insides around the pit. Another thing I was not too fond of until after a few samples and now really enjoy. There are what the people here call ‘potate’ which is essentially a sweet potato but with a drier and unique sweet flavor.

I am still eating as well as I was in Los Angeles and since my mom sent me the best cookbook for a vegetarian ever (which I recommend to everyone- even carnivores) “How to Cook Everything Vegetarian” I cook several times a week. I’ve been eating all sorts of delicious things like homemade minestrone, bean burgers with a side of sweet potato fries, couscous topped with fresh tomato sauce and eggs poached in red wine, vegetable pancakes, cabbage leaves stuffed with lentils and rice, Louisiana style gumbo, breakfast burritos with homemade tortillas and salsa, and pasta with panfried squash and tomato sauce!

Some days it feels as though coming to Africa is what makes time travel possible (rather than Doc‘s invention). A world where you can still find cassette tapes, where McDonald’s and Wal-Mart have not come barging in with hamburgers and low-low prices, on the way to work I pass kids who can’t be older than 3 walking alone down the street, during the day I hear the little boy who lives behind me chopping wood to put on the fire they use to prepare dinner. It’s a world less controlled by politicians and more natural.

At school I have finally adjusted to being allowed to touch my students somewhat without a law suit waiting to happen. Sometimes when I reach out to put my hand on an arm or to demonstrate something, they flea my reach in fear that I’m going to hit them like the rest of the staff. I definitely don’t hit them at all or even use muscle in any way, but I have gotten more used to taking the delinquents by an arm and pulling them to the front of the class to put their noses against the chalkboard.

There are chickens grazing on the side of the road constantly and I can tell the store-owner just up the street that I’ll pay him for my bread tomorrow. When I sit in my language teacher’s little office with his ratty old books I stare into his yard at a well that looks like it should be on Little House on the Prairie with stone sides and a hanging bucket. At night I often find myself working or cooking next to a little gas lantern or a candlelight. When the water is cut off in the house I am vigilant about putting all my empty buckets outside in case of rain and if I hear the water come on I am forced to hop out of bed in the middle of the night and retrieve all the buckets from the yard to fill them as quickly as possible before the opportunity for water is lost again.

I am finally reading the book my friend Bret sent me about the Huerfano Valley in Colorado. It was a commune established by people rejecting the war and the draft and all American politics in the 60s. It’s fascinating how much their little makeshift lives on a mountainside in Colorado 40 some years ago are strikingly similar to mine here. It feels almost strange the marriage of technology and lack of development here. I can hardly ever walk into the bathroom and flush my toilet when I want to but here I am, sitting on my laptop and at the school I can get on the internet and communicate instantly just like I’ve been doing since I was 9 years old. My family calls my cell phone every weekend, and even my students have cell phones.

“If the day and night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emit’s a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, starry, more immortal-- that is your success” -Into the Wild (quoting Walden; Henry David Thoreau)

The Peace Corps slogan has taken on much greater meaning in recent weeks. After being in country nearly 5 months and teaching nearly 3, the initial awe and charm of it all has begun to wear off and it has started to feel a bit like actual work.

Even in the time I am not physically in the classroom or preparing to be, there are so many additional, unanticipated responsibilities to deal with. Things such as being prepared at any minute to receive visitors who arrive spontaneously and insist you serve them an impromptu coffee; being constantly vigilant of my appearance, my dress, my attitude and demeanor. I must be willing to smile and greet any number of people along the road to anywhere I happen to be walking, and willing as well to carry on complete conversations with those who desire it. When a crazy person stops me for an extended period of time while I’m in the market I have to wonder about the culturally appropriate approach to escape (which is actually quite similar to that of the U.S. approach, I learned the hard way, as Claude walked on, leaving me stranded with a woman babbling nonsense at me before a crowd of onlookers for nearly 10 minutes once).

I had envisioned Peace Corps always as this tranquil, perhaps even lonely 2 years of my life. I always figured I’d have a chance to make a hefty dent in my “Read Before I Die” list. To the contrary, everyone in the village seems to notice every move I make. The children of the neighboring compounds have taken favor with playing in the yard and veranda of my house so oftentimes when I am not shouting at kids at the top of my lungs to “STOP NOISE” I am listening to them chase each other in droves, in circles round my house. Yesterday when I went to plant some seeds in the garden, another thing I envisioned being a bit peaceful aspect of my experience here, at least 7 kids stood staring at me, speaking in mother tongue and laughing as though they’d never seen a person put seeds in the ground despite that the entire culture is pastoral.

Leading such a public life is far more exhausting than I‘d imagined and as a result I have found myself slinking into a more introverted personality than ever before. I have begun to look forward to evening and thunderstorms for the opportunity for a few brief instants of freedom from scrutiny and relative calm. Some days I find I do not even feel like opening the shutters because it is the only way to escape the worry of visitors dropping by and children staring at me until I can‘t stand it and move to another room away from their peering eyes.

I suppose that this behavior sounds a bit depressed but that is not the case at all. I am still extremely happy here and never doubt my long carried desire to join the Peace Corps. Some excerpts from my journal can provide insight into the euphoria, in fact, that I am feeling:

15 October-

…Is it really possible that life can be this good? Everyday I feel completely shocked at what I’m living right now.

At the moment I am sitting in the bedroom of my very own house with a glass of warm coffee as a cool breeze is blowing in through my ancient pane-glass window. I can hear the sound of a foreign language being spoken as people barter and exchange goods at the market down the mud road. There are a great variety of birds chirping, the leaves of banana trees swaying calmly in the breeze. Out the window I can see the rusted tin roof of the entrance to the Chef’s quarters, surrounded by an array of fauna including my favorite tree here; long and skinny in the trunk, they sprawl out with scrawny, broad arms and bushy leaves at the top and our polka dotted with a beautiful deep but bright orange flower. When the sun hits them they look like something from a children’s storybook illustration…

…At 25 I don’t believe there’s any place or experience I’d prefer to be having right now. I partied my ass off and lived up my early youth as appropriate; I feel ready at last to march into that period of adulthood where you slow down a little, let a little calm in and start contemplating the next chapters of your story.

Overall I am finding the experience as a whole rather humbling in many ways. I have never been the biggest patriot but after spending a bit of time in Africa, seeing the rampant corruption, stumbling through problems with seemingly simplistic solutions which wind up becoming inherently more complicated than they initially seemed, understanding that though I feel like a poor youth barely out of the post-college ramen noodle diet days, I am actually extremely wealthy here; all of it molds a rather deep appreciation of my country’s accomplishments in a relatively short period of time. Granted most of our success lies rooted in the fact that a few British soldiers relocated, slaughtering everyone in their way to build exactly what they wanted of a nation, but, I am loathe to admit that just a few hundred years later the world is an altogether better place for it. I’m certainly not absolving our nation’s role in a multitude of vile things throughout our history; I did, after all, spend the two years of my life before coming here repudiating such things as our grossly excessive military arm as a career choice. It’s simply more clear now how undeniable it is that the world in general looks on our history, people, and way of life as a model of what they’d like their nation to be and such admiration turns the wheels toward a certain intellectual progress.

As nearly a half a year has already rushed past in my time here and I have already taken on virtually an entirely new identity, it is impossible not to speculate about who on earth I will have become at the end of all this. One near certainty is this, in the long run the impact will be deep and I believe that for the most part the changes will be positive.

September 30th, 2010

“One of the greatest rewards of travel is an expanded rubric of understanding. Exposure to different cultures cannot but broaden a traveler’s frame of reference.” - Erika Walburn, Where the Pavement Ends

Wishing my brother and grandmother long-distance happy Birthdays today. I realize it has already been about a month since my last post, a testament to the simplicity my life has taken on and also how much busier I’ve become in the last few weeks.

Things move at a slow pace here which at last I think I’ve begun to adjust to and at times even kind of appreciate. Living a simpler life was one of my motivations for joining the Peace Corps and one that I have already accomplished. After four months in country I barely notice that I have no internet, no television, no radio, no refrigerator, no washer/dryer, no kitchen sink, rarely any running water, never any hot water, and hardly any furniture!

My time has become much more saturated as compared to the two somewhat painful weeks of serious down time after my arrival in village. Since my last post I have spent countless hours attempting to piece together from the horrendously dense syllabus, a program for my classes which I think may actually be useful to my students in their lives rather than the completely irrelevant muck in the textbooks which they don’t understand a lick of anyways. I also started studying mother tongue with a native intellectual who began with the alphabet so that I can actually learn to read as well as speak, something many locals can‘t even do!

School is well underway; in fact, we are already about to close the first sequence, which seems absolutely absurd considering that half the student body and staff doesn’t even come for the first week or so, and considering that I don’t even have a textbook yet for one of my classes and considering that not one person has attempted to verify that I am performing my job well.

There are many frustrations in the day-to-day program. The classes are so large that you can easily spend 10 minutes of a 50 minute period taking roll. The discipline master never rings the bell on time and students are always attempting to trail in late then attempting to persuade me to let them in and eventually standing outside the classroom distracting the others when I refuse. Between my smallest class having at least 50 kids and my attempts to make things less conventional, the noise level can often get out of control. Taking the advice of my trainers in Bafia, I try to avoid doing things that will result in me losing my voice in the classroom. Using the chalkboard, the most traditional teaching tool I can think of, often creates an eruption of chaos as there is a problem of lighting in the classrooms. Each time I write on the board the students on one side will ask me to close a window or a student will just get up and do it, immediately inflaming the students on the other side of the room who become blinded by the darkness on their cornerof the board. This back and forth often continues with another student coming and opening the window and the other shutting it again while all of them are yelling at me and at each other that they cannot see.

I do not like to send students out because they are forced to do manual labor, which I’m not sure really even bothers them in the first place and which also forces them to fall behind in my class. I have started giving extra homework to those who misbehave but the other day when one of my classes was absolutely off the handle I wound up assigning all of them an insanely long sentence I belted out in a fury and making them write it 25 times apiece. You’d have thought I had just given them each 25 lashes they complained so much! Evidently this annoying form of punishment from my youth works in Cameroon too! There are also frequent interruptions which wind up causing overall a substantial amount of class time loss. People come to classes selling study materials or even soliciting donations, disciplinarians come to check that students fingernails are clean or take out students who are supposed to be punished, or to beckon me to see an administrator despite that I’m in the middle of a lesson. The challenges for the students are many and sometimes trying to overcome them is exhausting for me but overall it has been very rewarding so far.

I find it extremely challenging to find the balance between all the expectations of me all around. I have the Peace Corps, my life at home, my life in Cameroon, my reception/ mild celebrity in the village, my responsibilities at school; it really is a juggling act but as time ticks rapidly on I can see it etching out changes in me that I doubt I will ever fully recognize until I am back at home re-adjusting.

Occasionally being here in the capacity of an educator feels silly and seems to affirm my doubts about being capable of avoiding being another stain from the white man on this continent rather than an aid to development. Yet, when I manage to step out of the cloud of the impact living and working in such a foreign environment has on you, I can easily see that touching so many young minds 15 hours a week must be one of the most powerful tools of development possible. I am certain that no matter what I manage to eek out of my time here as far as blatantly visible development, the students are going to remember me the rest of their lives. I have done things in class that surprised even me like rapping a song about the present continuous tense in front of a total of about 250 students or throwing a Frisbee around the classroom. We laugh, we joke, and even when I have to be serious or I start to become angry with them, my handle on things is calm, warm, and reasoning.

Claude arrived for a visit to an impromptu dance party in my living room with about a dozen kids who live behind my house. They are mostly of a brood of children belonging to my landlord and one of his who knows how many wives. Just behind my house is an entire compound of wives and children so numerous I find it impossible to keep track. Soon after the arrival of the few who stay directly behind me I discovered that their mother often leaves for an entire week at a time. The oldest girl is 12 years and in total there are eight of them living in a two room apartment. I found that it was she who was preparing dinner for all the children over an open fire on their floor while some of the older boys (maybe 9 years) were constructing an outhouse. They are responsible for bathing the little ones and getting everyone off to school in the morning, washing all the laundry, and doing all the usual things a parent should be doing. So, I am faced with a personal conflict when my students arrive to class late because I know these are the sorts of responsibilities many of them are facing at home. Despite that the constant knocks on my door, little feet following me down the street, and little brown eyes staring at me through the bars of my windows can be pretty daunting, I feel a certain pressure to be a role model and someone they can rely on in a time of need. I also feel somewhat obliged to constantly give them bread and cakes and things to fill their bellies.

It’s been nice having Claude here. When I’m not working we do a lot of exploring, relaxing, and cleaning! With his help I think we have finally rid the floors of their irritating coating of mud and my formerly cold and empty house is beginning to feel like home. The other day we started my garden and I’m extremely stoked for the veggies to start coming in abundance, especially the lettuce which I have been missing! He and I work extremely well together for two individuals from two extremely different places. We have little tiffs over silly things like him not being terribly keen on my American cooking (except hot baguette sandwiches, which he loves), or sometimes because of things getting lost in translation, but overall I am the most comfortable with him that I have ever been in any relationship and that’s pretty damned remarkable considering our backgrounds.

Some days it still has not set in that I’m here, living this dream. Every morning I awake to exquisite sunrises over the valley in front of my house. The usually damp mud road is serene and peaceful as birds of myriad colors sing their morning songs while fluttering past me on my walk to school. I greet people in mother tongue and smile to myself as they oftentimes continue on behind me laughing together and saying, “C’est bien ca!” (That’s great!), tremendously impressed that I can already speak a few words of Gomala.

My life is drastically different than six months ago among the hustle and bustle of L.A.; I do not miss the brilliance and adrenaline of the big city. There is something more refreshing about walking into my front yard at night to a blanket of stars that I’m fairly certain it’s impossible to see in the United States anyplace. In many ways this world is more appealing than mine back home. I would not trade the cold scenery of steel skyscrapers, their lights twinkling in the night as bankers and lawyers plug away plotting their next big grab. Here I am entrenched in row after row of lush mountains, forests rich with banana and eucalyptus trees, the sounds and scents of nature all around. After spending my early 20s in the 2nd largest city in America, trapped often in smog infested traffic jams, rushing always from place to place, working tirelessly to pay that next car payment, it feels amazing, soul enriching, fulfilling, to stop, to breathe, and to reflect life. Though I look out on the horizon and feel a certain comfort knowing I will eventually walk back into the familiar tidiness and rush of my own country, there is no other place in the world for me at this moment than right where I am.

News came last weekend of a fellow volunteer’s death in Lesotho, a country in Southern Africa, and I was struck by the impact it had on me. It reminded me that in many ways what I do is dangerous, something it becomes easy to forget in the hustle and flow of the everyday. It also reminded me that I am part of a bigger community and when someone is lost in a tragic way you feel it just like those in Baghdad and Khabala must, though granted with fewer nightmares. I couldn’t stop myself thinking, wow, that’s me out there; that’s one of us. His accomplishments during his barely a year of service are stunning. I hope to live up to what he did in one year during my two and his death inspires me even more my efforts.

September 10th, 2010

“There must be quite a few things a hot bath won’t cure, but I don’t know many of them. Whenever I’m sad I’m going to die, or so nervous I can’t sleep, or in love with somebody I won’t be seeing for a week, I slump down just so far and then I say: “I’ll go take a hot bath.”” -The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath

I survived my two weeks of serious down time and already my first week of school! Life is going pretty well thus far, though there have certainly been challenges and frustrations. Lack of communication continues to irritate the shit out of me, but I am at least beginning to expect it. Last weekend I went to the market in the neighboring village with my friend Christine and then we went on a mini-hike up a mountain and were rewarded with great views and a beer at a cozy little spot we found with nice people!

I finally have electricity and a table to eat on as well as one to cut vegetables! My house is beginning to resemble a home! Even the red mud that seems to be permanently layering the floor/my feet/everything seems to have dissipated a tad. Last week I threw on my dirtiest clothes and scrubbed the walls of my kitchen and bathroom with a scrub brush to remove its thick coat of dirt. It also removed much of the paint, unfortunately, which caked the entire floor and my entire body in white dust meaning I will most likely die in a few years from lead poisoning. My toilet still isn’t installed, (though- fingers crossed- they are coming to do so in the morning) but at least my aim in the latrine has finally been perfected! I now know exactly how to place my feet so I do not pee all over myself but I can’t say I am going to miss that hole in the ground one bit (figuratively and literally)!

My bathroom also means the prospect of running water in my house which is probably the biggest challenge of life for me here. When you turn the taps in your kitchen, or bathroom sink, or the shower today, please remember that you are lucky as all hell because not only does water unquestionably arrive immediately, but it is safe, clean, and by God, there is even a knob to make it hot instantly! Quelle luxe!

The nearly constant string of visitors I’ve had has made me into a bit of a recluse as I have hesitated to open my shutters some days to possibly deter spontaneous drop- ins. Literally, the other day I lay down after getting home from work and 3 different people stopped by within about 10 minutes. This would probably excite me if they weren’t all awful conversationalists! Most of the time they just stand awkwardly looking off in the distance, not saying anything at all unless I ask questions or start absently talking about the rain or any random thing that comes to mind to distract from the silence. This must be an American necessity- filling that gap of noiselessness, but damn! It’s one I kind of appreciate! It’s one thing to stand around not talking to someone you already know but when it’s a practical stranger stopping by it’s just freaking uncomfortable!

The first week of school was nothing at all like the first week of school in the U.S. Over half of the kids do not even bother to come at all and it seemed fairly optional for me as well. I went, however, and actually taught most of the days, though primarily very basic review things such as “My name is Ms. Caldwell. What is your name?” and the alphabet. I gave an assessment to my classes that I based on the syllabus of the lowest grade in the school and none of the levels did very well on it. Nonetheless, they seem to like me so far and their behavior the first week was far better than that of the students in Bafia. One of my classes is supposed to have 89 students so we will see if they are so easy to manage once all of them are actually present.

I guess the whole concept of making learning fun is kind of new-age or something. Here school is work. It is all about copying notes from the board, drawing perfectly straight lines in your notebook, going unnoticed by not bothering anyone until test time and then regurgitating all those notes you copied. If you fail to make yourself invisible enough you may be forced to kneel on the concrete floor, a form of corporal punishment (supposedly outlawed) which I have already seen this week. I taught for 5 hours yesterday but the time actually flew by because we played Twenty Questions and Hangman, went over the alphabet, discussed grammar points and the kids were engaged,, laughing, participating and they may’ve even been enjoying themselves; I know I definitely was! I hope that I will earn the students’ respect by being strict and serious when necessary but also being fun, cutting them some slack when appropriate, and showing them that school can be enjoyable and without even noticing, they’re actually learning something in the process! When we discussed classroom rules this week, I told them they were not children so they should not behave like children. That, if they do I will treat them as such and otherwise they will be treated like adults. I really do love teaching, I simply hope that in the end I will not face confrontation from the administration because my kids are not learning in their way or at their pace or something of that sort.

Aside from my total comfort in the classroom, there are still some days here I wonder what in the hell I was thinking dreaming all my life of signing up to come to a third world country to help people! Ha! I must be insane! For instance, Wednesday the mason came to pour concrete in the bathroom (finally). Prior to him coming I waited a week before bumping into my landlord in town and asking him about the unfinished and, of late, untouched work to which he acted shocked that it hadn’t already been completed. The technician then came the next day only to inform me that he couldn’t do his work until the mason came and poured concrete first. The following day the mason came, without notifying me, only to find that I was at school. He came the next day again and discovered there were no bags of cement so he couldn’t do the work then either.

That afternoon was our first General Assembly meeting at school, which went well. While there I saw the sous-chef who is also President of the lycee. I told him about the various excuses everyday for the work not getting finished and on his way home from school he organized for them to come that very night. That was the same day I had about a thousand visitors right when I was trying to unwind and all the million kids that live in the house directly behind me came back from the city and were hollering and going wild all over the place. Two teenagers dropped by with my cabinet for my stove and as they were walking out two of my students were dropping by to say hello while about 3 other dudes were walking in and out doing god knows what in my bathroom. Suddenly I needed to get the hell out of dodge and jetted out the front door to go buy tomatoes. Once I’d done that I felt like I should just keep walking to clear my head. It was a beautiful walk- peaceful and forested. I ran into a bunch of students coming home from a soccer match and talked with one of them as we strolled along. I was feeling much better and happy with myself for getting out of that funk, but then suddenly realized I had wandered awfully far and actually didn’t recognize a thing and had no idea where I was. The student I had been talking with arrived to his house and I asked him where to go; he said the intersection I was looking for was just a little further on so I kept walking as the group of students began to disintegrate.

An older boy approached me and started to flirt. We chatted casually a bit as the students marched behind giggling as he was getting shot down. Suddenly it occurred to me I needed to turn the hell around and go back the way I‘d come! He turned to walk back with me and then looked up at an ominous cloud-covered sky and beckoned toward the bar next to where we were standing, encouraging me that we could not walk in a downpour. He was right after all so I went with him and sure enough the rain came just a moment later, drenching the already soggy ground for at least 45 minutes. To my surprise the guy got a phone call and said he had to go but that he was leaving me in the hands of his friend, who happened to be a much more courteous young man (the same age as me, actually) named Frederic who waited out the rain and had a beer on me, and then bought a flashlight so he could walk me all the way to my house only to turn right back around and go home.

Ah, at least I was in my own home and it was quiet and empty. The electricity was out so by candlelight I began to reheat the lentil soup I’d prepared the day before. I was sitting in my room and heard something so I walked out to see what it might be and noticed there was an awfully bright glow coming from the kitchen. I walked in to find that somehow there seemed to be flames coming out of both burners and even the back of the stove, and hopping around on top of it as well, shooting up the back of the new cabinet I’d just arranged a few hours before. My heart pounding and in shock, I quickly glanced around the kitchen and saw that, luckily, there was a half-full bucket of water still on the floor. I doused the entire stove and was panicked when the fire merely flickered a second and kept burning. Suddenly it occurred to me to shut off the gas which immediately ended the mysterious catastrophe. I stood there panting in a puddle of water that was already snaking a trail into my living room and creating gobs of mud everywhere my shoes had dropped dirt from my long lost wandering adventure. Once I caught my breath I began to laugh hysterically; perhaps it was the only way to keep from crying from the day I’d just had and from the sight of my poor, formerly delicious lentil soup and because all the sudden I really felt like a foreigner. And I guess really I just had to laugh because altogether it was, after all, exactly what I signed up for…

September 2, 2010

“When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest. The only thing that could spoil a day was people and if you could keep from making engagements, each day had no limits. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.” - A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway

It’s been about three months since I left the US. According to Critical Periods in the Life of a Peace Corps Volunteer I should be experiencing “fright, frustration with self, loneliness, weight/health changes, homesickness, and uselessness“. I can’t really claim to be feeling any of those things but I am certainly feeling other emotions which point to my extended time away from home.

I am feeling frustration, but not toward myself. I have been in my house nearly a week. When I visited in July the sous-chef told me the people staying here were working everyday on it and were going to install a toilet and lights before I arrived. Unsurprisingly none of that had happened by the time I got here. I spent a week and a day with the sous-chef and started to think he wasn’t in a huge hurry to get me into my house. Every morning as we drank coffee I drilled him with a dozen questions regarding the progress of the house, coordinating with the school, setting up my language courses, and information on how to get around town. As my interrogations became more routine I became acutely aware of my own cultural obsession with organization and planning as well as their lack thereof.

As I am sitting here, 2 weeks after my arrival to post, there are 2 boys crawling around in my ceiling installing my electricity and though they‘ve dug the floor up in my ‘bathroom‘ and installed a lot of pipes, my toilet is sitting upside-down in my living room at the moment. At least it has felt more like Peace Corps since leaving our chic quartier in Bafia. I’ve spent most nights crouched over my gas stove on the floor with a flashlight in my mouth and have resorted to peeing in a bucket at night rather than bothering to go out in the yard. Luckily I like camping because life pretty much feels like that at the moment.

Water is a huge aggravation and something I will hopefully never again take for granted in my life. The village just got ‘l’eau de robinet’ (tap water) prior to my arrival but unfortunately it is available only at the discretion of the water company and they frequently decide to cut it off for days at a time. Plus, with the work underway at present on the house my running water has been rendered inaccessible, period. My kind neighbor Victorine has offered her barrell of rain water, which is currently dry, or her underground water storage container, which is absolutely filthy, but, better than nothing. Sadly, impure water is probably the number one cause of health problems on the continent and it seems so needless because they are easily avoidable maladies with boiling, filtering, or treating the water before consumption. I have not yet understood why people don’t bother to practice these sanitation habits because at least in the case of Cameroon I don’t think lack of education is to blame. Hopefully at the very least I can serve as a reminder of these easy fixers.

Village life is startlingly more different than life in Bafia than I‘d anticipated. More than likely we were sheltered from a great many realities there, however, because of living in such a more posh area of town. For instance, here people have a very limited sense of privacy. The neighbors will look right in the windows if the shutters are open, or even open them themselves if they are not locked. If the doors are open people just walk in, needing only to utter “konk-konk” while doing so rather than actually knocking and awaiting the invitation. Victorine’s 3 small children are seemingly home alone most of the day most days since I’ve been here while she goes out working in her field and they have all taken to coming to my house and staring at me doing no matter what through the bars of my window for most of the afternoon. They also love to just walk right in if the door is open, though I am trying to steer them away from this habit. We were told we may begin to feel like zoo animals but I had to laugh yesterday when it occurred to me what an accurate analogy that is as I glanced at their 3 little faces staring at me in such wonder as if I was the very first person they‘ve ever seen.

Last week when the sous-chef suddenly informed me we were going to the school I began to follow him out wearing Claude’s soccer shorts and thinking nothing of it when he informed me that I could not do such a thing. I responded in my usual stubborn way at first but he insisted and I was forced to go and change clothes. All the more frustrating that he himself was wearing wind pants and a t-shirt but stated that a woman dressed in such a way would be said to be out in public naked.

A few days ago I walked down the street to pay for my phone credit and bumped into some young guys in the military who said they wanted to buy me a drink, a very common practice to welcome me to the town. Peace Corps encourages us to integrate as much as possible so turning down invitations such as this seems in poor taste. They were all very nice and interesting to speak with. Afterward they offered me a lift back to my house which was about a 5 minute walk up the street. I had them drop me at the sous-chef’s because I needed to buy something anyway and as I got out of the car an older lady I recognized from the compound was saying something to the guys in Patois (mother tongue). When I walked past her she seemed annoyed and angry with me and was mumbling something so I inquired what the problem was. She responded, “Ce n’est pas bien. Tu es la pour le travail, n’est pas?” “That isn’t good. You’re here for work, aren‘t you?” and then seemingly went on to discuss how disgusted with me she was with all the old women at the bar at that particular moment for several minutes.

When I got home I shed several frustrated tears. Despite that my mother is probably reading this and agreeing whole-heartedly with that old bag, it is actually a lot more complicated than it seems. First of all, it was the middle of the day and the whole interaction was perfectly harmless. Of course they turned out to all basically want to date me because it is seemingly impossible to have a platonic relationship with someone of the opposite sex on this continent, but I made it very clear that I was not available in that sense. Overall they were friendly and I accepted the offer of a ride because that is a much less risky gesture than in the States. The old woman apparently saw this car with mostly men and assumed I was whoring around town. The fact that she, who I don’t even know in any way except having maybe greeted her a handful of times, had such a strong opinion that even on a Sunday I should’ve been working instead of being in any situation involving a group of guys was infuriating and made me realize how great it is living in a culture where it is perfectly acceptable to tell someone to mind their own damned business!

My response to her was a light-hearted “Je peux pas travailler chaque jour!” “I can’t work everyday!” but I later informed the sous-chef of the whole story because it had so irritated me. The whole thing was so innocent and casual that for someone I don’t even know to have so much to say about it was maddening! Fortunately the sous-chef sided with me completely on the issue and said it was totally inappropriate for villagers to be concerned about what I’m doing in my personal life. As I described the woman to him he finally said that she is crazy and doesn’t even talk at all to one of his wives because she is so opinionated and has problems with everyone. This made me feel somewhat better but in the back of my mind I felt that she probably did at the very least represent the old fashioned views of some of the people of the community.

Additionally the day after moving into my new house the chef’s (the real chef) wife stopped by and mentioned that I should be staying at my house because it wasn’t good for me to stay so long with the sous-chef and that I would start to cause problems with his wives. This frustrated me as well considering there was certainly no one who wanted me out of his house in a timely fashion more than me and how could I cause so many problems for women who are already sharing a man in the first place when I myself would never agree to such a thing and have a boyfriend of my own! I would add that I am also way too young for the sous-chef and find the very thought of an intimate relationship with him nauseating but it turns out that one of his wives is 2 years younger than me and he married her at 15!

One day on the way into Bafoussam we happened to share a taxi with a very nice man who works at my school. He and the sous-chef started talking about his daughter who had just passed the probatoire, equivalent to becoming a Senior in high school. The sous-chef said she was ripe for marrying now and implied she should marry him. The father of the girl said no way, that he would have to divorce all his other wives first for such a thing to be possible. The sous-chef couldn’t believe he would turn down the proposal of such a prominent figure for his daughter. Finally they arrived on the topic of her being a more suitable match for the sous-chef’s son, an idea they settled on amicably. This entire conversation was a both amusing and sad; a young girl’s future being discussed completely in her absence and without any consideration of how she herself might actually feel about it.

Last night I had a nightmare that school was starting and I showed up 100% unprepared. Not knowing my schedule, not knowing my lessons, and with no clue what to do. As it turns out this wasn’t far from the reality. School starts Monday and so far the only contact I’ve had with school administrators is that which I’ve initiated myself. I was given 4 levels to teach, which is going to be a shit-ton of work. So far I have only 3 of the textbooks, student edition- not the teacher‘s, and have not even seen my actual work schedule. Today I called the discipline master to see about getting a copy of the Schemes of Work which outline broadly the schedule for which material should be presented to the students. He is out of town and said I would get all of that on Monday. I could even show up at 10 am Monday- the first day of school. I cannot get over the absolute lack of preparedness and total calmness about it. The entire student body will be there and that is the day I will find out what times I will be required to come to work and what I will be expected to do. It makes no sense to me and I find it incredibly frustrating. Each time I’ve pressured the staff to give me information it is almost as if they are laughing about my concern over it. They are perfectly content to begin preparations for the year after it has already begun.

I made a new friend the other day just walking down the street. Her name is Linda and unfortunately she lives in the capital and has already gone back. I laughed when she too implied that I didn’t need to stress too much about the first week of classes because that is the week of introductions. A WEEK!? Of introductions!? “Hi, I’m Miss. Caldwell from America and this is English class”; that introduction takes about a minute and then we could actually have class! Now I see why the people in this ‘bilingual’ country do not actually speak English!

Nonetheless, I guess I should try not to worry more than they are worrying. The longer I’m here, the more aware I become with my own “American-ness”. It is pretty fascinating, actually, to see how very different a whole cultural mentality can make a country. It’s like, people don’t connect their being behind with their being totally chill about every single thing. But alas, c’est la vie ici and I guess I’m stuck with it for the next 2 years!

August 22, 2010

“I woke up and the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn’t know who I was- I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I’d never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the cracked high ceiling and really didn’t know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn’t scared; I was just somebody of a ghost. I was halfway across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future, and maybe that’s why it happened right there and then, that strange red afternoon.” –On the Road, Jack Kerouac

The tick-tocks have added up and it’s already been 2 or 3 weeks since I’ve written. Things have changed a great deal since then. Model School officially closed, the group of 41 Americans I’ve been trotting around with for the last 10 and a half weeks and I were sworn in as volunteers, and now I’m at my post watching a rainfall that seems never-ending.

We had a lot of goodbye dinners and parties to attend before leaving town and all the people of Bafia seemed genuinely sad to see us go. My neighbor said her son Georgie (of the aforementioned brood of brothers) wondered what they will do since Lindsay, friend of all the children, was leaving! I was flattered. My host mom gave me a cute pair of shoes and made me peanut butter from scratch and when I called her from my post the day after arriving she told me she didn’t sleep all night and that Boy, the youngest child at the house, was knocking on my door forever.

Claude and I had some amazing moments together before leaving and so far we are keeping in close contact despite the distance. I was voted “Most likely to marry a Cameroonian” by my peers- go figure! He shed a few tears when he and his entire family helped carry my things to see us off. After all the time I’ve spent with him in the last almost two months it is an added challenge to be missing him in the midst of adjusting to my new life but what better way to figure out if we are meant to be than to face such difficulties from the get-go.

The time here has begun to take its toll a bit. We were given handouts created by volunteers in the 70s which outline the range of emotions and attitudes we should expect to encounter within ourselves over the next 2 years. So far they are pretty spot on. Currently I’m feeling easy irritability and as I become more entrenched in the culture, my patience has started to dissipate.

The cultural norm here is failure to communicate. For example, for the Model School Closing Ceremony all the students and Trainees arrived at 8 am to discover that the program didn’t begin until 10 am. They did the exact same thing to us at the Opening Ceremony stating, after we’d complained about waiting for hours, that we had come early to set an example for the Cameroonians, who, incidentally did not come early and thus never witnessed our fine example. In fact, we waited an additional hour or more after the ceremony was meant to start for all the special dignitaries to arrive. The Closing Ceremony seemed to last forever and we could not hear anything being said because the students were out of control in the tent next to ours and the sound system sucked. Finally it was well past lunch time and we were set free, only to be utterly mobbed by our Girls’ Club because we had never been told we were supposed to select a club President and keep attendance records and therefore they were not giving prizes to the girls. These kinds of things happened our entire training period and may’ve been even more annoying than all the rules we had to live with.

Moving to post was a smoother transition than I’d anticipated although technically I’m still moving. We had a private bus, an outdated Mercedes (how chic!) that we loaded to the brim with our metal trunks, suitcases, bicycles which took up the entire rear half of the thing, and 25 blancs and made our way up the road for the relatively short journey to Bafoussam. There we searched vigorously for all of our things among those belonging to the other blancs not stopping in Bafoussam but continuing on down the line. Once that feat had been accomplished we set off in smaller groups in a pickup truck which had to be once again loaded down and which, highly conveniently, dropped us off right at our front doors!

Unfortunately and also not too surprisingly, none of the things my Director asked my landlord to do and paid for him to have been done yet. Therefore my “bathroom” is still just a smaller room in my house than the other empty rooms and only 2 of the rooms have lights and outlets. Thus, for the last 3 days and until who knows when I am staying at my community host’s house. It has been extremely frustrating, tiring, and boring for the most part and I am overwhelmed at the thought of all the hours and minutes collected ahead of me for the next 2 weeks until school starts. Additionally, my house is entirely empty and the Peace Corps settling in allowance is enough to buy hardly anything at all. I’ve gone through half of it and the only things I’ve bought are my bed, sheets, and a part of my stove. I didn’t go fancy, either! It is all the more infuriating because lots of people moved into already fully furnished houses that volunteers over the years have been adding to and they got the exact same amount of money as me with my big, empty, cold space. I’m trying to make the best of it and be patient and know that before too long I will be at least minimally comfortable in my house but there have been moments over the last few days when I just start to cry because of the aggravation. I didn’t join the Peace Corps to live in luxury and I am becoming more familiar with financial burdens people may actually face, but at this moment I can’t even cook myself a meal or sit down someplace and read. After being a guest in someone’s home the last 11 weeks, I am thoroughly prepared to lounge around my own home, blaring CCR and Radiohead and doing yoga on my living room floor if I feel like! Instead I am currently confined to the sous-chef’s guest room or bar because he too lives in an unfinished house.

The fatigue of eating foreign food, especially that you don’t particularly care for, and not controlling when you eat it, of constantly being told where you’re going and when you’re going there, the aggravation of being entirely dependent on others for every want and need, and moreover, the absolute dullness of not having any work to do yet and knowing hardly anyone in the community is immense. I’m not depressed or even surprised that things are this way at the moment. I fully anticipated a challenging first few weeks as I begin to get in the swing of things here. Mostly I’m learning patience and I’m looking on knowing that very soon I’ll have a very robust schedule, at the least an equipped kitchen and a comfortable bed to sleep in, and that my boyfriend will hopefully visit next month!

In the meantime, I’m also thinking of how lucky I am in my post because I have gone into the regional capital the last 2 days to buy things for the house and discovered that you can find just about anything there including cheese!! I also live very close to a lot of other volunteers and will be able to escape to the comfort of their familiarity when necessary with ease. Volunteers in other regions are truly on their own right now and I can’t help thinking about their hardship and how mine pales in comparison.

I finally feel like I’m really in Africa now that we strapped my brand new bed on top of a bush taxi and were comfortably riding along with the appropriate number of passengers in our station wagon before being bombarded by people trying to get to my village who piled in making us 11 in a car meant for 5. The driver slid and bumped all over sheer clay roads that you wouldn’t imagine even exist while trying to avoid the fine he was certain to pay if he passed a police checkpoint. A fine, mind you, that wouldn’t actually have gone to the government at all but to the policeman himself because that’s how absolutely rampant corruption is.

So far internet is scarce with the service I bought and who knows when I’ll be able to purchase another so posts are going to be a lot more infrequent for now! I can’t believe it’s already almost September. Often there are days here that feel like I should be going to a fall football game in Bethel and that scent on the air is soothing like holding a warm mug of coffee while watching a peaceful snowfall out the window. I hope life at home feels just like it does in my imagination right now!

Time moves here in Bafia as if in a continuum of minutes, hours, days, and somehow already- months. It is difficult to imagine that while merely day after day has passed here there has been nearly a whole season gone by back home. I am certain one of the strangest parts about returning after two years in such a time warp will be seeing how much so many people and things will have changed. Lacey and Brendan’s new boy Max will already be walking and talking and it seems as if I will feel like I just got on the plane to come here!

However, life in Bafia will soon be no more because the week after this we will swear in as volunteers and I will officially never have a curfew again in my life! It is an exciting feeling to be set free in Cameroon at last and to feel again like an adult, yet, at the same instant a little intimidating. After being looked after and taken care of for the last 3 months in our homestay families it is overwhelming to think of how much work it will be to take care of just myself in this country!

There are so many responsibilities of day-to-day life that are substantially more challenging than the same activities in the States, plus the general pressure of teaching 15 hours a week in a difficult setting as well as thinking about my secondary project within the community and being active and well integrated there.

First of all, I’m moving into a house with absolutely no furniture. Furnishing a house in the States is somewhat of a hassle but here it is at least tenfold. I will have to go about negotiating from what is likely an even more than usually elevated price for every item I purchase which means I will need to do a bit of research before setting out in order to know what I should expect to pay. It’s never fun to get home and realize that when you thought you were bargaining you wound up still paying the white man price. Additionally there is the consideration of transporting all of these purchases to said house. I expect that my community host Wambo will be a tremendous aid in this whole process and so I am not sweating it too much but it will be nice to feel settled in sooner rather than later.

Once that happens I will need to worry about feeding myself. Luckily I have been posted in one of the most productive regions of the country and the country is the breadbasket of Sub-Saharan Africa. In fact, I read before coming here that if Cameroon closed its borders or experienced a catastrophe that destroyed crops it would potentially starve a number of the neighboring countries. So, the market is chocked full of goodies like almost any kind of bean, nuts, an array of vegetables including carrots, tomatoes, potatoes, yams, okra, eggplant and more, and fruit like avocados, the most delicious pineapples I’ve ever tasted, mangoes, bananas, plantains, grapefruit, papaya and so on! You can also find pasta, bread, and fresh herbs. The only things that are difficult to come by are cheese and fresh milk but you can opt for the powdered sort if you really crave it and La Vache Qui Rit if you’re willing to settle for something that is mysteriously not cheese…

So, cooking should be just as much of an adventure as it had been for me the last year in Los Angeles but I am initially daunted by the thought of needing to discover where and when to find all these ingredients and what’s worse, lighting the gas stoves here scares the shit out of me! Many times I have attempted it in my home and chickened out. I have only done it successfully twice and I felt that I came close to setting my hand on fire both times! Hopefully I can find one of those long lighters we have in the States and put myself at ease.

Other than that, the idea of starting over in a new community is both exciting and fatiguing. There will be the initial integration steps all over again but perhaps multiplied many times by the fact that this time I will not be one of 42 other Americans in the village. I will have to train everyone all over again that my name is not “La Blanche” but Lindsay. I will have to deal with the initial phase of being with people most likely every waking minute of everyday for the first few weeks or months, foregoing the ever-so-comfortable “me” time and space we Americans hold so dear. I will need to try explaining to everyone I meet why I don’t need to eat at every social occasion or drink for every staff meeting and I’m certain I will have to make exceptions and accommodations in this regard in order to please. I will have to start over again in explaining my ‘religion’ to nearly everyone while avoiding the lack thereof truth and implying that I am somehow kind of Buddhist because that’s the religion I feel the most attuned to in general and which seems to be far more acceptable/ easy to grasp than Agnosticism or Atheism.

Yet, in all this starting over there are also new possibilities and opportunities that make it worthwhile and thrilling. I have spent the last 3 months preparing for this departure and have readied myself emotionally for it for practically as long as I can remember. I will finally be living my dream and hopefully touching lives at the same time. I will actually get to know my students and hopefully feel they’ve actually learned something from me unlike in Model School. I will be able to make new friends and become intimately familiar with a place and a people that very few Americans ever have and if all goes well I will throughout my time here find a way to bring something to their lives to improve it someway, somehow.

Since another week has passed I will give a quick wrap-up before closing. Monday I finished teaching around noon and had the rest of the day free so my friend Christine and I decided to take a bike ride out to the river where I had gone last week again. This time I had remembered to blanket myself in bug repellent and so when we got there we stopped to have a drink and unwind a little. We made some friends there who were enjoying playing around with Christine’s binoculars which she has all the time because she is an avid birdwatcher. I tried the “I’m married” trick for the first time on some men who were beginning to flirt and was amazed at how effective it was! Instead of driving me nuts asking for my number or something they just asked if my husband was a really jealous man.

The last time we had gone to the river a man had told my friend Andrew that he had just seen a hippopotamus and this shocked me so I asked a lot of questions about it of our new friends. They assured us that there are many in the water and that you could see them just about anytime.

When we finished our drinks we left our bikes unlocked and wandered down with our new friends onto the ferry to see if we could catch a glimpse of such a prehistoric- seeming mammoth animal as a hippo! Before we knew it the ferry was taking off and we looked at our new friends in shock because we had not intended to actually leave the dock! They told us not to worry, we were coming right back and there wasn’t too much we could do at that point but relax and look for hippos. Unfortunately this story would be better if we’d seen one, which we did not, but nonetheless, it was a beautiful ride on the ferry and the bikes and it was nice to feel like we could escape Bafia a bit.

Tuesday one of the Host Country National teachers observed my class of troisiemes, a grade above the quatrieme class I’ve been primarily working with. They were being seriously rotten that day and I was in the process of making them all stand as a punishment when she walked in and they immediately shut up completely. After class she told me that I am not intimidating enough and my voice too high which is apparently true because whatever she’s doing is obviously working better! One of the Americans even got a note from one of his students that said he was a very good teacher and should try speaking French more because he is good at it but that he doesn’t beat them enough. I think there are certain adjustments we American teachers will never make and perhaps as a result certain classroom behaviors we may just have to deal with.

Wednesday we had Girls’ Club and I spent two hours showing four girls at a time how to create their own email addresses before proceeding to the computer lab for another hour with them. Unfortunately when we got there only one computer had working internet so my efforts were in vain. I even used my laptop to work with one girl to set up her account but after we had done all the work and it said, “Felicitations Allison!” it wouldn’t let us sign back in. But alas, c’est la vie en Afrique and hopefully they will know now how to do it themselves if they get the chance.

I had washed my laundry that morning and hung it out on the line to dry while I was gone for the day. My host mother had been ill and so the children were the only ones home that day. When I got back I realized that it seemed like some of my things were missing from the line. I mentioned it casually to my host father, unable to really remember what it might have been but pretty certain they were underwear. He launched into a full-fledged investigation of the matter, all in front of Claude. He called in every kid in the neighborhood who had swung by the house that afternoon and had them all recount the details of their interactions with my panties. Then he told my host mother about it and questioned the teenaged girls in the neighboring houses. Finally he said he wished to take the matter to the police which I declined politely through a bit of laughter and assured him that even if the panties were found I would just let the thief keep them at this point. Overall, a hilarious incident that is still being discussed in the household with the utmost of sobriety.

Thursday I was back with my favorite brutish class and we played some review games to close out summer school and prepare for their exams yesterday. We each had to proctor 2 tests which was annoying because they weren’t for our classes or the tests we had prepared and so the kids were mostly angry with us because we couldn’t help them at all with instructions and if the teacher hadn’t written they could use a calculator we had to forbid it. Nonetheless, the exams finished and only about ¼ of my class actually failed which, believe it or not, is really not so bad. The teachers are thrilled to be finished with Model School as well as hoping that real school will be easier…

The quatrieme nightmare class on our last day

After grading tests Claude and I went to see my host mom in the hospital because she has typhoid. It was a reminder of my days in the clinic in Ouakam and always eye-opening to see health care in Africa. Afterward we stopped by the home of a very sweet woman I pass everyday on my way to school as she tends to her beautiful flowers. She always has a huge smile on and greets me more warmly than anyone in the community so we had promised to come by and see pictures of her kids, 2 of whom married Peace Corps volunteers and now live in the States. She fed us some delicious Sanga, a dish made with corn, spices, and greens, and sent us off with some peanuts freshly harvested from her field as well as the advice that I can not forget her son Claude when I leave and we are a good couple and should be married.

This morning the running club had a race for anyone in the community to participate in and they had a great turn out of over 50 people. It was fun seeing so many kids come out for it, even though many of them were running in chuck taylors or even flip flops! The boy who won third place was a tiny kid in jelly shoes and Claude’s brother took first! I was the only American female who ran so I was pretty far behind most everyone but ran with a couple students which was nice. Then this afternoon we got together with our girls’ club to practice our song for the cultural party this week and they are all very excited to perform.

In a little bit Claude and I are going into town to buy my host sister a present for her 4th birthday this week. Tonight is our curfew free night so we will most likely chill at Martin’s bar and may decide to go do some dancing in the late hours at the night club. Tomorrow I will play Sunday soccer with my other friend Martin and then Claude and I have plans to take a picnic lunch and go on a real hike nearby. I am very excited about this!

As things wind down in training there should be a lot of exciting things happening this week so stay tuned!

I blinked and it is already the weekend again. This week is the last week of Model School already and training is over in 2.5 weeks. It is exciting to think that in less than a month I will be living in my new house, cooking for myself again and not living under the strict regulations of trainee life.

It has been another good week here in Bafia, though. Monday I had a new class which was a bit frustrating considering that the school is almost finished and going into a class you don't know is like starting all over but alas, I survived. After school Claude took me exploring on it wound up being one of the best memories I've made in Cameroon so far. Last week on one of our walks we'd gone down to a little stream for a little privacy and just as we were getting settled on the perfect sitting log I realized I was being eaten alive by these little irritating insects called moot moots. We were forced to leave immediately and I walked home like an antzy child, rubbing my legs together to scratch the horrendous itching I was experiencing. This time when he told me where we were headed, I coated myself in bug spray and put on my jeans!

When we got to the river there was an elderly woman bathing who said she didn't mind if we passed. The water was about knee deep and I was nervous as I rolled up my pantlegs and stuck my toes in so Claude carried me piggyback while oh so gingerly tiptoeing across a log hidden under the water's surface. I closed my eyes and buried my face in his shirt because I was certain we were going to end up in the river with my purse in tow. Even he breathed a sigh of relief when we reached the other side. He then led us up through several isolated plantations on a hillside and when we got to the top we could see all of Bafia off in the distance and beautiful, lush hills that seem to be infinite in the other direction. It was the closest thing I've done to a real hike since being in Cameroon and it was blissful to feel the sense of being someplace less traveled.

Tuesday I finished Model School and had the rest of the day free so my friends Jeneca and Andrew and I hopped on our bikes and rode about 45 minutes away down a dirt road where the children shouted, "Chinois" to us because apparently they haven't had much contact with whites. In certain parts of the country the government has brought in a great many Chinese laborers for things like road construction and so sometimes foreigners in general are thought to be Chinese.

Oftentimes in this country when I find that the view takes my breath away I think to myself that wow, I really am in Sub-Saharan Africa and speeding down dirt roads in dense growth like forest in the middle of nowhere was one of those moments! We rode all the way to where the river becomes very wide and you have to await the ferry to cross. Unfortunately on this particular day I had once again forgotten my bug spray so my excitement for our ride began to wane as the flies biting me pretty much forced all my energy into self-loathing after I'd spent the whole week caring for the unappealing peppering of bites from the week before.

When I got home the neighbor boys were hanging out at my house. They are a brood of 4 or 5 brothers who like to violently wrestle for fun, but man are they cute! (See photo from last post) I brought out the frisbee Mom sent and we made a game of me throwing it as far as I could and them all racing for it. It was hilarious watching them run as fast as they could and then pile on top of each other!

Wednesday morning was my day off from teaching so I went running and then Claude actually came over to help me wash my clothes. Yeah, I have found like the most domestic African in... well Africa! Then we went to fetch water, a chore I have come to loathe. The containers we must use are impossible to carry comfortably. Not only do they weigh a ton but the handle gives you blisters and you must change hands every few steps or your arm will tire easily. Most of the time women or children carry them on their heads and I am often stopped on the way home and told that it will be easier if I do the same. I always smile politely and respond that I am not Cameroonian.

Girls' Club getting their martial arts onA bidon used to carry water

After the chores Wednesday a friend of mine from the bar we frequent showed up, as promised, to teach our girls' club some martial arts moves. He did an awesome job of giving us some very useful self defense moves and kept the girls giggling. Afterward we chose the song they will sing for our cultural night at the close of Model School.

The rest of the week was pretty average. Played our usual soccer match on Thursday and I taught my favorite and everyone else's least favorite class on Thursday and Friday. They seemed happy to see me and I felt it went pretty smoothly even though I had to send out two students, one of which was in trouble for saying, "Je n'aime pas les blanches" ("I don't like whites"). I feel I've made an impression on them to some extent. We did an AIDS lesson Friday and they behaved like angels.

Yesterday I went to the less posh side of town than where I live to meet Claude's last remaining grandmother. She doesn't see well but was elated to have us there and said to her niece in her mother tongue while Claude had walked off that if she doesn't live to see tomorrow she will know in Heaven that he and are together because he has never brought a girl to meet her before.

Claude with his Grandma & AuntWe also got some rather sad news this week. Coincidentally in the photo I of Claude and I in last week's post you can see a brief glimpse of a young man who officiated the basketball match we'd gone to see. Unbelievably while looking through the photos a couple days later Claude informed me that the man was dead. Monday morning, the day after we'd seen him, he went to the clinic to change the bandage he had on his hand after a moto accident he was in. They found that his hand had been infected with gangrene and had gone septic and before they could do anything about it he had dropped dead. It was a shocking and sad reminder that we are not in Kansas anymore and that life is short in general but that life is even shorter for the people on this continent.

On a lighter last note, I forgot to give a special shout out to my awesome friend from LA Bret Rea last week for being the first one to send me something from my Amazon wishlist! I cannot wait to chill at post and learn about the lives of individuals living in a hippie commune in the mountains of Colorado! If anyone else wants to try sending something, it seems Bret was able to send direct shipping from the website so you can try that too if you'd like. However, I also recommend half.com for much too low priced used copies! Thanks again, Bret!

Voila, it's Sunday afternoon again and I guess that means it's about time for an update. Every week seems to go faster than the one before it and life continues to get better. Living with a host family has started to become sort of draining and I have definitely been more "American" in recent weeks. This means not always sitting in the family room and trying to have some time to myself when possible. Teaching went pretty well this week in spite of some minor blips that I think are simply unavoidable in teaching.

My biggest frustration thus far has been the limits of the language teaching methodology we are expected to use here and the fact that I can literally observe my students getting nowhere because of it. When I was taught ESL education at OU I learned to teach English without needing to use the native language of the learners at all. This is how ESL is taught, primarily because of the growing demand for English teachers worldwide and the fact that such demands could not be met if teachers needed to speak the native language in order to teach. In Cameroon we are expected to use the Communication Method and that means every word I use in class and every word the students use in class is supposed to be English, even when that means clarifying things or worse, that the kids just won't understand me.

My class of quatriemes are now notoriously the worst class in all of Model School and some of the teachers who had them after me last week gave up completely and called in the Discipline Master for help. I, on the other hand, tried another approach and had a heart-to-heart with the class... in French. Our theme that day was stories and when I wrote the definition of the word and that also of 'characters' and they all stared at me blankly and said, "Madame, we don't understand the words you are using", I felt at my wit's end and told them I was going to tell them a story! They said, "En Francais, Madame?!", surprised that I was speaking their language in class. I told them yes, in French because I felt it was incredibly important that they heard me and understood me well. I told them the story of a girl I went with a week or so ago, the sister of my friend, to see the results of her national test to get out of high school. It was the kind of story with which they are all extremely familiar. Here your entire schooling success, the possibilities presented for your future, rest solely on the passing or failing of 3 tests throughout your high school career. We have actually been given samples of these tests and the questions are vague, subjective, and hardly comprehensive at all in consideration of all they are expected to acquire in the seven year span they cover. One English test we were shown had a text about a girl who had turned to prostitution out of desperation and one of the comprehension questions was, "Do you think Mary's mother loved her?"

I asked them what they thought the girl saw when she went to get her results. They guessed she had not been successful. I told them they were right and asked them why they thought that might be. They said she must not have worked hard enough. I explained to them that according to the national syllabus they should all be able to speak English in my class so by their standards they were also not working hard enough. I asked what they thought would happen when it was their turn to take the same test. They said they too may fail. This is all too common. The students who fail must repeat the whole year over again as many times as it takes; many of them just drop out. It's hard for them to see the point at all in the first place when there is so much unemployment and corruption anyway. After this my class was more attentive than ever and they we have still hit bumps in the road some of the worst behaved students in the beginning are now some of the most active.

That night I had an epiphany. I had told them I wanted us to work together for them to learn and that they have to tell me when they don't understand things; I needed to come down to their level more. The next day I came in and changed my definition of characters from: "the people or animals who are the subjects of a story", to: "Who". They caught on easily and did group work to outline all the different parts of some African folktales I'd found.

Friday I had the group of older students again and I was actually impressed by my own creativity. Having been inspired to higher standards after the student stopping me after class last week I made dice for our class boardgame out of tape and wrote an entire murder mystery set in a neighboring town and made them use the grammar lesson from that morning to solve the crime. I feel very lucky because I really enjoy teaching and not of the trainees do; I would hate to think I was going to spend the next 2 years of my life doing something I didn't feel that way about.

Wednesday is club day and our girls' club had specifically requested to play sports that day. We arranged to get some balls and it was fun to see how much the girls enjoyed it when for once, as boys approached to join our soccer match, we would shout to them, "Est-ce que tu es une fille??!" ("Are you a girl??") and then quickly made them leave the field. It's amazing how many boys want to be in our club! After sports we did a self esteem building activity with the girls. This week I'm hoping a friend of mine from the local hangout is going to come introduce the girls to a few martial arts techniques.

Thursday is our sports day in Peace Corps and I have become a regular on the PC soccer field. I am thrilled to be playing and to have so many people to do so with all of the time. My Cameroonian friend Martin even invited me into a new soccer club on Sunday mornings that I played in today. I was the only woman on the field that was not being a goalie and I think as a result they took it easier than usual but they complimented me after the match and told me I have to come back next Sunday.

At the risk of sounding redundent or predictable, I have met someone here. In a somewhat humorous coincidence he is the host brother of one of the other trainees. We have been spending a solid portion of our time with one another. Most of the time we just meet after my classes and walk all around town together to places I haven't seen yet, just talking, joking, laughing, learning about one another. We have an insane amount in common in terms of our beliefs and characters for two people from very different worlds. He usually winds up at my house after walking me home in time for curfew and then we sit on the front porch, holding babies who are usually crawling all over us like monkeys and watching the sunset. Often he comes in to eat dinner because my host mother insists on it and it is rude to refuse, sometimes we play cards with the family. Regardless of what we are doing, we are always totally at ease with one another. It's not something I ever would've envisioned happening with another African really, and particularly not at such an early stage in my Peace Corps life, but he does make me extremely happy for now and I feel that for once in my life I should just try not to analyze it much farther beyond that.

There's something heartily romantic about the simplicity of things here. There's no need to go out someplace and spend money having a date, we just walk and we learn one another. It doesn't hurt either that he's extremely easy on the eyes.

Today was pretty fantastic because I played soccer and Claude made a surprise visit to the field to watch. Afterward we were supposed to go with his family in his dad's car to see the plantation he manages in a neighboring village but his dad was on what we in Peace Corps call Africa Time. That means that while I was at my house waiting for Claude to show up for 3 hours I did some work and watched the neighbor kids hanging on my window, excitedly chattering, "La Blanche, la blanche, Auntie Lindsay, La Blanche"! I was going to go add credit to my phone to finally call him to figure out the situation when I remembered that my American friend and neighbor Martin had invited me over for hamburgers at exactly the time happened to be walking past! Thus, I was the first one there and we ate what I am pretty sure was the best hamburger I've ever had in my life but what may've just been the only American food I've had in 2 months. I will post some pics of the kids hanging on my window and of the bliss on the faces of the Americans mange-ing our burgers!

After watching a terrential downpour from the bar at Martin's house I met Claude to go watch a quickly organized Peace Corps basketball team get totally licked by a far superior and clearly more invested Cameroonian team. After we dropped in on one of the Americans of the slew of them who was diagnosed with typhoid this week, as well as worms and some kind of gastrointestinal bacteria, then stopped by to say hello to Claude's family briefly and headed off to someplace private where we could just relax and be together. Now I am writing this and it is already night because I left the post many times throughout the day so I'm going to call it a wrap! Hope everyone at home is doing well!

Yesterday was our beloved and incredibly useful "Resiliency Training" where we learned all the healthy ways to cope with stress, disappointments, and really all negative emotions that I learned in 8th grade Quest class. Our group has decided that the best way to cope with these things is to open a big, stinky box of Deal With It! There is Deal With It Body Spray and Deal With It Smoothie- all very useful indeed!

I realized a few days ago that I have not yet given a real account of what my life is like here on a daily basis so today is a good day for that! So, to begin, I typically set my alarm for 6:30 to 6:15 but I don't believe I have ever once actually slept until it went off. With the little ones in the house, roosters crowing outside, and almost always someone washing, sweeping, or cooking something it is difficult to sleep later. In fact, the whole culture here begins in the morning. People frequently call or visit each other before I am even out of bed! What a contrast to the typical roll into work at 1 pm schedule I was living in LaLa Land!

After my bucket bath the time it takes me to get ready is shortened significantly by the fact that I didn't bring a hairdryer (something that will probably cause me to freeze at post). I then sit down for my breakfast of usually an 'omelette' with green beans, tomatoes, and sometimes spaghetti, or occasionally crepes but always with a cup of Nescafe. Mmm... (I am always trying to figure out why people in the countries where coffee is grown always drink Nescafe).

I usually leave around 7:30, walking down the dirt road from my house or through the cornfield trail, depending on where the day's activities begin. On the way I undoubtedly greet a half dozen people or more, unless it happens to be raining in which case it is only the overly ambitious Americans who are going anywhere at all.

Now that there is Model School we teach until noon when we have lunch. Sometimes we eat what some of the host mothers have prepared but it's a pretty hearty lunch so I have been trying to avoid it. Lately I swing into my friend Desiree's bar, where you can find Americans at pretty much any moment of the day that we are not in a session or past curfew (which unfortunately is 7pm). Desiree has become a good friend but initially he wanted me to be his second wife. He could hardly believe it when I explained to him that unfortunately in America women can have as many husbands as they wanted but a man could only have one wife. It took him about 3 weeks before he apparently asked some of the other trainees and told me I had lied to him. So, he now gets where I stand and is just a buddy. In fact, I feel safe around him because he doesn't let anyone bother me and seems to always keep a special look out for that sort of thing.

After our sessions on safety, cross-culture, technical training, language, and medical issues have completed for the day we usually have a beer at Desiree's and then it's already time to rush through the cornfield to get home before 7. At home I usually socialize with the family, play with the kids, and when Terrence was here I played a lot of cards and soccer. I normally fall onto my foam mattress under my mosquito net before 10 and if I'm lucky not every dog in the neighborhood is howling at the same time and I can fall right to sleep, but that's a rarity.

This week we began teaching at Model School and "BE QUIET!" falls under 'most commonly shouted phrase'. You are easily driven to this when you have 40 pre-adolescents in a classroom without windows and with very thin walls. I taught my first 8 hours and I'm very pleased with how it went. We are also required to lead one club and my friends Claire, Liz & I are managing the Girls' Club. We had a good turn out and I'm excited to see what we can get accomplished.

I spent most of the week with the dreaded quatrieme class, equivalent to about 7th graders though the range of ages is very diverse. All the other teachers want to kick this class out of the school but I grew quite fond of them. By Wednesday students were helping me to gather my things and carrying them all the way to the Teachers' lounge for me after class.

I tried to avoid punishing anyone too severely. There are very strict guidelines in the school for tardiness and most of the time when kids are late by even just a couple of minutes they winding up missing the whole first bell and doing manual labor on the school grounds. Something we've all had to adjust to here is the sight of students being given machetes at school. It's difficult to tell so far how effective the manual labor punishment is but it is good to know at least that officially corporal punishment is forbidden by law. From what I've heard it is still pretty common and there's a strong possibility I will see it once I get to my village but at least the mentality and law has shifted away from it a bit.

It was fun seeing how a real classroom environment will feel but it is definitely a lot of work. One of the technical trainers wrote after observing me, "Avoid shouting; by the end of the day you may lose your voice!". So, if anyone wants to send me a gavel or dunce cap, or maybe has some wonderful memories of how your teacher used to control the noise level in your classes, feel free to pass along that wisdom!

It was nice to observe my class with another teacher on Thursday after having them Monday through Wednesday and to see them actually using vocabulary I'd taught them. Yesterday I had the Premiere class who were a treat after having the younger kids. Here the French system makes it so that the lower class numbers are actually older kids so Premieres are like Juniors in high school.

I try to keep in mind how it felt to be a student myself and that makes me want to have as little boring blackboard copying as possible. Yesterday after I introduced prefixes and suffixes, we did some group work and played some games. They seemed to be really enjoying it and so was I. After class a boy came up and said (in his most planned English), "Madame, I really loved your class, it was very interesting; I want you to be the teacher all the time." When I said thank-you, I will be back next Friday he countered, "No, you must come Monday!" It made my day! Hopefully I can live up to their expectations next week!

Today has been very busy. I received the biggest box of all the Trainees the other day because my mom is the greatest mom ever! Among its contents were my running shoes and clothes which I put to use for the first time this morning. It felt good to start running again and I was impressed it was easier than expected. Apparently I have stayed in decent shape in spite of eating potatoes, plantains, and rice nearly everyday and not being able to hike yet!

I came home to help my host mother peel potatoes and clean my room, including a thorough t-shirt floor mopping! I am going to see the seamstress in a little while to have a dress made exactly how I ask and exactly my size for $4! Maybe I will never come home! This evening we are going on a little bike ride and I'm helping my friend Claude with English.

The weeks fly by here and before I know it I will be at post. I am nervous and excited for having some independence and my own home for the very first time! Judging by how things are going so far, I think life will be just fine in Bahouan!

The rooster has crowed and signaled the coming of yet another Sunday in Bafia. Already only a few remain before we move on with and begin our lives as Peace Corps Volunteers. Life continues to run smoothly and I feel joy at the possibilities offered by each new day.

This week I had the opportunity to go out with some Cameroonian friends and had really meaningful conversations. I feel I am connecting deeply with people and that is the part of my work here that will eventually mean the most. My friend Martin told me the other day that he hasn't enjoyed himself so much in a long time.

This week also marked the opening ceremony of Model School and after waiting 3 hours for all the special dignitaries for which the ceremony was planned we began with the group utterly butchering the National Anthem before the entire population of students, teachers and important folk. Unfortunately I was in the front row and was quietly singing while attempting to stifle my need to laugh hysterically at the spectacle. Luckily I think it's harder to tell when people are singing poorly when it's in a foreign tongue.

We observed a lot this week and I got the chance to watch a truly inspirational lesson from one of the teachers here. The class was the Premiere level which is students nearing the end of their schooling but the age range is anywhere from 15-19 and beyond. The teacher asked the students what career was the most important and a student rose (they stand to answer questions) to say that a teacher was the most important profession because you pass on knowledge to children. Next a student stood to counter this view by saying that a doctor is more important because you can't go to school if you aren't well. Everyone saw this was a good point and laughed. Then a third student stood to say that if the doctor hadn't a teacher they wouldn't have learned medicine and the whole class erupted in applause for he had clearly won the argument.

When they were asked what they wanted to be and why it brought me nearly to tears as they rose one after another to talk of their dreams of wanting to be a translator so as to help people understand one another; being a doctor and building a hospital for those who suffer from AIDS and Cancer but don't have the means to get the care they need; to be an advocate for children around the world because every 5 minutes a child dies from hunger. I was wowed and awed by their wordsand their intelligence and reminded that regardless of where you go the dreams of youth remain linked.

I will beging teaching at the Model School that we undertake during training this week and I am very excited to finally have control of a classroom of children and to see how things go. I think I will learn a great deal from the children and of course, I hope they will learn even more from me!

Yesterday we had a whole afternoon of training in mountain bike maintenance and then brought home our bikes. I am somewhat intimidated but hoping to become at least a better than mediocre biker by the time I return to the States.

This week marks a bit of a sad turn of events in my homestay because the person I've been the closest to in the house, my younger host brother Terrence, is moving on. I want to share his story with you because it has touched my heart and reminded me of why I'm here. Sometimes in the day-to-day it's easy to lose track of the challenges people face. They carry the weight of their burdens with grace and sometimes we seem to have so many things in common that it's easy to lose track of how much different our lives have been.

Terrence is 18 and is not really my host brother. When he was only 16 my family discovered him through another family member. His family was too poor to manage having him at home and needed him to go and work so after finishing only his primary school studies he came far from home to live with my Anglophone family and care for their children. Since I've been living here I have seen him rise every day before 6 am to begin the daily chores including but not limited to sweeping, mopping, cooking, fetching water, washing everyone's clothes, taking care of the children and generally doing anything everyone asked of him at any moment of every day. I have very seldomly seen him do anything resembling the life of a boy his age in the States but I have made an effort to get him out of the house a few times over the last few weeks and to try to get to know him a little better.

In that time he has opened up to me about his girlfriends, his brothers and sisters and his suffering. He has barely seen or spoken to anyone in his immediate family in years and when one of his elder sisters passed away last year after having not seen her for a long time it wore on him. He tells me the family doesn't pay him for the work that he does and he may or may not be telling me the truth about but either way whatever he is being paid is not much. He hardly leaves the house except to run an errand and often when he does he gets in trouble upon his return for something or another, because of the language barriers of Pidgin and broken English it is often hard to decipher the issue.

Last night during a heart-to-heart discussion in which I tried calmly convincing him that his way with one of the little ones was too harsh he opened up to me after I gently persuaded him as he wiped his eyes to hide the tears I saw building up in his lids. With effort because he was reluctant to share his long-guarded pain with another person, he spoke of how every person in Bafia knows him because he is like the town handiman. He spoke of the suffering he's had from chronic back pain caused by his constant manual labor and how no one has bothered getting him medical attention for it. He described how all his peers are beginning their studies in Form 5, equivalent to Juniors or Seniors in the States, and he has rested the same for the last 2 years, falling behind everyone else. He spoke of his anger, fatigue, frustration and the way he has given and given of himself which had an obvious sense of him having little left at all to give.

This week his family has been calling my host family regarding him. Evidently there was always some kind of arrangement that he would eventually have some part of his schooling in a chosen trade funded by my host family after he had worked for them a given period of time and now that time has come. I'm disappointed to see him go and will deeply miss having him in the house to play cards and soccer and laugh with regularly but I am glad to see some new opportunities on the horizon for him.

Getting to know him has reminded me of so many lost childhoods on this continent and many other parts of the world. It has enlivened a part of me I've never had the chance to feel, almost the love of an older sister towards a younger sibling. Tonight I will give him a long and meticulously worded letter describing what I hope will be words of wisdom and love for him as well as a little bit of money for all the work he's done for me since I've been here, and a mostly deflated soccer ball that he will probably appreciate just as much as one from the States.

Once again I am reminded of how lucky I have been in my life and I hope his story reminds all of you reading from the States as well of your own privileged position in this world.

July 4th, 2010

It’s so hard to believe that it has already been a year since the big 4th of July bash at the Spaulding castle. Growing up I always heard that the older you become, the faster the time seems to pass and every year I look back on it seems to become more true. I am missing my brother and Adrienne a lot today since last year’s celebration with them was so memorable. I have no doubt they are missing me as well and that in itself is a comfort.

Another milestone is arrived today too. It has been a month exactly since I left the States. It feels so much longer than that already but I’m happy to report that I’m not really counting the time anyhow. A really good thing considering that I’d have a pretty long way to go!

I returned from site visit yesterday evening and it was exciting to have some independence for the first time since my association as a Peace Corps Trainee. One of our cross culture training sessions included a depiction of the culture shock continuum; a series of peaks and valleys that we can expect to encounter throughout the next 2 years and once we’ve returned to what used to be our perception of normalcy. I’m lucky because of my experience in Senegal making the first few valleys far less intense and practically unnoticeable for me, but I did finally have a brief culture shock moment early in my site visit on Wednesday.

I believe I’ve already written about the issue of polygamy and in many ways I could already tell the frustration I initially felt at the cultural norm was only going to continue to manifest throughout my time here. I had not yet had an up close and personal encounter with the phenomenon until my trip and seeing it firsthand filled me with agony at the position of my sisters here.

I will give a brief overview of my site first and then go into more detail about what I have witnessed here so far. Our group of trainees headed to the Northwest, Southwest and Western regions of the country left together in a traditional Cameroonian bus on Wednesday with our community hosts in tow. With all the stories we’ve heard and my experiences traveling in other underdeveloped countries around the world, I’d have to say that, despite being 30+ crammed into a miniature bus and needing to change seats in our row when possible to keep our hind ends from going completely numb, our voyage went pretty well. Luckily my post is easy to get to, near the regional capitol, and in close proximity to other volunteers.

My community host turned out to be the second most important guy in my village, known as the sous-chef, and as a result I was treated like royalty the entire trip. We met up with a friend of his who works on national elections in Bafoussam, (the regional capitol), where we ran some errands in his nice Toyota pickup, including opening my new bank account for after swearing-in, before heading on toward my village.

Bahouan is in a mountainous region and the earth all around is red clay. It took about 20 minutes from Bafoussam before we turned down the unpaved stretch that reaches into the village. We pulled up to a discreet bar where the friend told me, “Voila, this is where you’re sleeping”! I laughed but later realized he was telling the truth, my community host’s house was attached to the bar.

After having a Castel with several men from the community (there are rarely ever women in the bars; another frustrating chauvinistic cultural norm), Wambo (the regal name meaning ‘King’ for my community host), gave me the tour of his compound. He himself has 3 wives, only 2 of which reside in Bahouan. The other wife is in Douala where he has another home. It suddenly became clear why when I’d asked him at our seminar how many children he had his response had been, “Au moins, dix” (“At least ten”). The chef of the village who I later had dinner with has 12 wives on his compound, which I’m told is a decidedly small number for someone of his community stature.

Here is what I wrote in my journal following this tour, “I can only think with this cultural screen which tells me that development of any kind is virtually impossible without women’s equality. Am I judging? Am I biased? Have I had the opportunity to ask the women their feelings? Yes, yes, and no. Yet, it seems that the women themselves are conditioned to accept their positions in society as though they are indifferent to it. I feel my job here is to understand the women and help them value themselves in spite of the cultural norm. I see these women who appear to be just baby-makers and home-makers; they work all day while the men drink and socialize in bars.

I feel luckier than ever in my life to be an American woman. To feel empowered and equal from birth as a human being.”

I boldly took up this discussion with many of the men I encountered at my site, particularly because of how difficult it was for me as a woman to mostly interact with only men the entire visit. At one point the arrogant friend of Wambo’s who had picked us up in Bafoussam ,who was at least twice my age and who had seemed to take a liking to me, said as we were all preparing to eat, “Lindsay, serve-moi!” I wanted to break down in tears and was angry as well but am happy that I didn’t just sit and stew to myself but did react in my defense by saying that I was not a Cameroonian.

I know there is going to be a very fine line to walk on this issue between expressing myself and offending people. I know I cannot assume that even the women will automatically admire me for standing up to their male-dominated culture. In fact, during one of the heated but cordial debates I had with Wambo and another chef du village they both assured me that it is often the women themselves who go out in search of other wives for their men. That, in fact, you are not seen as a real man unless you have many wives. To me this is an obvious barrier to development because of the economic implications of having at once so many wives, often who each have their own home entirely separate from the man’s home which he has to himself, but also so many little mouths to feed that often it is seemingly hard to even know how many.

In spite of this gender stratification constantly creating a rumbling irritation under the surface for me my visit was overall wonderful and I am now eager to actually begin my work in village. Because Wambo was in charge of making the arrangements for my stay he has secured me a house that is far too big for myself alone and which the emptiness of intimidated me greatly at first glance. But, it is a fine home and I am excited to live on my own for the first time in my life. I have 3 bedrooms which I have no idea how I am going to afford to fill with any furniture at all and they are working everyday painting and installing plumbing and lights for me before my arrival. There will be plenty of room for the dog and cat I plan to rescue from the hands of Cameroonians once I arrive who I hope will help keep me company when I’m in dire need of someone that doesn’t speak French. There is a big space in the front for the garden I hope to cultivate, most likely with someone’s help since I am up to this point severely lacking in green thumb. The view from my porch is stunning and peaceful and I live directly across from the main Chefferie. The Chef assured me his protection and my safety at post and I believe it.

Part of the site visit was with the goal of trying to meet important community members before my arrival so we took Wambo’s motorcycle around a bit doing so. One particular ride into a neighboring village to meet the prefet and commander was breathtaking. The red mud road is surrounded by lush forest on both sides and dotted with yellow sunflower-like flowers. Everywhere in this rich part of Africa things are alive. We passed field after field of corn, bean, nuts, manioc and much more. After riding a while a huge valley opened up to our left with rolling hills speckled in rusted tin rooftops of houses the same deep red-brown color as the earth around them and I had one of those enlightening moments of realization of how insane it is that I am here. I look forward to serene walks and jogs around the area to reflect on the beauty I’m surrounded by.

In meetings with all of the political figures in my community it was amusing to note them all remarking on the issue of corruption. Of course none of them implicated themselves as elements of this problem despite the extravagant living quarters many of them occupy and the fact that they do possess so many wives. In the case of the chefs in particular it was fascinating because they receive money from the state but are actually in power due to royal lineage. I’m told it is the chefs whose families founded the villages. While dining with the main chef he caught me staring at a blown up photograph of him in traditional garb dancing at a ceremony. He told me the outfit he was wearing cost more than $4,000 - that’s U.S. currency, money that would go a very long way here. Money that could’ve perhaps funded the road to Bahouan which many people have sited as an obstacle to their community’s development.

I am glad to have only touched the surface on so many issues and to have been given such an intimate look at the hierarchy here during my site visit. I truly believe it will take the full 2 years I am here to integrate myself enough to give straightforward, well-informed recommendations for the villagers. It is difficult to comprehend the marriage of tradition and modernity and I think it will undoubtedly be a challenge in my work. Americans pay quite insignificant attention to tradition and I think regard it primarily as a roadblock to progress. We learn from history but we don’t have the need or the desire to repeat it.

All this being said, I did spend about 2 hours Friday morning talking with a future colleague of mine at the school who stopped by to introduce himself. He worked closely with the last Peace Corps volunteer who went to Bahouan, who everyone kept referring to as though she had just left which I assumed was the case because it is at most sites, but later discovered she left in 2005. Everyone I met pointed out that she interacted very little with the community and barely spoke a word of French at all. I have yet to discern why the hell Peace Corps even placed her there in the first place. Apolinaire, the colleague, did make a good point about the importance of we Americans learning a few things from Africans about communal culture. He was very well versed in our individualistic ways. If I take away anything from the next 2 years, I hope it is related to that aspect of African tradition. I want my time here to be a two-way cross-cultural exchange and I would be want for purpose here if I believed I myself had nothing to gain.

All-in-all I think I made a solid first impression on my community. I made 'cous cous' with Wambo’s third wife, played with babies, attended some ceremonies where lots of people stared at me but giggled with bliss when I greeted them in the mother tongue; even the discussions I had with the men challenging their views on polygamy were lighthearted and we were able to laugh together at the cultural divide. Several people told me they could already tell I was going to be much different from their last volunteer and despite Wambo’s social status being somewhat of a stratification for us, he was very dedicated to explaining to everyone we came in contact with exactly what my goals are for Peace Corps and countering their initial belief that he had taken on a white wife! My first day in Bahouan I could not wait to be back in Bafia but now that I’m back, I can’t wait to settle into my new home!

Time is ticking on and on and it's unbelievable that we are already almost halfway through Pre-Service Training. Life is still wonderful and today was especially great. This morning I learned that despite what I thought was a horrible language aptitude test yesterday, I am now at the language level I needed to meet to swear in and don't have to worry about my classes too much anymore now except for my own improvement. Just before I came to get online all the Ed trainees learned their post assignments! I am very excited for my post in Bahouan. I haven't even so much as looked it up yet but it is in the Western province and I know there is a lot of good hiking nearby! There are also a lot of volunteers in the West and in the neighboring provinces and it won't take 3 days for me to travel to the capital. I also probably won't sweat my ass off the entire next two years.

Life is still pretty strict in terms of our day-to-day schedules. We have very little free time and are actually required to be home by 7pm unless we are given permission to stay out later. Since I really enjoy my homestay it hasn't been a huge problem for me. Last weekend, however, there was a bit of an incident with my host father taking me out to 'show me how the Cameroonians sortir (go out)' that led to him getting very drunk and my having to insist on going home earlier than he wanted to. The whole evening was one of my first major culture shocks here because of how misogynistic it all felt but I discussed the entire situation and why it could never happen again with him the next day and today with our host family coordinator.

It is difficult to be in an environment where women are valued so much differently. I have been surprised to learn that polygamy is not only present in Muslim families here but is simply an accepted cultural norm for all. It was a hard concept to grasp in Senegal but it was somewhat less commonplace and generally less widely accepted. I feel it's going to be a constant challenge in working and living here.

We have converted the bar near our classroom building into the Blanche bar and most of the group can be found having our one beer a day there every evening. Thursday is 'sports day' and I beat myself up playing a mean game of soccer yesterday. It was so much fun after so many years without kicking a ball around. In many ways the experience so far has just felt like being back in college or something and I constantly think of how much more amazing it is than sitting in my office everyday in Los Angeles!

This coming Tuesday all the Ed trainees will travel to post with our community host and get a better picture of where we'll all be living for the next couple years. I can't wait to write all the gory details of the exciting adventure that is traveling in Africa!

It is so hard to believe that I have only been in Cameroon for a week and a half. Already my life has the ebb and flow of a routine well versed and long lived. So far everything is exactly as I always dreamed it would be and more. I have been amazed at how comfortable I feel in my family and in my home. I actually look forward to coming home everyday even though it is nearly always the same. Babies crawling on me, the constant attention of my 5 year old host sister who is infinitely curious about every single aspect of the blanche in her house. The conversations between my host parents are always informative and fascinating and they are extremely patient with my forced use of French despite their being Anglophones.

Cameroon is far more beautiful than I anticipated. All around is endless green. Corn fields dot the landscape here in Bafia but off in the distance are majestic rolling green hills. There is humidity nearly all the time as it is the rainy season and we are becoming accustomed to having a constant coating of sweat on our bodies. The people stop in the street when we pass to greet and welcome us here. They, for the most part, seem very happy to receive us and know the Peace Corps very well. They are eager to help us acclimate and ask us how we are adjusting to life here.

Today I carried my water for the first time with my host brother. It was hardly any distance but it took all the strength I had and he had to help me part of the way with it even though he carried some himself as well. Sunday I learned to wash my laundry after we went to the Catholic mass and the girls on the porch laughed at me as I struggled to do it well.

Though it is the rainy season it has hardly rained at all but our first night in Bafia there was a thrilling thunderstorm while I was falling asleep and the lightning is striking now in the distance as I anticipate another may be brewing.

Our training is intense and thorough with sessions every day M-F from 8-4:30 and Saturday until noon focused on French acquisition, Medical information sessions (which usually include receiving a vaccination or 2), and technical training for our jobs at post. In only about a month’s time I will already be given a classroom in what is called the Model School that is meant to help me be well prepared for school to begin in a few months. Our posts will be announced in a week and a half and everyone is awaiting news on them anxiously. The country is so diverse and so difficult to traverse that the location of our posts will impact our experiences here immensely though I feel confident that regardless of where we are placed we will all find comfort in our homes and most likely our communities.

I have been immensely impressed with the values and actions of the Peace Corps program in general. Though I may have had my doubts in the past I feel convinced now that they do a great deal to promote truly sustainable development. I am extremely pleased and proud to be placed in such a place as Cameroon which has such a long history with Peace Corps and which the populous has adjusted to our presence and seem to want us here.

It’s amazing how well prepared I am as a result of my time in Senegal but I have also been intrigued by the differences between the 2 countries. The capital city here was far, far cleaner and less congested and overwhelming than Senegal. In many ways it feels as though Cameroon is more developed and from discussions with the Ambassador at our welcome dinner and a Foreign Service worker it seems that Cameroon has a great deal of potential for strong development. Actually my accommodations here have been far more comfortable than those in Dakar. There I had a room that barely fit my suitcases and bed with little to no privacy at all. I showered everyday with large cockroaches, often by candlelight because the blackouts occurred so frequently. I had a pit latrine and my French was so abysmal at the start that I was hardly able to get to know my family.

Here I have perhaps the biggest room in the house with a huge bed. My bedroom door locks and instead of looking into the courtyard of the house I have a beautiful view while sitting at my desk. The blackouts are far less frequent so far and I am now very acclimated to bucket baths, even when they are by candlelight. The bugs are less for the most part and even the mosquito bites are less severe. My French is so much better than 4 years ago that I have little to no problem communicating with my family and usually never resort to English despite that it’s their first language. The Peace Corps even gave me toilet paper and we have a toilet instead of a pit latrine. It’s amazing to see how technology has really changed the experience as well. My family has a computer and should be getting internet any day at the house and I am able to listen to my ipod and use my laptop in my room. The last week we have watched the World Cup religiously and it has helped bring us together. They even let us out early yesterday for the Cameroon match.

Thus, so far, I feel perfectly at home here. I have been adjusting and acclimating very well and am slowly trying to learn the things I will need to know to care for myself at post. I have no doubts about my time here or regrets about pursuing this step in my life so doggedly. I am absolutely certain it is going to enrich my life in nearly every way and I will return to the US a new person almost entirely.

Well, after over a year of being picked apart, background checked, dozens of doctors appointments, and long months of waiting for any news at all, I have finally received the full details of my Peace Corps assignment. There was much last minute hustle and bustle with my placement possibly shifting to Asia and finally coming back to being in Cameroon teaching English and AIDS education. In 2 short weeks I shut down my life in Los Angeles, kissed my friends and family, loaded down my car and hopped in with Miss. Emily for a 7 day adventure cross-country to home.

It's certainly been a whirlwind. I had grown pretty attached to my life in Los Angeles and realized on the way out how many deep rooted friendships I'd forged in the last two and a half years. The get-togethers the weekend I left were absolutely unforgettable and meant so much to me; the memories of them will warm my heart in Africa on many lonely evenings, I'm sure.

The trip across country was incredible, much like the first one I took with my dad in 2007 when I moved out to LA. In many ways it would not have been the same if I'd flown home. It felt like coming full circle to actually place all those miles between California and Ohio on my odometer. It was the intimate time for thinking over the big changes occurring in my life that I feel is so necessary to appreciating this journey.

Since I've been home things have slowed down to a comfortable ebb and flow. I want to leave in the best head space possible, at peace with myself more than anything and with the world around me. I have felt an immense amount of love in the recent months and especially in recent weeks, and there's nothing better in the world to give me the strength I need for the next 2 years. Antonio Banderas said on Ellen this morning, "There's nothing in this world that cannot be cured with love", and I believe it.

People ask me all the time why on Earth I'd want to do what I'm about to do. I have a 50% chance of having electricity and running water once I receive my placement. I might be 60 miles to the nearest volunteer. The Cameroon Welcome Book guides us to pack for all types of climates since Cameroon is coined "Africa in miniature" for its diversity. The extreme North is in the Sahel, mountain ranges dot the coastline to the West, and, in the South- jungle.

The truth is, I often ask myself why everyone doesn't want to do what I'm about to do. I guess we all just have our own callings, and I often think that it's a good thing, too, since I wouldn't ever be inclined to want to be a dentist, or a pharmacist, or a banker, but I still need all those things myself!

I'm reading a book entitled Emergency Sex about 3 young UN workers all learning the ropes while on the job. As I read I realize it is a bit insane to want to do this kind of work. Yet, at the same time, there's something raw and uncut about it. About being in a place where everyday is about survival. The things they are describing of Somalia, Rwanda, Bosnia in the 90s, on the real front lines is crazier than anything I've ever done and they do watch friends go down in the line of duty; yet still they returned to it.

I imagine there's something about development and aid work; going into the world where democracy may be a newborn baby; something about it that makes you feel more alive than ever. Like you are really at the center of the universe and working to shift the fate of all of humanity in tiny fragments. I guess that's why I want to join the Peace Corps and why I someday may want to be on those same front lines of possible terror and certain shock, disgust, and emotional anguish. In the end, the rewards for the service far exceed the personal costs; or, at least I hope they do.