Apparently this is beautiful. The women that did my henna thought it would be fun to put makeup on me also (they think I'm a doll... the next step is to get some fabric and dress me). I got dark red lipstick with lipgloss that actually smelled amazing, black eyeliner under my eyes, a forehead dot, and my favorite part--the drawn on eyebrows. I don't know if you can tell, but my left eyebrow goes straight across so it looked like I was confused about something. This all happened because I got stuck there the other day because of a rain storm. The picture does not do this look justice. I thought I looked ridiculous, but they loved it.

My neighbors have been giving me beauty treatments. In Cameroon there are two types of henna (no idea how to actually spell the Fulfulde names, but this is how it sounds): Seeppa and Lalay. Seeppa is the black stuff that you use to draw designs on your hands and feet. It's really liquidy and tends to run all over the place, especially if you lotion up right before you get it done. Lalay is the orange stuff you put on the bottom of your feet and on the inside of your hands. it starts as kind of a light orange, but the more layers you do the blacker (okay... dark reddish-er) it gets. Lalay is applied as a paste and is slowly blotted on to the whole foot. The design on my hand was done by putting down electrical tape before the paste. It takes forever to get it on and then you wrap your feet in plastic bags to let it set for at least 2 hours, depending on the intended result. I've done Lalay twice so far, and it takes 4-5 hours total to get it done. The women doing it wanted me to come 5 times but I don't think I can handle it. People love to see that we get it done and children always yell "A didi seeppa!" (You drew henna!). It's also a fun bonding activity to get to know women because they are rarely out of the house. They have a lot of fun with it, so it works out for the both of us.



For summer vacation Banyo is organizing all kinds of youth activities, one of which is a soccer tournament. The teams include all the different neighborhoods, but also random groups like the bakers and the butchers which I think sounds really funny. The other day was the final match between the neighborhood Fada (blue) and the Butchers (black). This match took place during Ramadan, while everyone is fasting all day long (no water, no food from 5am to 6:30pm) so I don't know how they survived... the match took place at the end of the day too so they must have been feeling it. There was a lot of speculation about which team would win. Fada is the neighborhood where the lamido (traditional chief) lives and where the big mosque is, so a lot of important people live around there. I think of it as a rich neighborhood because most of the people I know that live there are well off, but who knows if that is accurate or not. A friend said he thinks the butchers would win because they work all day so they are strong. Clearly, the butchers had the advantage because they ended up winning (I want to say the score was 1-0). My postmate unexpectedly had to hand out a medal and certificate to a player at the final ceremony. I think they wanted me to do it also, but I was not interested. Can't wait to see who wins it all next year.

Now that it's rainy season it rains all the time. When it rains, you literally can't do anything. People just don't show up for events or meetings and everyone is okay with that, which makes doing any real work during rainy season difficult. It also really throws off your schedule because you are homebound until the rain stops. The other day I had no food at my house and it rained all day so I couldn't go to the market. I had to make do with ramen and onion rings. My house is at the bottom of a little hill in my neighborhood which gets super slippery and I almost fall every time it's wet. I went to visit my postmate the other day (about a 15-20 minute walk from my house) after a rain storm and there were no motos out so I had to walk the whole way in a light drizzle. This is a picture from that day of the bridge near my house. Normally this is just a tiny stream but since it's at the bottom of a few hills it gets flooded big time. The next day it looked like nothing had happened. Sometimes it's nice to have an excuse to be lazy all day, but it rains too much which disturbs my plans so the rain has got to go...

At the end of March my training group (all 48 of us) got back together for In-Service Training (IST) in Ngaoundere, which is the regional capital of the Adamawa. It was a week of training flashback, both good and bad. We got to see each other and hang out, but we were basically in class all day. It was kind of rough to have a 8-5 schedule again after not really being too busy for the last four months. On the bright side, since we are now PCVs instead of PCTs we had a lot more freedom.

The week after IST most volunteers took the opportunity to "do a little tourism" in the Grand North of Cameroon since it takes a while to get up there and we recieved a travel stipend for IST. You'll have to look this up on a map, but I left Ngaoundere to go to Lake Lagdo, then from there I stopped in Garoua for a few hours, then on to Maroua. Waza National Park was a day trip from Maroua. Maroua was my favorite city so far in Cameroon. It's really nice, well laid out, and there is a lot of stuff to do. I spent most of my time in Maroua shopping in the Artisinal Market, eating hamburgers and drinking fruit juice, swimming in hotel pools, etc. It was a great trip, but traveling from place to place is rough, so I was really happy to finally be back in my house and my own bed. I didn't take too many pictures of the trip (mostly because I was paranoid that I was going to get robbed since I had so much with me), but here are a few shots of the two highlights:

LAKE LAGDO - North

Lake Lagdo on a hazy morning.

The beach with a little bit of the hotel we stayed at.

The little guy on the left is a hippo coming up for air.

WAZA NATIONAL PARK - Far North

Soo excited to see some animals :)

Not sure what this thing was, but it was cool looking and actually really cool feeling inside.

Elephantz wuz here.We didn't actually see any elephants (they migrate in dry season) or lions (only come out super early), but we did see a lot of other animals. Most notable were the ostriches, giraffes (saw a bunch, and even a group of about 10), warthogs, and most of the cast of the Lion King. I'm not going to bother posting the pictures of animals that I took because they didn't come out very well, but it was awesome.

This picture should seriously be on the cover of something to promote Peace Corps.

This is a part of a mural at the entrance to the park. From what I gather, the man being dragged is a poacher and he will be shot by excited military men. Pretty effective for people who can't read.

Some more cute kitten pics. I swear this will be my last post about only kittens. I don't even like cats, but kittens are sooo cute.

My kitten/not-so-kittenlike-anymore cat from the previous litter keeps trying to breastfeed with them, but she is almost the same size as the mom. It’s super awkward (see above). I shoe her away whenever I catch her, but she’s crafty.

This one is my favorite. When all the other kittens had already opened their eyes, this one only had one and a half eyes open (left). It is so cute and fluffy, plus I think it’s the smartest one (at least from my observations). Adorbs. I reeeallllyy don't need to keep one of the babies because two cats is already more than enough, but this one at least makes me double think it.

(<--new one)(older one in baby form-->)This one looks just like my kitten from the last litter (only about 6 months or so ago—the mama cat works fast). Look at the resemblance. In fact, all four of them have near twins in the last litter. They definitely have the same daddy.

This is the smallest one and it always hisses when I pick it up. It also is very defensive of its food. Not a big fan of this one.

I think this one is the only male, but it's hard to tell. He's probably the softest. He used to have eye infections or something crusty that kept his eye shut for a couple of days. He was also a really heavy sleeper when he was really little. I legit thought he was dead on more than one occasion because I couldn't wake him up. Basically, there is a reoccuring pattern that I'm scared/convinced the kittens are dead.

Hopefully they will all be out of my house before the end of May when new owners can pick them up. They are driving me nuts, running all over and making a mess.

My cat had four little babes on March 6. Here are some photos because they are adorable and this is basically what I do with my time now since I live alone.

This is mama cat a few hours before birth. She doesn’t look very comfortable.

When they were born they didn’t have hair on their legs so they looked like mice.

Cat pile part one (a few days old) and two (about 7 weeks old). Things don’t change much.

Big sis checking in on the kittens in their box. After about 4 weeks or so the mama will pick them up by their necks and move them places (like my bed) or hide them. When I got home from my training/vacation after being gone for two weeks during which time this new behavior began I noticed they weren’t in the box and I couldn’t find them anywhere. I’m really paranoid that the mom is going to eat the babies (it has happened to other volunteers…) so I was freaking out a little bit. I looked for 15 minutes and then finally called my neighbor who was looking after them. My neighbor ended up finding them almost right away though and they’re still around, so hopefully that’s not going to happen.

Kitten scratching.I’m pretty sure that they gave me fleas last week, but I haven’t seen any evidence for a couple of days, so hopefully that’s over.

More to come...

I hope everyone had a great Easter. Here in Banyo, my postmate and I got in the spirit by dying hard boiled eggs. My parents sent me an Easter package with an egg dying kit and a windup chick (which my cats are really afraid of) that got here just in time. The eggs here are all a brownish color, but we managed to find a dozen lighter colored ones to dye and it worked pretty well. We only used three of the colors, so we’re going to save the rest for another day.

(the other side of the egg says -non)

On Easter Sunday we went over to the American missionaries’ house which is about 15 minutes outside Banyo to have a special dinner. It was awesome. We ate beef and vegetable potpie, green beans (my contribution), fruit salad, shrimp chips with guac (not really sure what these things are, they taste kind of like the cinnamon twists at Taco Bell, but shrimpy), and mango cobbler with a semi-frozen vanilla ice cream for dessert.

After dinner, my postmate and I left around 6:30 to try to find a moto taxi back to town before dark, which is usually around 7 every day. A really big storm was coming so it was already kind of dark when we left. No motos were coming because it was Sunday (normally there are motos coming and going from the hospital there) and about to rain, so we figured we could walk until we found one. Well, it ended up raining with no motos in sight so we had to walk all the way to town (which has never happened before). Luckily my postmate had a raincoat and an umbrella, so she shared but we both still got really wet. Then her headlamp battery died. We ended up stopping twice along the way at bars when the rain got really bad. I’m sure the people sitting there thought we looked ridiculous and that we don’t have enough sense to get out of the rain. Right before we reached the market where we knew we could find motos there was a giant flash of lightning and all the power in town went out, so there was a collective yell from all the bar goers. After waiting a while in the dark, I found a moto to take me home. We almost fell over in a giant mud/water pool on the way, then he charged me double the normal fare. I ended up paying it anyway because I was just happy to be home after about an hour and a half (again, normally 15 minutes max) and didn’t feel like fighting about it. Long story short: rainy season is TERRIBLE. I’d take the dust back any day.

I had a great first-birthday-in-Africa a couple of weeks ago, and here are some pictures to prove it. Earlier in the day, my postmate and I visited the Tiket market just outside of town and (as always) found some great deals. I got some clothes and fabric to make some more clothes. Then in the evening, some folks over for a delicious dinner party. In Cameroon the tradition is to buy other people drinks for your birthday, so that's what I did. Sorry that some of the pictures are sideways. I tried to fix it but the internet goes so slow that it would have taken forever.

Some of the birthday dinner--Fish and beer battered onion rings

23! Also pictured, a giant salad

Dr. Eta (the chief of the district hospital where I work) and Jeremey (one of the Baptist missionaries that we randomly met that morning in the market)

Kaitlyn, Sani (my neighbor), and my African key lime pie birthday cake. Notice that my candle was literally just a candle, but we make it work here in Banyo.

It's that time here in Cameroon where the leaves start changing color, although it's not exactly the same as Fall at home. Here the leaves change color because it is now dry season, meaning that the leaves don't actually change color as much as they are coated with a thin layer of red/brown dust. Most of the roads aren't paved here, so once the rain stops the motorcycles and cars that drive by kick up all kinds of dirt. You have to walk around with a handkerchief to cover your face unless you want a lung full of dust. My nasal passages are very dry and painful right now, which is think is related.

There are positives of dry season, however:

(1) Traveling is easier because the roads are not giant swimming pools of mud for the van to get stuck in. Instead they are full of giant craters because no one thinks to fix the roads until rainy season comes back and it's too late.

(2) It's cooler now, especially during the night and in the mornings. It's still much hotter than at home, but I'll take what I can get.

(3) Also, I appear tan although really I'm just dirty.

Exhibit A

Also, MERRY CHRISTMAS!

These photos are long overdue. They are from the swearing in ceremony that happened December 1, 2010 where 48 trainees officially became Peace Corps Volunteers. The next day we left the protective bubble of training to live on our own all over the country.

A bunch of santés with our instructor, Theo

Calling out the new health volunteers

Country Director Lahoma, from Durham, NC and also a UNC-CH graduate

Rachel and I with our two host families and the American Ambassador

Tina doesn't want to leave for the Extreme North

Adios, amigos. See you at IST in March.

The opening song of Beauty and the Beast is the one where Belle walks into town and everyone talks about how beautiful and weird she is. This is our life:

1. Everyone you walk by says « Bonjour! »

2. We get our water from a pump

3. All the locals talk about us as we walk by

4. Everyone wakes up at dawn

5. We buy eggs and bread in the morning

6. There are sheep everywhere

7. Markets are open doors

8. All prices are negotiable

9. Women carry water on their head

10. People speak to you in French

11. Women wear wigs/weaves

12. No one reads books for fun

13. Ladies get a lot of unwanted marriage proposals

This list could go on forever.

Training is officially almost over. Our final exams have been taken and our final presentations have been presented, so now we’re just waiting for the swearing in ceremony on Wednesday Dec 1 (also World AIDS day). It doesn’t feel like 11 weeks have already gone by. I’m excited to get to post and have my own house and be able to cook anything I want, but it’ll be really weird to not see at least 47 other Americans every day. It’s definitely going to be a lonely first couple weeks. However, I will be able to predict my internet access once I’m at post (unlike here where I have no control), so we can schedule a Skype date if you want!

My city homestay family has a kitten clock (aka a clock with kittens on it) right next to their dining room table. It meows really loudly on the hour, every hour (ALL night long). My host parents said that when they first bought it they didn’t know that it meows, so they thought a cat was loose in their house for a couple of days until they realized it was just the clock. Every so often it doesn’t meow, so I don’t really understand its schedule. I may miss this clock when I leave in about 2 weeks, but I’ll have real cats so it’s cool.I sneakily took this picture this morning while my host dad was watching TV across the room. I’m glad he didn’t notice, because he’d think I was weird.

Training is 11 weeks, and halfway through we switched homestay families. This isn’t the way training is normally done—we are the first group that they’re trying this on. The health trainees started out in the village (Nyamsong and Lablé) and the Agros were in the city (Bafia) and now it’s the other way around. The two are pretty different, which is why we were given a chance to experience both environments. It was really weird to move though, because I had just started getting comfortable in the village house and then had to start the awkwardness all over again. I think everyone doesn’t enjoy that our families compare us to the person we switched with a lot, especially if they liked the other person better. I’m glad to be in the city now because my host mom is a good cook and I have an indoor bathroom, but it would have made life a lot easier and it would have been better to have only one homestay. Nyamsong (house) or Lable (school) Bafia



Training Centers, notice tomb in front of Lable school

Road Conditions Hang out spots, random town square v. the bar My bedrooms, painted the same color by Peace Corps

Homestay houses

Classrooms, normally there are chairs in the Bafia room

Here is a cool picture that I took from a National Geographic. I had never seen this before, but it’s an interesting comparison:

I am back from Western Adamawa, aka the forgotten region of Cameroon. We are pretty much a mixture of everything, but don’t really belong anywhere. We have the culture of the Grand North (conservative and mostly muslim), but it’s closer to do banking in the West region and our geography and climate is more like the West. It’s beautiful because I live right in the mountains, but the roads are terrible (not paved, even though it’s the major trucking highway) so it takes forever to get in or out. I am replacing a current volunteer, Anna, so my house is all set up for me and it’s adorable. I’ll post pictures after I move in and make it my own. Anna is very active, so she has a lot of projects that I can continue with, mostly youth group activities, but we’ll see what I end up doing. Peace Corps encourages us to take the first 3 months easy, so I’ll probably just start out with some observations.

Where other volunteers live in relation to me

Here are some of the highs and lows of site visit:

1. We left Bafia with at least 20 people packed into a 15 passenger van. There was a goat strapped to the top that cried the entire way to Bafoussam.

2. The Golden Center hotel in Bafoussam has the most amazing shower ever.

3. The volunteer in Bankim, Kate, made us pizza and pancakes. Delicious.

Hunter and Jackie with pizza

4. We had to take motos on the worst road ever to get from Bankim to Nyamboya. Jackie burned her leg on the exhaust pipe. I almost tipped over in a mud puddle.

5. After our Halloween party in Mayo Darlé my new post mate, Kaitlyn, and I realized there was a bat in our room. I’m pretty sure we woke up the entire village by screaming.

6. I have a cat, Mi-Hao, which just had 5 kittens 4 weeks ago. I am going to keep one of the girl kittens, name TBD. They are so cute.

My new babies

7. Baptist missionaries live in Banyo and gave me a cinnamon bun.

8. It took me 10 hours and 27 minutes to get from Banyo to Bafoussam, which is apparently good time. I will be banking very rarely. My bank in Bafoussam is called Afriland.

9. I miss cheese. We only have laughing cow triangles in Bafia, so I spent more than I should have on a block of Gouda when we got back to Bafoussam.

10. We watched a countdown of 30 Urban Hits music videos (African and American) in the hotel on the French MTV channel—Trace.

Mountains in Banyo

1. Ducks- There is a really mean duck that lives at my house. He is gigantic and always fluffs up his feathers when he sees me. He can tell I’m afraid of him because he won’t run away when I shoe him. Most of the time it’s not too bad, but the other day I was outside alone and he was coming at me so I hit him with a big stick the family uses to shoe them. Normally he would run away, but instead he chased me all over the yard. Anytime I tried to hit him he would fly up in the air at me. I ended up hiding behind benches and trees until I was able to sprint inside, but it was really scary and I thought for a second that I was going to die by duck. Now he knows he’s the dominant one in our relationship and waddles at me all the time. I’m scared to go outside alone.

2. Ants- African ants are deadly. I thought I hated ants at home, but I really hate the ants here. They come in all sizes, but the worst are the giant ones. Some are almost an inch long. Those are the ones that sting and bite, which is actually really painful. They are also really hard to kill. They’re fast and run in a zigzag, then don’t die when you step on them. When I got to my homestay there were a whole bunch of baby ducks, but now there is only one. I didn’t know what happened to them but I found out that these ants swarm the ducklings while they’re sleeping and sting them to death then eat them. My host family said they could kill a human if the person didn’t move. Seriously? I miss the vegetarian ants.

3. Mosquitos and Moutmouts- My ankles and feet are torn up right now. I’ve got a lot of bug bites and they itch soo badly. Somehow they even get you when you wear pants. Moutmouts are these really tiny bugs that bite you and leave a flat red circle (usually arms) or a small bleeding prick (legs) on you. They don’t really itch though but they transfer filaria, so probably have that by now. The good news is that filaria doesn’t really do anything to you until 40 years later when you go blind, but I’ll be treated for it in about 2 years so I’ll be fine.

We received our post assignments on Thursday! Right now everyone is together for training, but December 1st we will become volunteers and move to our posts alone to begin working. It seemed like we had to wait forever, but we were actually really lucky because most groups don’t find out until a few weeks later.

Our APCD, Sylvie, handed out post-its with the name of our city or village and what region of Cameroon it’s in. Then everyone ran over to the map to figure out where that was and who is going to be living nearby. I’m posted in Banyo, which is a decent sized city in the Adamawa region. It’s right on the border of Nigeria. I will have to travel 10 hours at least once a month to get to the West regional capital Baffousam, which is where I’ll do my banking. It seems like a long trip, but apparently travel takes forever in this country so I’ll be used to it. If you look at a map, it’ll take me about 16 hours (or more…) to get to Ngoundere. If you’re planning to visit, you might want to think about being here for about 2 weeks. I’ve also started learning Fulfulde 50% of the time we have language classes because that’s pretty much the language they speak in the northern regions. I got lucky, so I have a post mate (another volunteer in the same city) who is an education volunteer. She swore in around the time we got here, so she’s only been there a few weeks. Two of the other trainees are within 3-4 hours of me, which is also exciting. I don’t know a whole lot now about my post, but I’ll be visiting in about a week and a half.

This is a tree that I pass everyday going to and from training. It is enormous. You can’t even tell in the pictures, which is disappointing, but I’m not surprised.

I have three “brothers” that I live with because the rest of the kids live elsewhere—one about middle school aged, one 6 and one 4. Family structure is very confusing, so one of them is actually the son of my host sister, who is actually my host cousin (if that makes sense). The two younger kids are really the only ones who talk to me regularly and they’re super sweet. Every day when I come home they run up and give me a big hug. They also do really adorable things. For example, the 4 yo was supposed to be drawing the letter A for practice, but when we brought it over for inspection he had actually been drawing pictures of pots for cooking (he spends a lot of time around them). The family thought it was annoying, but I thought it was hilarious. They found out I have a camera, so they made me do a photo shoot which was basically them holding stuff in the room up and telling me to take a picture of them with it.Bahon (or Baron?) and Kevin

In Cameroon we have to wash our clothes by hand in a bucket and then hang them outside to dry. Or sometimes in most of our cases, hang them in our rooms until they smell like mold. Then we have to let them sit for 3 days after they’re dry before we wear them so we don’t get infested by Mango flies. Laundry takes a long time. Also, it is so physically difficult that I have reassessed the way I wear clothes. Something that would have been dirty before is no longer dirty and I won’t wear jeans just because I can’t imagine how hard it must be to wash them. Sunday was my first attempt, but I had to go to church and didn’t get back until later so my host mom finished my laundry for me so it wasn’t so bad. I had some other items to wash, so I did them Tuesday night. My fingers kind of hurt that night afterwards, but Wednesday morning I woke up to realize that I had scraped up my fingers pretty bad. Apparently I’m the only one in the health training group that really scrubs hard because this has not happened to anyone else, but I was assured by the Homestay Coordinator that it was normal because we are not used to doing it. Hopefully I’ll be set for a while and won’t have to clean anything any time soon.

Most of the stagaires (trainees) stayed after class Wednesday for a Body Pump session. One of the girls is an instructor back home so she led us in a v. amusing class. We didn’t have any weights, so we used books and water bottles. Then, we didn’t have mats, so we used pieces of butcher paper. Eventually, the kids who live in the houses around our training site got curious and came and watched how ridiculous we looked (especially since organized exercise isn’t really that common outside the US). I think we had about 15 audience members by the end.

Start sending me letters!! Everyone is starting to get letters, which is always exciting. It feels a lot like summer camp because they pass out the letters to everyone. If you send more than one letter, write what number the letter is in case it gets lost. I'd love to have some pictures or cards to hang up on my wall!!

Here is my address:

Shannon Mentock

Corps de la Paix

BP 215

Yaounde, Cameroon

AFRICA

You can send packages to that address too if you'd like. We have to pay a tax on packages that I think is by weight, so keep that in mind when deciding what to send. I've been told it is best to write the addresses in red because of superstitions and to not send anything too valuable or to seperate things into multiple boxes because it might not make it.

ALSO, if you want me to write you letters email me or leave a comment with your address. I have envelopes and free time and I know how to use it.

Thanks!!

Last night my host mother made me eat two bananas. It doesn’t sound like a big deal, but it was for me. I never, ever eat bananas at home or really even touch them because I’ve always thought they were really, really gross. I literally have no memory of eating any bananas at home that weren’t in a smoothie or banana bread. So far I’ve been able to avoid them, but (1) there’s a bunch of foods here I really would rather avoid than bananas, (2) it was the second time she had tried to get me to eat them, and (3) I feel really guilty because I can definitely tell that they make an effort to offer me special foods. My host mother already thinks I don’t eat because I can’t down an entire quart of rice in one sitting, so I had to give in and eat the banana. To be honest, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. The texture is different, but the taste isn’t (still gross). I could see why they’d be good frozen and covered with chocolate, but I’m not going to be running out to the nearest grocery store to pick some up (which I couldn’t do anyway because they don’t exist here).

It was also the first time the whole family had sat outside at night since I’ve moved in, so it was the first time I really got to see the stars and how awesome they look out here. The power was out, so literally the only light pollution we had was from our kerosene lamp. Wish I could have taken a picture, but you know.

We only spent a short time in Yaounde (Cameroon’s capital) getting our ID cards and being introduced to PC Cameroon’s headquarters, but I shot a video out of the bus window to help everyone out there understand what it’s like. This is just a sample and there are larger buildings in town, but for the most part this is what I saw:

This part of Cameroon is so green and vegetated. There are a lot of hills too. Here is an attempt to show off the landscape right outside of Yaounde:

Thankfully, I finally have both power and internet at the same time so that I can finally post. I just moved into the homestay where I will be for the first 5 weeks of training in a tiny village (aka about 15 houses), but when I first arrived there was no power. Power is pretty erratic here and cuts on and off at any time. Besides the internet, the greatest gift power gives us is crazy African music videos. We just watched a whole bunch of them while I ate dinner and I hope this becomes America’s newest import.

Where I slept

Tuesday: My own bed in Durham, NC

Wednesday: Holiday Inn at Arch St. in Philadelphia, PA

Thursday: American Airlines

Friday: Novatel Hotel in Brussels

Saturday: Jet Hotel in Douala, Cameroon

Sunday: Hotel Jouvence 2000 (cool name?) in Yaounde, Cameroon

Monday: My mosquito-netted haven in Nyamsong, Cameroon

It was a crazy journey to get here to our training site. We all met in Philadelphia for a day to meet and orient before we left for Cameroon out of NYC. Right before we began boarding at JFK (after about 7 hours of waiting… thanks Peace Corps for making sure we got there with enough time to spare) there was a freak thunderstorm that came out of nowhere. It rained really hard for a while, so our flight was delayed. Then it was delayed a little more because the line for planes waiting to take off got so long. Eventually we got to Brussels, but the gate agents wouldn’t let us try to make our connecting flight to Cameroon even though boarding wasn’t supposed to start for 5 minutes. PC paid for us to spend the night in Brussels, although we weren’t allowed to leave the hotel so don’t ask me how Brussels is because I don’t know. We had to get a new flight the next day, but it flew into Douala instead of Yaounde so we ended up about 2 days or so behind on orientation and had to jam it all in to get to our homestays Monday night. It has been rough being so nomadic and it feels like I’ve been gone months already instead of barely a week.

The group in Douala

CAMEROON.PEACECORPS.GOV

History of the Peace Corps in Cameroon

The Peace Corps entered Cameroon in 1962 with 20 Volunteers who came as math/science teachers. Peace Corps Cameroon’s program grew and diversified to include inland fisheries, credit union/cooperatives education, English teaching, community forestry, health, and community development. Since then, approximately 4,000 Volunteers have served in Cameroon. Currently, there are four active projects in Cameroon: education, Community health, agroforestry, and small enterprise development. The common themes that run through all Peace Corps Cameroon projects are impact, focus, counterpart involvement, Volunteer competence, and organizational professionalism. Through collaboration and good teamwork, the Peace Corps has made a difference in many aspects of life in Cameroon, one community at a time.

Community Health Project

Having gone through numerous revisions and updates over the past 20 years to effectively meet Cameroon's continuously evolving needs, the community health project, returns in 2006 as a combined community health and community development project. As such, it supports the priorities of the Ministries of Public Health and MINADER, collaborating with health care and community development professionals, to empower communities to improve their quality of life by assessing their needs and resources and undertaking their own projects to strengthen local health and community conditions. Additionally, the project is designed to assist the government of Cameroon to extend preventive health care, self reliance, and health promotion to the community level.

This past May, I graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with degrees in Nutrition and French. For my next step in life, I am going to put what I've learned in school to use as a Public Health Coordinator in Cameroon with the Peace Corps. Cameroon is a very bountiful country in Western Africa, where one of the official languages is French but a number of local languages are also spoken.

My adventure lasts 27 months from September 15, 2010 to December 2012. The first three months in Cameroon I will receive language and skills training to help me do my job. During this time, I will live with a host family who will help me adjust to the culture and learn a new daily routine. After the training period is over, I will be placed somewhere in Cameroon and will start my assignment for the next two years, whatever that shall be. Health volunteers can work in a wide range of areas and capacities, such as in health clinics or with local NGOs. Peace Corps positions are kept very open initially so that volunteers can have freedom to pursue their own small projects.

Although I do not know for sure how accessible internet will be in Cameroon, I will try to update my blog as often as possible. One of the main goals of the Peace Corps is to educate other Americans about foreign cultures, so I hope my blog will help you better understand another part of the world.

Lots of love,

Shannon