Yup, I'm still alive...

6/24/2008

Hello from Cameroon!

My apologies for not writing sooner, but the past couple weeks have been such a whirlwind! It actually feels like I’ve been in Cameroon and surrounded by my fellow stagiaires (Peace Corps Trainees) for much longer than a month. Let me catch you up…

Our time in Philly was filled with icebreakers and information on cultural adjustment and expectations. Every staff member there was a former PCV and it really does make you feel like you are joining a big family and an organization that encapsulates so many memories, hopes and history. Peter, our facilitator, was awesome and he even teared up when wishing us goodbye and good luck before we took off for the airport to catch a plane to Cameroon, so cute. The hotel was in the historic district and we got to explore a bit too – even though I’d been to Philly once, I must not have seen much of it because I was impressed by how charming it was. We didn’t have any trouble locating a few bars close to the hotel too J. Everyone in my training class seems great. I think I was surprised by how different we all are and how different our backgrounds are. Not everyone is the stereotypical hippie, liberal type I imagined. For instance, we have everything from a married couple with backgrounds in graphic design and art to someone who left his job at Deloitte doing securities auditing in London to enter the Peace Corps. There are 38 of us total. Cameroon has 4 PC programs in country: Agriculture, Health, Education and Business. Our training class has the Education and Business volunteers and the Agriculture and Health volunteers will arrive in September. Within Education, there are people here doing English, Science, Math, and Computer Literacy and within my group, Small Enterprise Development, we have Business Advisors, Agri-Business Advisors (only 2 people), and NGO Developers (only 3 people including me). As a group, we have a pretty good time together and an easy time getting along. Overall, Philly was an intense/good time spent getting to know one another.

That doesn’t mean that we weren’t aching to get out of Philadelphia and the U.S. generally by the end of it however. We were all pretty giddy at the airport. After about 24 hours of travel time routing through Paris, we landed in Yaounde. Local Peace Corps staff greeted us after we deboarded and have really taken care of us every step of the way. Really, they all seem so professional, approachable and just generally great, I feel lucky to have them watching out for our wellbeing here in Cameroon. We also have had several current volunteers helping us out who have been a great source of information on what to expect since they only went through this process a year or two ago. While we were in Yaounde we didn’t really get a chance to explore the city however, it felt kind of like we were being sequestered in the hotel actually. Because most people’s French isn’t so good and we really had no knowledge of Cameroonian culture or safety in the city, they didn’t let us venture out too far. Basically, we shuttled back and forth between the PC Headquarters and the hotel and ate all of our meals in the hotel too for fear of bacteria, etc. that would make us sick. We did go to the Country Director’s house for dinner one night however, which was pretty awesome. The US Ambassador to Cameroon was there as well, so it was great to meet her.

During our time in Yaounde, we’ve received a lot of info re: culture and safety, especially in regard to our health. They gave us a huge water filter and a honkin big medical kit with everything from bandaids to syringes…not to mention a kit for sending stool samples to the Peace Corps Medical Office in Yaounde. Just what I wanted as my first cadeaux in Cameroon. While I do want to be prepared for anything that comes my way, it’s a bit scary to think about actually needing to use the majority of the stuff included in the kit. But this is what I signed up for, n’est pas? So far, so good though. A few people in our group have fallen sick, but not I (knock on wood).

We also had to take a language test. I’ve been placed in Intermediate Low (the 2^nd language class from the top). We took a technical test for Small Enterprise Development too. Tests don’t usually get me excited, but this one did – it was just a preliminary exam and sort of demonstrated what we will be learning over the next couple months. I’m super geeked. I already feel like I’m learning so much.

Now we’re all in Bangante, settled into our homestay families here and into the first couple weeks of training. The first couple nights at my homestay were a bit of an adjustment – I think it may have been the first time that it really hit me that ‘hey, I’m in Africa’….all the sudden struggling through conversation in French with the strangers I would be living with for the next 3 months in a house and environment which resembled nothing of that which I left behind in the States. Life is good though, life is good…

Before I go, here are a few random notes and observations from my first few weeks in Cameroon...

A la prochaine!

• 6 shots in less than a week = really sore arms.
• Beware: Asking for a Corona at a local bar in Cameroon may result in a big white rock. Who knew that was even on the menu?
• Anyone can join Peace Corps – even celebrities. Amongst our crew we have a real live Indian music video star and a couple that had their green wedding taped for the Sundance Film Festival.
• Even a bunch of supposedly mature, future PCV 20-somethings digress into giddy silliness when confronted with a health session surrounding the sole topic of diarrhea. Didn’t help that the power point started off with “Diarrhea Happens…”
• Potato peelers – a device my host family here had never before seen – seem to be one of those fancy but useless technological advances, at least for Cameroonians. My host mom can peel upwards of 5 potatoes with a knife in the time it takes me, the white girl with her nifty western tool, to peel one. I actually think it was made for those of us who are simply impaired in terms of hand-eye coordination. I’ve already cut myself several times with the knife while helping my host fam prepare dinner. I think they were just trying to make me feel useful by letting me peel the fruit before, and now they just look concerned anytime I ask to help.
• Markets/stores here are not constricted in terms of physical space as they are in the US. One of our trainers, a current volunteer, stated it best by saying that you could take out a lawn chair, cop a squat, and pop a beer anywhere in town and within no time at all, you’ll be shopping. Anything that you might have been looking for from mangoes to shoes will appear before your eyes. Even highways are fair game - people will come running up to your car to sell their goods at every gendarme stop. So far I’ve seen everything from dead monkeys to baby goats for sale at a window near you.
• The mayor of Bangante (Madame La Maire) is a beast at Foozball.
• After only being in Cameroon for a few short weeks, I can already feel it leaving an impression. For instance, I will never again think of mud in the same way. “Bu” as it is called here, is a force to be reckoned with. This is the rainy season (there are only two seasons in Cameroon – the rainy season and the dry season), so it rains just about every day, sometimes multiple times a day. The sky opens and it rains harder than I’ve ever seen it rain before, but only for a matter of minutes each time. Snow days might not exist in Cameroon, but on more than one occasion I’ve had one of my French classes delayed because there was no hearing each other over the drumming of the rain on the roof. The ‘bu’ ensues, caking your shoes and making you stand a good few inches above your normal height. Whats more is that this culture places a lot of emphasis on the cleanliness and presentation of one’s shoes, so people spend every evening cleaning the red earth out of crevices. I’m afraid I will never understand this part of the culture – honestly, if it were me, I think instead of placing an emphasis on having shiny shoes I would just make every pair of shoes the same color as the rouge dirt. Maybe I will start a campaign and make this my secondary project while in the Peace Corps. I think I might also try to make tank tops the norm…not trying to be culturally insensitive concerning conservativeness, but I’m really not digging this farmer’s tan I’ve been perfecting…
• Somehow Spanish soap operas it seems, like some kind of opportunistic virus, find their way into nearly every television market around the world. I remember seeing them in all of their overly dramatic glory on television stations when traveling around the Middle East as well. Now I am forced to watch them nearly every night, dubbed into French (which only increases the drama mind you) when my family flips on the teli after dinner. Really, how does this happen? My only savior is the fact that our family’s television is tapped into the cable of our neighbors – meaning that if they change the station, the channel changes on ours as well. Awesome. I think the dad in the family next door isn’t a fan either. Thank god for that.