A Cameroonian Wedding - Buying the Bride!

Another week...Its true what they told us in training weeks go extremely quickly and days go by slow...I’m done with week 4 already! I forgot to mention in my last post that I attended a Cameroonian wedding 2 weekends ago. It was the traditional wedding, apparently each couple has 3 separate weddings here: traditional, church; and then some other one I cannot quite recall, I think legal. Of course, being the white people; we sat in the living room of the house where the wedding was held with the parents and closest family members; while all the other relatives and friends had to sit outside (where you couldn’t see a thing that was taking place) there were 4 of us and 2 ended up coming later...we all felt really bad because we took up these important seats. The wedding consists of a really long drawn out skit in which the bride and the grooms families argue over how much money the grooms will give to the bride; and then the brides family proceeds to "trick" the groom by bringing out false brides (other women) hidden under a piece of cloth. This took a good hour and a half. When they finally paid the right price they brought out the correct bride; there was a lot of singing and clapping and then they took the groom away for an hour of questioning while we all sat there listening to blasting Cameroonian pop music from the HUGE rented stereo system. There was also a hired man recording everything...he had a spot light which he would point directly at you when he chose to tape you and us, once again; being the white people, where featured far too often in the film. Finally the ceremony took place; we all ate the traditional Kola Nut (I think it symbolizes health) and then ate from the ENORMOUS buffet table, which featured off all things...3 goats; entire goats cooked up eyeball-filled heads and all; each in their own shiny silver catering bin. The wedding took 4 hours up to this point and we left; but I assume there was a dance late into the night...it was interesting; but actually quite exhausting!

In other news: I had my language test and my performance evaluation this past week. Apparently, and I find this to be completely inaccurate, I am now "advanced low" in French, which means I moved up from a 3 out of 10 to a 7 out of 10 and am now in the independent learning class, so I don’t have a teacher nor any set hours and I am completely responsible for learning French on my own. I don’t think this is good! I need to talk and have other people talk to me...we'll see how this goes...but due to the fact I still can’t get past the most basic of conversations with...nor understand hardly anything my family says...I’m thinking I need a teacher :^). My evaluation went very well. My home stay intermediary (the person who takes care of all issues between my family and me) told me that my mother loves me and constantly says she's so lucky she got me (and I feel the same way about them...so that’s excellent) and my technical trainer said "the Kate you are now is the Kate you should be at post"...so that was wonderful to hear too...and I got an overall score of 98%...not bad eh!? Considering I still feel lost a lot in general... I also had to give a presentation...which if you know me well you know makes me more nervous than most anything else...mine was on seed harvest and storage and I think it went just fine and everyone told me it was the most useful one that had been given which made me a little more confident in my presentation abilities...but not much...I HATE talking in front of people. We have another one coming up a bit later about culture and I’m definitely more excited since I’m going to do "material culture: basket weaving, pottery, and clothing" ha-ha....sounds great eh?

I had another interesting night with my mother on Friday...we walked over a few streets and a moto pulled up (I never know where I'm going or what I'm doing before the exact instant I do it) and she told me to get on...now, I cant ride a moto without a helmet...she knows this...so I tried to blurt it out in my moment of panic at being found out by PC for disobeying rules and it came out something like "I have need for my helmet; I lost my job" but it got the point across and the moto driver gave me his and then drove very "responsibly" (and kept telling me so) the entire way to a bar; where we met my mother’s "brother" who really couldn’t have been her brother at all because he didn’t even know where she lived: he told me "you are not shy"...I took it as a compliment. Then I made us walk home in a light rain the whole way because of the helmet thing and I ended up falling off of the road, blame it on the uneven pavement, and hurting my foot...not bad, but to the extent where it hurt to walk for 3 days, its better now though!!!! I walked here :^) then we continued on to some rich guys house, he’s a "deputy" and my mother is helping to run his campaign (I think, nothings ever very clear here) and I ate dinner with all these expensive looking men who openly talked about me in front of me...I heard "she's young" and "pretty, she resembles her mother"

My grandmother is still visiting us...we played cards and made fried plantains together (which taste almost like McDonalds French Fries) and she made me eat FAR too many, I think I may die from purely the amount of palm oil I consume in this country. My sisters are doing well...continuing to paint my nails in all the colors under the sun and spray me with perfume. I helped my sister draw pictures for some engineering-like class yesterday, and I cut off a fish’s gills and skin with her (this was kind of major for me as I'm sure you can all understand; but she said I did a good job). My brothers are the same as always...they caught another rat...I was disappointed it wasn’t as large as the first. and to end with the continuing cockroach story of the week: I got to school yesterday; opened my backpack during our coffee break...only to have a cockroach sprint out and run across the veranda...they're trying to infiltrate every aspect of my existence!!!!
Thanks again for the calls/emails/thoughts (you better at least have given me a thought) :^) Love from here. Kate

ps. sorry this was so incredibly long!!!