Teasing the MEAN monkey!

Hello all!
I am currently writing this on a friend's computer, and I am extremely excited about the English keyboard and my ability to take my time typing and making sure I get to say all that I want to say! Where to start…SOOOO much happened in the past week, it feels like an eternity has gone by since I last posted here! I started out the week leaving Bangante on Sunday with my counterpart and a group of other volunteers who were all headed to either the South or the East provinces (not many of us in actuality). I take a pretty crowded van down to Yaounde and then a REALLY NICE bus (actually seats and only one person per seat) to Ebolowa…and the roads are paved…and super nice, so that's excellent! From Ebolowa to my house (and the beginning of my village) it's only a ten minute motto ride…and it's beautiful! To get to my house you head out between two steep hills on either side of the road covered in trees…it's definitely jungle. My house is one in a group of three apartments right at a fork in the road, I don't really have many neighbors, but I am right next to my landlord’s house (he pretty much built these apartments in his yard…thus I'm sad because I don't have a yard of my own, but I'm going to do some bribing via fresh produce and get him to let me make a garden in his yard). My landlord is a retired military official, AND I am directly…and I mean, directly, across the street from a Gendarmerie (a police station), thus don't be too concerned about my safety! And if that's not enough for you…I have a pretty fierce monkey in a cage in my front yard as well…which my counterpart enjoys taunting, this is interesting.

I spent my week driving around on the back of my counterpart's motto being introduced to absolutely anyone and everyone in the village, to sum it up I met: police, the mayor/school principle, hospital staff, nursery (plant nursery that is) employees, many Ministry of Agriculture employees, village farmers, a woman who makes chocolate (who I want to work with…for obvious reasons), gendarmes, my supervisor Hans (who is a the Ministry of Agriculture delegate for rural and community development, which sounds pretty important), among other random people. I also went to see a water project that had been completed in a neighboring village and got to hike out to a GORGEOUS area in the middle of the rainforest with waterfalls, and oh my god I wanted to swim so badly I nearly subjected myself to whatever parasites I would supposedly get just to do so. I also attended a meeting with an organization from Yaounde, ANAFOR, which is an Agro Forestry NGO and I had dinner with a lot of different people: my supervisor, some neighbors of the volunteer I was staying with, some French missionaries, a women’s HIV/AIDS group, etc… My counterpart (Oscar Obam) has told people I am his child "Kate Obam"...so just call me that from this point on

For the first 4 nights at my site I stayed with the current health volunteer in Ebolowa, Lindsey. We got along excellently and she was SOOO knowledgeable about pretty much everything in town. She was finishing her service the week I was there, so I helped her pack up her house and she moved out on Thursday. We took all her stuff to our Post mate’s house (the education volunteer who also lives in Ebolowa) Rachel, and stayed there for another night. On Friday a health volunteer in my training group, Kim (who lives about 45 minutes from me to the north) came down and met up with us. Rachel, Lindsey, Kim and I all got in a car to head out en Brousse (into the bush) to go to meet up with a health volunteer and 2 trainees in my training group in Mvanga (which is only about 30 some miles from the border of Gabon). This car ride was, to say the least, interesting…14 plus a baby in a car, 7 in the back seat where I got stuck…3 hours…incredibly bad dirt roads…I think I stopped feeling every part of my body. Wow. I choose to forget about this experience!

Upon arrival in Mvanga we spent Saturday at a wedding. This wedding was also the traditional ceremony but very unlike the one I went to previously, a lot more dancing and I wasn't forced to sit in the 2 nd row again (however they did bring us a couch OUTSIDE so that we were more comfortable...they are very concerned about uncomfortable white people). I ended up getting sick this day, so I ended up hanging out at the volunteer's house the rest of the night and running back and forth to the pit latrine in the middle of the night...ha-ha...its actually kind of funny because the malaria medication I am on makes me slightly paranoid and I spend a lot of time thinking little noises are actually things like wild boars and getting very worked up about it(which by the way I don’t think even exist here)...and this happened to me many times in the pit latrine. This isn’t as bad as some other trainees stories of anti-malaria paranoia however...there are some good ones!

I also had a lot of bad luck...my permanent retainer broke off of one side of my teeth stabbed me in the tongue for a week until I ripped it out (I am very strong) and then I chipped my molar while eating some delicious caramel peanuts (don’t worry mom or dentist-to-be Brad because it was just a little bit and it just felt weird for a while and I’m getting it checked out); and THEN my camera broke...it just beeped and froze and the screen turned white...and I think I fixed it temporarily...but well see...that was the most depressing thing for me :^( our trip back from Mvanga began at 2 am (the only time a vehicle leaves from this town) and we packed over 26 people into a van and did not arrive back in Ebolowa until 9 am...this is also a period of time I would like to never repeat. I have one word for the entire weekend OWWW! Upon return to Ebolowa I made it up to Yaounde by 4 pm but was SO incredibly dead I decided to stay there in the CASE, which is like a peace corps hostel...and REALLY nice, but clearly the electricity was out when we arrived...so no hot shower yet...but really clean sheets and we ate pizza and ice cream and Twix bars, definitely an even trade.

I brought back gifts for my family...a wooden carving for my mother ( a little statue of a woman) and she has carried it around with her for the past 3 days talking about how beautiful it is constantly and kissing me EVERY time I come home...apparently it was a good gift idea!? Ha-ha... I also received "beeps" (which is when someone calls your cell phone and hangs up really fast so it just rings once) from my mother or one of my sisters every day that I was away! Lastly; my mother is making grandiose plans of visiting me in Ebolowa because she is very concerned with my ability to cook for myself...she plans to come for 2 days "do nothing but cook" and then leave...ha-ha we'll see about that.
And last, but obviously not least, I have eaten so much meat a lot of you in the states won’t even believe me! Beef and chicken and then last night my mother tried to slip in some "pork" which tasted like a hairy tongue and I don’t think it was actual pork at all...that was the first time I couldn’t finish something...it’s like fear factor every day :^)

Alright...once again MISS YOU ALL