Everyone is wonderful on birthdays...

Everyone is wonderful on birthdays...I have some damn good friends and family
here’s my post


Another week passed! I spent the whole of last week in and out seeing a lot of other volunteers…which was quite a nice change. After leaving Yaoundé I visited another volunteer and we spent time doing crafts like old ladies while sitting on the porch and people watching. I finally got my cross stitch kit in the mail (thanks mom and dad :>) so I worked on that a lot while she knit…it was great. We went for a series of long walks (and I mean LONG…how else can one pass the time)and explored the forest, etc. She's always wonderful to spend time with and share stories about all the annoyances and happenings since we're at the same point in our service and because I swear she is the long lost twin of my dear WI friend, Jennifer Eileen. :>) She had a small short term invasion of grasshoppers in her latrine, and we spent further time watching lizards on the walls of her house hunt wasps (real life National Geographic, honestly now). She said these things don't usually happen when I'm not there and called me the Pied Piper of Insects,which I'm going to have to agree with. We went to a bar to watch the Africa Cup when Cameroon was playing, things were a little crazy. It reminded me of Badger games actually; when Cameroon scored a goal the entire town was screaming and running around. It was slightly sad to leave and come back to post to once again be alone in my big house! However, it was nice to see there had been no massive ant invasion while I was gone and the second I got home my neighbors got all excited and were very happy to have me back, kissing me on the cheeks and hugging me like crazy. The next night my landlady pulled out a massive jug of palm wine (complete with many floating deceased insects) and I sat on my porch with a whole bunch of my neighbors drinking it, pulling bugs out of my teeth, and hoping once again that cultural integration is really more important than the risk of intestinal parasites. I was once again nominated to the children's section, due to my lack of eloquence in speech, and learned Boulou (the patois in Ebolowa) with the 3 to 8 year olds :>. Learning a foreign language in a foreign language is interesting but the pure and simple fact that I am white, desire to learn Boulou, and can say "Mboulou, on nem voy" (Hello, how are you?) and "mmvoo" (dog) gets people very excited. I also just learned how to say "You weren't raised right" and am extremely looking forward to using it for the first time when the situation presents itself.

My birthday was yesterday, thanks everyone for the emails, calls, and messages. It started off pretty interesting since it's kind of weird to have to go around telling people "hey, it's my birthday today" without feeling like you are asking for something, I didn't really bother with that too much (which I subsequently got yelled at for). It started off with me going for a walk which my two neighbor girls decided to join me for, for the first time (they wanted to "do sports" like I do), we walked about 3 miles, I bought a roll of toilet paper, we visited one of their grandmothers and I got handed a baby again, and then we took a motto back home (4 people on one!). Once we got back people started asking me for things, which here I guess is kind of seen as ok, but I was a little angry (aka: it's MY birthday, why should I give you stuff mentality). So after giving out a banana, a packet of my precious Crystal Light drink mix, and 1/2 a bottle of my cooking oil, I am at the front door and hear a loud crash in the kitchen…unusual. I went to check. Nothing less than a massively fat male goat is on my counter eating my baton (mashed up manioc wrapped in leaves)!!! I had seriously left my back door open for no less than a minute and apparently this goat had a very fine tuned sense of smell… So that was pretty hilarious. For my birthday night I went out with my postmate, her neighbor, and his friend from the university. The friend was informed that he could not hit on me, under no circumstances, with punishment of severe injury and he didn't! Also, since we were with 2 guys, all the other guys stayed away and not once did someone yell "white" at me or say anything to me, or grab me or hit me in any way. It was WONDERFUL!!! We ended up at a bar/dance place and danced for quite a long time, which I have not yet been able to really do in this country (due to the aforementioned common occurrences. I also got a bunch of text messages from people that had been in my training group with me, and 3 of the girls that I'd gotten close with called me (after 11 pm you get unlimited talk time for only 180 CFA~40 cents!!! WOOHOO!!!). I got to catch up with them for a long time. Overall it was definitely a very good birthday, I hand the turning point to the goat. :>)