Hiiii!

Hiiii!
This week has gone incredibly fast, hope the same for everyone back in WI dealing with the snow and cold, and hope it's letting up a bit!

In the last week I've gone out to the field TWICE! Last Friday Obam and I went pretty far out into the bush and ended up at this amazing house: big, huge porch with white arches, really nice "yard". We got a tour of the yard and the area surrounding which included a little stream that circled the house and was filled with these beautiful ducks floating around and under a makeshift bridge. I felt like I was in a fairy tale, or as fairytalesque as Cameroon can get. We had a meeting at the house with a few people who were trying to form a GIC (pretty much just a group of people working with the same goals) to grow manioc. The conversation was a little bit hard for me to follow, what with switching almost every word to Boulou, French, Boulou, French and then changing topic just as often. Safe to say I ended up catching about 5 minutes of the entire meeting. Then as I'm completely just tuned out for lack of comprehension the guy sitting across from me looks directly at me and says (in perfect French clearly) "What is the most important thing about raising pigs"? Now pretty safe to say I could not answer that question correctly if my life were on the line among English speakers,but he acted a little perturbed that I did not know the answer and will probably think of me as the white girl who doesn't really know anything! However, everything ended just fine with me leaving after drinking 2 glasses of palm wine, some homemade orange juice, and receiving as gifts 2big sticks of sugarcane, 2 pineapples, and 13 bananas!

I also went out to the field on Wednesday. We were to meet with a tomato growing GIC, but the guy simply forgot, thus we had nothing to do! We ended up just driving around the villages, and saw a lot of people I had met before, so I didn't get harassed quite as much (or not that I understood at least :>). We visited a primary school out in the bush and determined that Obam and I are going to help them have an example garden in the back school yard, and I told Obam I wanted to give a lesson on environmental issues, which he seemed excited to help with. I also asked about medicinal plant gardens, and although none really exist we went to visit an elderly woman (I'd met once before) who knows pretty much everything about every medicinal plant and herb and is responsible for helping women from around Cameroon give birth and care for problems during pregnancy and in infancy. She spends hours every day out in the bush collecting plants, and I think it would be really interesting to just follow her around for a day and listen to all she knows! Lastly, we visited a basket weaver (after my constant prodding) and I told him how much I wanted to learn and he told me I could come by on Sunday, collect materials with him, and drink palm wine All in all, this was the most productive I've felt yet since I felt like I knew some people and had IDEAS!

Things at home are going just fine. I haven't gotten any more furniture yet, since I have not felt like trying to move it to my house! But I'm used to how it is now, so it might be a while. My postmate has been having problems with her water running continuously and not turning off, so I have been going there to do my laundry and take showers (aka: being lazy and not carrying water on my head, and getting to use an actual shower instead of bucket and cup. She has too much water and I have none! My neighbor kids still are bringing me plenty of fruit: guava and papaya.My neighbor man has added 3 new plants to my front porch display, made me a new flower arrangement for inside (really enormous pink rose looking flowers), and found me a massive birds nest (it's an intricate candy cane shaped thing…I have no idea what kind of bird it is from, but he came in and hung it on my wall for me. I have plenty of house decorations! I think however that my neighbor girl (22 year old) is angry with me, this is evident by the fact that her minimum of 2 visits a day to my house have stopped and she no longer demands to know where I am going at all times or requests to come with me, which, hey, it's kind of peaceful! But I think it all started with this police man who sits at the barrier right by my house who started asking her to ask me if I wanted him to be my boyfriend. I told her no several times, she asked for my phone number which she subsequently gave to him without my permission (and I've come to find out once a Cameroonian man gets my phone number I do not stop getting calls). I told her how much it bothered me and I also told her she needed to stop asking me for things all the time which since my birthday she has kept up! I always feel a little horrible not giving things, since obviously I can afford things even as a volunteer more easily than a family of 12 living off of one person's salary. It's hard to rationalize when the Peace Corps tells us to say we are volunteers and need to change things via actions that will be sustainable after we are gone and not through material handouts. So I felt like a huge jerk telling her to stop asking me for things, but I decided to make it known I can't just start giving out stuff to her and everyone else and hope she'll eventually realize why?! Maybe that's asking way too much…

In other marriage proposals --- I have heard possibly the best reason for me to marry: "You should get married because if your mother had not married you would not have been born", now if that just doesn't want to make me marry immediately I don't know what will! I also have received a pick up line: "you look like Barbie" thus still contemplating shaving my head (ok, not really).

Lastly, I went with my postmate to watch the semifinals of the Africa Cup (Cameroon vs. Ghana) with a French missionary couple in Ebolowa. Cameroon won!!!! So now they are on to the finals --which has everyone around here extremely excited --soccer is definitely their pride and joy.

So, all's well, hope you feel the same!