Hello hello! Special treat for everyone after this blog entry…wait for it!

Hello hello! Special treat for everyone after this blog entry…wait for it!

Certainly been in and out a lot lately…feels like I'm never really home for more than a day at a time! I spent some time up in Kim's (I'm just going to use her name because I am with her too often to not!) town for the independence/unity celebration…I don't really know what it is about…I think Cameroon combined all their political holidays into this one week or something, at least that's what it seemed like!

Kim held a writing contest as part of the celebration. I helped. Haha…this included us getting omelet sandwiches, telling other people to get everything ready, and then showing up to hand kids paper and sit around and read for 4 hours while the kids wrote about their futures and the future of their country. It ended up going pretty well…but after the first 2 hours the 8 year olds started showing up, and since we didn't specify age from the get go, we ended up with about half of the papers full of drawings and phrases like "I want the president to be president forever". Also, only in Cameroon during an "official" contest like this are you disrupted by events such as the goats making too much noise outside and a crazy drunk women coming to the door at 8 am and yelling things at everyone inside. A few days after the contest we gave out prizes to the winners at the "soccer game for unity"…since everything was very unclear, we assumed that Kim would just stand up, say a few words, and hand out the bags of tee-shirts. However, this whole contest idea was rapidly taken over by the "officials" in the community, they gave a big speech, made the kids stand in line for applause, had random people including myself (without even informing me they just call my name into the microphone!), the mayor, the delegate of agriculture…etc…hand out the prizes and get photos taken with the winners…in front of the entire town…awkward times pretty much sums it up!

Another "event for unity" included a march. For this we showed up to the center of town at 6 am…they pack about ½ the population into one vehicle, we get on mottos, and drive 10 kilometers to the northern border of the south province. Once we get there all the women are told they need to have an obligatory medical exam. Of course, this means there is one man from the hospital with a blood pressure cuff and a stool. No one forms a line, but just a big pack and a few women get their blood pressure taken after some pushing and shoving. They never got around to us (or half the other women for that matter) so I guess it's a good thing I'm not afflicted with hypertension?! After this we do some stretching, which looked to me more like line dancing…I just took pictures…I guess it's also a good thing I'm not a sufferer of stiff joints. :>) Then we are distributed our free gift! Tee-shirts! We were so excited about the tee-shirts (I always am)…but we soon discover that they do not say anything exciting like "march for unity" but are instead plain grey XXL. Very sad. However we did get cloth, hand written numbers to pin on our backs! The march itself was just fine, but I have NEVER seen a cameroonian walk as fast as all these people did, either unity is a highly motivating purpose or there was a big cash prize for the winner! Our goal was to not be last so we wouldn't be deemed the weakest and further the stereotype of weak white people. However, somehow kim and I got stuck between the 2 big groups ahead and behind us…and thus were easy to pick out of the crowd. This clearly inspired 10 mottos to encircle us as we entered town at the end of the march and follow us into the gauntlet of waiting spectators screaming things at us and cheering. Once again, all I can say is…awkward!

We also attended the "unity parade"…which starts 2 hours late, and consists of all the school children from town and the surrounding areas wearing their uniforms and marching 200 meters across an open field in front of a stage where all the important people (and us) sit. I occupied myself by taking pictures of other unsuspecting spectators. Lastly, we had to go to the sous-prefet's party (a guy with a rank somewhere above mayor). Parties here are THE MOST awkward of all awkward situations. We enter the sous-prefet's living room as we are announced by a man on a microphone next to the door. We then take seats in chairs which line all the walls of the room. Music blasts, no one talks, everyone stares at each other and waits for the food. The food is served 2 ½ hours after the party has "started". We eat. They clear everything away. Then the awkward first dance takes place. They choose people at random (I swear sometimes they know who absolutely does not want to be called and then choose you) to dance the first dance in pairs they select. Of course Kim and I get called and have to dance with 60 year old men. The dance lasts for 30 seconds. Everyone laughs at us. We sit down and contemplate how soon we can successfully escape unnoticed. We stay 10 more minutes before deciding, the answer is NOW!

Aside from all the eventfulness due to unity…I've done a bit of work around my village. I had a meeting about a water project at the village Lo'o. Silly me assumed that when they asked me to come for the meeting, that I would be solely an observer! I got there, sat down, and everyone was just staring at me until someone told me to start. So…I guess I can say I winged it…because I have NO IDEA how one does water projects! But now I guess we are building a water pump. Haha… Other than that, Kim and I went to the village Mefoup to do a soy presentation and had record attendance of 43 people! Everyone seemed pretty into it and a lot of people requested recipes books a fellow volunteer made. Clearly however, after the meeting the first individual to come "ask a question" is a 50 year old man, who comes up to us and whispers in horrible English "I want a woman to marry"…seriously, if only I could be a man in this culture for 5 minutes!

Lastly, last thursday was my 8 month anniversary with Cameroon! Not like I'm counting or figuring this stuff out or anything, but in one more month I'll already be a third done with my service. Woah.

SPECIAL EDITION!!!
Pests and Food Products

I wanted to describe the ways in which the pests in my home affect EVERY SINGLE food product I own in order to gain your pity and make you oooh and aaaah at the tiny ecosystems I find in everything from my flour to my zesty blend spice container. We will start with everyone's favorite…ants. There are 3 main types of ants I have identified in my home. We have the large biting black/red ant, the small blank ant, and the tiny orange ant. Tiny orange ants are by far my largest frustration, and have been deemed to be worse in my house than any other volunteers in the South (this is the part where I garner your pity). Now, my prior knowledge of ants led me to believe they only liked sweet things: candy, pure sugar, syrup, etc…this is OH so wrong. Ants consume all food indiscriminately in my home! An onion slice falls on the ground, within 5 minutes…covered in small orange ants. Butter, keep it in it's covered plastic container in a Ziploc bag…2 days later when I use it again…boom full of ants (and often black fuzzy mold). Bread, eat ½ a baguette, but the rest in a Ziploc bag…next afternoon when I want to make a sandwich…wham ants…inside every crevice, those holes which normally make bread so airy and delightful are simply a labyrinth of fun for the ants. And on and on, even spices! They ate my rosemary. I wanted to cry. The little ants are handy in one respect though, they eat other dead bugs. I kill a cockroach, and throw it outside my door, within an hour the thing it entirely gone! The large biting black/red ants were the invaders of my sink during their migration past my house. Oddly enough they usually are only out and about now at night and have a very defined path along the edge of my back porch. Recently something has lured them into the kitchen at night (in far smaller amounts, thank god) and they have been doing evil things like eating my bananas THROUGH the peel. WHY?!?!

Next on the list we have mice. I only saw one in my house that one time (when it did a sweet back flip in my kitchen)…however they are known to be at large due to their lack of discretion in eating my food and pooping in a specific corner about once a week behind my bed in the middle of the night (sneaky little jerks). Mice enjoy chewing through plastic and eating labels off of containers. Ziploc bags left too long with something in them…corners chewed off by mice. Small spreadable cheese in wrapper, in box left too long…chewed through by mice. Cinnamon bottle with apparently delicious label (I bought it…I guess I found myself drawn to the container as well, but didn't think to taste the label)…chewed up by mice. Even the skin on onions get gnawed off by these guys! I repeat…jerks!

Moving on…we have other insects that like to lay eggs. I enjoy pasta so I bought a small bag. I ate some and put the rest in a Tupperware container to store for 2 weeks while I was gone. Who'd have thought this could be a bad idea?! When I opened it next, there were huge bugs who had burrowed inside of the pasta tubes and were living half imbedded in the pasta! So…you know what this means…bugs that size can't get into a Tupperware container in any other way than by eggs…thus every time I eat pasta I'm getting a good dose of bug protein in egg form! Other egg layers include the maggot like things in all flour. My flour is always in a Tupperware too…but that doesn't stop these guys from going about their business havin' babies by the second in my food. Before using flour here you have to put it all through a fine sieve to get out all the bugs, their larvae, end eggs. However, I'm pretty sure the sieve isn't small enough…oh well…it'll maybe stop me from eating raw cookie dough?! One cool thing about the flour larvae is that they make paths down the edges of the container in the flour…kinda like those ant house/maze things kids in the States have…and I like to observe them…and then eat their babies. Maggots also find themselves into almost any fruit that gets a little too ripe on my counter, and I've, on more than one occasion , forgotten to take a good look at my guava before biting in and have gotten a mouthful of fruit + little worms! Yum.
…are you grossed out yet?!...

Lastly we've got the mold. And since fungus is neither plant nor animal, I allow it to be called a pest! With no refrigeration you can imagine that food is quick to rot…but wow, I sometimes find myself pretty astounded at just how fast mold can take over a tomato that was good just the night before, or grow on my dishsponge if I don't bleach it every few day, or inside a container of spices I guess I must have stupidly stuck a contaminated utensil into?! On a sidenote, un-food related…mold has even grown on my pants folded up on my shelf! Humidity…I tell ya!

Alright! That's it! Enjoy your lunch ;>)