It's been too long...

Wow, it's been a long long LONG time since I've last written and for that I apologize! I have use of Kim's computer currently so that makes it a lot easier to type this up…but I'll try to be more on the ball…AFTER my parents trip here! It's really very soon, they'll be leaving the states in only a week and I will be meeting them at the airport in yaounde next Tuesday. Wow. I've made some plans for while they're here that I'm pretty excited about. My friend, Leo, who I work with at Mefoup actually has a car and has offered to drive us all down to the border of Cameroon and either gabon or equatorial guinea, where there is apparently a huge market and maybe we'll get to just step over the line and say we were there! While down in Mefoup they'll get to see us harvest my soy field there too. We'll also be spending a day or two with my homestay family, none of which I've seen since I left bangangte in the very beginning of December. My homestay mother is very very excited and told me we will all be staying at the house…we'll see how that all turns out. Then we'll be going to Bamenda (my favorite place in this country), possibly Foumban ("art capital of cameroon"), and Limbe (the beach). Around Ebolowa everyone is getting excited for their trip here as well, Billy is planning "a surprise" for my parents, we have lots of stuff being planned by Hans and Serges, and a couple of the other volunteers will hang out with us while we're near their posts. Needless to say I'm quite ready for them to be here!

Aside from that I'll start this blog post by sharing my two recent incidents of intense homesickness… Get the sad stuff out of the way :>) The first was this past Saturday when I went down to Mefoup. It ended up being a late day and Leo drove me back around 7:30 at night…so by this time it was already dark, the temperature was down to an astounding 68 degrees already (this is the coolest time of year), I was sitting BY MYSELF in the front seat of a nice car with a sunroof open, wearing a seatbelt too! Windows open…cool breeze…driving past people burning their fields next to the road reminded me of the smell of campfires…I almost felt for a second like I was in the states on a summer/fall night. I always love the smell of that time of year and just that feeling you get with the wind in your hair and the cool air all over the place! (I'm not too good with the description here, you know what I mean!)…It was all very sad in the end when we pulled up at the control gates to town and someone yelled "la blanche" in my face. Then the next incident was that Sunday. I was at home and Billy was talking about these "Wisconsin badger" jerseys we're still going to have made (by the way my team is apparently unstoppable…they've won every game they've played!). So he was talking about an example for what to model the jerseys after, and he showed up at my door with this dirty ripped up really old school letterman jacket, that sure enough, is red and white, big picture of bucky on the back, university of Wisconsin, badgers…everything. I almost burst out crying on the spot, which would have been hilarious and far too awkward all in one moment…so instead I tried to smile as big as possible and adequately express my amazement that this jacket somehow ended up in my village…in Cameroon, by way of Wisconsin. Just like myself I guess. Pretty crazy.

Let's see…I hate getting to this point where so much has happened between now and the time I've last written that this post will either get really long and detailed or just not say all I want it too, and neither option is suitable…I'll begin where I left off last time. It was a few weeks ago now that I was up in the West province for the environmental education camp. My friend Jessica was in charge or planning it and she did an excellent job of getting everything set up and inviting kids. We ended up having a relatively good attendance of between 7 and 18 kids everyday. We discussed the full range of environmental topics, which was clearly a test of our French ability, but ended up going pretty well. A few of the kids were those kids the teacher would probably write on their report card "a pleasure to have in class" if this were America…they showed up every day, participated, pretty much could finish our sentences for us…it was great to have them there and by the end of the camp we were having a lot of fun with them. Our last day we made jumpropes out of recycled plastic bags and then spent an hour, us 4 white girls, with about 8 highschool boys doing double dutch…which made for some good pictures! While up in the West I stayed with either one of my two friends Nura and Jessica. Compared to my house, which is only a 45 minute walk from Ebolowa on a nice paved road (I really got lucky with this), they are both between 2-4 hour walk from town on really crappy (read: MUDDY) roads from Baffousam. When I was up there is was the very start of the rainy season in the west…actually I'm pretty positive the rain came with me, since every day it just poured, what seemed like constantly…the roads were horrible! To get to Jessica's house mottos won't even brave the road when it's like this so we spent most of our time walking to and from the school where we had the camp, town, and her house. It's in interesting game of concentration, balance, and calf muscle endurance when walking in mud of this type…especially in flipflops. I completely destroyed my one pair that had been on their last leg. I bore holes all the way through the soles in several places due to the opposite forces of mud suction and my leg strength :>) We also got to spend a day in Foumban, an artisan city really close to Baffousam. A really fun group of us ended up going and we did a lot of shopping, my favorite purchase of which were these small bronze statues of pygmy witchdoctor looking man and woman…they make me laugh everytime I look at them…aka: good buy! We also went to the sultan's palace in Foumban. The sultan is just like the chiefs in other towns, but the Bamoun culture here places a lot of emphasis on him and he's overall just a really important guy (like my summaries of such things?!) There is a museum in the palace, which is incredibly well put together and the most actual museum like place I've been to in Cameroon, complete with a musical performance at the end! Nura's good friends with the chief of her village, who is apparently good friends with the sultan, so we had an "appointment" to meet him. This ended up falling through because at the moment we were there it was a big celebration for the graduation of a new Koran class. We didn't realize this until we were in the middle of it and the streets leading out of the palace were closed off by a mass of kids singing and chanting. So we were cornered, and ended up sitting in some apparently (but unknown to us) restricted area in front of the palace. We subsequently got scolded, asked to move, and then approached by the sultan's wife…who…ended up being from the US virgin islands (I think that's what it was) and speaking PERFECT American English! She was great and arranged for us to sit behind the sultan in his private quarters while we watched the graduation ceremony! What an experience, kinda unprecedented! Good day trip :>)

My trip home from Baffousam was also very interesting, and surprisingly full of good events…I decided to take a private car from Baffousam to Yaounde…in hopes it would take about 4 hours instead of the 7 or 8 buses sometimes take. To do so one stands by the side of the road out of town and gets these "chargers" (random guys) to flag down passenger cars going your way. I was getting really annoyed with these guys because they wouldn't let me flag down cars, and they were doing a really bad job at it…so I decided to work for myself, and sure enough, after about 10 minutes (versus an hour and a half with the guys) I chased down a car (literally) and got a spot in the backseat. Although I was between 2 big guys, one of which kept demanding I get a drink with him in Yaounde and putting his arm around me, the trip went quicker then in the bus and I got dropped off right in front of the peace corps office in Yaounde when we got there! Once in Yaounde I waited for a taxi to the depot area for the buses to the South. A man on the curb next to me was going to the same depot and ended up helping me find the taxi. The whole street of the depot area was closed off, for some reason I don't understand, requiring everyone to get out of the taxis and walk with huge loads of stuff to their agency of choice. For me this can be a very taxing experience, since harassment in the depot can get really really intense. It was exactly as I assumed, in the ¼ mile I had to walk I had all kinds of things yelled at me, all parts of me being grabbed, guys surrounding me…etc…so I decided to try something I hadn't yet used, and caught up to the man that had helped me and been in the taxi with me. I put my arm in his and asked if he would be my husband for 10 minutes. He was great, he just said sure, and then flung people dirty looks, and walked all the way to the depot with me…then just left me WITHOUT asking for my phone number! Fantastic! So once at my agency waiting area things went equally amazing. I made friends with the bathroom attendant, got to pee for free! Then all the workers kept calling me either "sister" or "madame" instead of the usual "baby", "white", or "my dear". THEN most exciting, I bought myself a roasted ear of corn some boy was selling, and turn around 5 minutes later to see him standing there offering me another. Some guy sent me an ear of corn, yes, in the same manner one would send someone a drink in a bar…but then he left me alone too! It was all very nice. When we finally all got on the bus and moving it turned out all the streets in and out of Yaounde were closed off too. My bus was abnormally organized and someone suggested that everyone put in an extra 100CFA for gas and we take some backroads to try to get out of the city. An hour and several rough roads later, we ended up JUST on the otherside of the blockade, and to our joy and the gawking of several groups of police and over 5 miles of backed up traffic, we ended up being the only bus on the road for several hours that was moving! So all these things that could have gone wrong, actually went right. I was very happy. The only bad thing was that someone decided to put their dog in the trunk of the bus, which was right behind my seat, and everytime we hit a bump or took a quick turn the poor thing wailed its heart out right in my ear…
That's the trip then!

On the homefront! A select few of my neighbors have been driving me crazy! A new man is living right next door. He started out blasting Celine Dion all day long, which was harmless enough, but now he has moved on to blasting Cameroonian pop music with VERY loud bass from 6:30 am to 11 pm…and is making my head explode…the cinder block walls don't do much in the way of holding in sound I guess. Then in the last few days people have started taking over the one private area I had…the back of my house. Call my feelings "American", but I like to be able to sit in my house with the curtains open and not expect someone to be directly at the window in every room. I have one lady doing her laundry outside my kitchen window, in the back of my house, the kids peeping in the 2 front windows, and then most recently 2 women will come take turns showering inches from my bedroom window at 10 pm! I looked out the first time I heard the water in the bucket to see what was going on, and sure enough! Naked woman on my porch…why?! On a positive note, I've gotten shelves built into a corner in my kitchen and a corner in my living room, and now I think I'm FINALLY done getting stuff to furnish my house and can spend my money on travel! The shelves look great though, and Kim, Hans, Serges and I celebrated them by bar hopping during the day, for 8 hours…full time job, drinking in this country. Sadly, my 2 favorite neighbor girls are gone for a period of time. I think one might be gone permanently to go to school, but her sister, my water getting buddy Michelle, will hopefully be back. I miss these 2 girls a lot, and I'm sad they left while I was up in the West and didn't get to say goodbye. They were sometimes the only people I would really have a conversation with for a full day! :>( Lastly in the village, there is a female police officer who always likes to talk to me about my running…she does a hilarious imitation of how I run, sidenote…but then one day I passed by her at the road barrier with Hans and she told me 1)that I have pretty feet and 2) that I should marry her husband too so that I can stay in Cameroon with them and we can run together…so, first FEMALE proposal?! It was odd.

Work related things have been slow as usual since we're now just starting the soy harvest. I met with a woman's HIV/AIDS support group the previous health volunteer had started in Ebolowa to discuss starting a soy project with them, and possibly starting an animal raising project too…the woman I'm in contact with from the group, Deboise, is this fantastic, kind and very intelligent person who I'm really excited to work with if anything gets off the ground. I brought my landlady back some information from Baffousam about animal raising as well, and she's already started building cages for rabbits. We started harvesting one of my soy fields at the village Lo'o…I really like harvesting, you just rip the entire plant out of the ground and put it in a basket…it's kinda like pulling weeds…but with nutritional benefits! ;>) We're going to try to organize a cooking with soy class there for when my parents are here. We've also been keeping tabs on the Moringa nurseries we started, and moved one of them that wasn't getting enough sun…Water project is going slow, rocks were collected a long time ago, and an area near the river was cleared for sand, but no work has been done since then. I think I need to step it up and start pushing things along. My other 2 soy fields will be ready to harvest within the next month, and then we'll have cooking classes for them too…and then after that it's time to start clearing land and planting again! At Mefoup there has been some bad luck…least seriously, we had planted a plot of beans and corn right next to the plot of soy. The beans were completely decimated by something, there is not one single plant left standing…so that was depressing…but at least it didn't affect my dear soy! But more seriously, there was a woman at Mefoup, Pauline, who was suppose to be my go to person, the woman in charge of mobilizing the other woman and organizing our work days…she was killed in a car crash a few weeks back…so the village was very affected by that…incredibly disheartening. Sad note to put at the end here. Obam, however, has fully recovered and returned to village last Monday, he can walk again and is almost as good as new! There's the work report in a nutshell, and I hope not too scattered.
SO! That should be about all! Hopefully summed up accurately and at a readable length for you! :>) Bon voyage to my mom and dad!