Tu va t'habituer....

It literally means, you are going to habituate yourself. This is one of the most frequent statements I hear on a daily basis from Cameroonians and while it is almost always a response to me explaining that I am not cold in the mornings or evenings here, and that the thought of 140 degree weather in March and April makes me want to cry, it's a helpful philosophy to have. You'll get used to it. Right now I think I'm at the second stage of culture shock as defined by our medical manual where it seems like everything is different and the habituating is a bit of a never-ending process. Yesterday I saw a child in a full-on snow suit complete with a fur-trimmed hood at 7 am....it was probably 60 degrees. And he was probably the envy of the neighborhood. Everyone gets seriously bundled up here in the mornings and looks at me like I am crazy in my short sleeves and skirt. Don't I know it's winter here? It hasn't rained since mid-October and won't until May or maybe June. Moving from Seattle, the idea of eight months without rain seems impossible, but the reality of the situation, and the gravity of it, is strikingly apparent every time I pass another huge river bed that has been reduced to miles of sand dotted with people washing clothes in the puddles of water they've dug down two or three feet to reach. And this is the cold season, where temperatures dip to 55 or so overnight and hit 95 in the shade at midday. Some days the sunlight is tempered by what look like clouds that could hold rain, but most of the time that's actually all the dust the Harmattan winds blowing down from the Sahara are bringing in.
Climate is just the first, albeit the most ever-present, difference I'm encountering here. Time is a whole different ballgame too, with most meetings I've been present at running on for 3 or 4 hours, partly because few people even begin to show up until at least an hour after the scheduled starting time. Another place time scheduling seems to be very flexible is the schools, which are supposed to run from 7:30 to 2:00 but inevitably end around noon or so, often because there are not enough teachers to teach all the subjects. At the high school (lycee) here there are nearly 1600 students but only about 22 teachers, 11 of whom just left for additional training in the provincial capital. This includes the only English teacher they had, and the principal has been trying to recruit me to step in. I'm going to start working with their English club, but don't feel ready to commit to a teaching job just yet. It's going to be an uphill battle for the students in exam classes to get fully prepared with so few instructors though, and from reports from other volunteers it sounds like unfortunately this is the norm rather than an exception throughout at least this province, if not all of Cameroon. I hope I'll get a better sense of the situation as my work with the Club Anglais continues.
The other day I was walking back to my house with a friend wearing a baseball cap to keep some of the sun off my face. An old man called out to me, “Bonsoir, pere!” an interesting variation on the usual calls of “Nassara”, “La blanche” or “Ma soeur” which had my friend in stitches laughing as he explained that the man thought I was a priest. Guess he missed the skirt! The initial perception any given Cameroonian decides to have of me is shaped by a complex and varied mix of experiences they've had with non-Africans. While I am neither explicitly a missionary trying to save souls (though I certainly have been entrusted with a mission in my service here) nor another traveler passing through town I am also obviously not one of this village, not yet. Children who don't live in my quartier still hopefully demand 'cadeaus', 'bonbons' or 'argent' from me routinely and only today did I finally get charged the same price as the rest of the villagers for an item of street food, a small step in a struggle that I imagine will continue for quite a while. Throughout all of this though I am continually reminded of how lucky I am to get the chance to work through these growing pains, to uncover more and more of the puzzle that is daily life in Cameroon. As a wonderful line from the poet Ben Okri reminds me, I have been given such “a gift of freedom to think and remember and understand,” to get used to a wholly different way of life so that I can better find ways to give something back somewhere along the way.

By the way, I've been here for over 100 days now!

So, I've been meaning to put up a new post for a while now, but have been procrastinating a bit because I really didn't know what to write about....there has been so much going on in my life here in Cameroon but at the same time it isn't necessarily the time of stuff that is breaking news, or makes for a terribly interesting blog read, I don't imagine. However, as I am sufficiently embarassed that the other day I received a letter from my friend Tans referencing my Obama post (knowing that mail takes at least a month and usually closer to two to get to me from the U.S., I have just bought myself two hours of internet and will take a stab at making this interesting for you all. So here it is, the first post from me as an official Peace Corps Volunteer!

Myself and the 27 other volunteers in my stage were sworn-in in the presence of the U.S. Ambassador to Cameroon, the Peace Corps Country Director and many other regional Cameroonian dignitaries on December 4 in Pitoa, the village where we had lived and trained for the previous 10 weeks. The next day we said goodbye to one another and our homestay families and took off for our respective posts throughout the Grand North of Cameroon. For me this meant a four hour bus ride followed by about an hour car ride through the mountains to my village. This trip is usually made on a motorcycle, but while I've come to believe its possible to fit nearly anything on a moto, two suitcases and a bicycle might be pushing it. Honestly though, one of these days I'm going to devote an entire post to a song I'm writing, to the tune of "Down by the Bay", called "On a Moto" and its going to be a wonderful chronicle of some of the more ridiculous things I've witnessed being transported on motorcycles across this country.

I should have time for that these days too, as life in village so far is a bit slower than that of training. My past for weeks have largely been spent settling into my house and community and celebrating the holidays. First up was Tabaski, also known as Fête du Mouton, which literally translates to Celebration of the Lamb. It's a Muslim holiday which follows 70 days after Ramadan and celebrates the story of God's command to Abraham to sacrifice his son and then God's intercession to save the child by substituting a ram after Abraham had demonstrated his obedience. It is celebrated with lots of music, dancing and consumption of a lot of lamb. Christmas was spent in Maroua, my provincial capital, with fellow Peace Corps Volunteers and featured 90° weather and chicken fajitas for dinner, made from whole cooked chickens we bought off the street. As I write this it is New Year's Eve and I'm back in village preparing to celebrate with a volunteer from a neighboring village. We're going to attempt to make pizza from scratch in a dutch oven...report on the results to follow.

When I'm not busy fêting I've been getting a feel for the health realities in my community here. I spend two mornings a week assisting with pre-natal consultations at the local hospital and will be going out into the mountains this week with my counterpart to observe the routine vaccination outreach program. The job is definitely made more interesting by the fact that in 9 out of 10 cases, interacting with patients means having someone translate my questions from French to Mafa, the most prominent local language, and the translating the responses back into French for me, which I sometimes then need a minute to work out to English. I'm hoping to begin studying Mafa soon, but in the meantime its really interesting to be so dependent on another person to accurately and reliably understand and translate every single thing you want to say. Once again every day is a learning experience, some come easier than others, but literally just walking down the street staring at the beautiful mountains that surround me and the people of this place I am constantly in awe of how lucky I am to be experiencing all of this, now and for the next two years. I miss all my friends and family often, especially throughout this holiday season, but I am thankful everyday for this amazing journey and thankful to all of you out there who are following me on it. Bonne année à tout le monde!

Barack Obama Coiffure

On the way into Garoua, our provincial capital for the time being, there is a hair salon of sorts which has recently changed its name... I don't know exactly whose coiffure it was originally, but last week it was officially re-christened, "Barack Obama Coiffure". The new and improved Barack Obama Coiffure joins the legions of "Fan Club Barack Obama" establishments that have spontaneously materialized over the last two weeks. These days on the streets of our training town the standard greeting of, "Nassara!" is occasionally replaced with "Barack Obama!!", always accompanied by a jubilant pump of at least one fist. As I imagine most people abroad at the moment could affirm, people here in Cameroon are absolutely hysterically excited about the next President of the United States, and it has been really cool to witness that excitement and hopem. Really and truly this victory has become a victory for all Africans in the eyes of so many people here... "On va dominer!", "We are going to dominate!" one of my neighbors yelled to me yesterday. It's really a magic time to be an American abroad, at least in Cameroon, because overnight the attitude towards Americans has changed dramatically, from ambivalence if not outright dislike to admiration and inspiration. Someone else commented to us the day after the election, "In America, anything really is possible."

The past two weeks have been full of new and exciting changes. On election night I was actually hours away from my homestay family and fellow trainees in a village in the Mandara mountains which will be my home for the next two years (well, after I finish training next month). I woke up at around 4:30 in the morning and stepped outside with my radio in time to catch the end of the live broadcast of John McCain's concession speech under an incredible African sky full of stars.

My week at post with the current volunteer was wonderful. My town is medium-sized and is home to the district health center, serving as a referral center for 11 smaller health centers scattered throughout the neighboring mountain villages. I will be working with all the health centers in some capacity, though the work to be done with each of them varies tremendously. Some have no electricity or running water and all of 10 boxes of medicine in their pharmacies, while others have beautiful, freshly painted buildings and all the basic health equiptment but very few patients coming to use their services. I am both intimidated and exhilirated by the challenges and possibilities that await me there, as well as the nearly limitless potential for projects. The post is also physically beautiful and the previous Peace Corps Volunteers who have served there have had really positive experiences with the people of the area as well. Back in training now I find myself impatient to get to post and get started doing the real service work I anticipated when I joined the Peace Corps.

Every day is a journey

Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.
- Matsuo Basho

I've been struggling a little bit in figuring out what to write on this blog, because although each and every day here is full of new and ridiculous and wonderful adventures, reducing the experiences to a few words that will mean something to anyone else is a little tricky. So today I'm going to try to describe something of my daily life here, though no two days are the same, hoping some of the wonder and novelty and randomness comes across.

Most days I wake up around 5:30 to the call to prayer from the Mosque across town, in time to see the incredible colors left over from the sunrise and bask in the 70° morning air which will heat to 90° or more over the next hour. The next 15 minutes or so are the closest thing I get to silence throughout the day, as the village is only beginning to wake up. By 6:00 life is happening at full speed as my brother and sisters wash themselves and the dishes in the courtyard and my father ushers the goats out into the street to begin their day of grazing around the neighborhood. By 6:45 I'm sitting down to a breakfast which alternates between fried dough, pain au chocolat and an omelet, all with hot, sugary tea. After breakfast it's off to the Peace Corps training center behind my brother and sisters headed to school. It's about a 10 minute walk from my house to the center, and one of the other volunteers made the really brilliant analogy that most days it feels like the opening scene of Beauty and the Beast as someone shouts, "Bonjour!" every 5 or 6 steps and little children run up to shake our hands.

Training consists of multiple hours of language class as well as technical skills training given by current Peace Corps Volunteers and cross-cultural and medical presentations from Peace Corps staff. Our new favorite person is the women who sits just outside the gate of the Peace Corps compound selling bags of peanuts the size of a fist for 25 FCFA, about $0.05. The little finds like this (they come in a sugar-roasted variety too!), or the cheese that doesn't have to be refrigerated, have become our big daily victories as we try to create a little bit of similarity to home away from home here in Africa.

After school we usually head out for bike rides, play soccer or grab a cold drink at one of the local bars before heading home to our families around 6, as the sun goes down and the bats the size of small dogs and the mosquitos start to come out. I eat a dinner of couscous and sauce and then watch spanish soap operas dubbed into French for a while before having a wonderfully cool bucket bath under the stars and going to bed to BBC World News at 9, tucked safely away under my mosquito net.

So that's the average day, though no day is really average, what with dying lizards falling out of trees onto my classmates heads, US presidential election absentee ballots being hand-delivered to us on a Sunday afternoon at a party to benefit Chadian refugees or motorcycles carrying three people and a bleating goat flying by. Life is never boring, and I hope reading about it hasn't been!

Thanks for all your messages and thoughts, it's wonderful to hear from friends and family around the world. You are all in my thoughts frequently, each step of this journey.

On est ensemble

(Written 10.05)

On est ensemble. Three simple words of greeting given to us by our health trainers which encompass so much more. Literally translated as We are together it's a phrase which describes the general sentiment around training these days pretty well. We are together....a lot.....learning language, sweating profusely, sharing many of the same struggles and victories as we progress through the weeks. I've been in Cameroon for just over two weeks now – a quantification that doesn't begin to match up with my sense of time these days. In many ways it seems so much more than 2 weeks ago that I first stepped off the plane in Douala and into the 100 degree heat, remembering little of my French from high school and completely clueless about the culture or the country I was walking into. Two weeks later finds me living with a Cameroonian family of 8, rattling off French and Fulfulde greetings to my friends and neighbors every time I walk out the door, dodging goats and motorcycles with similar frequency-- and on multiple occasions simultaneously --as I walk to school, and perfecting the art of the bucket shower under the stars at the end of each sweaty, crazy day. In two weeks I've already learned and experienced so much...I've learned to appreciate the late afternoon downpour that breaks the 100+ degree heat, the stranger who invites me into their home to share their Ramadan meal. I've learned to wash my clothes by hand in a bucket and eat with my hands and (kind of) bargain for prices in the market, and so much more. Life is pretty simple, and pretty awesome in its novelty so far.

Taking the plunge...again

A ship in the harbor is safe, but that's not what ships are for.
~ William Shedd

Today I officially join the Peace Corps as a trainee, the first big step into the next two years of my life. It is fitting that three years ago today I took another big step as myself and a dozen friends threw ourselves off the 218 m Bloukran's Bridge in Storm's River, South Africa trusting our entire lives to a few hundred feet of bungee cord and a set of cloth harnesses. Though certainly not equal, both these experiences represent conscious decisions I have made to not let fear or uncertainty hold me back from experiences which might help me grow and challenge some of my fears.

In joining the Peace Corps today I am certainly forcing myself out of my comfort zone and into an experience which I know will be incredible because it is going to challenge me physically and emotionally and mentally from the very first day. Living with a family that is not my own, who do not really speak my language, who eat food that I don't even recognize and who are probably a little freaked out about hosting me too, not knowing a single person I am going to be spending the next three months with...it's incredibly intimidating and incredibly exciting too.

My overall ambitions for the next 27 months are fairly simple. I want to completely open myself to the experiences which come along, especially the difficult or frightening ones. I want to give as much of myself as I can to help the people in my village help themselves by identifying ways to improve their health that are both culturally appropriate and feasible without continual external aid. I want to work as hard as I can to understand health and illness from their perspective and find solutions and ways of sharing knowledge that respect these perspectives while also presenting plausible alternatives. And I want to continue to tackle new fears head-on and overcome them and grow.

Countdown to Cameroon

I officially have two weeks left before I begin the next 27 months of my life! At this point I've gotten past most of the anxiety about being away for so long and I'm excited to get back to Africa! I have very little idea what to expect from Cameroon or the Peace Corps (probably overall a good thing) but I'm really hopeful that Central Africa will be every bit as wonderful as Southern Africa was.

Anyone who has spent any amount of time with me this summer will know how much I agonized over what to name this blog...I enlisted the help of several friends and family in brainstorming for a clever title like my friend Liz's, the PCV in Benin who got to name her blog 'Benin There, Done That.' Or the Cameroon PCV (who I can't wait to meet) who already has a blog called 'That's What She Said.' The competition was pretty tough and at times I doubted if I could even write a blog if I couldn't even come up with a catchy name...

In the end I've decided to go for idealistic instead of clever and borrow some lines from a wonderful Nigerian poet, Ben Okri. These words depict so much of what I love about my experiences of Africa so far -- the amazing hope and joy that people seem to be able to effortlessly create in the face of what I -- and I think most Americans -- would consider incredibly depressing and hopeless circumstances. While I doubt that I'll profoundly change the world by spending two years in the Peace Corps, I do not doubt that my life will be changed and inspired by the experiences I have here. I hope this blog will be a way for me to include some of you in these experiences, both in the moments of difficulty and frustration as well as the moments of hope and inspiration.