Spring Break '12

Hey y’all. This blog is waaay overdue, so I’m going to cut right to the chase. Let me take you back to March 18-30: In-service training and my first trip to the beach (which also marked my first 3 months at post—granted I’m currently in month 10...crazyyy!). 

In-service training was a weeklong workshop held after the first three months of our service. This year, it was held in Bamenda, the regional capital of the Northwest region. Bamenda has a similar climate as Ngaoundéré (except during the dry season), and it is also located in a beautiful valley; the whole city is surrounded by a wall of mountains and trees. In the rainy season, they say you can see waterfalls. The Northwest region is also one of the two Anglophone regions in Cameroon, so everyone speaks English/Pidgin (local dialect)/”special English (best way to describe this: speak normally, but with no contractions or conjugated verbs). 

So anyways, the week was filled with sessions on how integration at post was going, how to develop projects, how to work effectively with your counterpart, how to fund projects…that sort of business. I’m not going to bore you with details, but that was the basic premise. The highlight of that week was enjoying spending time with friends who I hadn’t seen since training. It was great hearing about everyone’s post and how well they were integrating into their communities—helped remind me that I’m not the only one experiencing culture shock and having to find the courage to leave the house every day and face this new world. Today, that timidity has slowly gone away, but there are still moments where I dread having to walk down the street when I’m the only woman/white person within a miles radius (and all eyes are on me). 

The real point of this post is to tell you about the mini-vacation I took after in-service. A group of us decided to head to one of the popular beaches in Cameroon, Limbe. Limbe is located in the Southwest region of Cameroon, where Mt. Cameroon is located (the largest active volcano in Cameroon). The beaches sit at the base of the volcano, so naturally you will find that the beaches are black!  My friends and I decided to stay at a popular Peace Corps hotel called Madison Park, located about 20 minutes outside of the center of town. Instead of sleeping in an air conditioned hotel room, we opted to pitch tents on the beach and rough it for the three days we were there (I mean, how often does the opportunity arise where you can camp on a blank-sand beach?). 

I can’t even begin to describe how beautiful this place was. The backdrop of the hotel was lush, green, jungle, and a beautiful mountain that I thought was Mt. Cameroon, but was just a mountain the locals called “mini Mt. Cameroon”. The beach was away from the hustle and bustle of the city and tourists, so we were pretty much the only people there except for the fisherman that would go out in the mornings, or the mama’s walking around, selling their catch of the day in the local markets. 

The first night in Limbe, we went to the popular fish market in town to grab some dinner. We headed to Downbeach, where we were faced with the task of choosing the best fish mama to give us the best price on all the fresh grilled fish, shrimp, crab, and calamari you could get your hands on. The first night, I went with some grilled carpe and grilled shrimp (which I accompanied with some grilled coconut I had bought from a little kid who was walking around, selling packets of grilled coconut flakes—coconut shrimp…yum!). The second night we ate there, I decided to go a little crazy and get the works: grilled fish, grilled shrimp, crab, and grilled calamari--in one sitting.. Heaven. That’s what it felt like. Heaven—in my mouth. And get this--it only cost me about $10…with beer. If you know me, you know I love me some good food, and this was probably the best food-high I’ve had in a long time. 

Previously that day (before stuffing my face with seafood), we spent some time at the Limbe Wildlife Center (check it out: www.limbewildlifecenter.org). It is a wildlife rescue and rehabilitation center for primates and various other animal species found in Cameroon. We ate lunch at a restaurant inside the center, called Arne’s (“Arnies”), where we drank the most amazing smoothies and mojitos in country, accompanied by the best cheeseburger I think I’ve ever tasted in my life (better than many burgers I’ve had in the States). Not to mention, we are enjoying this amazing spread next to a gorilla enclosure! Literally, 10 feet away from us, gorillas (including silverback gorillas) were chillen under the trees, snacking on some mangoes. It was seriously one of the most unique experiences I’ve ever had. After eating, for 3,000 FCFA ($6—all proceeds going towards the center’s rehabilitation efforts) we toured the center to see all the different species of monkeys they had in captivity (many of which are endangered due to poaching for “bush meat”), as well as various other animals (python, crocodile, and birds). Fun fact: one of the sponsors of the center is Florida’s very own Busch Gardens in Tampa Bay! It was such a pleasant surprise to see something from home all the way over here :) 

The rest of our time in Limbe was spent soaking up the sun on beach chairs, eating all the mangoes and bananas to our hearts content, showing kids our awesome pyramid-making skills, swimming, and catching up on life. It was a perfect getaway, one that I will be sure to make again before my end of service.  

Here are some pictures of the trip! Enjoy :) 

Heaven in my mouth

Can't have spring break without a beer tower

Silverback Gorilla

Just chillen!

Our tent!

Behind the tree line is the mountain

Black sand :)

Seafood feast-before

Seafood feast-after!

Shout-out to Florida's Busch Gardens!

 

Youth Day & International Women’s Day

            Holy cow—it’s already MAY! My apologies for my blog absence (and I do mean it). I wish I could say it was because I was up to my neck in activities that involved changing the world, but in all honesty, it was pure laziness (too honest?). Believe it or not, these past three months have been quite eventful, and it will take me more than one post to sum it all up for you.  Be patient with me…or as the Cameroonians would say—Ashia! 

Youth Day is on February 11 every year. It’s Cameroon’s way of celebrating, well, the youth. There is normally a week of events that leads up to the big day. Schools will put on talent shows for their students, soccer matches are also a popular event, and this year there was the first ever Miss Ngaoundéré pageant. I attended a talent show the Wednesday before, held by one of the high schools. It was so much fun to watch! Groups of students would make up dances, lip sync, perform short skits, play music, sing, dance…you name it. It wasn’t a competition, just an opportunity for the students to showcase their creative talents (which doesn’t happen very often).

                                         Traditional dance

                                        Salsa dancing!

                                         Live band

I also went to the Miss Ngaoundéré pageant. There were about 18 contestants, comprised of both high school and University students (but they were all around the same age). For the first pageant ever held in the city, it went pretty well. They girls had choreographed and practiced their walks and formations on the stage. They showcased their casual wear, traditional-wear (from their village), and formal wear. The talent portion wasn’t really a talent portion, just the girls dressing up in their favorite sport gear (tennis players, basketball players, soccer players etc.), and then there was the bathing suit portion….I was surprised they even decided to have one considering how conservative it is in the city…not to mention the governor was there!! It was a little…riskay…if you ask me. Anyways, they ended the pageant with the Q&A portion. Overall, the girls did great and a winner was chosen! I have to say it was definitely a good time and great experience, and something I think I would like to help with for next year as a youth activity!

            The contestants and the runner-ups!

  

Miss Ngaoundere 2012

On Feb 11 all of the schools in Ngaoundéré participate in marching/parading at the Place D’Independence  (a big field with a sitting area for spectators—it’s where they hold all major holiday celebrations).  All the schools—elementary, high school, university, and technical—show up with their matching pagne and parade in front of the governor, government officials, and a group of spectators. I’m not really sure why they do this, but it’s a tradition for all major Cameroonian holidays.  At the end of the day, everyone parties, eats, drinks and the clubs are open and poppin until dawn. Just as Americans look forward to holidays as an excuse to celebrate and party (i.e Cinco de Mayo, St. Patrick’s Day etc.), the Cameroonians do too. Youth Day is no excuse.

    A group of students parading in front of the Governor and spectators

                             Some of the crowd..there were more

Now, International Women’s Day is also one of those holidays. Same basic premise, except this day/week celebrates women and their accomplishments, and how far Cameroon has come in its efforts to empower women. So the parading involved most, if not all, women’s groups and associations in the city and surrounding villages. Most of these groups are involved in doing some kind of income generating activity, like a savings and loans group (they call it “Tontines”), or they make and sell things. These are usually the most dynamic and motivated women in the community, so why not give them a day to celebrate? Every year there is a pagne made for International Women’s Day. You can sort of see the pagne in these pictures: 

         The "former" Governor (he actually just got replaced)

 20 "Men of the Year"-they received awards for helping out the women in the community....on Women's Day (go figure).

  Here they come! Both the pink and green pagne were the chosen pagne for this year

                  An all women's band!

 After the parading is over, the women go home to feed their husbands and family (But wait! It’s Women’s Day…and they’re still cooking for the men?), then go back out to party the night away--at least those who are allowed to leave home, and those who drink. I say that because even though there is a day specifically for women, it doesn’t really include all women in this society, especially the conservative Fulbe community. Many women are only allowed to leave their concession/house only when they get permission from their husbands (that also includes going to the market). Yes! Women are making strides in Cameroon, but they still have a long way to go… 

So during Women’s Week I went to a couple of events. I sat in on a Women’s Association meeting and made some contacts with some important ladies in the city (score!). Then I went to a Women’s Exposition, which was basically a food fair because all the women’s groups were selling food out the wazoo. The highlight of this day: I ate grubs, python, and porcupine. Yep. I sure did and it was tasty! Well, the snake and grubs were (surprisingly) but the porcupine was a little to gamey for my taste.  I call it my “Andrew Zimmern moment”. He’d be so proud of me. 

So that was basically the entirety of both holidays. Next year I plan on actually holding activities (especially Youth Day/Week!) so I’ll have plenty more to say. In my next post I’ll talk about In-Service Training and my trip to the beach!

Oh P.S--MANGO season is in full swing, ya'll! I made mango salsa for the first time...sooo delicious, and I taught my friends how to eat a mangos the easy way! More to come... stay tuned, folks :)

   Here's a picture of my city from the top of Mt. Ngaoungere :)

   View 1: Those two towers are the Grand Mosque--I live right down the road from there

                                           View 2

                                   View 3...it's a pretty big city

         Pretty view! You can see Cyrus's village (my postmate) just below the rock

Puppy Love

Happy February!

Let’s see. What’s been going on since my last post?

1. I led my first meeting at post, by myself! It was my post mate’s (Cyrus) girls club that he helps facilitate every week in his village, Beka Huséré (I’m not quite sure if that’s how you spell it). It’s about 10 minutes outside of Ngaoundéré. Cyrus inherited this group from the volunteer he replaced, and because of him the group has stayed intact for almost two years now. I decided that I would help with the group since it is a girl’s group and they could use some female leadership (and he had to go out of town for official PC business).

Well, only 4 girls showed up, so I included some of the boys in the neighborhood too, making it 7 of us total. I had everyone go around and introduce themselves, say where they went to school, their grade, what they aspire to be when they grow up, and their favorite color (just for fun). After I thought it would be a good idea to introduce a team builder to them, so I chose “The Human Knot”. If you have never done this activity before I’ll explain: everyone has to link hands with two people you’re not standing next to so you form a big knot, and then you have to figure out a way to untangle ourselves without letting go of each other’s hands. Naturally the first 3-4 tries they let go, thinking I wasn’t going to see. We must have attempted it 3 more times before they completed the task without cheating. Either it was because of my bleak attempt at describing the rules in French combined with confusing hand motions or they couldn’t quite grasp the concept, since they have probably never done anything like that before. I took it as a success for both the group and myself. The activity took about 30 minutes tops, and that’s all I had planned for the meeting, so for the remainder of the hour we played neighborhood games (you can compare them to duck-duck goose, patty cake etc. except the Cameroonian versions).

2. I started French and Fulfulde tutoring every Monday, Tuesday and Thursday for about an hour and a half to two hours. My tutor’s name is Francois. He is a language trainer for the Peace Corps who just happens to be from/lives in Ngaoundéré, which is great for me because he knows what he’s doing and has experience working with Americans. Score.

3. I’ve been following Krystina (other post mate) around town to see some of the youth projects she’s been involved with. One project is a group of 10 girls between the ages of about 13-23 who are not attending school/university because they don’t have the money, so they have started an income generating activity by carving calabash (a hollowed out, dried fruit that can be used for bowls or decorations when carved and painted). The girls have received a loan to buy the materials and pay for training, and once they start selling the calabash, they will pay back the loan and save money so they can go back to school. This is the kind of work I hope to start when I do start to do my own projects!

4. I recently discovered that I have 3 mango trees, an avocado tree, lemon tree, and guava tree in my concession. I noticed the mangos have started growing, which means mango season is approaching. Let me break this down for you: Me+3 Mango Trees= all you can eat mangos 24/7, mango smoothies, dried mangos (which I fully plan on making and I already have the materials), mango salad, mango salsa, mango juice….I can keep going. Did I mention the guava, lemon and avocado trees? Yeah…it’s pretty much the ideal living situation. I’m drooling just thinking about it.

5. The kitchen furniture I had made is now sitting in my “kitchen”. I had to pay 3 burly men 500 CFA to help lift my ginormous countertop up my narrow staircase which was an epic fail because I completely forgot to factor in the stairs when I was measuring out how long I wanted it to be (2.5 meters long). I thought I would have to cut it in half, which would have completely defeated the purpose of having a countertop. A week later I paid 4 different men to attempt to get it up the stairs again without butchering it, this time successfully! So now I have a full functioning kitchen: countertop with shelves for storage, a table (island) and two stools, all painted and varnished for about $145 (not too bad!). My description doesn’t do it justice so here are some pictures!

6. Last but not least, I GOT MY PUPPY!!!! He’s a cute little guy I named “Pogey” (Poh-geeh) which means “handsome” in Tagalog (Filipino). I couldn’t find a French name that wasn’t cliché like Garcon, Jean Pierre, or Francois, nor could I find a good Fulfulde name that sounded cute or that I could roll of my tongue easily. I’ve always wanted to name a pet Pogey, so I thought since this is the first dog I will raise on my own, it was meant to be. Cameroonians can also pronounce his name, which works out perfectly. He pees and poops all over my house, wakes me up at 6:30am and chews on anything and everything he can reach, but I am in love with him!

I was thinking about this today and realized that I will probably end up training in him three different languages, four if you include his name. It’ll probably go something like this: Sit Pogey (that’s 2), Vien Pogey (Come here Pogey…2 again), Kai Pogey! (No Pogey…Fulfulde & English..2 more). Too confusing?! Or I could combine them: “Kai Pogey, stop eating that. Vien! (he comes over to me), good boy!” Four languages! Only in Africa…

Swearing In Pictures!

Grandmere posing with the U.S Ambassador

Grandmere receiving her certificate of appreciation with PC Country Director, Lahoma!

The Adamawa Crew

Youth Development Volunteers and Amadou (the bossman)

Swearing In Day.

Bonne Année!

Happy New Year everyone!

I hope that you celebrated the holidays and rang in the New Year surrounded by family, friends, good booze, and of course good food. I can definitely say that I did. Even though I wasn’t with my family in the States (who I missed terribly, especially since this is the first holiday we’ve spent apart), I celebrated with my new PC family who I would consider my new “home away from home”. Wouldn’t have done it any other way!

I decided not to spend Christmas and New Years at post. Since it was the “fête” and attempting to do anything work related would have been completely counterproductive, I decided to seize the opportunity to travel and see some more of Cameroon. I headed to Meidougou, a village about 4 hours from Ngaoundere in my region, and then Maroua for New Years, the regional capital of the Extreme North.

My journey to Meidougou started with a 4 hour bus ride to the small city of Meiganga. I was cramped in the back of a bus that was made for 20 people, but leave it to the Cameroonians to fill it with 40 grown men, women, and a few children. Thankfully half of the trip was on a paved road, but the other half was on a red clay dirt road. Doesn’t sound too bad, and it wasn’t, but since it’s dry season and hot and I was sitting next to the only window on the bus that they decided to open, I had a nice layer of red dust in my hair and on my face by the end of the ride. I looked like I had a stepped out of a spray tan gone wrong. If I had blonde hair it would have been orange. I spent Christmas Eve in Meiganga with my friend and fellow YD volunteer who is posted there. We spent the night catching up on life at post, drinking tea, and watching National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. Since it’s been a family tradition every year for the past 10 years or so to watch this movie on Christmas Eve, I decided I didn’t want to break the tradition just because I was half away around the world.

The next day I traveled to Meidougu, which is about 30 minutes outside of Meiganga. The volunteer posted there graciously opened up his house to host the festivities (he was also one of our two volunteer greeters when we first arrived in Cameroon). We chipped in on buying 3 goats for us to slaughter and eat (yum!). So we ate goat, guacamole, homemade chips, and some bean dip for our Christmas day meal. Not a typical American Christmas feast, but it was delicious! I suggested instead of doing Secret Santa that we should try a White Elephant gift exchange, so everyone brought gifts that ranged from American candy, souvenirs from other regions in Cameroon, and local novelties from the markets. The game was a success and I ended up with a big bag of Skittles! We ended Christmas evening with some drinks and headed to the village’s local bar where we got a private concert from a famous Cameroonian pop star. Only in Cameroon.

My New Year’s trip consisted of: 18 hours of traveling on a Mercedes charter bus (the seats had Coach covers on them), seeing HIPPOS TWICE in their natural habitat (from the bus window, but that doesn’t matter because I still saw them!!), staying at an International 1 star hotel for two nights…which in Cameroon is the equivalent to 5 stars, shopping at the Artisanal market (the north is known for their leather and artisanal work for cheap—great for gifts!), dressing up for our party in my one-of-a-kind New Year’s pagne dress, attempting to DJ, starting the countdown at 10 seconds, and ringing in the New Year with new and old friends!

Since then, I have finally bought enough kitchen supplies to start cooking with. I’ve come to realization that I am basically re-living my college days as a freshman because my meals so far have consisted of ramen noodles and mac n cheese. It’s a little hard to cook more elaborate meals with my limited cooking space, but after going to the carpenter and dropping 70,000CFA on a kitchen counter with shelves and a table and stools, I won’t have any more excuses. The best way to furnish a house here is to have things made, and when you’re starting from scratch it’s definitely not cheap.

I also met the Governor of the Adamawa, who was eager to meet me after hearing that I would be working with youth. He showed a lot of interest in what I am going to be doing and told me that I have his support. Since he’s the highest government official I will probably come in contact with during my work, it’s good to know that he’s got my back! My meeting with him was a refreshing reminder of why I am here and how much potential there is in this city to do some awesome things.

I’ve made an effort to spend some more time with my neighbors by eating lunch and dinner with them throughout the week. I went to my post mate’s village (Cyrus) for one of his girl’s group meetings. They through a welcoming party for me and brought over salads, omelets, bread and drinks. We took pictures and Cyrus and Krystina led their meeting. We took pictures so I’ll put them up as soon as I get them! Next week both my post mates will be out of town, so I decided to lead the girl’s group meeting by myself. I’m a little nervous about that, but I think that it will be a good practice.

I received my first care package from home this week as well. It was filled with spices, mixes, home-made beef jerky, granola bars, trail mix, candy, and office supplies. I’ve particularly been enjoying the spices, candy, and jerky! Thanks Mom & Dad!

Other than that, I’m just taking things day by day. Half the battle is just getting out of my house and doing things on my own. I’m starting French and Fulfulde tutoring soon, after getting my kitchen set up my next home project is getting my walls painted in my living room, and then searching for a furry companion (a puppy).