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…