At Post

Disclaimer: This post was not proof read.

Hello internet, it’s been a long time. I have mixed feelings about our reunion. On the one hand it’s been almost relieving to not be tethered to you as I have been since grade school. On the other I’ve felt so deprived of communication, Wikipedia, news, Reddit, and all the other glorious bounties you bring. I still don’t have you at my new home in Guzang, but you’re only 1000 francs away in Bamenda and I suppose that may be for the best. I still haven’t given up on you though and hopefully soon I will bask in your warm glow on the comfort of my own couch.

There’s been so much that’s happened since I last checked in! I apologize for the delay in updating this blog for those that were actually waiting for a post; I know there are at least five of you, maybe even more.

I am at post. Guzang. Batibo sub-division. Momo division. Northwest region. Cameroon. My home sweet home for the next two years and thank the gods I like it because it would be a rough two years if I didn’t. There is a wonderful paved road leading from Guzang to Bamenda, the Trans-African Highway. I can get a car or a bike from the market any day, any time, no problem. I’m just connected enough to the outside world to have access to shawarma, internet, nightclubs, supermarkets, and other whiteman things. I’m just isolated enough to where I feel I’m getting a true Peace Corps experience; surrounded by jungles, mountains, chickens, goats, and Cameroonians. There are two German volunteers in my village who I’m becoming fast friends with and today I saw a white guy I hadn’t seen before (I was on a bike going to the next village, didn’t get to say hi, just waved. Who were you white guy? What were you doing here? I will never know) but other than that it’s Africans for days, naturally.

I’m integrating into the culture pretty well I think. I have my contri bag and contri cup (drinking horn) courtesy of my fellow Batibo volunteers, and I have my contri cap courtesy of my counterpart. I move around with the cap to let people know I’m trying to integrate into the culture, sometimes it makes me feel like I’m one of those Taino Indians brought back to the court of Isabelle and Ferdinand, dolled up in 16^th century European regalia to let people know that I too can be civilized. But I also think the hat stylish as hell so it evens out. I move around with my contri bag to hand people cola nuts and to carry my contri cup and contri toilet paper. The cup is for palm wine. The toilet paper is also for palm wine.

Ahh palm wine, sweet sweet mimbo. I drank it with some elders the first night I was here and I haven’t stopped since. Not out of my own volition, but not necessarily against it either. Palm wine is tapped from the raffia palm and is probably the largest cash crop in the whole of the Batibo region. It is tapped in the morning and in the evening and is alcoholic straight away.  Early on it is sweet like nectar and not very alcoholic, it ferments very quickly with time and by the end of the day it’s very alcoholic. By the second day it’s liquor. By the third day it’s flammable. Unfortunately this natural fermentation process means that it also takes place in the stomach after consumption. This leads to a tumultuous collection of gas and who knows what else forming in your innards throughout the day and the end result ain’t so pretty. I don’t know how most locals aren’t running to the bathroom every couple hours, it’s probably (hopefully) something you get used to. When locals talk about the miraculous drink that is palm wine they always end up saying “It’s natural!” I now repeat this mantra whenever I just barely make it to a toilet. But my verdict: palm wine is awesome. It’s a great social drink, it brings people together, it tastes great, and the buzz is mellow. It’s natural.

I guess I should catch all you good people up on what I’ve been up to this past month. The rest of training went by very slowly, everyone was ready for it to be over and I was one of them. It was basically reiteration, more language, and free time. We had some good times though to end our being together on a high note, especially the Halloween party. Three weeks ago we piled into a bus, decked out in our graduation pagne, a sea of orange, red, and gold, and made our way to the American embassy in Yaoundé for the swearing in ceremony. It went down without a hitch and we all became official Peace Corps Volunteers. The next day we said goodbye to our host families and goodbye to our friends going to different regions and boarded smaller buses destined for our new homes. The PCVs in the Northwest were waiting for us at the headquarters in Bamenda and we all went out for legitimate hamburgers. During the festivities my new clustermates singled me out to give me my contri cup and contri bag which was touching to say the least (thanks guys). We all went out for drinks afterwards and then to a nightclub where we proceeded to shake skin until the wee hours of the morning. The next day I woke up to a call from my clustermate Colin the Indispensable, he would earn that name this day.

We went all around Bamenda with a giant trunk and giant bag, getting my bank account open, eating some shawarma, and then catching cars that would take us to Bali Park and then Guzang. We said our goodbyes in Guzang market square and then I was on my own. My community host (a real nice guy) met me in the square, we went to meet my landlord (another real nice guy), and I entered my new home. It’s pretty fantastic. Second floor, furnished, two bedrooms, living room, big kitchen, front and back balcony. I’ve lived in worse places in the States as some can attest to. I have running water sporadically at best, I mainly use the outside tap to fill my buckets, but that’s only because it is dry season. But the electricity has only gone out on me once which is pretty damn unheard of around these parts. A father and his son live directly next door, a nice (but very evangelical) teacher lives below me, and diagonally below there is a clinic run by a nice lady.

The day after I arrived was Guzang market day. My village has the second largest market in the Northwest. Talk about being baptized in fire. My cup was full of mimbo from 10AM to 5PM. It was a great day though, I finally met my counterpart who is a really wonderful guy; enthusiastic, motivated, and welcoming. He works for the government agriculture ministry in a village called Widikum but operates his own NGO in Guzang, his hometown, called the Community Initiative for Sustainable Environment and Gender Development (CISEGD). He’s been doing really great work and I’m excited to be helping him with it. In the coming months we have a beekeeping project, mushroom cultivation trainings, and are going to try and add some stuff to the demo farm across the street from the office.

My next few months in the Peace Corps will primarily involve identifying farmers who are trying to improve their systems and are receptive to new ideas. I’ll take one or two of these farmers and develop a farm management plan for them in order to integrate various components of their system and help them run their farm more like a business. I’ll also be conducting a community needs assessment which takes the form of a giant Microsoft Excel report that at this point seems pretty daunting. So far though, my counterpart and I have been identifying groups of yam farmers for a project through the Presbyterian Hunger Program in which groups are given 100 chickens to utilize their manure as fertilizer while receiving training on planting nitrogen fixing trees in their fields. After six months the group agrees to buy another 100 birds and gives them to a different group free of charge, making the program cyclical and sustainable. I think it’s pretty awesome and it seems like the perfect way to hit the ground running and has introduced me to a lot of farmers in the Batibo area while giving me hands on training in addressing farmers in Pidgin.

That’s another thing. Remember when I was so happy that I got posted to an Anglophone region? Yeah, turns out it’s going to be a little bit harder than I thought. I’m getting by with using special English and changing my inflection and accent but some people only speak Pidgin and some only the local dialect. So far I can understand a lot better than I can speak but I know I’m going to have to double down on learning how to speak if I’m going to integrate and talk to farmers effectively. I’m also still trying to keep up with my French, if I didn’t like Guzang so much I would almost say I’m sad I didn’t get posted to a Francophone region, it would probably be just as difficult. But boy do I like the Northwest.

Other than the yam meetings my first few weeks have been filled with protocol; meeting all the officials in the area and presenting my documents to them. District officers, agriculture and livestock officials, the mayor (who is great and has been a huge asset to me), and gendarme commanders. And of course the Fon. His Royal Highness the Fon of Guzang is a really magnanimous individual and welcomed me with open arms, going so far as to call me his son. He and the traditional council are going to be a great resource for me, everyone seems very proud that there is now a Peace Corps volunteer in the village and they have all done their best to make me feel at home. It isn’t every day that you get to drink with a king and kingsmen. He also told me to quit smoking, so did the prince, maybe when royalty is demanding that you quit your bad habit you should quit your bad habit.

Yesterday was a very important cultural day in the village. There is a tree planted in the middle of the market. Six hundred years ago, when Guzang was founded, seven slaves were buried alive under this tree to give the land power. The government has tried to move this huge market many times but has never succeeded, the market has deep roots in Guzang and some say it’s because of the sacrifice. Of course it’s probably just tradition and there is an actual history as to why the market is located in Guzang but pretty cool story, huh? Anyway the Fon, who is never seen in the market by tradition, and the traditional council make a sacrifice to this tree every year to rejuvenate its power. I served as a guest to the Fon and followed the council and some jujus into the market. I had already drank a lot of palm wine when CRTV decided it was a good idea to interview the whiteman. I will be appearing red-faced and sweating into thousands of Cameroonian living rooms soon so that’s great. I hope Peace Corps doesn’t send me home for that, I don’t think it was too bad.

Other stuff I might have missed: Thanksgiving was awesome here with a big celebration in Mbengwi, but it was sad not to be at home. The day after we went to the funeral of a dear friend that was taken too soon. It was sad but an amazing cultural experience, funerals a pretty joyous occasions in Cameroon. My third day here I gave a speech in Pidgin to a Presbyterian congregation of hundreds of people which was nerve wracking but now I hear “Sean!” everywhere I go. The kids that live downstairs from me are really great and love giving me high-fives, they were the first to start calling me Sean and not whiteman. I still hear the “whiteman whiteman whiteman” jingle everywhere I go, sometimes I scold the kids and they start saying “Sean Sean Sean” but there are so many of them it’s hard to bother, so petit-au-petit I’ll probably stop hearing it so much but I don’t really care, I am a white man after all and that’s nothing to be ashamed of. It isn’t meant to be insulting anyway. Everyone here is super religious and I get a lot of blowback if I don’t show my face in church on Sundays so guess who has to go to church every Sunday for two years? This guy. It’s funny how things come full circle. I’ll probably just end up going into the same trance I did as a kid all those moons ago. A lot of people have tried to “save” me, including my neighbor. It’s a lot to deal with, and it sucks having to feign faith, but it’s not so bad. I listen to black metal a lot and I’ll probably sacrifice a goat to Frey somewhere during mid-service, does that count as a cultural exchange? Moghamo is the local language and the name of the people around Batibo, I’m trying to learn it as best I can but African languages don’t bounce off this tongue so easy. There was a giant wasp’s nest in my bathroom when I arrived here. I burn my trash. I have a lot of downtime.

I think that about covers it.

I hope everyone is safe and well, I know I am. Hope to have the internet here soon. In the meantime feel free to message me on Facebook or my old cellphone if you want my Cameroonian phone number and have a good international plan or a lot of money to waste. Speaking of money to waste, if you want to send a package of delightful American things (I only say this cause people were wondering, I’m seriously fine so no need), you can send them to Sean Potts, Peace Corps, BP 837 Bamenda, NW, Cameroon. Letters would be pretty cool too! I don’t know how many stamps to put on them though…

All my love! We are together!

Two Weeks in Mbengwi and the World's Your Oyster

Countries are not nations, nations are not states. I’m feeling more and more lucky to be in “Africa in Miniature”, especially as someone who had previously never been or wanted to go to Africa, as it really lives up to its name. The regions of this country are diverse beyond belief and the cultures stand in sharp contrast to each other. Though the state is Cameroon, the nations change from village to village and the countries change from region to region. There is no typical Cameroonian landscape and there are not typical Cameroonian people. Nothing taught me more about this than the recent two week trip we took to Mbengwi.

After what I could only describe as a “cultural field day” where we used our French in different pretend scenarios, my fellow Anglophone volunteers and I loaded our stuff onto a junky bus and began a two day voyage to the Northwest. For two weeks we would be training at a fish farming station in the village of Ku, located in the small city of Mbengwi. The trip was long and cramped but the wind in my face made it all worth it. Sweet white Jesus do I miss fans.

After what felt like 20 gendarme road blocks, being desperately hounded to buy oranges and bananas at each one, and our bus hitting a moto, we reached our hotel for the evening. It had hot water. I wish I could tell you more about it but all memories of the evening have been superseded by the shower I took. Also the only thing I can remember about the shower is that it was hot. The tears of joy streaming down my face were washed away by the liquid warmth. I drank some beer, watched some Vikings, and went to bed.

We loaded back up, drove for three hours, and arrived at the frat house where we would be staying. We were greeted by an amazing PCV who became our facilitator during our stay there. We drank the white mimbo (palm wine), ate dinner, and passed out. The next day we woke up, got shifted into groups, and started all our farm chores: gardens, fish, and pigs. The station itself is pretty cool, it was started by the Cameroonian government and the Peace Corps in the 70s to produce fingerlings to sell to farmers and act as a training environment for local farmers to learn about fish farming, animal husbandry, and farming techniques. It’s in pretty bad shape now but that just made for more intensive training. The system they have going now is anything but integrated; the pig shit goes in the pond for nutrients and that’s about it. We all developed plans for improving the system at the end of our stay.

The garden I made was bomb, all of ours were. Starting from overgrown fields of weeds and hacking them down with machetes we made beautiful beds for cowpeas and sweet potatoes (I hate sweet potatoes but whatever). The fish were easy to feed but were the worst of the chores due to the shaping and dredging of an old fish pond. Pigs were the easiest and the most fun.

More about the Northwest though. The temperature is so much better due to elevation, the mountain scenery is beautiful, English (if you want to call it that) is spoken, and the people are incredibly friendly. You do have to deal with kids trailing behind you singing “whiteman whiteman whiteman” but I got used to it after a while. I’d rather be called whiteman any day over “le blanche”. The people of the South are so stoic, it’s hard to find a smile shot your way, but everyone loves greeting each other in the Northwest. The disposition is the main difference. Our groundskeeper was a real amazing person, and the mama that was our landlady was one of the most animated people I have ever met. She taught me a lot of Meta, the local language and the name of the tribe in the area. The place I’ll be living for the next two years is extremely close by and populated by the same people so I was happy to learn all that I could. It was difficult to come back to the South after the amazing time we had. I know my host family was happy to see me but I can’t wait to move out, end this training, and start working and living in a place of my own.

We met plenty of other volunteers in the Northwest, a real good group of people. My post mate is a great dude and got me excited for what’s to come, even told me a bit about the house I’ll be staying in. I’ll be living in the palm wine capital of the world, for better or for worse, and every 8^th day we host the second largest market in the Northwest. We all took a hike up a pretty sizeable mountain. I took plenty of pictures but Nikon is a foolish company and has their own micro-micro USB cords so I can’t transfer them to my computer. So that sucks for you guys because the scenery was fantastic.

The second week culminated with a pig roast. I killed the pig. By kill the pig I mean I punctured its throat with a dull machete and then an old-timer took the blade from me and started sawing at its aorta. It was pretty brutal but I’m glad I got to experience it since I eat so much pork. The process could have been a lot cleaner and a lot quicker. The machismo in this country is palpable and everybody thinks his way is the best. The slaughter has to be drawn out so everyone gets the chance to show how badass and skillful they are. I just wanted it over as fast as possible, it took a while to bleed out and die. Then the real work started.

We shaved him with boiling water and dull knives, hauled him up to the house in a wheel barrel and rubbed him down with salt. The next morning was hell on earth with the size of the fire we made. We made a makeshift oven of cinderblocks and corrugated metal and slow roasted him until the meat was falling off the bone. We had all of our trainers and new friends over for dinner and damn was it good. His Royal Highness the Fon of Ku even showed up.

We met the Fon three times during the course of our stay which I guess is testament to how much he enjoyed our company. The first time was during the International Day of the Girl Child, we had an introduction ceremony, drank mimbo, and sat in awkwardness for a bit before seeing the traditional dancing that was planned for that afternoon. Three days later he came to our house for dinner, complete with more mimbo and more awkwardness. He was pretty relaxed by the time of the pig roast so it was a much more casual affair. I don’t mean to depict the Fon as a strange dude; there is just a lot of pomp and tradition surrounding him. Never turn your back to him, wait until he’s seated then clap three times before sitting down, politely avert your eyes, and never cross your legs. All in all he was friendly; a student of history and an Arsenal man who likes to play table tennis. It was good to share a table with royalty.

We left the day after the roast, stayed at a less nice hotel that didn’t have hot water (but did have a fan), and made the long trip back to the jungles of the South were we’ve been for a week now. I’m back to speaking French and getting sick of training, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel and boy does it look good. I write this during my lunch break; about to go to French class and then weed my garden so the Ambassador will have something pretty to look at when he comes to check on our progress on Sunday. He’s curious as to our thoughts on how technology is affecting Cameroon and probably to brief us a bit on the troops that were just sent to help with Boko Haram in the North. That will be great, I like the Ambassador, he’s a good guy, but it would also be nice to have a day off. Oh well, this is Africa.

I’m sorry about the no pictures. I’ll find a way to get around that. But thanks so much for reading! I’ll try and post more regularly. Everyone is missed, all my love.

PS: I’ve gone from speaking no French to being placed in the Intermediate High category. That’s some pretty cool news to report but I don’t know where I would have fit it in to this post. Too bad I’m going to lose it all again when I get to the Northwest.

Level 2: Complete

It seems like I’ve already been here so long, but it’s only been two weeks. Maybe it’s because if this were a vacation than I’d just be about done with the vacation. But this isn’t and I’m not. I don’t mean for that to sound bleak! I’m still excited to be here for the 27 months that I am, but for the first time I’m getting a good sense of time. It’s seems daunting but there’s nothing wrong with that.

Me and Papa Félix have been batching it since Friday when Mama Mimette left for Yaoundé, her daughter is about to have a baby! I feel like a huge burden though as Félix can’t leave me alone here, that would be a breach of his contract with the Peace Corps to house me, so he’s missing the birth of his grandchild. I think making the journey for a family birth is more of a female thing here anyway, but it makes me feel bad. We’ve been living pretty well on our own though. I ran into him at the market yesterday and introduced him to some white women, something I think he’s wanted to see for a good while now. He brought home sardines and a baguette for dinner. I’m a bit grateful, it’s not like I don’t like mama’s cooking but jesus lady, I can’t eat 12 batons de manioc. Sardines for dinner are much more in line with the amount I can eat. I’m blowin’ up like you thought I would. Call the crib, different number, different hood, but it’s all good.

Not too much new to report. I’m living a pretty slow life. I’ve eaten rat for dinner, twice. What’s more disturbing is that I loved it. Tastes like greasy beef, put that in some hot water and you’ve got a stew, baby. A bunch of us went to the market. Bought a carton of cigarettes for $4, it might be harder to quit than I thought. But yes, mom, I’m going to quit. Just not now. It’s my last “American” luxury and… carton for $4. We also went to the boulangerie, I bought banana bread, a baguette, and a quarter wedge of Gouda which I proceeded to eat and finish right then and there. I couldn’t help myself. I think two weeks without cheese is the longest I’ve ever gone.

Oh, yeah, one more thing. I GOT POSTED. We all made a sorting hat that proceeded to determine our fates Hogwarts style.  I was as nervous as an autistic puppy on the 4^th of July. But that cleared up real fast when the hat (i.e. Maulay) told me I would be going to the village of Guzang in the NORTHWEST. Northwest is an Anglophone region. No French. Just the King’s. Couldn’t be happier, as much as I would like to learn this language I’m convinced a bunch of mentally deficient Franks got together around the 6^th century and had a convention to determine a tongue that would piss people off for hundreds of years to come. Seriously, what’s the point of conjugating a verb when it’s going to sound the exact same no matter how you say it? Why have singular and plural nouns? Why only pronounce half the damn letters? I’m sorry France. You make damn fine cheese, thanks for the ships during the revolution and all the fine paintings, but your language is completely idiotic. Now I’m going to start learning Pidgin English on top of the French, but the less French in my life the better.

I digress. Guzang is a small village in Northwest Cameroon that borders the Southwest region. It is known for its palm products; nuts and wine. (That’s right SG, treenuts.) Temperatures are cool, getting cooler at night. Soon us Anglophone volunteers will be going to Mbengwi in the Northwest for farming and livestock practicums, it’s extremely close to my village so I might even get to sneak a peek. Local farmers have been harming the environment for decades with unsustainable agricultural activities and there is a huge need to implement sustainable measures to help in soil fertility and scaling back deforestation. Sustainability was one of the key issues I was looking forward to working on and it seems I have my work cut out for me. There will be many other volunteers close to me; the Northwest is the most volunteer dense region of the country, and I will have electricity. All my wants have pretty much been met and now I’m just excited to get to work.

My garden here is going well. I think. We’ve got nightshade (not poison), amaranth, and today I’m going to plant some cowpeas. The chickens are doing decently well also. Only three mortalities so far, which is to be expected, but I looked today and one doesn’t seem to be doing so well. So it goes. You try and hope the things you’re in charge of don’t die but hope can’t ward off disease and parasites. The sad mortalities will soon turn into delicious mortalities.

I bet things are great in the States. How could they not be? Are the roads still paved with gold? Does everyone still have a private jet? I can’t remember that well. I hear Bernie is the new front runner, called it. Some evil guy raised the price of some HIV drugs? Broadband is a core utility now? Someone tell Paul Biya.

Also someone tell Colin to stop using my youtube account to watch Naruto, it’s destroying my browsing history and I can’t find all my one off songs I like to listen to.

One Ecstatic Wave

Well here I am in Cameroon. As I write this I’m trapped in the Peace Corps training center due to rain. It’s currently the rainy season and I’ve been finding out just exactly what that means, the clouds open in torrents without a moment’s notice.

So how have things been? They’ve been good, great, bad, interesting, confusing, beautiful and overwhelming. After meeting all my future colleagues in Philly we drove through NJ and NY to get to JFK and hopped on a seven hour flight to Brussels. It was sad that my first time in Europe was a layover but, hey, c’est la vie. I got to go to Europe. After two hours and several hurried cigarettes at the Brussels airport we got on a nine hour flight bound for Yaoundé by way of Douala. To Cameroon. Deepest darkest. To the armpit of Africa.

We arrived at night, were shuttled into a bus, and made our way to the hotel in Yaoundé My first impression was how similar it was to Central America. Loud, disorganized, people everywhere, food cooking in the front of every tin roof shack we passed. We ate some caterpillars on the way (don’t worry, just as a novelty).

Training at the hotel was basic; safety and security, interviews to determine our posts, more vaccines, etc. It was good to see how well the current volunteers have adapted. It’s strange to think that in a year it might be me yelling at Cameroonians in African French and wearing pagne. We got to know each other a lot better and I’m a pretty big fan of everyone in the group. Sadly we wouldn’t be together for very long.

We were separated by sector, Agriculture and Health. My fellow aggies and I went to Ebolowa, the regional capital of the South, so we could have access to the large training center with the space required for our gardens. The healthies were posted at Mengong, a smaller village about half an hour away. They exited the bus first and we got to see their new host families pick them up one by one. We laughed and laughed at how uncomfortable they looked. What goes around comes around.

We got off the bus at the training center and we were paired with our host family. I was the third one to go and I was paired up with Mama Mintyene. She greeted me with this weird half-bijou head-knocking thing. I told her I didn’t speak any French and she soon found out how serious I was. We got to my new home, it’s nice and I have a decent size room (about 2/3rds the size of my room in the States). She showed me the toilet, which is an outhouse the size of a closet with a hole in the ground. That’s also where I take my bucket showers.

She said we were having cous-cous for dinner and boy that made me happy. Encontrer bon jour. Cameroonian cous-cous is a giant cassava turnover and I was about to find out that I hate it. The gumbo it was sitting in was good but oh man was it hard to down that so as to not be offensive. I said it was deliceux. So guess what was for breakfast the next day? Goddamn cous-cous. Luckily I haven’t had it since.

So it’s been 7 days in these conditions and I have to say I think I’m getting used to it. The food has been better, I’m eating healthier (still smoking like a fiend), sleeping without a fan and sweating balls. My skin went red immediately but now it’s pretty café au lait. Lizards are everywhere, spiders are everywhere.  Mon host pere is pretty aloof. It’s only me my mama and my papa at the house, no kids which is good for my sanity but bad for my French. I’m getting used to being filthy and am letting the beard grow out, neck and all. I’m starting to look pretty homeless so that might have to change.

I took my first moto to the market yesterday to meet up with the health people, we had a blast. We’ve got wifi at the training center, power in our houses, and boutiques and bars galore. Healthies got none of that. They definitely needed to get out, it was sad to see them go around 5:30 (it gets pitch black around 6:15). That’s another thing; I go to bed around 8:30. It’s been pretty interesting seeing my body adapt to a new time schedule.

Anyway yesterday was the first time we took motos into the market, the only way to travel in Cameroon. I think that was the first time it really hit me as to where I was. Driving through the market I knew I was in Africa. The chaos, the smells, the noises all combined and made it feel otherworldly.

We find out where we will be posted on Thursday. I’ve been getting really mixed signals as to what that will be. I want to be in the West, though we met up with some volunteers posted here in the South and they made it seem pretty cool, it still just seems so isolated. The two west most regions, Northwest and Southwest, are Anglophone and I’ve admitted to the country director that I don’t think my French will be up to snuff in time, I don’t want to spend my first year at post freaking out and trying to learn the language. Long-term thinking Sean knows I should go to a Francophone region, if I do I will most certainly be a fluent speaker at the end of the two years. I’m already learning a lot, infinitely more than I knew coming in (i.e. nothing).

But so far so good! I’m taking it day by day and just trying to get through training. It’s hard thinking about the next seven weeks let alone the next two years. It seems pretty daunting but I just might be cut out for this line of work. Tomorrow we get our chicks and pigs! I have to kill them eventually but that’s still pretty cool. By the next post I’ll know my post. I’ll try to keep this updated as much as possible, even if no one reads it I’ll probably get a kick out of going back and looking it over.

I hope all is well in the Land of Burgers and Washing Machines.