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.