Merry Christmas Eve’s Eve,

So I didn’t really do a whole lot of Peace Corps work this week, but I definitely did stay busy running errands and visiting with people. I did start off the week with a visit to Banyo (bigger town about 4 hours up the road) to finish up all my protocol with the head government and military officials and now that’s finally done J The trip was pretty uneventful but the rides there and back were very entertaining. For those of you who know me well, you know that I used to suffer from a fairly severe case of nervous passenger syndrome (I blame all those years of driving with my father… love ya dad), but no longer! Public transportation in Cameroon has completely cured me of that, and I am convinced that there is not a driver or car left back in the states that I couldn’t handle now. So here’s an example to illustrate my point: the morning I left for Banyo we started off with 8 adults in a small 2-door Toyota hatchback of some sort and it was a tight squeeze. We had only been on the road for about 20 min when we stopped to pick up a family of 5. I kept thinking you’ve got to be kidding me, but no, no they were not kidding and 10 mins later I had reached a new personal best for public transport in Cameroon; 10 adults, 2 children, 3 chickens and all our luggage, all in the same 5 passenger 2 door compact car (but to be fair one of the guys was sitting on the hood of the car, so he wasn’t technically in the car as much as he was on the car). So there I was with 11 other people, and livestock, and a baby with mashed bananas all over it’s hands and face sitting on my lap, and I started to laugh. The guy next to me asked me why I was laughing so I looked at him and said, “What else can I really do in this situation?” We rode like this for about an hour on dirt roads.

On a different note we’ve had some changes to the compounds population. First the devil roster is gone. I can’t remember if I’ve written about him yet, but the short and long of it is there was a roster in the compound that I’m pretty sure was the spawn of Satan himself. He had it out for me. Every morning since I’ve been here he would stand right under my window and start crowing at 4:30. I’m a firm beliver that 4:30 is an ungodly hour no matter what species you are. That bird is the sole reason I had to resort to sleeping with earplugs and now I can’t sleep without them. Anyways I got the last laugh because we ate him last week, and let me tell you revenge never tasted so sweet (pun intended). With the roster gone I guess word got out that there was a livestock vacancy at my place and we quickly inherited a new four-legged friend, a baby sheep named Stacy (after the volunteer before Ralph). I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this yet, but my neighbor is a vet and apparently when I was gone at work a big heard of cattle and sheep came through and there was a newly born sheep that couldn’t keep up with the rest of them so he was given as a gift to Abdulihi. It is so so so cute, if it wasn’t so dirty and buggy I could totally get behind sheep becoming the new dogs, but alas it is dirty and buggy so I enjoy watching it form the porch. When Stacy the sheep got here it wouldn’t eat anything so Hahu and I cornered it, grabbed a hold and bottle feed it some Bouie (hot corn milk stuff) I don’t care for it much, but it did the trick and now it’s eating on it’s own.

Let’s see what other things did I do this week? Oh ya I decided to put in a little manual labor of my own, so I put on my boots, barrowed a shovel and started to dig a hole for compost. The ground was really hard because it’s the dry season and when my neighbor came over to see what the crazy white girl was doing she tried to convince me to wait and try again when the rains come. I really didn’t want to wait 4 months so pushed on and it paid off. After about an hour I had a textbook looking compost pile I even went and cut down some palm fronds to cover the hole with and keep the animals out. All my agro buddies would have been proud ;) About 5 hours after that, (I was still feeling pretty good about my little compost project) I went out back and caught Stacy the sheep eating the palm leaves. Oh well it was a valiant effort. Anybody got any ideas on how to keep my four-legged friend out of my compost?

Nothing else terribly important or funny happened for the rest of the week except that I did finally get to do a computer skype chat with my mom and dad. We got the video streaming up and running so that was pretty cool. Though I did have to explain to the other Cameroonians in the room why I was talking to my computer and how it was talking back to me, but once they understood they thought it was pretty cool too. One of my co-workers even got a chance to say hello to my mom and dad, and he’s been talking about it to anyone who will listen all week. At the moment I have forgotten my skype name, all it says is Kate Millman, but once I figure out what it is I’ll let you know.

I think that’s all for this week. I hope that everyone has a wonderful Christmas. See you next week, same time, same placeJ

Peace,

Kate

*** Devil Chicken and Stacy the Goat... I feel like i live on a farm :)

Greetings All!

So first things first, welcome to my mother’s faithful email army, and to everyone else (if there is anyone else… I’m starting to think mom and dad are the only one’s who read this thing) thanks for the interest. I’m sorry to say but I had to cut her off, I know some of you might be sad that the weekly emails have seen their final days, but I realized last week that if she dictates our weekly phone calls into emails, I’ll be left with nothing of interest to share. So, thank you mom for keeping everyone updated of my Cameroonian happenings but as promised I’m going to start updating this thing regularly.

One story that I forgot to write about last week, but that is definitely note worthy was my official presentation at the Lutheran church last Sunday. Upon my arrival to Bankim, I quickly realized for all its diversity, religion runs this town. To speak on diversity, in my neighborhood alone, to the right of my house is a Baptist church, to the left a mosque, directly across the street is the catholic mission, and I work for a Protestant health center. Needless to say balancing the Peace Corps’ a-religious stance, the religious spectrum in Bankim itself, and my own personal beliefs is proving to be no easy task. On a lighter note when I showed my counterpart, Bernadette, a picture of all my VBUMC friends she decided that it was of the upmost importance that she officially present me in church the following Sunday. I asked what exactly that entailed and she said all it was a quick introduction so that people in the community would know who I was. Pretty straightforward, pretty painless, so I thought… Turns out Bernadette is a church elder which means that she sits at the front facing the congregation, and you guessed it, I got to sit right next to her which meant for the next 4 hours (and no that’s not a type-o it really lasted 4 hours) 500 pairs of eyes were on me like white on rice. Besides the fact that it was in French I couldn’t tell you a lick of what was said during the service because I was afraid to move. I also don’t think anyone in the congregation could tell you what went down because they were pretty intent on watching the strange new white girl the entire time. I totally get the fishbowl analogy now. When it came time for introductions, Bernadette gave me a lovely intro and then unexpectedly through the floor to me… YIKES! No one told me I had to say anything! and I didn’t have anything ready! (side note; it’s super hard to bullshit you’re way through things in another language) So I mumbled out a quick couple words and then sat down sure that everyone was going to think I was a bumbling American idiot. I couldn’t have been more wrong! All this week people have been coming up to me in town telling me they saw me in church and welcoming me to Bankim. I couldn’t have asked for a better outcome, and thanks to my 4 hours of fame at church I feel like the integration process has gotten off to a great start.

As far the rest of the week, Wednesday I went to the clinic to help with the baby vaccination day and got peed on by an squirmy 6 month old baby boy, Thursday putzed around and hung out with the nuns at the catholic mission, and then Friday went back to the clinic to help out with prenatal visits. That was pretty cool, because I got to sit in on all the ultrasounds. One woman came in from a village way out “en brusses” because her midwife told her that she felt the baby’s head in two places and was worried. Turns out after the ultrasound they realized the women was pregnant with twins. I immediately wanted to go over and tell the mom-to-be congratulations but decided to wait on her reaction first… still waiting… by that I mean there was no reaction at all. It was strange to me, I thought either she would be really happy to have two healthy children, or she might be really worried about the extra mouth to feed, at the very least some sort of emotion, but alas, nothing.

Saturday I got a nice surprise when another volunteer on her way to Yaoundé for her close of service called me. She said that her bush taxi had broke down about 10 k outside of Bankim and so she was getting in a small car headed to town where she was going to wait for it to get fixed, and did I want to get lunch with her. Of course I said yes and so I spent a couple of hours with her chatting about this and that and picking her brain about things she had done during service.

When I got home I decided to take a bucket bath because I was going over to eat dinner with my neighbors that night and I knew they probably wouldn’t approve of the dirt tan (seeing as how they bath three times a day). So I got the water ready, striped down, reached for my towel, and had it half way around me when I saw something move on it. At first I thought it was some sort of mutant mouse-like- tree-frog, but then quickly realized it was actually a bat. I threw down the towel, grabbed some clothes, and ran to my neighbor’s house. No one was home, so I went to the next, again no one home, so finally I left my compound looking like a hot mess and went to the one next door (where I hadn’t officially introduced myself yet, I only knew a couple of the kids). I found one of the wives and was like, “hi I live next-door and I need one of the little boys who live here, I know there’s a bunch of them.” In hindsight it probably wasn’t the best idea to go up to a complete stranger and ask for their little boy… oh well live and learn. The wife asked me if I was ok and I sad yes, but that there was an animal (whose name I didn’t know in French, so which in my Franglish came out as, and I quote, “the thing that’s like a bird, but not a bird because it has hair, and flies at night”) in my house and I needed help getting it out. After about 2 minuets of contemplation I guess she decided I wasn’t deranged and so she called for one of her sons to help me out. Thirty min. after that, with the help of a 12 year old Cameroonian boy and my baseball cap we corralled the bat out of my room, out of my house and back into the wild. You know how people sometimes say, “this isn’t funny now, but it will be someday” not true in this case, here it was funny pretty much the entire time. I guess it’s a good thing I finished up with that series of rabies shots last month ;)

I MADE IT!!!

I’m officially a volunteer, I’m officially at post, and I’m officially on my own, well sort of on my own, I do still have to report to Peace Corps, but for the most part I’m doing my own thing, which is kind of scary, but kind of exciting at the same time.

So last I left off day one of traveling to post was about half way over, and let me tell you that was the better half of the day by far. Right after I left the internet café, I was blind sided by a terrible case of what I suspect was food poisoning. I’ll spare you the details, but just know that it’s no fun to be violently ill in a room without running water… Thankfully my bout of sickness only lasted 24 hours and I woke up the next morning feeling considerably better, which was good news for me because Aislynn and I had the bulk of our traveling still to go.

The ride was pretty uneventful and can be summed up with three words: long, bumpy, and dusty. It’s the dry season now so whenever a car goes by it kicks up about 5 inches of pure dust that’s always sitting on top of the roads. Good news is I’m looking really tan these days, bad news is it’s actually just the dirt. Oh well , I’ll take it!

Day one at post, I literally walked in the door dropped my stuff, found my bed and crashed for 5 straight hours. It was fantastic!

Day 2 I figured it was probably time to start unpacking and cleaning my house. Side note, in the 2 weeks that Ralph left and the house was empty the spiders, cockroaches, and mice pretty much took over. I think I might get a cat to get rid of the bugs and mice, no mousetraps in Cameroon. Anyways, I unpacked in the morning, and then headed into town for the afternoon. While I was there I ran into some people from the health center who were giving vaccinations for the national vaccination campaign. I know I’m supposed to take a week or two to move in and get situated before I get stared with actual work, but I just couldn’t pass this up. Turns out I made a good call, I got the chance to see some of the neighborhoods, and met a ton of people in the process. I think at the end of the day we had visited almost 300 houses and vaccinated close at 400 kids for Polio, Vitamin A deficiency, and intestinal worms. Needless to say I was wiped.

Monday, I was planning to finish up with unpacking, but I got a phone call at 6:30 am (another side note: I can’t sleep past 6 am anymore, it’s bizarre, I never thought I would ever be saying those words) from a very excited man at the district hospital named Joseph, who I had met during my visit in November, wanting to know If I wanted to take a day trip “en brusse” with him to see all of the small villages in the Bankim district. Again I could hear my boss saying, “take it easy, you have 2 years to do this,” but I was just excited to see the area so I said sure and 15 min. later I was in a 4 wheel drive truck heading into the bush. All I could think while we were driving from village to village was how beautiful the landscape was and how incredibly strong the people who live here must be. Their lives are no walk in the park (no electricity, no running water, limited water sources in general, and roads impassable in the rainy season) but each time I waved hello, or greeted someone they all flashed me huge smiles and friendly faces. One final word about Monday’s outing; we stopped for lunch, and I had cuscus and jamajama, and I ate it with my hands, and it was awesome.

Today, was pretty unexciting compared to the previous parts of my week. I went around and passed out protocol letters, which means I went around to introduce myself to all the important people in town to be like , hey I’m here. We don’t really do anything like that in the states, so I always feel a little awkward just walking up to someone who’s a big deal, and being like good morning, I’ve arrived. The most intimidating letter to deliver was to the traditional chief. You have to pull out all the stops and be super formal, so needless to say I kept the conversation super short with him. The last thing you want to do when you’re new to town is piss off the chief of the village by insulting him with bad French.

So ya, that’s what’s new with me in Cameroon. I’m going to try and make it out to the place with internet once a week so I can keep everyone posted. On my happenings here in Bankim.

Until Till Next Week!

Kate

Trainee No More

Hey All!

As of yesterday I am now officially a Peace Corp Volunteer! Yesterday there was a big swearing in ceremony with lots of important people, including the American ambassador, the Peace Corps Country Director, a handful of traditional chiefs, the mayor of Bagante, and some other people who I know were important because they got the good seats, but I’m not quite sure who they were exactly. Also it was really awesome because all the host families were invited and they all dressed to the T. You could really tell that they were all so proud of us and my host mom and dad were no exception. They both came looking amazing in their traditional clothes and they you could tell they pulled out all the stops. The ceremony lasted about an hour, and at the end well all took the PC oath and then viola! we went from trainees to volunteers.

Post ceremony there was a luncheon and then we all had to say goodbye to our families. Not gonna lie it was a lot harder then I thought it would be. I know I’ll go back to visit, but when I watched them walk away everything became really real. Like Ok from now on you’re on your own! Yikes! It’s a little intimidating, but very exciting at the same time!

Post-Post ceremony all the new volunteers spent the afternoon and then pretty much all night “celebrating” We had a nice dinner together and then just enjoyed each others company for the rest of the evening. This morning everyone got up early, packed up all the stuff and then headed out to post. It was really sad to leave everyone, but on the bright side now I’ll have places to stay and excuses to do a little traveling around CameroonJ

As I’m writing this now part one of the trip is complete. Aislynn and I left this morning for Bafousamm and arrived no problems. Were spending the night here in a hotel and then catching the first car out tomorrow morning at 5:30. Should get to my post sometime between 2-3 in the afternoon.

That’s all for now! I hope everyone’s enjoying the holiday season!

Peace,

Kate

Thanksgiving post that I'm just now putting up!

Greetings Everyone!

I guess the first thing to say is happy Thanksgiving. It was weird not being with the gang in the Outer Banks but I definitely had a great time celebrating with everyone her in Cameroon. It was really cool because we invited all the trainers and so the meal was a fusion of traditional Cameroonian cuisine and then some American classics. We had turkey, stuffing, salad, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie, kokie, plantains, guacamole, green beans, pineapple, melon, and tons of other stuff. As usual I ate way too much and slept like a dog all night! We even threw around the football around a bit. All in all it was a great day.

This week is the last week of stage! YAY !!!!! I’m defiantly ready for it but I know I’m going to miss my host family and all the other volunteers but I know it’s gonna feel great to gain a little independence. As of right now the plan is to swear in on Wed. leave Thursday and then arrive in Bankim on Friday. I can already tell it’s going to be a whirl wind.

Nothing else super exciting going on at this end. Hope all is well in the states!

Love,

Kate